Latest / Oxide and Friends / Trolltron, Assemble!

Transcript

Trolltron, Assemble! · Oxide and Friends

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay. So now Twitter has given up on sending me reminders to start my spade.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: And Excellent.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I'm not sure if that's because just they're like, the mics are hot, and they're like, alright. You know what? Fuck it. You try to remember to schedule your space without us.
• 0:13
  And meanwhile, like, like, I'm trying to find the link for the space. So I guess I got punished there. I also love the fact that it really wants me to confirm every time I invite you to cohost. Like, Twitter's like, I don't know about this guy.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: You sure
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: you wanna
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: You I don't know. Because, like, the the ramp up did it go well last week?
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. This guy again? Yeah. Again?
• 0:33
  You wanna do it again? Alright. So I tried to change the the the title when I I'm not sure that it that it took. So we should just be clear at the top that I I feel like the, the National Troll Service has has has issued a the troll watch has actually been escalated to a troll warning. And those in the outer oxide islands are are advised to to seek shelter.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. This is a mandatory evacuation warning.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Like, I'm just saying that you can that that you can stay here, but we can't send anyone in to rescue you.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Maybe days.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: It maybe days. So I would ideally and maybe we won't even get the time of this. I don't even know because I'm gonna have a hard time talking about the same author tweet and then talking about anything else. So we'll see.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Do you want do you wanna change the title of it? It's still saying time software engineer's oldest foe.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: And as it turns out
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Which is clever. Don't get me
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: wrong. Yeah. I so I changed that to Sam Albin, software engineering software engineering's youngest foe. Though? Or yeah.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: That was the youngest. Certainly.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I and I'm not sure I can edit it from here. Alright. Well, yeah. We'll just alright. So we'll get going.
• 1:51
  So did you where did you did you see this tweet after I quote tweeted it at him? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
• 1:58
  I saw it. Yes. Thank you for that. Just so you blame me for this?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Well, if I hadn't seen your tweet, I wouldn't have seen it.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I thought I I did that is unknowable. That is absolutely unknowable. We can't know that.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: That's fair. That's fair.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I may so for those who who didn't see it, so I mean, I do not follow the same moment. I wanna be clear about this. The algorithm brought this to me. I did not seek this out.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: That's almost worse, though. It's like it knows it knows you, that you do.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: This is like are we talking about Quora? Quora? You have this problem with Quora?
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: We're we're, like, a few days after. It's like, hey. You look for this thing.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: No. So I have got a so Quora sends me links that it thinks I'm interested in. And they are all they all just they all relate to prison life. Like, life in the big house. Life in prison.
• 2:58
  And and the reason it keeps sending me these links is because I keep clicking on them. And because, like, I don't know. I'm curious. I yeah. How do they make porna in in in the can?
• 3:12
  How do they like, if we ever need to make if when when you and I are finally incarcerated together and you need me to make booze, I know what to take from the commissary to make booze. See? This is useful. That is But it kinda be so useful. So I don't know why I find this mesmerizing, but I do find it mesmerizing.
• 3:28
  I do click on it. So, of course, Core is like, alright. We got this guy dialed. Like, anytime you have any article about prison life, this guy will click on it. And I want a way of saying, like, I'm clicking on it, but I feel filthy about myself.
• 3:41
  Like, I don't like, this is no bad click. I wanna, like, you know, any of middle click buttons. I needed some kind of click that says, yes. I'm clicking on it, but please, please, please stop. I hate myself when I do this.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Bridget's like, no. You can't click on it in my Right.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I know she should. She I it's it's bad. So I feel like this way, definitely, with the same Altman tweets, it's like, oh, Twitter. Okay. Fine.
• 4:04
  But no. Please don't. Don't bring them to me. I mean but, yes, I'm gonna engage with them, unfortunately. So so I pinned it, but do
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: you wanna give it a reading?
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. Well, so he I mean, there's a whole bunch going on here. Right? So there is this, I I think, higher ed is going through a lot. There I mean, higher ed does need to change, change, and we can talk about kind of the the and so I actually said, actually, Adam, from the jump, I did you think the one very important I do feel that that very much colors our reaction to this.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. And
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. It's been kind of interesting to me when I mean, as a parent, like, you really don't wanna necessarily say, hey. Non parents can't weigh in on this. It's like no. Like, everyone's opinion is valuable, but it's also indisputable that being a parent has changed my opinion about lots and lots and lots of things, has informed my thinking about lots and lots and lots of things.
• 5:14
  And being a parent of a teenager is informed by being about lots and lots of things. And and, Adam, I don't know. Maybe you had the same kind of thought that there's a big difference between being an 18 year old and having an 18 year old.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: And what you remember about being
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: And what you remember about being an 18 year old.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: That's right. Because certainly at age 18, in my in my current reflection of it, I was like, yes. When but, like, obviously, I was a child. As evidenced by last week, who who who claimed to have known me since childhood, when what she meant was as, like, a 24 year old. And it's like
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: What she actually said, the actual words out of her mouth is I have known Adams since he was a baby. And and people are like, oh, I didn't know Brian Grove in Connecticut. I'm like, no. No. No.
• 6:09
  No. Hey. Not mom, not an, like, actual baby. But
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: No. Like like a, you know, 500 month old son or whatever. 500.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: But it's true. And it's like I know it's like I think it's certainly like I think of I mean, obviously, you and I have known one another since we were both very young. And the although, like, I didn't know you at college. It was only when you were in college, and I was, like, like, some 5 years older than you are. But, and, actually, I have to say it was fun.
• 6:37
  I mean, you were obviously at my wedding many, many years ago, and then being, we sort of give people other full context. We were watching a a ballgame in which my my son was pitching as a senior in high school, pitching for the varsity team, which is a lot of fun. And you kind of think, like, wow, we are we're old. Right? Having been kind of through life's journey together.
• 6:59
  But the yeah. So what I mean, we were kids and obviously, it's a there's a gradient there. And we, society, have kind of picked 18 years old for some things. We picked 21 years old for other things. And we should probably pick 26 years old or 28 years old for a lot of other things.
• 7:23
  But the alright. So the tweet, just to read it, is a Sam Altman says, a version of college replacement that I'm super interested in. Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world and give them tenure, say, a decade plus of salary, resources to work on whatever they want in a smart peer group in exchange for a small percentage of future earnings. I get, like, throwing up in the trash can. To which I, quote, tweeted and said that this is child abuse.
• 7:51
  I I in which I absolutely believe. I mean, I'm I'm I'm not being I there's without hyperbole, I think that that is so wrong to even contemplate. An 18 year old is, yes, is an adult in in some very narrow senses, but is also very much a child in many other senses and is emphatically a child with respect to mortgaging their own future. And I felt that this whole tweet was horrifying. So, Adam, what was your reaction to it?
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, same. I mean, you know, I think I, you know, I I love my 16 year old. I think the world of him. And if given sort of unfettered access to capital and, like, I I don't think necessarily, like, the world's, greatest thoughts would come out of him, that there is a role that adversity plays in and and necessity plays in crafting people and ideas.
• 8:56
  And, I mean, I guess, like, I I felt is it the Altman Fellowship or whatever it was he was doing to encourage people to drop out of school? I feel like it's just fucking people up.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: The or
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: this idea would fuck people up.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Okay. So I get yes. I I totally agree. And I've been trying to think about, like, why do I find this so off putting? And so I've got I've got an idea that I wanna kinda float by you and float by you kind of you, plural.
• 9:17
  So the other folks may have a perspective on this. But the, I feel that as I reflect back on my own education, I really haven't learned from peers. I love my peers in terms of, like, you know, we're talking the young adult education, say, 18 to 26. In that 18 to 26 period, I wasn't really learning from peers. I was learning from people who were further down the track than I was.
• 9:50
  Professors, TAs, older undergraduates. I when it was at work, it was more senior engineers. And I feel like I learned there's so many people that I learned so much from. And my peers also learned from them, and I loved being with my peers. And as I grew older with my peers, I came to learn a lot from my peers.
• 10:14
  And now I would say I learn a ton from my peers. But I feel like that's the fundamental disconnect. That if you take an 18 year old and put them only with with other 18 year olds, they're not gonna learn anything. I mean, the or what they're gonna learn is I shouldn't say that. They are there there's a lot of opportunity for life's wisdom that you are not getting by taking.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: That's right. It it that that's right. It's not that they won't learn from their peers. It's rather they're getting a a single kind of first principles kind of take on the world, which may I mean, perhaps to Altman's point, and this may be stretching stretching to to find a point, There may be some benefit there, but there's also a huge amount of benefit of not needing to make every mistake the the hard way or learn every lesson
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: the hard way. Yes. And I mean, I feel that so many I mean, and Adam, I don't know if you feel this the same way too being at I mean, having been at you know, I both been at big established company, a couple of startups, and now working together at a startup that is predominantly people who are are 10 plus years into their career. And I feel a big reason that startups are fucked up is because they are started generally by very young people who have a lot of life's lessons still in front of them. And they make a lot of repeatable mistakes because they're not listening to people who are older than they are.
• 11:41
  Is my is that an o I
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: I I I no disagreement there. I think a lot of the the, you know, my read on the y c culture is that it's like, you know, that folks with experience don't don't sort of teach us everything, and that there's first principles learning is more important. And I've heard that directly from venture capitalists, include including venture capitalists who were investors in my company, that you should learn everything from first principles and, like, smart people are gonna outpace people with experience. And and I and I get that as sort of a meme, but it does seem to deny both, in this context, people trying to learn of a whole vista of learning, and then people starting companies of of a different kind of vista of learning, and forcing them to to reconsider things, you know, some that need to be reconsidered, others that don't, but certainly denying themselves the benefit of of learned experience.
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: There's also some historical precedent for this kind of myth of 18 year olds running the show all over the place. And that's the dark ages after the fall of the Roman empire in Europe. I mean, most of the nobility at that time was like 18 years old. And, you know, a lot of these stupid wars were caused because somebody was like, hey. The Duke and the neighboring fiefdom, like, looked at me wrong at the last feast.
• 13:08
  I'm gonna go fuck them up. It's like we've the world has seen this before, and it was not pretty.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: It's all like King Joffrey as far as the eye can see.
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you know, that that obviously fiction, but, like, there is some historical precedence for these young nobles and and royalty and so forth that were just, like, you know, clearly given to the their worst inclinations because they were all teenagers.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Well and then I think we also then fetishize. And I think, like, math does a particularly, bad job of this or good job of this. I guess depending on your axis. But we we overly fetishize youth. And because as we get older like, look, we lose mental acuity as we as we get older.
• 13:52
  And thank God, we also gain wisdom as we get older. Unclear if we gain wisdom faster or slower than we lose mental acuity. But I I think we tend to fetishize this period of kind of maximum mental acuity and then minimize the fact that, like, yeah, but you actually have no no wisdom there. You're making a lot of repeatable mistakes. And I said, I think I mean, the the I mean, I don't even think the I mean, the fields metal is so screwed
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: up. Yeah. What what is the age limit on that?
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: 40, I believe.
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: You're correct. It is 40.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: So you cannot win the Fields medal if you're older than 40. It's like, woah. That's warped.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: Well, but that that like, in fairness, that was designed for a very specific reason, and that was to encourage young mathematicians to take risks and try to do good things. I mean so, like, that that I kinda give them a pass, but that's that's a very specific highly vertical thing.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. And I think that we and, I mean, I think it's a huge mistake. I think we fetishize, you know, the and, Adam, I'm sure that I mean, you've seen this too where you have, kids that are very prescient or they develop early. They develop early mentally or physically, and they end up with their childhood ends up being effectively sacrificed because their adulthood arrives too early.
• 15:13
  And when they arrive to the actual adulthood, it's like as it turns out, everyone's caught up. And they what actually when they were a math prodigy at 7, it's like, actually, you just had the mental acuity of of a 20 something when you were 7. And when now you're 21, it's not like you're not I mean, this is not true for all mathologies, obviously. There are plenty that remain prodigious in adulthood. But for everyone that's prodigious in adulthood, I would bet that there are there's more than one that is actually caught up to by the general population and then looks back on a child that that's lost.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. As a as a fellow normie, I I definitely agree with that perspective. And, I don't know. I like, my freshman year of college, our next my next door neighbor was something like 14 or 15. And I I I think it's also a shame to deny children childhood.
• 16:09
  Yes.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: It well and I know we got a couple of examples of this. The I I mean, I can think of a couple examples in our the I mean, both shared lives and separate lives, Adam. I when I went to school, I there was a fellow 1st year that was exceptional from a math perspective, was TA ing, math 35, which was the I mean, because he he took math 35. Right, Adam?
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. With professor Banchoff. Yes.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Right. So I I I was not smart enough to take math 30 So I've been this is the this is the accelerated for those who did very well on the BC Calc exam. The the, for those who had done very well on on the BC Calc exam, you were you could take math 35. I was stuck in in steerage with in in Math 17. But he he wasn't just taking Math 35, he was TAing Math 35.
• 17:08
  While he was taking a 100 level and 200 level, which is a graduate level math courses. It's a 1st year, which is, like, super unusual. He had been featured as a prodigy when Newsweek had famously featured him as a prodigy when he was younger. And this is, like, alright. Like, wow.
• 17:24
  That guy must be really, really smart. It's great. Like, it's amazing. Good. That's awesome for you.
• 17:31
  And then, like, a a really interesting thing strange thing happened that he and I were in the same operating systems class together. An operating systems class had very much changed my own life. So something that I looked back in. Adam changed your life as well, I think. Absolutely.
• 17:48
  Yeah. So certainly, we both see the power of education in that regard and the power of a professor to, and TAs. Honestly, older folks to really to to kinda change one's life. So I was in this life changing operating systems course, and this erstwhile Prodigy was also taking the same course. And the thing about this course is that course I part of what I love about the course is, like, that course was hard intellectually, but it was also just, like, a lot of work.
• 18:15
  Like, there was not you you couldn't just kinda show up for the exam in 169. Right? A lot of lab work and, which is great. I mean, that's part of what made that course great, I felt, was was all of the the very intense lab work. And, he was kind of, like, trying to phone it in a little bit, which is, like, alright.
• 18:34
  That's not gonna work. He's just gonna be that like, it doesn't matter how bright you are. That's not gonna work. And then kind of a a a funny thing happened because there were and, Adam, when you took it, were there homework assignments as well as labs?
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: There were homework assignments, but that was in the sort of companion class. So this was at Brown University, there was a kind of a one and a half course sequence where you can take 167 where you do homeworks in class and, like, exams and stuff, and then 169 where you actually build the operating system.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Yes. A transition that actually happened while I was there because 169, this operating systems course, had a reputation. I don't know if it if it it still had that reputation when you were there, Adam, but it had a reputation on campus as being one of the most difficult time consuming courses on campus.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: The, the, joke at my time was, 169 because they're only a 168 hours in the week.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: Right. So this is
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: a hard course. The one that I would put it next to was Ed 100. Education 100 was another one. It was famously with Ted Sizer, a very famous lecturer, another life changing course. But, like, you could it was literally not physically possible to take Ed 100 and CS 169 side by side because they were each of them was too demanding, of your time.
• 19:48
  And so the in particular, the the son of the chair of the department was taking 169 and doing very poorly because he wasn't doing any of the work. And the chair of the department had decided that's it. This course is too hard, and you have to, you you have to basically get rid of the labs. And to the professor's credit, refuse to get rid of the labs and try to get creative. They did get creative by creating a full credit course, which was this course that did all the kind of the material you're talking about out of 167.
• 20:18
  And then the labs, it it which he retained the number for, which was beautiful, is only a half credit course. Did you find another half credit to pair with that
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: one, bud? I did, actually. I picked up my other half with, Greek,
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: no.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: No. Latin grammar review. I had taken a bunch of my god. What? I had I had taken a bunch of Latin in high school, and I showed up, to to Brown University as a freshman thinking that I could take a graduate level Latin class, which I could in a in the most technical sense.
• 20:50
  And, you know, I had my first experiences with student with the dreaded see me after my first exam. There you go. Exactly. Later on, I I did some Latin grammar review as a senior with a bunch of freshmen and it was great.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: And so you got a half credit for that?
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Picked up
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: the other half.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, so what the this half credit is, like, gloriously useless because there are so few other half credit courses. When I was there, the only other half credit course was the chorus. So you could go sing in the chorus. If you're like, I don't sing. I can't sing in the chorus.
• 21:20
  Well, no. Then then don't take 1.60 But it means you were only taking 169, basically, for the challenge and the thrill and and the education. Right? But in in my day, these were still too so so, Adam, you had the homework assignments in 167. The this this OS course had the you had homeworks.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Yes. Brian and for the other speakers, we're all I I it seems like getting really compressed and the audio is really choppy. But I checked the recording audio and maybe folks, who are not speakers could give, like, a thumbs up if the audio sounds fine, to all of you.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Because you you sound fine to me. This was not true, but you sound fine. Do I not sound fine to you?
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: No. No. We're losing I I'm losing kinda every other word, but I don't know that it's worth fixing.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: It's it's a bit there's there's a bit of a drop. Yes. Come on, Twitter. Get it together. I also wonder if it's different for, speakers as yeah.
• 22:17
  Then I actually think because speakers live in the future in Twitter spaces, I actually wonder if they've got an issue that's only affect but, fortunately, our resident Twitter support engineer, Tom Lyon, Internet Internet pioneer and, Twitter support engineer, Tom Lyon. Tom will, I'm sure, just get right on that.
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: That's right.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Well, we we we can see the delay in chat, like, you know, or in the on the screen. People are giving us the the 2 two fingers, the, like, victory salute here, which I infer to mean that the audio sounds okay, because I forgot there isn't actually a thumbs up anymore. But, sound sounds like we sound fine to them, but we just don't sound good to each other.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: That's fine. Okay. Well, we can endure. You sound great to me. So really it is only you who are suffering.
• 23:04
  I'm so sorry. But so you but you had homeworks in 167. That's right. They were idiosyncratic, I assume.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. In the in the way that, the professor, Tom Detner had what is and was idiosyncratic.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: And in this just, like, thinks about things differently, like, in a good way, but in a but in a way that's definitely different And would ask these kind of open ended problems, open ended, like, word problems. And I I haven't been a TA having graded those. Like, no two answers are the same. Basically, everyone it actually, Adam, it reminds me of the question that you're fond of asking. You've got a question that you're fond of asking candidates and people kind of explore their thought process, and I kinda feel like that's, like, a classic 167
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: format. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: So this math prodigy sitting beside me taking this course turns in the answer key. Turns in the the same answer that Tom Scott. And it's like, did you cheat on this? And it's called in and he says, no. No.
• 24:09
  I I know. I don't well, I guess I just I came up with the same answer. I don't know. So I came up with word for word with the same answer. And the, it's like, okay.
• 24:18
  And then later on the the kind of the next assignment, Tom seeded his home directory with a false copy of the answers that this student then turned in and and was, ultimately, was allowed to stay at the university, but I mean, it's a whole big deal. And it was a and I remember at the time thinking, like, holy god. You've got such like, you have so you were born with so much from into the natural ability perspective. Why would someone who is born with so much then do something that is so wrong and so reckless and so unnecessary given their obvious capacity. I mean, they just didn't have the time to do the work for the class.
• 25:08
  Like, just don't take the class. You know? It's and the the kind of the thing that I came to is that I think that part of this person's problem was they had been deprived of a childhood. That that that having this kind of being in Newsweek when you're 7 years old for being super smart is probably not the best thing for your long term development, was kinda my conclusion for that. And, Ian, I saw you, that you go to speak.
• 25:41
  Did you know someone in in something similar?
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, as someone who, was accelerated through through high school, I had, you know, a number of peers who were in similar ish situations where they were, either taking college level classes early or, you know, started college a year early or whatever else. One kind of common thread on on those, people is often, the work is easy until it isn't. So they they never really learn the ability to study because they don't need to. They don't need to do put in a a huge amount of work for a very large amount of time up until you hit a course where that does not work.
• 26:37
  Which is often even just at 1st year university level, 1st year college level is where that kinda threshold gets passed and and you do actually have to study. And a lot of people struggle when they get to that point because they've found that, up until that point, school and school work has been the cakewalk. And it's as soon as it isn't and requires some some some effort then, things become difficult and perhaps people look for an easy way out to be able to, you know, continue to not have to work.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: No. I I think you're right. And, certainly, that was true. It sounds like it was true for you. It's definitely true for me that and, Adam, it sounds like it was true for you.
• 27:16
  I you and I have not bonded over the see me story. But I also had see me written at the the the top of my first two college exams. Had, I was taking I took 2 exams concurrently. They both came back with see me written at the top of it because I've done exceedingly poorly on both exams because I take an Ian that same approach that you're talking about, which is like I kinda skated through high school. And, the skating doesn't work anymore.
• 27:41
  Where at some level, the skating doesn't work anymore. And in many ways, and this is part of why I view what Altman is describing as so despicable, is the you have to take that youthful ego and gently massacre it and then rebuild someone up. And you when you are being and you wanna do that in a way that doesn't leave people, you know, despondent. But you also need to, at some level, struggle. You need to and, Adam, I think this was your point too that, like, you need adversity.
• 28:16
  You need things not to go well. You need to and you're talking about, like, you need to actually, like, work hard. That's all those are really important life lessons that are part of your education that happen between 18 and 22 often. And to take an 18 year old and deprive them of that is, to me, deeply wrong to that that 18 year old.
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: I think another thing about your math prodigy fellow, I actually feel really bad for that person to some extent. Like, not trying to excuse the cheating. That's that's just not okay. Pretty much ever, certainly not in an academic context. But I can't I can't only imagine that that person was just had an enormous amount of pressure riding on them basically from this from childhood.
• 29:02
  And when I say childhood, I mean, like, you know, 3, 4, 5 years old. And their entire identity was probably centered around being this academic whiz kid. And then they get into college, and and and then they hit that that barrier that both you and Ian described of, like, oh, golly. Now I really have to work, and I can't just skate anymore. And, you know, that just becomes and then they hit this class.
• 29:26
  I mean, an operating systems class for god's sakes, and it's just kicking their asses or kicking their ass, and and they're just like, what do I do? You know? I mean, talk about an identity crisis.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, again, it it's way to 6. I definitely found myself wondering what was going through his head at that moment. Probably pure terror. Pure terror.
• 29:51
  And you gotta think that, like, as you you describe as an identity crisis. Because I think that, you know, this is the the peril of kids believing that they're smart. This isn't the other kind of, like, there are many aspects of Altman's tweet that I find I take real issue with. But the idea that we're, oh, we're gonna find the smartest. It's like, okay.
• 30:09
  What does that mean? Smartest. Who's the smartest? How are you gonna find? How are you gonna find this?
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: Right? Is this gonna give us, like, dozens of Theranoses?
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I thought it by the way, are you watching the dropout, Adam?
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: No. No. No. I I've seen it advertised on
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: Twitter and I haven't
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: So good.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Good. Alright. I'll check it out.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: It is so good. I think it's outstanding. I mean, like okay. Like, look, obviously, I you know, this is I I'm obviously going to be predisposed. This is right up the fairway, but I think it's very good.
• 30:40
  It's really well acted. It's well written. And there are definitely scenes in there where you're like, wait a minute. Is this true? It's like there are it and a I mean, a lot of it is, certainly, like, the the the the they they tell the story very accurately in terms of the the the course level and the players and so on.
• 31:00
  But there are so many small scenes that seem very plausible. I really wanna see a making of, but, Adam, it's really worth watching. And I think worth watching, actually, with Will. I think it's really interesting to watch with kids.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Jason, you sorry. Jason Ozo,
• 31:17
  Speaker 6: you got your,
• 31:17
  Speaker 7: Sure.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: And I was gonna say
• 31:19
  Speaker 7: that as soon as you convert from being a listener to a speaker, the audio quality goes to trash. So, anyway, the thing that I was gonna raise was that there's been a lot of mention about self esteem and trying to build kids' self esteem through, empty gestures as opposed and praising, ability rather than praising effort as being a real problem for kids when they actually meet adversity and they don't know how to recover from adversity. So that whole praising effort rather than, ability thing, they've done, experiments where kids who are praised for their ability, when they meet a hard problem, they the language they use to express their, thought process revolves around, I guess I'm just not smart enough to do this. Whereas, I I believe that there was an experimental design where, basically, they sort of prepared these kids to either be thinking in terms of challenge or in terms of ability, and the ones who are prepared in terms of challenge did better at responding to that kick up in the learning curve.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I it totally that ends up you know, there have been a couple of very famous studies about that, about the the the peril of praising kids is smart. And, Jason, did that color your your take on Altman's tweet? I mean, did you first of all, did you have the same reaction that that we had? And did that color your reaction to it?
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: So I just I
• 32:52
  Speaker 7: just responded to, one of Adam's tweets with, yeah, I've been in a company actually where they got a bunch of grads, young grads, and they wanted them to do the second system. The first system had been, you know, PC based, dot ball, and Pascal. It was a defense comms, system. And they wanted to do the second one in UNIX, and they wanted to do it with c plus plus, and they didn't show any of the people who they got into that. They didn't actually show them the first system, how it works, listen to people who are experienced users.
• 33:24
  They all the user stories were actually constructed by one of the owners of the company, and they didn't wanna blinker their vision. And so this kind of business model of imagining, well, we could we could actually be Einstein. You know? We could come up with all of this stuff straight you know, could spring from our foreheads. I really hear what you were saying earlier about, learning from people.
• 33:47
  I mean, a huge amount of what I learned was, getting access to to Usenet early on and reading comp.arch. So, really, you know, that that ability to actually participate in a bigger conversation, it's not something that necessarily is going to come to people who are just sort of taken and coddled and put it together with a bunch of other people their age.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that that you're right. That's exactly it. And I think that that is I think, especially if, as many of us were, if you were a bright 18 year old, you probably reflect back on your life thinking, boy, I cannot imagine taking myself, surrounding myself with doppelgangers of myself. Like, I would be insufferable today. I mean, to the degree, I'm not already insufferable.
• 34:33
  Sorry, Adam. But the the degree of that.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Well, is this is this a impolite time to point out that you were praised praised for your your your youth was fetishized by the MIT technical review?
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. No. That's a good
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: one. Awkward? Is this
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: No. Yeah. No. This is a good yes. So yeah.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: So go on. No. Well, you you're TR 35. Right? So this is, like, 30 you know, the 35 brightest folks under 35.
• 35:03
  Although, I think I think 35 feels like you're you're certainly well into your way into adulthood. But I was also thinking about the Forbes 30 under 30 and, and our speculative 5 under 5, which is what's coming.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: The the 5 under 5. We're gonna do the oxide 505. This is Josh Kuo's brilliant idea about It was yours. I thought it was a great idea. 505.
• 35:23
  We're gonna take the 5 brightest technologists under entrepreneurs under the age of 5 years old, and we're gonna laud them because that's it. I'm really Yeah. Yeah. I you know, I I mean, obviously, I've got super mixed feelings about that. I mean, I would say the one thing about 35 at least is that most of those folks were that was was a super interesting crew.
• 35:44
  I would say that. And and there were some technologists that, were I mean, I had this really I I I one of my kind of, like, my dinner mates, was on engineer working in GE on engine that would result in a new kind of engine that would result in, like, a 1.5% improvement in efficiency. And he was really, really So I feel like they however they did it, they did a decent job of getting people that were somewhat far in their career. But, yeah, I I got a lot of mixed feelings about that because I don't know that it, like it was it was nice. It was fun.
• 36:27
  I really enjoyed meeting those folks, but I'm not sure that it was I definitely I don't view it as part of my identity. And I I think it's really unfortunate when we are we do fetishize youth by, you know, by indicating that, hey. You should be on these lists or what have you. It's like, no. Stop being in a hurry and start actually grinding on the the harder, longer problems.
• 36:52
  And that is that's not those awards and lists don't do anything to to reward that, I don't feel. Is that a
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No. No. No. I forgive you.
• 37:03
  You. Yes.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: That's it doesn't, it doesn't feel like it. I do remember thinking, like because, I mean, obviously, I I I I was aware that I was going to win this thing, this honor, before it happened. And I'm like, wow. This is gonna change everything. And, of course, I'd like to change absolutely nothing.
• 37:19
  You know, I'm I I was still like, I was changing a diaper the day before, and I was changing a diaper
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: the day.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: That's right. Until this moment.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: Right. It's a
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: bit too polite to bring it up.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: That's right. Exactly. But I and I think there's there's just a real danger because then you end up with I know with that crew, I will say that I somewhat recently just wanted to see where some of those folks had landed who were, in the the tier 35, whatever that year was, 2006, whatever it was. And it's like, because those folks were 34, 33 years old when they they were basically they were they were academics. They were postdocs.
• 37:55
  Like, they were already, like, far enough along that they've gone on to do, really interesting things, interesting technologists. But I do think that there's a real peril for making that that bar too low. Because we don't actually the other thing is, like, you think about the the, you know, the ways that we season and the things that we get better at. I mean, Adam, I don't know about you, but I feel like I'm a much better writer now than I was 20 years ago.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, god. I mean, just when I read the stuff that I unfortunately, I was too prolific 20 years ago. And now I'm gonna read that garbage, and I'm I'm just embarrassed that it's still there. Now, of course, I have less time to write,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: but I
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: like to think that I've gotten
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: better at it. Can I, I'm I know I'm not in a safe space, but can I confide something in you that I, I did not use which versus that correctly for, like, the first 10 years of my adult life?
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure I'm still not. I just try to avoid it.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: I now and now I've like, I find my old writing. I'd like the unreadable in terms of, like, oh my god. Come on, you idiot. That subordinate clause. What are you doing?
• 39:03
  But I feel like certainly, I feel writing is something I but there's a lot of other things that we've certainly, I feel And, Adam, I don't know. What what else would you put on the list of, like, I've seen that better?
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: Top of the list for
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: me is empathy. Totally.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Just like hearing myself and and hearing the way it will be perceived, understanding other people and their needs and their motivations. And, I mean, maybe this is both years and and, like, children and and the burden of life, but also just, being able to find a hill that I'm not willing to die on. Yes. Just be like, you know, we can disagree and you and I can be wrong and I can apologize, and or we could just walk away with this argument, you know, not not had.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Yes. So yeah. I mean, a couple of things. One, being in, I mean, you and I are both married, not to one another, but to to to lovely people. Right.
• 40:01
  Fact check true. Right. And being in a long term relationship, I feel it forces like, you have to, like, you have to resolve issues. You you can't, you know, you can't hold on to grievances. Right?
• 40:13
  You're gonna have to let those go. You having kids, I think, really does force you. I I feel that having kids has made me way more empathetic in part because, someone with a sense of humor up there sent me some kids that are pretty different than I am, and that's been, that's been really good. That's been, honestly, even when it drives me absolutely up the wall, that's been really, really good for and I think, like, I I feel I mean, did were you the only one that wanted to, like, inflict children upon Altman for this?
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: Sorry. You cut out right as you said it. Can you say it again?
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: I want to inflict children upon Sam Altman. I want to force Sam Altman to have children.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. Yes. I I mean or I sort of do, but I worry about those children.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Yes. It's a terrible experiment. We can't do it. It's irresponsible.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, the the I mean, that that aside, the other kind of half of this tweet, or interpretation of this tweet of his gets into the the way that venture views human capital. And in in in one sense, this this is a hyper rational perspective, which is he's buying as low as possible. And and if these these investments, also known as these humans, like, go bankrupt, then whatever. It's like it's that's that's their problem to a degree.
• 41:36
  And the upside of it is sort of unbounded. So Yes. It it sort of that sort of makes it more horrible, I think.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: I think it makes it more horrible too. I would love to hear what other people think about this, but I agree with you. I think that that makes it way more horrible. And the and, I mean, people pointed out that, like, hey. Wait a minute.
• 41:54
  Student loans are the same thing. It's like, student loans, I think it is I think it is horrific. Part of the reason the system needs to change is because we cannot straddle such young people with so much debt is so deeply wrong. So I mean but the thing about student loans is that the the actual nut that you owe is actually fixed versus, Adam, you're pointing out, the upside for them is effectively unbounded.
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: And I mean, I would I would note that the US does have pretty insane interest rates on some student loans. Yes. And the people who are least in a position by which to pay off those loans are also at least in a position to get them refinanced with more favorable terms after they've got their degree. So it's it's pretty it's a pretty monstrous system, particularly when you compare with overseas where, you know, Australia's system, the government provides the loans and they are indexed to inflation. So
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: You're not getting this, like, ever growing amount of debt based on a interest rate, which in some case is comparable to a credit card, which is kind of insane.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Rapacious. Absolutely.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, that's a pretty good point. And thank you for I, like, I do not wanna come anywhere close to defending the student loan industrial complex. And I, because you're right. I mean, I think it is just so wrong to saddle those folks with But to me, it feels even more wrong to take a slice out of someone's earnings.
• 43:30
  Do you, do you agree with that, or maybe you disagree with that?
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: I agree with that. But I guess, like, even the even the the premise of it of of just the allowing people to create in this vacuum or this vacuum of responsibility in a sense. Right? Like, that that somehow alleviating financial pressure will cause folks to do their greatest work or not just financial pressure, kind of pressure writ large, will will cause these young folks to do their best work. And I think it that may be true for some minority, but would almost
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: to all sorts of various industries. I mean, the, obviously, it's it's a basically, a transfer payment to ease and Xbox. I don't know. Whatever it sounds. The Jack Jack in the Box, Wendy's.
• 44:31
  I got Yeah. A lot of startups. It's in I just also think it feels wrong to me. I mean, to me, like, taking a share of someone's future earnings feels like having some, like, some departed investor or founder on your cap table. Table.
• 44:52
  And you're just like
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: On your, like, on your personal On your
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: personal On your personal of your life.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: On your
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: cap table of your life that you can't recap out of. You're just like and it's just like that takes something out of you. Remember, we have, you know it's like when at a previous startup, knowing that the fired CEO was still very much on the cap table, it's like, it doesn't feel great. It doesn't feel like, alright. Well, I'm gonna go bust my ass here for you, I guess.
• 45:17
  And it it's something you gotta I don't know. I I just feel it would be and then, of course, you also get into all these, like, perverse incentives and, you know, you wanna turn down a job because, actually, you know, this job is gonna pay more, but I actually wanna take this job that's gonna pay less. Well, now this asshole on your cap table is actually wanting you to take this higher paying but more miserable job.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: What do you think of the like, thinking of this in terms of, like, professional athletes? Because in in some sense, this this
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: yields So so it does exist in the in the professional athlete world in the form of like baseball. But like the this is the concept of an income share agreement to be able to repay, course financing is not is, like, exist today. So companies like Lambda School, currently have that. The difference is that is I think that there's a there's a cap on the time that is more favorable than to be fair, Sam Sam often here hasn't really laid out the full agreement. But, you know, there is a there is a cap on the the time, and a cap, on, I think, the minimum salary before they start to get some amount of that that payout.
• 46:34
  But I do think the other piece here that's a little bit weird to me is the salary that I would accept as an 18 year old and the salary that I would be getting at a as a 28 year old, salary plus all the all the other total comp is very, very, very different. And if you lock someone in at a 18 year old salary for a decade with just, I don't know, cost of living adjustments in there, they're gonna be grossly underpaid by the time they get to to the, later ends of that, which is kind of terrifying in my opinion.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: And then without a degree. I mean, without a without an education or I mean, I just think to to bury that all into a into a start up just feels very wrong. So in terms of, like, the Lambda School, but they aren't they called something else now? They haven't they they've haven't they, like, rebranded to avoid losses or something? But the the Lambda School I mean, what do you is that model working for folks?
• 47:34
  I I see so many horror stories about it. It it doesn't feel to me like that model is much better. In fact, arguably worse because you're getting people to effectively mortgage their own future. I mean, it reminds me of indentured servitude from when people were looking for travel to the new world. Right?
• 47:52
  And it's like desperate people will do extraordinary things and kind of taking advantage of that desperation feels deeply, deeply wrong. On the sure made
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: No, Brian, you were cutting in and out there. I think the the question was, like, what do people think of the Lambda School?
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: And and yeah.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that the, the the interest is is difficult. So when you compare the landscape of coding boot camps, coding boot camps that are paid out of pocket by the student, you can be pretty hit or miss as to whether or not the student gets the outcome that they want out of that, and have potential to be rife with, kind of charlatans. Right? Where a smaller school could very easily rip off, someone who is hoping to learn something can and, make a career change.
• 48:55
  They could get ripped off of whatever capital that they have to be able to try and make that change and be left to the other side without a meaningful increase in skills and a meaningful, like, piece of paper that they can then shop around to employers. The upside of the income share agreement is it does, to some degree, align incentives between the school and the individual. And if the school is motivated to land that person into a job which pays them enough. And the income share agreement is not that much different from what a recruiter, like a third party recruiter would get in landing someone in a tech job. So, like, I'm a little I don't know.
• 49:38
  I didn't know how I feel about the ISA as outlined for for some of those creating boot camps. I think it might not be that bad idea. I think that this so so in this case, like, an income share agreement for an 18 year old who has not got a degree and it does not get an accreditation out the other side and does not land in a job. I don't know. I I have very different feelings about that.
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: Other than that, though, it sounds great.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds, I think, pretty pretty bleak. So the other thing that I think is the in terms of the other danger of this that the I mean, aside from the income the income share agreement, you know, talk a little bit about, like, how do you know, if you wanna find the smartest 18 year olds, part of the reason I feel so strongly that this is child abuse, is because that search for the 18 year olds has to start much, much, much earlier. I mean, Ian, you were mentioning brief briefly baseball, which is something I definitely, through my side, know quite a bit about or a decent amount about.
• 50:38
  And it's like, you don't show up as a div one baseball player. Like, that doesn't just happen. That that is a someone who's gonna play division 1 baseball was a standout baseball player when they were 7. And they did the showcases and the camps. I mean, and there's there's a very deliberate process that you go through that requires an extraordinary, talented, driven kid, also requires a lot of surround.
• 51:06
  And it requires a lot of friend involvement as well. And I just have a lot of questions about how you you, Sam Altman, think you're gonna find these 18 year olds. And one of the other comments that and we'll probably did to this was, hey. You know, you're just, like, selecting for the same privilege. You're basically just getting to say the people that would have gone to Yale.
• 51:24
  I mean, like, what what kind of this is not, like, democratizing this at all. Adam, I don't know. What do you think? Am I it was I was any of that I'm here
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: for breaking up? No. Breaking up a bit, but, yeah, like, the notion of how we choose these folks does seem like it's gonna lean on all the same privilege. And, like, the university system certainly has its problems, in terms of discrimination and but I think recognizes them more than Venture recognizes, their discrimination and the way that they invest their money, at least as problems to solve. So, not a lot of confidence that this punitive group of 18 year olds would not sort of look like they had benefited from their 18 years of privilege, if if not more.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: Right. And this does cause me I I do have to give the the the the blood camp story, Adam. I have to tell you the
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: the the,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: a a very wealthy I am a very wealthy friend of mine has get togethers of various technologists. I I
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: I I really enjoy that you're it's like you're trying to say a paragraph without it. That's sufficiently anonymized, I guess.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: Okay. Good. Well, the and so, Adams, you had a great way of phrasing this of, like, you're a baseball card. Like, because you could you you must be a baseball card for someone else. Like, you you must have had also experienced this phenomenon where you're someone's baseball card.
• 53:08
  Like, they they, you know, they keep you under the bed, and everyone's smile, their friends are over, and they get to get pulled out and, like, all the baseball cards are out of the bed. Get to, like, look at the baseball cards. I don't know. So, like, I'm a baseball card, which is fine. I'm actually cool with being a baseball card.
• 53:20
  Like, I don't know. Do I not have enough do I not have enough standards of myself?
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The food's pretty good. Yeah. I don't know.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: The food is good. I yeah. Right. Exactly. The food is good.
• 53:27
  So this person was having a, get together, with many people. This is before the pandemic. Like, a 150, something like that. Like, a lot of people in a nice spot. Like, alright.
• 53:39
  And as we know, I've got low standards for myself. So, like, sure. Free food. Why not? And on the attendee list are, in addition to, like, technologist they were, like, technologists and then, like, younger yet younger technologists, and then like 3 17 year olds, 2 15 year olds, and 3 14 year olds.
• 54:03
  And you're like, woah. Wait a minute. What? It woah. And in particular, this is like an overnight thing where they kind of assign you in these tents.
• 54:13
  And they had they assigned you, like, a tent mate, and they had assigned me a 14 year old as a tent mate. And someone who was, at that time, a year younger than my oldest child. And, one can quibble about whether an 18 year old is a child. I think we can all agree that a 14 year old is emphatically a child. And I sent email to the organizers being, like, you are having me tent with a child.
• 54:40
  And this where are the where are is this person's parents? And, by the way, this person should not be here. Is alcohol being served? It's like I mean, there's there is so much that can go wrong. And I did speak to the organizer about it.
• 54:58
  Like, you need to stop doing that. That that you you gotta cut that off. And he was doing it for, like, somewhat good reasons, which I suspect is, like, I wanna give Altman the benefit of the doubt, which I actually don't want to give. I've got no doubt. But they I mean, I think he's like, they're trying to think back.
• 55:14
  I was like, oh, I as a 14 year old would have loved this. And it's like, okay. You, as a 14 year old, would have loved this. But fine. You're not a 14 year old.
• 55:24
  You're a fucking adult. And this 14 year old has parents. And those parents have a responsibility to that 14 year old, and this 14 year old shouldn't doesn't matter whether you as a 14 year old want to do this. Like, children wanna do all sorts of things that they shouldn't do. And have some teenagers, and you you'll learn that.
• 55:43
  Right? So we should not defer to what children what children want to do just because they want to do it. And in particular, I was just, like, totally shocked at that. Did I tell my mom I told my mom that I was
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: That that you were scheduled to room with a 14 year old?
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: Well, I that I handled by my own. Like, that was, like, absolutely no way that that's
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: You're like you're like, not only does this 14 year old have parents,
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I have parents. I have parents. And, my mom's school psychologist and, someone who is I look up to a lot and is, great with kids. But I did let her know about this. And and, I mean, she was like, Brian, if you see anything amiss, you need to call the police.
• 56:26
  I'm like, mom, I got it. And she's like, I'm serious. I'm like, okay, mom. I got it. I got my I called the police check.
• 56:32
  But I mean, she's serious for a good reason because, like, that is anyone who deals with kids, if in any capacity, youth sports I obviously deal with kids a lot in scouts. I mean, Adam, you're a coach of youth sports. It's like, that is crossing so many lines at once that should not be crossed.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: So I I I guess I I'm I feel in Altman's tweet that I I I get that these kind of, that's part of what is echoing for me is that, like, hey. In order to find an 18 year old, you probably found this person as a 14 year old, and that is unquestionably child abuse, or unquestionably an inappropriate relationship where you've gotten an adult having a relationship with a child that even if they think that they're that this is in the child's best interest, this is still a child. And it's like, what are we doing in tech? What is our what is wrong with us? I'm worried that, like, my mom I'm, like, afraid to show my mom that tweet.
• 57:31
  My mom's gonna be so upset.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That sounds right.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. Unfortunately,
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: the other thought I had reading it was, you know, I I think as I I've mentioned on this, on this Twitter space in the past, I would do a pretty fancy boarding school. I was a day student. I was not that fancy. But, I went with, you know, some some of my classmates, their parents had, like, tens and 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars or 1,000,000,000 of dollars. And like, those were not the most motivated of my classmates.
• 58:03
  It will not surprise you that that like, yeah, you know, the, the hedge fund pioneer, like his son was like a good swimmer. But, I couldn't really speak to his academics.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Right. Biggest Adderall deal on campus.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: That's right. So like, you know, we do have, we have this case study or we we've seen that, like, having all adversity removed from your childhood doesn't actually produce the world's most creative, thoughtful, you know, high output individuals.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Sometimes you focus too much on kinda creating comfort, which actually that's not not what you want. That actually you want to actually you don't wanna create distress for your children, but you wanna be very, very careful about creating too much comfort, for sure. And I think that and Adam, I think it was your point that like, hey, this is like taking also for a didn't he say for a decade plus? Am I making that up?
• 59:00
  I mean, he wants to give a lot of like, salary for a long period of time as if this is, like, a researcher. Yes. A decade plus of salary. Like, what? Makes no sense.
• 59:11
  Ken, I saw you coming on as a speaker. I noticed you you you're on Twitter. You were looking forward to to talking with us. Do you have a a Ken or True? Unless you add add yourselves?
• 59:19
  Do you guys thoughts on this?
• 59:23
  Speaker 6: Yeah. I was just curious. Earlier, you something, Brian, about, taking a slice of somebody's income, future income, as being somehow immoral. And I don't necessarily disagree. I tend to side more with Adam on sort of incentivizing young minds who are filled with silly hormones to introduce variance in their life.
• 59:44
  I think that's their moral part, but, taking future earnings is essentially equity. So like if you ever taken, you know, incentive shares, stock options, that's the same thing at a drastically different scale. So I'm sort of curious if you like where between those polar ends you would sort of draw the line. But I'm I'm also curious if anybody remembers the, kids in like 99 or 2000 who sold their bodies as advertising venues in order to raise money for college because I think that's kind of an interesting example of like what if the what if it wasn't Sam Altman just sort of like rapacious ly incentivizing these kids with 1,000,000 of dollars and was instead kids trying to come up with inventive ways to do this for themselves?
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, and, like, I mean, my kids it's part of the reason why I I found that when, you know, Facebook was offering then Facebook, not Meta. Facebook was was offering kids effectively money to offer data. And I feel that that's so gross to me because my kids would absolutely do that. I mean, you would overpay. If you paid $10 for my kids' data, you'd be overpaying because they would gladly do anything for money, which is part of the reason, like, they're kids.
• 1:00:57
  That's why they can't make that decision. But, Drew, that's a good point about the the that because I feel like in the .com boom, there were there were a couple of those. In terms of the the immorality of it, I mean, I just feel that, like, you're right. I mean, it's like it's like it's like having someone some dead investor on your cap table, and it sucks. It and, like, it sucks when it's a company.
• 1:01:16
  It would really suck to be a person where it's like, can I declare bankruptcy to, like, shake this purse? How do I get rid of this investor, basically? How do I get rid of this board member? So I don't know. To me, it would be it's it's certainly or actually, Drew, I would flip flip it around.
• 1:01:34
  Would if if your child were contemplating this, what would your advice to them be? That oh, Drew's reconnecting. So, Ken, I noticed you were trying to get here as well. Maybe while Drew's reconnecting, you can.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah. The whole thing just still Dropped down. Incredibly exploitative. So so the the reason I feel kinda strongly about that topic is just because, you know, you got you got kids that are clearly interested in coming on and doing something interesting. And, you know, it's like like, I I I I just think of it like you you got so many people that don't understand so many topics, like like finance, like, just coming out.
• 1:02:34
  Like, what's the best way to go about something? Then you have to think about, are these kids trying to create companies? So are they in leadership positions that are going to be taking on, like, response like, basically, being the CEO of a of a fresh company and trying to lead others when they might have really strong technical ability, but maybe not great social skills. And there's just like a whole slew of other things that it feels like they're not setting them up for success in any real way. Right.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: Right. And I agree with you that it it's exploitative. And as you say, like, part of the reasons it's exploitative is it's like being with someone whose judgment is impaired. Taking advantage of someone whose judgment is impaired is wrong because you know their is impaired. And the judgment of as the parent of teenagers, the judgment of teenagers is impaired.
• 1:03:30
  God bless them. God love them, but their judgment is impaired at some level. And I yeah. I I I completely agree with you about it being exploitative. I can't see how Drew got bounced out for good, it looks like.
• 1:03:48
  So I I there's another remark in there about, like, the I mean, so actually, Adam, is it worth, like, taking this seriously in terms of, like, how we do did you read any of the other anything else in his thread, by the way,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: about No. No. No. No. You poisoned me that far, but I wasn't gonna go that deep.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: What what
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: were there any real gems in there?
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: Well, apparently, he got on this because he was asked to speak at presumably a commencement ceremony. And in his words, he was instructed to point to attributes of himself, presumably race or gender, as part of of his privilege. And he it was his this was the moment that he realized that that, higher education is going to collapse. One of our colleagues said, like, out of curiosity, like, if this had happened to him in a grocery store, would we be reading about the collapse of Safeway? I mean, so it's not clear, how the, the and also I, like, I question, like, okay.
• 1:04:48
  Let me just hear what the actual guidance you got was under commencement address out of curiosity because I I think that certainly I I don't know. Certainly, I feel like I have been very, very, very lucky in my life, and I would be lying if I didn't say a decent amount of that luck was by birth. And, and not everyone has that. And it's it's wrong to not acknowledge that. Right?
• 1:05:13
  And so I don't know what his problem was.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: I I I totally agree with that. And I think that, the other like, the kind of concurrent experiment that that Sam Altman is not really alluding to is, like, what if you give a bunch of not particularly talented 30 somethings, a $100,000,000 and, you know, praise them for their entrepreneurial efforts, whatever they might have been, then what will happen to those folks? I think we're, like, seeing the effects of of those experiments.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Are we are you about to make a Ryan Breslow connection God bless you.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: Or I
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: do mean No. I think he's in his twenties.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Did did I
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: I just mean, like, you have lots of entrepreneurs who've, like, killed it for some definition of it. And Yeah. And, like, and some is, you know, by happenstance and some is assuredly by skill. But, it's the rarer among those that can really distinguish those and and really do good and do well, you know, as a second act.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: And you guys that's interesting. So in terms of, like, you gotta believe securities, like, if he doesn't have insecurities, like, you should have some because, like, honestly, your outcome was not that great. It was not that impressive. And definitely wasn't repeated. And I, like, I'm not sure.
• 1:06:36
  It it's not I I haven't seen the contribution of science or engineering you've made. So, yeah. You'd like get some insecurities. Probably do you good.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: Right. Well earned.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting. And and you so you you wonder if he's not wondering himself. Like, do I I I guess I don't understand that. What is the fixation with the youth there?
• 1:06:56
  I don't get it. Do you how have the teal fellows done? How has that experiment gone?
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, I I don't think you're right. The teal fellows is what I was reaching for earlier. I I haven't followed. I assume badly, but maybe maybe that's unfair, I guess.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: I have met 1 Thiel fellow, and they were absolutely wall to wall 100.0% insufferable. It was exactly, like, your caricature of what a teal fellow would be. First of all, told me within 2 sentences that they were a teal fellow. It's like, wow. That was okay.
• 1:07:35
  Definite what? Okay. That's it. That's definitely an an unasked question, but okay. And it was, yeah, really bad.
• 1:07:45
  Somebody's in this well, I should you know? I'm trying to write a paragraph without an e again. I shouldn't bother. There's something deeply narcissistic about people that are longevity obsessed. Can I just get that out there?
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: Yes. As, as a sort of non sequitur, unless I miss some important connectives issue. No. I I I should've I I knew
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: I should've written the paragraph without the e. I should've kept I should've kept not using e. Yes. Yeah.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: Fair enough.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Well, we have not talked about time at all. I feel we're gonna have to defer time to a a future space, Adam. I did we have have we burned this one down enough? Do we
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: have I I think we've burned this burned burned this to some ashes. Yeah. And I I and I'd still like to talk about daily savings time. You know, less timely, no pun intended, but but there's some meat on that bone too.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: So I I assume we will pick that up next week. Is that what you're asking?
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: Works for me. Yeah.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That works for me. And, Franek, I know you got up incredibly early, ironically Oh, no. No. No, sir.
• 1:08:53
  I just I just haven't slept. I'm very happy. Now I can join at 4 AM AM instead of 5 AM. That's very nice. May thank you or maybe not.
• 1:09:03
  Thank you, DayLiz. I have no idea how you're saying this thing works at all. Like, in Syria, we didn't use it. In Armenia, we don't use it. How the hell does that work?
• 1:09:11
  I still don't understand. But, yeah, it it still looks like it's an enemy. Every every 6 months, someone is writing about its own somewhere. Alright. Well, we're we're gonna pick that up next week.
• 1:09:23
  I think we'll talk about that in detail, and we will talk about time. I hope I I so, Adam, you and I are gonna have to be resilient to any Sam Altman trolling. I mean, this is obviously I mean, this was a was this a category 2 troll, category 3? Wait. Wait.
• 1:09:37
  Wait. In terms of a trolling event.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it was up there. And and, yes, we will both equally need to be resilient. Yes.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: I was not gonna mention this to you. You you broke the seal on this one, not the record.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: That's fair. That's fair.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: I was gonna be, like, I was gonna keep a stiff upper lip, and we're just, like, we'll talk about it. But but no. We okay. I'm gonna go quick.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: It was on me. That's fair.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: You you know, forecasters warn of a superstorm that that could imperil all of humanity.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: Currently building. We're gonna keep an eye on it.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Well, unfortunately, I mean, they're because recall that Preslow has y Combinator as as as the mob bosses of Silicon Valley. I mean, that's important for humanity. That kind of that that, magnetic repulsion is actually very important to prevent these 2 from joining forces to some sort of like trolling Voltron that would, destroy us.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: Trolling Voltron. You got me.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Trolltron?
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm into it.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: There we go. I think finally, we have the title of the episode. Episode. Alright. Thanks everyone.
• 1:10:50
  We will talk to you next week. I'm really sorry. We will Thank you. Again, and we'll try not to. Adios.