Kind: captions
Language: en
Donald Trump was probably the biggest
person ever to be removed from social
media do you understand why that was
done Can you steal man the case for it
and against it everybody who's watching
this around the world basically saw
let's say us establishment or democrat
alligned folks just decapitate you know
the head of state from digitally right
like just boom gone okay and they're
like well if they can do that in public
to the US president who's ably the most
powerful in the world what does the
Mexican president stand against that
nothing regardless of whether it was
Justified on this guy that means they
will do it to anybody now the seal is
broken just like the bailouts as
exceptional as they were and the first
everybody was shocked by them then they
became a policy instrument and now
there's bailouts happening every single
bill is printing another whatever
billion dollars or something like
that the following is a conversation
with bology s Nason an angel investor
Tech founder philosopher and author of
the network State how to start a new
country he was formerly the CTO of
coinbase and general partner at Andre
harwoods this conversation is over 7
hours for some folks that's too long for
some too short for some just right there
are chapter timestamps there are Clips
so you can jump around or like I prefer
to do with podcasts and audio books I
enjoy you can sit down relax with a
loved human animal or consumable
substance or all three if you like and
enjoy the ride from start to finish
biology is a fascinating mind who thinks
deeply about this world and how we might
be able to engineer it in order to
maximize the possibility that Humanity
flourishes on this fun little planet of
ours also you may notice that in this
conversation my eye is red that's from
Jiu-Jitsu and also if I may say so from
a life well
lived this is Alex Freedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's biy
sason at the core of your belief system
is something you call the uh prime
number maze I'm curious I'm curious we
got we got to start there if we can
start anywhere it's with mathematics
let's go all right great a rat can be
trained to turn at every even number or
every third number in a maze to to get
some cheese but evidently it can't be
trained to turn at prime numbers 2 three
five 7 and then 11 and so on and so
forth that's just too abstract and
frankly if most humans were dropped into
a prime number maze they probably
wouldn't be able to figure it out either
you know they'd have to start counting
and so actually pretty difficult to
figure out what the the Turning you know
rule was yet the rule is actually very
simple and so the thing I think about a
lot is just how many patterns in life
are we just like these rats and we're
trapped in a prime number Maze and if we
had just a little bit more you know
cogitation if we had you know a little
bit more cognitive ability a little bit
more whether it's uh you know brain
machine interface or just better physics
we could just figure out the next step
in that Prime we could just see it we
could just see the grid right and that's
what I think about like that that's a
big thing that drives me
is figuring out how we can actually
conceive understand that prime number
maze that we're living in so understand
which patterns are just complex enough
that they are beyond the limit of human
cognition yes and uh what do you make of
that are the limits of human cognition a
feature or a
bug I think mostly a bug I admire
ranagen I admire uh you know fine men I
admired these great mathematicians and
physicists who were just able to see
things that others couldn't and just by
writing it down you know that's that's a
Leap Forward you know people talk about
it's not the idea it's execution but
that's for trivial ideas for great ideas
for Max's equations or n's laws or you
know Quantum electrodynamics or some of
ronen's identities that really does
bring us forward especially when you can
check them you don't know how they work
right you have the phenomenal logical
but you don't have the theory underneath
it and then that stimulates the
advancement of theory to figure out why
is this thing actually working that's
that's actually you know statch you know
arose in part from the kind of
phenomenological studies that were
basically being done where people are
just getting steam engines and so on to
work and then they kind of abstracted
out thermodynamics and so on from that
right so the the practice led the theory
rather than vice versa to some extent
that's happening in neural networks now
as you're aware right and I think that's
um so just something that's true and
that works you if we don't know yet
that's amazing and that pulls us forward
so I I do think that the limits are are
more of a bug than a feature is
something that humans will never be able
to figure out about our universe about
the theory about the practice of our
universe yeah people will typically
quote cell's incompleteness with for
such a question and uh yeah there are
things that are provably unknowable or
provably unprovable um but I think you
can often get an approximate solution
you know the the hbert you know you know
Hilbert's problems like we will know we
must know uh at least we should know
that we can know push to get at least an
approximate solution push to know that
we no at least we push back that
Darkness enough so that we have lit up
that corner of the intellectual Universe
okay let's actually take a bit of a
tangent and explore bit in a way that I
did not expect we would but let's talk
about the nature of reality briefly I
don't know if you're familiar with the
work of Don Hoffman no I don't I know
Roger Penrose has like his Road to
Reality series for like basic physics
getting up to everything we know but go
ahead tell me it's even Wilder yeah in
modern physics we start to question of
what is fundamental and what is emergent
in this beautiful Universe of ours and
there's a bunch of folks who think that
SpaceTime as we know it the
four-dimensional space is emergent it's
not fundamental to the physics of the
universe and the same many argue I think
Sean Carol is one of them is that time
itself the way we experience it is also
emergent it's not fundamental to the way
our universe works anyway those are uh
the technical term I apologize for
swearing those are the mind fucks of uh
modern physics but if we stroll along
that road further we get somebody like
Donald Hoffman who makes the
evolutionary case that the reality we
perceive with our eyes is not only an
abstraction of objective reality but
it's actually completely detached like
we're in a video game essentially that's
uh consistent between each uh consistent
for All Humans but it doesn't it's not
at all connected to physical reality so
it's an version of the simulation
hypothesis is that his in a very distant
way
but uh the simulation says that there's
a sort of computational nature to
reality and then there's a kind of a
programmer that creates this reality and
so on now he's he says that we humans
have a brain that is able to perceive
the
environment and uh evolution is produced
from primitive life to complex life on
Earth produce the kind of brain that
doesn't at all need to sense the reality
uh directly so like this table according
to Donald Hoffman is not there well so
like not not just as an abstraction like
we don't sense the molecules that make
up the table but all of this is fake
interesting so I you know I I tend to be
more of a hard science person right and
so um you know so just on that people
talk about qualia you know like is your
perception of green the different from
different from my perception of green
and you know my counterargument on that
is well we know something about you know
spectrum of light and we can build
artificial eyes and if we can build
artificial eyes which we can you know
they're like they're not amazing but you
can actually you can do that you can
build artificial ears and so on
obviously we can build recording devices
and you know for cameras and things like
that well operationally the whole
concept of your perception of green you
see green as purple I see green is green
or what I call Green doesn't seem to add
up because it does seem like we can do
engineering around it right so the
Hoffman thing I get why people more
broadly will talk about a simulation
hypothesis because you know it's like
fan many others have talked about how uh
math is surprisingly useful to describe
the world you know like very simple
equations give rise to these complex
phenomena wfr is also on this um from
from a different angle with the cellular
autometer stuff but um it's almost
suspicious how well it works yeah but on
the other hand it's like uh you know it
it is yet we're still also in a prime
number maze you know there's things we
just don't understand and um you know so
Al so the within the constraints of the
non-prime numbers we find math to be
extremely effective surprisingly
effective yeah exactly so maybe maybe
the math we have gets us through the
equivalent of the even turns and the odd
turns but there's math we don't yet have
that is more complex or more complex
rules for otherwi just play all R just
rats and OCC I know that gets like very
abstract but you know there are unsolved
problems and in physics you know like
the condensed matter space there's a lot
of interesting stuff happening my
recollection I maybe you know out of
date on this like things like son and
luminescence we don't know exactly how
they work and sometimes those things
that are like at the edges of physics
you know in the late 1800s I think
Rutherford somebody I think it rord said
you know basically all physics is being
discovered Etc and that was obviously
before quantum mechanics you know that
that sort of edge case people looking at
the bomber and the passion series and
seeing you know this weird thing you
know with with the hydrogen spectrum and
it was quantized and you know that led
to uh like the sort of phenomenological
set of observations that led to quantum
mechanics and and and everything and you
know sometimes I think the UAP stuff
might be like that right people
immediately go to aliens for UAP like
the unidentified aerial phenomena right
and people have been uh there's
surprising amount of stuff out there on
this the UK has Declassified a bunch of
material you know Harry Reid was a
sendor has talked about this it's not an
obviously it's not an obviously
political thing it it which is good it's
something that is is there something
happening there right and people had
thought for a long time that the UAP
thing was a like American um kind of
counter propaganda to cover up their new
spy planes that were spying over the
Soviet Union to make anybody who talked
about them seem you know crazy and and
and hysterical or whatever but if the
UAP thing is real it could be
atmospheric phenomena like you know like
the Aurora Borealis or the northern
lights but some things we don't
understand it could be something like
the uh the bomber and passion series uh
you know which were the observations of
like emission Spectra before quantum
mechanics so that's like another option
as opposed to doesn't exist or Little
Green Men it could be physics we don't
understand yet as one possibility do you
think there's alien civilizations out
there so there's a lot of folks who have
kind of ridden and talked about this is
you know the Drake equation which is
like you know the multiplying all the
probabilities together there's perhaps
more sophisticated takes like the uh the
Dark Forest you know which says that if
the universe is like a dark Forest we're
the dumb ones that aren't hiding our
presence um there's one calculation I
saw I haven't reproduced it myself but
basically says that the uh the
assumption that other civilizations have
seen ours is wrong because when you have
like a spherical radius for like the you
know electromagnetic radiation that's
leaving our planet as that sphere gets
larger and larger it gets like smaller
and smaller amounts of energy so you
know you get farther out you're you're
not getting enough um you know uh you
know photons or or what have you to to
actually uh detect it um you know I
don't know I actually haven't looked
into the math behind it but I remember
remember seeing that argument so
actually it is possible that it's so
diffuse when you go past a certain you
know number of light years out that
people you know then alien civilization
wouldn't be able to detect it right
that's that's another argument that's
more basically about signals from them
from us to be able to signals colliding
enough to uh find the signal from the
noise right exactly intelligence signal
yeah Hansen Hansen has an article called
grabby aliens um have you seen his thing
this right and so there he's been on
this podcast oh great he's brilliant I
like him he he pushes you know
boundaries in interesting ways in every
ways in all of the ways in all the ways
that's right I I I like him overall he's
he's you know he he's an net Andy grabby
aliens so he he has he has this
interesting idea that uh the
civilizations uh quickly learn how to
travel close to the speed of light right
so we're not going to see them until
they're
here yeah that's possible I mean one of
the things is so here's for example a
mystery that we haven't yet Done Right
which or we haven't really figured out
yet which is um a biogenesis in the lab
right we've done lots of things where we
you've got you can show macro molecules
binding to each other you can show you
know evidence for the so-called RNA
world abiogenesis is to go from you know
like non-life to life right in the lab
you can show micro Evolution obviously
with bacteria you can do artificial
selection on them lots of other aspects
of um you know fundamental you know
biochemistry origins of Life stuff have
been established there's a lot of
plausibility arguments about the
Primitive environment and nitrogens and
carbons snapping together to get you
know the you know the RNA world is the
the the initial hypothesis but to my
knowledge at least we haven't actually
seen a biogenesis demonstrated now one
argument is you need just like this
massive world with uh you know so many
different reps before that actually
happens and um one possibility is if we
could do atomic level you know
simulations of molecules bouncing
against each other it's possible that in
some simulation we could find a path a
reproducible path a biogenesis and then
just you know replicate that in the lab
right um I I don't know okay uh but that
seems to me to be like a mystery that we
still don't fully understand like an
example of the prime number maze right
one of the most fascinating Mysteries
one of the most important y yeah and and
again there may be some biochemist who's
like oh B you you know about X Y and Z
that happened in the aogen field I I
freely confess I'm not like at you know
urant on it the last thing I remember
looking at it isant mean like up to the
moment oh nice that's a nice word that's
a aant yeah I'm probably mispronouncing
it but um we'll edit it and post to
pronounce correctly with AI yeah yeah we
we'll copy your voice and you will
pronounce it perfectly correctly yeah in
post one thing that I do think was
interesting is uh Craig Venter a while
back tried to make a minimum viable cell
um where he just tried to delete all of
the genes that were that were not
considered essential and so it's like a
new life form and this was like almost
20 years ago and so on and that thing
was a was was viable in the lab right
and so it's possible that you could you
kind of reverse engineer so you're
coming at the problem from different
directions like RNA molecules can do
quite a lot you've got some you know
reasonable assumptions as to how that
could come together uh you've got like
sort of strip down minimum viable life
forms and so there's it's not there
isn't stuff here you can see micro
Evolution you can see at the sequence
level you know if you do molecular
phalogenics you can actually track back
the bases there's actually so it's not
like there's no evidence here there's a
lot of tools to work with but this in my
view is a fascinating area and actually
also relevant to AI because another form
of a biogenesis would be if we were able
to give rise to a different branch of
life form the Silicon based as opposed
to carbon based you know to to stretch a
point um you give rise to something that
actually does meet the definition of
life for some definition of life right
what do you think that definition is for
an artificial life form because you
mentioned Consciousness yeah when will
it give us pause that we created
something that
feels by some definition or by some
spiritual poetic romantic philosophical
mathematical definition that it is alive
right and we would want to kill it so
couple of remarks on that one is um
Francis Crick of of Watson and Crick uh
before he died I think his last paper
was published on something called the
claustrum okay and the thing is that you
know sometimes in biology or in any you
know domain people are sort of
discouraged from going after the big the
big questions right but he proposed the
claustrum is actually the organ that is
the seat of Consciousness it's like this
sheath that like covers the brain and uh
for mice if you and and again I may be
recollecting this wrong so but you can
look better it my recollection is um in
mice if you disrupt this the mouse is
like very disoriented right it's like it
it's the kind of thing which you know
Watson and Crick were all about
structure implies function right they
found the structure of DNA this amazing
thing and you know they remarked In This
Very under understated way at the end of
the paper that well obviously this uh
gives a basis for how the genetic
material might be replicated and error
corrected because you know Helix un
wines and you CAU right so he was a big
structure function person and that
applies not just at the protein level
not just at the level of DNA but
potentially also at the level of organs
like the claustrum is kind of this
system integrating level right it's like
the the last layer in the neural network
or something you know um and uh and so
that's that's a kind of thing that I
think is worth studying um so
Consciousness is another kind of big a
biogenesis is a big question the prime
number am Consciousness is a big
question um and uh you know than
definition of life right uh there's
folks gosh there's I think so this one
is something I'd have to Google around
but there was a guy I think at Santa Fe
Institute or something who had some
definition of life and like some
thermodynamic definition um but you're
right that it's going to be a
multi-feature definition we might have a
touring test like definition frankly
which is just if enough humans agree
it's alive it's alive right and that
might frankly be the operational
definition because you know viruses are
like this boundary case you know are
they are they alive or not most people
don't think they're alive but they're
they're they're on they're kind of
they're more alive than a rock in a
sense well I think uh in a world that
we'll talk about today quite a bit which
is the digital world I think the most
fascinating philosophically and
technically definition of Life Is Life
in the digital world mhm so
chatbots essentially creatures whether
they're replicas of humans or totally
independent Creations perhaps in an
automatic way I think there's going to
be chat Bots that would ethically be
troubled by if we wanted to kill them
they would have the capacity to suffer
they would be very unhappy with you
trying to turn them off and then there
will be large groups of activists that
will protest and they'll go to the
Supreme Court of whatever the Supreme
Court looks like in in uh 10 20 30 40
years and they will uh demand that these
chat Bots would have the same rights as
us humans do you think that's possible I
saw that Google engineer who was
basically saying this had already
happened and I I I was surprised by it
because it just I when I looked at the
chat logs of it it didn't seem
particularly interesting on other hand I
can definitely see I mean gp3 for people
who you know haven't paying attention
shows that serious step ups are possible
and obviously you know you've talked
about a in your podcast a ton um is it
possible that GPT 9 or something is is
kind of like that or gpt1 15 or GPT 4
maybe but you for people just listening
there's a deep skepticism in your face
yeah you know the reason being
because um you know what's possible is
possible that you have like a partition
of society on literally this basis you
know um that's one model where there's
some people just like there's
vegetarians and non-vegetarians right
there may be
um machines have life and machines are
machines you know like or something like
that right uh you know you could you
could definitely imagine some kind of
partition like that in the future where
your fundamental political social system
that's a foundational assumption and you
know is a a i does it you know deserve
the same rights as like a human or for
example a corporation is in intermediate
uh do you see that thing which is how
human is are different corporations have
you seen that infographic it's actually
funny so it's like Spectrum there's a
spectrum so for example Disney is
considered about as human as like a dog
but like exgon I may remembering this
wrong but they had like a level with
like human at one end and like rock at
the other do have to do with corporate
structure what what I think it's about
people's empathy for that Corporation
their brand identity but it's
interesting to see that first of all
people sort of do think of Corporations
as being more or Le like The Branding is
really what they're responding to well
that's what I mean they're also
responding you know I have a brand of
human that I'm trying to sell MH and it
seems to be effective for the most part
sure although it has become like a
running joke that I might be a robot
right which means there's the brand is
cracking could it's seeping through but
I mean in that sense I just
I think uh I don't see a reason why
chatbots can't manufacture the brand of
Being Human of being sensient I mean
that is the touring test but it's like
the multiplayer touring test now that
actually a fair number of chat Bots have
pass the touring test I'd say there's at
least two steps up right one is um a
multiplayer touring test where you have
chatbots talking to each other and then
you ask can you determine the difference
between in chat Bots talking to each
other and clicking buttons and stuff and
apps and and humans doing that and I
think we're very far off I shouldn't say
very far off at least I don't know how
far off we are in terms of time but
we're still far off in terms of a group
of End chat Bots looking like their
digital output is like the group of
Inhumans like a go from the T Test to
the multiplayer T Test that's one
definition another definition is you
know to be able to kind of swap in and
you're not just convincing one human
that this is a human for a small you
know session you're convincing all
humans that this is a human for end
sessions remote work actually makes this
possible right that's another definition
of a multiplayer Turing test where
basically you have a chatbot that's
fully automated that is earning money
for you as an intelligent agent on a
computer that's able to go and get
remote work jobs and so on I would
consider that next level right if you
could have something that was like that
that was competent enough to I me
because everything on the computer can
be automated right literally you could
be totally hands-free just like
autonomous driving you could have
autonomous earning as a challenge
problem if you were Microsoft or apple
and you had legitimate access to the
operating system just like apple says
can you send me details of this event a
decentralized thing could in theory log
you know the actions of 10,000 or
100,000 or a million people and with
cryptocurrency you could even monitor a
wallet that was on that computer and you
could see you know what long run series
of actions were increasing or decreasing
this digital balance you see what I'm
saying right so you start to get at
least conceptually it'd be invasive and
and you know there' be a privacy issue
and so on conceptually you could imagine
an agent that could learn what actions
humans were doing that resulted in the
increase of their local cryptocurrency
balance okay there may be better ways to
formulate it but that I consider a
challenge problem is to go from the
touring test to a genuine intelligent
agent that can actually go and make
money for you if you can do that that's
a big deal people obviously have trading
Bots and stuff but that would be you
know the next level it's typing out
emails it's creating documents it's
actually it'll mimic human behavior in
its entirety yeah that's right and it
can it'll schedule zooms it'll send
emails it'll essentially because if you
think about it a human is hitting the
keys and clicking the mouse but just
like a self-driving car the wheel
rotates by itself right those keys are
effectively just it's like a like the
automator app in in apple right um
everything's just on the screen you're
seeing it there and it's just an AI it's
kind of hilarious that the I'm not a
robot click thing actually works cuz I I
I actually don't know how how that's
happen how it works but I think it has
to do with the movement of the mouse the
timing and they know that it's very
difficult for currently for a bot to
mimic human behavior in the way they
would click that little checkbox yeah
exactly I think it's something I mean uh
again my recollection on that is it's
like a pile of Highly OB fiscated
JavaScript with all kind it looks like a
very simple box but it's doing a lot of
stuff and it's collecting all kinds of
instrumentation and yeah exactly like a
like a robot is just a little too
deterministic or if it's got noise it's
like gaussian noise and the way humans
do it is just not something that you'd
eily be able to do without collecting
thousands and thousands and thousands of
human traces doing it but it is a
predator prey on that goad and then the
computer or millions of human traces I
don't know the computer just sees the
JavaScript it needs to be able to
look outside the simulation for the
computer the world is like it doesn't
the computer doesn't know about the
physical world so has to look outside of
its world and introspect back on this
simple box right is which is kind of you
know I think that's exactly what
mushrooms do or like psychedelics is you
get to go outside and look back in and
that's what a computer needs to do I you
know I do wonder whether they actually
give people Insight or they give people
the illusion of insight um is there a
difference yeah because well actual
Insight you know actual Insight is again
maxell's equations you're you're able to
shift the world with that there's a lot
of practical devices that work the
illusion of insight is I'm Jesus Christ
and nothing happens right so I don't
know I think those are quite different
uh I don't know I I think you can fake
it till you make it on that one which is
um Insight in some sense is revealing a
truth that was there all along yeah so I
mean I guess like I'm talking about
technical Insight where you you have
this is the thing you know we were
talking about actually before the
podcast like technical truths versus
political truths right some truths
they're they're on a spectrum and
there's some truths that are actually
entirely political in the sense that if
you can change the software in enough
people's heads you change the the value
of the truth for example the location of
a border is effectively consensus
between large enough groups of people uh
who is the CEO that's you know consensus
a certain group of people what is the
value of a currency or any stock right
that that market price is just the
psychology of a bunch of people like
literally if you can change enough
people's minds you can change the value
of the Border or the position of the
hierarchy or the value of the currency
those are purely political truths then
all the way on the other end are
technical truths that exist independent
of whatever any one human or All Humans
think like uh the gravitational constant
right or the diameter of a virus those
those are just those exist independent
of the human mind changing few Minds
doesn't matter those those remain
constant and um then you have things
that are interestingly in the Middle
where cryptocurrency has tried to pull
more and more things from the domain of
political truds into technical truds
where they say okay the one social
convention we have is um that if you
hold this amount of Bitcoin or or that
if you hold this private key you hold
this Bitcoin and then we make that very
hard to change because you have to
change a lot of technical TRS so you can
push things to this interesting
intermediate Zone the question is how
how how much of our world can we push
into that right and that takes
us in a nonlinear fascinating Journey to
the question I wanted to ask you in the
beginning which is um this political
world that you mention in the world of
political truth as we know it in the
20th century in the early 24st Century
what do you think works well and what is
broken about government the fun thing is
that we can't easily and peacefully
start new opt-in governments and like
startup governments yeah and what do I
mean by that is basically
um you can start a new company you can
start a new community you can start a
new currency even these days you don't
have to beat the former CEO in a duel to
start a new company um you don't have to
become head of the World Bank to start a
new currency okay um because of this yes
if you can if if you're if you want to
you can join I don't
know uh Microsoft or name some company
that's a GameStop and you can try to
reform it okay or you can start your own
and the fact that both options exist
mean that you know you've you can
actually just start from scratch and
that's just I mean the same reason we
have a clean piece of paper right I
mentioned this actually in in the
network State book I'll just quote this
bit but we want to be able to start a
new state peacefully for the same reason
we want a bare plot of Earth a blank
sheet of paper an empty text buffer a
fresh starp or a clean slate because we
want to build something new without
historical constraint right for the same
reason you hit plus and do docs. new you
know like create a new Doc it's for the
same reason right because you don't to
backspace you don't to have just like
128 bytes of space 128 kilobytes and
just have to backspace the old document
before creating the new one so that's a
fundamental thing that's wrong with
today's governments and it's a meta
point right because it's not any one
specific reform it's a meta reform being
able to start new countries okay so
that's one problem but there you know
you could push back and say that's
that's a feature because you know a lot
of people argue that tradition is power
through generation if you try a thing
long enough which is the way I see
marriage there's value to the struggle
and the journey you take through the
struggle and you grow and you develop
ideas together you grow intellectually
philosophically together and that's the
idea of a Nations that spans Generations
that you have have a tradition that
becomes
more that that strives towards the truth
and is able to arrive there or no not
arrive but take steps towards there
through the generations so you may not
want to keep starting new governments
you may want
to uh stick to the old one and uh
improve it one step at a time so just
because you're having a fight inside a
marriage doesn't mean you should get a
divorce and go on Tinder and started
dating around that's the uh that's the
push back so it's it's not obvious that
this a strong future to have to launch
new governments there's several
different kind of lines of attack or or
debate or whatever on this right first
is uh yes there's obviously value to
tradition and uh you know people say
this is Lindy and that's Lindy it's been
proven for a long time and so on but of
course there's a tension between
tradition and Innovation you know like
going to the Moon wasn't
Lindy just it was awesome and you know
like artificial intelligence is
something that's very new new is good
right and this is a tension within
Humanity actually itself because you
know it's way older than all of these
nations I mean humans are tens of
thousands of years old the answers of
humans are millions of years old right
and you go back far enough and the time
that we know today of the cile farmer
and
Soldier is if you go back far enough you
want to be truly traditional well
actually descended from hunter gatherers
who were mobile and wandered the world
and there weren't borders and so on they
kind of went where they want right and
you know people have you know had done
historical reconstructions of like
skeletons and and stuff like that
and uh many folks report that the
transition to Agriculture and being cile
um resulted in you know dimition of
height you know people had like tooth
decay and stuff like that the skeletons
people had traded off upside for
stability right that's what the state
was that was what these cile kinds of
things were now of course um they they
had more likelihood of living uh
consistently you could support larger
population sizes but it had lower
quality of life right and so the hunter
gatherer you know maybe that's actually
our Collective recollection of a Garden
of Eden where people you know just like
a a spider kind of knows innately how to
build webs or a beaver knows how to
build dams you know some people theorize
that uh the entire Garden of Eden is
like um a sort of built-in neural
network recollection of this you know
pre sessile era where we able to roam
around just pick off fruits and so on
low population density so point is that
I think what we're seeing is a V3 you go
from the hunter gatherer to the farmer
and Soldier the cesil nations are here
and they've got borders and so on to
kind of the V3 which is the digital
Nomad the new hunter gatherer we're
going back to the future because you
know it's even older than Nations is no
Nations right even more traditional than
tradition is you know being
International right and so we're
actually tapping into that other huge
thread in humanity which is the desire
to explore Pioneer wander innovate you
know I that's important way to make
America great again is to dissolve it
completely into Oblivion no that's a
joke see yeah I know it's a joke but the
thing well humor I'm learning this new
thing yes the new thing for the the
chapot emulation isn't fully working
there yeah yeah glitch that's we're in
the in the beta and let me say say one
other thing about this which is you know
there are I mean everybody in the world
to for okay let's say I don't know what
percentage let's say
99.99% uh it's rounds to that number
of political discourse in the US focuses
on trying to fix the system if those
folks I mean 0.01% of the energy is
going towards building a new system that
seems like a pretty good portfolio
strategy right or 100% are supposed to
go and edit this codebase from 200
something years ago I mean the most
American in the world is going and you
know leaving your country in in search
of a better life America was founded 200
years ago by the founding fathers it's
not just a nation of immigrants it's a
nation of immigrants right IM
immigration you know from other
countries to the US and actually also
immigration within the US there's this
amazing YouTube video called um it's
like 50 states US population I think
1790 to it says 2050 they've got a
simulation so you just stop it at 2019
or 2020 but it shows that like Virginia
was like number one early on and then it
lost ground and like New York gained and
then like Ohio was a big deal in the
early 1800s and it was like father of
presidents and general all these
presidents and later Illinois and
Indiana and then California only really
came up in the the 20th century like
during the Great Depression and now
we're entering the modern era where like
Florida and Texas have risen and New
York and California have dropped and so
Interstate competition it's actually
just like inter currency competition you
know you've got trading pairs right you
you know sell BTC by eth you sell you
know salon or Z you know sell Monero buy
zcash right each of those trading pairs
gives you signal for today on this
currency is down or up relative to this
other currency in the same way each of
those migration pairs someone goes from
New York to Ohio Ohio to California
gives you information on the
desirability of different states you can
literally form a pairs Matrix like this
over time U very much like the link
Matrix that's shaped America in a huge
way and so you know you you ask a if if
this nation of immigrants that was
founded by men younger than us by the
way the founding fathers were often in
their 20s right who um you know endorse
the concept of proposition Nation who've
given rise to a country of Founders and
and Pioneers uh who've literally gone to
the Moon right um those folks would
think that this is the end of history
that that's it we're done like we've
we've done everything else I mean
there's people in technology who believe
and I agree with them that we can go to
Mars that we might be able to end death
but we can't innovate on something that
was 230 years old you know so there is a
balance certainly to to strike the the
American experiment is fascinating
nevertheless so one argument you can
make is actually that we're in the very
early days of this V2 if so what you
describe as V2 you could make the case
that we're not ready for V3 that we're
just actually uh trying to figure out
the V2 thing you're trying to like skip
when are we ever
ready now again we go go back to
marriage I think and and having kids
kind of thing I think everyone who has
kids is never really ready to be kids
that's the whole point you dive in okay
but
the I mean you you mentioned that you
can laun is there other criticisms of
government that you can provide as we
know today before we kind of outline the
ideas of of V3 let's stick to V2 I'll
give a few right and so a lot of the
stuff will go into the version so I've
got you know this book the network State
um which which covers some of these
topics does Network State have a
subtitle um it is uh the network State
how to start a new country how to start
a new country and but um I just have it
at the network state.com I should say
it's an excellent book that you should
get I read it on Kindle but there's also
a website and uh BAGI said that is
constantly working on improving it
changing it by by the by the time the
whole project is over it'll be a
different book than it was yeah in the
beginning it's always shedding its old
skin well I I wanted to get something
out there and get feedback and and what
not just like an app right you know you
again you have these two polls of an app
is highly Dynamic and you're you're
accustomed to having updates all the
time and a book is supposed to be static
and there's a value in something static
something unchanged and so on but in
this case I'm glad I kind of shipped a
version 1.0 and uh you know the the next
version um you know I'm going to split
into like uh tentatively motivation
theory and practice like motivation like
what is the sort of political philosophy
and so on that motivates me at least to
do this which you can take or leave
right and then Theory as to why Network
state is now possible and I can Define
it in a second and then the practice is
zillions of practical details and
everything from roads to diplomatic
recognition and so on um funding
founding all that stuff a lot of the
stuff actually I left out of V1 simply
because I wanted to kind of get the
desirability of it on the table and then
talk about the the feasibility and I
should actually on that briefly in in
terms of things you can revolutionize
like um one of the biggest Innovations I
think that Tesla does with the way they
think about the car way they deploy the
car is not the automation or the
electric to me it's the uh over theair
updates mhm right be able to send
instantaneously uh updates to the
software that completely changes the
behavior the ux everything about the car
and so I do think it be interesting cuz
books are a representation of human
knowledge a um a snapshot of human
knowledge and it would be interesting
that we if we can somehow figure out a
system that allows you to do sort of
like a GitHub for books like if I buy a
book on Amazon without having to pay
again can I get updates like V point
v1.1
v1.2 and there's like release notes
right that that would be that would be
incredible inredible it's not not enough
to do like a second edition or a third
edition but like minor updates that's
not just on your website but actually go
into the the model that we used to buy
books right so I spent my money maybe I
I'll do a subscription service for five
bucks a month where I get regular
updates to the books and then there's an
incentive for authors to actually update
their books such that it makes sense for
the subscription and that that means
your book isn't just a snap shot but
it's a lifelong project right if you
care enough about the book so I think
there's a lot that can be done there
because actually in going through this
process in many ways the most
traditional thing I did was a
self-published eBook on Kindle right uh
why because basically like you know if
you actually ink a deal with a book
publisher first they you know they'll
give you some advance I I didn't need
the advance or anything but second is
all these constraints um oh you know you
want to translate into this or you want
to do this other format or we want to
update it you have to go and now talk to
this other party right you know and uh
also the the narrowing window of what
they'll actually publish it gets narrow
and narrower you see all these you know
meltdowns over young adult novels and
stuff on Twitter but it's it's it's more
than that so you know actually having an
Amazon page it's just like a marker that
a book exists okay and uh now I've got
an entry point where if someone says
okay I like this tweet but how do I kind
of get the um that that might be a
concept from like the the middle of
chapter 3 right how do I get the thing
from front to back I can just point them
at the network.com that is import this
right this one entry point okay and um
you mentioned like subscription and and
and money and so and so forth and I
think people are paying for Content
online now with News letters and so on
but I've chosen to and I will always
have the thing free um and I want it on
you can get the Kindle version on Amazon
simply because that you have to kind of
set a price for that but the network
state.com what I want to do is have that
optimized for free Android phone so
people in India or Latin America or
Nigeria can just tap and open it going
to do translations and stuff like that
uh Greg foder of alpace VR you know
founder of old space VR you know he sold
that and uh he coded the website and um
you know work with him on it and there's
another designer who um Elijah and uh
it's basically just a three-person group
and we thought we had something pretty
nice but one thing I was really uh
pleasantly surprised by is how many
people got in touch with us afterwards
and asked us if we could open source the
software to create this this website
right because it's actually you you can
try it on mobile I think it's actually
um in some ways a better experience than
kindall and uh so that was interesting
because um I do think of the website as
like a V1 version of uh this concept of
a book app right for example imagine if
you have the Bible and the Ten
Commandments aren't just text but
there's like a checklist and there's a
gateway to a Christian Community there
and um you know the practice is embedded
into the thing you know like do you know
brilliant.org amazing site I love this
site brilliant is basically mobile
friendly tutorials and you can kind of
just swipe through you know you're in
the line at Starbucks or you know
getting on a plane or something you just
swipe through and just get really nice
micro lessons on things and it's just
interactive enough that your brain is
working and you're problem solving and
uh sometimes you'll need a little pen
and paper but that format um of sort of
very mobile friendly just continuous
learning I i' I'd like to do a lot more
with that and so that's kind of where
we're going to go with the the book app
so the there's a lot of fun stuff about
the way you did at least V1 of the book
which is you have like a one sentence
summary one paragraph summary tldr and
like one image
summary which is
um I think honestly it's not even about
a short attention span it's a really
good exercise about summarization
condensation and really like helping you
think through what is the key Insight
like we mentioned the the prime number
in maze that reveals something Central
to The Human Condition which is
struggling against the limitation of our
of our minds and in that same way you
summarize the network state in the book
Let's actually jump right there and let
me ask you what is the network State
what is the network state so I'll give
it a sentence and also give it an image
right so the informal sentence a network
state is a highly aligned online
community with a capacity for Collective
action that crowdfunds territory around
the world and eventually gains
diplomatic recognition from pre-existing
States okay so just taking those pieces
highly aligned online community that is
not Facebook that is not Twitter people
don't think of themselves as facebookers
or twitteri right that's just a
collection of hundreds of millions of
people who just fight each other all day
right It's a Fight Club a company is
highly aligned where you know you'll put
a task into the company slack and on the
if you do in all hands about 100% of of
the people in a company slack will do it
so they're highly aligned that way but
online communities don't tend to be
highly aligned online communities tend
to be like a Game of Thrones fan club or
something like that or you know a
Twitter account you might get 0.1% of
people engaging with something it's not
the 100% if you combine the degree of
alignment of a company with the scale of
a community that's like what a highly
aligned you know online community is
right start to get it that or 10,000
people who can collectively do something
as simple as just all liking something
on Twitter for example why would they do
that they're they're Guild of electrical
engineers they're a guild of graphic
designers and you've got a thousand
people in this Guild and every day
somebody is asking a favor from The
Guild and the other 999 people are
helping them out for example I've just
launched a new project or I'd like to
get a new job can somebody help me and
so on and so you kind of give to get
you're you know you're helping other
people in the community and you're kind
of building up Karma this way and then
some you spend it down like stack
Overflow has this Karma economy it's not
meant to be an internal economy that is
um like making tons and tons of money
off of is sort of to keep score right
that's a highly align online community
part then capacity for Collective action
I just kind of described that which is
at a minimum you you don't have a highly
aligned online community unless you have
a thousand people and you paste in a
tweet and a thousand of them RT it or or
like it okay if you can't even get that
you don't have something if you do have
that you have the basis for at least
Collective digital action on something
okay and you can think of this as a
group of activists you can think of it
as for example let's say I mentioned a
guild but let's say there a group that
wants to raise awareness of the fact
that life extension is possible right
every day there's a new um tweet on I
don't know whether it's uh met foran
research or Sinclair's work or David
Sinclair right Andrew hubman has good
stuff here you know or um there's a
longevity VC there's a bunch of folks
work in this area every day there's
something there and literally the
purpose of this online community is r r
of longevity and of the thousand people
970 go and like that that's pretty good
right that's solid you've got something
there you've got you've got a laser
right you've got something which you
focus on something because most of the
web 2 internet is entropic you go to
Hacker News you go to Reddit you go to
Twitter and you're immediately struck by
the fact it's like 30 random things
random it's just a box of chocolates
it's meant to be you know we're some of
them look delicious some look delicious
novelty we can overc consume novelty
right so you know what we were talking
about earlier the balance between
tradition and Innovation right here is a
different version of that which is um
entropy going in a ton of different
directions due to novelty versus uh like
Focus you know it's like it's like Heat
versus work you know heat is entropic
and work force along a distance you're
going in in a direction right and so if
those 30 links on you know the next
version of Hacker News or red or
something like so brilliant is just
that's leveling you up the the 30 things
you click you've just gained a skill as
a function of that right so these kinds
of online communities I don't know what
they look like they probably don't look
like the current social media they they
just like for example I know this is a
meta analogy but in the 2000s people
thought Facebook for work would look
like Facebook and you know David Sachs
you know found and sold a company Yammer
that was partially on that basis it was
was fine it was a billion dollar company
but Facebook for work tended was
actually slack right it looked different
it was more chat focused it was less
image focused and whatnot what does the
platform for a highly aligned online
community look like I think Discord is
the transitional state but it's not the
end State Discord is sort of Chatty the
work isn't done in Discord itself right
the cryptocurrency for tracking or the
crypto karma for S tracking people's
contributions is not really done in
Discord itself Discord was not built for
that and I don't know what that ux looks
like maybe it looks like tasks uh you
know like uh maybe it looks something
different okay so
let me Linger on this so you were
actually uh there some people might not
be even familiar with Discord or slack
and so on even these
platforms have like communities
associated with them mean meaning the
the big like The Meta community of
people who are aware of the feature set
and that you can do a thing that this is
a thing and then you can do a thing with
it this cour like when I first realized
that I think it was born out of the
gaming world yes is like
holy shit this is like a thing there's a
lot of people that use this right
there's also a culture that's very
difficult to escape that's associated
with Discord that spans all the
different communities within Discord
Reddit is the same even though there's
different subreddits there's still
because of the migration phenomenon
maybe there's still a culture to Reddit
and so on yes so I I I'd like to sort of
try to dig in and understand what's the
difference
between the online communities that are
formed and the platforms on which those
communities are formed sure is that
important yes it is it is so for example
an office a good design for an office is
frequently you have um you know the uh
the commons which is like the lunchroom
or the Gathering area then everybody
else has a cave on the border they can
kind of retreat to cave in the comments
I love by the way I was laughing
internally about the Heat versus work I
think that's going to stick with me
that's such an interesting way to see
Twitter yeah like CU this this heat or
is this is this thread like because
there's a lot of stuff going on right is
it just heat or we doing some like is is
there a directed thing that's going to
be productive at the end of the day I
love this I never see it different
anyway the cave in the Commons is a is a
really nice uh so that has to do with
the layout of an office that's effective
that's right and uh so you can think of
many kinds of social
networks um as being on the cave and
common Continuum for example Twitter is
just all Commons the caves are just like
individual DMS or DM threads or whatever
but it's really basically just one
gigantic Global public Fight Club for
the most part right then you have or
love Club well somewhat love but mostly
fight or actually it's I love
aggressively that's all yeah I mean the
way I think I mean Twitter is like a
cross between uh you know a a library
and a civil war you know it's something
where you can learn and but but you you
can also fight if you choose to fight
right um yeah well I mean it's um uh
because of its the common structure of
it it's a mechanism for virality
of anything yeah you just describe the
kind of things that become viral yeah
meaning no no offense to liberians it's
like a library and Liberia Liberia was
racked by Civil War for for many years
right libraries is one of my favorite
sets uh for porn just kidding joke I'm
learning as that's probably crossing the
line uh for the engineers working on
this humor module maybe take that down
um gosh uh we're just talking oh yeah so
continue Twitter's a Commons yeah so
Twitter's a Commons then Facebook is
like it's got all these Warren and stuff
Facebook is very difficult to reason
about uh like privacy on that and the
reason is I think it's easy to
understand when something is completely
public like Twitter or completely
private like signal and those are the
only two modes I think in which one can
really operate when something is quasi
private like Facebook you have to just
kind of assume it's public because if if
it's interesting enough it'll go outside
your friend Network and it'll get
screenshotted or whatever and posted and
so you know Facebook is sort of sort of
forced into default public despite its
privacy settings uh you know for anybody
who says something interesting you know
if it's like uh you can figure out all
their dials and stuff like that but just
hard to understand unless it's totally
private or totally public right you have
to basically treat it if it's totally
public it's not totally private okay at
least under a real name I'll come back
to soon then so you've got Twitter
that's that's total Commons Facebook
which is like a Warren's you know like
you know it's like rabbit warrs or like
a ant colony where you don't know where
information is traveling then you've got
Reddit which has sort of your Global
Reddit and then all the subreddits
that's a different model of cave and
Commons I think one of the reasons it
works is that you have individual
moderators where something is totally
off topic and acceptable totally off
topic and unacceptable in this subreddit
and totally on topic and acceptable in
another that's like like kind of a you
know a precursor of the digital
societies I think that we're going to
see that actually are become physical
societies like lots and lots of
subreddit like things you know become
physical societies then you start going
further into like Discord where it's
it's more full-featured than um you know
as you go Twitter Facebook Reddit now
you jump into Discord and Discord is a
bunch of individual communities that are
connected and you can easily s of jump
between them right and then you have
slack and you know yes you can use um
slack to go between different company
slacks but slack historically at least
I'm not sure what their current policy
is historically they discourage public
slacks so there it's mostly like you
have your main slack for your company
and then you sometimes may jump into
like a let's say you've got a design
consultant or somebody like that you'll
jump into their slack but Discord is
you've got way more discords usually
that you jump into then then slacks
right well and let me ask you then on
that point because there is a culture
one of the things discovered UN rdit in
Discord of anonymity or pseudonyms or
usernames that don't represent the
actual name on slack as an example of
one CU I think I did a I used to have a
slack for like deep learning course that
I was teaching and that was like a very
large like 20,000 people whatever but so
you could grow quite large but there was
a culture of like I'm going to represent
my actual identity my actual name and
then same stuff in Discord I think I was
the only asshole using my actual name on
there it's like everybody was using uh
pseudonyms so what's what's the role of
that in the online community well so I
actually gave a talk on this a few years
ago called uh the pseudonymous economy
okay and um it's coming about faster
than I expected uh but I did think it
was going to come about fairly fast and
essentially the concept is obviously
we've had so first anonym pseudonym real
name right can you describe the
difference difference Anonymous is like
forchan uh where there's no tracking of
a name you you know there's zero
reputation associated with an identity
right pseudonymous is like much of
Reddit where there's a persistent
username and it has Karma over time but
it's not linked to a the global
identifier that is your state name all
right so your quote real name even the
term real name by the way is a misnomer
because it's like your Social Security
name like social security number it's
your official government name it's your
it's your state name it is the tracking
device it's a it's a air tag that's put
on you right why do I say that right
another word for a name is a handle and
so just visualize like a giant file
cabinet there's a handle with Lex
Freeman on it that anybody the billions
of people around the world can go up to
and they can pull this file on you out
images of you things you said like
billions of people can stalk billions of
other people now that's a very new thing
and I actually think this will be a
transitional era in like human history
we're actually going to go back into a
much more encrypted world and okay let
me Linger on that because um another way
to see real names is the label on a
thing that can be canell yes that's
right in fact there's a book called
seeing like a state which actually talks
about the origins of surnames and
whatnot like if you have a guy who is
that guy with brown hair that's like an
analog identifier it could be in 10
different people in a village but if you
have a first name last name okay that
guy can now be conscripted you can go
down with a list a list of digital
identifi pull that guy out pull him you
know into the military for conscription
right so that was like one of the
purposes of names was to make masses of
humans legible to a state right hence
seeing like a state you can see them now
right see digital identifiers one thing
that people don't usually think about is
pseudonymity is itself a form of
decentralization so you know people know
Satoshi Nakamoto was pseudonymous he
also knew he's into decentralization but
one way of thinking about it is let's
say his real name
okay or his state name is a node okay
attached to that is uh every database
you know his uh his Gmail his you know
Facebook if he had one every government
record on him right all of these
databases have that state name as the
foreign key right um and so it can go
and look things up in all of those uh
databases right and so it's think of it
as being being the center of a giant
network of all of these things when you
go and create a pseudonym you're butting
off a totally new node that's far away
from all the rest and now he's choosing
to attach Bitcoin talk and bitcoin.org
and the gpg signatures of of the code if
he choose to do that all those things
the digital signatures are all attached
to this new decentralized name because
he's instantiating it not the government
right one way of thinking about it is
the root administrator of the quote real
name system is is the state because you
cannot simply edit your name there right
you can't just go you can't log into
usa.gov and backspace your name and
change it moreover um your birth
certificate all these stuff that's fixed
and immutable right whereas you we take
for granted that on every site you go to
you can backspace you can be like call
me ishmail you know walk into a site you
use whatever name you want you have to
use the same Name Across multiple sites
you can do that and if not you don't
have to one thing that we're seeing now
actually is at the level of kids you
know the younger generation um Eric
Schmidt several years ago mentioned that
you know people would like change their
names when they became adults so that
they could do that this is kind of
already happening people are using I I
remarked on this many years ago search
resistant identities okay why they have
their Fina which is their quote fake
name Instagram and rinsta which is their
real name Instagram this is cool okay
and what's interesting is on their
rinsta they're their fake self because
they're in their Sunday Best and you
know smiling and this is the one that's
meant to be search indexed right MH on
the fina with their fake name this is
just shared with their closest friends
they're their real self and they're you
know hanging out at parties or whatever
you know and so this way they've got
something which is the public Persona
and the private Persona right the public
Persona that's search indexed and the
private Persona that is private for
friends right and so organically people
are you know like Jean Jacobs talks
about like cities and how you know
they're organic and and what not like
some of the mid 20th century guys
architecture they had removed shade from
uh you know like like awnings and stuff
like that got removed so this is like
the restoration of like awnings and
shade and structure so that you're not
always exposed to the allseeing
WebCrawler that I of Sauron which is
like Google bot just indexing everything
these are search resistant identities
and that like eye just sort of passes
over you like you know in The Terminator
like the Terminator eye just kind of
passes over you right so search identity
is not pulled up it's not indexed right
and now you can be your real self and so
we've had this kind of thing for a while
with communication the new thing is that
cryptocurrency has allowed us to do it
for transaction hence the pseudonymous
economy right and um she go from
Anonymous pseudonymous real name these
each have their different purposes but
the New Concept is that pseudonym you
can have multiple of them by the way
your ens name you could have it under
your quote real name or state name like
Lex freeman. eth but you could also be
uh Punk 6529 eth okay mhm and now you
can earn you can sign documents you can
boot up stuff you can have a persistent
identity here okay which has a level of
indirection to your real name why is
that very helpful because now it's
harder to both discriminate against you
and cancel you concerns of various
factions are actually obviated or at
least partially addressed by going
pseudonymous as default right it is the
opposite of bring your whole self to
work it's bring only your necessary self
to work right only show those
credentials that you need right now of
course you know anybody who's into
cryptocurrency understands so Nakamoto
and so on is for this but actually many
progressives are for this as well why
you know ban the boxes it's like you're
not supposed to ask about like felony
convictions when somebody is you know
being hired because they paid they've
served their time right or um you're not
supposed to ask about immigration status
or marital status in an interview um and
uh you know people have this concept of
blind auditions where you know uh if a
woman is auditioning for for like a
violin seat they put it behind a curtain
so they can't downgrade you know her for
playing so her performance is judged on
the merits of its audible quality not in
terms of who who this this person is so
this way they don't discriminate versus
m male or female for um for who's uh you
know getting a violin position so you
combine those Concepts like ban the Box
not asking these various questions blind
auditions and and then also the concept
of implicit bias like if you if you you
know believe this research people are
unconsciously biased towards other folks
right okay so you take all that you take
Satoshi and you put it together and you
say okay let's use pseudonyms that
actually takes unconscious bias even off
the table right because um now you have
genuine Global equality of opportunity
moreover you have all these people
billions of people around the world that
might speak with accents but they type
without them and now if they're
pseudonymous you aren't discriminating
against him right moreover with AI very
soon the AI version of Zoom you'll be
able to be whoever you want to be and
speak in whatever voice you want to
speak in right and um you'll be and
that'll happen in real time uh so I mean
this is really interesting but
I for Fina and
rinsta there's some sense in which the
fake
Instagram you're saying is where you
could be a real self well my question is
under uh under a pseudonym or when
you're completely Anonymous is there
some sense where you're not actually
being your real self that as a social
entity the it is human beings are
fundamentally social creatures and for
us to be social creatures there is some
sense in which we have to have a
consistent identity that can be
cancelled that can be
criticized uh or applauded in society
and that identity persists through time
so is there some sense in which we would
not be our full beautiful human s unless
we have a lifelong consistent real name
attached to us in a digital world so
this is a complicated topic but let me
make a few remarks first is real names
quote unquote state names were not built
for the internet they actually names
state names right it's actually a way
great way of think about social security
name right um so your state name your
official name was not built for the
internet why they give both too much
information and too little okay so too
much information because uh someone with
your name can find out all kinds of
stuff about you like for example um
someone doesn't want to be stalked right
the real name is out there their stalker
knows it they can find address
information all this other kind of stuff
right um and with all these hacks that
are happening just every day we see
another hack massive hack Etc uh that
real name can be indexed into Data That
was supposed to be private right like
for example you know the office of
personnel management like the government
the US government many governments
actually are like a combination the of
the uh surveillance State and the
Keystone Cops right why they they slurp
up all the information then they can't
secure it so it leaks out the back door
okay they've they basically have you
know 100 million records of all this
very 300 million records all this very
sense of data they just get owned hacked
over and over again right and so really
there should be something which totally
inverts the entire concept of kyc and
what have you you um and of course
comply with the regulations as they are
currently written but also you should
argue privacy over kyc the government
should not be able to collect what it
can't secure it's slurping up all this
information it's completely unable to
secure it it's hacked over and over
again you know China probably has the
entire OPM file and it's not just that
like Texas is hacked um and some of
these hacks are not even detected yet
right and these are just the ones that
have been admitted and so you know what
happens is criminals can just run this
stuff and find you know oh okay so that
guy who's got that net worth online he
merges various databases they've got a
bunch of addresses to go and hit okay so
in that sense real names were not state
names were not built for the internet
they just give up too much information
in our actually existing internet
environment they give up too much
information on the other hand they also
give too little why if instead you give
out uh Lex Freedman doeth okay or a
similar crypto domain name or urbit name
or something like that now that's
actually more like a a DNS okay first if
you've got a let's lean. eth what can
you do that um some you can do today
some you'll soon be able to do uh you
can pay lex. e you can message lex. e
you can um look it up like a social
profile you can send files to it you can
upload and download basically it
combines aspects of an email address um
a uh a website a username etc etc but
you you know eventually I think you'll
go from email to phone number to ens
address or something like that as the
primary online identifier because this
is actually a
programmable name right whereas a state
name is not you know think about it like
a state name will have apostrophes
perhaps in it or is that your middle
name or this and that that was a format
that was developed for the paper world
right whereas the ens name is developed
for the online world now the reason to
say ens or something like it you know
somebody in a in a village they'll their
name might be Smith because they were a
blacksmith or pot because they were a
Potter right in the same way I think
your
surname right now for many people it's
eth and that reflects the ethereum
community your surname online will carry
information about you like says
something different about you BTC says
yet something different I think we're
going to have a massive fractionation of
this over time we're still in the very
earliest days of our internet
civilization right 100 200 years from
now those surnames may be as informative
as say Chen or fredman or or seren awon
in terms of what information they carry
cuz the protocol it's the civilization
fundamentally that you're associated
with right right so that there's some
improvements to the real name that you
could do in the digital world but do you
think there's value of having a name
that's persists throughout your whole
life that is
shared between all the different
digital communities I think you should
be able to opt into that right at which
at which level in terms of the society
that you're joining wait a minute so can
I murder a bunch of people in society
one
and then go to society 2 and be like I'm
murder free my my name is I don't mean
it like that no no yeah so why that
would that's the application I'm
interested in okay well I'm not
application but but but I I would like
you to to prevent me sure a person who's
clearly bad for society from doing that
sure sure murder is going to be against
the rules in almost every society and I
mean basically I mean people argue yeah
most likely right and um animals well
I'm thinking of like the Aztecs or the
Mayas or you know something like that
there's various you know Soviet Union
there's weird there's weird Ed not Ed
Cas yeah there's societies unfortunately
that have actually that's why that's why
I asteris it but let's say murder is U
something that Society one probably has
effectively a social smart contract or a
social contract that says that's illegal
therefore you're in jail therefore
you're deprived of the right to exit but
upon into that Society in theory you
would have said Okay I accept this quote
social contract right obviously if I
kill somebody I can't leave okay so
you've you've accepted upon crossing the
border into there right now um as I
mentioned you know uh like what is
murder like people will I mean there's
obvious answer but as I said there's
been human sacrific in some societies
communism they killed lots of people
naism they kill lots of people
unfortunately there's quite a lot of
societies you know I wanted to say it's
an edge case but maybe many of the 20th
century societies around the world have
institutionalized some kind of murder
whether it's was a Red Terror you know
in the Soviet Union or obviously the
Holocaust or you know the cultural
revolution or or year zero and and so on
and so forth right so my point there is
that who was committing all those
murders it was the state it was the
organization that one is implicitly
trusting them to track you right and how
did they commit those murders well how
how did Lenin you know uh you know the
hanging order I'm talking about the
hanging order for the klocks
yes okay the famous hanging order which
actually showed they were actually
bloodthirsty the key thing was he said
here's a list of all the quote rich men
the coocks go and kill them the real
names the state names were what
facilitated the murder they didn't
prevent the murderers there right so my
point is just in the the ethical waiting
of it it's a two-sided thing right
you're right that the tracking can you
know prevent disorganized murders but
the tracking facilitates unfortunately
organized murders lists of undesir Ables
were the primary tool of all of these
oppressive states in the 20th
century you see you see my point I I see
your point and it's a very strong
point in part it's a cynical
point which is that the rule
of a centralized state is more negative
than positive I think it is a it is like
it's like nuclear energy okay it's it's
it's like fire it is something which um
you're going to keep having it reform
because there's there's good reasons
where you have centralization
decentralization
recentralization but power corrupts
absolute power corrupts absolutely and
you just have to be very suspicious of
this kind of centralized power the more
trust you give it often the less trust
it it deserves it's like a weird
feedback loop right the more trust the
more it can do the more it can do the
more bad things it will do so okay
there is a lot of downside to the state
being able to track you right and
history teaches us lessons when at a
large scale especially in the 20th
century at the largest of scale a state
can do commit a large amount of murder
and suffering and and by the way history
isn't over if you think about what the
Chinese are building on this right that
surveillance State it's not just
tracking your name it's tracking
everything on you you know like we chat
is essentially like it it is all the
convenience and none of the freedom so
that's the downside but don't you the
question is about is I I think probably
fundamentally about the human nature of
an
individual of how much murder there
would be if we can just disappear every
time we murder well I mean at the
individual level so the issue is
basically like once once one realizes
that the moral trade-off has two poles
to it right and and moreover that
basically centralized organized murder
has I mean if we add up all the
disorganized murder of the 20th century
it's probably significantly less than
the organized murder that was that these
states facilitated right and probably by
you know RJ romal has this thing called
democide right and the thing is it's so
Grim right because you know it's saying
like one one death is a tragedy a
million is a statistic right these are
just like just incalculable tragedies
that we we can't even you know uh
understand but
um you know nevertheless engaging with
it like you know I don't know is a ratio
10x is it 100x I wouldn't be surprised
if it's 100x yeah but have you seen the
viciousness the negativity the division
within online communities that have
anony anonymity so that's the thing is
basically you there's also a Sila and
aerbus I'm not you know when you when
you see what centralization can do and
then you you correct in the direction of
decentralization you can overcorrect
with de ation and you get Anarchy and
this is basically then you want to
recentralize right and this is the you
know uh I think it's the remain to the
Three Kingdoms the the Empire long
United must divide the Empire long
divided must unite that's always the way
of it right so what's going to happen is
we will state certain verbal principles
right and then the question is where in
state space you are are you too
centralized well then okay you want to
decentralize and are you too
decentralize you want to centralize it
may track more right and people opt into
more tracking because they will get
something from that tracking which is a
greater of societal stability so so it's
kind of like saying are we going north
or south and and the answer is like
what's our destination where is our
current position in the in the
civilizational state space well my main
question I guess is um does uh creating
a network State escape from the some of
the flaws of human nature the reason you
got Nazi Germany is a large scale
resentment with different explanations
for that resentment that's ultimately
lives in the heart of each individual
they made up the entirety of Nazi
Germany and had a charismatic leader
that was able to channel that resentment
into action into actual policies into
actual political and Military movements
can't you not have the same kind of
thing in digital communities as well
have you heard the term argumentum ad
hitlerum or like Godwin's law or
something like you know it's something
where if the reference point is Hitler
it's this it's this thing where a lot of
things break down but I do think I mean
look is there any uh did Bitcoin manage
to get where it was without a single
shot being fired to my knowledge yes
right did Google manage to get to where
it is without shots being fired
absolutely um and while a lot of shots
were being fired elsewhere in the world
sure and but who's firing those shots
again St States right yeah but that's
because Bitcoin and Google are a tiny
minority of communities that's it's like
the the icing on the cake of humans
civilization sure basically any
technology I mean like you can use a you
can use a hammer to go and hit somebody
with it right I'm not I'm not saying
every technology is equally destructive
or what have you but you can conceive of
it's kind of like rule 34 but for
technology right you okay right you can
you can probably figure out some your
ability to reference brilliant things
throughout is quite admirable yes but
anyway sorry rule 34 for technology rule
34 but for abusive technology you can
always come up with a black mirror
version of something and in fact there
is this kind of funny tweet which is
like a Sci-Fi author my book don't
invent the torment Nexus was meant to be
a cautionary Tale on what you know would
happen if Society invented the torment
neus and then it's like uh Tech guys at
long last we have created the torment
neever right and uh so the thing is that
simply describing something some abuse
unfortunately
um after the initial shock wears off
people will unconsciously think of it as
sort of an attractor in the space right
it's like I'll give you some examples
like uh you know Minority Report had the
the gesture thing right and the connect
was based on that so it's a dystopian
movie but had this cool kind of thing
and people you know kind of keyed off it
right or you know people have said that
movies like um you know full metal
jacket that was meant to be in my my
understanding is meant to be like an
anti-war movie but lots of you know
soldiers just love it you know despite
the fact that the the drill sergeant is
actually depicted as a bad guy right for
the sort of portrayal of that you know
kind of kind of environment right so I'm
just saying it's like giving the vision
of like the digital Hitler or whatever
is not actually a vision I want to paint
I do think is it is it everything is
it's possible obviously you know isis
uses the internet right like is it yeah
I'm not we're not bringing up Hitler in
a shallow argument we're bringing up
Hitler in a long empathetic relaxed
discussion which is a different which is
which is where hit can live in a healthy
way there is a there's deep Le lessons
in Hitler and Nazi Germany as Stalin yes
okay so in many ways uh you know and
this is a very superficial way of
talking about it but this is um exit is
the anti-genocide technology right
because exit is the route of the
politically powerless exit is not people
always say oh exit is for the rich or
that's actually not true most immigr
most immigrants equals most immigrants
are not rich politically powerless you
describe exit what is exit so uh there's
this you know book which I I reference a
lot I like it um called exit voice and
loyalty by Albert hman okay and he
essentially says um and you know I gave
this talk uh in 2013 that that goes
through this uh at YC starb school but
just to describe these voices reform
exit as alternatives for example in the
context of an open source project voice
is uh submitting a bug and exit is for
working in a company um voices uh you're
saying you know hey uh here's a um
here's a ticket okay that I'd like to
get solved and exit is taking your
business elsewhere okay um you know at
level of corporate governance voices you
know board of directors vote and exit is
selling your shares right and a country
voic is a vote and exit is migration
okay and um I do think that the two
forces we talk about a lot democracy and
capitalism are useful forces
um but there's a third which is uh
migration right so you can vote with
your ballot you can vote with your
wallet you can vote with your feet
wallet has some aspects of exit built
into it um but voting with your feet
actually has some aspects of voice built
into it because when you leave it's like
an amplifier on your vote you might say
10 things but when you actually leave
then people take well you said seriously
you're not just like complaining or
whatever you you actually left San
Francisco because it was so bad on this
and this issue and you've actually voted
with your feet it is um manifest
preference as opposed to state of
preference so Voice versus exit is this
interesting dichotomy do you try to
reform the system or do you exit it and
build a new one or find seek an
alternative and then loyalty modulates
this where if you are a patriot as part
the the initial part of your
conversation right like you know uh are
you are you a Traer you know you're
giving up on our great thing or whatever
right and people push those buttons to
get people to stick that's like you know
I I shouldn't say the bad version let's
say a common version Sometimes good
sometimes bad um then uh but then
there's the good version which is oh you
know maybe the price is down right now
but you believe in the cause so even if
they're you know on paper you you would
rationally exit you believe in in this
thing and you're going to stick with it
okay so loyalty can be again good and
bad but it kind of modulates a trade-off
between voice and exit Okay so given
that framework we can think of a lot of
problems in terms of am I going to use
voice or exit or some combination there
because they're not M exclusive it's
kind of like you know left and right sub
both together I think that one of the
biggest things the internet does is it
increases microeconomic leverage and
therefore increases exit in every
respect of life for example um you know
on every phone you can pick between Lyft
and Uber right when you're at the store
uh you see a price on the shelf and you
can comparison shop right um if it's
Tinder you can swipe right if it's
Twitter you can click over to the next
account the back button and his exit the
The microeconomic Leverage leverage in
the sense of Alternatives right this is
like the one of the fundamental things
that the internet does it puts this tool
on your desktop and now you can go and
talk to an illustrator or you can kind
of build it yourself right by by typing
in some you know characters into do and
that makes the positive forces of
capitalism more efficient uh increase in
microeconomic leverage and it's
individual empowerment right and so our
sort of industrial AED systems were not
set up for that level of individual
empowerment just to give you like one
example that I think about we take for
granted every single website you go and
log into you can configure your Twitter
profile and you can make it dark mode or
light mode and your name all this stuff
is editable right how do you configure
your USA
experience is there a usa.gov that you
edit can you even edit your name there
dark mode uh for USA but I mean just
your profile is there is there like a
national profile I mean there's like
driver's license point is that it's
assumed that it's not like individually
customizable quite in that way right of
course you can move around your house
and stuff like that but it's not like
your experience of the US is like
configurable you know uh let me think
about that let me let me think about
sort of the analogy of it so the
microeconomic leverage you can switch
apps can you switch your experience in
in small ways efficiently multiple times
a day in inside the United
States um well the physical world think
you do yeah under the constraints of the
physical world you do like micro
migrations so this is coming back to the
hunter gatherer farmer Soldier digital
Nomad kind of thing right the the
digital Nomad combines aspects of the V1
and the V2 for a V3 right because the
digital Nomad has the mobility and
freedom of the hunter gatherer but some
of the consistency of this the
civilization of the farmer and Soldier
right but coming back to this like one
thing about it is in the 1950s if a guy
on assembly line might literally push
the same button for 30 years okay
whereas today you're pushing a different
key every second right that is that's
like one version of like microeconomic
Leverage another another version is you
know in the 1980s I mean they didn't
have Google Maps right so you couldn't
just like discover things off the path
people would just essentially do you
know home to work and work to home and
home to work and a trip had to be
planned right they were contained within
a region of space or you do home to
school school to home home to school you
know it wasn't like you went and
explored the map most people didn't
right they were highly canalized okay
meaning you know that it was just back
and forth back and forth very routine
just like the push the button push the
button trapped within this very small
piece and also trapped within this large
country because it was hard to travel
between countries and so again you know
of course there were vacations of course
there was some degree of news and so on
your Mobility wasn't completely crushed
but it was actually quite low okay
relatively speaking just you you were
you were trapped in a way you weren't
even really thinking about it okay and
now that map has opened up now you can
see the whole map you can go all over
the place um you know I don't have the
data to show it but I would I'd be
shocked if people the average person
didn't go to more places wasn't you know
doing more you know going to more
restaurants and things like that today
than they were in the 80s simply because
the map is open okay and the the map map
is made more open through the digital
world through the digital world exactly
so we're reopening the map like the
hunter gatherer okay because you can now
think about every site for very low cost
that you can visit right the digital
world you can I mean how many websites
have you visited I don't know hundreds
of thousands probably at this point over
your life right how many places on the
surfaces are you're actually unusual you
might be like a world traveler what have
you right but still even your even your
physical Mobility is less than your
digital Mobility right you can just
essentially I mean entire concept of
like Nations and borders and whatnot
didn't exist in the hunter gather ER
right because you couldn't um you
couldn't build permanent fortifications
and whatnot even even Nations as we
currently think of them with like
demarcated borders um you need
cartography you needed Maps right that
stuff didn't exist for a long time you
just had sort of a fuzzy area of we kind
of controlled this territory and these
guys are on the other side of the river
okay I think uh just to I don't want to
digress too much but yeah where digress
away I think entirety of life on Earth
is is a kind of a degression which
creates Beauty and complexity as part of
the degression I think your vision of
the network state is really powerful and
beautiful I just would want to linger on
this real name issue let me just give
you some data go ahead personal
anecdotal experience data there's a
reason I only do this podcast in person
there is something lost in the digital
space oh sure and I finded now I
personally believe to play Devil's
Advocate Against The Devil's Advocate
that I'm playing I personally believe
that this is a temporary thing we will
figure out technological solutions to
this but I do find that currently people
are much more willing to be on scale
cruel to each other online yes than they
are in person uh the only the way to do
that just visited Ukraine went to the
front the way you can have people be
cruel to each other in the physical
space is through the machine of
propaganda that dehumanizes the other
side all that kind of stuff that's
really like hard work to do online I
find just natural at the individual
scale
people uh somehow
start too easily engage in the drug of
mockery derision and cruelty yes when
they can hide behind anonymity I don't
know what that says about human nature I
ultimately believe most of us want to be
good and have the capacity to do a lot
of good but sometimes it's fun to be
shitty to shit on people to be cruel I
don't know what that is weird it's weird
because I think you know one of my
sayings is just like the internet
increases microeconomic leverage the
internet increases variance for anything
that exists before you have you know the
zero and 100 versions of it I'll give
some examples and I'll come to this for
example you go from the 30 minute sitcom
to the 30 second clip or the 30 episode
Netflix binge right you go from guy
working 95 to uh the guy who's the you
know 40 years old and and has failed to
launch hasn't you know the doesn't have
a job or anything and the 20-year-old
Tech billionaire okay you go from all
kinds of things that were sort of
gaussian or kind of constraint in one
location to kind of extreme outcomes on
both sides okay and uh applying that
here you are talking about the bad
outcome which I agree does happen where
the internet in some sense makes people
have very low empathy between others but
it also is the other extent where people
find their mental soulmates across the
world someone who's living in Thailand
or in you know like Latin America who
thinks all the same stuff just like them
wow you never met this person before
right you get to know them online you be
in person it's like you know the brains
have been communicating for two years
three years you've been friends and the
even person is just great right so it's
actually it's not just the total lack of
empathy is frankly far more empathy than
you would be able to build usually with
an inperson conversation in the 80s or
the 90s with someone on the other side
of the world because you might not even
be able to get a visa to go to their
country or not even know they existed
how would you be be able to find each
other and so on and so forth right so it
is kind of both it is tearing Society
apart and it's putting it back together
both at the same time my main concern is
this what I see is that young people are
for some reason more willing to engage
in the drug of Cruelty online under the
veil of anonymity that's what you're
seeing publicly but you're not seeing
the private
chats like there there it's kind it's a
it's a I work for the intelligence
agency so I'm see you see the priv I
mean I'm collecting all of your data uh
yeah yes but you can Intuit it stuff and
I don't think I'm being very selective I
mean I if you if you just look at the
Young Folks I mean I am very concerned
about the uh the
intellectual psychological growth of
young men and women so I'm I'm not
disagreeing with you on this I am saying
however there is a positive there that
once we see it we can try to amplify
that with technology yes but I'm just
saying the very very basic technology I
if stuff I I Cod up over the weekend
kind of thing I think if I throw
anonymity on top of that it will lead to
uh many bad outcomes for young people
anonymity yes pseudonymity maybe not cuz
Reddit is actually fairly polite right
um the entirety of Reddit just chuckled
as you said that well well within a
within a subreddit it's actually fairly
polite like that say you you're not
usually seeing it depends on which
subreddit of course there's a
consistency there's a right the I think
definition of politeness is interesting
here because it's polite within the
culture of that subreddit yes they abide
by let me put it a different way they
abide by the social Norm ter of that
subreddit right and that's the
definition of politeness yeah well or
civility is like right so there is an
interesting difference between pous and
Anonymous you're saying it's possible
that
pseudonymity you can actually avoid some
of the ne negative aspects absolutely
we're redundar ising the world in some
ways okay with China being the big
exception or outlier you know the Dunbar
number 150 people if you know that's
that's like roughly the scale of your
Society right um
or that's the number of people that a
human can kind of keep in in their brain
that's you know whether ocal or not I
think I think it's probably roughly
true and uh we're reduning the world
because a we're making small groups much
more productive and B we're making large
groups much more fractious right so you
have an individual like Notch who can
program Minecraft by himself or Satoshi
you could do V1 of Bitcoin by himself or
you know Instagram which is just like 10
people or Whatsapp which like 50 people
when they sold um but the other hand you
have huge quote countries of hundreds of
millions of people that are just finding
that the first and second principal or
the the you know they're just splitting
on principal components you know whe
Scott Alexander thinks of them as
scissor statements you know that
statements that one group thinks is
obviously true one group thinks is
obviously false you can think of them as
as political polarization you think of
in terms of Game Theory there lots of
different reasons you can give for why
this happens but those large groups now
are getting split and so you have both
both the unsustainability of these large
sort of artificial groups and the
productivity of these small organic ones
and so that is kind of it's like sort of
obvious that's a direction of
civilizational rebirth we just need to
kind of lean into that SC stat there's
so many beautiful just like um you know
we mentioned chocolates they advertising
themselves your entirety speech is an
intellectual like box of chocolates but
okay so I don't think we finished
defining the network State let's like
Linger on the the definition you gave
the one sentence statement which I think
essentially encapsulated the online
nature of it I forget what else uh can
we just try to bring more um richness to
this definition of how you think about
the network State absolutely so that
informal sentence is a network state is
a highly aligned online community with a
capacity for Collective action that
crowdfunds territory around the world
and eventually gains diplomatic recogn
from pre-existing States so we talked
about was the alignment of online
communities and the capacity for
Collective action Y well one Collective
action it could be a thousand people
liking a tweet right if you can get a
thousand of a thousand people doing it
but a much higher level much higher bar
is a thousand people crowdfunding
territory and actually living together
just like people current physical space
in physical space and not all in one
place that's critical just like Bitcoin
is a decentralized currency the network
St is a recipe for a decentralized
state-like entity okay okay where it
starts with um you know for example two
people just get you know they become
roommates they meet in this community
they become roommates okay they get
their place together or 10 people get a
group house or eventually 100 people
just buy a small apartment building
together and guess what they start
getting Equity not just paying rent okay
these are all people who share their
values and now they can crowdfund
territory together now of course they
don't just jump straight from a thousand
people liking something to a th people
crowdfunding something what I describe
in the middle is you do a lot of meetups
you get to know these other people
before you decide to live you know
collectively with them once you live
with them you start to get a network
effect for example if those 100 people
want to learn Spanish or Turkish or
Vietnamese they could all have a
building where they're doing Vietnamese
immersion right and that's something
which they get a benefit from being
physically around the other people that
the pure digital wouldn't give them to
quite the same extent right um and so
crowdfunds territory around the world
crucially not just one place they're all
connected by the internet just like
Hawaii's 2,000 Mi away from the
Continental us but both sides think of
them as American but the people on
Hawaii and people in the continental US
what's the role of having to have
territory if most of the exchange so
presumably as technology gets better and
better the communication the intimacy
the exchange of ideas all happens in the
digital world what's the importance of
being able to crowdfund territory well
because we're still physical creatures
you you can't reproduce yet digitally
right there's still lots of things so
it's all about sex well that's going to
be part of it you're going to want to
you know reproduce are we talking about
a
cult it's not a cult it's not a cult why
can't you just like take a train why is
it not a cult it's not a cult because a
cult is very internally focused and it's
it it tries to close its members off
from the outside world this is much more
how America itself was populated where
there were lots of towns like Penn is
named after William Penn or the founder
of Texas like Sam Houston right lots of
towns like the Onida commune in in you
know Northern New York they recruited
and they became a town and they became
actually the anida um glassware company
kind of you know makes makes glassware
out there all of these communities that
were opt-in voluntary communities were
not simply like Cults that were closed
off from the world they were meant to
set an example to the world of what
virtuous living look like and they were
trying to recruit from the rest of the
world they were exporting Goods to the
rest of the world right so it is um it's
yes reproduction it's you know marriage
and kids and so on but it's also just
hanging out and it is just the physical
world is very high bandwidth there's
lots of stuff you know it's fun to just
go and have a dinner in person just to
hang out to build things moreover
there's also lots of innovation that can
only take place in the physical world um
you know look I'm you know one of my
sayings in the book is cloud first land
last but not land never okay in many
ways what one of the problems book
solves is Teal's problem of you know we
have Innovation and bits but not atoms
right we can build a billion- dollar
Company online but we need a billion
permits to build a shed in San Francisco
right how do you reconcile that well
what is stopping the Innovation anoms it
is a Thicket of regulations what are
those regulations ultimately a social
construction if you lean into the you
know whole deconstructionist you know
School of thinking you can deconstruct
and then reconstruct the state itself
given sufficient social consensus online
okay if the population Nevada had 100%
consensus you could just dissolve every
law in Nevada in theory and then build
new ones okay so the online consensus of
getting people to agree on something is
Upstream of what happens offline so once
you have consensus in bits the human
consensus also you know cryptographic
consensus cryptocurrency
consensus then you can reshape the world
of atams the reason we can't reshape the
world of Adams right now is because you
don't have that consensus of Minds okay
for example in SF anything you do
there's going to be 50% of people who
are against you like so that's just a
recipe for gridlock whereas if you have
a bare piece of land that everybody
agrees on you can get you know 70,000
units get set up in burning man in just
a few days okay that's the power of what
when you actually have human consensus
and one way I talk about this also in
the book a little bit and this I'm going
to go much more into detail into V2 I
think of this as 100% democracy as
opposed to 51% democracy 51% democracy
which is the current form of government
is 49% dictatorship because the entire
premise of democracy is about the
consent of the government right that's
actual legitimating underpinning
principle and uh in so far as 49% did
not consent to the current you know
president or prime minister or whatever
um let's say presidential system first
pass the post okay um in so far as 49%
did not consent or in a in a prime
minister system it could be like 60% or
more didn't consent the current leader
those folks are having something imposed
on them that they did literally did not
vote for moreover campaign promises are
non-binding so whatever they voted for
they can effectively be defrauded you
know the actual voter fraud is when a
politician promises X but does not do it
it's as if you bought a can of orange
juice and it actually drink it it's milk
or it's nothing right so all of that is
routinized all of that is accepted we
have this thing which is just the
minimum possible amount of democracy of
51% okay and what happens is then that
5% tries to Ram something down the 49%
throat and then the next election it's
now 5149 the other way and then they Ram
it back and that's how you get the
Seesaw that is just splitting countries
apart right the alternative to that is
you build a consensus online you go and
get some godforsaken patch of territory
actually the the worse the territory the
better why because it's like burning man
nobody cares right the nicer the piece
of land the more the people are going to
argue about it but starlink has repriced
the world basically all kinds of piece
of territory that were previously you
know they're far away from natural ports
they're far away from natural resources
all all kinds of pieces of territory
around the world now have satellite
internet and so what you can do is again
the map has being reopened right what we
were talking about earlier the map has
being reopen you can gather your
community online they're now capable of
collective action you can point here
this place has great staring coverage
you go there like the Verizon guy you
know can you hear me now good right you
see that the coverage is good there you
drive out there you test it out maybe
you do it with mobile homes first right
um this by the way is its own thing
there's yimi and there's there's nimi
and there's yimi but I she also like HBY
okay you let's go nimi yimi HBY what are
those so nimi is non my backyard don't
build in cities yimi is let's build high
density buildings really tall buildings
and so on and cities there's a third
version which uh is HBY uh my little
coinage which is horizontal sprawl is
good why horizontal sprawl because to
build a skyscraper to build a tall
building in a city you have this
enormous permitting process all of this
stuff which has to get done it's
expensive it's timec consuming the way
that cities were built if you go back to
the V1 what does the startup City look
like it looks like something like
burning man it looks like the cities of
the Wild West they were not multi-story
buildings right they were basically
things that were just like one story and
someone could have it there in the dust
and then you build roads and stuff
between them they can move them around
it was a much more Dynamic geography and
so when you have that as a vision of
what a startup City looks like right now
you've got something there's there's a
company I found called kft which is like
van life there's a lot of stuff in
construction that that makes this
feasible there so-called man camps uh
for for fracking um where people can
just do like like companies like agreco
they PR power you can bring water all
this stuff on site so it's easy to
actually snap this stuff to grid
relatively speaking if you've got
horizontal space you pick this space you
crowd from the territory now you've got
a city okay and the last bit is uh
eventually gains diplomatic recognition
from pre-existing States and this is a
part that people you know different
people will be with me up to this point
and then they'll say okay that's a part
I disagree with or how are you going to
ever do that right they'll say yeah you
can build an online community I believe
you can get them to do Collective action
of course people have crowdfunded land
and movement together you're doing it a
larger scale Al that I believe how are
you possibly ever going to gain
diplomatic recognition of pre-existing
States you dumb delusional Tech bro
right that's you know common thing okay
that's about the tone of it as well
right and so first I would say uh
sovereigns are already out for business
they're inking deals okay uh Nevada in
to deal with Tesla to build the Gea
Factory El Salvador has Bitcoin as
National currency Wyoming has done the
Dow law where ethereum is now recognized
where you can have onchain
incorporations that are recognized by
Wyoming law um Virginia and New York
negotiate with Amazon for hq2 tuvalu
signed a deal with GoDaddy for the.tv
domain Colombia signed a deal for the
doco domain and on and on on sovereigns
are open for business sovereigns are
doing deals with companies and with
currencies sovereigns at the level of
cities like Miami in New York where the
Mayors are accepting their their salary
in Bitcoin um States like you know
Wyoming or Nevada has its new private
cities legislation or entire countries
like El Salvador So when you say
sovereigns by the way you mean the old
school physical nation states
governments Fiat States Fiat States okay
and but but the Fiat isn't the thing
that makes a state what makes a state is
geographical location it is is something
where uh the both right so basically
it's it's a play on word so just like
fiat currency to cryptocurrency we we'll
have Fiat country and crypto country
right right and in fact you can think of
the Fiat and crypto version of almost
anything one thing I'll come to later is
a big thing the big thing I think comes
after digital currency is digital
passports okay so and that's a big part
of this this whole network thing which
I'm we come back to but so that last bit
the reason I just mentioned all those
deals between sovereigns whether at the
city
US state or un listed country level okay
and on the other so that's on one side
of the market on the other side are the
um companies and the currencies why
could we not have online communities
right so so let me uh making those deals
so uh diplomatic
recognition but are aren't you
still attached to the
responsibilities uh that come from being
a member of a
Sovereign um old school nation state can
you possibly Escape that so yes and let
me give you a concrete example Israel
okay why um you know people talk about
you know a lot of people are like oh B
he just he took this from snow crash or
some sci-fi book they'll reference
actually if uh there's many different
references of the book this is not the
only reference but a very important
reference that I think is much more
important to me than snow crash which is
which is good a good book whatever but
fictional is Der Juden by The Herzel
which translates as the Jewish State and
that led to the foundation of Israel and
that's very real it's worth reading
because it's amazing The Herzel was like
a tech founder okay in the book he was
writing about the death of distance in
1897 why because steamships could take
you across you know countries okay and
he like is just you know amazingly smart
and practical Guy where just handled all
these various objections and he said
look you know the Jewish people you know
our choices are either a assimilate and
give up the culture or B some people are
thinking communism is good idea I
disagreed that we should do c build our
own country right and that was
considered totally crazy but what he did
was he a wrote a book b started a fund C
organized a semiannual conference the
you know World Zionist Congress and the
fund and the Congress are still going
today crucially there were a bunch of
intermediate stages between the book and
the IDE and then the actual state of
Israel in 1947 for example um the you
know folks who were committed Zionist
got together and started crowdfunding
territory and what is now Palestine and
in fact though Palestine was only one
choice in the book they also had
Argentina as a choice so this my concept
Cloud first land last and the land's a
parameter you can choose right other
places that were considered at various
points like Madagascar Biden in the
former Soviet Union right so the land
was a parameter Palestine went out
because of its you know historical
religious importance now by the way one
thing I'm sure some like some fraction
of viewers will be like oh my God like
all the bad stuff that happen I'm
obviously not denying that there's
enormous amounts of controversy and so
on that attends Israel and what not I
consider myself generally pro-israeli
I'd also consider myself Pro Palestinian
I fund lots of Palestinians and so so so
I've I'm leaving that part out that huge
conflict or you know for for now okay
and you might say that's airbrushing it
I don't mean it to do that I'm saying
here is the positive things they did can
we take the positive and not have the
negative and I'll come back to how we we
we might swap those parts out let me
just talk about this a little bit more
so one of the things that happened was
committed Zionist went and crowdfunded
territory in what is now Israel and they
knit it together right why because when
you're physically present on territory
yes in theory like the the British
Empire was in control they were the
Sovereign okay in practice who were the
boots on the ground the facts on the
ground right there the people who were
actually telling the land and building
the buildings and and so and so forth it
like who had the claim there is like the
people who are present okay now now um
this this territory this network of of
territories eventually um became the
basis for or part of the basis for what
became Israel now I'm fully aware that
the exact configuration of what
territory belongs to Israel what
territory belongs Palestinians this is
an enormous topic of dispute okay but I
just point this out to say the process
going from book to crowdfunding
territory to a sovereign state where
people were now citizens of Israel as
opposed to the British Empire is not
some fictional thing but did happen and
within the lifetimes of some of the
older you know they're in their 80s now
but in the lifetimes of some older
people okay so so it's not impossible in
fact it has happened right a but for
that step then perhaps hopefully is a
better example because in this
particular like you said land
last if I were just it was if I was an
alien and arrived at Earth and say
choice of land maybe if you were
interested in uh create choosing a land
that represents a network state where
ideas that unites a
people uh based on ideas maybe pick a
land that doesn't lead to uh
generational conflict and War so get to
that and destruction and suffering and
all that all the stuff that's right so
so now that I've said what are you know
the positive things about Israel and I
think there's a lot to admire in Israel
as I said I think there's also a lot to
admire in the Palestinians and so on I'm
not taking any position on that there's
other Inspirations for the network State
the second major inspiration is India
which managed to achieve independence
non-violently right that's very
important right so can you can you fuse
these things right a state started with
a book that achieved Independence
non-violently okay and that managed to
build this polyglot you know
Multicultural democracy right that does
you know like you know India has its
flaws but it does manage to have you
know human rights of lots of people
respected and what have you right and um
has managed to you know there were times
like emergency in the 1970s and thereon
the declared emergency there are times
when seemed touch and go but overall
with fits and starts this flawed thing
is has kind of made its way through and
you know the third inspiration is
Singapore with Le Kuan Yu who built a
city state from nothing you know I
shouldn't say from nothing okay there
was something there but let's say it
built one of the richest countries in
the world without like huge amounts of
Natural Resources in the middle of a
Zone where there was lots of Communist
Revolution going on um and so he was the
CEO founder essentially of this amazing
startup country right and um you know
finally of course America which has too
many influences to name things we talked
about the nation of immigrants obviously
the Constitution and so on and you think
okay can we go you think of uh you know
these Inspirations what's interesting
about these four countries by the way
Israel India Singapore in the US they
have something in common you know what
that is who's that they're all Forks of
the UK code
base we think obviously you know the UK
was sort of the ancestor of America but
Israel was a former British colony right
the India was a British colony and so
was Singapore right and for people who
don't know what fork and codebase means
it's a language from versioning systems
particularly git represented online on a
website called GitHub and a fork means
you cop the code and all the changes you
make to the code now live in their own
little world so America took the ideas
that defined the United Kingdom and then
forked it by evolving those ideas in a
way that didn't affect the original the
original country that's right and what's
interesting about this is and of course
I'm saying that in a somewhat playful
way right but I think it's a useful
analogy interesting analogy right so you
have the Americans who forked you know
the UK code base and then you have you
know the Indians Israelis and the
singaporeans who also made their own
modifications and in some ways each
Society has pieces that you can take
from them and learn from them and try to
combine them right so you have a state
that is started by a book that um
non-violently assembles that crowdfunds
territory around the world that um is
led by a CEO founder um and that is also
governed by something that's like a
constitution but just like you from you
know I talk about the V1 V2 and V3 a lot
right like V1 is gold and V2 is Fiat and
V3 is Bitcoin right or V1 is hunter
gatherer and V2 is farmer Soldier V3 is
digital Nomad or Sovereign Collective
okay which is not just an individual but
a group um here V1 is UK common law they
don't have a constitution it's all a
precedent going for many years right V2
is the US Constitution and V3 is the
Smart contract the social smart contract
which is a you know Fusion obviously of
Russo's concept of the social contract
and the smart contract the social smart
contract is like written in code okay so
it's like even more rigorous in the
Constitution and in many ways you can
think of going from the United Kingdom
of uh England Wales you know Scotland
Northern Ireland the United States of
America the network states of the
internet okay where you go from the
rights of Englishmen with the Magna
Carta to Europeans African-Americans all
the immigrants to the the you know the
Americans or the um you know North
America you go all the people of the
world and uh so you you basically are
more democratic and you're more
capitalist because you're talking about
internet capitalism not just nation
state lock capitalism in a sense it's
the V3 right in another way it's a V3
only about 2% of the world um is uh over
35 native born American can qualify to
be president of the United States but
100% of the world you could become the
president of a network State there might
be a you know Palestinian Washington
or a you know Brazilian Hamilton right
and now rather than say okay maybe
you're maybe you have a small percentage
chance of immigrating to the US and a
small percentage chance of your
descendant you know becoming like you
know president now we can just say you
can start online and you know what maybe
this person is so exceptional they have
Americans coming to their you know
Network state right you don't think that
kind of thing is possible with like the
rich get richer in the digital space too
the people with more followers
uh have friends that have followers and
they like I don't think it's a rich get
rich I think what happens is um so this
is an important concept it is it's
multi-axis right that is to say for
example um just the introduction of the
Bitcoin axis right uh and those because
it didn't exist pre pre 2009 now it
exists um those people who are rich in
BTC terms are only partially correlated
with those who are rich in USD terms
there's all these folks who essentially
BTC is Bitcoin and USD is US dollar yes
so that's a new axis and eth is yet
another axis right you eum eth is
ethereum right so you are essentially
getting new social systems which are
actually net inequality decreasing
because before you only had USD
Millionaires and now you have a new
track and then another track and another
track right you have different
hierarchies different ladders right and
so on net you have more ladders to climb
and so it's not the rich getting richer
in fact old money in some ways is the
last to
cryptocurrency um old money and old
States I think those people who are the
most focused on you might call it reform
I would call it control okay the most
focused on control of the old world who
have the least incentive to
switch they will the rich will get
poorer because it will be the poor or
those who are politically powerless
politically poor who go and seek out
these new States yeah I I didn't mean in
money but yes okay there's other ladders
I meant in in terms of influence
political and social influence in the
these new network States you you I think
said that basically anybody can become
president of a network State just like
anybody can become CEO of a startup
company of course whether people follow
you it's another matter but anybody can
go and found one go ahead sorry oh from
the perspective that anyone can found
one anyone can found I see we don't
think it's implausible that uh you know
somebody from Brazil or nig I mean most
quote billionaires in the world are not
American and in fact actually here's
another important point it's far easier
to become a tech billionaire then become
or a billionaire period Then become
president of the United States there's
less than 50 US presidents ever all time
okay it is a much more realistic
ambition to become a billionaire than to
become president there's like thousands
of billionaires worldwide in fact 75% of
them are outside the US and many of
those have been you know some of them
are like energy and oil which is often
based on political connections but a
very large chunk of the rest are Tech
okay and uh that's something where
you're mining but you're mining online
by hitting Keys as opposed to with a
pickaxe you know and granite right so
the point is that we think it's totally
understandable today for there to be a
you know huge founder who comes out of
Vietnam or you know South America like
that like you can name Founders from all
over the world right exceptional people
can rise from all the world to run giant
companies why they not rise to run giant
new countries and the answer is we
didn't develop the mechanism yet right
um and just as another example I talked
about this in the book vitalic pan is
far more qualified than Jerome Powell
right or anybody at the Federal Reserve
he actually built a c and managed a
monetary policy and a currency from
scratch okay as a 20-some right
obviously that's a more accomplished
person than somebody who just inherited
an economy this is a lot of people can
push back at that to say that the the
people that initially build a thing
aren't necessarily the best ones to
manage a thing once it scales and
actually has impact sometimes sometimes
but Zuck has done a good job of both I
think vitalica has done a good job of
both right but that's not an inherent
truth well so actually if you built the
thing you will be the best person to run
it I will agree with you on that and
actually I talk about this in the book
uh or I've got an essay on this called
founding versus inheriting okay and the
premise is actually that the classic
example you know the saying shirts
sleeves to shirt sleeves in three
generations it means the guy who starts
at poor and builds a fortune his son
maintains it and his dissipate grandson
dissipates it right for why is shirt
sleeves a symbol of poverty well back in
the past it was kind of like you know
you're just working with your you're not
you're not white collar you're back to
working with your hands you're just a
blue collar to Blue Collar in three
generation yeah yeah or working class or
something like that that right so
essentially that the the grandson
squanders it right and you know in sense
by the way um just to talk about that
for a second if you have two children
and four grandchildren and eight
great-grandchildren and 16 and so on and
in older families you know they were
much bigger right six you know children
is not uncommon whatever Fortune you
have is now split six ways and then six
ways and six ways again so with the
exception of progeniture where the
oldest son inherits all the way down the
majority of attendant just a few
Generations out have probably inherited
none of that fortune unless it is
compounded to such an extent that it's
like up 6X over 20 years right so it's
actually hard to maintain a quote ruling
class in the sense that this person
who's like four generations down has you
know uh like 11/16th of the DNA you know
one over two to the fourth right of
their their Canan who built a fortune so
it's not even like the same is is it the
same family even right is a fortune
actually in the family so most people
don't think a few Generations out they
just kind of think oh Marx is right
there's always been a rich and a poor
it's actually much more Dynamic than
that because you literally like what is
even the family when it's diluted out
you know 11/16th right um if you're
11/16th a Rockefeller are you a
Rockefeller or 15 16 something else
would you have the Rockefeller Fortune
probably not right now are there again
primogeniture where the guy who inherits
the name all the way through um that
would be one way to pass it down but
even that person doesn't necessar have
the qualities of the guy who you know
the cultural qualities other qualities
guy who's like four generations past so
they tend to squander it right so this
brings us to you coming back up to
governance the system the the guys who
built the United States you know like
Washington and Hamilton these are giants
right these are founders and the the
folks today are like not the the
grandson but like the 40th Generation
air of a factory that somebody else
built like think about a factory and you
have you know this grandchild or
great-grandchild and inherits a factory
most of the time it's just cranking out
widgets and the Greek grandson is
cashing checks theyve been selected as
legitimate Heir because it's the you
know the founder passes it down to his
son passes down to his grandson to his
great grandson so legitimacy is there
they've got title they can show I own
this Factory okay they can cash the
checks there's professional managers
there everything seems fine until one
day that factory has to go from making
you know widgets to making masks for
covid or something else it has to change
direction has to do something it hasn't
done before none of that capability for
invention and reinvention is present
anymore
these people have inherited something
that they could not build from scratch
because they could not build from
scratch they can't even maintain it this
is an important point the ability to
build from scratch is so important
because if some part breaks and you
don't know why it was there can you even
maintain it no you can't okay unless all
the replacement parts and the know how
to fit them together is there you can't
repair this so in 2009 Mother Jones had
a story that said that the US military
had forgotten how to make some kinds of
nuclear weapons cuz there was a part
where all the guys knew how to make it
had like aged out or left mhm okay and
this was some like aoel or something
like that it was it was rumored okay
thing is um you're seeing you know
increasingly for example you've got uh
wildfires in California you've got you
know water that's not portable in
Jackson you've got power outages in
Texas um you're seeing a lot of the
infrastructure of the US is just less
functional I think probably part of that
is due to civil engineering not being
that sexy a field people aging out and
just domain knowledge being lost and The
Heirs who win you know the role of mayor
or whatever of this town don't have the
ability to build it from scratch they're
just selected for legitimacy not
competence okay so once you think about
this concept of founding versus
inheriting and I've got the whole essay
which talks about
this um of course the alternative to
somebody who's legitimate but not
competent what people will say is oh we
need like a you know an authoritarian to
be in control of everything and then
their their hope is that that person is
competent but they don't have legitimacy
because if they're just installed as
just like a authoritarian ruler 50% of
the population is really mad at them
they don't have title they just grab the
title you know maybe they can exert
enough Force but that's a problem with
kind of the authoritarian you know
dictator takeover right so the
alternative the third version is the
founder who combines both legitimacy and
competence because they start from
scratch and they attract people to their
Vision they build it from scratch and so
you need is the ability to constantly do
refounding rebirths so if you imagine a
world that is
primarily Network
states can you help me imagine what that
looks like now there's several ways to
imagine things which is how many of them
are there and how often do they the
Nuance pop up there could be thousands
given seven billion people 8 billion
people on Earth yeah yeah so there's
Network state in the like the precise
definition I have in the book which is a
diplomatically recognized entity and
there's never see in sort of the loose
definition where you know one thing
that's interesting is this term has
become a lowercase term really fast okay
State yeah like in the sense of Google
became lowercase Google for like
Googling or like uber became lowercase
Uber like if you go to the network
state.com reviews or you go to search.
twitter.com and put put in networkstate
you'll see it's just become like a word
or a phrase okay so that means it's sort
of whatever I intend it to mean people
will use it to mean what they want it to
mean right Okay Internet the internet
you become a well first all you're a
meme and this book is a meme am I a meme
okay maybe I'm a meme but the the book
is book because I think is a good meme
that's actually why I wanted to make it
free I wanted people to take it out
there make it their own and one of the
things I say at the beginning and I'll
come back to this thing is it's a
toolbox not a Manifesto even if you
dislike 70% of it 80% of it 90% of it if
there's something that's useful to you
you can take that and use it just like a
like a library you know a software
Library you might just use one function
there great I'm glad I've delivered you
some value right that's my purpose in
this so you're not iron Rand no I'm not
iron Rand and basically the whole point
of this actually is it's it's
polytheistic poly statistic poly
numistic is genuinely is it polyamorous
it's not polyamorous okay um though
somebody might want love advice in the
book I didn't I didn't see it so did you
talk about love in I do not talk about
love rather maybe not that I don't
believe in love love is great all right
I will accept your offer to write a
guest chapter in your in your V2 book
about love all right great um uh because
there is some aspect that's very
interesting which as which parts of
human civilization require physical
contact physical uh because it seems
like more and more can be done in the
digital space yeah but as I said like
work for example but you're not going to
build a self-driving car city in digital
space you're not going to be able to do
oh I need cars at all well you well so
sure but let's say you're not going to
be able to get to Mars in a purely
digital thing you need to build you know
you have to build a rocket launch pad
you're not going to be able to uh do all
the Innovative biom medicine whether
it's you know all the um you know have
you seen bioelectricity or there's
there's stuff on regenerative medicine
stem cells all this stuff you you just
can't do that digitally right we're
still physical beings you know so you
need physical space but how do we get
that right so that this is this is meant
to wind its way through various
roadblocks in the so-called you know
actually my term from many years ago the
IDE maze it's meant to W its way through
the IDE maze to find how to use bits to
re unlock unlock innovation in Adams the
idea ma within the bigger prime number
Ma we're going back to visualizing the
number of states and how often are they
born so let me first let me first anchor
this because people just to give some
numbers right how many un listed
countries are there like 196 193 okay
and there's some that are on the border
like Taiwan or Israel right uh where
they're not I mean Israel is a country
but it's not recognized by every country
or what have you right is Texas a
country no but it may eventually become
right okay so within that list of about
200 countries okay I've got a graph in
the book that shows that most countries
are actually small countries um about
there's 12 countries that have less
100,000 people by the UN definition of a
country there's another 20-some that
have between 100,000 and 1 million
there's another 50 or 60 something that
have between a million and 10 million so
most
countries in the UN are less than 10
million people there's only 14 countries
that are over 100 million people okay so
most countries are small countries is
kind of surprising to us because most
people live in big countries okay and uh
so now you're like okay well I've built
social networks that are bigger than
that I've you have a following that's
bigger than 100,000 people you have a
following that's bigger than you know a
small country like kir body or what have
you right and uh okay so that that first
changes feasibility you think of a
country as this huge huge huge thing but
it's actually smaller than many many
many countries are smaller than social
networks that you've built okay number
one uh number two is the number of un
listed countries um even though it's
being flat is for the last 30 years with
like you know a few things like South
Sudan and East timour that that have
that have come online there's a graph
that I posted which shows that it's
increased by about from about 40 or 50
something at the end of uh World War II
um when the UN was set up to 190
something today there's been like kind
of a steady increase in particular with
all the decolonization all the countries
that got their independence from first
from the British Empire and then from
the Soviet Empire right that imperial
breakup led to new countries okay and so
then the question is
is that flat forever well the number of
new currencies similarly increased for a
while roughly one per country or
thereabouts and then it was flat for a
while and then suddenly it's gone
completely
vertical that's an interesting graph
right where it's like linear is then
it's flat and then it just goes voof
like this now you can Define you can you
can argue where the boundary is for quot
a new currency okay um but I think
Bitcoin certainly counts I think
ethereum certainly counts in terms of
just its scale and adoption worldwide so
at least you have two if you take the
broad Church view you have a thousand or
something like that right somewhere in
between you might say how many
currencies are above the market cap of
an existing previously recognized fiat
currency like which got onto the
leaderboard right there's a website just
like coinmarketcap.com that's like a
site for like cryptocurrency tracking is
very popular okay there's a fun site
called Fiat Market cap.com which shows
where Bitcoin is relative to the Fiat
currencies of the world and it's like
last I check like number 27 somewhere in
between um the Chilean pezo and the
Turkish l or something okay and it
previously being close to cracking the
top 10 okay and I think it will will
again at some point so we know that you
can have a currency out of nowhere that
ranks with the Fiat currencies of the
world could you have a country out of
nowhere that ranks with the countries of
the world so this is this is maybe the
the fastest way probably should have
said this at the very beginning if you
go to the network state in one image
okay that kind of summarizes is what a
network state looks like in a visual
just one single Visual and the visual is
of a dashboard and the dashboard shows
something that looks like a social
network except you're visualizing it on
the map of the world and it's got
Network nodes all over the place 100
people here a thousand people there
they're all connected together the total
population of the people in this social
network is about 1 million uh people
it's a one 1.7 million people in this
example and some of the buildings are
some of the people are just Singletons
they're just folks in their apartment
who con conceptualize themselves as
citizens of this network State and
they've got the flag on their wall right
and the digital passport on their on
their uh um phone along with digital
currency others are groups of hundreds
or thousands or even tens of thousands
of people that have all taken over a
neighborhood just like chinatowns exist
right just like you know um uh
intentional communities existed uh they
just basically you know go and crowdfund
lane together right and these are all
Network together you know just like the
islands of Indonesia are separated by
ocean these are islands of this network
state that are separated by internet
okay they conceptualize themselves as
something and at the very top of the
dashboard there's something very
important which is the population annual
income and real estate footprint of this
network state so population we already
discussed you can build an online social
network we know you can build something
which has a population that's bigger
than these 100,000 or million person
countries one of the new things
contributions the network state has
is say that you can not just exceed it
in population you can exceed it in real
estate footprint M because one way of
thinking about it is um I don't exactly
know the numbers on foreign ownership in
Estonia but let's say to first order the
million something estonians own and
could afford Estonia okay a million
people could buy a territory that is the
size of Estonia right that's probably
true to First shter there might be some
overseas ownership but it's probably
true okay you probably find a country
for which that's true what that means is
a million people digitally could buy
distributed territory that is probably
greater than or equal to the size of
Estonia especially if they're buying
like desert territory or stuff like that
which means now you have a digital
country that is ranking not just in
people not just in real estate footprint
you know so so it's also in real estate
with the with the with the countries of
the world so you start ranking and
you're bigger than these un listed
countries in your population and your
real estate firment and the third is
income okay you can prove on chain that
you have a income for the for the
digital population that is above a
certain amount right mhm this is what I
call the census of the network State and
it's actually such a crucial component
that I have it in you know the essay uh
the network say in a thousand words the
post office and census were actually
important enough to be written into the
US Constitution okay um partly because
it was like for a apportionment of
Representatives partly because it was a
feedback mechanism and so that census
was done every 10 years and it's
provided a crucial snapshot of the US
for the last several hundred years okay
now here this this census of a digital
State could be done every 10 seconds
okay conducting it is actually not the
hard part you know what the hard part is
proving it because how will the world
believe that you actually have 100,000
people spread across countries couldn't
they all be Bots could they be be a AIS
proof of human proof of income and also
proof of real estate start to actually
rise dramatically in importance because
you're saying we're going to rank this
digital State on the leaderboard of the
the Fiat States okay and so that means
that people will start to at first
they'll just laugh at it once you start
claiming you have 10,000 citizens people
are going to start poking and be like Is
that real prove that it's real okay so I
have a whole talk on this actually I'm
giving it this U chain link conference
but essentially how do you prove this
right the short answer is crypto oracles
plus auditing the somewhat longer answer
is you put these assertions on chain
these proof of hum
um these proof of real estate Etc
assertions on chain okay and there's
people who are writing to the to the
blockchain and they are digitally
signing their assertions now of course
simply just putting something on chain
doesn't make it true it just says you
can prove not that the what is written
on chain is true but that the metadata
is true you can show who wrote it via
their digital signature what they wrote
their hash and when they wrote it their
timestamp so you can establish those
things in metadata of who what and when
was written Who's the who in that
picture so for example how do you know
it's a one human great question so let's
say you've bought a bunch of your pieces
of territory from Blackstone okay as a
function of that
blackstone.com get an email receipt when
you buy a piece of property or something
okay you just put not online but onchain
and it's signed by Blackstone or
whatever real estate vendor you you buy
it from it could be a company it could
obviously be an individual right and so
you have a bunch of these assertions you
let's say there's 47 different real
estate vendors I know vendor is an
atypical term there but just bear with
me right 47 different real estate um
sellers that you've bought all of your
territory from each of them put digital
signatures that are asserting that a
certain amount of real estate was bought
and it's square meters its location or
whatever else they want to prove the sum
of all that is now your real estate
footprint okay and now the question is
was that real well because they signed
what they put on chain you can do things
like you can audit let's say Blackstone
has signed 500,000 properties and
they've they've sold them and put them
on chain and I'm not talking about 2022
or 2023 but 2030 right it'll be a few
years out but people are doing this type
of stuff they're putting this stuff
onchain so you get that onchain receipt
they've got 500,000 of these what you
can do is uh just sampling okay you pick
a subset n of them let's say 500
properties around the world you go there
you actually go and independently look
at what the square footprint is and then
from that you can see what was the
actual your measurement versus they're
reported and then you can via cisal
inference extrapolate that if they were
randomly selected to the rest of the
properties and get a reliability score
for blackstone's reporting of its real
estate square footage who does the so
that's the auditing step that's the
auditing step so the the crypto Oracle
is the AUD
onchain uh what did you say assertions
that's right yeah bought like who bought
stuff with who I still have to get to
the proof of human but auditing there's
a bunch of people randomly checking that
you're not full of shit that's right so
who is in charge of the auditing though
so it could be a big four like
PWC and basically the the accountants
that do corporate balance sheet and cash
flow and and who keeps them in check
from corruption I'm just imagining a
world full of network States yeah it's a
good question so you know at a certain
point you get to who watches the
Watchers right yeah and oh well the
government is meant to keep the
accountants accountable and you know
Arthur Anderson actually did have a
whole flame out in you know the um
around the time the Enron thing um so it
is possible that there's corrupt
accountants or bad accountants or what
have you but of course the government
itself is corrupt in many ways and
prints all this money and seizes all
these assets and surveils everybody and
and so on and so forth so uh you know
the answer to your question is going to
be um probably exit in the sense that if
those accountants they are themselves
going to digitally sign a report and put
it on chain okay so they're going to say
we believe that x y and Z's um you know
reports that are on chain were this
reliable and here's our study if they
falsify that well if somebody finds that
eventually then that person is
downweighted then you have to go to
another accountant right is there ways
to mess with this I mean I
just let me breathe in and out as I
mentioned some of the heaviest shit I've
ever read uh so because I visited
Ukraine I've read red famine by an apple
bomb
bloodlands Y and it's just just a lot of
coverage of the senses I mean there's a
lot of coverage of a lot of things but
in Ukraine in the 1930s uh Stalin messed
a lot with the senses to hide the fact
that sort of a lot of people died from
starvation and did that with the
cooperation of Arthur g ssb's New York
Times company Like Walter Durant
falsified all those reports there's
several parties involved is can there be
several parties involved in this case
that manipulate the truth as as it is
represented by the crypto Oracle And as
it is checked by the auditing mechanism
it is possible but the more parties are
involved in falsifying something the
more infections there are so that's why
you basically have you know um another
level of auditing you know is
fundamentally the answer right and
really I think what it comes back to is
if you're showing your work right this
is the difference between crypto
economics and Fiat economics you know
the the Bitcoin blockchain anybody can
download it and and run verification on
it okay this is different than
government inflation stats which people
don't believe right because the process
is just you know it is true that CPI
methodology is published and so on but
it is not something which people feel
reflects their actual basket of goods
right and so the independent
verifiability is really the core of what
true auditability is and so then to your
question it's hard for some group to be
able to collude because the blocking is
public and everything they've written to
it is public and so if there's an error
it's easier in some ways to tell the
truth than to lie because the truth is
just naturally consistent across the
world whereas lies can be found out even
you know cisal Tesla you know benford's
law
uh yes right it's something where the
digits in like a real um if you take the
last digit or the F was last digit or
first digit I think I think it's first
first digit right so you take the first
digit in um an actual financial
statement you look the
distribution of like how many ones and
how many twos how many threes the
percentages um it has actually you you'd
guess it might be oh each one would be
equally random it'd be 10% it's not like
that actually uh there's there's certain
distribution that it has
and fake data um doesn't look like that
but real data does that's weird it's
interesting right benford's law also
called the first digit law states that
the leading digits in a collection of
data sets are probably going to be small
for example most numbers in a set about
30% will have a leading digit of one
yeah so that's a great example of what
we're talking about earlier the
observational leading to the theory oh
there's a benford's law of controversy
I'm looking that up benford's law of
controversy benford's law of controversy
is an adage from the 1980 novel
Timescape stating passion is inversely
proportional to the amount of real
information available the adage was
quoted in an international drug policy
article in peer reviewed social science
can I just say how much I love Wikipedia
I have uh the founder Wikipedia coming
on this very podcast very soon and uh I
think the world is a better place
because Wikipedia exists one of the
things he wanted to come on is talk
about is the ways that he believes that
Wikipedia is going wrong so on technical
truth it's great remember truth I
remember our thing earlier on like
technical truths versus political truths
on technical truths it's great on
political truths it's like a defamation
engine um just as one example okay
there's something that you know I was
going to write up but there was a scam
called hpz token that managed to edit
Wikipedia nobody detected it it said
that I was like the founder of hbz token
the founder yeah I I had nothing to do
with this and people were scammed out of
it because Google just pushes Wikipedia
links to you know High to high on Google
and people like well it's in this
Wikipedia therefore it's real right
Wikipedia as the bio of living persons
thing they should just allow people to
delete their profil because they have
zero quality control and it's literally
facilitating fraud right where people
will maliciously edit and then do things
with them and nobody cares
or is looking at it Beyond you know the
fraud stories and this is happening if
that was happening that was like
undetected I wasn't paying attention to
this this was like there for like I
don't know weeks or months totally
undetected that literally facilitated
fraud right and fundamentally the issue
is that Wikipedia doesn't have any
concept of who's editing or property
rights or anything like that right it is
also something which is it used to be
something in the early 2000s mid 2000s
people said oh you know it's Wikipedia
how trustworthy can be Botanica is
reviewed and that's been forgotten and
now it's become over trusted right
remember the thing like the more trust
something gets the less trustworthy it
often becomes it kind of abuses the
power right so um what I'm interested in
you know Google actually had a Model A
while back called kol K uh null um was
something where when there were
different versions of a of a Wikipedia
style page you had Google Docs like
permissions on them for example you
might have 10 different versions of the
Israeli Palestinian conflict okay and
each one had an editor and folks that
they could Grant edit rights and so on
but this way you would actually be able
to see different versions of a page and
they might have different versions of
popularity but this way you wouldn't
have edit Wars you'd have Forks right
and they would all kind of you know
coexist and then people could review
them and now you could see different
versions of something versus the thing
that just kind of rewards dogged
persistence or being an editor or
something like like that the other thing
is a lot of the folks who have editorial
privileges at Wikipedia are there from
the early
2000s and most of India wasn't online
then most of Africa wasn't online then
right so there's this inherited power
that exists which uh again was fresh and
Innovative 10 or 20 years ago but um
it's now kind of outdated yeah I want to
see some data though I want to see some
data because we can always um I mean
this is here here's we we often
highlight small anecdotal I'll uh cases
hold on a second uh we often
highlight issues in society in the world
in anything by taking a specific example
taking anecdotal data and saying there's
a problem here I want to know on net how
much positive is being added to the
world because of it my experience that I
try to be empathetic and open-minded my
exploration of Wikipedia has been such
that is a bre breath of fresh air in
terms of the the breadth and depth of
knowledge that is there now you can say
there's bias built in there's Wars that
are incentivized not to produce truth
but to produce uh a consensus around a
particular narrative but that is how the
entirety of human civilization operates
and and we have to see where is it
better and where is it worse in terms of
platforms I think Wikipedia was an
improvement over what came before but
has a lot of flaws you're right that
absolutely um sometimes people can over
fixate on the anecdotal but sometimes
the anecdotal illustrates a general
pattern okay for example one thing that
happens frequently on Wikipedia is um
there are editors who will plant a story
and then they will then go and use that
story as like a neutral third party to
win an edit War so here's a phenomenon
that happens in Wikipedia you have an
editor who has who's privileged above
just random users okay who will plant a
story and then site that story as if it
was a neutral third party so there's a
site called wikipediocracy okay and it
discusses the case of a person named
peppermint who had a name that they
didn't want included their so-called
dead name on their Wikipedia profile and
there's a Wikipedia editor named ten who
people allege was a news day a reporter
or or or writer that put a piece into
Newsday that dead name ten uh that dead
name peppermint and then was able to
cite it on the Wikipedia article as if
it was like a neutral third party when
it actually wasn't when when people
alleged it was the same guy okay now
that is not an uncommon thing that
actually that's what I want date on okay
how many articles I'm not uh a I'm I'm
dancing with you not against you okay
I'm saying how many articles have that
kind of War where douchebags are
manipulating each other so that's the
question what's the audit has Wikipedia
actually been audited right who are the
editors like who's actually writing this
stuff it is actually something where uh
again on technical topics I think it's
pretty good on non-technical topics
there's something called uh the
Wikipedia reliable sources policy it's a
fascinating page okay so it actually
takes a lot of the stuff that we have
been you know the world has been talking
about in terms of what's a reliable
source of information and you know so
and so forth it's called the Wikipedia
reliable sources perennial sources okay
and if you go to this page okay which
I'm just going to send to you now all
right you will literally see every media
Outlet in the world and they're colored
gray green yellow or red okay um and so
red is like untrustworthy green is
trustworthy yellow is like neutral okay
now this actually makes Wikipedia's
epistemology explicit they are marking a
source as trustworthy or untrustworthy
for example you are not allowed to site
social media on Wikipedia which is
actually an enormous part of what people
are posting you will you instead you
have to site a mainstream media outlet
that puts the Tweets in the mainstream
article and only then can it be cited in
Wikipedia by the way to push back this
is a dance we're Dan sure um that those
are rules written on on a sheet of paper
I have seen Wikipedia in general play in
the gray area that these rules create oh
well if you you are an editor then you
can get but you can use the rules and
you can because there's there's a lot of
contradictions within the rules you can
use them to in in the ways you said to
achieve the ends you want it really
boils down to the
incentives the motivations of the
editors and one of the magical things
about Wikipedia the positive versus the
negative is that it seems like a very
small number of people same with stack
Overflow can do uh an incredible amount
of good editing and um aggregation of
good knowledge now as you said that
works seems to work much better for
technical things over which there's not
uh a significant division the yeah there
so uh some of that has to do less with
the rules and more with uh with the
human beings involved well but here's
the thing is um so first let me take
this I finish off this point of reliable
source paral right so if you go to this
you'll see that
alaz is marked green but let's say uh
the KO Institute is marked um yellow
right the nation is marked green oh shit
oh snap okay okay sure yes right the
nation is marked green but National
Review is marked yellow okay you could
probably go and do so what's good about
this is makes it epistemology explicit
right you could actually take this table
and you could also look at all the the
past edit Wars and so on over it and
take a look at what things are starting
to get marked as red or yellow and what
things are starting to get marked as
green and I pretty sure you're going to
find some kind of partisan polarization
that comes out out right number one uh
number two is once something gets marked
as being yellow or red yeah then all
links and all references to it are
pulled out for example coindesk okay was
marked as being like uh gosh I think
it's marked as as red coindesk which is
actually like I get a lot of useful
information from coindesk that's right
but it's marked as red why because
there's some Wikipedia editors who hate
cryptocurrency and so cryptocurrency on
Wikipedia has been a huge topic where
they've just edited out all the positive
stuff and these are senior editors at
Wikipedia who can control what sources
are considered reliable so they've now
knocked out coindesk they've knocked out
social media mhm they only allow
mainstream media coverage and not even
all mainstream media only those they've
marked as green yeah this is the
manipulation of cons I want to know how
many articles are affected by it and
hundreds of thousands hundreds of
thousands you could just say that
randomly because affected there's
different levels of effect in terms of
it actually having a significant impact
on the quality of the article let me
give you an example let me concrete
example right um the fact that people
cannot cite direct quotes on social
media but can only cite the rehash of
those quotes in a mainstream media
outlet and not just any mainstream media
outlet but those that are colored green
on the Wikipedia reliable perennial
assour policy is a structural shift on
every single article to make Wikipedia
align with us mainstream media
corporations right I am as often Playing
devil's advocate uh to counter a point
so that the disagreement reveals some
profound wisdom that's what I'm doing
here
uh but also in that task here I'm trying
to understand exactly how much harm is
created by the
bias within the team of editors that
we're
discussing and how much of Wikipedia is
technical
knowledge for
example the Russian invasion of Ukraine
mhm the Wikipedia article I've seen
there now that changes very aggressively
a
lot and I hear from every side on this
but it did not seem biased to me here's
like as compared to uh mainstream media
in the United States so now I'm going to
sound extremely woke yeah okay um if you
go and look at this all right times of
India is yellow but Mother Jones Jackin
okay they are green mhm right so a niche
mostly white Western like partisan left
Outlet is marked green but a billion
people you know like the times of India
is marked yellow right that's a
structural bias towards Western media
outlets and Western editors when much of
the rest of world hadn't gotten online
or what I would just love to see in
terms of the actual article
mhm what
ideas are being censored altered shifted
I would love I just think it's an open
I'm not uh sort of uh so edit logs are
there the edit logs are public here it
be fascinating yeah is there a way to
explore the ways that narratives are
shifted because of this sure so very
simple one is if you were to pull all
the at logs Wikipedia you could see how
many times are social media links
disallowed
okay like first of all think about like
this how many I mean just the fact that
social media is not allowed to like be
cited on Wikipedia or inconsistently you
think that's a problem it's a huge
problem like you can't site let's say
Jeff bezos's own tweet you have to cite
some random media Corporation here's the
thing uh and sorry sorry if I'm
interrupting hopefully I'm adding to it
I think I think they're trying to create
friction as
to uh the sources used because if you
you can use social media then you can
use basically Bots to create a bunch of
sources right and then that you can
almost automate the editor War right
like here's the thing is basically
Wikipedia initially you know like said
oh we'll only site mainstream media uh
as a way of boosting its credibility in
the early 2000s okay when its
credibility was low now it's sort of
become merged with the US establishment
and only CES these things who trust I
mean have you seen the graphs on trust
in mainstream media like it's plummeted
it's down to like 10% or something like
that right so the most trusted sources
for Wikipedia are untrusted by the
population yeah true that that that
feels like it's a fixable technological
problem I think I'm underformed and my
gut says we're both together underformed
to do a rigorous 3 to four hour
discussion about Wikipedia hold on a
second I I I I think I have a gut
uh sort of developed feeling about which
articles not to trust in Wikipedia I
think I I need to make that explicit
also I have a kind of an understanding
that you don't go to this don't go to
Wikipedia for this particular topic like
don't go to Wikipedia for an article on
Donald Trump or Joe Biden there's going
to be if I did I would go to maybe
sections that don't have room for
insertion of bias or like the section on
controversy or ACC accusations of racism
or so on or sexual assault I'll usually
not trust Wikipedia on those sections
like math that'll be great right
Wikipedia is great for that on many
topics that do not have a single
consensus truth it's structurally
shifted towards um basically white
Western liberals woke whites right
fundamentally that's the demographic of
the Wikipedia what kind of Articles do
you think are affected by this let's
let's like think about like would
everything that's not math and and
Technology I think that's too strong a
statement so we can like I said war in
Ukraine I I sure um I think that's too
strong a statement I there's so
much affect I guess I'm saying affected
to a large degree even his uh major
battles in history Battle of Stalingrad
or sure like uh that's not math you
think all of that is affected to a point
where it's not a trust Source absolutely
if you look at the edit Wars for example
on Stalin versus Hitler Hitler's the
tone on Hitler starts out legitimately
and justifiably as basically genocidal
maniacal dictator with Stalin there's a
fair number of Stalin apologists that
edit out mention of genocide from the
first few
paragraphs I am playing Devil's Advocate
in part but I also am too underformed to
do the level of Defense I would like to
provide
for the wisdom that is there for the
knowledge that is there I I don't want
to use the word truth but sure for some
level of knowledge that is there in uh
Wikipedia I think I really worry about I
know you don't mean this but a cynical
interpretation of what you're saying
which is don't trust anything written on
Wikipedia I think you're being very
consistent and eloquent in the way
you're describing the issues of
Wikipedia and I don't have enough um
actual specific examples to give where
there is some like still battle for for
truth that's happening that's that's
outside of the bias of society I just I
I think if we naturally distrust every
source of information there is a
general distrust of
Institutions and a distressed sources of
knowledge that leads to an apathy and
cynicism about the world in general if
you believe if you believe a lot of
conspiracy theories you basically tune
out from this Collective Journey that
we're on towards the truth and that
that's that like if it's not it's not
even just Wikipedia I just think
Wikipedia was at least for a time and
maybe I tuned out maybe because I am too
focused on computer science and um
engineering and and Mathematics but to
me Wikipedia for a long time was a
source of
calm escape from the from the political
battles of
ideology and um as you're quite
eloquently describing it is not it has
become part of the battleground of
political ideology I just would love to
know where the boundaries of that are
you know Glen Greenwald has observed
this um lots of other folks you know for
example I'm definitely not the only
person who's observed that Wikipedia a
lot of let me just State because I'm
sensing this and because of eloquence
and clear Brilliance here that a lot of
people are going to immediately agree
with you okay and this is what I am also
troubled by not this is not you but I
often see that people will detect
sinicism especially when it is phrased
as eloquent as yours and we'll look at a
natural dumbass like me and think
that Lex is just being naive look at him
trusting What could IIA let me ARG your
let me argue your side okay can can you
please do that cuz you could do that
better than me no no no no Alexa I enjoy
talking to you and I'm doing Devil's
Advocate a little bit because I I do
really want to be I am afraid about the
forces that like of basically editors
talk of authority of talking down to
people and censoring information yeah so
let me first argue your side and let me
say something okay which
is what you
are reacting to is oh even those things
I thought of as constants are becoming
variables where is the terrafirma if we
cannot trust anything then everybody's
just it's Anarchy and it's chaos like
there's literally no consensus reality
and anybody can say anything and so on
and so forth right and I think that
there's two possible deviations from you
know let's say that the mainstream you
know obviously people talk about like
qanon for example is like this kind of
thing where people just make things up
you know they just go totally qu supply
chain independent from mainstream media
and if mainstream media is uh a
distorted gossamer of Quasi truth these
guys go to Just total fiction as opposed
to like right the alternative to qanon
is not bluon mainstream media but
Satoshi
andon okay which is an upward deviation
okay not a downward deviation to say
there is no such thing as truth but
rather the upward deviation is
decentralized cryptographic truth not
centralized
corporate or government truth okay so
how does the decentralization of
Wikipedia look like great question it's
this concept Ledger of record first
whether you're Israeli or Palestinian
Japanese or Chinese democrat or
republican those people agree on the
state of the Bitcoin blockchain hundreds
of billions of dollars is managed
without weapons okay um across tribes
with widely varying ideologies right and
what that means is that that is a
mechanism for getting literally
consensus it's called consensus
cryptographic consensus proof of work
and when people can get consensus on
this what they're getting consensus on
are basically bites that determine who
holds what Bitcoin this is exactly the
kind of thing people would fight Wars
over you know for hundreds of billions
of dollars alone millions of dollars
people will will kill each other over
that in the past right so hundreds of
billions of dollars people can get
consensus truth on this in this highly
adversarial environment right so the
first generalization of that is it says
you can go from bytes that reflect what
Bitcoin somebody has to bytes that
reflect what stocks bonds other kinds of
assets people have that's the entire
defi ethereum that whole Space okay
basically the premise is if you go from
consens on one bite by induction you can
go to consensus on in byes depending on
the cost of getting that consensus right
and almost anything digital can be
represented you know everything digital
can be represented as bytes right so now
you can get consensus on certain kinds
of digital information
Bitcoin but then also any kind of
financial instrument and then the next
generalization
is what I call The Ledger of record many
kinds of
facts can be put partially or completely
onchain it's not just proof of work and
proof of stake there's things like proof
of location proof of human proof of this
proof of that the auditable oracles I
talked about extend it further lots and
lots of people are working on this right
proof of solvency seeing that some actor
has has um enough of a bank balance to
accommodate what they say they
accommodate you can imagine many kinds
of digital assertions can be turned into
proof of X and proof of Y you start
putting those on chain you now have a
library of partially or completely
provable facts okay this is how you get
consensus as opposed to having
a white Western Wikipedia editor or
mostly white Western Us Media
Corporation or the US government
simply say what is true in a centralized
fashion so do you think truth is such an
easy thing as you get to higher and
higher questions of politics is the
problem that the consensus mechanism is
being hacked or is the problem that
truth is a difficult thing to figure out
was the 2020 election rigged or not is
the earth flat or not that's a
scientific one that's this is my
technical versus political the Spectrum
yeah but even the Earth like well that
that one is yeah never mind that's a bad
example because that is very uh you can
rigorously show that the Earth is not
flat but um what there's some social
phenomena political phenoma philosoph
one that that will have a lot of debates
historical stuff about
uh um about the different forces
operating within Nazi Germany and uh
stalinist Soviet Union I I think there's
probably a lot of they yeah like the
historians debate about a lot of stuff
like
uh Blitz the book that's talks about the
influence of drugs in the Third Reich
right were they on meth or something
yeah they all there's a lot of debates
about how how truth how what what is the
significance of meth on the actual
behavior and decisions of Hitler and so
on so there's still a lot of debates I
is it so easy to fix with um
decentralization I guess is the question
so I actually have like basically
chapter two of the network State book is
on essentially this topic and so it's
like 70 Pages or something like that so
let me try to summarize what I think
about on this the first is that there
was an onion article that came out I I
can't find it now anymore but it was
about historians in the year 3000
writing about the late 90s and early
2000s and they're like yeah clearly
Queen Britney was a very powerful
Monarch we can see um how many girls
around the world worshiped her like a
God and so on and it's very funny
because it was a plausible
Distortion of you know the current
Society by you know a human civilization
picking through the rubble a thousand
years later yeah having no context on
anything right and it's a very
thought-provoking article because it
says well to what extent is that us
picking over Pompei or the pyramids or
even like you know the 1600s or the
1700s like a few hundred years ago we're
basically sifting through artifacts and
um you know s Burger actually has this
concept of like uh which is is obvious
but it's also useful to have a name for
it it's like I think he calls it like
dark history which is and again I might
be getting this wrong but it's like only
a small percentage of what the Greeks
wrote down you know has come to us to
the present day right so perhaps it's
not just the winers who write history
it's like the surviving records we have
this extremely partial
fragmentary record of history and
sometimes there's some discovery that
rewrites the whole thing do you know
what like gockley Tey is everything I
know about that is is from Rogan because
he's a huge fan of that that kind of
stuff that like rewrites and then
there's a lot of debates there there's a
lot of debates so basically it's like
the discovery of this site in Northern
turkey that totally shifts our estimate
of like when civilization started maybe
pushing it back many thousands of years
further in the past right you know the
past it's like an inverse problem in
physics right we are trying to
reconstruct this from limited
information right it's like x-ray
chrysty it's an inverse problem right um
it's it's Plato's Cave you know we're
trying to reconstruct what the world
looks like outside from these Shadows
these these fragments that have been um
given to us right or that we' found and
um so in that sense as you find more
information your estimate of the past
changes right oh wow okay that pushes
back civilization farther than we
thought one Discovery just changes it so
you want to try to given all the gaps in
the data we have you want to try to
remove bias from the process of trying
to fill the gaps well so here's the
thing um I think we're very close to the
moment of it and that's why it'll sound
crazy when I say it now but our
descendants I I really do think
of what the blockchain is and
cryptographically verifiable history as
being the next step after written
history it's like on par with that
because anybody who has the record the
math is not going to change right math
is constant across human time and space
right so you know the value of pi is
constant that's one of the few constants
across all these different human
civilizations okay um so somebody in the
future assuming of course the digital
record is actually intact to that point
because you know the uh in theory
digital stuff will persist in practice
you have lost data and floppy drives and
stuff like that in a sense in some ways
digital is more persistent somebody
physical is more persistent okay but
assuming we can figure out the the
archival problem somehow then this
future record at least it's internally
consistent right you can run a bunch of
the equivalence of check sums right the
Bitcoin verification process just sum it
all up and see that okay it's F of G of
H ofx and boom that that at least is
internally consistent okay again it
doesn't say that all the people who
reported it were uh they could have put
something on chain that's false but at
least you know the metadata is likely to
be very difficult to falsify and this is
a new tool it's a really a new tool in
terms of a robust um history that is
expensive and technically challenging to
edit and alter and that is the
alternative to the stalinesque rewriting
of History by centralized
power yeah I'm going to have to do a lot
of actually reading and thinking about
um I'm actually as as you're talking I'm
also thinking about the fact that I
think 99% of my access to Wikipedia is
is on technical topics
um because I basically use it very simly
to stack Overflow and even there it
doesn't have unit tests for example one
thing put it right so one thing I
remember again I may be wrong on this
but I recall that the Kelly Criterion
it's a it's actually quite a useful
thing to know it's like how to optimally
size your bets okay and you can have um
given your kind of probability that some
investment pays off or assume
probability you can have bets that are
too large bets that are too small
sometimes the Kelly Criterion it goes
negative in actually it says you should
actually take leverage you're so sure
this is a good outcome that you should
actually spend more than your current
bankroll because you're going to get a
good result right so it's a very
sophisticated thing and as I recall many
sites on the internet have the wrong
equation and I believe that was
reprinted on Wikipedia the wrong
equation was put on Wikipedia as a Kelly
Criterion for a while it's funny okay
and so without unit tests see math is
actually the kind of thing that you
could unit test right you could
literally have the assert on the right
hand side today right the modern version
we've got Jupiter we've got repet we've
got all these things the modern version
of Wikipedia um there sites like
golden.com for example like a you know
the um there's there's a bunch of things
I'm funding lots of stuff across the
board you know on on this um and you
know I'm not capitalizing these
companies or capitalize independently
but I'm trying to see if you know not
just talk about a better version it's
hard to build something better so
actually go and build it and what you
want is assertions that are actually
reproduced you you you don't just have
the equation there you have a written
down code you can hit enter you can
download the page you can rerun it it's
reproducible so the problem with that
kind of reproducibility is that it adds
friction it's harder to put together
articles that do that kind of stuff
unless you do an incredible job with ux
and so on I the the thing that I think
is interesting about Wikipedia on the
technical side is that without the unit
tests without the assertions it still
often does an incredible job because the
reason it's the the people that write
those articles and I've seen this also
in stack overflow is are the people that
care about this most and there's a pride
to getting it right okay so let me agree
and disagree with that right so
absolutely there's there's some good
there there's um I mean again do I think
wkip is a huge step up from what
preceded it in some ways on the
technical topics
yes however you talking about the
editing environment right like the
markup for Wikipedia it's very you know
mid 2000s right it is not it's a
Craigslist yeah exactly for at a minimum
for for example it's not wizzywig right
so uh like medium or something like that
you you know or ghost um you can just go
in and type and it looks exactly like it
looks on the page here you have to go to
a uh a markup language where there can
be editor conflicts and you hit enter
and someone is over in your edit or
something like that and you don't know
how it looks on the page and you might
have to do a few you know previews or
what have you so number one so editing
you talk about barish eding that's
that's the thing um number two is given
that it might be r a thousand times for
every one time it's written it is
important to actually have the
mathematical things unit tested if they
can be given that we've got modern
technology and that's something that's
hard to like retrofit into this because
it's so kind of aifi right right there's
the yeah the interface on every side for
the editor even just for the editor to
check that there for say the editor
wants to get it right make it we want to
make it really uh or not really easy but
easier to check their work like
debugging like a nice ID for the for the
that's exactly right for the editing
experience that's right and the thing
about this is um as I said because the
truth is a global constant but like
incorrectness you know right go ahead
every happy family no I I love I love to
think that like truth will have a nice
debugger well so here's here's right so
the thing is that what you can do is uh
let's say you did have like a unit
tested page for everything that's on
first of all it makes a page more more
useful because you can download it you
can run it you can import it and so on
second is it leads into one of the
things that we can talk about I've sort
of like a road map for building
alternatives to not just existing
companies but to many existing us
institutions from media and tech
companies to courts and government and
you know Academia and nonprofits the
Wikipedia discussion actually relates to
um how you improve on Academia right and
so Academia right now one of the big
problems this is kind of related to the
oh boy okay the current institutions we
don't have trust in them but is that the
answer is is that the answer to trust no
one right and I think the alternative is
decentralized cryptographic trust or
verification and how does that apply to
Academia first observation is we are
seeing
science being abused in the name of
quote quote unquote science okay capital
S science is Maxes equations that's
that's a good one that's a good one
right quote unquote science is a paper
that came out last week and the key
thing is that capital S science real
science is about independent replication
not prestigious
citation that's the definition like all
the journal stuff the professors all
that stuff is just a superstructure that
was set on top to make experiments more
reproducible and that superstructure is
now like dominating the underlying thing
because people are just fixating on the
Prestige and the citation and not the
replication right so how does that apply
here once you start thinking about how
many replications does this thing have
maxel equation I mean there's trillions
of replications every time us speaking
into this microphone right now you know
we're we're testing um you know our
theory of the electromagnetic field
right uh or electrical and magnetic
fields every single time you pick up a
cell phone or use a computer you're
you're you're putting our our knowledge
to the test right whereas some paper
that came out last week in science or
nature may have zero independent
replications yet it is being cited
publicly as prestigious scientists from
Stanford and you know Harvard and MIT
all came up with X right and so the
prestige is a substitute for the uh the
actual replication so there's a concept
called good heart's law okay I'm just
going to quote it when a measure becomes
a Target it ceases to be a good measure
okay so for example uh
backlinks on the web were a good signal
for Google to use when people didn't
know they were being used as a signal
yeah you were talk you talked about uh
quantity versus quality and pag was a
pretty good uh approximation for quality
yes such a fascinating thing by the way
but yeah is a fascinating thing we can
talk about that but basically once
people know that you're using this as a
measure they will start to game it and
uh so then you have this cycle where you
know sometimes you have a fix Point like
Satoshi with proof of work was
miraculously able to come up with a game
where the gaming of it was difficult
without just buying more compute right
so it's actually it's a rare kind of
game where knowledge of the game's rules
didn't allow people to game the game
okay but a brilliant way to put it yeah
which is one of the reasons it's
brilliant is that it's you can describe
the game and you can't mess with it
exactly it's very hard to come up with
something that's stable in way there's
actually on the metap point uh gosh
there's a game where the rule of the
game is to change the rule
okay um it is uh you mean human
civilization or what yeah um gosh it is
called something
nomic okay n o m i c nomic is a game
where the rule of the game is to change
the rules of the game yeah at first that
seems insane then you realize that's
Congress yeah right literally What It Is
So Meta because there are laws for
elections
that elect the
editors of those laws who then change
the laws that get them elected with
Jerry mandering and other stuff right
that's a bad version way of think bad
way of thinking the other way of
thinking about it is this is what every
software engineer is doing you are
constantly quote changing the rules by
editing software and pushing code
updates and and so on right so you know
many games devolve into the metagame of
who writes the rules of the game right
become essentially games of nomic proof
of work is so amazing because it didn't
devolve in such a way right it became
very hard to rewrite the rules once they
got set up it's very financially and
technically expensive that's not to say
it will always be like that but it's
very hard to change if we could take a
small tangent we'll turn to Academia I'd
love to ask you about how to fix the
media as well after we fix Academia yeah
these are all actually related related
yeah Wikipedia media and Academia are
all related to the question of
independent replication versus
prestigious citation sure so the the
problem
is Authority and Prestige as you see it
from Academia and the media and
Wikipedia with the editors we have
to have uh a mechanism where sort of um
the data and the repr reproducibility is
what dominates the discourse that's
right and so one way think about this is
I've said this in um I think I tweeted
this but Western Civilization actually
has a break glass emergency button it's
called decentralization right Martin
Luther hit it when the Catholic church
was too aifi and centralized
decentralized with the Protestant
Reformation okay he said you know at the
time people were able to uh pay for
indulgences like that is to say they
could sin they could say okay I sinned
five times yesterday here's you know the
equivalent of 50 bucks okay I'm done
with my sin I can go and sin some more
okay they really buy their way out of
sin okay now people debate as to how
frequent those Indulgence were but these
are one of the things he invaded against
in the 95 thesis so decentralization
boom break away from this oied church
start something new right and in theory
the quote religious wars of the 1600s
that ensued were about things like where
you know the wafer was the body of
Christ or or what have you but in part
they were also about power and whether
the centralized entity would write all
the rules or the decentralized one would
and so what happened was obviously
Catholicism still exists but
protestantism also exists okay and uh
similarly here you've got this aifi
Central institution where you know
forget about I mean there's complicated
studies they are difficult to summarize
but when you have the science saying
masks don't work and then they do okay
which everybody saw and this is not like
you know everybody knew that there was
not like some massive study that came
out that changed our perspective on
maske wearing it was something that was
just insistently asserted as this is
what the science says and then without
any acknowledgement the science said
something different you know the next
day right I remember because I was in
the middle of this this debate
um and I think you could justify masks
early in the pandemic as a useful
precaution and then later you know
postvaccination perhaps not necessary I
think that's like the rational way of
thinking about it but the point was that
such levels of uncertainty were not
acknowledged instead people you know
were basically lying in the name of
Science and public policy uh was you
know it was wasn't Public Health it was
political Health okay so something like
that you're just spending down all the
credibility of an institution for
basically nothing okay and so in such a
circumstance what do you do break glass
decentralize what does that look like
okay so let me disc describe what I call
crypto science uh by analogy to you know
crypto just like there's Fiat science
crypto science right Fiat economics okay
so um in any experiment any paper when
it comes out
right it's you can sort of divide it
into the analog to digital and the
purely digital okay so the analog to
digital is you're running some
instruments you're getting some data
okay and then once you've got the data
you're generating figures and tables and
text and a PDF from that data right
leave aside the data collection step for
now I'll come back to that right just
the purely digital part what does the
ideal quote academic paper look like in
2022 2023 first uh there's this concept
called truly uh called reproducible
research okay reproducible research is
the idea that the PDF should be
regenerated from
the data and code okay so you should be
able to hit enter and regenerate it why
is this really important as a concept
John Clair buou and Dave donaho at
Stanford 20 years ago pioneered this in
stats because the text alone often
doesn't describe every parameter that
goes into a figure or something right
you kind of sometimes just need to look
at the code and then it's easy and
without that it's hard okay so
reproducible research means you
regenerate the PDF from the code and and
the data you hit enter okay now now one
issue is that many papers out there
science nature Etc are not reproducible
research moreover the data isn't even
public uh moreover sometimes the paper
isn't even public the Open Access
movement has been fighting this for the
last 20 something years there's various
levels of this like green and gold Open
Access okay so the first step is the
code the data and the PDF go onchain
step number one okay the second thing is
once you've got so you can anybody who
is and that could be the ethereum chain
it could be its own dedicated chain
whatever okay it could be something
where there's a just the URLs are on the
ethereum chain and stored on filecoin
many different implementations but let's
call that onchain broadly okay not just
online onchain when it's onchain it's
public and anybody can get it so that's
first second is once you've got
something where you can regenerate the
code um or the PDF from the code and the
data onchain guess what you can have uh
citations between two papers turn into
import statements yeah that's funny
that's cool right so now you're not just
getting composable Finance like defi
where you have like one interest rate
calculator calling another you have
composable science and now you can say
this paper on this especially in ml
right you'll often cite a previous paper
and its Benchmark or its method right
you're going to you're going to want to
scatterplot sometimes your paper your
algorithm versus theirs on the same data
set that is facilitated if their entire
paper is reproducible research that is
generated you can just literally import
that Python and you know then you can
you can generate your figure off of it
right moreover think about how that aids
reproducability because you don't have
to reproduce in in the literal sense
every single snippet of code that they
did you can literally use their code
import it okay people start compounding
on each show it's better science okay
now I talked about this but actually
there's a few folks who have been
actually building this um so there's us
scholar.org um which actually has a demo
of this like just a V1 like kind of
prototype where it shows two stats
papers on chain um and uh one of them is
citing the other with an import
statement there's also a thing like
called I think d.com which is trying to
do this all right decentralized science
so this itself changes how we think
about papers and actually by the way um
the inspiration for page rank was
actually citations it was like the
impact factor out of acad that's where
ly page and sery Brin got the concept
out of right so now you've got a web of
of citations that are import statements
on chain in theory you could track back
a paper all the way back to its
antecedence okay so if it's citing
something you can now look it up and
look it up and look it up and a
surprising number of papers actually um
you know their antecedents don't
terminate or the the original Source
says something different or it just kind
of got garbled like a telephone game and
uh you know there's this famous thing on
like um the spinach um like a is it does
actually have iron in it or or something
like that I I I forget the details on
this story but it was something where
you track back the citations and people
are contradicting each other okay but
it's just something that just gets copy
pasted and it's a fact it's not actually
a fact because it's not audited properly
this allows you to cheaply audit in
theory all the way back to Maxwell or
Newton or something like that okay now
what I'm describing is a big problem but
it's a finite problem it's essentially
taking all the important papers and
putting them on chain it's about the
scale of let's say Wikipedia okay so
it's like I don't know a few hundred
thousand a few million papers I don't
know the exact number but it'll be on
that level okay so now you've got number
one these things that are they're on
chain okay number two they're you've
turned citations into import statements
number three anybody can now at a
minimum download that code and while
they may not have the instruments and
I'll come back to that point while they
may not have the instruments they can do
internal checks the benford's law stuff
we were just talking about you can
internally check the consistency of
these tables and graphs and often you'll
find fraud or things that don't add up
that way cuz all the code and the data
is is there right and now You' made it
so that anybody in Brazil in India and
Nigeria they may not have an academic
you know like uh uh Library access and
so but they can get into this all right
now how do you fund all of this well
good thing is crypto actually allows
tools for that as well Andrew hubman and
others have started doing things like
with nfts um to to fund their lab I can
talk about the funding aspect there's
things like research hub.com which are
trying to issue tokens for labs but a
lab isn't that expensive to fund maybe
it's a few hundred thousand a few
million a year depending on where you
are crypto does generate money and so
you can probably imagine various tools
whether it's tokens or nfts or something
like that to fund finally um what this
does is it is not qinon right it is not
saying don't trust anybody neither is it
just trust the centralized academic
establishment instead is saying trust
because you can verify because we can
download things and run them The crucial
thing that I'm assuming here is the
billions of supercomputers around the
world that we have all the MacBooks and
iPhones that can crank through lots and
lots of computation so everything
digital we can verify it locally okay
now there's one last step which is I
mentioned the instruments right whether
it's your sequencing machine or your
accelerometer or something like that is
generating the data that you are
reporting in your paper when you put it
on chain okay basically you think that's
the analog digital interface we can
Crypt ofy that too why for example an
aluminous sequencing machine has an
experiment manifest and when uh that's
written to there's a website called ncbi
National Center for biotechnology
information you can see the experiment
metadata on various sequencing runs
it'll tell you what instrument and what
time I was run and who ran it and so and
so forth
okay what that does is allows you to
correct for things like batch effects
sometimes you will sequence on this day
and the next day and maybe the humidity
or something like that makes it look
like like there's a Cally significant
difference between your two results but
it was just actually batch effects
okay what's my point point is if you
have a crypto instrument you can have
you know various hashes and stuff of the
data as a chain of custody for the data
itself that are streamed and written on
chain that the manufacturer can program
into this for anything that's really and
you might say well boy boy that's
Overkill right I'm saying actually not
you know why if you're doing a study
whose results are going to be used to
influence a policy that's going to
control the of millions of people every
single step has to be totally audible
you need the glass box model you need to
be able to go back to the raw data and
you need to be able to interrogate that
and again this is anybody who's a good
scientist will Embrace this right so
yeah so first of all that was a
brilliant exposition of a future of
science that I would love to see um the
the push back I'll provide which is not
really a push back is
like what you describe is so much better
than what we currently have that I think
a lot of people would say any of the
substeps you suggest are already going
to be a huge Improvement so even just
sharing the code yes or sharing the data
you said like off it's I think it would
surprise people how often it's hard to
get data uh it it like the actual data
or specifics or a large number of the
parameters not you you'll share like one
or two parameters that were involved
with running the experiment you won't
mention the machines involved except
maybe at a high level but the versions
and so on the dates when the experiments
were run don't mention any of this kind
of stuff so there's there's several ways
to fix this and one of
them I think implied in what you're
describing is a culture that says it's
not okay exactly to like so so first of
all there should be even if it's not
perfectly unchain to where you can
automatically import all the way to
Newton just just even
the the act of sharing the code sharing
the data Maybe in a way that's not uh
perfectly integrated into a larger
structure is already a very big positive
step saying like if you don't do this
then uh this doesn't count and because
in general I think my
worry uh I you know as somebody who's a
programmer who's OCD I love the the
picture you paint that you can just
import everything and it all
automatically checks everything my my
problem is is that makes incremental
science easier and revolutionary science
harder oh I actually very much disagree
that I would love to hear you let me
just kind of collaborate sure um why
sometimes you have to think in this
grave a area of fuzziness when you're
thinking in totally novel ideas and when
you have to concretize in data like some
of the greatest papers I've ever written
are don't have data they're in the space
of ideas almost like you you're kind of
sketching stuff and there could be
errors but like Einstein himself with
the famous five papers I mean they're
they're they're really strong but
they're they're fuzzy they're they're
they're a little bit fuzzy and so I I
think uh you know even like the gan gan
paper you're often thinking of like new
data sets new ideas and I think maybe as
a step after the paper is written you
could probably concretize it integrated
into the rest of side like you shouldn't
feel that pressure I guess early on I
well I mean there's there's different
each each of the steps that I'm talking
about right there's like the data being
public and everything just that just
having the paper being public that's
like V1 right then you have the thing
being regenerated from code and data
like the PDF being regenerated from code
and data then you have the citations as
import statements then you have the full
citation graph as an import statement so
you just follow it all the way back
right and uh and now you have that gives
you
auditability then you have the offchain
you know the the analog digital crypto
custody right like where you're hashing
things and streaming things so you have
the chain of custody each of those is
kind of like a level up and adds to
complexity but it also adds to the
auditability and the verifiability and
the reproducibility but you know one
thing I'd say I wanted to respond to
that you said was uh that you think this
would be good for incremental but not
Innovative actually it's quite the
opposite I think Academia is
institutional and it's not Innovative
for example NIH has this graph which is
like I think it's age of recipients of
ro1 Grants okay and what it shows is
basically it's like a hump that moves
over time roughly plus one year forward
for the average age as the year moves on
okay I'll see if I can find the GIF what
this why is this let me see if I can
find actually look at this movie just
for a second it's it's ridiculously
Powerful movie in It's 30 seconds I just
sent it in what'sapp the name of the
video is age distribution of NIH
principal investigators and Medical
School faculty and it starts out on the
X axis's age with the distribution and
percent of
piis and from 19 early 1980s moving one
year at a time and the mean of the
distribution is moving slowly
approximately as BL said about one year
per year uh per year now this is 10
years ago one year in age per year of
time and notice how first of all the
average age is moving way upward before
you you know become an NH nhpi second is
it's a court of guys people who are just
awarding grants to each other yeah
that's clearly what's happening you know
that's that's the underlying Dynamic
they're not awarding grants to folks who
are much younger okay because those
folks haven't proven themselves yet
right right so it is this this is what
happens when you get prestigious C
citation rather than independent
replication the age just keeps creeping
up and this was 10 years ago and it's
gotten even worse it's become even more
Gerra even more hidebound right and so
the thing is the the the structures that
vanar bush and others set up the entire
postwar science establishment one thing
I'll often find is people will
say B the government hath granted us the
internet and uh you know self-driving
cars and space flight and so on how can
you possibly be against the US
government kneel and repent for its
Bounty you know and really what they the
reason they they kind of they don't say
it quite in that way but that's really
the underpinning kind of thing because
they've replaced go with gov they really
think of the US government as God you
know the conservative will think of the
US government as like the all powerful
military abroad and the progressive will
think of it as the benign all powerful
you know like nurturing parent at home
okay but and in this context they're
like how come you as you know some tech
bro could possibly think you could ever
do basic science without the funding of
the US government has it not developed
all basic science right and the answer
to this is actually say well what if we
go further back the 1950 did science
happen before 1950 well I think it did
beri and you know Maxwell and Newton
were they funded by NSF you know no they
weren't right what were Aviation
railroads automobiles gigantic you know
Industries that arose and both were were
stimulated by and stimulated development
of pure science did they were they
funded by NSF no they were not right
therefore NSF is not a necessary
condition for the presence of science
neither is even the United States
obviously a lot of these discoveries new
was before you know like uh the I I
believe it's before the American let me
find the exact it's actually Less Old
than people think okay so Newton died
1727 right so I knew that um you know it
was like in the 1700s so newon was
before the American Revolution right
obviously that meant huge Innovations
could happen before the US government
before NIH before NSF right which means
they are not a
necessary condition number one that
itself is crucial because a lot of
people say the government is necessary
for the for basic science it is not
necessary for basic science it is one
possible Catalyst and I would argue that
mid-century it was okay because
mid-century was the time when you the
middle of the centralized Century uh
1933 1945 1969 you have Hoover Dam you
have the Manhattan Project you have
Apollo that generation was a climatized
to a centralized US government that
could accomplish great things partly
because technology favored
centralization going into 1950 and then
started favoring decentralization going
out of it I've talked about this in the
book The Sovereign indidual has talked
about this but very roughly you know you
go up into 1950 and you have mass media
and mass production
um and just centralization of all kinds
giant nation states slugging it out on
the world stage you go out of 1950 and
you get cable news and personal
computers and the Internet and mobile
phones and cryptocurrency and you have
the decentralization and so this entire
centralized scientific establishment was
set up at the peak of the centralized
century and it might have been the right
thing to do at that time but is now
showing its age and it's no longer
actually geared up for what we have
where are the huge Innovations coming
out well Satoshi Nakamoto was not to our
to our knowledge a professor right
that's this revolutionary thing that
came outside of it um early in the
pandemic there was something called
project- evidence. github.io which
accumulated all of the evidence for the
Corona virus possibly having being a lab
League when that was a very
controversial thing to discuss right
Alina Chan to her credit you know Matt
Matt Ridley and alen Chan of in this
book you know on um whether the Corona
virus was a lab leak or not I think it's
plausible that it was
um I I can't say I'm 100% sure but I
think it's at least certainly it is a
hypothesis worthy of discussion okay um
though of course it's got political
overtones point being that the
synonymous online publication at
project- evidence. up.i happened when it
was taboo to do so so we're back to the
age of sidonis publication where only
the arguments can be argued with the
person can't be attacked okay this is
actually something that used to happen
in the past like you know um someone
there's a famous story where Newton
solved a problem someone said I know the
lion by his claw or something like that
right people used to do pseudonymous
publication in the past so that they
would be judged on part by their
scientific IDE and not the person
themselves right and so um so I do
disagree that this is the incremental
stuff this is actually the Innovative
stuff the incremental stuff is going to
be the institutional
gerontocracy that that's Academia where
it's like you know do you know who I am
I'm a I'm a Harvard Professor science I
don't I I think I agree with everything
you said but I
I um I'm not I'm I'm not going to get
stuck on
technicalities because I think I was
referring to your vision of data sets
and importing code sure and so that
forces just knowing how code works it
forces a structure and structure usually
favors incremental progress like if you
Fork
code you're not going to uh desent
decentivize is
Revolution you want to go from scratch
okay so I I understand your point there
okay um and I also agree that some
papers like Francis Crick on the
claustrum or others are theoretical
they're more about like where to dig
than the data itself and so on and so
forth right so I agree with that still I
don't um the counterargument is rather
than a thousand people reading this
paper to try to rebuild the whole thing
and uh do it with errors when they can
just import they can more easily build
on what others have done right oh yeah
yeah yeah so the the paper should be
forkable well yeah yeah so here's what
you know like uh you python has this
concept of batteries included for the
standard library right because it lets
you just import import import and just
get to work right that means you can fly
whereas if you couldn't do all those
things and you had to rewrite string
handling you would only be able to do
incremental things libraries actually
allow for greater Innovation that's my
counter I I think you create I I think
that paints a picture I hope that's a
picture that fits with science it
certainly does it fits with code very
well I just wonder how much of science
can be that which is you you
import how much of it is possible to do
that certainly for the things I work on
you can which is the machine learning
world the uh all the computer science
world but whether you can do that for
all right you can think biology seems to
yes I think so chemistry I think so and
then you start getting into weird stuff
like Psych ology which some people don't
even think is a science no um just love
for my psychology friends I I think as
you get farther and farther away from
things that are like hard technical
Fields it starts getting tougher and
tougher and tougher to have like
importable code okay
so let me give the strong for version
right so there's a guy who I think is
is's a you know great machine learning
guy uh creator of actually Kos
um who he disagrees with me on Fran yeah
he's been on his podcast twice yeah okay
great so he dis I disagree with him on a
lot of stuff yes me too I think we have
mutual respect you know follow each
other on Twitter whatever right I think
yes I think he does respect and like you
here is something which I totally agree
with him on and he actually got like
trolled or attacked for this but I
completely agree within 10 20 years
nearly every branch of science will be
for all intents and purposes a branch of
computer science computational physics
computational chemistry computational
biology computational medicine even
computational archaeology realistic
simulations Big Data analysis and ml
everywhere that to me is incredibly
obvious why first of all all we're doing
every day is PDFs and data analysis on a
computer right and so every single one
of those areas can be reduced to the
analog digital step and then It's All
Digital then you're flying you're in the
cloud right do you put a date do you say
how long or 10 20 years think years I I
I arguably it's already there right and
here's the thing you you you were saying
well you know you might drop off when
you hit psychology or history
actually um I think it's the softer
sciences that are going to harden up why
um one of the things I talk about a lot
in the book is for example with history
the concept of crypto history makes
history computable one way of thinking
about it is remember my Britney Spears
example right where Queen Britney right
yeah okay so at first it's kind of a
funny thing to say a computer scientist
term for history is the log files until
we realize that what would a future
historian how would they write about the
history of the
2010s well a huge part of that history
occurred on the servers of Twitter and
Facebook yeah so now you go from like a
log file which is just the individual
record of like one server's action
to decade a decade worth of data on
literally billions of people all of
their online lives like arguably that's
why I say that's like actually what the
written history was of the 2010s was
this giant digital history as you go the
2020s and the 2030s more of that is
going to move from merely online to
onchain and then cryptographically
verifiable so that soft subject of
History becomes something that you can
calculate things like Google Trends and
engrams and stuff like that yes
beautifully
put then I would venture to say that
Donald Trump was erased from history uh
when he was removed from Twitter yeah
and many social platforms and all his
tweets were gone I think someone who an
archive of it but yeah I understand your
point yeah well as the flood of data
about each individual increases
censorship it it it becomes much more
difficult to actually have an archive of
stuff but yes for important people like
a president of the United States yes uh
let me on that uh topic ask you about uh
Trump you were considered for position
as FDA commissioner in the Trump
Administration and I think one of in
terms of the network state in terms of
the digital world one of the seminal
acts in the history of that was the
Banning of trump from Twitter can you
make the case for it and against it sure
so first let me let me talk about the
FDA thing so I was considered for a
senior role at FDA but I do believe that
and this is a whole topic we can talk
about the FDA um I do believe that just
as it was easier to create Bitcoin than
to form the FED right reforming the FED
basically still hasn't happened right so
just as it was easier to create Bitcoin
than to reform the FED it will literally
be easier to start a new country than to
reform the
FDA it may take 10 or 20 years I mean
think about Bitcoin it's only about 13
years old right it may take 10 or 20
years to start a new network state with
a different biomedical policy but that
is how we get out from this perhaps the
single worst thing in the world which is
harmonization regulatory harmonization
descri
regulatory harmonization regulatory
harmonization is the mechanism by which
US
Regulators impose their regulations on
the entire world so they basically have
a monopoly by us Regulators uh this is
not just the FDA it is SEC and FAA and
so on and so forth and for the same
reason that a small company will use
Facebook login they will Outsource their
login to
Facebook a small country will Outsource
their regulation to the USA okay with
all the attendant issues because I mean
you you know the names of some
politicians can you name a single
regulator at the FDA no no right yet
they will brag on their website that
they regulate I forget the exact numb is
I think it's like 25 cents out of every
dollar something along those lines okay
it's like double digits okay that's a
pretty big deal and the thing about this
is you know people will talk about quote
our democracy and so on but many of the
positions in quote our democracy are
actually not subject to democratic
accountability uh you have tenure
professors and you have tax exempt
colleges you have the sbers that New
York Times who have dual class stock you
have um you know a bunch of positions
that are Out Of Reach of the electorate
and that includes Regulators who have
career tenure after just a few years of
not necessarily even continuous service
so they're not accountable to the
electorate they're not named by the
press and they also uh aren't
accountable to the market because you've
got essentially uniform Global
regulations now the thing about this is
it's not just a government thing it's a
regulatory capture thing big Pharma
companies like this as well why because
they can just get their approval in the
US and then they can export to the rest
of the world right I understand where
that comes from as a corporate executive
it's such a pain to get you know access
in one place so there's a team up though
between the giant company and the giant
government to box out all the small
startups and all the small countries and
lots of small Innovation right there are
cracks in this now right the FDA did not
equit itself well during the pandemic
for example it Deni I me there's so many
issues but one of the things that even
actually New York Times uh reported the
reason that people thought there were no
covid cases in the US early in the
pandemic was because the FDA was denying
people the ability to run covid tests
and the emergency use authorization was
you know emergency should mean like
right now right but it was not it was
just taking forever and so some Labs did
Civil Disobedience and they just
disobeyed the FDA and just went and
tested uh academic Labs with threat of
federal penalties because that's what
they are they're like they're like the
police okay and uh and so they were sort
of retroactively
granted immunity because nyt went and
ran a positive story on them so nyt's
Authority is usually greater than that
of FDA if they come into a conflict nyt
runs stories then FDA kind of gets
spanked right um and it's not you know
probably neither party would normally
think of themselves that way but if you
look at it when nyt goes and runs
stories on a company it names all the
executives and they get all hit when it
run stories on a regulator it just
treats the regulator usually as if it
was just some abstract entity it's
Zuckerberg's Facebook but you can't name
you know the people who the career
bureaucrats at FDA interesting right
very interesting it's a very important
Point like that person who's like named
and their face is is known like you just
as an example you know Zuckerberg's face
and name most people don't know Arthur G
solsberg they couldn't recognize him
right yet he's a guy who inherited the
New York Times company from his father's
father's father that is unaccountable
power it's not that they get great
coverage that they get no coverage you
don't even think about them right and uh
so it's invisibility right there's some
aspect why foui was very interesting
because in my recent memory there's not
been many faces of scientific policy of
science policy and he became the face of
that and you know as as uh there's some
of it is meme which is uh you know
basically saying that he is science or
that some people represent science but
the in in quot quote science or whatever
yeah the the positive aspect of that is
that there is accountability when
there's a facee like that right but you
can also see the fouchy example shows
you why a lot of these folks do not want
to be public because they enter a
political you know and media mind field
I'm actually sympathetic to that aspect
of it what I'm not sympathetic to is the
concept that in 2022 that the unelected
unfireable anonymous American regulator
should be able to impose regulatory
policy for the entire world we are not
the world of 1945 you know it is not
something where these other countries
are even consciously consenting to that
world just as Give an example you know
there's this concept called challenge
trials okay the the madna
vaccine was available very very early in
the pandemic you can just synthesize it
from the sequence and challenge trials
would have meant that people who were
healthy volunteers okay they could have
been soldiers for example a varing ages
who are there to take a risk their lives
for their country potentially okay it
could have been just healthy volunteers
not necessarily soldiers just Patriots
of whatever kind in any country not just
us but those healthy volunteers could
have gone and at the early stage of the
pandemic we didn't know exactly how
lethal it was going to be because you
know Lee W leang and you know
30-year-old 30s somethings in China were
dying from this it seemed like it could
be far worse how lethal the the the
virus would be yeah it may be by the way
that those who are the most susceptible
to the virus died faster earlier it's as
if you can imagine a model where those
who were exposed and had the lowest
susceptibility also had the highest
severity and died in greater numbers
early on if you look at the graph like
deaths from covid were exponential going
into about April 2020 and then leveled
off to about 7,500 10,000 a day and then
kind of fell right but it could have
gone to 75,000 at the beginning so we
didn't know how serious it was so this
would have been a real risk that these
people would have been taking but here's
what they would have gotten for that
basically in a challenge trial somebody
would have been given the vaccine and
then exposed to the
and then put under observation mhm and
then that would have given you all the
data cuz ultimately the the synthesis of
the thing I mean yes you do need to
scale up synthesis and Manufacturing and
what have you but the
information of whether it worked or not
and was safe and effective and like that
could have been gathered expeditiously
with volunteers for challenge Trav you
think there would be a large number of
volunteers absolutely what's the concern
there was is there an ethical concern of
taking on uh volunteers well so let me
put it like this had we done that we
could have had vaccines early enough to
save the lives of like a million
Americans especially seniors and so on
okay soldiers and more generally First
Responders and others um you know I do
believe there's folks who would have
stepped up um you know to to take that
risk Heroes Walk Among Us yes yeah
that's right like if military service is
something which is ritualized thing um
people are paid for it but they're not
paid that much they're really paid in
honor you know and in in Duty and and
patriotism that is actually the kind of
thing where U I do believe some some
fraction of those folks would have
raised their hand for this important you
know task I don't know how many of them
but I I do think that we the volunteers
would have been there there's probably
some empirical test of that which is a
there's a challenge trials website
there's a Harvard Prof who put out this
proposal early in the pandemic and he
could tell you how many volunteers he
got um but but something like that could
have just shortened the the time from
pandemic to functional vaccine right to
to days even if you had actually really
acted on it the fact that that didn't
happen and that the Chinese solution of
lockdown that actually you know at the
beginning people thought the state could
you know potentially stop the virus toop
people in place it turned out to be more
contagious in that basically no NPI no
non-pharmaceutical intervention really
turned out to work that much right and
actually at the very beginning of the
pandemic I said something like look this
actually February 3rd about a month
before people you know I was just
watching what was going on in China I
saw that they were uh doing digital
quarantine like using WeChat codes to
like block people off and so on I didn't
know it was going to happen but I said
look if the Corona virus goes pandemic
and it seems it may the extreme Edge
case becomes a new normal it's every
debate we've had on surveillance
deplatforming and centralization
accelerated pandemic means emergency
powers for the state even more than
terrorism or crime and sometimes a
solution creates the next problem my
rough forecast of the future the coron
virus results in quarantines nationalism
centralization and this may actually
work to stop the spread but once under
control States will not see their powers
so we decentralize and I didn't know
whether it was going to stop the spread
but I knew that they were going to try
to do it right and you know look it's
it's hard to call every single thing
right and you I'm sure you know someone
will find some errors but in general I
think that was that was actually pretty
good for like early February of 2020
right so it's my point though the point
is rather than copying Chinese lockdown
what we should have had were different
around the world to some extent Sweden
defected you know from this right they
had like no lockdowns or what have you
but really the the the AIS that people
were talking about was lockdown versus
no lockdown um the real acction should
have been challenge trials versus no
challenge trials we could have had that
in days okay and that those are two
examples on both vaccines and testing
there's so many more that I can point to
so those are kind of decentralized
Innovations and that's what fdh stand
for FDA can stand for it or something
like FDA right ah so let's talk about
that right something like FDA so this is
very important in general the way I try
to think about things
is V1 V2 V3 as we've talked about a few
times so FDA V well right so what what
was before FDA right so there was both
good and bad before FDA because people
don't have the right model of the past
okay so you know if you ask people what
what was there before the FDA they'll
say U and by the FDA itself omits the
right their pronouns are just FDA FDA
okay um so but basically why is that
important it's just something
where why why is that either humorous or
interesting to you they have a sort of
ingroup lingo where when you when you
are kind of talking about them the way
that they talk about themselves it is
something that kind of pequs interest
it's kind of like uh you know in in La
people say the 101 or the you know right
whereas in Northern California they'll
say 101 or people from Nevada will say
Nevada right it just instantly marks you
as like Insider or Outsider okay in
terms of how the language works right
and that's go ahead I mean it's just
makes me sad because that lingo is part
of the mechanism which creates The Silo
the bubble of particular thoughts and
that ultimately deviates from the truth
because you're not open to new ideas I I
think it's actually like uh you know in
glorious bastards there's a scene in the
bar do you want talk about it no but
it's good uh you can't uh just just to
censor you this is like a Wikipedia
podcast is like Wikipedia you can't site
um Quinton Tarantino films no okay okay
okay sorry me back there basically like
English start going like one two three
four five and I believe it's like the
German start with like the thumb
something that You' never know right I
may misremembering that but I think
that's right okay so uh so that's F has
got the lingo all right right so FDA got
the lingo so coming back up
basically just talk about FDA and then
come back to your question on on the the
platform what was v0 FDA V1 what's what
does the future look like V1 V1 was
quote patent medicines okay that's what
some people say but V1 was also Banting
and Best okay Banting and Best they won
the Nobel Prize in the early 1920s right
why um they came with the IDE for um
insulin supplementation to treat
diabetes and they came with a concept
they experimented on dogs they did self-
experimentation they had healthy
volunteers they experiment with the
formulation as well right because just
like you'd have like a web app and a
mobile app maybe a command line app you
could have you know drug that's
administered orally or via injection or
cream or you know there's different
formulations right dosage all that stuff
they could just like iterate on okay
with willing doctor willing patient
these uh you know these uh these folks
who were affected uh just sprang out of
bed the insulin supplementation was
working for them and within a couple of
years they had won the Nobel Prize and
Eli Lily had scaled production for the
entire North American continent okay so
that was a time when Pharma moved at the
speed of software when it was willing
buyer willing seller okay because the
past is demonized as something that our
glorious regulatory agency is protecting
us from okay but there's so many ways in
which what it's really protecting you
from is being healthy okay as you know I
mean there's there's a zillion examples
of this I won't be able to recapitulate
all of them just in this podcast but if
you look at a a post that I've got it's
called regulation disruption and the
future um Technologies of 2013 corsera
PDF okay um this lecture uh which I'll I
kind of link it here so you can maybe
put in the show notes if you want um
this goes through like a dozen different
examples of crazy things the FDA did
from the kind of stuff that was
dramatized in Dallas virus Club where
they were preventing people from getting
AIDS drugs to you know their uh you know
various uh attacks on um you know quote
raw milk where they were basically
saying here's here's a quote from FDA uh
you know um filing in 2010 uh there's no
generalized right to bodly and physical
health there's no right to consume or
feed children any particular food
there's no fundamental right to freedom
of
contract they basically feel like they
own you you're not allowed to make your
own decisions about your food there's no
generalized right to Bly in physical
health direct quote from their like
ridden kind of thing okay the the
general frame is usually that FDA says
it's protecting you from the big bad
company but really what it's doing is
protecting it's preventing you from
opting out okay now with that said and
this is where I'm talking about V3 as
critical as I am of FDA or the FED for
that matter I also actually recognize
that um like the Ron Paul type thing of
End the Fed is actually not practical
End the Fed will just be laughed at what
Bitcoin did was a much much much more
difficult task of building something
better than the fed that's really
difficult to do because the fed and the
FDA they're like the Hub of the current
system people rely on them for lots of
different things okay and um you're
going to need a better version of them
and how would you actually build
something like that so with the fed and
with you know SEC and and and the entire
you know the banks and whatnot crypto
has a pretty good set of answers for
these things and over
time all the countries that are not or
all all the groups that are not the US
establishment or the CCP will find more
and more to their liking in the crypto
economy so that part I think is going
okay we can talk about that what does
that look like for biom medicine well
first what does exit the FDA look like
right so there actually are a bunch of
exits from the FDA already um which is
uh things like right to try laws okay
Clea labs and laboratory developed tests
compounding pharmacies off Lael
prescription by doctors and countries
that aren't fully harmonized with FDA
for example you you know Kobe Kobe
Bryant before he passed away went and
did uh stem cell treatments in in
Germany okay stem cells had been pushed
out you know I think in part by the Bush
Administration by by other things so um
those are different kinds of exits right
to try basically means you know at the
state level you can just try the drug
okay um CLE labs and ldts that means
that's a path where you don't have to go
through FDA to get a new device approved
you can just run run it in a lab okay
compounding pharmacies these were under
attack I'm not sure actually where the
current you know statute is on this but
this is the idea that a pharmacist has
some discretion and how they you know
prepare mixtures of of of drugs um off
Lael prescription by MDS so MDS have
enough like weight in the system that
they can kind of push back an FDA and
off Lael prescription is the concept
that a drug that's approved for purpose
a can be prescribed for purpose B or C
or D without going through another you
know whole new drug approval process um
and then countries that aren't
harmonized right so those are like five
different kinds of exits from the FDA on
different directions um so first those
exits exist so for those people who are
like oh my God we're all going to die or
he's going to poison us with you non FDA
approved things or whatever right like
uh those exit exist you you probably
actually use tests or treatments from
those you don't even realize that you
have right so it's it hasn't killed you
number one number two is actually
testing for safety um you know there's
safety efficacy and like comparative
safety is uh is actually relatively easy
to test for there's very few drugs that
are like um there's tgn 1412 that's an
famous example of something was actually
really dangerous to people right with
with an early test so those do exist
just acknowledge they do exist but in
general testing for safety is actually
not that hard to do okay and if
something is safe then you should be
able to try it usually okay now what
does that decentralized FDA look like
well basically you take individual
pieces of it and you can often turn them
into vehicles and um this is like 50
different startups but let me describe
some of them first have you got any
drugs or something like that recently I
mean like prescribed drugs prescription
drugs and like now that you clarify the
answer is no yeah uh prescribed drugs uh
no okay so not not a long antibiotics a
long time ago maybe but no so you you
know how you have like a sort of like a
wated Up chemistry textbook the package
insert that goes in the right okay wed
Up chemistry textbook it that's what it
is right that what a terrible user
interface we don't usually think of it
that way why is user interface so
terrible that's a web of Regulation that
makes it so terrible and uh you know
there's actually guys who try to
innovate just on user interface called
like help I need help that was like the
name of the company a while back and it
was it it was trying to explain the
stuff in plain language okay just on
user interface you can innovate and why
is that important well um you know
there's a company called uh pillpack
which innovated on quote the user
interface for drugs by giving people a
thing which had like a daily blister
pack so it's like here is here's your
prescription and you're supposed to take
all these pills on the first and second
and basically whether you had taken them
on a given day was manifest by whether
you had opened it for that specific day
okay this is way better than other kinds
of so-called compliance methodologies
like there guys who try to do like an
iot pill where when you swallow it it
like gives you measurements this was
just a simple Innovation on user
interface that boosted compliance in the
sense of compliance with a drug regimen
dramatically right um and I think they
got acquired or would have you for a lot
of money and hopefully utilized
effectively utilized effectively right
well sometimes sometimes these companies
that do incredible Innovation really
makes you sad when they get acquired
that that leads to their death not their
scaling sure I mean they did a lot of
other good things but this is one thing
that they they did well right so
pillpack just shows what you can get
with improving on user
interface why can't I mean we get
reviews for everything right one thing
that you know like people have sort of
in my view some quote out context they
like oh biology thinks you should
replace the FDA with the AL for drugs
actually there's something called phase
4 okay of the FDA which is So-Cal
postmarket surveillance do you know that
that's actually something where in
theory you can go and fill out a form on
the FDA website which basically says
I've had you know a bad experience with
a drug um like vs but for drugs yeah so
it's like it's it's called medwatch
right um and so you can do like
voluntary report reping and uh you can
get like a you know like a PDF and and
just like upload it right is this a
government uh like is this dgov yeah
it's form 3500b I love it it's HTML it's
going to be like from the '90s or it's
going to have an
interface designed by somebody who's a
Cobalt Fortran programmer right here we
go so here we go so basically the 3500b
I hope to be proven wrong on that by the
way so 3500b consumer voluntary
reporting when do I use this form you
were hurt or had a bad side effect use a
drug which let unsafe use Etc the point
is FDA already has a terrible Yelp for
drugs yeah it has a terrible version of
it yeah what would the good version look
like the fact that you've never I mean
just fact you have to fill out a PDF to
go and submit a report how do you submit
a report at Yelp or Uber or Airbnb or
Amazon you tap and their star ratings
right so just modernizing FDA 3500b and
modernizing phase 4 okay is a huge thing
is it can you comment on that is there
what incentive mechanism forces the the
modernization of that kind of thing
here's how it would work or one Poss to
create an actual Yelp yeah here's here's
here's here's how that would work right
you go to uh you know the pharmacy or
you know wherever and you hold up your
phone and you scan the barcode of the
drug okay what does you see instantly
you see global reports right by the way
because your biology your physiology
that's Global right information from
Brazil or from Germany or uh Japan on
their physiological reaction to your the
same drug you're taking is useful to you
it's not like a national boundaries
thing so the whole nation state model of
only collecting information on by other
Americans really you want a global kind
of thing just like you know Amazon book
reviews that's like that's a global
thing other things are aggregate the
global level okay so what you want is to
see every patient report and every
Doctor around the world on this drug
that might be really important to your
rare or semi- rare condition just that
alone would be a valuable site who
builds that site it uh it's it sounds
like something created by capitalism it
sounds like you could do by cap it would
have to be a company yeah you can
definitely do see these but we don't
have a world where a company is allowed
to be in charge of that kind of thing
well I Health went down it just seems
like a lot of the so it depends right
basically this is why you have to pick
off individual elements
right there's essentially a combination
of first recognizing that um the f is
actually bad even be able to say that
that let me put it like this it does a
lot of bad things it is something which
you need to be able to criticize you
might be like well that's obvious right
well in 2010 for example there's a book
that came out if anybody wants to
understand FDA it's called reputation
and power yeah a lot of people don't
want to criticize FDA yeah because they
will retaliate against your biotech or
Pharma company yeah and that retaliation
can be initiated by a single human being
absolutely the best analogy is you think
about the TSA okay have you flown
recently y okay do you make any jokes
about the TSA when you're in the TSA
line uh usually you don't want to but
they're a little more flexible you know
what can I tell a story sure which
is it's it was similar to this I was uh
in Vegas at a club I don't go to clubs
okay I got kicked out for the I think
the first time in my life for making a
joke with a
bouncer and and um cuz I had a camera
with me and you're not allowed to have a
cam camera and and I said okay cool like
I'll I'll take it out but I made a a
funny joke that I don't care to retell
but he was just a little offended he was
like you're you're out I don't care who
you are I don't care who you're with uh
and then he proceeded to list me the the
famous people he has kicked out from
that but there is I mean all of those
the reason I made the joke is I sensed
that there was a an ement to this
particular individual like uh where the
authority has gotten to head my
authority yeah right I almost wanted to
poke at that right and I think the
poking The Authority I quickly learned
the lesson well not you I have now been
rewarded with the pride I feel for
having poked Authority but now I'm
kicked out of the club that would have
resulted in a fun night with friends and
so on instead I'm standing alone crying
in Vegas which is not a unique Vegas
experience it's actually a fundamental
Vegas exper experience but that I'm sure
that basic human nature happens in the
FDA as well that's exactly right so just
like with the TSA you know just to
extend the analogy when you're in line
at the TSA right you don't want to miss
your flight that could cost you hundreds
of dollars and so you comply with
absolutely ludicrous regulations like oh
3 o bottles well you know you can take
an unlimited number of 3 ounce bottles
and you can combine them into a 6 o
bottle through the terrorist technology
called mixing y okay Advanced right and
uh the thing about this is everybody in
line actually some fairly High you know
let's say call it influence or net worth
or whatever people fly right millions
and millions and millions of people are
subject to these absolutely moronic
regulations it's all what you know I
think uh security theater is is is
shri's term right A lot of people know
this term so millions of people are
subject to it it costs Untold billions
of dollars in terms of delays and what
if you just walk up right it um it
irradiates people and this is another
FDA thing by the way this is an FDA TSA
team up okay in 2010 the TSA body
scanners there were concerns expressed
but when it's a government toover thing
see a do com is treated with extreme
scrutiny by FDA but it's another doov
well they're not trying to make a profit
so they kind of just wave them on
through okay so these body scanners were
basically like applied to millions and
millions of people and this huge kind of
op experiment it's almost I think it's
quite likely by the way that if there
was even a slightly increased cancer
risk that the net you know morbidity and
mortality from those would have
outweighed the deaths from terrorism or
whatever that were prevented right you
you can work out the numbers but under
you can just get the math under
reasonable assumptions it's probably
true um if it if it had any increased
morbility mortality I've not seen the
recent things but I've seen that concern
expressed you know 12 years ago point
being that despite the cost despite how
many people are exposed to it despite
how obviously patently ludicrous it is
you don't make any trouble nor do people
organize protest whatever about this
because it's something where um people
the the security theater of the whole
thing is is part of it oh well if we
took them away there' be more terrorism
or something like that people think
right but there it is fascinating to see
that the populace puts up with it
because it does one of my favorite
things is to listen to Jordan Peterson
who um I think offline but I think also
on the podcast you know is somebody who
resists Authority in every way and even
he
goes to TSA with a kind of suppressed
like all the instructions everything
down to when when whenever you have like
the yellow thing for your feet they they
force you to adjust it even slightly if
you're off just even I mean it's like uh
it's a cough it's a Kafka novel we're
living like TSA it makes me smile it
brings joy to my heart because I
imagine uh France kofka and I just
walking through there because it's it's
it it really is just deeply absurd third
but and then the the the the whole
motivation of the mechanism becomes
distorted by the individuals involved
the initial one was to reduce the number
of terrorist attacks I suppose right now
it's guns and drugs basically it's like
what they essentially what they've done
is they've repealed the Fourth Amendment
right search and seizure they can do it
without probable cause everybody is
being searched everybody's a potential
terrorist so they've got probable cause
for everybody in theory and so what they
do they'll post on their website the
guns and drugs or whatever that They
seized in these scanners well of course
if you search everybody
you're going to you're going to find
some criminals or whatever but the cost
of doing that is dramatic moreover the
fact that people have sure been trained
to have you know compliance it's like
the Soviet Union right where um you know
just grudgingly RI go along with this
extremely stupid thing what's my point
the point is this is a really stupid
regulation that has existed in plain
sight of everybody for 20 years we're
still taking off our shoes Okay because
some shoe bomb or whatever number of
years ago okay all of this stuff is
there as opposed to there's a zillion
other things you could potentially do
different paradigms for quot airport
security but now apply that to FDA just
like t a lot of what TSA does is
security theater arguably all of it a
lot of what FDA does is safety theater
the difference is there's far fewer
people who go through the aperture
they're the biotech and Pharma CEOs okay
so you don't have you don't have an
understanding of what it is to deal with
them number one number two is the
penalty is not a few hundred dollar of
missing your flight it is a few million
dollars or tens or hundreds of millions
of dollars for getting your company
subject to the equivalent of a
retaliatory weight time just like that
bouncer threw you out just like the TSA
officer if you make a joke or you know
they can just sit you down and make you
lose your flight right so too can the
FDA just silently impede the approval of
something and choke you out financially
because you don't have enough Runway to
get funded right so impose more weight
time guess what we want another six
months you know data is going to take
you another six months your company
doesn't have the time you die right if
you live you have to raise around at
some dilutive valuation and now the
price gets jacked up on the other side
that's the one thing that can give by
the way in this whole process when when
you push out timelines from days to get
a vaccine approved with or vaccine
valuate or rather via challenge trials
to months or years the cost during that
time when you when you it just increases
nonlinearly right because you can't
iterate on the product it all the normal
observations if it takes you 10 years to
launch a product versus is 10 days
what's the difference in terms of your
speed of duration your cost Etc right so
this is part of what it's not the only
thing there's other things there's AMA
and CPT there's other things but um this
is one of the things that jacks up
prices in the US medical system okay so
now you have something where these CEOs
they're going through this aperture they
are uh they can't tell anybody about it
because if you read reputation and power
okay I'm going to just quote this
because it's amazing amazing book right
it's written by a guy you know Daniel
Carpenter smart guy but he's an FDA
sympathizer he fundamentally thinks it's
like a good thing or what have you
nevertheless I respect Carpenter's
intellectual honesty because he quotes
the CEOs in the book you know verbatim
and he gives some paragraphs and
essentially from their descriptions it's
like um think about like a Vietnam War
thing where you've got a p and they're
like blinking through their eyes I'm
being tortured okay that is the style
when you read Carpenter's book you read
the quotes from these um from these
CEOs let me see if I can find it do you
recommend the book it's a good book yeah
or it's it's now a little bit outdated
okay because it's it's like you know
almost 10 years old still as a history
of the FDA it is well worth reading and
by the the reason I say like the FDA is
so insanely important it's so much more
important than many other things that
people talk about but they don't talk
about it right I just want to read his
little blurb for it right this is 2010
the US Food and Drug Administration is
the most powerful regulatory agency in
the world how did the FDA become so
influential and how does it wield its
extraordinary power reputation power
traces the history of FDA regulation
Pharmaceuticals uh revealing how the
agency's organizational reputation has
being the primary source of its power
it's also one of its ultimate
constraints Carpenter describes how the
FDA cultivated a reputation for
competence and vigilance throughout the
last century and how this organizational
image has enabled agency to regulate
while resisting efforts to curb its own
authority first of all just that
description alone you're like wait a
second he is describing this as an
active player it's not like a DMV kind
of thing which is passed through it's
it's talking about cultivating a
reputation its power resisting efforts
to curb its own authority right the
thing is now you're kind of Through the
Looking Glass you're like wait a second
this is kind of language I don't usually
hear for regul Regulatory Agencies the
thing is the kind of person who becomes
the CEO of a giant company what do they
want to do they want to expand
that company they want to make more
profit similarly the kind of person who
comes to run a regulatory agency or one
of the subunits or that person wants to
expand its
Ambit okay but is that always obvious
and sorry to interrupt but for the COO
of the company I know that the
philosophical idea of capitalism is you
want to make the thing more profitable
but we're also human beings do you think
there's some fundamental aspect to which
we want to do a lot of good in the world
sure but the fiduciary duty will push
people to get the ambitious you know the
the profit maximizing expansionist CEO
is selected for right basically they
believe crucially they're not just this
is important they're not just I mean
some of them are Grand Theft Auto make
as much money as possible but they
believe in the mission okay they've come
to believe in the mission and that is a
person who's selected Chomsky actually
had this good thing which is like I
believe that you believe what you
believe but if you didn't believe what
you believe you wouldn't be sitting here
right so they select for the kind of
people that are able to make a lot of
money and in that process uh those
people are able to have construct a
narrative that they're doing good even
though what they were selected for is
the fact that they can make a lot of
money yeah and they may actually be
doing good but the thing is with CEOs we
have a zillion images in television
media movies of the evil Corporation and
the greedy Co we have some concept of
what coo failure modes are like okay now
when have you ever seen an evil
regulator have you can you name a
fictional portra of an evil regulator
can you name an evil SE a lot a lot a
lot a lot but that's so interesting I'm
trying I'm searching for a deeper lesson
here you're
right you're right I mean there is there
is of portrayals especially in sort of
authoritarian regimes or the Soviet
Union where there's bureaucracy you know
Chernobyl you can kind of see within
that there's the reg the story of the
regulator but um yeah it's not as
plentiful and it's also doesn't often
doesn't have a face to it it's like
bureaucracy is this amorphous thing that
results any one individual you see
they're just obeying somebody else
there's not a face to it of evil the
evil is the entire machine that's right
that's what I call the school of fish
strategy by the way it's something where
you are an individual and you can be
signaled out but there's more
accountability for one person's bad
tweets than all the wars in the Middle
East right because it's a school of fish
yeah right so if the establishment is
wrong if the bureaucracy is wrong
they're all wrong at the same time who
could have known whereas if you
deviate then you are a deviation who can
be hammered down okay now the school
fish strategy is unfortunately very
successful because uh you know truth is
whatever if you just always ride with
the school of fish and turn with they
turn and so on unless there's a bigger
school of fish that comes in you
basically can never be proven wrong
right and this is actually you know of
course someone who believes in truth and
believes in you know Innovation and so
on just physiologically can't ride with
the school of fish you just have to say
what is true or do what is true right
still you've described correctly you
know how it's faceless right so I will
give two examples of fictional
portrayals of evil Regulators one is
actually the original
Ghostbusters okay did not expect that
one but yes yeah so the EPA is actually
the villain in that where they flip a
switch that lets out all the ghosts in
the city and the guy is coming in with a
head of steam as this evil regulator
that just totally arrogant doesn't
actually understand the private sector
or or the consequences of their actions
and they force the and and cruly they
bring a cop with them with a gun so it
shows that a regulator is not simply you
know some piece of paper but it is the
police right and that cop with a gun
forces the Ghostbusters to like release
the and the whole thing spreads a second
example is Dallas spers club which is
more recent and that actually shows the
FDA blocking a guy who with a
life-threatening illness uh you know
with AIDS from getting the drugs to
trees condition and from getting it to
other people right those are just two
portrayals but in general what you find
is when you talk about FDA with people
one thing I'll often hear from folks is
like why would they do that right they
have no mental model of this they kind
of think of it
as why would the why why would this uh
thing which they think of as sort of the
DMV they don't think of the DMV as like
this active thing okay why would the FDA
do that well it is because it's filled
with some ambitious people that want to
keep increasing the power of the agency
just like the co wants to increase the
profit of the company right I use that
word Ambit right why Ambit because these
folks are we know the term greedy right
these folks are power hungry they want
to have the maximum scope and sometimes
regulator agencies collide with each
other right even though FDA is under HHS
sometimes it collides with h s and
they've got regulations at conflict um
you know for example HHS says
everybody's supposed to be able to have
access to their own medical record FDA
didn't want people to have access to
their own personal genomes that
conflicts okay um and both those are
kind of anti-corporate statutes that
were put out with HHS this thing being
targeted at the hospitals and FDA being
targeted at the personal jic companies
but those conflicted right um it's a
little bit like cftc and SEC have a door
jam over who will regulate
cryptocurrency right sometimes
Regulators fight each other but they
fight each other they are they fight
companies they are they are active
players this reputation in power book
The reason I mention it is um I want to
see if I can find this quote so let me
see if I can find this quote reputation
and power organizational image and
pharmaceutical regulation at the
FDA so Genentech executive G Kirk Rob
right Rob would describe regulatory
approval for his products as a
fundamental challenge facing his company
and he would depict Administration a
particularly Vivid metaphor I've told a
story hundreds of times to help people
understand the FDA when I was in Brazil
I worked on the Amazon River for many
months selling pamy for fizer I hadn't
seen my family for eight or nine months
they're flying into sa Paulo as I and I
was flying down from some little village
on the Amazon to manuse and then to sa
Paulo I was a young guy in his 20s I
couldn't wait to see the kids one of
them was a year old baby the other was
three I missed my wife there's a quanset
Hut in front of just a little dirt strip
with a single engine plane of fllying to
manuse I roll up and there's a Brazilian
Soldier there the military Revolution
happened literally the week before so
this Soldier is standing there with his
machine gun and he said to me you can't
come in I speaking pretty good
Portuguese by that time I said my God my
plane my family I got to come in he said
again you can't come in I said I got to
come in and he took his machine gun took
the safety off and pointed at me and
said you can't come in and I said oh now
I got it I can't go in there and that's
the way I always describe the FDA the
FDA is standing there with a machine gun
against the pharmaceutical industry so
you better be their friend rather than
their enemy they are the boss if you're
a pharmaceutical firm they own you body
and soul okay that's a CEO of a
successful company Genentech MH he say
he's told the story hundreds of times
and Regulatory approval is a fundamental
challenge facing his company
because if you are regulated by FDA they
are your primary customer if they cut
the cord on you you have no other
customers and in fact until very
recently with the Advent of social media
no one would even tell your story it was
assumed that you were some sort of
you know corporate criminal that they
were protecting the public from that you
were going to put poison and milk you
know like the melamine scandal in China
I'm not saying those things don't exist
by the way they do exist that's why
people are like they can immediately
summon to mind all examples of corporate
criminals right that's why I mentioned
those fictional stories those templates
even if Star Wars doesn't exist how many
times have you heard of Star Wars
metaphor or whatever for something right
Breaking Bad you know go ahead yeah but
the but the pharmaceutical companies are
St stuck between a rock and a hard place
because the reputation if they go to
Twitter they go to social media they
have horrible reputation so it's like
they don't know yes but why is that
because reputation and power FDA beat
down the reputation of Pharma companies
just like EPA helped beat down the
reputation of oil companies and as it
says over here right in practice dealing
with the fact of FDA power meant a
fundamental change in corporate
structure and culture at Abbot and at
Genentech Rob's most Central
transformation was in creating a culture
of acquiescence towards a government
agency as was done at other drug
companies in the late 20th century Rob
essentially fired officials at Abbot who
are insufficiently compliant with the
FDA what that means is de facto
nationalization of the industry via
regulation just to hover on that that's
a really big deal because if their
primary customer is this government
agency then it has nationalized it just
indirectly right this is partially
what's just happened with um Microsoft
Apple Google Amazon the other Maga okay
they have
been that's funny well well
done yeah I didn't even think about that
it's well done right so it's a so the
you know like I have this tweet is like
Maga Republicans and magga Democrats
right okay oh damn it so many things
you've said today will just get stuck in
my head it changes the way you think C
catchy something about catchy phrasing
of ideas is makes it even more powerful
uh so yeah okay so that's happening in
the tech it's happenening in Tech so
Facebook is the outlier because Zuck
still controls the company but just like
I mean why had Tech had a good
reputation for a while because there
wasn't a regulatory agency whose
justification was regulating these
corporate criminals MH right once that
is the case the regulatory agency
basically comes back to Congress each
year if you look at its budget approvals
it's saying we find this many guys we
found this many violations right they
have an incentive to exaggerate the
threat in the same way that a prosecutor
or you know a policeman has a quota
right like these are the police you know
one way I describe it also is like um
you know like a step down Transformers
you have you have high voltage
electricity that's generated at the
power plant and it comes over the wires
and then there's step down Transformers
that turn it into a lower voltage that
you can just deal with out of your
appliances right similarly you have
something where the high voltage of like
the US military or the lease and that is
transmuted down into a little letter
that comes in your mailbox saying pay
your $50 parking
ticket where it's a piece of paper so
you don't see the gun attached to it but
if you were to defy that it's like Grand
Theft Auto where you get one star two
star three stars four stars five stars
and eventually you know you have some
some serious stuff on your hands okay so
once you understand that you know every
law is backed by force like that
Brazilian guy with the machine gun that
uh Rob mentioned these guys are the
regulatory police okay now see for a
time what happened was you had the
captured industry because all of the
folks who were in
Pharmaceuticals were as Carpenter said
um the a culture of acquiescence towards
the FDA the FDA was their primary
customer so just like in a sense it's
rational you know Amazon talks about
being customer obsessed right what Rob
did was rational for that time right
what g k Rob did was
uh saying our customer is the FDA that's
our primary customer nobody else matters
they are satisfied first every single
tradeoff that has to be made is FDA
right and uh you know really that's why
the two most important departments at
many pharmaceutical companies arguably
all are Regulatory Affairs and IP not
R&D right because one is artificial
scarcity of Regulation which jacks up
the price and the other is artificial
scarcity of the patent which allows
people to maintain the high price right
so this entire thing is just like you
know college education these things may
at some point being a a good concept but
the price has just risen and risen and
risen until it's at the limit price and
Beyond okay
so what has changed what's changed is in
the 2010s uh the late 2000s and 2010s
and so on with the Advent of social
media with the Advent of a bunch of
millionaires um like who are were
independent uh with the Advent of um
Uber and arnb right with the Advent of
cryptocurrency with the diation of trust
and institutions it used really taboo to
even talk about the FDA potentially bad
in like you know 2010 2009 okay but now
people have just seen face plant after
face plant by the institutions and
people are much more open to the concept
that they may actually not have it all
together and I think it's a you know you
you probably see some tracking poll or
something like that but I wouldn't be
surprised if it's like a 20 or 30 point
drop after the CDC failed to control
disease and the FDA failed and the
entire biomedical regulatory
establishment and scientific
establishment was saying masks don't
work before they do this was just a
train crash of all the things that
you're paying for that you you
supposedly think are good as I mentioned
one response is to go q and on and
people say don't trust anything but the
better response is decentralizing FDA
okay so I will say one other thing which
is I mentioned um you know this concept
of improving the form 3500b where you
like scan go ahead no yeah yeah right I
just makes me laugh that I could just
tell the form sucks by the fact that it
has that code name sorry yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah exactly right ux is broken at
every layer yeah so so they have a bad
Yelp for drugs could we make a better
one we could make a better one just
modern ux the key Insight here by the
way which is a non-obvious point and
I've got a whole talk on this actually
uh that I should probably release I
actually did like almost eight n years
ago it's called regulation is
information product quality is a digital
signal okay what do I mean by that
basically when I talk about exit you
know exit the the fed that's the crypto
economy right what does exit the FDA
look like well one key Insight is that
many of the big scale tech companies can
be thought of as Cloud Regulators rather
than land Regulators what do I mean by
that well first what is regulation
people do want a regulated Marketplace
they want a quality ratings like on a
one to five star scale and B bands of
Bad actors like the zero star frauds and
scammers and so and these are distinct
right somebody who's like a lowquality
but well-intentioned person is different
than a smart an evil person those are
two different kinds of failure modes you
could have in a marketplace right why is
it rational for people to want a
regulated Marketplace especially for
health because they want to pay
essentially one entry cost and then they
don't have to evaluate everything
separately where they may not have the
technical information to do that right
you don't want to go to Starbucks and
put a dipstick into every um coffee to
see if it's poisoned or something like
that you sort of want to enter a Zone
where you know things are basically good
and you pay that one diligence cost on
the Zone itself right whether it's a
digital or physical Zone and then the
regulator's taken care of it and they've
baked in the regulatory cost into you
know some subscription fee of some kind
right so the thing is the model we've
talked about is the land regulator of a
nation state and a territorially bounded
thing but the cloud regulator what's a
cloud regulator that is Amazon star
ratings that's um Yelp that is eBay that
is Airbnb that is Uber and Lyft and and
so on and so forth It's also actually
Gmail and Google why because you're
doing spam
filtering and uh you are doing ranking
of mails with a priority inbox right uh
with Google itself they ban malware
links right so the Bad actors are out
and they're ranking them right how about
Apple the app store right they ban Bad
actors and they do star ratings when you
start actually applying this lens PayPal
you know they've got a reputation score
every single web service that's at the
scale of like tens of millions or
hundreds of millions of people has had
to build a cloud r regulator and The
crucial thing is it scales across
borders so you can use the data from
Mexico to help somebody in mova or vice
versa right because it's fundamentally
International right those ratings do you
have a network effect and um there's
another aspect to it which is these are
better Regulators than the land
Regulators for example Uber is a better
regulator than the taxi medallions why
every ride is GPS tracked there's
ratings on both the driver and the
passenger side both parties you know
know that payment can be rendered in a
in a standard currency right if you have
below a certain star rating on either
side you get deplatformed and so on to
protect either Rider or driver and on
and on right what does that do think
about how much better that is than taxi
medallions rather than a six-month or
annual inspection um you have reports
from every single Rider okay before Uber
it was the you know the taxi drivers and
taxi Regulators were in a little
Monopoly locally okay because they were
the persistent actors in the ecosystem
taxi Riders had nothing in common didn't
even know each other some you know in
New York some guy gets in a taxi other
guy they had no way to communicate with
each other so the persistent actors in
the ecosystem were the The Regulators
and the drivers and they had this cozy
kind of thing and Medallion prices just
kept going up and this was a sort of
collaboration on artificial scarcity
afterwards with Uber and lift and other
entrance you had something interesting a
different kind of regulator driver
Fusion if you assume regulatory capture
exists and lean into
it Uber is the new regulator
and Uber drivers are the drivers lift is
the compe competing regulator and lift
drivers are the new drivers okay so you
have a regulator driver Fusion versus
another regulator driver Fusion you no
longer have a monopoly you have multiple
parties okay you have a competitive
market this is the concept of like
polycentric law right where you have
multiple different legal regimes in the
same jurisdiction overlapping that you
can choose between with a tap of a
button right all these Concepts from
like libertarian Theory like you know
polycentric law or caly all these things
are becoming more possible now that the
internet has increased microeconomic
leverage and um because that exit is now
possible now you may argue oh well LT
and Uber they're not profitable anymore
and there's two different criticisms of
them one is oh they're not profitable or
oh they're charging too much or and I
think part of this is because of certain
kinds of the the regulatory status
caught up to try to make them
uncompetitive for example they don't
allow people in some states to identify
themselves as indep dep contractors even
if they are part-time okay um there's
various other kinds of rules and
regulations you know in Austin for a
while Uber was even banned what have you
right net net though like uber grab
gojack lift DD like ride sharing as a
concept is now out there and whatever
the next version is where it's
self-driving like while it's like a very
hardfought battle and the regulatory
State keeps trying to push things back
into the garage this is a fundamentally
better way of just doing regulation of
taxis similarly
Airbnb for hotels I mean it's basically
the same thing okay and um now Airbnb
could use competition I think that it
would be good to have you know like
competition for them and there are other
kinds of sites opening up but the
fundamental conso of the cloud regulator
now let's apply it here once you realize
regulation is information the way you
would set up a competitor to FDA or SEC
or FAA or something like that is you
just do better reviews MH just start
with that that's pure information you're
under free speech that's like still you
know the most defended thing literally
just publishing reviews and not just
reviews by any old person it turns out
that FDA typically will use expert
panels where there's expert panels it's
like professors from Harvard or you know
things like that um so that is is this
concept of a reputational bridge what
you want to do is you want to have folks
who are let's say biotech entrepreneurs
or their you know uh profs like Sinclair
or what have you you do want to have the
reviews of The Craft
okay you also want to have especially in
medicine B medicine you want to have the
reviews of Experts of some kind so
there's going to be defectors from the
current establishment okay just like you
know there profs who defected from
computer science Academia to become
Larry and Sergey and whatever you know
or they weren't profs they were grad
students right um in the same way you'll
have defectors uh who have the
credentials from the old world but can
build up the new just like there's folks
from Wall Street who have come into
cryptocurrency and help legitimate it
right just like there's folks who left
um salsburg to come to substack okay
okay um you know we have we have these
folks who by defecting they help and
then they're also supplemented by all
this new talent coming in right that
combination of things is how you build a
new system it's not completely by itself
nor is it trying to reform the old it's
some fusion okay so in this new system
who do you have you have like the most
entrepreneurial and Innovative MDS you
have the most entrepreneur and
Innovative professors and you have the
founders of actual new products and
stuff and they are giving open- Source
reviews of these products and they're
all also building a community that will
say look we want this new drug or we
want this new treatment or we want this
new device and we're willing to
crowdfund 10,000 units so please give us
the thing and we'll write a very fair
review of it and we'll also all evaluate
as a community and so on so you turn
these people from just passive patients
into active participants in their health
that's the community part and they've
got the kind of bedal technical
leadership there now what is the kind of
prototype of something like this
something like V Dow is very interesting
things like molecule Dow are very
interesting it'll start with things like
longevity right and why is that because
the entire model of FDA this 20th
century model um is wait for somebody to
have a disease and then try to cure them
okay versus you know saying an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure
right why are we not actually tracking
folks and getting a constant dashboard
on yourself so you can see whether
things are breaking and then you you
deal with it just like you've got server
uptime things you don't wait necessarily
for the site to go down you start seeing
Oh response rates are spiking we need to
add more servers right you have some
warning okay even 10 years ago there's
this uh article called uh the measured
man in the Atlantic where this guy
physicist Larry smar okay what he was
doing is he was essentially doing a
bunch of measurements on himself and he
was finding that uh there were
predictors of inflammation that were
spiking and he went to the doctor showed
the charts and the doctor like I can't
do anything with this mhm then that
turned out to be an early warning of
like a serious condition then you had to
I think go for like you know surgery or
or something and he was starting to
think well look the way that we're doing
medicine right now is it's not quite um
like pre-m theory of disease but it is
prec continuous
Diagnostics okay continuous Diagnostics
just to talk about this for a second
this is I I I mentioned one angle on
which you go after FDA which is like the
the better phase 4 right I've mentioned
the concept of better reviews in general
okay I mentioned vad da which is like a
community that is going after longevity
let's talk about continuous Diagnostics
so
basically we know better what is going
on in Bangalore or Budapest than in our
own
body that's actually kind of insane to
think about this stuff that you know
it's all the other side of the world
10,000 miles away but you know few
millimeters away you don't really know
what's going on right and and that's
starting to change with all the
Quantified Self devices the hundreds of
millions of Apple watches and fitbits
and stuff right you're also starting to
see continuous glucose meters which is
very important they're starting to give
you readouts people are seeing wow this
is spiking my insulin or rather this is
spiking my my blood sugar and uh it
might be something you didn't predict it
varies for different people for some
people you know banana isn't a big deal
for others it's actually quite bad for
their blooder what happens when you
extend that well about 10 years ago a
guy Mike Snider um professor at did
something called the integr where he
just threw the kitchen sink of all the
Diagnostics he could at himself over the
period of I think a few weeks or a few
months I foret the exact duration he's
able to do things where he could see
during that period he like got a cold or
something and he could see in the
expression day the gene expression data
that he was getting sick before he felt
sick he could also see that something
about that like viral infection like U
made him develop diabetes-like symptoms
if I'm remembering it accurately so you
can see oh wait a second these are
things that are
um that I can see in my readouts that I
would only have the vaguest
interpretation of as like a human being
right and moreover he could take uh you
know I don't think he did this but if
you took treatments if you took drugs
right you could actually show what your
steady state was if you tracked over
time show what your disease state or
sick state was and then this drug pushes
you back into non- disease St State you
can actually get a quantitative readout
of what you know like steady state was
right so that and and that steady state
you know your expression levels across
all these genes uh your small molecules
basically everything you can you can you
can measure that's going to vary from
person to person right what's healthy
and natural for you may be a different
Baseline than for me for example people
who are small example people who are
South Asian um or of dark skin tend to
have vitamin D deficiency why because we
need a lot of sunlight so often side
you're tapping in your screen so what do
we do take like actually significant
vitamin D infusions okay that's like a
small example of where baselines differ
between people okay so continuous
Diagnostics what could that mean that
could mean you know things like the
continuous glucose meter it's Quantified
Self it's like continuous blood testing
right so you have a So-Cal mobile
flomist this is something which FLOTUS
takes blood right mobile full bottomy
would come to your office come to your
remote office this is a great business
for people I think you know you can Reis
visit this in in 2022 people tried this
in the 2010s but I think it's worth
revisiting mamist comes every week or
every month takes blood runs every test
right maybe that's you know a few
thousand dollars a year maybe maybe
eventually gets to a few hundred dollars
a year um and that's expensive in some
ways but boy that's better health
insurance in other ways yeah that's I
mean it's amazing so one there's a bunch
of companies that do this and I actually
would love to learn more about them what
one one of them it's a company called
inside tracker that sponsors this
podcast they do that but the the reason
really appreciate them they're the first
ones that introduced me to like how easy
it is but it's also depressing how
little information exactly as you
beautifully put once again how little
information we have about our own body
in a continuous sense yes and actually
also sadly even with inside tracker as I
collect that data how not integrated
that data is with everything else right
if I wanted to opt in I would like I I
can't just like riffing off the top of
my head but I would like Google Maps to
know what's going on inside my body
that's maybe I can't into it at first
why that application is useful but there
could be an incredible like that's where
the entrepreneurial Spirit builds is
like what can I do with that data can I
make the trip more less stressful for
you and adjust the Google Maps thing
kind of thing that's right yeah so I
mean one of the things about this by the
way is because there so many movies made
about Thanos okay that's one of the
reasons why people have sort of been
scared off from doing Diagnostics uh to
some extent okay why because VC's are
like oh is this another Theos and like
the diligence and everything everyone's
looking at it oh blood testing one drop
of blood huh hurts with recruiting
essentially um a lot of the media and
stuff around that basically has
pathologized the thing that we want to
have a lot more entrance in right now
you know one way of thinking about it is
FDA has killed way more people than
Theos has all right way more just take
drug lag alone okay whenever you have a
drug that works and reduced morbidity
and mortality after it was actually
generally available but was delayed for
months or years the integral under that
curve is the excess morbidian mortality
attributable to fda's drug lag you could
go back and do that study across lots
and lots of different drugs and you
probably find quite a lot Alex tabarok
and others have have written on this
right Daniel hener has written on this
okay that's just like one example I mean
I gave the pandemic example the fact
that they held up the euas for the test
and didn't do challenge trials that's
like you know they're not that's like a
million American Dead that could have
been orders of magnitude less if we had
gotten the vaccine out to vulnerable
population sooner okay so you're talking
about something that has a total
Monopoly on global health and um you
know you can't know what it is without
that unless you have zones that are FDA
free but that have some form of
Regulation as I mentioned it's a V3 it's
not going back to zero regulation
everybody you know man fr
but it's a more reputable regulator just
like um you know Uber is a better
regulator than the taxi medallions right
yeah I mean you're painting such an
incredible picture you're making me wish
you were FDA commissioner but I I there
were a bunch of people who tweeted
something like that after the you know
with the pandemic um whatever go ahead
yeah is that is that possible like if
you were just given uh if you became FDA
commissioner could you could you push
for those kinds of changes or is that
really something that has to come from
the outside short answer is no and the
longer answer meaning the long that'd be
funny if you're like the short answer is
no the long answer is
yes so so basically see a CEO of a
company it's while it's very difficult
they can hire and fire right so in
theory they can do surgery on the
organism and like you know Steve Jobs
took over apple and was able to hire and
fire raise money do this that he
basically had root over Apple like he
was a system administrator right he had
he had full permissions okay as FDA
commissioner you do not have full
permissions over FDA let alone like the
whole structure around it right if
you're FDA commissioner you are not the
CEO of the agency okay lots of these
folks there uh have career tenure they
they can't be fired um they can't even
really be disciplined there's something
called the Douglas factors you ever
heard the Douglas factors it's like the
mirander rites for federal employees
okay you have the right say so basically
if you've heard that federal employees
can't be fired the Douglas factors are
how that's actually
operationalized when you try to fire
somebody it's this whole process where
they get to appeal it and so on and so
forth and they're sitting in the office
while you're trying to fire them and
they're complaining to everybody around
them that this guy's trying to fire me
such a bad guy blah blah right and
everybody around even if you know they
may think that guy is doing a bad job
they're like wait a second he's starting
to fire you you might try to fire me too
and so anybody who tries to fire
somebody at FDA just gets uh a faceful
ofad for their troubles what they
instead will do is sometimes they'll
just transfer somebody to the basement
or something so they don't have to deal
with them if they're truly bad okay but
the thing about this is there is only
one caveat Douglas Factor number eight
the notoriety of the offense or its
impact upon the
reputation of the agency there's that
word again reputation of reputation and
power so the one way you can truly screw
up within a regulatory bureaucracy is if
you sort of endanger the like annual
budget renewal think of it as like this
mini death star that's coming to dock
against the max Death Star for it's like
annual refuel and it's talking about all
the corporate criminals that it's
prosecuted the quotas like the police
quotas of the ticketing you know and if
they don't have a crisis they will like
invent one just again just like TSA just
like other agencies you're more familiar
with you can kind of map it back look at
the guns and drugs we've SE and say have
an incentive for uh you know creating
these crises or or manufacturing them or
exaggerating
them and if you endanger that refueling
that annual budget renewal or you know
what have you then the whole agency will
basically be like okay you're you're bad
and you can be disciplined or sometimes
you know with rare except you know you
can be booted but what that means is
that FDA commissioner is actually a
white elephant it's a ceremonial role
really right you know you know the term
white elephant it's like uh basically
you know the Maharaja gives you an a
white elephant as a gift seems great
next day it's eaten all of your grass
it's pooped on your lawn it has like
just put a foot on your car and smash it
but you can't give it away it's a white
elephant the Maharaja gave it to you
right that's what being like FDA
commissioner is it's a kind of thing
where if and a lot of people are drawn
in like moner to the flame for these
titles of the establishment I want to be
head of this I want to be head of that
right and really what it is is it's
like I don't know becoming head of
Kazakhstan in the mid1 1980s in the
Soviet Union the kazakstan SSR right
Soviet Socialist Republic before the
thing was going to like crumble
potentially right in many ways it's
becoming you know folks who are just
totally status obsess getting these
positions but um like a lot of the Merit
all all the folks with Merit are kind of
leaving the government and going into
you know Tech or crypto or what have you
right so even if these agencies were
Hollow for in some ways they becoming
hollower because they have less Talent
there right so a you can't hire and fire
very easily you can hire a little bit
you can't really fire um B A lot of the
talent has left the building but was
there C we're entering the
decentralizing era and D you know like
be like Satoshi Satoshi founded Bitcoin
because he knew you could not reform the
FED there's everybody's trying to go and
reform reform reform and the reason
they're trying to reform is we haven't
figured out the mechanism to build
something new and now perhaps we have
that so I've named a few of them right
I'll name one more related to Lance
Fitness is actually the back door to a
lot of medicine okay why is that um you
go to any you know conference it could
be neurology it could be cardiology
you'll find somebody who's giving a talk
that says something along the lines of
Fitness is the ultimate drug Maybe not
today when people are saying oh fat
phobic whatever but not too many years
ago you would see somebody um people
saying Fitness is the ultimate drug if
we could just prescribe Fitness in a
pill that would improve your
cardiovascular function your neurologic
function deals with depression by the
way in that case the use of the word
drug means medicine so medicine yeah
sure sure sure uh Fitness is the
ultimate medicine yeah yeah the ultimate
medicine right so if they could just
prescribe the effects of it it's just
like boom just massive effect right like
you're fit enough you do the resistance
training it helps with you know
preventive diabetes every kind of thing
in the world you see a significant
treatment effect yet your Fitness is
your own responsibility you go to some
gym 24hour fitness what do they have
they have on the wall exhortations like
your body is your responsibility right
you am I right yeah yeah yeah yeah and
you know uh go ahead but no it's it's
just it's hilarious yes yes yes it's
funny it's it's true right yeah it's
funny because it's true and so your
Fitness your diet that's your
responsibility but when you go into a
doctor's office suddenly becomes lie
back and think of England okay suddenly
you become passive suddenly oh your
doctor your doctor is Dr Google well you
your doctor must be a moron you're
you're going and trying to take care of
yourself you're Googling symptoms oh how
stupid you are I have a medical degree
and that doctor see the thing is if you
come in and you you've self- diagnosed
or you've done some of your own research
if you're right they're and if they've
got an ego about it they're undermined
and if you're wrong they're like you
know haha you know arrogant but either
way they have if they've got this kind
of mindset they have an incentive to
resist the patient taking care of
themselves isn't that the doctor's job
right and they're kind of taught to
behave like this many of
them so what that means then is that
intervention of that 15 or 30 minute
appointment with the doctor doctor
whatever drug they prescribe better hit
you like Thor's hammer to put you back
on the straight and narrow because
that's only with you for like a few
seconds you know a few minutes or
whatever the doctor's only with you for
a few minutes the drug is only you know
some drugs are very powerful so they
actually do work like this okay but your
Fitness is your own responsibility and
that's a continuing forcing function
every day and again we get back to
decentralization right the
decentralization of responsibility from
somebody thinking themselves merely as a
patient to an active participant in
their own health who's doing their own
monitoring of their own health right and
logging all their stuff who's eating you
know properly and looking at the effect
of their diet on things like their you
know continuous glucose monitor as a V1
but other things right um who is you
know as fit as they can possibly be like
these are kind of obvious things but why
is this the back door to medicine
because since F only regulates those
things that are meant to diagnose and
treat a
disease all the stuff that is meant to
improve prove an otherwise healthy
person is potentially out of their
purview supplements are one interesting
aspect that they were carved out uh in
the in the mid 9s and that's why the
suppl industry is Big because FDA isn't
it doesn't have as tight of rain on that
but all of the Fitbit uh CGM continuous
glucometer type stuff you can crank out
all kinds of things that help people get
fitter that will also actually have just
general health value but you're not
quote marketing them to diagnose or
treat you know a disease you see what
I'm saying you're marketing them for the
purpose of Fitness this is a market why
because psychologically people they they
don't like paying to get back to normal
but they will absolutely pay tons of
money to get better than normal they'll
pay for Fitness they'll pay for makeup
they'll pay for hair they'll pay for
this and that right so that's actually
the back door and you can do tons of
things there where obviously being
healthier is also protective you can
actually show the studies on this so
this way you build out all the tooling
to get healthier and that actually helps
on this axis a few other things are kind
of us medical system while I'm on it
because you got me on this topic I love
this okay so this is uh this is the most
eloquent exploration of the US medical
system and how to improve it how to fix
it and what the future looks like yeah
so love it so basically so part of it is
decentralizing control back to the
individual right now I've talked about
FDA length but let me talk about some
other other broken parts of the US
system right um there's like am there's
CPT there's cpom there's this you know
like all these regulations which see
normally in capitalism you have a uh
buyer and a seller right duh in medicine
you have thirdparty regulation and
fourth-party pricing and um fifth party
payment okay so third party regulation
FDA is regulating it fourth party
pricing it is um you know the the the
CBT codes right fifth party payment it's
the insurance companies all right and
just to discuss these bits of the system
first why are some people against
capitalism and medicine I actually
understand why they're against it
because they are visualizing themselves
on a gurnie when they're being wheeled
in and now somebody at their moment of
vulnerability is charging this insane
price for their care and many people in
the US have had this horrible experience
where they're bankrupted or or scared of
being bankrupted by medical bills
therefore or the concept of adding more
capitalism to Medicine scares them and
they think it's horrible and you're some
like awful greedy Tech bro kind of thing
all right let me let me say I understand
that concern and let me you know kind of
let me pull tease that apart a little
bit right basically the most
capitalistic areas of medicine are the
most functional areas of medicine so
that say the places where you can walk
in and walk out okay whether that's
Dentistry
Dermatology plastic surgery even veteran
Ary medicine which is not human okay
where you can make a conscious decision
say Okay I want this care or I don't
want this I see a price list I can pay
cash right if I don't like it I go to
another dermatologist there's few
Dermatological emergencies that's why
dermatologist have a great quality of
life okay by contrast when you're being
wheeled in on a gurny you need it right
now okay and you're unconscious or what
have you or you're not in a capacity to
deal with it right and so these are the
two extremes it's like ambulatory
medicine you can walk around and pick
and like ambulance medicine okay and
what what that means is the more
ambulatory the medicine the more
legitimate capitalism is in that
situation people are okay with a
dermatologist basically turning you down
because you don't have enough money and
you go to another dermatologist because
you can comparison shop there it's not
usually an emergency right whereas if
you're coming in with an ambulance then
people don't want to be turned down and
I understand why okay what this suggests
by the way is that you should only have
insurance for the edge cases Insurance
should only cover the ambulance not the
ambulatory I most people are losing
money on insurance right because most
people are paying more in in premiums
and they are getting out it's just that
this huge flight of dollars through the
air that no one can make heads or tails
out of oh the other aspect that's
obviously broken you know is employer
provided health insurance which is
started after World War II so you know
auto insurance is in a much more
competitive market you don't whip out
your auto insurance card at the gas
station to pay for your gas right you
only whip it out when there's a crash
right that's what quote health insurance
should be and the Singapore model is
actually a pretty good one for this
where they have sort of a mandatory HSA
you have to like put some money in that
and um that pays for your Healthcare
bills but then it's cash out of that
it's like a separate pocket it's sort of
for savings to pay for health savings
accounts health savings account right
the thing about this is once you realize
well first ambulatory medicine is
capitalistic medicine ambulance medicine
is socialist medicine
okay you want to shift people more
towards ambulatory guess what that's in
their interest as well now that brings
us back to the monitoring right the
continuous monitoring where whether
eventually it's Mike Snider's integram
the V1 is the Quantified Self and the
Apple watch and the you know continuous
glucose meters and a VN is the Mike
Snider integram there's a set called q.
bio which is doing this also right
eventually this stuff will hopefully
just be in a device that just measures
tons and tons of variables on you right
there's ways of measuring some of these
metabolites and you know without
breaking the skin um you know so so it's
like it's not you don't have to keep
breaking the skin over and over there's
VAR various ways of doing that so now
you've got something where you've got
the monitoring you've got the dashboards
you've got the alerts and just like this
Larry smar guy that I mentioned the
measured man you might be able to shift
more and more things to ambulatory and
one of the things about this also is the
medical system is set up in a bad way
where the primary care physician is the
one who is like not the top of their
class but the guys who are at the bottom
of the pinball machine the surgeons and
the radiologist once your stuff is
already broken okay they're the ones who
are paid the most so a lot of the skill
collects at the post break stage right
right where you actually want Doogie
haser MD is at the the Upstream stage
okay so you want this amazing amazing
doctor there right how could we get that
I mentioned the app that doesn't exist
which is like a better version of the
3500b right here's another app that
doesn't exist and this is one that FDA
is actively quashed why can't you just
take an image of a mole or something
like that you know with the incredible
cameras we have a huge amount of Medical
Imaging should be able to be done at
home and it goes to doctors whether it's
in the US or the Philippines or India I
mean Tel Radiology exists right why can
you not do that for Dermatology for
everything else you should be able to
literally just hold the thing up and
with a combination of both Ai and MDS
just diagnose that should exist right um
answer is there's a combination of both
American doctors and the FDA that team
up to prevent this or slow this um and
you know one argument is oh the AI is
not better than a human 100% of the time
because it's not deployed yet therefore
it could make an error therefore it's
bad even if it's better than 99% of
doctors 99% of the time uh another
argument is the software has to go
through design control okay now
basically once you understand understand
how FDA Works basically imagine the most
bureaucratic Frozen process for code
deployment at any company
ever and that is the most Nimble thing
ever relative to fda's design review so
just a review a talked about how FD was
blocking all this stuff B talked about
why ambulatory medicine is capitalist
medicine uh ambulance medicine is
socialist medicine C talked about how
with the agnostic stuff we can shift it
over to ambulatory D talked about how
there's lots of things where you could
have a combination of doctor and Ai and
an app um that you kind of quickly self-
diagnosed some of this is happening now
the the some of the tele medical tele
medicine laws were relaxed during covid
where now people you know a doctor from
Wyoming can prescribe for somebody in
Minnesota like some of that stuff was
relaxed during covid okay there's other
broken things in meical system I'll just
name two more and then kind of move on
okay I mention like AMA and CBT okay
those are two regulatory bodies am
American Medical Association CPT current
procedural terminology okay basically uh
you know Marx's labor Theory value where
people are supposed to be paid on their
effort right um of course the issue with
this is that you'd be paying a physicist
to try to dunk and you know they' be
trying but they wouldn't actually
probably be able to do it they'd be
trying real hard whereas you actually
want to pay people on the basis of
results right cheaply attained results
are actually better than expensively
attained non-rs perhaps obvious okay
nevertheless the way that the US medical
system has payouts it's based on so
called rvus relative value units and
this is something where there's a
government
body that um sets these prices uh and it
is in theory only for Medicare but all
the private insurers key off of that and
um AMA uh basically publishes a list of
these so-called um the CPT codes which
is like the coding the biomedical coding
of this and what each medical process is
worth and whatnot so it's
like I I don't remember all the numbers
but um it's like a five-digit code and
it's like okay I got a I got a a test
for CIS fibrosis or a test for this or a
test for that God help you if your um
medical billing is erroneous why the
insurance company will reject it um
because it doesn't pay for that this is
this giant process of trying to encode
um you know every possible ailment and
condition into these CPT codes and that
you can literally get degrees in medical
billing just for this okay this enormous
inefficient industry okay like literally
medical billing is a whole field okay
yeah now what do you want to do when you
grow up I I want to work in medical
billing in medical billing okay where
everybody's mad at you at all times yeah
part of what happens is when you give a
treatment when a doctor gives a
treatment to a patient they can't like
rep the treatment okay like a car you
sell a car you could in theory repo the
car so the patient has a treatment now
um what happens well the insurance
company uh you know that that treatment
is perhaps provided look it's a lab test
provided by a company right the company
bills the patient the company is
supposed to charge a high price why the
insurance company wants it to try to
collect from the patient the patient is
scared oh my God they see this huge
price they um they sometimes don't pay
sometimes the insurance company doesn't
pay either and uh
when when a company is stiff by an
insurance company when diagnostic
company is sh by stiff by an insurance
company it has to jack up the price on
everybody else right everything boils
down to the fact that you don't have you
know a buyer and a seller the doctor
doesn't know the price of what is being
sold uh the buyer doesn't know the price
of what is being bought at the time
that's being bought uh neither party can
really even set a free price because
there's this rvu system that hovers
above the buyer feels they've already
bought it because they bought Insurance
the insurance company doesn't want to
pay for it everybody is trying to like
push the price onto somebody else and
you know not actually show the sticker
price of anything and hide everything
and so and so forth oh their thing about
it is obviously lawsuits are over
everything everybody's mad about
everything it's Health people are dying
okay so everything is just optimized for
Optics as opposed to results right
similarly actually many drugs are
optimized for minimizing side effects
and Optics rather than maximizing
effects which are totally different
criteria right you might have for
example a drug that um only cures a
thousand people but doesn't have any
side effects versus one that cures a
million people but that has 10 really
serious side effects a year right and
the second one would probably not happen
because those side effects would be so
so big
okay how do you attack this I name a few
examples but I actually think the reform
is going to come and part from outside
the system in particular India is coming
online okay why is that important well
you may have encountered an Indian
doctor or two okay maybe an Indian
programmer one or two all right and I do
think tele
medicine could explode right where you
could have an Indian doctor um you know
in India and there's a US doctor okay
who's like a
dispatcher you see what I'm saying
they've got all these other Indian
doctors behind them they've got a tele
medical app and you are now doing
something where
uh these relatively inexpensive Indian
doctors who are vetted by the American
doctor or the doctor in jurisdiction of
the license become the backend doctors
of the world to some extent this already
there with t radiology and other kinds
of things right but now that you've got
literally like a billion Indians who've
just come online okay you have this huge
pool of folks who have a different
attitude towards medicine for example
it's a lot more cash payment over there
for example India is big on generic
drugs for example during Co it had
something called has something called a
rogu which is a national tele medicine
app okay the US wasn't able to ship that
in some way India's digital
infrastructure again you'll have to read
a post called uh the internet country by
Tiger feathers. subs.com and you'll see
that actually India's national software
infrastructure is surprisingly good it's
not as good as China's in some ways but
it's like better than the US's which is
like health.gov and like non-existent
it's like kind of impressive how good
some of India software is the fact that
it exists is good so you have all these
new doctors coming online India cranks
out generics right tele medicine is now
more legal in the US and you have uh
cash payment in India right and in a lot
of other places you don't have the whole
Insurance employer Health thing and this
Market is growing so you could have a
sort of parallel Market that starts
evolving right which is and people are
already doing some medical tourism or
things that's another exit from the FDA
you have a parallel Market that starts
evolving that just starts from
fundamentally different premises it just
C
cash for everything right there's
downsides with cash for everything
there's a huge upside with cash for
everything cash for everything means you
give customer service from the doctor it
means the prices are actually visible it
ideally pushes you again towards more
ambulatory medicine rather than
ambulance medicine it is monitoring
constant monitoring with the Quantified
Self and whatnot as opposed to just let
your system fail and then wheel you in
right um there's a reputational bridge
because now we've we' had a couple of
generations almost of Indian doctors in
the US so people know that there's you
know there's some very competent Indian
doctors there a good chunk of AMA and so
that they can serve Lobby for this and
uh you have plenty of Indian Engineers
now I'm not saying India alone is a
panace but I do think that this is a
large enough parallel Market to start
doing interesting things and you could
see uh sort of medical tourism medical
migration to where it gives India an
opportunity to basically
um let go of the constraints of the FDA
yeah because and innovate aggressively
and and I mean it's such a huge
opportunity to define the future of
medicine and make a shit ton of money
from a market that's desperate for it in
the United States because of all the
over the regulation that's right and I
think basically it's something where the
reason it it needs to and that would fix
the FDA sorry to interrupt yes we fix
the FDA by exiting the FDA right and
then the FDA would dry out and then it
would hopefully it might reform it might
dry out right and this is you know why
people are for example they're traveling
across borders you know they're getting
orders from Canadian pharmacies you know
a lot of this type of stuff we can start
to build Alternatives right I mean
India's generic industry is really
important because it just doesn't
enforce American IP there so generic
drugs are cheaper right and it's quite
compid it's been around for a while so
there's enough proof points there where
um again I'm not saying it Panacea it's
going to something which will require
like American and Indian collaboration I
think there's going to be a lot of other
countries and so on that are involved
but you can start to see another poll
getting set up which is a confident
enough
civilization that is willing to take
another regulatory path right and that
is in some ways doing better on National
software than the US is and it has
enough of a bridge to the US that it can
be that simulation which you need which
is kind of something that outside poke
right I want to talk about India but let
me just kind of wrap up on this big FDA
bedal kind of thing
right with the book the network State
the purpose of the network State you
know you know I I want people to be able
to build different kinds of network
States I want people to build the vegan
Village I want people to be able to
build a you know if they want to do the
Benedict option like a like a Christian
Network if if people want to do
different kinds of things I'm open to
many different things and I will fund
lots of different things um for me the
motivation is just like you needed to
start a new currency Bitcoin it was
easier to do that than reform the FED I
think it's easier to start a new country
than reform the FDA and so I want to do
it to U in particular get to longevity
right meaning longevity enhancement
right and what does that mean so in an
interesting way and this will sound like
a trit statement but I think it's
actually a deep statement or let me
hopefully try to convince you it is
crypto is to finance s what longevity is
to you know the Curren state of medicine
why it inverts certain fundamental
assumptions okay so at first crypto
looks like traditional Finance it's got
the charts and the bands and you're
buying and selling so on but what
Satoshi did is he took fundamental
premises and flipped them for example in
the traditional macroeconomic worldview
hyperinflation is bad but deflation is
also bad so a little inflation is good
right in the traditional macroeconomic
worldview um it's good that there are
custodians banks that you know kind of
intermed the whole system right in the
traditional you know worldview um every
transaction needs to be reversible
because somebody could make a mistake
and and so on and so forth right in the
traditional worldview you don't really
have root access over your money Satoshi
inverted all of those things okay
obviously you know the big one is
hyperinflation was bad but he also
thought mild inflation was bad and
deflation was good that's just a
fundamental shift okay he gave you root
access over your money you're now a
system administrator of your own money
you can room- RF your entire fortune or
send Millions with a keystroke you are
now the system administrator of your own
money that alone is why cryptocurrency
is important if you want system
administration access at times to
computers you'll want it to currency
right to be Sovereign you know there
other assumptions where like the
assumption is every transaction is
private in the existing system by
default or it's it's visible only to the
state whereas at least the initial you
know the Bitcoin blockchain everything
is public right there various kinds of
things like this where he just inverted
fundamental
premises and um and then the whole
crypto system is in the crypto economy
is in many ways a teasing out of what
that means just to give you one example
the US dollar people have seen those
graphs where it's like inflating and so
it just like loses value over time and
you've seen that okay whereas uh and and
most of the time it's just sort of
denied that it's losing any value the um
the most highbrow way of Defending it is
the US dollar trades
off temporary short-term price stability
for long-term
depreciation and Bitcoin makes the
opposite
trade-off in theory at least long-term
appreciation at the expense of
short-term price
instability because like you know
there's the whole plunge Protection Team
and so on basically there's there's
various ways in which quote price
stability is tried to be maintained in
the medium term at the expense of
long-term depreciation you need like a
reserve of assets to keep you know
stabilizing the dollar against various
things so what does crypto medicine look
like relative to Fiat medicine to make
the same analogy right the existing
medical system it assumes that um a
quick death is is bad an early death is
bad but also that living forever is
either unrealistic or impossible or
undesirable that you should die with
dignity or or something like that okay
so a little death is good that's the
existing medical system whereas as the
concept of life
extension and you know David Sinclair
and you know what you call you call it
health span says rejects that
fundamental premise and it says actually
the way to defeat cancer is to defeat
aging aging is actually a programmed
biomedical biological process and we can
we have results that are showing
stopping or even reversing Aging in some
ways and so now just like uh just like
with with uh with the other thing you
say a quick death is bad and so is
actually death itself right so we
actually want significant life extension
this is similar it's very is very
similar to what uh you know the the
rejection of the the Fiat system right
the Fiat system says Al little inflation
is good Fiat medicine says a little
death is good Bitcoin says actually no
inflation just get more valuable over
time and crypt medicine says actually
let's you know extend life this leads to
all kinds of new things where you start
actually thinking about all right how do
I maintain my health with um you know
Diagnostics how do I um you know take
control of my own on health but the
decentralization of medicine all the
stuff that I've been describing sort of
fits like longevity is traditional
medicine as crypto is to traditional
currency if we take those assumptions
separately so we take cryptocurrency
aside MH is that to you obvious that
this letting go of this
assumption about about death is that is
that an obvious thing is
longevity Obviously good versus for
example the The Devil's Advocate to that
would be what we want is to keep death
and maximize the quality of life up
until the end well like so that uh you
you ride into the sunset healthy
somebody who is listening to the whole
podcast say well bologi just a few hours
ago you were saying this jocy runs the
US and they're all old and they don't
get it blah blah blah now you're talking
about making people live forever so's
never any new blood to was out haha what
a contradiction right it's funny that
you you're you're so on point across all
the topics we and uh all the topics we
covered and the possible criticism I
love it well just try to anticipate you
know some of well done done sir the I
think the argument on that is so long as
you have a frontier it is okay for
someone to live long okay so long as
people can exit to a new thing number
one number two two is in order for us to
go and you know colonize other planets
and so on you know if you do want to get
to Mars if you want to become you know
Star Trek and you know what have you
um probably going to need to have you
know like you know just to survive a
long flight so to speak you know
multiple Lightyear flight you you're
going to need to have life extension so
to become a pioneering you know
Interstellar kind of thing I know that
see like it's it's a kind of thing which
sounds like okay yeah and when we're on
the move Moon we're going to need
shovels you know it it sounds like
a piling a fantasy on top of a fantasy
in that sense but it's also something
where if you're talking about the vector
of our civilization where are we going
well I actually do think it's either
anarco primitivism or optimism
transhumanism either we are shutting
down civilization it's degrowth it's you
know unibomber Etc or it's the stars and
escaping the prime number maze it's like
to
me it's obvious that we're going to if
we were to survive expand out into space
yes and it's
obvious that once we do we'll look back
at anyone which is currently most people
that didn't think of this future didn't
anticipate this future work towards this
future as as Lites like as people who
didn't totally didn't get it it will
become obvious if right now it's
impossible and then it will become
obvious yes it seems like yes longevity
in some form I mean there could be a lot
of arguments of the different forms
longevity could take but in some form
longevity is almost a prerequisite for
the expansion out into the cosmos that's
right expansion of longevity there's
also like a way to bring it back to
Earth to an extent which is how were
societies used to be judged you may
remember people used to talk about life
expectancy as a as a big thing right
life expectancy is actually a very very
very good metric why it's a ratio scale
variable you know there's like four
different class of variables statisti
talk about ratio scale is like years or
meters or kilograms okay then you have
interval scale where plus and minus
means something but there's no absolute
zero then you have ordinal where there's
only ranks and plus and minus don't mean
thing and then you have categorical like
uh the Yankees and the the Braves are
categorical variables they're just
different but you all you have is the
comparator operator whether you have a
quality you don't have a rank okay so
ratio scale data is the best because you
can compare it across space and time if
you have a skon that is like you know 2
m tall that's from 3,000 years ago you
can compare the height of people from
many many years ago different cultures
and times right whereas their currency
is much harder to Value that's not like
a ratio scale variable other things are
harder to Value across space and time
right so life expectancy is good because
as a ratio scale variable with a very
clear definition right like when someone
born and died you know those are
actually relatively clear um by the most
other things aren't like that you know
you that's why murder or you know death
that you know it can be scored it's
unambiguous you know it's done when it's
done whereas when does somebody get sick
oh they were kind of sick were they were
sick today they were sick at this hour
the boundary conditions many other kinds
of things are not like clearcut like
that right and I should just briefly
comment that life expectancy does have
this
Quirk a dark Quirk that it uh when you
just crudely look at it is incorporates
uh child mortality mortality at age of
one or age of five and um maybe it's
better and clearer to look at mortality
after after five or whatever uh and
that's still those metrics still hold in
interesting ways and measure the
progress of human civilization in
interesting ways yeah that's right you
actually want longevity biomarkers a lot
of people are working on this there's
this book called The Picture of Dorian
Gray right and the concept is sell your
soul to you know ensure the picture
rather than he will age and fade right
and uh so the concept is that that thing
on the wall just reflects his age and
you can see it okay so there's a premise
that's embed in a lot of Western culture
that to gain something you must lose if
you if you're Icarus and you try to fly
then you will you know you'll fly too
high and it'll melt your wings but guess
what we fly every day commercial air
flight right so the opposite of like the
Icarus or Picture of Dorian Gray kind of
thing is the movie Limitless which I
love because it's so Nan and so unusual
relative to the dystopian you know
Sci-Fi movies where there's a without
giving I mean the movie is kind of old
now but um there's a drug in it that's a
neotropic that boosts you know your
cognitive abilities and it's got side
effects but at the end he Engineers out
the side effects amazing just like you
know yeah there are planes that crash
and we we land right okay so why did I
mention the picture during great well
there's another aspect of it which is
longevity B marker the point is to kind
of estimate how many years of life you
have left by um you know that that q.
bio or integr or or you take all these
analyses on on somebody right one of the
best longevity biomarkers could be um
just your face right you image the face
and you can sort of tell oh somebody
looks like they've aged oh somebody
looks younger etc etc and um this is
actually data that you've got on
millions and millions of people where
you could probably start having AI
predict okay what is somebody's life
expectancy given their current face and
other kinds of things right because you
have their name they have your birth
date you have their you know date they
passed away if they've already they'
already passed away right and you have
photos of them through their life right
so just Imaging might give a reasonably
good longevity biomarker but then you
can supplement that with a lot of other
variables and now you can start
benchmarking every treatment by its
change and how much time you have left
MH if that treatment that
intervention boosts
your estimated life expectancy by 5
years you can see that in the data you
can get feedback on whether your
longevity is being boosted or not okay
um and so what this does it just
fundamentally changes the assumptions in
the system now with that said uh you
know life extension may be the kind of
thing I'm not sure if it'll work for Our
Generation we may be too late it may
work for the next Generation would that
make you sad well I've got something
you're the last gener generation could
be but I've got something for you mhm
which is uh I call it genomic
reincarnation okay this one you probably
haven't heard before I've tweeted about
it okay so by the way good uh time to
mention that your Twitter is one of the
greatest twitters of all time so people
should follow you well Lex Freedman has
one of the greatest podcasts of all time
you guys should listen to Lex Freedman
podcast which you may be doing right
which you may be doing right now yes
yeah uh well thank you so uh what was
the term again sorry genomic uh so I
call it genomic not Resurrection but
genomic reincarnation okay so here's the
concept you may be aware that you can
synthesize strands of DNA okay um
there's sequencing of DNA which is
reading it and synthesizing DNA which is
like creating strands of
DNA uh what's interesting is you can
actually also do that at the full uh
chromosome level for bacterial
chromosomes remember that thing I was
saying earlier about the minimum life
form you know that Craig Venter made so
people have synthesized like entire
bacterial chromosomes and they work like
they can literally essentially print out
a living organism all right now when you
go uh from bacteria to UK carots which
are the the um Kingdom of life that
we're part of right yeast are part of
this Kingdom and so on it becomes harder
because the chromosomes are more
complicated but folks are working on
ukar chromosome synthesis and if you
spot me that sci-fi assumption that
eventually we'll be able to take your
genome sequence and just like we can
synthesize a bacterial chromosome we can
synthesize not just one ukar chromosome
but your entire complement of
chromosomes in the lab right because you
have you know 23 you know 46 whatever
you take the pairs what you can do is
potentially print somebody out from
disk reincarnate
them in so far if your sequence
determines you and you can argue with
this because there's epigenetics and
other stuff okay but let's just say A
first order your DNA sequence is Lex you
can sequence that okay you can do full
genome sequencing and log that to a file
then here's the you know the karma part
your crypto Community where you've built
up enough Karma among
them if when you die your karma balance
is high enough they will spend the money
to reincarnate the next Lex who can then
watch everything that happened in your
past life
and you can tell them something
MH everything I described there I mean
if you spot me eukariotic chromosome
synthesis that's the only part that like
you know I think I think will be
possible Right folks are working on it
I'm sure someone will M essentially a
clone it's like a clone right but it is
um it is you in a different time you're
in a different time but you don't
unfortunately have the memories well you
could probably watch watch the like the
digest of your life and it would be
pretty interesting right I mean yeah the
the you know that's actually a process
for psychology to study if you create a
blank mind what would you need to show
that mind to align it very
well with the experiences with the
fundamental experiences that Define the
original version such that the resulting
clone would have similar Behavior
patterns worldviews
perspectives feelings all those kinds of
things potentially right in including
sadly enough traumas and all that or
what have you right but basically just
like in a very simple version of it you
know by the time one is age 20 or 30 or
something in your 20s you'll sort of
learn your own personal operating system
you'll be like oh alcohol really doesn't
agree with me or something like that you
just by trial and error you know things
that are idiosyncratic to your own
physiology like oh you know I I'm
totally wrecked if I uh get seven hours
of sleep versus nine hours or whatever
it is right people will have different
kinds of you know things like this that
manual can be given to your next self so
you can know don't do this do this don't
do this do this right to some extent
personal genomics already gives you some
of this where you're like oh I'm a
caffeine non you know or slow
metabolizer oh that explains X or Y you
know or I I have a weird version of
alcohol De hydrogenous oh okay that
explains you know my alcohol tolerance
so you know this is part of the broader
category of what I call practical
Miracles right so it's longevity it's
genomic reincarnation it is restoring
sight and it is curing deafness with you
know the uh you know artificial eyes and
artificial ears it is um the super
soldier serum did I show you that so
like myad and n a tweet about this
basically X-Men are real so here is a
study from anym from several years ago
okay
uh when is this is like the mid
2000s this was
in 2004 okay so it's now 17 years later
it's probably this is almost certainly a
a teenager by now so this kid basically
was just totally built yeah okay
extraordinarily musular like very
muscular at a at a at a very young age
yes so the child's birth rate was in the
75th percent he appeared extraordinarily
muscular with protruding muscles in his
thighs motor and mental has been normal
now at 4 and a half years of age he
continues to have increased muscle bulk
and strength and so essentially myat
mutation associated with gross muscle
hypertrophy in a child so this is like
real life
X-Men okay and um there's pictures of
animals yes so company called variant
bio that is looking at people who have
exceptional health related traits and it
is looking for essentially this kind of
thing but maybe more disease or or
whatever related right for example
people who have natural immunity to co
understanding how that works perhaps we
can give other people artificial
immunity to co right um if you scroll up
you see my kind of tweet super soldier
Serum is real where it's like wild type
mouse and a m null and look at the chest
on that thing you see the before and
after wow okay this is what's possible
you know this could be us but you
regulating you know right you know
saying like this could beb play this
could be us but the FDA regulating right
all this
okay oh yeah on steroids but it's not
that's the thing is it's not steroids
well that's the thing is people when
people again you get back to the Icarus
thing they think oh steroids well that's
definitely going to give you cancer
screw up your hormones etc etc and it
could but you know what like have we
actually put in that much effort into
figuring out like the the right way of
doing testosterone supplementation or
the right way of doing this uh obviously
we managed to put a lot of effort into
marijuana increasing the potency of it
or what have you could we put the effort
into these kinds of drugs right or these
kinds of compounds maybe I think that
would actually be a really good thing
the thing about this is I feel this is
just a massively underexplored area um
rather than people drinking caffeine all
the time that's a very mild enhancing
drug okay uh nicotine is also arguably
kind of like that you know some people
will have it even without the cigarettes
right why can't we research this stuff
one way of thinking about it is you know
Lance Armstrong the the
cyclist yes he violated all the rules um
you know shouldn't have won the Tour to
France or anything like that but his
chemists and I say this somewhat tongue
and- cheek but also you know his
chemists are candidates for like the
Nobel Prize in chemistry because they
brought a man back from like testicular
cancer to like winning tour to Frances
against a bunch of guys who probably you
know bunch of them were also Juiced or
whatever right whatever was done there
take it out of the competition framework
there's a lot of testicular cancer
patients or or cancer patients period
who would want some of
that and we should take that seriously
we should take that Pursuit really
really really seriously Yes except again
just like the thero stuff all this
pathologize oh it's a Balo Scandal oh
it's this oh my God you know and yes of
course within the context of that game
they're cheating when the context of
life you want to be cheating death yes
right so um it's just kind of a reframe
on what is good right and it is just
taking away these assumptions that mild
inflation is good or mild death is good
and going towards Transcendence so that
gets me done with the giant FDA
biomedical Etc ET longevity yeah that's
beautifully beautifully done you have
you had two questions one was on Trump
and deplatforming and the other was on
crypto and the state of crypto and the
third is on India which one should we do
all right since we talked about how to
fix government we talked about how to
fix Health Medicine
FDA
longevity let us briefly talk about how
to fix social media perhaps sure since
we kind of talked about it from
different directions but it'd be nice to
just look at social media and if it can
perhaps first as an example maybe it's
not a useful example but to me it was
one that kind of shook me a little bit
uh is the removal of trump and since
then other major figures but Donald
Trump was probably the biggest person
ever to be removed from social media um
do you understand why that was done Can
you steal man in the case for it and
against it and if there's something
broken about that how do we fix it
Steelman the case 4 is kind of obvious
in the sense of um you are seeing a
wouldbe dictator who is trying to run a
coup against democracy who has his um
supporter
go and storming the seat of government
who could use his app to whip up his
followers across the country to reject
um you know the will of the people and
uh so you're an executive and you know
you will take actions that while perhaps
controversial are still within the law
and uh you'll make sure that you do your
part to defend democracy by uh making
sure that at least this guy's megaphone
is taken away and that his supporters
cannot organize more rights right that's
basically the case you know for the
deplatforming okay um would you agree
that that's so it's like really steel
Manning it I'm I'm you asked the steal
man so I'm giving the for case yeah well
I think I guess I would like to
separate the would be
dictator oh I guess if you're storming
the capital you are dictator I I see I
see um so those are two are interl right
you have to have somehow
a personal Judgment of the person bad
enough to be worth this you know
significant step yeah it's not just
their actions or words in a particular
situation but broadly this everything
that led up to this moment and so right
yeah so that's that's a for case right
now the against case there's actually
several against cases right there's
obviously the Trump supporters you know
against case there is the um sort of the
libertarian SL um left libertar Ian you
know against Case and there is the uh
rest of world against Case okay there
actually three because it's not just two
factions there's multiple right so what
is the Trump supporter against case
there's an article called The Secret
bipartisan campaign that saved the 2020
election right which came out um a few
weeks after uh the inauguration like
February 4th 2021 and essentially uh the
Trump supporter would read this as
basically saying uh in the name of
Defending democracy they corrupted
democracy um you know whether it was
actually vote counts or just changes of
all the rules for mail and ballots and
stuff there were regular meetings
between the Chamber of Commerce and you
know AFL or and the unions in particular
they admit that the BLM Riots of you
know the mid 2020s were actually on a
string and they could say stand down
right so that's actually that's a quote
from this article where it's like the
word went out Stand Down protect the
results announced that it would not be
activating entire National mobilization
Network today remains ready to activate
if necessary hoser credits the activists
for their restraint so basically the
activists reoriented the protected
results protest towards a weekend of
Celebration so point being that the fact
that the Trump supporter would say the
fact that they could tell them to stand
down meant that the previous you know
unrest was in part you know coordinated
and so they'd say okay so that makes it
illegitimate in a different way right
plus you know know what is one Riot on
Jan 6 versus the attacks on the White
House and stuff you know there's
storming at the White House in mid 2020
and uh didn't actually storm the White
House but they're setting fires outside
and it's qu quite a lot of stuff right
so the second against Case is the let's
say Libertarians left libertarian who'd
say um do we really want uh giant
corporations regardless of what you
think about Trump and you don't have to
be a trump supporter do you really want
giant corporations to be determining who
can say what on the internet and if they
can deplatform a sitting president and
the quote most powerful man in the world
he's not the most powerful man in the
world in fact um the quote people are
electing a figurehead and actually it's
the heads of network that are more
powerful than the heads of state right
that the fact that the CEOs of Facebook
and Twitter and Google and apple and
Amazon all made those decisions at the
same time to not just deplatform Trump
from Twitter which literally billions of
people around the World saw but also
censor or stop on Facebook and to have
Google and apple pull parlor out of the
App Store and Amazon shut down the back
end that would be corporate collusion By
Any Other Name it's actually very
similar to the so-called business plot
against FDR FDR
was a complicated figure who can in some
ways best be thought of as the least bad
communist dictator or socialist dictator
of the 20th century why because he
nationalized the economy repeal the 10th
Amendment right tried to pack the courts
he you know sicked the government on all
of his enemies from huy long to Andrew
melon obviously he intered the Japanese
which shows that wasn't really totally a
good guy right we don't usually think
it's the same guy who did this did that
earlier in his life um most people don't
know this one he led uh a whole Navy
thing to entrap gay Sailors and do you
know about this one no yeah Google FDR
entrapment of gay Sailors basically he
got young men to try to find folks
within the Navy who were gay and then um
basically entrap them so that they could
be prosecuted and what have you right
FDR did a lot of stuff but fundamentally
nationalized the economy and and set up
the alphabet soup is what they called it
at the time and that's like all these
agencies or whatever and um in some
sense he's you know like continuous like
there's there had been a rising trend of
centralization Woodward Wilson obviously
centralized Lincoln centralized right
even actually you know 1789 was a degree
of centralization over the more you know
like loose thing that was 1776 1789 so
he was on that trend line but he was
definitely a huge kind of dog leg up so
the thing is that because of all the
lawsuits that were flying many you know
Forks like uh Amy schay you know has
written a book The Forgotten man and
essentially her thesis and thesis of
many others at that time like John T
Flynn who's this journalist who you know
was Pro FDR and then was against was
that FDR made the Great Depression great
okay that it wouldn't have been such a
bad thing without him mucking up the
entire economy and giving it a sickness
it would have recovered quickly without
that right this a counterfactual which
people just argue about it really
angrily back and forth and you can't
actually run the experiment unless you
could Fork the economy right just like
where the bailouts good or bad I think
they were bad but how could I prove it I
need to actually be able to Fork the
economy crypto actually allows you in
theory to do that like where folks could
actually shift balances this is a whole
separate thing where you can actually
start to make macroeconomics into more
of an experimental science rather than
simply arguing from Authority You could
argue from experiment um some of the
virtual economy stuff that Edward
castronova has done is relevant to this
we can talk about that point is though
with FDR there's this thing because he
had such a war on Private Industry at
that time and Justified it with this
narrative quote bold persistent
experimentation there was something
called the quote business plot where all
of these captains of industry that he
hadd been beating up and again Teddy
Roosevelt had also been doing this with
you know the trustbuster um the Jos at
the time Ida Tarbell had gone and you
know basically ran all these articles on
Rockefeller knocked him down wood Wilson
in control but FDR the the cosos were
thinking oh bad this is so terrible
there's a so-call business plot uh to
try to take over the government and uh
stop FDR from you know pushing the
country in what they thought was a bad
Direction Smedley Butler was a general
that they recruited to try to help them
with this but he turned on them and he
went and kind of broke the whole thing
open and told to Congress and so on and
so this guy you know
uh the whole plot was broken up right
now one way of thinking about today or
the you know the whole aftermath of Jan
6 is it's a business plot but in reverse
because the generals and the CEOs both
were against Trump and actually the
business plot happened and now all the
cosos just bo bo Boop you know they
pulled all the all the pushed all the
buttons that they needed to and now the
network was Prime over the state okay
now why why is that an interesting way
of looking at it because one thing I
have in the book is you can kind of
think of 1950 as like is as Peak
centralization you go forward and
backward in time things decentralize you
know for examp and and you start getting
Mirror Image events that happen with the
opposite outcome for example 1890 the
frontier closes 1991 the internet
Frontier opens internet becomes open for
Commerce okay you go backwards in time
you have the Spanish Flu forwards in
time covid-19 right um backwards in time
you have the uh captain of Industry the
robber barons forwards in time you have
the tech billionaires and there's so
many examples of this like another one
is um backwards in time the New York
Times is allying with Soviet Russia to
choke out Ukraine now today they have
reinvented themselves as cheerleaders
for Ukraine against you know nationalist
Russia right and of course I think you
could absolutely support Ukraine on
other measures but it's pretty
hypocritical for the guys who profited
from the h deore you know the ox sbur
family literally profited from you know
the HM to now make themselves
cheerleaders for Ukraine it's actually
this insane thing which we can talk
about a tiny tangent on that yeah you
put it brilliantly and a reminder for
anyone who listens to me talk about
Ukraine it is possible to have empathy
for a nation and not be part of the
machine that generates a mainstream
narrative yes that's right like
basically you know I I was actually one
of the first three Estonian e e
residents okay and I completely
understand why and the baltics and all
these countries including Ukraine that
just recently within living memory got
their independence from the Soviet
Empire would not want to be forceably
reintegrated into a place that they just
escaped from you know and so that is
something which is sort of outside the
American left right you know tired kind
of thing where when you understand it
from that point of view right then
there's like a fourth point of view
which is like India's point of view or
like much of the developing world or
what I call you know parts of it are are
you know parts are descending whatever
but much of the rest of the world
outside of that border region says look
uh we're sympathetic to the ukrainians
but we can't allow our people to starve
so we're going to maintain trade and
guess what actually you know we've got a
lot of wars in our neck of the woods and
human rights crises that Europe just
didn't even care about so it can't be
that Europe's problems are the world's
problems but the world's problems are
not Europe's problems right so that's
like a fourth point of view then a fifth
point of view is China which is like
guess what we're going to be the Iran of
the Iraq War you know where like who won
the Iraq War Iran arguably right they
extended their influence into Iraq right
so China's like guess what we're going
to turn Russia into our gas station and
build a pipeline they're building
there's a power SE is like the name of
the Eastern Russia pipeline just like
nordstream is you know nordstream one
and nordstream two I think they're
building a new pipeline you know through
Mongolia so zean ping and Putin and the
Mongolian head of state were all
photographed kind of thumbs uping this
pipeline we'll see if it goes through
but it's ironic that you know Russia
wanted to make Ukraine their you know
Colony but the outcome of this war may
be that Russia becomes China's Colony
you know so that's at least like five
different perspectives right there's
like the US establishment perspective
there's the you know Tucker Maga
perspective there's the baltics and
Ukrainian perspective there's like the
Indian and like poor countries
perspective then there's Chinese
perspective then of course there's the
Russians right
so um just respect to that by the way
that's another example of History
happening in Reverse this is the sinos
Soviet partnership except this time
China is a senior partner and Russia is
a junior partner and this time they're
both nationalists rather than communist
and there's so many flips like this and
you know I'm gonna list a few more
actually because there's so so so many
of them do you have an explanation why
that happened yes let me just list a few
of them this is in the the network St
book it's in the chapter called
fragmentation Frontier forth turning
Futures our past right so um I give this
example of like a fluid unmixing right
just watch this for a second right this
is from Smart everyday unmixing color
machine Ultra L reversible flow smart
every day
2117 and so you can mix something and
then like this thing that you don't
think of as reversible you can unmix it
which is insane right that it works okay
the physics of that situation it just
works right so uh for people just
listening that there is whatever the
mixture this is this is ultra Lam
reversible flow so this probably has to
do something to do with the
material we're used to mixing not being
a reversible process exactly and that's
what that shows and then he he then
reverses the mixing it's able to do it
perfectly that's right so that's like
the Futures are past thesis it shows
that Free Will is an illusion just
kidding okay basically there's there's
you know some environments where you
know the equations are like time
symmetrical so you can right um and this
is one model sort of just an interesting
visual model for what's happening in the
world as we red decentralize after the
centralized Century right so um
basically you know I mentioned the
interent frontier over reopens back then
the Western frontier closed T we
experienced covid-19 back then we
experienced the Spanish Flu Tech
billionaires any we other the C indry
right today Founders like Alon and
dorsy are starting to win against the
stalish journalists back then I had a
Tarbell demagogued and defeated
Rockefeller I think net net Founders win
this time versus the journos back then
the Jos won over the founders okay um
today we have cryptocurrencies back then
we had private banking today this is an
amazing one we have a populous movement
movement of digital gold Advocates back
then because Bitcoin maximalist and so
on where gold has become populist
because it's against the printing money
and so and so forth back then we had a
populist movement against gold in the
form of William Jennings Bryan in the
cross of gold speech gold was considered
a tool of big business now gold is the
tool tool against big business and big
government right uh digital gold yeah
digital gold right today we have the
inflation and cultural conflict of viar
like America back then we had the
inflation cultural conflict of viar
Germany say in viar America we have
right and left fighting in the streets
same unfortunately in viar Germany Peter
turchin has written about you know today
we have what turchin considers
antibellum like polarization like preor
polarization back then you know if you
go further back in time we had what we
now know to be antib pration right say
we have Airbnb back then we had passes
today we have Uber back then we had
Gypsy cabs um you know so today we see
the transition from neutral to yellow
journalism back then we saw the
transition from yellow to quote neutral
journalism right um and you know today
figures like Mike Moritz he you know
wrote about China's energetic and
America's laconic but back then bertran
Russell actually wrote this whole long
book actually you know the mathematician
beran Russell right wrote this whole
long book which I didn't even realize he
wrote about these kind of topics um
about uh the problem of China and one of
his observations was U you again this
I'm not saying this is I'm just saying
he made this observation he was saying
that America was energetic and China
laconic at the time because everybody
was in opium DS and so on and so forth
okay more examples the one I just
mentioned where the Chinese and Russians
are again lining up against the West
except this time the Chinese are the
senior partner in the relationship
rather than the junior partner today I
think in the second Cold War there will
also be a third world but this time I
think that third world might come in
first because it's not the non-aligned
movement it's the aligned movement
around web 3 protocols
that's fascinating yeah that's where
India comes in by the way something we
haven't mentioned Africa that there
could be very interesting things in
Africa as well Nigeria is actually Niger
has first tech unicorn um and I'm
investing there I've uh and I think you
know it's one of these things where
China's risen India's like about 10
years behind uh you know China but I
think this is the Indian decade in many
ways we can come back to that point um
but there's absolutely you know Sparks
of light in Africa I mean it's a huge
continent now the more behind sorry to
interrupt the more behind you are the
more opportunity you have to LEAP fro
sometimes that's right and P A is
classic example where they did this in
in East Africa but uh but I think
there's more possibility there um so
what is uh the fact that this uh there's
a kind of
symmetry what is that um how do how did
that take us from uh uh Trump and the
the different perspective you the
libertarian perspective of uh it doesn't
really matter yeah because the
libertarian perspective or the left left
libertarian perspective would say is it
really a good idea to have total
corporate power against the quote
elected government even if you know you
may disagree do you want to open the
door to Total you know corporate
oligarchy and it's like the opposite
that's why I mention it's like the
opposite of the business plots and they
pulled on that thread okay so um the the
macro explanation that I have for this
future is our past thesis and there's
more it also gives some predictions
right if you go backwards in time the us
federalizes into many individual states
like before the Civil War people said
the United States are and after they
said the United States is before FDR the
10th Amendment reserved rights to the
states afterwards it was just Federal
Regulation of everything as we go
forwards in time you're seeing States
break away from the feds on uh gun laws
drug laws right Sanctuary cities okay um
many of kinds of things you know and now
Florida for example has its own guard
that's like not a a National Guard but
like a state guard other other cities uh
other states are doing this and that's a
force of decentralization of saying that
parallels yes in Reverse in Reverse
right happened before make America
States again nice okay that's what's I
think happening right I'm not saying I
well I think there's aspects of that
that are good there's aspects are bad
but um just like that's kind of the the
angle right but then that's I I mean
from your perspective that's probably
not enough right that's that's not um
it's part of the Future Let's just say
whether I think you you suggested all
kinds of ways to build different
countries I think that's probably one of
them you said like start micro micro
countries or something like this I
forgot the terminology yeah micro
Nations yeah that's not not I actually
think of them as a better term as micro
States because they're actually not
Nations that's why they don't work but
Micro states are better right uh coming
back to the difference between the
nation and the state the nation is like
the nation state is a term that people
use without expanding it but Nation
comes from the same root word as like
natality so it's like common descent
common birth right common origin like
the Japanese Nation that's a group of
people that have you know come down from
history right hence nationalism yeah
whereas the state is like the
administrative layer above them it's
like labor and capital like labor and
management okay the American state stood
over the Japanese nation in 1946 after
the war right Al so you weren't talking
about traditionary you know that that
doesn't matter in terms of like I
thought you meant nation is a thing that
carries across the generations there's a
tradition there's a culture and so on
and state is just the manag the uh the
layer I mean that's also that's also
another way of thinking about it right
there a reversal there as well okay yeah
so so I mean one way of thinking about
it is um you know one nation under God
indivisible is no longer true it is
America is at least two Nations the
Democrat and Republican in the sense of
their own cultures where I can show you
graph after graph you've seen the
polarization graphs I can show you
network diagrams where you know like uh
there's this graph of polarization in
Congress where there's red and blue
there're separate things there's this
article from 2017 showing um how uh you
know shares on Facebook and Twitter are
just separate subgraphs they're just
separate graphs in The Social Network
and they're pulling apart those are two
Nations uh they're not under God because
people in the US no longer believe in
God and they're very much divisible
because uh 96% of Democrats won't marry
Republicans in a high percentage other
way and in one what that means is in one
generation ideology becomes biology
these become ethnic groups it takes on
the character of hudu and tosti or
Protestant and Catholic Sunni and Shiite
it's not about ideology if you think
about all the flips during covid right
where people were on one side versus the
other side it's Tribal it's just tribe
on tribe and so it's not Universalist
that identity of American makes less
sense than the identity of Democrat and
Republican right now or perhaps the
identity of inal states where I think
that's a good or bad thing I think
that's unfortunately you know whatever
it is the arrow of History right on the
opposite side of things India is
actually was 56 princely States at the
time of Indian unification um in from
1947 to 19 1947 when they got
independence from the British it was 562
princely States most people don't know
that part it got or like outside India
don't know that part it got unified into
a republic only by like 1950 and India
is like actually a modern cre India is
like Europe it's kind of like the
European Union in the sense that we
didn't have a unified India in the past
it was something a lot of different
countries like Northern South India or
like garat and thadu are as different as
Finland and Spain okay but India has
moved in the direction of much more
unification like much more you know um
centralization or what have you whereas
the US is decentralizing you go okay few
more things there are Flips and I'll
I'll finish this off today we're seeing
the rise of theonomous founder and
starup societies back all the way back
in the 1770s we saw tonomous founders of
starup countries namely the US right
Federalist Papers um today we're seeing
so far unsuccessful calls for wealth
seizures in the US back then we saw
FDR's executive 6102 which was a
successful seizure of gold I expect we
may see something like that an attempted
seizure of digital gold and I think
that'll be one of the things that
individual states like Florida or Texas
may not enforce that and I think that's
actually the kind of thing where you
could see you know a like a breakup
potential in the future right one other
thing that kind of Rhymes is in many
ways like the modern US
establishment the story that you hear is
the victories in 1945 and 1865 legitim
the current establishment that is being
the Nazis being the Confederates right
so they beat the ethnic nationalists
abroad and they beat the quote
secessionists at home right and uh the
ethnic nationalists were you know Arian
Nazis and the secessionists were you
know slave slave owners and against
freedom and so on so forth okay I'm not
disputing that I'm just saying that
that's just like their the way people
think about it there's a possibility and
I'm not saying it's 100% at all okay but
if you're a Sci-Fi
writer there's a possibility that the US
loses to the ethnic nationalist abroad
except this time they're Chinese
Communists non-white Communists as
opposed to Aran Nazis which seemed like
the total opposite okay and uh there's a
possibility that there is a um Financial
secession at home where it's you know
Bitcoin maximalist states that are
advocating for Freedom the opposite of
slavery you see what I'm
saying oh boy that's dark you're uh
you're looking for major things in
history that don't yet have a cognate
going forward right and that's a nice
way to think about the future it is only
one model and you know any mental model
or something like that that's why I say
as a Sci-Fi scenario it's like a
scenario one could contemplate right
where the new version has I mean the
Chinese Communists do not think of
themselves as Arians right um but they
are Ultra Nationalist and you know the
Hitler comparisons people talk about
Hitler endlessly you know like Saddam is
a new Hitler everybody's a new Hitler
Etc if there is a comparison to quote
Nazi Germany it is you know CCP China in
a sense why they are
non-english-speaking
manufacturing Powerhouse with a massive
military buildout under one leader that
is a genuine pure competitor to the US
on many dimensions and in fact you know
exceeding on some dimensions of
technology and science right
that is like it the problem is it's a
boy who cried wolf people say this a
zillion times right um and you know that
is like uh you know I'm not saying this
by the way crucially I'm there's like I
think China is uh very complicated and
there's hundreds of millions of people
probably half in China that disagrees
with the current ultr nationalist kind
of thing right and so I kind of hate it
when innocent Chinese people abroad or
whatever are just like attacked on this
basis or what have you plus
the other thing is that many Chinese
people will say well look relative to
you know where we were when Deng took
over in 1978 we built up the entire
country we're not starving to death
anymore and the West wants to recolonize
us and so so I understand where that's
coming from this way you want to be able
to argue different points of view with
that
said there's one huge difference right
which is Nazi Germany was like 70
million people and the US was 150
million and the Soviet Union was 150
million and the UK was like 50 million
so they were outnumbered like five to
one
mhm China outnumbers the US four to one
this is going to be a fun Century things
are going to get under this model under
this model things are going to be
potentially crazy plus you know people
are like oh I think this is uh you know
again I have nothing personal you know
there's this guy Peter zahan he writes
these books right I probably agree about
20 or 30% but I disagree with a lot of
the rest and a bunch of it is basically
about how China's really weak and
America is really strong and the rest of
the world is screwed and um you know I
think there's absolutely problems in
China and uh you know like the current
management is actually messing a lot of
things up we could talk about that but I
do think that you know the US is like
fighting its Factory so one thing you
know Zion will talk about is how oh
America has this Blue Water Navy all the
aircraft carriers and China has nothing
it's got bookus Etc well China ships
things all around the world right it
probably has you know one of the most
most active fleets out there in terms of
you know it's commercial shipping um and
uh in terms of building ships here's a
quote China's merchant ship building
industry is the world's largest building
more than 23 million gross tons of
shipping in 2020 us yards built a mere
70,000 tons the same year though they
typically average somewhere in the
200,000 that is a 100 to 300 x ratio
just in ship building pretty much
everything else you can find in the
physical world is like that okay we're
not talking like 2x we're talking they
can put together a subway station in
hours with with prefab and the US takes
three years okay when you have a THX
difference in the physical world the
reason the US was won against you know
Nazi Germany in a serious fight is they
had this giant manufacturing plant that
was overseas and they just outproduced
right and they supplied the Soviets also
with lendley and the Soviets talked
about how they would not have won the
war without the Americans people are
like oh the Russians you know fought the
the the Russians armed by Americans
fought the Germans like it's it's a
Soviet Union they're not actually able
to make high quality stuff they're
obviously are individual people in
Soviet Russia who were Innovative right
I'm not taking that away there's a
there's a tradition of amazing I just
want to be like um there's individual
Russians who obviously I admire Mev and
uh you know korov and and so on there
there's amazing Russian scientist engine
so I'm not saying that you know I mean
in general from P from brilliant F like
yourself that criticize communism it's
too easy to say nothing communism
produces is good uh which of course is
not true a lot of brilliant people in
and then a lot of even you know there's
a lot of amazing things that been
created yeah so they had some amazing
mathematicians amazing scientists and so
on right however great branding on the
you know red and yellow The Branding is
Stellar Nazi Germany to excellent
branding with the flag and so on you
know yeah so
so end ends there in terms of
compliments yeah well actually they
copied a lot of stuff from each other
you know like there's this movie called
the Soviet story it basically shows a
lot of Nazi and Soviet propaganda things
next to each other and you can see guys
almost in like the same pose it's almost
like uh you know how AI will do like
style transfer you can almost see
because the Socialist realism style of
like the muscular bronny worker very
similar to like the style of the Arian
Superman you know like pointing at the
verman or whatever and then there's the
crappy open source version that tries to
copy which is musolini yeah that just
like that does the same exact thing but
does it kind of shittier so right anyway
so my main thing about this is basically
like trying to fight your factory in the
physical world is probably not going to
work people are I think overconfident on
this stuff right with that said I think
we want to at all you know the future is
not yet determined right at All Odds you
know all we want to avoid a hot war
between like I mean a hot war between
the US and China would be do you think
it's possible that we get a war we're
doing these things like Pelosi going to
Taiwan and trying to trying to cause
something like look again this is one of
these things which is complicated
because obviously if you're there's more
than one perspective on this right again
you've got the US establishment the US
conservative the Taiwanese perspective
the Chinese perspective all the
bystanders over there there's more than
one perspective on this okay if you're
you know China's one of China's
neighbors you look at China with
apprehension like Vietnam for example is
sort of fallen into uh or not fallen
into is partnering with India because
they're mutually apprehensive of China
China is not making like great friends
with its neighbors it's kind of you know
it's demonizing Japan it's it's so
alterationist nowadays um and so if
you're Taiwanese you're like uh yeah I
do not want to be under the Chinese
surveillance State I completely
understand that some people are pro
reunification others aren't but there's
more you know Trend you know um in some
ways for for Independence okay fine but
there's also an increasing temperature
across the entire world as we sit here
today there's speeches by Vladimir Putin
about the serious possibility of a
nuclear
war and that escalates kind of the heat
in the room of geopolitics it escalates
the heat in the room of course right and
the thing is people have this belief
that because something hasn't happened
it won't happen or can't happen but like
there were a lot of measures people took
during the Cold War
to make sure a nuclear exchange didn't
happen the whole mutually assur
destruction thing and communicating that
out and like the balance of Terror there
were smart guys on both sides who
thought through this and there were near
near misses right there you know like
there's that story about like the Soviet
Colonel who didn't order a nuclear
strike because he thought it was just
like an error in the instruments right
okay what's the point point is you know
for example py going to Taiwan that
didn't strengthen Taiwan that didn't
like that if if you're going to go and
provoke China I thought scholar stage is
his Twitter account had a good point
which is you should if you're actually
going to do it then you strengthen
Taiwan with like huge battalions of like
arms material and you make them a
porcupine and so on and so forth instead
her kind of going and Landing there and
mooning China and then flying back in
the middle of a hot war with Russia
that's absolutely you know in the middle
of an economic crisis or what have it
just it just you know can you can pick
battles or whatever right it's like you
don't have to fight Russia and China at
the same time it's like kind of insane
to do that okay plus even with Ukraine
um some people are like oh this was like
a a victory for US military policy or
something there's a guy who I'm not
trying to beat him up or anything he's
like this is in March thread on US
security assistance to Ukraine it's
working Ukraine might be one of the
biggest successes of US security
assistance and the reason is you know us
didn't focus on some high-end chiny
objects but on core military tasks that
focus should remain and it's like how is
this a success the West gave massive
arms to Ukraine only after the invasion
but not enough before to deter and now
Ukraine is like this Syria like
Battleground with you know a million
refugees or whatever the number is right
the country is blown to Smither
thousands of people dead whatever
thousand do gas in in Europe with like
10x energy radicalized Russians the
threat of World War III or even nuclear
war you know shooting somebody isn't
that's not like the point of a military
the point is you know com there's a
million ways to smash Humpty Dumpty into
pieces and you know unleash the blood
drenched Tides right and have people all
shooting each other and killing each
other it's really hard to maintain
stability that's what competence is it's
deterrence and stability right there's
not like a success in any way um it's
like an absolute tragedy for everybody
involved right yeah I mean deterrence of
course is the the number one thing but
there you know there's a lot to be said
there
um but I'm a huge not fan of declaring
Victory as we've done many times when
it's the wrong yeah I mean look I mean
the other thing about this is the whole
mission accomplished thing during your
mission accomplished is what I meant
yeah exactly mission accomplished was
obviously you know the thing is Russia
lives next door to Ukraine and so just I
mean just like Iraq lives next door to
Iran and Afghanistan is next door to
Pakistan and China and so if the US
eventually gets tired of it and leaves
those guys are next door right and so
you know who knows what's going to
happen here okay um but one of the
problems is like you know the whole
Afghanistan thing or the Iraq thing is
the lesson for people was the
uncertainty they're like is the US going
to fight don't know is will the US win
if it fights don't know therefore roll
the dice that uncertainty is itself like
tempting to folks you know like like
Putin or whatever right so point is
coming all the way back up we were
talking about how history future is our
past and FDR like the business plot FDR
failed but like the tech companies were
able to deplatform Trump right and the
left libertarian would say do we want
that much corporate power okay and so
that's so we gave the four case for
Trump D platforming protecting democracy
the Trump supporter case against which
is on the secret history of the Shadow
campaign the save the 2020 election
basically that article the left
libertarian or libertarian case against
and then to me what is you know like I
am more sympathetic
to the libertarian libertarian against
and then also maybe the fourth group
which is the non-american case right
which is to say every you know you know
you know amlo he's the uh he was the you
know head of state of Mexico I think at
that time okay um amlo macron you know
other folks everybody who is watching
this around the world basically saw
let's say us establishment or democrat
aligned folks just
decapitate you know the head of state
from digitally right like just boom gone
okay and they're like well if they can
do that in public to the US president
who's ably the most powerful man in the
world what does the Mexican president
stand against that nothing right like
these Us Media corporations these US
tech companies are so insanely powerful
everybody's on Twitter or what have you
other than China leaving them aside
they've got their own root system if
somebody tried to deplatform Zan paying
off of sign away bow they'd probably
just fall through a trapo you know they
whole family right but for the rest of
the world that's on the that that is
hosting their business their Politics on
these US tech companies they're like
regardless of whether it was Justified
on this guy that means they will do it
to anybody now the seal is broken just
like the bailouts as exceptional as they
were and the first everybody was shocked
by them then they became a policy
instrument and now there's bailouts
happening every single bill is printing
another whatever billion dollars or
something like that right can I ask on
your thoughts and advice on this topic
um if if I or anyone were to have a
conversation with Donald
Trump first of all should one do
so and uh if so how do you do it and it
may not necessarily be trump it could be
other people like Putin and xiin ping
and so on let's say people that are
censored right like people that
Platforms in general see as dangerous
Hitler you can go uh we keep bringing it
up of course that's the ultimate ede
case right um in the sense of that's
saying like something must be done this
is something therefore this must be done
right I've heard that one
before no right no but I love it yeah so
this is just can I just use that as an
explanation with confidence for
everything I do yeah sure there you go
right something must be done this is
something therefore must be done
therefore this must be done so that is
the like the two all kinds of
regulations all kinds of things are kind
of Justified on that basis right there's
a version of that which is uh punch a
Nazi I decide who is a Nazi you're a
Nazi therefore I punch you and that's
Justified yeah yeah and you know like
people say oh uh how many people are
calling Israelis you know like the these
things right um and
so the problem with argumentum at hurum
is it just I mean people will say
Obama's a Nazi everybody would say
everybody's a Nazi right but there is a
social consensus about who let's let's
set Nazis aside but who is dangerous for
society okay but now let's talk about
that all right so basically I think a
more interesting example than Hitler in
in this context is Herbert Matthews so
Fidel Castro before he became the
Communist dictator of Cuba was on the
Run he was like Assam Bin Laden at the
time he was like a terrorist that the
Cuban regime had seemingly defeated and
what Herbert Matthews did is he got an
intro to him he went to the you know
place where he was hiding out he gave an
interview and he printed this he
geography in the New York Times s with
this like you know photo of Castro
looking all you know Mighty and so on
and he's like Castro is still alive and
still fighting okay and uh there's this
book on this called the man who created
Fidel okay where basically nyt's article
was crucial positive press that got
Castro's point of view out to the world
and helped lead to the Communist
Revolution that actually impoverished
Cuba led to like gay people being you
know like uh discriminated against there
led to people fleeing you know and
drowning trying to escape right that's
an example of where platforming somebody
led to a very bad outcome in fact many
of the Communist dictators in the 20th
century had like their own personal
journalist right for example there's a
guy John Reed he's an American he's
buried uh you know if I get this right I
think he's buried at the Kremlin wall
okay um why is an American buried there
okay um because
he wrote a book called 10 days that
shook the world that whitewashed the
entire Soviet Revolution and uh that you
know the the Russian Revolution in 1917
October
Revolution and made these guys out to be
the good guys when they were actually
genocidal Psychopaths okay he got their
point of view out of the world and it
was a totally misleading point of view
all right do you think what what do you
think he was
thinking he's think he saw the
psychopathy you know sometimes it's not
obvious like well the French Revolution
had already happened so people kind of
knew that this sort of Psychopathic you
know Killing In The Name of equality
could produce bad results right and uh
but but it's more than that right so
it's John Reed it's Herbert Matthews
it's um Edgar snow okay so these are all
people who should be extremely famous
right um so Edgar snow is ma journalist
okay so he wrote um you know here's
there's actually a article in this how
1930s reporter from Missouri became
China's ideal ideal journalist okay and
he wrote various books including like
red star over China okay and it's just a
he geography of of ma right yeah and uh
then of course you've got Durant he is
like Stalin's biographer right just a
recap John Reed brought Lennon's message
to the world M's dead Durante helped
Stalin starve out the ukrainians M's
Dead uh Edgar snow uh was Ma's
biographer um and uh Herbert Matthews
was like castros and this guy David
David halberstam in Vietnam who uh was
effectively hoi mins he basically went
and uh took leaks from a communist spy
I'll give you the exact name f I'm going
to mispronounce this but it's perfect
spy the incredible double life of Pham
fan on Time Magazine reporter and
Vietnamese communist agent that guy was
the source of many fabricated stories
that David Halbert Sam printed in the
New York Times that led to the
undermining of the South Vietnamese
regime and you know for example stories
of Buddhists being killed and so on
Ashley rinberg in the great lady wink
writes this whole thing up at length so
you can go and read it for his
account but basically all of these
communist dictators had a journalist
right alongside them as their biographer
yeah okay but those are tools of the
propaganda machine versus well so my
point is MH these are five examples that
are on the far left that should be
balanced also against the times running
profiles of Hitler on the far right we
know that Bas you know the times
actually also ran a whole thing which
was you know Hitler's like Mountain
Retreat or something like that do you
know about that story what year was this
I'll tell you one second Hitler at home
in the clouds oh boy please tell me it's
like early 30s I think it's um oh yeah
this is auto detales this is actually a
guy that um Ashley rinberg writes up in
the great lady wined right 1937 37
there's another one where I think the
date is wrong but it's 39 you know but
essentially uh these titles are like
where Hitler dreams and he lives simply
you know right and uh there's another
one hair Hitler at home in the clouds
okay the thing about this is absolutely
there are folks who are hi geographers
of the far right but whether you're
talking lenen and John Reed or uh Stalin
and Walter Duran of the New York Times
or Castro and Herbert Matthews again of
the New York Times or Edgar snow and Mao
or David halberstam and uh you know hoi
Min again of the New York Times
like you start to see a pattern here
where the guys who are being platformed
and given a voice are these guys who end
up being like far-left you know lunatics
right and I think part of the issue here
is you know the saying about how
Communists don't understand
self-interest nationalists don't
understand other
interest and so nationalists are more
obvious isn't that good I thought it was
good it's pretty good right Prett good
so the Nationalist is very obvious in
the sense of like they're for the Arians
they're not even for like the Slavs or
whatever right like you know uh
basically you know had Hitler
constructed a different ideology um you
know then like he he might have gotten
more support in Eastern Europe or
whatever right but he also called the
Slavs inferior not just you know
basically everybody was inferior to the
Arians okay except maybe the English or
whatever but that was it right um oh and
the Japanese are honorary Arians or
something so the Nationalist declar as
the supremacy of their own race or
culture or what have you and doesn't
understand people's other interest but
he also up his own guys okay same with
you know in some ways China today same
with Japan back in the day whereas the
Communist has a message that sounds more
appealing it's a Universalist message
ostensibly but it's it's actually faux
universalism because it's actually
particularism like during the Soviet
Union communism this fa universalism was
basically a mask for Russian nationalism
you know where you know or at least at
least Soviet nationalism where in
particular Russians were pushed into
many territories and you know Russian
speakers were you know like privileged
in you know the Eastern Europe and and
the baltics of course Russians
themselves were oppressed at home as CZ
and rights they were both victim and
victimizer of the regime their churches
were crushed and so on as compensation
they were agents of Empire it's a
tragedy all around right I'm not you
know I think Russians have been hard
done in many ways they had a very hard
hard Century they've also done hard by
others okay it's complicated those
journalists you mentioned just to
elaborate maybe you disagree with me I
wonder what you think but I think
conversation like not to sort of glorify
any particular medium but there's
something one of the reasons I like long
form podcasts or interviews long form
unedited interviews there's been shows
throughout the 20th century that do that
kind of thing but they seem to be rare
uh there is that's podcast made it much
more popular and common is it's
somehow makes it easier not to do this
kind of bullshit journalism that the Goa
stuff yeah I I feel like asking
interesting and deep questions allow I
think you could sit down with Hitler in
1940 1941
1942 and the podcast
actually serve a purpose in 41 and 42
mid World War II mid World War II a
purpose of one which is very
important get good information for the
future so history can study it and to
reveal to the world the way a man thinks
that is beyond the
propaganda so all this stuff is
complicated but today so in the specific
issue of the folks you were talking
about like Putin Z Trump right for those
folks they are very clearly outgroup for
both the US left and right which is
let's say the Western left and right
which are your um uh your audience
there's folks who are tankies and there
folks who are Maga who are sympathetic
what are tankies tankies are those who
are you know let's they may call
themselves tankies let's say they're
Anti-Imperialist left and magga right
okay for different reasons are um
against the US establishment and for
Putin or X or something like that as you
know um as an agent against the US
establishment right so leaving those
aside the point is that most of your
audience is sort of on guard vaccinated
in sense right versus Z and Putin and
Trump right like they have they know the
counterarguments and so on and so forth
okay in which case I wouldn't think
interviewing them would be like that big
a deal relatively because there's so
much other coverage and so on out there
it's it's I think it's probably okay
however for something like um you know
when what John Reed was doing and so
when he was the sole source of
information about the Russian Revolution
yes right that's different that's
different right so so it's something
about it get kind of gets back to the
the competitive environment and so on
there's no of folks who are writing
critical coverage of these these three
men right and so if I felt that that was
insufficient then you you might need
more of it right right um just like you
know for example nowadays with Stalin
there are a lot of Articles and books
and PDFs and so on on it but at the time
not as much at the time not as much
right that's why I brought those those
guys right because often it's kind of
like have you have you ever stocked
shelves at a supermarket and so seem
totally out of the field no but shoes
but the same thing SE I used to work as
SE the thing that is the most popular is
the thing that's not on the Shelf
because it's been sold out yeah right so
in some ways like you know this is the
this is similar to that you know famous
photo that people have or photo image
that people have on Twitter of the plane
and um you know the parts that are shot
versus not right the the uh survivorship
bias right and one way of kind of
thinking about it is the guys who you
think of as bad guys or possible bad
guys or controversial guys or whatever
are those you've already got some
vaccination to that's why you think of
them at all whereas the folks that I
mentioned The Regulators invisible you
don't right ssbg you know Zuckerberg you
know his pros and cons you know who he
is as a person you don't even know
salsberg exists most people right
despite the fact that he's like
certainly is powerful you know he owns
the New York Times he inherits it he
also got dual class talk just like Zuck
um but he's invisible right well that's
why I think studying the knowns the
people that are known can help you
generalize uh to the way human nature is
and then you start to question are the
same kind of humans existing in places
that uh wield power and you can assume
they are they do exist there and then
you can start to infer that's right and
ask questions so this is kind of what I
try to do is um like what is the dark
matter what is the question that's not
being asked
right and so um you know that's not to
say that you you need to be so
antimimetic that you only do that but I
think you need to do that as well as
understand what is good about the
conventional wisdom and you know for
example if you notice a lot of what I
talk about is like the V1 V2 V3 where as
critical as I am of let's say the FDA I
recognize that people want a regulated
Marketplace and how do we do better as
critical as I can be of the FED I
recognized that some kind of monetary
policy is necessary and Satoshi came up
with a better one right um as harsh as
one can be a Critic of the current
system it is really incumbent as
difficult as that is upon one to come up
with a better version just like Academia
as much as I think current science is
corrupted what I proposed is a way to
actually improve on that and actually
any any true scientists say yes I want
my work to be reproducible yes I want
citations to be import statements and so
on and so forth and we don't have to get
everybody to agree with that but just
enough to build that better version and
not regress yeah there's a there's an
implied op optimism within the V1 V2 V3
framework let let me ask you at a high
level about social media because you are
one of its prominent users to
communicate your wisdom I use Twitter I
I wouldn't I would really think of as
quot communicating my wisdom per se or
anything like that I use Twitter like I
might use GitHub as a as a scratch pad
for just kind of floating Concepts and
you know I've got okay here's a frame on
things let me kind of put it out there
and see what people think get feedback
and so on don't you think it has a
lasting impact that the your scratchbook
I think it it's good but basically like
um if I say that's what's my primary
thing on Twitter it's that it's a it's a
scratch pad for me to kind of put some
Concepts out there you know iterate on
them get feedback on them and so on and
so forth do you think it's possible that
the words you've tweeted on Twitter is
the most impact you will have on the
world on the world I don't uh so is that
possible is it possible um well my
tweets it's a good question I I think
the network state will be I think
important uh or I hope well the book The
Book of the concept good question s just
to clarify the the movement the movement
right uh in the sense that Zionism shows
that it is possible to have a book and
then a conference and then a fund and
eventually in the fullness of time with
a lot of time and effort to actually get
a state right and uh you know as I
mentioned earlier a lot of countries are
small countries but I didn't mention
mention there's a guy who's the head of
kazakstan and he made a remark he's like
you know if we allow every nation that
wants to have self-determination to have
a state we'd have 600 countries rather
than 190 yeah because you know the
option one of there's many opposites of
a nation state but one of the Opposites
is the stateless nation and where the
network state is popular in places like
Catalonia Catalonia nationalists in
catalonian guys who are committed
Catalonia nationalist so Catalonia you
know this region of Spain right um the
the thing is
that again V1 V2 V3 the nation state is
V2 and it beat the city state which is
like V1 and the network State I think of
as a potential V3 which combines aspects
of V1 and V2 so Catalonia or The Basque
region these are underneath the quote
nation state of Spain but many
catalonians think of themselves as part
of a separate nation not all many okay
and so they want a state of their
own who doesn't if you're Nation you
know meaning that they've got a they've
got a legitimate claim from history
language culture all that stuff right
the Bas do as well the Kurds do as well
okay lots of ethnic groups around the
world do so in the game of musical
chairs that was the formation of current
national borders they lost out right so
what did they do well one answer is they
just submit to the Spanish state and
they just speak Spanish and their
culture is erased and their history is
erased and so on the second is they do
some sort of Ireland likee Insurgency
the troubles to try to get a thing of
their own which is obviously bad for
other kinds of reasons right you know
violent
Etc what this Catalonia nationalist said
he's like look well we can't give up on
our existing path the network state is a
really interesting third option I mean
by the way I I had talked to this guy V
partal okay and he's got this site
called via web and uh via vill web sorry
it can be meaning the network State can
be especially appealing to us Catalin
are now embarking on the task of having
a normal and current state in the old
way and this is a project that we cannot
give up but this does not mean that at
the same time we are not also attentive
to ideas like this and we do not try to
learn and move forward right meaning you
know the network state right because
that's the Third Way which says okay
maybe this particular
region is not something where you're
going to be able to get you know a state
but just like there's more Irish people
who live outside of Ireland right just
like you know the Jewish people you know
didn't actually get a state in Poland or
what have you they they had one in
Palestine perhaps the catalonians could
crowd fend territory in other places and
have essentially a a state of their own
that's distributed okay now again what
people are immedately going to say is
well that's going to lead to conflict
with locals necessarily and so on so
forth but if you're parallel processing
you don't have the all-in-one bucket
aspect of I must win here and the guy on
the other side is like I must win you
have optionality you can you can have
multiple different nodes around the
world just like like there's multiple
China towns you could have multiple
catalonian towns right and uh some
places you might be able to just buy an
island and that becomes you know the the
new Catalonia right um just like in I
think there's a there's a region called
new calonia um and that's in the
Southwest Pacific so maybe maybe new
Catalonia is somewhere else right so if
you're flexible on that now of course a
bunch of people will immediately say
there they'll have 50 different
objections to this they'll say oh you
don't get it the whole point is the land
and you know so on they've been there
for Generations say I I do get it um but
this Catalin nationalist who's like
literally written in catalonian
for I don't know how many years right uh
is basically saying this is worth
thinking about and so it's a peaceful
Third Way yeah but it's it's interesting
I mean it TW I mean it's it's a good
question whether Elon Musk SpaceX and
Tesla will be successful without Twitter
yeah I I don't think as as
successful I mean he obviously they were
they existed before Twitter and a lot of
the engineering problems are obviously
non- Twitter things right but Twitter
itself has certainly probably helped
musk with Tesla sales the engineering no
that's not that's not what I mean oh go
ahead the best people in the world solve
the engineering problem yes but he hires
the people to solve them and he knows
enough about engineering to hire those
people that's the point I'm making is on
Twitter the legend of Elon Musk is
created the
vision is
communicated and the best engineers in
the world come to work for the vision
it's an
advertisement of a man of a company
pursuing a vision and I think Twitter is
a great place to make viral ideas that
are compelling to people whatever those
ideas are and whether that's the network
state or whether that's uh humans
becoming a multiplanetary species here
is a remark I had just before the
pandemic related to this okay about
Twitter helping along just be on that
for a second maybe centralization is
actually also underexplored in the
design space for example today social
networks are essentially governed by a
single Co but that Co is a background
figure they aren't leading the users to
do anything what if they did one example
could Alon musk's then 30 million
followers somehow get us to Mars faster
tools for directed collaborative work by
really large groups on the internet are
still in their infancy you can see piece
of what I was talking about the scratch
Pad thing the network State being a
group with which can do Collective
actions this is kind of the thing right
so Technologies for internet
collaboration that can be very useful to
the soft for future network States
operational Transformations how like
Google Docs coordinates edits um
Conflict Free replicated data types is
another it's alternative easier to code
in some ways an operational
transformation microtasks like
mechanical cherk scale Ai and earn.com
before we sold it blockchains and crypto
obviously the polymath project where a
bunch of people parallel processed and
were able to solve an open math problem
by collaborating um Wikipedia with its
flaws that we talked about social
networks and group messaging all these
are ways for collaborating they're not
just simply attached hacking or or doing
something on the Internet this is
something that Alan could use right what
works and what doesn't about Twitter if
there's something that's broken how
would you fix it a million things I can
say here a few things first is
factchecking I had this kind of fun I
thought it was a funny tweet to anyone
who wants to quote ban lying on social
media please write down a function that
takes in a statement and returns whether
it is true if you can start with the
remand hypothesis that would be amazing
yeah okay yeah put that's kind of funny
right that's funny and uh so now the
thing
joke landed on like five people sure you
want to explain the joke go well no I
there's a lot of problems decidability
where the truth that's what proofs in
math is the truth of the thing is
actually exceptionally difficult to
determine and that's just a really nice
example the problems that persist across
centuries that have not been solved by
the most Brilliant Minds they're
essentially true or false problems
that's right and so when people are say
when they were saying they want to ban
lying on social media fact check social
media the assumption is that they know
what is true and what do they mean by
that they really mean the assertion of
political power right with that said do
I think it could be useful to have some
kind of quote fact checking thing yes
but it has to be decentralized and open
source you could imagine an interesting
concept of coding tral like a Google
yeah that returned what was true it's
like a modified version right so like
gpt3 but the stable diffusion version
where it's open mhm okay and so now
anybody abl Fusion shows it is possible
to take an expensive AI model and put it
out there right so you have you know you
know what a knowledge graph is like mhm
like basically you know uh you wouldn't
actually whether you have it as rdf or
like a like a triple store kind of thing
or some of representation it's like an
ontology of a is a b and you know B has
a c and it's got probabilities on the
edges sometimes and other kinds of
metadata and this allows Google to show
certain kinds of onebox information
where it's like um what is so what is
Steve Jobs's uh you know what is what is
Loren Powell Jobs's uh age or birthday
they can pull that up out of out of the
um the knowledge graph right and uh so
you could imagine that tral would have
both deterministic and statistical
components and crucially it would say
whether something is true according to a
given Knowledge
Graph and so this way at least what you
can do is you can say okay here's the
things that are consensus reality like
the value of the gravitational constant
will be the same in the Maga Knowledge
Graph and the US establishment Knowledge
Graph and the CCP Knowledge Graph and
the the I don't know the Brazilian
Knowledge Graph and so on and so forth
okay but there's other things that will
be quite different and at least now you
can isolate where the point of
disagreement is and so you can have a
form of decentralized fact checking that
is like according to who well here is
the authority and it is this knowledge
graph right so that's like a kind of
thing right yeah yeah so that is um so
that's one concept of like what next
social media looks like there's there's
actually so much more another huge thing
is decentralized social media okay
social media today is like China under
communism in a really key sense there's
this great article called The Secret
document that transformed China do you
know what China was like before 1978 I
know about the atrocities sure so but
put some flesh on the Bon so to speak
okay so basically there's a good book
I'm read because I think a lot of
documents in public recently and so
there's a window when it opened up now
it's probably closing back down again
but but you know great biographies
because of that we written like I'm
currently reading miles Great Famine by
Frank deart yeah which is uh oh
boy it's crazy okay yeah here's the
thing
is capitalism was punishable by death in
living memory in China just to explain
what that meant okay I mean that's what
communism was right it was literally the
same that has like the CC you know the
entrepreneurs and jackon and so on so 40
something years ago capitalism was
punishable by death what to put to give
in a concrete example there this is a
famous story in China maybe apocryphal
but it's what you know the the folks
have talked about there's a village in
Xiao gang and basically all the grain
that you were produced was supposed to
go to the collective and even one straw
belonged to the group at one meeting
with Communist Party officials a farmer
asked what about the teeth in my head do
I own those answer no your teeth belong
to the collective okay now the thing is
uh that when you're taking 100% of
everything okay work hard don't work
hard everyone gets the same so people
don't want to work right so what
happened these Farmers gathered in
secret and they did something that was
like would have gotten them executed
they they wrote a contract amongst
themselves and said we all agree that we
will be able to keep some of our own
grain we will give some of them to the
regime so when it comes to collect the
grain they've got something we'll be
able to keep some of it and if any of us
are killed for doing this then the
contract said that the others would take
care of their
children okay to keep some of what you
earned I mean just think about how they
formed their mini capitalism Society
within the Comm a secret capitalism
Society amongst five people yeah right
so now that they could keep some of what
they earned right keep some they earned
they had a bumper Harvest and you know
what happened with that bumper Harvest
that made the local officials really
suspicious and mad they weren't happy
that there was a bumper Harvest they're
like what are you doing you're doing
capitalism right and in you know a few
years earlier they might have just been
executed and in fact many were that's
what it means when you see Millions dead
Millions dead means guys were shot for
keeping some grain for themselves okay
it means like guys came and kicked in
the door of your Collective farm and you
know raped your wife and took you off to
a prison camp and and so on and so
that's what communism actually was okay
it hasn't been depicted in movies
there's a great post um by Ken
Billingsley in in the year 2000 called
uh if I get this right Hollywood's
missing movies okay this is
um basically here I'll paste this link
so you can put in the show notes all
right this is worth reading it's still
applicable today but now that we have
stable diffusion now we have all these
people online now that Russia and China
are America's national bad guys um you
know they as they were before they are
again perhaps we'll get some movies on
what communism actually was during the
20th century and how bad it was right
and you know vaccinate people against
that as well as against Nazism which
they should be okay the point of this uh
go ahead uh no cuz I'm I'm
congratulating myself on the nice
because you're sending me excellent
links on WhatsApp and I just saw that
there's an export chat feature yes great
because we also have disappearing
messages on so I was like all right this
is great great I'll be able to get it
this your your ability to reference
sources is incredible so thank you for
this
otherwise if I if I say something it
sounds too surprising so that's why I
want to make sure I have on this top
yeah so like yeah I mean people would be
like shot for for for holding some grain
so what happened though was ding XA
ping said okay um we're not going to
kill you in fact we're going to actually
set set up the first special economic
zone in shenzen he didn't try to flip
the whole country from communist to
capitalist in one go instead he's like
we can reform in one place and in fact
he fenced it off from the rest of China
and it did trade with Hong Kong and he
spent his political capital on this one
exception it grew so fast they gave him
more political Capital you know some
people think actually that the you know
Sino Vietnamese War uh was deng's way of
just distracting the generals while he
was turning China around to get it back
on the capitalist Road and what he did
was um the opposite of a rebranding he
did a reinterpretation like a rebranding
is where the substance is the same
but the logo has changed okay you know
you're now you were Facebook you're now
meta that's a rebranding right
reinterpretation is where the logo and
The Branding is the same they're still
the CCP they're still the Chinese
Communist party but they're capless now
the engine under the hood it's deniable
okay and this is a very common once you
realize those are different things it's
like swap the front end swap the back
end yeah go ahead go put it right really
good yeah yeah
really I'm enjoying your metaphor and
way of talking about stuff yeah so I
yeah yeah swap you could yeah rebranding
is swap to front end reinterpretation
swap to back end that's right once you
you know once you realize that you're
like okay I can just like as an engineer
you can kind of okay sometimes I want to
do this on the front end sometimes I do
the backend sometimes it's explicit and
sometimes user doesn't need to see it
it's on the back end lots of political
stuff you know is arguably not just best
done on the back end but always done on
the back end one of the points I make in
the book is left is a new right as a new
left is um you know if you look through
history the the Christian King the
Republican conservative the CCP
entrepreneur um the um the WASP
establishment these are all examples of
a revolutionary left movement becoming
the ruling class right okay like
Republican conservative just as that one
example I go through an extended
description of this in the book but the
Republicans were the The Radical
Republicans the left of 1865 they won
the Revolution and their moral Authority
LED them to have economic Authority in
the late 1800s you wouldn't want a
Democrat Confederate Trader as the head
of your you know Railroad Company would
you right so all the Confederate Traders
Etc were boxed out from the plum
positions in the late
1800s uh and so what happened was the
Republicans turned their moral Authority
into economic Authority made tons of
money the Democrats then started
repositioning not as a party of the
Southern racist but the the poor right
and you know the cross of gold speech by
William Jennings bran was part of that
there's a gradual process that reached
its apoe not apotheos but let's say a
crucial Mark with the election of FDR
where was actually not the 1932 but 1936
election that uh black voters switched
over to FDR okay that was actually the
the like the major flip to like 70% you
know to to to the Democrats now they'
repositioned as the party of the poor
not the party of the South okay and
Republican an had lost um some economic
Authority or rather they had moral
Authority they turned into economic
Authority they started to lose of moral
Authority the loss of moral Authority
was complete by 1965 that was actually
mop-up people dated you know the Civil
Rights Movement as a big way where the
Republicans lost moral it's not really
that was a mop-up because uh 1936 30
years earlier was when black voters
switched the Democrats okay so 1965 was
another 10 points moving over of black
voters to the Democrats Republicans had
completely lost moral Authority 100
years after the Civil War okay then the
next 50 years that loss of moral
Authority meant that they lost economic
Authority because now you wouldn't want
a republican bigot as a SE of your tech
company anymore would you right so by
2015 202 now now you have it's like two
sine waves that are staggered right
moral Authority leads to economic
Authority leads to loss of uh moral
Authority leads to loss of economic
Authority and so now you have the uh the
Democrats you know have you know
completed 155 your Arc from the defeated
party in the Civil War to the dominant
party in the US establishment all the
woke capitalists are now at the very top
and now the same repositioning is
happening where if you're so woke why
are you rich you get it right like you
know if you're so smart why aren't you
rich is the normal kind of thing right
if you're so woke if you're so holy why
is like for example the BLM founder why
do they have this million dollar mansion
right if you're so woke and it's all
about being good and you're anti- capist
how come you seem to be raking in the
money Etc right this is an argument
which I'm not sure how long it will go
um it it might take uh years to play out
it might take decades to play out I
think probably on the order of a decade
you're going to see in my view the
repositioning if the Democrats are the
woke capitalist the Republicans will
eventually become are becoming the
Bitcoin maximalists why because you know
if one guy picks left the other guy
picks right it's literally like magnets
kind of repelling they're sort of forced
into the other corner here right and the
Bitcoin maximalists will essentially
where this guy says centralization they
say decentralization where they defend
the right of capital to do anything the
maximalist will say actually you're all
canelones um you're all benefiting from
printed money you don't have anything
that's legitimate you don't actually own
anything is all a handout from the
government and so on and so forth right
and um so that's a counter positioning
that will basically attack the wokes by
how much money they're making they're
not contesting the ideology so when one
guy signals economics you signal culture
when
uh their guy signals culture you signal
economics that's actually that's the
whole thing I can talk should I talk
about that for a second sure is is this
uh integrated into the forces that you
talk about you you've talked about the
three forces the trifecta forces that
affect our society which is the wokes
let's say woke Capital com capital
capital you talk so fast it's uh and I
think so slow no no uh woke capital
communist capital and crypto Capital uh
can you explain each of those three we
actually talked about each of the three
in part but it would be nice to bring
them together in a beautiful triangle
and then I will also come back up and
I'll talk about how the CCP story
relates to social media and
decentralized social media okay all
right so nyt CCP BTC
is W Capital communist Capital crypto
capital and communist capital is the
simplest it is you must submit the party
is powerful CCP is powerful and you are
not if you're in China you just submit
CCP is an embodiment of communist
Capital that you're talking about well
yeah so basically and by the in China
they call it CPC you know so basically
they don't like it usually if you say
CCP right so uh the Communist Party of
China as opposed to Chinese commun
basically that is capitalism that is
that is a Chinese pool of capital that
billion person pool okay that that's we
chat and it's um you know it's Alibaba
and it's entire kind of thing that is
one just social network with currency
the whole thing is vertically integrated
when we say communist what do you mean
here why is the word communist important
why don't you just say China so is is
communist and important word it just
it's well it just a catchy label it's a
catchy but I think it's also important
because it seems It's paradoxical right
let's add a thread on this the future is
communist Capital versus B capital
versus crypto Capital each represents a
left right Fusion that's Bizarre by the
standards of the 1980s consensus it's
PRC versus mmt versus BTC all right and
why is it Bizarre by the standards of
1980s consensus well in the 1980s you
wouldn't think the Communists would
become capitalists but they did you
wouldn't think that the wokes the
progressives right um would become so
enamored with giant corporations and and
their power right they've they've seen
something to to liken that right um and
you also wouldn't think that the
non-americans or the post Americans the
internationalists would be the champions
of capital because um youd think it's
the American Nation right so rather than
the conservative American
nationalists being the Defenders of
capital you have
the
liberal Americans who are with capital
you have the Communist Chinese who are
with capital and you have the
internationalists who are with capital
and it's the conservative American na
nationalists who are in some ways
against that which is which is kind of
funny right
so uh so it's like this weird
ideological flippening that um if you if
you look if you take the long lens you
have these poles that kind of repel each
other okay so just on the CCP NT BTC
thing nyt by the way is walk Capital
yeah what is nyt so its formula is a
little interesting if CCP is just you
must submit because they're powerful
okay and you bow your head because the
Chinese Communist party is strong W
capital is you must sympathize why do
you bow your head Lex oh because you're
a white male therefore you're guilty you
sympath you must bow your head because
you are powerful MH yet notice it ends
in the same place in your your your head
looking to the ground right in China
it's because they are powerful so
therefore you must bend your head for
the Ws it's the left-handed version
where you are powerful and that's
shameful so you should bow your
head right right okay but it ends in
your head bowed it's an ideology of
submission it's not that subtle but it's
like somewhat subtle then finally crypto
capital is head held high you must be
Sovereign okay which and one of the
things I point out in the in the book is
each of these polls is um negative in
some ways when taken to extreme but also
negative in its opposite for example
obviously just totally submitting to
Total surveillance is bad but a society
where nobody submits is San Francisco
where people just Rob stores and walk
out you know in the middle shoplifting
you know all this all these goods and
nothing happens right a society where
you know you have the woke level of
sympathy where you get to the kind of
insanity of math is white supremacist
and whatever you know nonsense is is
happening today is terrible but a
society that's totally stripped of
sympathy is also not one that one would
want to be part of right that's just
like the you know whether it's 4chan's
actual culture or it's Fain culture or
something like that or some some weird
comination you that's also not good it's
like Russia in the 90s like nobody
trusts anybody that's also bad and you
know being totally Sovereign that sounds
good and there's a lot that is good
about it and I'm sympathetic to this
corner but being totally Sovereign you
go so capitalist so Sovereign that
you're against the division of labor you
don't trust anybody so you have to pump
your own water and so on so you actually
have a reduced standard of living over
here okay and conversly like survivalist
or whatever survivalist type of stuff
right and you just kind of you you just
go kind of too crazy into that corner
and then like of course though the Other
Extreme of you know having no
sovereignty is the you will own nothing
and be happy everything things in the
cloud and can be deleted at any point
right so each of these is kind of has
Badness when it's there but also its
total extreme opposite is bad and so you
want to kind of carve out like an
intelligent intermediate of these three
poles and that's the you know
decentralized Center or the
recentralized center I call now with
that said I think there is a
repositioning in particular of vook
capital that is happening and I think if
the 2000s was the global war on terror
and then the channel just changed to
wokeness in the 2010s and when I mean
channel change have you seen Paul
Graham's graph or actually David
rosado's graph that Paul Graham posted
no but there a good chance to say that
Paul Graham is awesome okay yeah and so
here is this graph okay David Rosado is
a data analysist I think that put this
together so basically this is a graph of
the word usage frequency in New York
Times 1970 to 2018 and he's got some
controls there bam tweets hypothesis
although some newspapers can survive the
switch to online subscriptions none can
do it and remain politically neutral
quote newspaper record you have to pick
a side to get people to subscribe and
there's uh a bunch
of
plots on the x-axis is years on the Y
AIS is the frequency of use and sexism
has been going up misogyny has been
going up sexist patriarchy mansplaining
toxic masculinity male privilege all
these terms have been going up very
intensely in the past in in the in the
past decade yeah but really 2013 is the
exact moment you see these things
they're flat and they just go vertical
mansplaining toxic masculinity what
precisely happened in 2013 ah so I
talked about this in the book but I
think fundamentally what happened was
Tech hurt media and their revenue
dropped by uh about $50 billion over the
four years from' 08 to 2012 yeah Tech
helped Obama get reelected and media was
positive on on Tech until December 2012
they wrote like the Nerds Go Marching In
in the Atlantic then after January 2013
once Obama was as sconed then the knives
came out because basically these Tech
guys were bankrupting them they were
through um supporting them and so the
journals got extremely nasty and uh just
basically they couldn't build search
engines or create social networks but
they could write stories in shape
narrative so a clear editorial Direction
went down that um you know essentially
took all of this all these weapons that
had been developed in Academia to win
status competitions in Humanities
departments yeah and and then they just
deployed them right and essentially
somebody observed that wokeness is the
combination of uh fault and
deconstruction and civil rights where
deconstruction takes away you know the
legitimacy of the old order and then
civil rights says okay the only thing
that's good is is this right which is
says the old Ro was also bad in a
different way but this is what's good
and um that is the underpinning ideology
the the all these words have embedded in
them like an ideology right another way
of thinking about it is this is not my
reference but I'll cite It Anyway the
glossery of the Greek um military hun
right the creation and or use of special
terms are employed by the Hun as
propaganda tools um because essentially
the word itself embeds a concept you can
Russell conjugate something one way or
the other right Russell conjugation this
concept that I sweat you perspire but
She Glows you can always take something
you know you are uncontrollably angry
but uh he is righteously indignant okay
um you have a thin skin they clap back
right so once you kind of realize that
these words have just been chosen in
such a way as to delegitimize their
Target and they all went vertical in
2013 and they were suddenly targeted
against their urw alleys you know in
Tech but also just across the the
country you can see that this great
awokening that's what uh eglasius called
it by play on words the Great Awakening
right this kind of spasm of Quasi
religious extremism I wouldn't call it
religious because it's not god- centered
it's really State and network centered
so I call it a Doctrine which is a
superet of religion and and political
Doctrine this uh these words went
vertical and the all the terrorism stuff
you just notice kind of fell off a cliff
that was the obsession of everything in
the 2000s and just Channel change right
it's amazing how that happened it's not
like not like any of the pieces got
picked up some of those Wars are still
raging of course and there's uh victims
to this wokeism yeah movement and um but
in a weird way even though some parts of
it just like you know syri like there's
wars in the Middle East that still keep
raging there's there's certainly active
fronts of vasm you know but in a sense
the the next shift is already on you
know why it's a pivot from wokeism to
statism in many way is nyt is sort of
and more generally the US establishment
is sort of kind of coming you may not
believe this they're kind of coming back
to the center a little bit in the same
way that lenen After the Revolution
implemented the New Economic Policy
which you may be aware of right which
was just like x% more capitalism he kind
of boot on the neck take control but
then ease up for a bit and the so-call
NP men during the 20s were able to eek
out something there was like you know oh
okay fine he's he's going to be easier
on us then it intensified again because
basically by loosening up they were able
to consolidate control they weren't
putting as much pressure on right then
it went extremely intense again right uh
similar to like Ma's like 100 flowers
saying let 100 flowers bloom and you
know everybody came out and then he
founded all the people who were against
him and he executed a bunch of them
right so what's happening now is nyt is
and more generally the US establishment
is somewhat tacking back to the center
where you know they're not talking BLM
and abolish the police they're saying
fund the capital police right they've
they've gone from The Narrative of 2020
which was meant to win a domestic
contest where they said America is a
systemically racist country tear down
George Washington we so evil to the
rhetoric of 2022 which is we're the
global champion of democracy and every
non-white country is supposed to trust
us now obviously those are inconsistent
right if if you're in India or you're in
Nigeria and you just heard that the
America is calling itself the same guys
by the way saying it's so
institutionally racist systemically
racist and you're saying well the leader
of the Free World and the number one
obviously there's an inconsistency
between the domestic propaganda and the
foreign propaganda right there's a
contrast between abolish the police and
put two billion for the capital police
you can reconcile this and you can say
the US establishment is pro- federal and
antioc and state so abolish the local
police who tend to be you know
Republican or rst but fund the FBI fund
the capital police who tend to be you
know just like in the um you know the
Soviet Union is the national things like
the the KGB right that were there for
the um uh for the state um but there
were always local nationalist ethnic
insurgencies in like Estonia and other
places right so you can reconcile them
but nevertheless on its face those those
are
contradictory so what are you going to
get I think I think you're going to get
um this rotation where uh a fair number
of the folks on the sort of
authoritarian right are kind of pulled
back into the fold a bit okay these are
the cops and the military and whatnot
some of them because as this decade
progresses you're going to see the
signaling on American statism as opposed
to bism okay which is 30 degrees back
towards the center right conversely on
the other side you're going to have the
left Libertarians and right Libertarians
who are signaling crypto and
decentralization and so on okay and so
the next one isn't red versus blue it's
Orange versus green it's the dollar
versus Bitcoin and so you have the
authoritarians the top of the political
Compass versus the quote Libertarians
right and here is the here's the visual
of
that so that's why like you know as I
wrote the book and after I I was like
you know I'm already seeing this um this
shift happening from war on terror to
wokeism to American statism right and
here just take a look at this visual
interesting so uh the visual is an
animation
transforming
the left versus right libertarian versus
authoritarian to uh
Bitcoin dollar versus versus crypto
that's right and some folks switch sides
right because you have folks Like You
Know Jack dorsy and a lot of the tech
Founders in basically the lower left
corner right who were blue but are now
going to become orange or are orange and
you have folks in the upper right corner
who are going to at the end of the day
pick the dollar and the American flag
over the internationalist ideals of
cryptocurrency the re aligning as you
call it let me ask you uh I briefly we
do need to get a a comment your
Visionary view of things where at a low
point in the cryptocurrency space from a
shallow analysis perspective or maybe in
a deeper sense if you can enlighten me
do you think Bitcoin will rise again yes
do you think you will go uh to take on
Fiat you know to go over a million
dollars to uh go to these Heights you
know I mean I think it's possible and
the reason I think it's possible is I
think a lot of things might go to a
million dollar because inflation because
inflation right what that it's an
important point right yes it's a very
important Point yes because you're
seeing
essentially yes right s of the choke
pointing on energy is pushing up prices
across the board for a lot of things the
supply you know China's not doing us any
favors with the covid uh lockdowns um
Putin's not doing the world any favors
with this with this giant War um there's
a lot of bad things happening in the
physical world right you know you have I
mean when China Russia and the US are
all and Europe is you know like there's
folks who are just insane about degrowth
and they're against um you know they're
they're they're pushing for burning coal
and wood right so a lot of prices are
going up in a really foundational and
fundamental way and um with that said
also the dollar is in some way
strengthening against certain and other
things cuz a lot of other countries are
dying harder right um you know and
you've got riots in Sri Lanka and riots
in Panama and riots in you know all all
these places right so it's it's very
complicated because you've got multiple
different Trends going in the same way
you're you're Bitcoin Maximus would just
say infinity over 21 million and so
therefore you print all the dollars with
only 21 million Bitcoin so Bitcoin goes
to Infinity but you can be something
where lots of other currencies die and
the dollar is actually exported via
stable coins mhm okay
um but I do think so still moves Fiat
still moves somehow into the
cryptocurrencies yeah yeah yeah it's I
think it's kind of like Microsoft where
I mean Windows is still around right
Micosoft is still around it's still a
you know multi hundred billion dollar
company it had he doesn't mean it he
doesn't mean it don't worry all my
machines are windows and still boot yeah
okay okay I don't know a single Mac
really okay that you are unusual on that
yeah that's um so at least for our it's
not ideology just convenience fine I
mean they actually now post sethia they
do make some good stuff right like uh
Microsoft teams is good right there's a
lot of incredible stuff UC has done a
lot of innovative things like GitHub
yeah that mean well that's an
acquisition but still they give them
credit for it the acquisition the
pivoting of vision and motivations and
uh focus and all that kind of stuff
anyway yes Microsoft do analogy metaphor
for something well yeah so basically
just like you know they didn't need a
turnaround but they are they did endure
to the present day they didn't die from
Google app I mean for the massive
attacks on the they didn't die they are
less powerful but they make more money
right yes and um I think that might be
something that I mean our best case
scenario is the US establishment or CCP
has more power over fewer people okay I
see and so you know but you can exit if
you if you're there you're kind of
knuckling under or whatever but you
can't exit right and so I mentioned the
uh those three polls CCP is obviously a
billion people 1.4 aligned under the
digital Yuan and so on right nyt is the
entire you know it's it's the tech
companies it's the US dollar it is the
and then crypto capital is everybody
else but I actually think that over time
that third world is web 3 this time and
that's the third poll and that's India
and it's Israel and it's lots of
American conservatives and left
Libertarians and Libertarians and it's
also lots of Chinese liberals all the
folks who are trying to get out of China
because you know the like the you know
it's become so Nationalist and crazy and
and difficult for capitalism and so if
you take basically non-establishment
Americans on both left and right okay
the the you know the bottom two
quadrants in the political Compass I
talked about you take the liberal
Chinese you take the Israelis and the
Indians why because they don't both of
them are have a lot of tech Talent right
they're the number one and number two
demographics for Tech Founders and they
want to uh while they are generally
sympathetic to the West right and
they're more ties to the West they also
are more cautious about National
interest rather than just starting
fights you know where that's how they
would think about it right they just you
know India thinks of itself as a poor
country Israel thinks of itself as a
small country and so therefore it needs
to not just get in every fight just for
the sake of it and so need to maintain a
cautious distance with China but not
like do what Pelosi is doing and try and
start start like a big thing okay I
think Israel is similar where it's
maintaining diplomatic relations with
China it's more friendly towards China
than than the US is India and Israel I
think are two sovereign states that have
a lot of globally mobile tech talent
that obviously have ties to the West
with the large diasa that are hard to
demonize you know in in the sense
of willing to argue on the internet let
put it like that in English right it's
very important and um them plus enough
Americans plus enough Chinese can set up
another poll that is not for Cold War or
military confrontation but for peace and
trade and freedom and so on and so forth
right that's the center as opposed to
the you know left of the you know the
the woke American us establishment or
the right of the ultra nationalist CCP
right that's what I think about now what
I would say here is the reason I think
these are the kind of the three polls
you can argue against this right you can
say it's unipolar World America is
totally dominant that's one argument you
could say it's a bipolar world it's just
the US versus China not no everybody
else will to be forced to align with one
or the other junker you know actually
explicitly rejected this he's like look
there's a billion people in India it's
coming up on will eventually be like the
number three economy it's on the rise
he's got the history and culture he
thinks he's entitled to have India is
entitled to have its own side right in
such a thing it's a funny way of putting
it right yeah but it's also true and uh
so you could say it's unipolar you could
say it's bipolar you could say it's just
multipolar and everybody is kind of
there you know India Israel all these
groups are out there but I actually
think it's going to be tripolar and the
reason it's Tri is these three pools are
the groups that have enough media and
money and scale and whatnot to really
kind of be self-consistent civilizations
obviously China is like the vertically
integrated like apple or whatever just
like one a stable ideology a stable
ideology that's right right obviously
the you know the Ws have control of lots
of Institutions they've got the US
establishment they've got the tech
companies they' got the media companies
and so on but crypto is basically
everybody else and crucially crypto has
inroads in China and America where it's
hard to demonize it as completely
foreign because there's many many many
huge proponents of the Universalist
values of crypto in America and China
because it is true Global rule of law
and free speech and you know so on it is
genuinely Universalist in a way where
America can no longer be you know the
number one rule of rules based order is
America is always number one and China
doesn't even pretend to maintain a rules
based order right yes whereas for all
those countries that don't want to
either be dominated by the US media
corporations that can or social media
that can just censor Trump nor do they
want to be dominated by China this is an
attractive alternative a platform they
can make their own right so that's where
I think you know I wrote an article on
this in in foreign policy on um here
here's two articles that talk about this
a little bit it's called great protocol
politics and then here's another one on
the sort of domestic thing Bitcoin is
civilization for barrier wise okay but I
want to just come up the stack a little
bit and just return to that original
point which I diverged on which was why
I gave the whole example of how uh we
got into China because I talked about
how China had gone from communist to
capitalist and letting people have just
a share of what they owned right with
social media we're still in kind of the
Communist era of social media almost
where whatever you earn on social media
like Google takes its cut Twitter takes
100% you you're nothing for all your
tweets or anything like that not not
only do you have do you earn nothing um
you might get a little rev share on Tik
Tok or YouTube you can do okay right but
not only you earn either nothing or a
little bit you have no digital property
rights even more fundamentally you are
at the just the whim of a giant
Corporation can hit a button and
everything you worked for over Years
Gone okay that is even if that is quote
the current state of events the State of
Affairs rather that is not the right
balance of power to be able to unperson
somebody at the touch of a key and take
away everything in their digital world
when we're living more and more in the
digital world we need a check on that
power and the check on that power is
crypto and its property rights and it's
decentralization right then when I say
decentralization decentralization I
mean your money and your digital
property is by default yours and there
has to be a due process to for someone
to take that away from you everything
all work is online all your money is
online your presence is online if that
can just be taken away from you with a
with a press of a key that just gives
you know bad governments bad
corporations so much power that that's
wrong right that's why I'm a medium and
long-term Bull on crypto simply because
to check on this thing and that if you
think about in terms of just abstract
decentralization is one thing but you
think about in terms of property rights
it's quite another and um now with that
also means is once you have property
rights and you have decentralized social
media it'll be like the explosion of
trade that happened after China went
from communist to capitalist literally
billions of people around the world are
no longer giving everything to the
collective they own the teeth in their
head now
finally okay yeah is it funny right so
you're Lex freeman. eth you own it the
keys are on your computer the bad part
is of course they can get hacked or
something like that then you can deal
with that with social recovery there's
wayas of securing keys but the good part
is Tada uh you actually have property
rights in the Hernando doto sense you
have something you own ownership digital
ownership it's the cloud is great but
crypto gives you some of the
functionality of the cloud while also
having some of the functionality offline
world where you have the keys so it's a
v it's a V3 right as you know as
continuous theme right the V1 was
offline I've got a key I own it I have
deao control V2 is the cloud someone
else manages it for me it's hosted I get
collaboration so on V3 is the chain
where you combine aspects of those right
you have the global state of the cloud
but you have the local permission and
controlling of the private key okay so
that's why I'm a medium to long-term
Ultra Bull on crypto and I've actually
there's a podcast I gave with asymco
where I talk through how crypto actually
doesn't just go after Finance so it's
gold and it's wire transfers and it's
crowdfunding and it's all Finance with
defi but it's actually also search and
it's social and it's messaging it's
actually even operating systems um and
uh and eventually cloud and whatnot do
you want me talk about the briefly yeah
yeah if you can briefly see so how how
how how broad you see the effect of
crypto so first crypto is fundamentally
a new way of building backend systems
right so if you think about how big a
deal it was to go from AT&T's corporate
unit Unix to Linux it's permissionless
right when you went from as much as I
admire a lot of the stuff that you know
Sam mman and Greg Brockman have done at
open AI I mean they're phenomenal in
terms of research they've pushed the
envelope forward I give them a ton of
credit right still it was great to see
stable diffusion out there which was
open source AI right and so from a
developer from a power user standpoint
whenever you have the unlocked version
like an unlocked cell phone it's always
going to be better right so the um what
what crypto gives you obviously it's
every Financial thing in the world you
can do stocks bonds Etc it's not just
like the internet wasn't just a a
channel it wasn't like radio and TV and
internet it was internet radio and
internet TV and internet this and
internet that everything was the
internet all media became the internet
crypto is not an asset class it's all
asset classes it's crypto stocks and
crypto bonds Etc in a real sense like
private property arguably didn't exist
in the same way before crypto
international law didn't exist before
crypto how was how are you going to do a
deal between Brazil and Bangladesh um if
a Brazilian company wants to you know
acquire a bangladeshian company they
usually have to set up a us adapter in
between because otherwise what are what
are the tax or the you know other
obligations between the two you set up a
us adapter or a Chinese adapter to go
between but now that Brazilian bation
can go peerto peer because they're using
the blockchain right they can agree on a
system of law that is completely you
know International and that's code so
each party can diligence it without
speaking Portuguese and Bengali right so
that's why I am a long-term Bull on
crypto I just described the the finance
case let me go through the others right
social
so you have the private keys for your
ens you have apps like farcaster you um
basically have decentralized social
media where there's different variants
some you just log in with your crypto
username others the entire social
network and all the likes and posts are
on chain like do but uh but there's
several different versions right search
Once you know once you realize um block
explorers are an important stealth
threat to search they're very high
trffic sites like blockchain.com and
either scan that Google is just totally
slept on they don't have a block
Explorer you don't have to do anything
in terms of trading or anything like
that Google does not have a block
Explorer why they don't think of it as
search but it is search it's absolutely
search it's it's a very important kind
of search engine and once you have
crypto social you have you now show that
you're not just indexing in a block
Explorer like uh onchain transactions
but onchain
Communications okay so now you suddenly
see oh the entire Social Web that Google
couldn't index It could only index the
worldwide web and not the Social Web now
it's actually the onchain signed web
right because every post is digitally
signed it's a new set of signals it's
way easier to index than either the
worldwide web or the Social Web because
it's open and public so this is a total
disruptive thing to search in the medium
term because it's a new kind of data set
index right so that's how it's a threat
to to social to search it is a threat to
messaging why because or it's disrupt
eventually because the ens name as I
mentioned is like a universal identifier
you can send encrypted messages between
people that's a better primitive to base
it on you know WhatsApp is just claiming
that they're ENT and encrypted but with
an ens name or with a crypto name you
can be provably audibly ENT and
encrypted because you're actually
sending it back and forth right with
because the private key is local right
that itself given how important that is
right that you know you could man-
in-the-middle signal or Whatsapp because
there's a server there right if you have
you know so N1 encrypted messaging will
happen and with payments and all this
other stuff okay so you get the crypto
messaging apps you get uh operating
systems why well the frontier of
operating systems I mean look you know
Windows uh Linux and Mac OS have been
around forever but if you actually think
about you know what is a
blockchain well there's operating
systems there's web browsers a
blockchain is the most complicated thing
since an operating system or web
browsers because it's a kind of
operating system why it's got you know
something like ethereum has a evm it's
got a programming language it's got an
ecosystem where people monetize on it
they build frontend apps and they build
backend apps they interoperate between
each other this is the frontier of
operating systems research people
haven't thought of it that way right
it's also the frontier of a lot of
things in databases um you will get a
crypto LinkedIn where there's zero
knowledge proofs of various credentials
okay uh basically every single Web Two
company I can probably come up with a
web 3 variant of it right like like
ethereum is I mean and this is high
praise for both parties but ethereum is
like the crypto Stripe Right or the web
stripe and you will um you will see
versions of every everything else that
are like this but you know I kind of
described uh search social messaging
operating systems the phone right salana
is doing a crypto phone why do you want
that again digital property Apple was
talking about running some script to
find if people were having you know
cesam like CH you know child porn or
whatever on on their on their phones
right and even nyt actually reported
that uh like Google ran something like
this and found false positive some guy
had to take a photo of a kid for you
know medical diagnosis it got false you
know falsely flagged as cam he lost
access to his account total nightmare
imagine just getting locked out of your
Google account which you're so dependent
on right as more and more of your
Digital Life Goes online you know is it
really that much ethically different if
it's the Chinese state that locks you
out or an American corporation right
basically it's operationally very
similar you just have no recourse you're
unpersoned right so the crypto phone
becomes like insanely important because
you have a local set of private Keys
those are the keys to your currency and
your passport and your services and your
life right so like become something you
just hold on you with your person at all
times like your normal phone you might
have backups and stuff but you know the
crypto phone is an insanely important
thing okay and so that search that's
social that's messaging that's um
operating systems that's a phone that's
a lot right there yeah that's beautiful
can I have 120 seconds to just finish up
a few more thoughts on social media
please okay AI and AR okay just massive
impact obviously of AI and social media
you're going to have completely new
social media companies gestures other
things you know Tik Tok having you know
some of the AI creation Tools in there
is is just like a V1 of that um there's
this whole thread with everything stable
diffusion is unlocking but basically
this is going to melt Hollywood Us Media
corporations that took a hit in the
2010s were now going to be able to have
everyone around the world able to tell
their story and all the stuff about AI
ethics and AI bias the ultimate bias is
centralized AI only decentralized AI is
truly representative you cannot be faux
representative you cannot claim that
some that Google is representing
Nigerians and Indians and Brazilians and
Japanese like those folks need to have
access themselves right so that's a
fundamental ethical argument against
centralized AI it's unethical and it's
like you know this faux thing where you
might have like faux diversity in the uh
in the interface but you haven't
actually truly decentralized it this is
the woke capitalism right you justify it
with the Bess and you make the money by
centralizing it but the actual way of
doing it is letting it free for the
world and letting people build their own
versions if people want to build a Asian
Lord of the Rings they can do that if
they want to build an Indian one they
can do that if they you know whatever
they want right so that is the argument
for um Ai decentralization and for how
that kind of links to this I love that
AI decentralization fixes the bias
problem in AI which a lot of people seem
to yeah centralization is talk about and
focus on yeah centralization is
inherently
unrepresentative fundamentally like you
can like mathematically show it it's not
representing the world the the
decentralization allows anybody to pick
it up and make it their own right and
centralization is almost always a mask
for like that private corporate interest
where it's like one of the things about
the W cism thing by the way is the
deplatforming of trump is was political
other things are political but do you
know what deplatforming started with in
the late 2000s early 2010s all the open
social stuff was when deplatforming was
being used as a corporate weapon against
mircat and zingga and tepring right
these were companies that were competing
with features of you know tweet deck Etc
they're competing with features of
Twitter or Facebook and the API was cut
off and that was when actually
progressives were for net neutrality and
an open internet an open social against
the concentration of corporate power and
so on remember that right and uh so
what's going to happen is both those two
things the political and the corporate
are going to come together why in the
Soviet Union
denunciation was used as a tool to for
example undercut romantic Rivals right
there's a great article called the
practice of denunciation in in you know
the Soviet Union right which talks about
all these examples where where the
ideological argument was used to like
kick somebody into the 300 like pit that
existed at like the center of the Soviet
Union anybody could be kicked into the
pit at any moment and Tada well Ivan's
out you know and now you know hey Anna
you know whatever right okay that same
thing is going to be used by woke capus
is being used by woke capis where the
woke argument is used to justify pulling
pushing their competitor out of the app
store or down wracking them in search
well again you wouldn't want a a bigot
to be in search who could compete with
us or whatever right and conversely um
so so the wokeness is used to make money
and um the money is used to advance the
ideology it's like this kind of back and
forth sometimes right now you think of
those as independent things but then
they fuse okay and so that's very clear
with the AI bias arguments where it just
so happens that it's so powerful Lex
this technology is so powerful in the
wrong hands it could be used so we will
charge you 99 for every use of it how's
that how how altruistic is that is that
amazingly alistic it's really good right
so so once you kind of um kind of see
that as I said whenever they're
positioning on economics you can go in
culture when you're positioning on
culture you can go in economics if
they're so woke why are they Rich if
they're so concerned about
representation why is it centralized
answer they're not actually concerned
about it they're making money right okay
so that is I think in a in a few words
blows up a lot of the AI bias type stuff
right okay um they're basically they're
biasing AI all right so the amount of
stuff that can be done done with AI now
like it also helps the ponus economy as
I was talking about with the AI Zoom so
you have totally new sites uh totally
new apps that are based on that um it uh
I think it may
um I mean it it changes you're going to
have new Google Docs you all these kinds
of things you might have um you know
once you can do things with just a few
Taps you might have sites that are
focused more on producing rather than
just consuming because you know you
might with AI you can change the
productivity of gestures you know you
can have a few gestures like like a for
example the image to image thing with
with st diffusion where you make a
little cartoon third graders painting
and it becomes a real painting a lot of
user interfaces will be rethought now
that you can actually do this incredible
stuff with the knows what you wanted to
do
right so um and I saw this funny thing
which was a riff on Peter Teal's line
which is AI centralized and crypto
decentralized and and some I was saying
actually it turns out crypto is
centralized with the cbdcs and stable
coin and so on but AI is getting
decentralized with stable diffusion haha
right which is funny and I think there's
centralized and decentralized versions
of each of these right and finally the
third poll that actually you know teal
you know he talks about Ai and crypto
but the third poll is actually though
it's sort of underappreciated because
people think it already exists is social
that just keeping on going right and
obviously the next step in Social is AR
and VR and why is it so obvious because
it's meta you know it's Facebook now I
saw this very silly article it's like oh
my God Facebook is so dumb for putting
it 10 billion dollars into you know
virtual reality right and I'm
like okay the most predictable
innovation in the world in my view is
the AR glasses have you talked about
this on the podcast before AR and VR I
mean of course a lot but the AR is not
as obvious actually okay so AR glasses
what what are AR glasses so you take
Snapchat spectacles Google Glass um
Apple's AR kit Facebook's Oculus Quest 2
right or Meta Meta quest to whatever you
okay you put those together and what do
you get you get um something that has
the form factor of glasses that you'd
wear outside okay which um can with a
tap record or give you Terminator Vision
on something or with another tap go
totally dark and become VR glasses M
okay so normal glasses AR glasses VR
glasses recording it's as
multi-functional as your phone but it's
hands-free and you might actually even
wear it more than your phone in fact you
might be blind without your AR glasses
because uh you know one of the things i'
I've shown the book early on
are like floating sigils did we talk did
I show you that so this is a really
important just visual concept that right
there shows with AR kit you can see a
Globe floating outside okay secret
societies are are returning this is what
nfts will become the the nft locally on
your crypto phone if you hold it you can
see the symbol and if you don't you
can't by the way for people just
listening we're looking at a nice nature
scene where an
artificially created Globe is floating
in the
air yes but it's invisible if you're not
holding up the AR kit phone yes right so
so only you have a window into this
artificial world that's right and then
here is another thing which shows you
another piece of it and this is using
ens to unlock a door so this is an nft
used for something different so the
first one is using the nft effectively
to see something and the second is using
the nft to do something mhm okay so
based on your onchain communication
right um You can unlock a door that's
that's the door to a room soon it could
be a door to a building it could be the
gates to a community it could be your
digital login okay and so amazing what
this means is basically a lot of these
things which are like individual pieces
get synthesized right and uh you
eventually have a digital just like you
have a digital currency where digital
currencies unify Concepts like uh
obviously gold stocks bonds derivatives
every kind of financial instrument plus
Chuck-E-Cheese tokens Karma everything
that's fungible and transferable the
digital passport unifies your your
Google style login your private Keys
your API Keys your nfts your ens name
your domain name all those kinds of
things and your key card for your door
and so on right so the AR glasses are
what probably I don't know it'll be
Facebook's version three or version four
apple is also working on them Google is
also working on them you might just get
a bunch of those models at the same time
it's like predicting the iPhone just
like you know dorsy knew that mobile was
going to be big and that's why he had
140 characters for Twitter because it
was like an SMS code limitation and
Twitter was started before the iPhone AR
glasses are an incredibly predictable
invention that you can start thinking
about the future of social is in part in
person okay and it also means people
might go outside more why because you
can't see a monitor in the Sun but you
could hit AR and maybe you have a you
know full screen thing and you just like
kind of you know move your fingers or
something and you can tap you have to
figure out the gesture you don't want to
have Gorilla arms maybe you do have a
keyboard outside or or just even like a
um you could even have a desk like this
you know if you had um if you can touch
type you can imagine something where you
look down and you can see a keyboard
with your AR glasses and it registers it
and then you can type like this right
and probably you could have some AI that
could you know figure out what you meant
rather than what you were doing right
okay
so that's Ai and social media that's AR
and social media but really um one last
thing I'll say which is the non- obvious
non technological part is I think we'll
go
from very broad networks which are
hundreds of millions or billions of
people like Twitter and Facebook which
have many small communities in them to
much smaller networks that have a
million or 10 million people but are
much deeper right in terms of their
assoc affiliation right and this is the
long-term Trend in Tech is you're going
from I eyballs in the 1980s sorry
eyeballs in the 1990s to daily active
users in the 2000s to holders in the
2010s so you go from just like oh I'm
just a looky L to I'm logging in every
day to I'm holding a significant
percentage of my net worth and then this
decade is when the online community
becomes primary you're a nzen the
digital passport is your main identity
and so this is not see the problem with
Facebook or Twitter is it's a bunch of
different communities that don't share
the same values fighting with each other
this brings us back to the network state
where you have one Community with shared
values shared currency um and it's full
stack it's a it's a social network and
it's a
cryptocurrency and it's a co-living
community and it's a messaging app and
it's a this and it's a that and it's
like Estonia you know with a million
people you can actually build a lot of
that full stack that is starts to get to
what I call a network
State I feel like there should be like a
a standing Applause line here this is
brilliant you're an incredible person
this was an incredible conversation we
covered uh how to fix our government
looking at the future of governments uh
moving into Network dat we we covered
how to fix medicine FDA longevity that
was just like a
stellar description that really I'll
have to listen to that multiple times to
really think and thank you for that
especially in this time where the
lessons learned from the
pandemic are unclear to at least me
and there's a lot of thinking that needs
to be done there and then just a
discussion about how to fix social media
and how to fix money this was brilliant
so um you're an incredibly successful
person yourself you taught uh caught a
course at Stanford for H for
startups that's a whole another
discussion that we can have but let me
just ask you uh there's a lot of people
that look up to you so if there's
somebody who's young in high school
early
college trying to figure out what the
heck to do with their life what to do
with their career what advice could you
give them how they can have a career
they can be proud of or how they can
have a life they can be proud of at
least what I would do and then you can
take it or leave it or what have you but
uh
so yeah to maybe to your younger self
advice to your younger self you know my
friend Noel is uh you know he this is a
lot of what he puts out is the very prac
iCal you know brass TXS next steps and I
tend towards the you know macro of
course we both do sort of you know both
kind of thing right um let's talk brass
taxs and excepts because I actually am
practical uh or at least practical
enough you know to get things done I
think just like you said you're breaking
up the new book into three yes is
motivation theory and practice
motivation theory and practice that's
right and practice so let's talk
practice especially at the individual
scale right so first what skill do you
learn as you know a young kid right um
so let me let me just give what the the
ideal full stack thing is and then you
have to say okay I'm good quantitatively
I'm good verbally I'm good this I'm good
that right so the ideal is you are full
stack engineer and full stack influencer
or full stack engineer full stack
Creator okay so that's both right brain
and you know left brain all right so
what does that mean with engineering
that means you master computer science
and
statistics okay of course it's also good
to know physics and continuous math and
so on that's actually quite valuable to
know and and you might need to use a lot
of that continuous math with AI nowadays
right because a lot of that is actually
helpful right um grade descent and
whatnot but computer science and stats
are to this Century what physics was to
the last why because for example what
percentage of your time do you spend
looking at a screen of some
kind a large percentage of the time a
large percentage of the time right
probably more than you know for many
people more than 50% of their waking
hours if you include laptop you include
cell phone tablet you know your watch
you know maybe a monitor of some kind
right all those together is probably
it's a lot okay which means and then
that's going to only increase with ar
glasses okay which means most of the
rest of your life will be spent in a
sense in The
Matrix okay in a constructed Digital
World which is more interesting in some
sense in the offline world it's because
we look at it more it changes faster
it's right and where the physics are set
by programmers okay and uh what that
means is you know physics itself is
obviously very important for the natural
world computer science and stats are for
the artificial world right and uh why is
that because every domain has algorithms
and data structures whether it's you
Aviation okay you go to American
Airlines right they're going to have you
know uh planes and seats and tickets and
so on so it's data structures and you're
going to have algorithms and functions
that connect them you're going to have
tables that those data is ritten to if
it's Walmart you're going to have skus
and you're going to have shelves you're
going to have so you have data
structures and you have algorithms to
connect them so every single area you
have algorithms and data structures
which is computer science and stats and
so you're going to um collect the data
and analyze it right and so that means
if you have that base of CSN stats where
you're really strong and you understand
you know the the theory as well as the
practice right and you need both okay
because you need understand you know
obviously basic stuff like Big O
notation and whatnot and uh you to
understand all your probability
distributions okay um you know a good
exercise by the way is to go from the um
bruli trials right to everything else
because you can go bruli trials to the
binomial distribution to the gaussian
you can also go from you know bruli
trials to the geometric distribution and
so on you can drive everything from this
right and computer science includes not
just Big O but softare engineering well
computer science is Theory software
engineering is practice right yeah you
could
argue probability and stats is theory
and then data science is practice sure
right and so you include all of that
together I include all that as package
that's theory and practice right I mean
look it's okay to use um libraries once
you know what's going on under the hood
right that's fine but you need to be
able to kind of write out the whole
thing yourself I mean
it's uh that could be true could not be
true I don't know I are you sure about
that because well you should you could
you could I you might be able to uh get
quite far standing on the shoulders of
giants you can but it depends like you
couldn't
build well okay somebody maybe you could
however you were going to finish that
sentence I could push back before you
could probably push back right but
here's what I was going to say I was
going to say you couldn't really you
couldn't build Google or Facebook or
Amazon or Apple without somebody at the
company who understood like computer
architecture and you know layout of
memory and you know theory of compilers
but you might want to see the thing is
if you just look at libraries you might
be able to understand the capabilities
and you can build up the intuition of
like what a great specialized engineer
could do that you like you know for
example do you know at least a while
back facebook.com like was literally
it's just a single C++ plus compiled
binary or not C++ it was like hipop they
had a
PHP uh compiler where they had just one
giant binary I think I may be gang this
wrong but that's what I recall right
yeah yeah I mean that's that's it should
be simple it should be simple and then
you have guys like uh John carac who
comes in and does an incredibly
optimized implementation that actually
well yeah more than that right like he's
I mean yes right but go ahead I mean
there's some cases with John carac by
being an incredible engineer is able to
bring to reality things that otherwise
would have taken an extra five to 10
years yeah or maybe even more than that
like so you know this is the great man
theory of History versus like sort of
the um kind of the the determinist like
you know waves of History are pushing
things along the way I reconcile those
is the tech tree model of History you
know like Civilization you're play game
civilization yeah so like Civilization
you got the tech tree and you can go and
be like okay I'm going to get Spearman
or I'm going to do greeneries and
pottery right and so you can think of it
as something where here's everything
that Humanity has right now and then
Satoshi can push on this dimension of
the Tek Tre so he's a great man because
there W weren't other there wasn't a
LeBus libbets to satoshi's Newton right
like vitalic as you know amazing as he
is was five years later or thereabouts
right there wasn't contemporaneous um
like you know another person that was
doing what Satoshi was doing is truly
swet genaris right and that shows you
know what one person can do like
probably Steve Jobs with apple you know
given how the company was dying before
he got there and he built it into the
most valuable or put on the directory he
becom the most valuable company in the
world it shows that there is quote great
man right um maybe more than just being
five or 10 years ahead like truly
shaping where history goes right but on
their hand of course that person Steve
Jobs himself wrote that email that
recently was foring saying that you know
he doesn't grow his own food and he
doesn't uh you know he he didn't even
think of the rights that he's got
someone else thought of those and and
whatnot and so you kind of it is obv a
tension between the individual and
Society on this right but coming back so
CSN stats that's what you want to learn
um I I think physics is also good to
know because you go one level deeper and
of course all these devices you're not
going to be able to build um you know uh
lar or things like that without
understanding physics right you mention
that as one side of the brain what about
the other right so CS St is is is that
side okay and then you can go into any
domain any company kick butt you know
add value right okay so now the other
side is Creator right becoming a Creator
first online you know become like social
media is about to become far far far
more lucrative and monetizable people
are not
updated they kind of think this is it's
like over or something like that or it's
old or whatever but um with with crypto
once you have property rights on social
media now it's not what Google just
allows you to have but it's what you own
right you actually have genuine property
rights
and that just completely changes
everything just like you know the
introduction of property rights in China
change everything it might take some lag
for that to happen but you can lend
against that borrow against that uh you
you just you own the digital property
right and you can do nfts you can do you
know Investments you can do all this
other stuff right so uh in many ways I
think anybody who's listening who's like
you know I want to build a billion
dollar company I'm like build a billion
doll company yes also build um a million
person media operation or a million
person following or something online
right because a Us Media company is
simply not economically or socially
aligned with your business I mean the
big thing that I think uh you know Tech
and media actually is funny they there's
this collision and sometimes there's an
Adam smashing event and there's like a
repositioning right and media attack
Tech really hard in the 2010s as well as
many other
things and now post 2020 I think it's
now centralized Tech and media versus
decentralized techken Media and
centralized techken media is um nyt and
Google which have all become woke aied
the The Establishment companies but
decentralized second media is like
substack all lots of defectors from you
know uh from the US establishment from
the nyt have gone to substack but also
all the founders and funders are much
more vocal on Twitter whether it's Mark
Anderson Jack dorsy Jeff Bezos uh
Zuckerberg Zuck is just cutting out the
establishment and just going going
direct to you know posting himself or
posting the Jiu-Jitsu thing you know
which he recently did or going and
talking to Rogan right um and so you you
now have this sort of Adam Smash and
like kind of reconstitution why is that
important well look once you realize Us
Media companies are companies and you
know the their employees salsburg
employees are just dogs on a leash right
they're they're they're hitmen for old
money assassins for the establishment
they're never going to investigate him
okay there's a thing right now like some
strike that or possible strike that's
going at the New York Times the
obviously the most obvious
Rich corporate zillionaire the epitome
of white privilege is you know and and
again I'm not the kind of person who
thinks white is an insult right but the
you know the guy who inherited the
company from his father's father's
father's father in NFL right you know
you're supposed to have the Rooney Rule
where you're supposed to interview
diverse candidates for the top job you
know the other competitors for the top
job of the publisher in the New York
Times were two cousins of sbur so three
s straight white males in 2017 who
competed for this top job and everybody
in media was like silent about this
coronation they have this coronation
article in in in the times about this
right so you have this meritless
nepotist right this literally Rich Siz
white man who has makes millions of
dollars a year and it makes like 50x the
salary of other you know nyt journalists
okay and uh you know lives in in a
mansion and so on while denouncing this
is a born rich guy who denounces all the
built Rich guys at a company which is
far wider than the tech compan he's been
denouncing okay and again this is
something there's a website called Tech
journalism is less diverse than tech.com
um which actually shows the numbers on
this right here I can can look at these
numbers right so why why why did I say
this well centralized Us Media has lost
a ton of clout um engagement is down
you've seen crypto prices down like
stock pric have crashed
that's that's very obvious and
quantifiable less visible is that media
engagement is crashed right by the way
uh yeah there's a plot that shows on the
xaxis percent white and on the Y AIS of
the different
companies and the tech companies are
basically below 50% white and all the
different
Media Tech journalism companies are all
way above you know 70 80 90 90 plus
percent white and hypocrisy ladies and
gentlemen I mean again I'm not the kind
of person who thinks white is an insult
but these guys are and they are the
wokest Whites on the planet right it's
like ridiculous right I you know it's
like and anyone anyone who's homophobic
anyone who's that it feels like it's a
personal thing that they're struggling
with may maybe the journalists are
actually the ones who are racist well
actually you know it's funny you say
that because there's this guy guy am
Rosenthal okay and you know on his
gravestone was quote we kept the he kept
the paper straight right and actually um
he essentially uh went and this is
managing ENT of the New York Times for
almost you know from uh 69 to 77
executive Ed from 7786 and it was a
history Lord yeah history of basically
keeping you know gay reporter sh so
essentially the way I think about it is
um New York Post reported
that just just just to talk about this
for a second because it's so insane all
right New York Post reported and I've
got some of this in the book okay but
Abe Ros Rosenthal managing editor of the
New York Times from 1969 to 1977
executive editor from 1977 to 1986
gravestone reads he kept the paper
straight and then here's Jeet here on
this he kept the paper straight As It
Happens rosenal was a notorious
homophobe he made it a specific policy
to the paper not to use the term gay he
denied a plum job to a gay man for being
gay he minimized Aid crisis so like you
know the thing about this is this is not
like a one-off thing okay uh the New
York Times literally won a pulzer for
choking out the ukrainians for helping
starve 5 million ukrainians to death and
now has reinvented themselves as like a
cheerleader to stand with Ukraine right
they were for you know AB rosenthal's
homophobia before they were against it
right they were like if you look saw the
link I just pasted in okay during BLM uh
you know it's credibly reported that i't
seen this refuted the family that owns
the New York Times Were slaveholders
Somehow that stayed out of 1619 in BLM
coverage right so they were literally
getting the profits From Slavery to help
bootstrap you know the what was the
times or you know went into it they
actually did this article on like the
compound interest of slave holders in
Haiti and how much they owed people
right if you apply that to how much
money they made off slaves I mean can
anyone name one of salzberger slaves
like can we humanize that put a face on
that show exactly you know who who lost
such that he may win right and so you
stack this up and it's like you know for
the Iraq War before they were against it
and it's like yeah sure Bush you know
did a lot of bad stuff there but they
also reported a lot of negative you know
not negative coverage like false
coverage right about WDS like you know
the whole je military and so it's like
this amazing thing where if some of the
most evil people in history are the
historians if the um you know they
actually ran this ad campaign in the
2017 time uh period called the truth so
giant orwellian billboards right um
which say uh you know the truth is
essential here it looks like this this
is this was when this was just a few
years ago 2017 this is in New
York a billboard by the New York Times
reads the truth is hard to know the
truth is hard to find the truth is hard
to hear the truth is hard to believe the
truth is hard to accept the truth is
hard to deny the truth is more important
now than ever
right this is like uh yeah this is 1984
type of stuff yeah now here's the thing
do you know what other truth yeah big
what truth period big white
board so oh okay what other National
newspaper proclaimed itself the truth in
constantly every every day you you know
this one actually Oh you mean PR yeah
yeah there you go that's right what is
it what is the Soviet translation what's
the Russian translation of pra is is
truth that's sorry that didn't even
connect in my head
yes yeah
truth unironically huh and again it just
so happens that is this an onion
article right so like you know Prov that
like at least you're Communists these
guys have figured out how to get charge
people $99 a year or whatever it is for
the truth wow that's actually even
amazing right so the corporate truth so
you when you stack all that up right
basically Legacy media has delegitimized
themselves right every day that those
quote investigative journalists don't
investigate salsberg shows that they are
so courageous as to investigate your
boss but not their own yes Tada total
mass drop right that's like just obvious
right now once you realize this and you
know every influencer who's coming up
every Creator realizes okay well that
means I have to think about these media
corporations as competitors they are
competitors their competitors for
advertisers and for influence they will
try basically what the media
corporations did partially successfully
during the 2010s is they sort of had
this reign of terror over many
influencers where they' give them
positive coverage if they supported sort
of the party line and negative coverage
if they didn't okay but now um the soft
power has just dropped off a cliff right
and uh you know many kinds of tactics
that you know establishment journalists
do one way of thinking of them is like
like as a for-profit stazzy why because
they may stalk you dox you surveil you
like they can literally put you know
like two dozen people following somebody
around for a year and um that's not
considered stalking right uh that's not
considered spamming they are allowed to
do this and make money doing this
whereas if you so much as criticize them
oh my God it's an attack on the Free
Press blah blah blah right but you are
the free press and I'm the Free Press
like we're the Free Press again it goes
back to the decentralized you know that
free speech is not like some media
Corporation thing it's everybody's right
and what actually happened with social
media what they're against is not that
it is an attack on Democracy it's that
it's the ultimate democracy because
people have a voice now that didn't used
to have a voice you know that's saying
freedom of the freedom of the press
belongs to those who own one right that
old one right or never never argue with
a man who buys ink by the barrel right
yeah in a real way the entire things
that were the promise to people freedom
of speech free markets yeah like a
Beggar's democracy it's like oh yeah you
can have freedom of speech but not
freedom of reach because you're just
talking to yourself in your living room
in um you know Buffalo New York right
maybe you can get gather some friends
around you didn't have uh the licenses
to get uh you know like a TV broadcast
license radio license you don't have the
resources to buy a newspaper you don't
have practical reach or distribution
okay what happened was all these people
in the US in around the world suddenly
got voices and they were suddenly saying
things that the establishment didn't
want them to say and so that's what this
counter decentralization has meant both
in the US and in China just crack down
but it's as if like a stock went up like
100x and then dropped like 30% all the
Deep platforming stuff yes it's bad okay
it's um it's it's a it's a reared move
but in the long Arc I think we're going
to have more speech I think the counter
decentralization May succeed in China
but I don't think it's going to succeed
outside it CU you you're trying to
retrofit speech and thought controls
onto an ostensibly free Society right
now that check got cash people actually
have a voice it's not going to be taken
away from them very easily right so how
does this relate to my advice to young
kids once you have that context right
once you realize hey
look Apple didn't like do deals with
Blackberry okay Amazon didn't
collaborate or give free content to
Barnes & Noble uh Netflix
uh was not going and you know
socializing with employees of
Blockbuster these employees of
establishment media corporations are
your competitors okay they are out for
clicks they are out for money um they
will if if they literally choke out the
ukrainians before making themselves into
champions of the Ukrainian cause they'll
basically do anything you know and so it
when she realize that you're like okay I
need to build my own voice okay if
you're Brazilian you're you know
Nigerian you're in the midwest or the
Middle East right if you're uh you know
Japanese you know whatever wherever you
are you need to build your own voice
because Outsourcing that voice to
somebody else and having it put through
the distorting filter which maximizes
the clicks of the distorting kind of
thing is just not going to be in one's
own interest you don't have to you know
even agree with everything I'm saying or
even all of it to just be like well look
I'd rather speak for myself I'd rather
go direct if I could speak unmediated in
my own words right because the choice
for word is actually very important
right so that's the second big thing you
need to and this is a thing that took me
a long time to understand okay um
because I always got the importance of
math and science and in fact I would
have been probably just a career
academic or mathematician in another
life you know maybe statistician
something like that electrical engineer
Etc but the importance of creating your
own content and telling your own stories
uh if if you don't tell your own story
the story will be told for you right um
the sort of flip of winter right history
is if you do not write write history you
will not be the winner you must write a
history MH okay it's kind of a funny way
of you know putting it right yeah
chicken and egg yeah Contra positive
right and now what does that mean
practically okay so in many ways the
program that I'm laying out is to build
Alternatives peaceful alternatives to
all you know Legacy institutions right
to obviously to the FED right with with
Bitcoin to Wall Street with Defi and
with ethereum and so on to Academia with
The Ledger of record and the onchain
reproducible research that we talked
about to Media with decentralized social
media decentralized AI you can melt
Hollywood with this Okay Melt the Raa
melt the MPAA I mean there's there's
some good people there but everybody
should have their own movies you know
there's people should be able to tell
their own stories and not just wait for
it to be cast through Hollywood and
Hollywood's just making remakes anyway
okay so you can tell Original Stories
and you can do so online you can do so
by hitting a key and the production
values will be there now that the AI
content creation tools are out there I
mentioned disrupting or replacing or
building alternatives to the FED to Wall
Street to Academia to Media I mentioned
to Wikipedia right um there's things
like golden there's things like uh
there's a bunch of web 3ish Wikipedia
competitors um that are com combining
both Ai and crypto for property rights
um there's uh you'll also need
alternatives to all the major tech
companies that's that was a list that I
went through with um you know
decentralized search and social and
messaging and operating systems and even
the cryptophone okay um and then finally
you need alternatives to uh us political
institutions and more generally and
Chinese political institutions um and
what are those that's that's where the
network State comes in and the
fundamental concept is if you as I
mentioned uh only 2% of the world can
become president of the United States
about the number of Americans who are
you know native born and over 35 and so
on and so forth but 100% the world can
become pres of their own network State
what that means is um and this kind of
related to those two points right if
you're an individual and you're good at
engineering and you're good at content
creation okay like somebody like Jack
dorsy for example or or Mark Anderson
actually a lot of the founders are
actually quite good at at both nowadays
you look Bezos he's actually funny on
Twitter when he allows himself to be
he's you know you don't become a leader
of that caliber without having you know
some of both right if you've got some of
both um now no matter where you are what
you're is what your nationality is
whether you can get a US Visa you can
become president of a network State and
what this is It's A New Path to
political power that does not require
going through either the us or the
Chinese establishment you don't have to
wait till you're 75 you don't have to
become a geronto crat or spout the party
line and so on um the V1 of this is like
folks like you know Francis Suarez or n
belly of El Salvador but you know Suare
is a great example where um well not a
full Sovereign or anything like like
that he has many ways in many ways the
skills of a tech CEO where he just put
up a um you know a call on Twitter and
help build Miami recruited all these
people from all over and it wasn't the
two-party system but the n city system
he just helped build the City by
bringing people in okay and that's and
when I say Suarez is a V1 I you know I
love France Suarez I love what they're
doing um the next iteration of that is
to actually build the community itself
rather than just kind of taking an
existing Miami you're building something
that is potentially the scale of Miami
as a digital community and how many
people is that well like the Miami
population is actually not that large
it's like 400 something thousand people
you could build a digital Community like
that so if you have the engineering and
you have the content creation and you
build your own distribution you own your
own thing you can become essentially a
new kind of political leader where you
just build a large enough online
community that can crowdfund territory
and you build your vision of the good
mhm and anybody could build the vision
of the good talking about 8 billion
people I mean there's no more inspiring
I mean sometimes when we look at how
things are broken there could be a
cynical paralysis right but ultimately
this is a really empowering message yes
I I think there is a new birth of global
freedom and that in the fullness of time
people will look at the internet as
being to the Americas what the Americas
were to Europe
a new world okay in the sense of this
Cloud continent has just come down okay
and people are you know if you spend 50%
of your waking hours looking at a screen
20% you're spending all this time
commuting up to the cloud in the morning
and coming back down you're doing these
day trips and it's got a different
geography and all these people are near
each other that were far in the physical
world and vice versa right and so this
will because it's this new domain it
gives rise to Virtual Worlds that
eventually become physical in the same
way that most people don't know this
that well but you know the americaas
really shaped the old world many
Concepts like the ultra capitalism and
Ultra democracy of the new world the
French Revolution was in part I mean
that was a bad version okay but that was
in part inspired by the American okay
there many many movements that came back
to the old world that started here in
the same way you know I don't call it
the mainstream media anymore you know
what I call it the downstream media
because it's Downstream of the internet
that's right right that's right and you
know there's this guy a while back who
he had this meme called the one Year
American Empire that everything's
American and so on and his I think
fundamental category ER is he considers
the internet to be American but you know
why that's not the case because and
it'll be very obviously so I think in
five or 10 years why because the
majority of English speakers online by
about 2030 are going to be
Indian okay they're all they just got 5G
LTE super cheap internet recently the
last few years it's like one of the
biggest stories in the world that's not
really being told that much okay they've
been lurking and here's the thing and
this took me a long time to kind of you
know figure out like to not to figure
but to communicate actually realized
this in 2013 but um these folks don't
type with an
accent okay they speak with an accent
but they don't type with an accent and
all the way back in 2013 when I taught
this corsera course um I was like who
are these folks I had hundreds of
thousands of people from around the
world sign up it's a very popular course
even then okay and hundreds thousand
people signed up I was like who are
these folks and there were like polish
guys and you know like you know like
this lady from Brazil and so and they
knew Scumbag Steve and Good Guy Greg but
they didn't know the Yankees or hot dogs
or all the offline stuff of America they
didn't know physical America they knew
the digital conversation the Reddit
conversation and you know what became
the Twitter conversation for example I
just saw this um this YouTube video
where there's a Indian founder and he
just said just casually like oh I slid
into his DMs like this right it was kind
of a joke but he said it in an Indian
accent and everybody laughed everybody
knew what he meant and you're like wait
that is a piece of what people think of
as American internet slang that's
actually internet slang yeah which will
soon be said mostly by non-americans now
what does that mean that means that just
like the US was a was a branch of the UK
and it started with English and
certainly there's lots of antecedents
you can trace back to England but
nowadays most Americans are not English
in ancestry there's Germans and Italians
Jewish people African-Americans you know
everybody right in the same way the
internet is much more representative of
the world than the USA is it may have
started American but got forked by the
rest of the world that's right and it is
it gives a global equality of
opportunity it's even more capitalist
than America is it's even more
democratic than America is just as
America was more capitalist and
Democratic than the UK the meme has
escaped the cage of its captor and by
the way that doesn't mean I'm that so I
want to be very clear about something
when I say this kind of stuff people
will be like oh my God you hate America
so much you know and that's not at all
what I'm saying uh it's like first take
Britain okay would you think of the US
or Israel or India or Singapore as being
anti-british not today they're post
British right in fact they're quite
respectful to I mean look at the queen
and so on people respect the UK and so
everyone's cominging there to pay their
respects that might not be the greatest
example but yes go on well put it like
this broadly speaking they're not like
burning the British flag and Effigy or
anything essentially point is each of
these societies is kind of moving along
their own axis they're not defining
every action in terms of whe they're Pro
British or anti-british right like once
you have kind of a healthy distance
people can respect all the
accomplishments of the UK while also
being happy that you're no longer you
know run by them yes right and then you
can have like a better you know kind of
arms length relationship right and so
that's what post British means it is not
anti-british not at all in fact you can
respect it while also Alo being happy
that you've got your own sovereignty
right um and you know happy that Britain
has is doing its own thing I'm I'm glad
I'm glad they're doing well right okay
and um they're actually doing some
special economics Zone stuff now and in
the same way if you think of it as not
being pro-american or anti-American
because that's the with us or against us
formulation of George Bush you know like
rather than just everything must be
scored as pro-american or anti-American
you can think of post-american that not
everything has to be scored on that axis
like you know
there are certain things around the
world which should be able to exist on
their own and you should be able to move
along your own axis like is um like
perhap obious example like uh is is
longevity pro-american or anti-American
you know no it's like it's it's on its
own axis it's moving on its own axis and
new States and new countries should be
able to exist uh that do not have to
Define themselves as anti-American to do
so they're just post-american um
friendly to but different from that's
possible to do and we've got examples of
that right and so when I talk about this
I'm talking about is really in many ways
us and Western ideals you know but
manifested in just a different form
right and and also crucially integrative
of global ideals you know these are in a
sense they Global human rights they
Global values uh which is freedom of
speech private property protection from
search and seizure um and actually so
that's all the Bill of Rights type stuff
and I saw something I thought was really
good recently that's a good um first cut
at something that I might want to
include I credit him of course in V2 of
the book a digital Bill of Rights okay
and uh so this was a really good decent
first cut at a digital Bill of Rights
okay and he talks about um the right to
encrypt the right to compute the right
to repair the right to portability right
so encrypt is perhaps obvious you know
e-commerce and everything a compute like
your device it's not like you can't just
have somebody intercept it or you know
shut down your your floating points um
that might sound stupid but in the EU
they're trying to regulate Ai and by
doing that they have some regulation
that says like
logic is is is it self-regulated did you
see this no it's hilarious hold on but
click the the tweet that I sent you just
before this one right so I was like you
know in in woke America they're
abolishing accelerated math because math
is quote white supremacist not to be
outdone Europe seeks to regulate AI by
regulating logic itself you can't reason
without a license right article three
for purposes of this regulation the
following definitions
apply AI system is software that's
developed with one or more of the
techniques and approaches listed in
Annex one and you know what's in Annex
one in Annex one logic and knowledge
based
approaches so step away from the if
statement right okay and the thing is
you know if you've dealt with these
bureaucracies the stupidest possible
interpretation I mean think about you if
you think oh no no that wouldn't make
any sense they wouldn't do that the
entire web has been uglified by this
stupid cookie thing that does absolutely
nothing right the actual way to protect
privacy is with user local data mean
meaning like decentralized um systems
right where the private keys are local
no I'm just laughing at the layers of
absurdity in this um yeah step away from
the if statement I mean it's hilarious
um it's very very
clumsy um it's us struggling how to
define yeah the digital Bill rights I
suppose
and doing it so extremely clumsily it's
funny you know the Europe like I heard
this thing which is like Europe's like
well look the US and China are way ahead
of us in AI but we're going to be in
leader in AI regulation oh yeah yeah
yeah and something we haven't mentioned
much of in this whole conversation I
think may be implied between the lines
is the thing that was in the
constitution of the pursuit and
happiness and the thing that is in many
stories that we humans conjure up which
is love
I think the thing that makes life worth
living in many ways but for that you
have to have freedom you have to have um
stability you have to have a society
that's functioning so that humans can do
what humans do which is make friends
make
family uh make love make uh make
beautiful things together as human
beings uh baji this is like an
incredible conversation thank you for uh
showing an amazing
future um I think really empowering to
to people because we can all be part uh
of creating that future and thank you so
much for talking to me today this was an
incredible obviously the longest
conversation I've ever done but also one
of the most amazing enlightening thank
you thank you brother for everything you
do thank you for uh inspiring all of us
well Lex this was great and um uh we
didn't get through all the questions
there we didn't
just just for the record we didn't get I
would venture to say we didn't get
through
50% this is great this is great and I
had I had to stop us from going too deep
on any one thing even though it was
tempting like those chocolates those
damn delicious looking chocolates that
was used as a metaphor about 13 hours
ago or however long we started the
conversation this was incredible it was
really brilliant you're brilliant
throughout uh on all those different
topics So yeah thank you again for
talking today oh this is great I really
appreciate being here sir thanks for
listening to this conversation with B J
sason to support this podcast please
check out our sponsors in the
description and now let me leave you
some words from Ray Bradbury people ask
me to predict the future when all I want
to do is to prevent it better yet build
it predicting the future is much too
easy anyway you look at the the people
around you the street you stand on the
visible air you breathe and predict more
of the same to hell with more I want
better thank you for listening and hope
to see you next time