DOGE, o3-mini vs Google Flash, Why Sports, and Why Horowitz > Andreessen
Okay. Now I have to say, we we talked a little bit before we hit record. We don't normally do that. It's a new thing we're trying. It's a little spicy.
Dax:Can you feel the difference? Audience, can you feel the difference? How much more prepared we are?
Adam:We're so prepared and organized.
Dax:It's 10/20 where America begins.
Adam:It's funny that East Coasters probably have the best claim to that, but West Coasters think they have the most important time zone.
Dax:Do West Coasters think their time zone is the the real time zone?
Adam:Yes.
Dax:Is that a thing?
Adam:Oh, for sure.
Dax:How could they feel that way when when they wake up, everything has already happened? I know.
Adam:It's like they wake up and, like, people are almost done with their day on the East Coast. Not almost done, but it's like lunchtime. Just there was a guy I worked with long, long ago that I base all of my opinions of this on, but he would get up at, like, 9AM Pacific. And you know me. I'm an early early riser central time.
Dax:Oh, I see.
Adam:And he'd be like, well, just getting ready for the day here. Let's, and, like, he kinda say things that were just, like, assuming it's, like, the beginning of my day, and it's like, no. Really, it's not. Yeah. I don't know.
Adam:That that just rubbed me a certain way, and I guess I've decided all West Coasters are that guy.
Dax:No. I I think it's a very weak claim because, like, we I just talked about Cloudflare stock. They don't even know. They don't even know yet. They don't even know that the Cloudflare stock is up 15%.
Dax:They're, like, gonna find out when they wake up. So I feel like you just naturally feel like you're behind and you can't feel like this is the real
Adam:time. Yeah. It's seven twenty on the West Coast right now. I feel like the people who care about Cloudflare stock within Cloudflare
Dax:That's fair. They're probably up. I mean, Cloudflare employees in California might not know. Yeah. Sure.
Adam:That's true. Their portfolio is way up. Because Kotler is a public company and everyone knows
Dax:that. We can, let's talk about our first topic, which is I guess, we're gonna call it Doge, Department of Governmental Efficiency.
Adam:There's just no way it's not supposed to be pronounced Doge, right, because of the cryptocurrency. That's my guess. I mean, Elon has this long history with the Doge cryptocurrency. Right?
Dax:Yeah. I think you're right.
Adam:So what's the deal? So is Elon, like, officially, like, a member of Trump's cabinet? What is the deal? I don't understand.
Dax:No. He is. It's really I think there's so much question around what the legality around this stuff is, but just completely in theory, the president is allowed to have an adviser. And he's allowed to say, hey, advisor, go look into this and give me recommendations. That's like I don't think there's anything literally illegal about that.
Adam:Sure. Yeah. I was I guess I wasn't implying anything was illegal. I was just trying to understand, like, what is the relationship here?
Dax:Yeah. I think people are, like, kind of confused about about that. So you can look at it that way. But then if you just automatically say yes to everything the adviser suggests, like, yeah, they're an adviser and you technically have final call, but you can see how there's a spectrum on how much influence the advisor has. I'm not saying that that's what's happening, but Yeah.
Adam:Sure.
Dax:That's the potential for, you know, something kind of corrupt to happen.
Adam:But but this those thing is is not just an idea. Right? It's like an actual, like, committee that's, like, cleaning up the government or something?
Dax:Yeah. So, basically, I think from what I understand, Elon just tapped just people that like, when you're at his size or, like, relevance, you just have a set of people that you can just tap for to work on anything. So you've had a bunch of people and they're just there, like, doing a bunch of stuff. Obviously, there's a lot of friction because they're going into departments and asking questions and the departments don't like you know, naturally there's friction, of course, that there's going to be. And I think there's a lot of flurry because they've been posting a lot of, can you believe the government is doing X, Y, Z?
Dax:They're spending money on X, Y, Z things. And they tend to be things that are really flashy and attention grabbing and like maybe even a little misleading. And so there's a lot of commotion around it because it's generating a lot of attention. Like, can you believe we span X, Y, Z and whatever? But if that's fair, there's definitely a lot of waste in that category, but they're kind of just going after stuff that's really small in the grand scheme of things.
Dax:Like everything that they listed, it doesn't really add up to anything monumental. But it is stuff that that makes headlines. And some of it has also been a little bit misleading. It's been the thing that I've really been thinking about is I know this thing with the Internet, it making it hard to understand what's true or not has been a thing. I feel like it's finally gotten to a level where even me, someone that's, like, pretty, like, Internet savvy and, like, thinks about these things, even I'm having trouble understanding, like, what's true and what's not.
Dax:Like, there's just such compelling, quote, unquote, facts everywhere. And there's stuff that sounds so real to me that I later found out isn't, and I didn't that this wasn't happening to me five years ago. Like, when stuff was fake, it was obviously fake. You know?
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. I okay. So that that does sum up the I had so many thoughts, and you helped me think about, the overriding thought and feeling I have, which is I don't like both sides. I dislike the tech bro angle of this where, like, I feel like Elon and his crew were like, we could figure this out. We figured out tech.
Adam:Like, how hard is government? It just I know that angle of it, and that bothers me because it's like, I do feel like they could easily get in over their head, and it's like they don't really understand what they're doing. But then on the other side, it bothers me when people are just, like, criticizing that side.
Dax:Yeah. Exactly.
Adam:Somehow I'm I'm not happy with either side because I do think, like, if you take stock, if you step back with x slash Twitter and, like, assess objectively, how did it go? Elon cut 70% of the staff. Everyone was up in arms, and, like, they're gonna crash and burn. They didn't crash and burn. I don't know.
Adam:I don't know anything about x's financial situation, but, technically, it's running. It's running fine. There's some hiccups along the way. But, like, would you call that a success? Did he do a good job of taking Twitter and making it more efficient?
Dax:I think there's been I think I think the side of people that are like, it's gonna it's gonna, like, go offline in three months. There's definitely a whole contingent of, like, quote, unquote, expert people saying that. I think that's definitely, like, disproven. And, like, obviously, all of these big tech companies were bloated, especially in that time. So in a lot of ways that was the easy part because the people saying that was gonna that was not gonna work out were just so wrong.
Dax:So I'm not surprised that that part worked out. In terms of the health of the business, I think it could be in a much better place. I think he's just done a lot of stuff that's been pretty chaotic that, hasn't been that helpful. I don't think he does well with areas of high complexity. I think he's very good at dealing with singular mission.
Dax:It's extremely complicated to get there and it requires doing something no one's done before, but really straightforward. Get to Mars. There's no question on, did we do it? Did we kind of do it? You know, it's just, like, just get to Mars.
Dax:Yeah. I think he's great for that kind of thing. I think when it comes to stuff that's, like, really complicated, like social media dynamics and, like, how one little change can trigger all these, like, emergent properties across, like, millions of people. I don't think he's, like, the person that, I don't I don't think that, like, naturally fits his way of if it's a skill set, I guess.
Adam:It's me too. That's that's how I am. I feel like if you tell me, like if I have a feedback loop and you tell me, like, get to this state, I feel like that's what I will kill myself to get to to my detriment. But if it's, like, a bunch of complex decisions and all this stuff, no. No.
Adam:Thank you. I just wanna be a hammer on a nail. Interesting.
Dax:I I think I agree with you. I think the thing that I I think that I feel is we can't keep going without cutting and then the government. Like, we're just we're increasingly in a bad space, like our debt is just growing higher and higher. And at some point, you need some kind of action like this. But I think that makes sense.
Dax:I think the detail here is the government is not supposed to be efficient. I think it needs to be a lot more efficient, but the whole point is, is it servicing things that cannot that the private market doesn't handle well. So the reason private markets don't handle well is because you can't do it efficiently or like profitably or like whatever. So there's a lot of things worth investing in with whatever excess capital we have to like fix certain areas that, that, you know, that have these gaps. So I think infinite efficiency isn't the goal of government.
Dax:Yeah. Like, that's not the reason why we have that. And the other thing is there's also areas that are that do provide ROI that are maybe like too risky for the private market to tap into, that do end up providing like a good ROI. And I think the government does service that just through like a wide scatter shot approach of funding certain things. So yeah, I think a lot this is this the reason I said this this discussion is annoying, it's, like, as always being framed as, oh, you're for efficiency or you're for, like, protecting the status quo of of what's what's there.
Dax:But it's not it's not really that. I think it's, I'm down for disruption. I'm down for all of this. But, yeah, it's just a little sketchy when it's happening in areas of life where, you know, we don't want as much chaos. Like, I'm down for a company that just literally implode and reinvent itself.
Adam:That's how
Dax:That that's great.
Adam:Capital markets work. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. Or capital I'm just not as down for that, in the government. But at the same time, like, something needs to happen and maybe this, you know, this is just what that is. I personally think what is going to happen is there's gonna be a bunch of energy around this for one, two, three months, and they're gonna have all these great headlines. They're like, we cut, 10,000,000 to Vietnam for funding plays about lizards.
Dax:Right? It's literally stuff like that. They're they're like finding stuff that's just so ridiculous. Yeah. And they're posting that.
Dax:So everyone's like, wow. Like, we're cutting all this waste, and it's, like, so bad. And then they're gonna move on. I think they're gonna get bored. They're gonna get, like, you know, front end energy.
Dax:And they're gonna mark it as as a victory. So that's my expectation. But
Adam:Well, you you said something about our the the debt. So the whole reason efficiency matters at all is that we keep spending more money than we make. Like, America has this national debt, and you always hear about the number. But is there, like, actually any consequences to that number? What are the consequences to that number?
Adam:Because it's gotten so much bigger over our lifetime.
Dax:Theoretically, there might be a comp like, a consequence at some point, but it's it's so complicated because we can just print money to service the interest Mhmm. On these types. The
Adam:debt keeps growing. Right?
Dax:Yeah. Because, like, we can borrow money, and then we can not pay down the principal or just keep paying the interest every year.
Adam:And we borrow we borrow it from the treasury, which is not the government. Right? Sorry. This is probably really basic stuff, but I never learned this.
Dax:I am gonna have trouble remembering this. I did understand this at one point, but it's just kinda complicated. It's easy to forget. I think it's stuff like their like, for social security, it's like, we'll borrow money from yeah. I don't remember.
Dax:I'm not gonna try to explain it. But
Adam:Yeah. It's fine.
Dax:But it's not just that. Like, we also borrow money from other countries. Like, we sell we sell, instruments that anyone can buy.
Adam:Treasuries to debt.
Dax:And then Yeah. Okay. And then we and then we yeah. So, obviously, this keeps growing and growing, and printing money is okay. The reason it's kind of okay is let let me try to explain it in a in a way that's maybe simple.
Adam:I appreciate that.
Dax:If you are an economy that can produce I'm gonna go back to my old example, a hundred apples a year. Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay? And through efficiency gains, you now are able to produce 200 apples a year.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:You can technically double your money supply without anyone noticing.
Adam:Okay.
Dax:Because if the price of an apple is $1, per apple in the first case, when you double the supply, so I mean, demand doesn't go up. It's now 50ยข. Right? If you give everyone twice amount of money, it still stays at a dollar, but you have, like, more money in circulation that you can now just spend, inject wherever you want.
Adam:Yeah. Okay.
Dax:So in a lot of ways, money printing is it's kind of like stealing the efficiency gains that, a country has or, like, any kind of group of people has and, like, deciding to, like, inject money in in in somewhere else. So governments that with economies that grow always have the, opportunity to do this kind of thing to some degree. If your economy stops growing and then you start printing money sorry. If your economy stops growing and you're still printing money, that's when you see inflation. Okay.
Dax:And it's arguably not good to also capture a % of that growth for this purpose, because, like, a top down government is not gonna invest that in in the right place all the time. Mhmm.
Adam:Okay.
Dax:So that's roughly why printing money is okay. And so it's a lot more complicated than this, but it's, like, this kind of dynamic that, that allows for all this to to even be a thing.
Adam:So so the effect of the debt growing too large, we would see that in the form of inflation.
Dax:Yeah. Okay. Because because the money we're printing can't be absorbed by these efficiency gains that the economy yeah. So the thing I described going from producing a hundred apples to 200 apples, it's deflate it's called it's deflationary because it's, reducing the price of a good. So printing money is the opposite.
Dax:It's inflationary, so you can try to cancel them out.
Adam:Got it. Okay. So it's not like a geopolitical thing. I don't know. For some reason, I thought the national debt couldn't get too high or some bad thing would happen with our status in the world.
Dax:I see. I know. It it is related because if we keep printing money and the value of the dollar goes down, then everyone's like, I'm not gonna keep working in dollars or, like, borrowing dollars or, like, lending out dollars. So our ability to even do this type of thing, we can just erode. Right?
Dax:I mean, it's actually you could think about it like, let's say I lend you a thousand dollars and I'm like, in ten years, you're gonna give me $2,000 Right? But you do some action that makes it so the dollar is worth nothing.
Adam:And then you pay me
Dax:$2,000, I'm like, you fucking screwed me.
Adam:You're welcome. Here's your $2,000 back.
Dax:That's another mechanic that exists here that yeah. So, again, this stuff is extraordinarily complicated, and I'm dumbing it down. Now imagine it at government scale at, like, millions of people looking for little schemes and optimizations and Mhmm. All the complexity of the world. So, yeah.
Dax:It's it's crazy. Okay. But the point is, this is maybe not sustainable to do to be increasing our debt this much forever. And to be fair, the big I think the I I think how I feel is it jumped because of COVID. Like, all of our numbers jumped because of COVID, but now we're treating it like that's normal, and we're continuing to be at that level.
Adam:Why did they yeah. Why is it obvious why they jumped because of COVID?
Dax:Because we because we just spent more during COVID. We had to for all the different things we had to do to simulate the economy, to, like, you know, make sure people Yeah. Just a week. Yeah. But that just made that just kinda like like, you it's hard to rein stuff back in.
Dax:Right? So that's why I agree something needs to happen. But
Adam:Interesting. Okay. That's as much as I can talk about whatever that subject was without my brain hurting, and let's talk about other things. What's what's going on in the world of tech? CloudFlare.
Adam:We're gonna talk about CloudFlare. I don't
Dax:know anything about CloudFlare, so
Adam:let's just talk about it. Okay. There's talk about it. You know that.
Dax:There's talk about it. I am very happy. My portfolio is the heights ever been in my whole life.
Adam:Congratulations.
Dax:Thank you. Thank you. I feel good. But, yeah, o three Mini. So have you used it yet?
Adam:Oh, yeah. Let's see here, man. Oh, yeah. I did wanna talk about this. So, Claude is upsetting me, and I had just abandoned ship on OpenAI as soon as I started using Claude.
Adam:Now I feel like you you switched back to OpenAI, so I'm gonna do that probably. Could you explain to me, o three minutei? Because I guess o three Mini when I hear Mini, I think, oh, it's not a very good one.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:But that's o three, and it was o one. Like, o one Pro, and now they have o three Mini. So o three Mini is better than an o one
Dax:Pro. But not not as good as it could be because it's still the Mini version. Yeah. Oh, god. It it's crazy.
Adam:Why why is this naming thing so hard? I've heard, multiple runners of frontier model companies, like CEOs, say naming is hard. Why? Why is it any harder than name I mean, naming is always hard, but, like, why is this so hard?
Dax:I think the issue isn't naming. I think it's just that they're trying so many different approaches, and they're not like, oh, this new approach just eclipses the previous approach. It's like, the new approach is really good, but then for other situations, the previous approach is still good. So let's keep both around. But now we need different names, and it's just
Adam:Just alphabet just go like alpha, beta, gamma, delta, whatever. Just use, like, an alphabet.
Dax:It gets confusing because then it's like, oh, but then the new one we did is actually a different take on the approach we did with the second model.
Adam:See, that's where they go wrong, I think. They're trying to, like, tie it to the previous thing with, like, Remix tags and, like, mini and all this stuff. I think that's where it gets confusing to me. Just number them. Model three, model four, five, etcetera.
Dax:I yeah. But then how do you communicate, like, the true, like, next generation
Adam:of you know,
Dax:it's I
Adam:I guess. Okay.
Dax:It's it's the root problem isn't the naming. It's just it's a clusterfuck of a product.
Adam:Yeah. The way they're making these things, the it's like it's not an easy thing to get your head around
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:In community.
Dax:So, they so ChatGPT launched out their mini. I was telling you that I stopped using Claude just because, like honestly, it's not what everyone else says, like the the limits and stuff like that. For some reason, I, like, I think I used AI a good amount. I don't I don't think I ran to them that much. Just the app UX was just, like, killing me.
Dax:Like, they they kept doing these little things that made it annoying. They added they they moved a button that I would always click or, like, they they made it so, like, if you, like, mouse towards the button, you would go over something else, which would cause, like, a thing to pop up with the layout shift with where I was trying to click. And that would, like, open up some, like, Google Drive shit. And I kept accidentally clicking it, and it was just it was driving me nuts. So that bothered me.
Dax:That post I had where Claude was like, just kidding.
Adam:I don't think we talked
Dax:about that last time. I was like, those two those two combined, I'm like, I still think Claude is probably the best for coding, but that just annoyed me. So then the old three mini stuff came out, so I decided to try it. It's very good. It's like their new it's their new reasoning model, and it it returns fast, which is not what o one and o one pro do.
Dax:Okay. So I've been having a good time with it, especially giving it more challenging things. I think it does a really good because I think the idea of reasoning models is they, like, take the prompt and, like, inject a bunch of prompt steps around it. So it's almost like the AI is first talk gonna talk to itself and think about what it should do and then
Adam:do it. It, like, lays out a plan. So is that kind of like the benefits of agents or no?
Dax:I don't think so. I think the word agent's weird because all that all an agent means is an app that's using an ALM.
Adam:Oh, yeah. Okay. True.
Dax:Yeah. So they actually show you the chain of thought now. Like, you can see everything that's that it's thinking, and it's pretty, interesting to see that. And sometimes as it's thinking, it actually gives you the answer. So I find it good.
Dax:I find it to be pretty fast. It's not the fastest, but it's pretty fast. So that's my current thing that I'm using. Google finally launched, a competitive model to all of these. I think they're calling it Gemini Flash.
Adam:Okay.
Dax:Google Gemini pass.
Adam:Competitive, you mean to this generation? Like Yeah. What what what models are in this generation? So there's o three minutei, but what's the comparable, like, cloud? Is it just on 2.5?
Dax:So all the o ones are reasoning models, but they're all built roughly on the same base model, which is four four o, I think. I g p t four o. Like, that four series.
Adam:Oh, okay. I didn't know this. It's all just post training differences. Look how smart I am.
Dax:It's almost just like technique. Like, how you're, like, invoking the LM difference. Okay.
Adam:You killed my smartness. Okay. Fine. I mean,
Dax:I'm sure that there's definitely that too. Yeah. And then there's, so, like, in terms of, like, the best models out there, there's some class of them. I think Google now has an entry in that, and it is dirt cheap. It is so
Adam:Gemini is.
Dax:So cheap. Gemini Flash. And it's like Gemini Flash two point o. Again, these names are crazy. Yeah.
Dax:Flash makes you think it's, like, less capable but fast, but I think it's that's not what it means. It's just a normal model, but they have, like, a Flash Mini or something that's that's supposed to be fast.
Adam:Are all the do you do you just use all these in the browser? You just use OpenAI in the browser? Do they have, like, a native app or something?
Dax:I finally set up Avonte for Neovim.
Adam:Avonte. I heard you say this. So you you actually do this from within Neovim.
Dax:So I just set up this past week, and it's a the cursor like experience. And I think that's actually so wired up to Claude just because it's a key I had in my environment. And, yeah, I find it to be a pretty good experience. And then I use it in the browser for stuff that doesn't make sense to ask in the editor.
Adam:Sorry. I'm actually just signing back up for OpenAI because I gotta I gotta start using this one. I gotta see what the the reasoning, the chain of thought, all this stuff is about. Everyone just talks about this. Yeah.
Adam:Claude, I'm gonna cancel Claude. It's it's bothering me. It's bothering me not, like, that I hit the daily limit. It's just how often they default to concise. And then today, it just it literally won't give me responses that says it can't due to unprecedented volume or something.
Adam:I don't know. So everybody just stopped using these things so I can use them. I don't know. But why is this product different than any other products? Like, I feel like people figured out how to scale software a long time ago.
Adam:Why why What's with all the limits and stuff? I don't understand it.
Dax:I think it's entirely a, it's the battle between growth and retention in the company because there's a physical asset here that needs to go to growth, which is new, yeah, which is new, like, making their models better and and research.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:But then those same GPUs need to be used for inference for, for the actual product. So what percentage you allocate to growth? What percentage you allocate to inference? I would almost allocate nothing to inference.
Adam:You would?
Dax:Because, like, what's the what's the point of getting users if you ultimately lose the bigger battle?
Adam:Oh, yeah. You're real big into this. This has come up in the last forty eight hours, twenty four hours.
Dax:Oh, it's true.
Adam:About that top top of the funnel growth, not about the retention.
Dax:Yeah. So you can't do nothing because then you're not a player, but
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:I can see how it's a very annoying situation to be in.
Adam:Yeah. Okay. The this this I'm feeling anxiety. I'm feeling overwhelmed.
Dax:Mhmm. Me too.
Adam:And I don't get overwhelmed about, like, new framework releases or, like, Svelte five comes out. I don't care. Like, I don't get overwhelmed by that stuff. This is overwhelming just because I need, like, one website, one page. Someone make this if it doesn't exist, or send it to me.
Adam:DM me. I'm sure this exists. I need one page I can go to that just shows, like it's kinda like the Can I Use site, like, where, like, the middle row is, like, all the latest models from all the different providers? And then, like, all the different other releases kinda, like, compared and, like you know what I mean? Like, where they're all sorted accordingly so I can know, like, if I'm using this one, it's on par with all these other ones.
Adam:And it doesn't even have to tell me what they're good at. I just wanna know what is the latest model from all the companies. That's basically what I'm saying.
Dax:Yeah. What should I be using, and what are my options?
Adam:Yeah. What are my options? Because I then I just remembered the deep seek thing. I just I want the the I wanna just have a good workflow in my local setup, and I guess the model can be swapped out most of these tools. Like, Avante probably lets you just swap out any model.
Adam:Right? I just I wanted to settle down. I wanna, like, get into a groove, and I'm not getting in a groove So all my tools keep changing.
Dax:I feel like my I says a while ago that I don't think being in a model building business is gonna be good. And so far, what I'm seeing is exactly that because there's just infinite stuff and churn and
Adam:They're all basically the same. I mean, they're not really, like, jumping out from each other, and they're all just gonna spend so much money trying to get to these next levels, but they're all gonna get there to the same levels. What's the differentiator?
Dax:It's just it's just kinda confusing because Claude had I was looking at some market share thing about, like, I think it's more like b to b, like, API usage. Like, Claude has a crazy amount compared to everyone else.
Adam:Oh, really? Yeah.
Dax:Which is kinda surprising. So then
Adam:it made me think, oh, maybe
Dax:that's why they don't care about the b to c stuff because they're maybe more focused on on that side. I still believe the big incumbents are gonna move so slow, and it's not gonna matter. They're just gonna end up winning. Like, again, Google, like, literally years later, after literally inventing the technology, is now coming out with a model that that kinda works.
Adam:I remember I remember saying, like, Google how's Google getting beat at this? They're not even doing anything. And now here they are.
Dax:Yeah. I will say I think Google's the exception. They're the incumbent that can, that just always fails to expand their business. Like somehow they just somehow always just fail to do it, but they have a model that's there, and it's like I said, it's so cheap. It's getting to the point where so we have this issues product SSD.
Dax:You know, we, like, pull out issues and structure them for you so you can see problems that are going on. Mhmm. I'm like, we have all this, like, really stupid code that tries to match issues and extract things. I would love to just have a general filter on logs, grab any that looks like an error, and run every single issue through an LM and be like, just structure it for me. Mhmm.
Dax:And it'll do that way better than whatever we have now. It's getting to the point where the economics make that kind of thing.
Adam:It will actually work.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. Assuming these economics are real. Like, we don't know how other guys they are.
Adam:Yeah. I do feel like you can now build you could build companies just assuming, like, these use cases are gonna work out. Like, it's gonna get to a cost that you can afford to do stuff. Maybe it seems too expensive right now, but you can just kinda, like, skate where the ice is or where the puck is what is it? I don't know.
Dax:Skate where the ice is freezing.
Adam:Skate where the ice is going or the puck. Oh, god. It's it's ruining my brain, this conversation. I'm feeling dumber as we go along.
Dax:What also sucks is the whole tokens concept.
Adam:Because I
Dax:was looking at the again, this Google Gemini thing, and I was like, oh, I was like, wow. The toss per token is really cheap. But then I'm like, wait. But how many tokens would be in an issue? And it's just so unintuitive.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:It's hard to get a feel for for what the stuff will actually cost.
Adam:Okay. I I need to not talk about those three mini or
Dax:Both these topics, you've been just you've just been like,
Adam:I'm I know. What yeah. Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just, I haven't been manic for a month, and it's very different. This is a different, state of being where I'm just a normal person.
Adam:I don't know how much I love being normal. I'm trying to love it for everyone's sake, but my brain just feels like it's so slow all the time. Anyway, you weren't expecting that. Sorry.
Dax:No. It's funny because this is the thing that I remember Kanye talking about. He was like, he kinda went through the same thing where
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Obviously, bipolar got I mean, he he was on medication, so it was more intense. Yeah. And he just, like, hated how he was, and he couldn't do a lot of the stuff he did. He's obviously more he's obviously more extreme on all the sides, but Yeah.
Adam:Me and Kanye were pretty pretty similar, though. I mean, he's having
Dax:a manic episode right now. Just
Adam:Oh, really?
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. And whenever you activate it, it's Twitter, that's
Adam:how you know it. Yeah. I saw that.
Dax:Website's very cool.
Adam:It was very cool. Did he make that in a manic, fever pitch?
Dax:No. But the person that made it replied on Twitter, like, because Wes Wes did a deep dive, and some someone that worked on it was like, oh, yeah. This is a cool project.
Adam:Oh, that's cool. Yeah. No. I, I don't think I'm having the same effect as, like, what medication would do. I've heard just the feeling, like, it changes your personality.
Adam:Like, you feel, like, lifeless. I mean, that's not everybody. Obviously, it's different for everybody. But, my effect is just like I feel like I'm wading through, like, molasses. I feel like everything I do is just like my brain is moving slowly, if that makes
Dax:sense. Just from changes around your routine and
Adam:Yeah. The main way I can I can ensure that I don't ever have manic episodes is just sleeping? I can't get out of bed until five.
Dax:Until five.
Adam:Yeah. I so if I wake up at four, I'd lay there for an hour. But, like, I'm making sure I'm getting good sleep every night, and that's something I do.
Dax:Thing is nobody would say until five as, like, that's a wake time to wait.
Adam:Yeah. Well, I used
Dax:to get a date. Until 5AM.
Adam:Yeah. Just no more four and five hour nights. If I do that, if I sleep seven, eight hours a night, I seem to be able to avoid the mania, which is good. I'm just adjusting. Here's something I wanna talk about.
Adam:The Super Bowl this weekend, you're so excited? Do you have a Super Bowl party? What are you doing? You probably are having a Super Bowl party.
Dax:I'm just gonna work. I'm just gonna work.
Adam:That's just a little bit more than I can ignore it. Here's the thing. Here's the thing about not liking sports. I don't get it. Why don't people there's a lot of people that don't like sports.
Adam:And I like, I don't watch football games for six months. I watch the playoffs. But I'm always interested all year round. And for me, it's the NFL, but, I mean, like, broadly in sports. I think they're so interesting, and it's it feels like a dying thing.
Adam:Feels like less and less people care about sports. Like, the NBA
Dax:race is
Adam:way down. Oh, yeah. Oh, really?
Dax:But isn't the NFL, like, on crack
Adam:in terms of it? Yeah.
Dax:It's doing great.
Adam:I don't know. It kinda, like, lines up with my interest changing. Something happened, and a lot of people just kinda, like, stopped caring about the NBA. I used to just be an NBA fan. A lot of people stopped caring about the NBA and started liking NFL.
Adam:I'm not sure exactly. I mean, like, the NFL's always been popular.
Dax:Of I I was always very, very casual, not very into sports. But of anything that I, like, followed a little bit, it was the NBA. And I do feel like there was some point where, like, there's a certain generation of NBA that I just kinda, like, checked out of. Yeah. Is it that people got too good at it?
Dax:Like, I don't like, the the generation where everyone was just hitting threes from, like, half court, that's, like, kinda when
Adam:Like, I'll tell you we've we've mastered it. It's it's done.
Dax:I don't know.
Adam:It's a lot of people that way.
Dax:Because that's that's what the NFL did. Right? They, like, obsessively change up
Adam:Change the rules.
Dax:To make sure it's entertaining. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. No. Baseball's even trying to do that, which good luck. There's no way baseball's ever gonna be entertaining. But, like, like, the fact that, like, half the players literally aren't even sweating.
Adam:Like, they're just standing in a field. I mean, there's just not a lot of ways to dress it up and make it exciting, but that's baseball. Yeah. The basketball I think basketball ratings are down, like, 40% this year
Dax:That's crazy. Wow.
Adam:Which is insane. I mean but, yeah, you're the way you're describing it feels very similar with my timeline where it's just, like, around that Steph Curry Warriors area. It just kinda, like, lost its luster for me. And I don't know why I enjoyed watching the Warriors for a long time when they were first getting good, and then it just kind of, like, the whole league
Dax:is just after that. Exactly.
Adam:Yeah. I'm saying Didn't care anymore.
Dax:After that. Yeah.
Adam:The players move around a lot. I don't know if that's it. I don't know what's different. And I don't know why I think the NFL thing, I I just like, I've always been a Chiefs fan, and Patrick Mahomes is, like, amazing. So I think that is why I started getting into the NFL, but I couldn't quite pin why did I stop caring about basketball.
Adam:But I do have an interesting thought about sports, a pitch for why you should care about sports. They're they're super interesting on a lot of levels, and I feel like people who either I don't know. I don't know what this crowd is that's, like, that's never been interested, and then there's people that, like you, that we're interested and aren't they're they're maybe not saving. Maybe there's no way I can save you. But I had this interesting thought the other night in my sleep.
Adam:I have a lot of those, like, where I'm thinking in my sleep. Do you ever do that? I the thought was it wasn't a dream, but it was just, like, all the little cracks of your night. You know, like, when you when you come to, you're, like, thinking about a thing.
Dax:I'm just laughing at the amount of buildup this
Adam:Oh, yeah. This is way too much buildup. It's not that good of a thought.
Dax:You're going on, like, a million tangents.
Adam:It's so true. Okay. Well, the thought was so, like, Jordan and the Bulls in the nineties, they're going for their second three peat, which is, like, from, like, a sports fan and, like, person who cares about the game that's being played. It's like this monumental thing, and, historically, obviously, like, Michael Jordan's a legend. This is, like, all just, like, entrenched in culture.
Adam:Right? As this thing that he did, They won two, three peats. But, like, it almost didn't happen because some guy that ran the team just, like, had an ego problem and just, like, didn't want them getting all the credit. So, like
Dax:We've lost it in the last dance. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. From the last it's the plot of the last dance. Yeah. So it's super interesting to think, like, all because the Chiefs now are getting ready to do this potentially thing on Sunday where they can maybe win three in a row in the NFL. It's never happened.
Adam:And it's like the teams, like, the players and the coaches and the fans are kind of, like, all aligned on this idea that we you, like, the the winning and the records and the, like, history and the hall of fame and all of that, like, the legend of it. Yeah. And then, like, there's this other half that because, like, none of that, it makes money. Then there's this other half that has, like, actually make money. It's such a, like, CEO, CTO dynamic or something.
Adam:It's like there's this whole other half of people that wear suits every day, and they figure out how to make money from it. And they can be incompetent. They can have egos. They can there could be money issues, and all these other things that threaten to, like, completely derail the thing that, like, everyone else cares so much about. Does that make sense?
Adam:I don't even know what that thought is. It's just, like, it's a collection of thoughts. I need you to rein it in for me.
Dax:I think what you're describing is there is a like, sports provide a crazy opportunity for, like, good dramatic stories to to emerge.
Adam:And I think that's what That's it.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. It's like all these, like, interesting, intricate stories beyond what is literally happening on the court. And I think a lot of these things are hard to see in the moment. I think we at least for me, maybe if you're, like, really tuned in, you you're on top of this stuff.
Dax:But for me, it's mostly on the retrospectives that explain all this that are really interesting. So that's why all those documentaries are really popular. I think Drive to Survive was probably the first one that really
Adam:Is that the,
Dax:Like, tapped into this, the F1.
Adam:F1?
Dax:Yeah. Okay. Because, like, it's exactly what you're describing. There's, like, a crazy level of drama and detail going behind the scenes, exactly what you're saying, beyond the people racing, but also the engineers, but also the finance side of it. Also, these teams are being bought.
Dax:Also, there's, like, all these, like, histories with these people. So it's really, really interesting. So I I totally understand that part of it. But not every sports fan is describing this part of it. Right?
Dax:I feel a lot of people just like watching what's happening on the field.
Adam:No. Sure. Yeah. I'm not I don't I'm not saying that, like, this is a reason to be a sports fan or that the average sports fan cares about any of that. It's just an interesting, like, push and pull that it seems like the thing that should be most important when you're caught up in it as a fan like, that should be the important thing.
Adam:But it's really
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. It's very easily, like, undermined by the realities of the world. There's some metaphor in there. There's something about how the world works. Yeah.
Adam:It it's like we can't just have nice things. There's there's the cost to everything.
Dax:The f one thing is especially funny because there are amazing f one races. They're, like, really truly thrilling f one races. But the average f one race, especially, like, when, like, Mercedes was so good, like, it was extremely boring.
Adam:You were
Dax:just, like, every you watch a race, like, hoping it was for one of those exciting ones, and then two hours later, you go, like, yep. The people that were in first, second, third just stayed in first, second, third the
Adam:whole time.
Dax:But then it's the juxtaposition with what's going on behind the scenes, it's, like, a million times more entertaining. Like, you don't even care what's happening on the track. It's just this this other stuff. And I I think what's happening here is, I guess the phrase reality TV has a negative connotation, but
Adam:Oh, interesting.
Dax:That category of thing is extremely appealing. Like, every single person, whether they deny it or not, likes something under this umbrella of reality TV.
Adam:And I
Dax:think sports has recognized that and they're, like, tapping in into that. So everything you described, it's about, like, the reality that's happening behind it and, like, telling it in a in a dramatized way. But there and I would say, like, almost all TV and content is is this now. You know? I feel like so much of it is under this umbrella.
Dax:I watched the show my background show for the past few months now. Did I tell you about this? The the the yachting one?
Adam:No. Okay.
Dax:So so? When I look for TV shows, my number one criteria is give me the one that has, like, the most number of episodes. The more episodes are better because it's, like, a background thing for me. So if I lock into one, I don't have to,
Adam:like, re research for a while. A new
Dax:show. Yeah. I love that. So I found a show called Below Deck, and the main series is still going on. There was, like, thirteen seasons or something, and it has, like, four other spin off series.
Dax:And it is the perfect formula. So it's all about these, mega yachts. So, like, some of the biggest yachts you can get that are publicly rentable, so they do charters. And it follows the crew around through each charter. And the crew has all this drama with each other, and there's a captain who's always like this great leadership figure that's, like, dealing with all this.
Dax:There's a crew bickering with each other. And every episode, a new set of guests come on and they do a charter. So there's always, like, something new happening, but it's also a consistent pattern. So every single episode you know, it's going to start with them planning the charter. It's going to be most of it with them doing the charter.
Dax:And at the end, they then they go out and party once the charter is done for a night, and they they do it all over again. A consistent format back and forth. And it's just, one, super interesting for me to, like I, like, know so much about, like, this industry now. Like, I know the terms. Like, I think I could maybe even, like, get a yacht parked.
Dax:I think I could help with getting a yacht parked at this point.
Adam:And it's all this drama
Dax:with just like, oh, no. Like, they hit another boat, and it's, like, a huge deal. And and then and then, like, the crew are always
Adam:They hit they hit other boats? That that happens?
Dax:Yeah. It's it's really bad. It's, like, it's funny because, like, sometimes it looks like they're going so slow, and it's like, how does that even matter? But they're just so heavy that the amount of energy transferred with any collision is is huge. Then the crew's always hooking up with each other, and that's, like, creating a crazy amount of, like, you know, social drama.
Dax:And then they all get drunk at the end when the charter's over, and they go out. And that creates a bunch of dramatic situations. And I just have this They have below deck, they have below deck Mediterranean. It's all Mediterranean. They have below deck down under.
Dax:It's all in Australia. And the captain from down under is crazy good looking. So then every single charter guest is just like, woah. You see the captain? He's so hot.
Dax:And all the crew members are like, man, I wanna hook up with the captain. But then he's just a family guy that wants to get back to his daughter in Thailand, but he can't get back there because it's COVID. And they don't all they
Adam:make is
Dax:a country, and all he wants to do is is is, you know, get back to her. He doesn't care about all this stuff.
Adam:Yeah. So
Dax:there you go.
Adam:That was amazing. I'm kinda convinced you've sold me. I don't know anything about boats, but now I kinda wanna watch.
Dax:The larger point is this category is always gonna be compelling in any you could just take the formula and focus on any part of the world, and it'll probably do well.
Adam:So is it does it tie in with, like I know they say the Zoomers really value authenticity. Is that reality TV or no? I feel like reality TV is not real always, ironically.
Dax:I think yeah. I think reality TV is definitely extremely staged, very, edited to, like, make certain narratives look like they happened. But it is more real than a scripted show at the end of the day. It's like
Adam:Yeah. You know? So I guess what I'm asking is, like, is it just is it our generation? Do millennials enjoy reality TV, or is it, like, universally human beings enjoy?
Dax:I think our generation was the first one to really pick this off. Right? Like, Jersey Shore, that was, like, a huge reality show when I was growing up.
Adam:Yep. So I wonder if it evolves into even more reality where it's, like, unedited. Just I guess that's what YouTube and Twitch
Dax:are. So I mean that there's all people that do that on YouTube that show their lives, and it's it's basically that same category. I was listening to an interview. So this woman that made this documentary about so there's this whole segment on YouTube about where, it's like families. Like, families that just show every aspect of their life and, like, their kids and everything.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:And there's, like, the audience for this is huge. Like, millions and millions of people, like, watch this type of content.
Adam:Cut their family?
Dax:Or It's like a mix. It's like it's just the whole thing they're showing is, like, their family's lives. And, like, oh, we're having a new baby, and then this is, like, little Bobby, and he's having trouble with this, and here's him playing. And it just it's, like, it's their job. Like, these families, this is their business.
Dax:They make money off of this type of thing. And it's really confusing because are those kids child laborers? Because they're effectively working like, if you made a scripted TV show, you'd have to hire a child actor, and there's, like, all these laws and then all this stuff around it. But it's, like, a small business. It's like they're running their own business, and it's like their own family working on it.
Dax:And there's not, like, any kind of
Adam:Interesting.
Dax:It's just that they're on their own. And then it's so new that we don't know if these kids are gonna grow up and be like, this is the most fucked up thing. And, like Yeah.
Adam:I'm like, oh, man.
Dax:This shouldn't be allowed.
Adam:Yeah. Like, even worse than child stars.
Dax:Yeah. So there's there's this documentary on I'm not gonna watch the documentary, but I just watched an interview with the person that made it. And she kinda, like, summarize the story. So one of these families, they're all like us. They're all looking at their metrics, their analytics, and they know they're just getting crazy feedback on what works.
Dax:People like this type of content. People like when this kind of thing happens. One of the biggest things that drives viewers is, when you have a new baby. So, like
Adam:Oh. When They're gonna get a lot
Dax:more babies. Excited.
Adam:Oh, my
Dax:God. They decide to adopt a child from China. Okay. And, like, they grew to a crazy degree. I don't know what happened.
Dax:I don't know if they had, like, a lot of trouble with this with the child they adopted, but they after, like, two or three years, they dissolved the adoption, which is, like, really that's, like, really crazy.
Adam:Like, they did it for the ratings or no?
Dax:No. No. So they they they effectively it seems like they maybe adopted him for the ratings. I'm sure it wasn't, like, that clear cut. It was That's what I mean.
Adam:Yeah. And then they're like, okay. We're done with you. Thank you.
Dax:They're like, we kinda wanna do this, but then I'm sure they were extra motivated by the fact that, you know, all their viewers were like, do it.
Adam:Do it.
Dax:Do it. Do it. And then they just couldn't deal with it, and they had to do that. And, obviously, when everyone heard about that, they got, like, demolished. Demolished, demolished, demolished online.
Dax:So it's just this crazy yeah. So, like, we just live in a world where that's, like, a type of content that exists, and that kind of stuff is is happening. So, yeah, I think reality is just the like, the most thrilling form of entertainment for everyone Yeah. As much as we have to deny it.
Adam:I mean, to tie back to the sports thing, I I love when they do the, like, mic'd up, like, when you can see what they actually say to each other on the field. They should just do that on the broadcast. Just tell players, like, listen. You're gonna be on the broadcast. Everything you say is going out to the world.
Adam:And then just, like, let's accept that they're gonna say some things. Maybe put a tape delay so you can bleep out the worst stuff. But, like, wouldn't that be so much more entertaining if during a sporting event, all the players entertaining if during a sporting event, all the players had mics and you could hear everything they say? That'd be way better.
Dax:I just love hearing the you know, sometimes I always think about this where usually the shot of the NBA game is, like, from a camera Yeah. Like, up top.
Adam:But, like,
Dax:you can hear the squeaking all
Adam:the time.
Dax:And, like, oh, like, they have a separate mic that's, like Just pick up the floor. Just to play the squeaking.
Adam:Because you can't hear it really say stuff. Not very well. Yeah. That's a good point.
Dax:It's like yeah. So the whole thing is kinda made up to begin with, so I might as well throw there.
Adam:Hey. Can we do a sponsor break while I pee? Forty minutes. That's how long it takes me to pee. Or how long it takes me
Dax:to pee. Did you get to drink any water
Adam:in between? I've been drinking water and coffee the whole time. I don't know if you've not been watching me, but I'll be right back. Okay.
Dax:Alright, everyone. This is, Adam's p break sponsor time. We're sponsored by terminal dot shop.
Adam:I don't
Dax:know if that counts as a sponsor because it's our own company, but it is something that you should consider checking out. It is a coffee shop that's entirely accessed through your terminal. SSHterminal.shop. In your terminal, hit enter and you'll get a pretty cool experience. If you don't wanna buy coffee,
Adam:you should go check it
Dax:out just because it's so cool. Also follow the Twitter because we do a lot of stuff that is, just fun if you're a developer. We got so many things planned for this year. Twitter handle is terminal dot shop. Help us out.
Dax:Check it
Adam:out. Did you sell terminal so hard?
Dax:I think I did an okay job. It was Good job. Great. But I Way
Adam:to go.
Dax:I tried.
Adam:Yeah. You tried. That's all that matters. Participation. So 2025, it's a there's, like, a thing in the air.
Adam:There's, like, a vibe shift. Have you felt it?
Dax:Sort of. I don't know. Maybe.
Adam:Okay. To be honest, I haven't felt it. I've just heard people say there is and that
Dax:I should feel it.
Adam:So that I think I've thought
Dax:People are manifesting. They're like Yeah. They want it to be true. Okay. Yeah.
Adam:It was mostly, Marc Andreessen, I think, on, Lex. But he did make it sound like tech was about to explode. Do you think tech's like, are we on an upswing or downswing? I never know. Feels like we're back and forth on whether it's anti war.
Adam:Idea.
Dax:I, I wouldn't really trust anything Marc Andreessen said ever since he fell off that wall.
Adam:Wait. What? Fell off a wall?
Dax:Yeah. That story?
Adam:No. What? No.
Dax:He sat on a wall and then he had a great phone.
Adam:Humpty Dumpty?
Dax:What? Yes.
Adam:Is that, like is Marc Andreessen known as Humpty Dumpty? Did I not know this? Alright.
Dax:How are you not getting the joke?
Adam:Let me see what it looks like. Oh my god. It was a personal personal appearance insult? Okay. Well, I didn't go there.
Adam:Okay. No. He does. Okay. I see it.
Adam:It's funny. Wait. Do you not yeah. What do you think about, Marc Andreessen? Please tell me.
Adam:Because, sometimes I think, like, man, this person is so smart, and I get really into them. And then I find out, oh, actually, they're a jerk. Never mind. Don't like them.
Dax:I I don't like Marc Andreessen at all. I think he's, I think his VC is actually really incompetent.
Adam:I don't know anything about their, like, track record. I know they're invested in all the big ones, but, like, if you invest in everything, then you're, obviously, you're invested in all the
Dax:big ones. I think they just had, they did they just grew as much as possible, and they're in every single deal, so they have a lot of sway. But Mhmm. Every single Andreessen Horowitz partner I've come across has been, like, really stupid in a very specific way. Could you
Adam:please tell me what the And there's, like,
Dax:there's, like, infinite of them. Like, if you look on Twitter, like, anytime you see VC talking, you look them up, something at a 16 z. So I just think they're just really large, and they have this classic there's always organizations like this. They are viewed as prestigious, but they actually have a lot of people working there and everyone thinks they're like the shit. And they speak from this, like, position of wisdom, but I generally find them to, like, kind of be stupid.
Dax:Like, their all their endeavors in crypto were, like, really, really weird and kinda dumb. Mhmm.
Adam:So now that you said that, I go to the website, thea16z.com, and, like, I am completely out. I'm I'm out. I thought I kinda like Marc Andreessen from the podcast episode. Nope. Their their their website.
Adam:I don't know what this gold thing is. I don't know what this coin, whatever what I'm looking at. But just, I'm out. That was enough. Just you what you just said.
Adam:I do
Dax:love Ben Horowitz, though. I will say I really like Ben Horowitz, so this is my conflict with it.
Adam:So the other half. Well, tell me who is Ben Horowitz? I know Andreessen's story, Netscape, all that. What is
Dax:Probably have you read the beginning of Hard Things About Hard Things?
Adam:Yeah. I think so.
Dax:That that's Ben Horowitz's book. But the beginning of it, like, the first third is, like, such a entertaining read. It's about, like, the complete hell he was in with his company that he built.
Adam:Yeah. Wait. I do know this story.
Dax:Yeah. I really like him. I think he's, like, I'm trying to
Adam:be What did he do? I don't
Dax:even remember. It's just, like, it's it wasn't nothing that, like, stuck around. Something that sold to VMware or something.
Adam:Oh, Netscape didn't stick around either, did it?
Dax:Yeah. So I I just I don't know. I'm just not into I just find Mark Andreessen kind of annoying. So
Adam:Yeah. That that frames that does frame a lot of all of what I just experienced on that podcast.
Dax:Like I said, none of these people are at the end of the day, like, we're talking about people in the top x percent, so they're not stupid. So when I said they're stupid, like, I'm not like they're literally stupid. Yeah. No. I just don't
Adam:find say in a specific way. Is that a thing you can articulate?
Dax:Yeah. I think they have the I okay. So, actually, all all there's a very clear metric for me. I have been more and more seeing politics as, like, this drug that just, like, can fuck you up. And I see a lot of them get have I feel like a lot of them have been really, like, they all got, like, hit by it and they let themselves get affected by it.
Dax:So to me, that's like you know, I'd, like, pull pull you one notch down if you're, like, if if you just kind of got infected by this virus that, has been hitting people. And I've been seeing like in the world of smart people, there are people that get affected by it and people that don't, and I could have never predicted who was on which side. I'm really surprised by some people that I thought would never be impacted by something like this. Like they just infected them and they can't like see stuff through any other lens. So they have this like crazy political view of like everything that they're doing.
Dax:I think a lot of it is a little bit like role playing. I think they have kind of this fantasy view of how, like, chaotic things are and, like, what their position is in that world.
Adam:This is helping me frame the the episode I just listened to a whole lot. That that helps. Okay. I just need you to tell me how to think back. That's all.
Adam:I'm easily impressionable. Like, the last person I listen to is the person I agree with. So as long as you're always the last person, then you can help me stay away from the Andreessen
Dax:of the world. I mean, to be honest, I think that's true for me too because, like I said, these people aren't dumb. Like, none of these people are dumb. So when they talk, they sound pretty good.
Adam:Sounds very smart. Yeah.
Dax:And I I I feel the same way. My solution is I just don't listen to anything. I really don't.
Adam:Won't be influenced. Oh, that's a great idea, actually.
Dax:I just don't consume any podcast. I don't consume any of these people.
Adam:Yeah. Okay.
Dax:I just yeah. Like I said, this is an extension of my thing of wanting to be someone's peer. That's that's kinda what's driving me. It's like, I don't wanna just be a little subscriber to these people's thoughts.
Adam:Mhmm. Yeah. Because then it it makes it hard. You you have to, like, undo stuff to have your own thoughts.
Dax:Yeah. There there there's some amount of value. Right? There's some amount of value of being well read and, like, understanding a lot of these things, but yeah, it just cuts both ways. I posted a tweet the other day.
Dax:It went crazy viral also about how I found it so interesting that the founding fathers were like so accomplished. They like, you know, fought a war. They're all pretty young. They lived in a time where like, I think I just put them on a tweet, like if you got diarrhea and you get off water, you could die. Like things were like that intense.
Dax:But then they also were like crazy gifted at deep philosophical thought and understanding all these, like, really counterintuitive things that just you just don't understand. Like, most people just do not understand, things that, like, really take a lot of introspection and understanding to to come to conclusion. They, like, wrote that into the constitution.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Like, how like, what the I was like, what how do these people all randomly exist together? And, like, I, like, never see people like that.
Adam:What's the answer? Now I gotta know. How did they?
Dax:I mean, some people a lot of people just said, like
Adam:you know, obviously, these are all,
Dax:like, wealthy individuals. So a lot of their upbringing was just reading eight hours a day, like and not like reading the pop science book of the week. It was all reading, like, stuff that survived for two thousand years Mhmm. Like, all the classics and all that. So I and they're just really well trained in in a lot of those things, which maybe isn't as common now.
Dax:You just don't get I guess you just don't get that from listening to something like a podcast. Yeah. Like, for an idea for, like, a book to literally serve a a thought to survive from, like, ancient Greece to, like, our modern time, it had to be, like, a really, really good thought. Like, almost like that Marc Andreessen podcast, has anyone listened to that in two thousand years? No.
Dax:Right. Probably not. But I I think that's there's, like, something to be said said for that.
Adam:It's it's like I mean, this is a word. So is this what this word means, infotainment? It's like Yeah. It's just entertainment, but it's kinda
Dax:dressed up
Adam:in, like, this intellectual rapper that makes you feel smart.
Dax:Yeah. It makes you feel a little bit better. Yeah. Yeah. That's why for me, reality TV, I'm just gonna, like, not pretend.
Dax:There's nothing that I'm watching below tech. There's nothing Yeah.
Adam:There's nothing about
Dax:that. Exercise at all. Yeah. I know in my head why I'm consuming it.
Adam:Okay. Well, now we can't ever say anything smart on this podcast because I don't want people to be listening to infotainment when they listen to us. You know? No.
Dax:This is entertainment. This
Adam:is entertainment. Entertainment. There's nothing.
Dax:Yeah. This podcast is not gonna last for two thousand years.
Adam:No. It's it's really not.
Dax:But, yeah, like, I I think just going back to some of those things, it's, I find a lot of stuff with the law to be really counterintuitive Mhmm. Because it's not like law is something we have to really invent. We all naturally have instincts around justice and revenge and vengeance and all of this. And a lot of ways, law is there to, like, counteract all of our instincts around how we think we should make the world safe.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:And it requires such deep it's so like, I'm struggling with the right word for it. It's like, you have to go past all of your instincts to really come up with the right way to structure our laws and our criminal system and and how we, like, run our society. Yeah. And I just don't understand how you were able to do that in the seventeen hundreds. Like, it's it's just so it just seems so impossible.
Dax:People can't do that now.
Adam:Yeah. Right.
Dax:It's it's wild.
Adam:It is wild. I it's it's interesting you said this because I just just started on a podcast. Somebody talking about this idea of how brilliant our founding fathers were and just, like, the constitution and everything that they kinda thought ahead of, like, the actual brilliance of it. Yeah. So now I just I still feel a little unfulfilled.
Adam:I wanna know the answer as to why these people existed because I
Dax:Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I could think of examples that kinda highlight this. So the Boston Massacre is a big one. So you have a situation where there's increasing friction between the colonies and the British.
Dax:Mhmm. And there's, like, a gathering and British soldiers just, like, shoot a bunch of people and kill them. Okay? Mhmm. So you imagine what the reaction of that is gonna be.
Dax:Like, it's not like, the British soldiers are minority there. So, obviously, all the people in colonies are gonna, like, go and hang them immediately. Like, fuck these guys. They just killed a bunch of our people.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:Escalating tensions. Of course, it's gonna turn into mob mob justice. But, I think it was is it James Madison? I forgot who it was. He, like, intervened and was like, no.
Dax:We need to have due process. We need to, like, have a trial for them.
Adam:We need
Dax:to do everything by the book. And ultimately, like, yeah, they were I think they were executed, but he, like, forced that to happen. And and, like, think about how crazy stuff gets now. Like, anything political, like, how riled up people get.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:For someone to, like, have that clarity is incredible for that to happen at all. And then he, like, writes about it too. Like, why, like, why is that even important? He has this really great argument. And this is, like, again, borrowed from stuff that's been around, like, a hundred years ago in England.
Dax:Like, he, like, references all this stuff. And the point he makes is, of course, we're always gonna have evil in the world. Like, of course, there's always gonna be crime that happens. But if people start to believe that being innocent isn't enough to keep me safe, you end up in a really bad place. So people are like, oh, I know I'm innocent, but the government can just come and grab me and throw me in jail anyway.
Dax:And being innocent isn't enough. So his whole point is having stuff like due process, like the symbol of making sure that everyone gets that no matter how obviously it is they committed a crime, it helps people believe that being innocent is enough. Like, as long as I'm innocent and I do the right things and I live a virtuous life, I will be fine. If you lose that, then you're like, fuck it. I don't care.
Dax:I'm, like, gonna get oppressed anyway. Like, who cares about that? So, like, that's such a complex
Adam:So smart.
Dax:Second order effects, like, thing to even think about. Mhmm. And to, like, have that back then. Also, he was, like, in his twenties, like, I think when this is going down.
Adam:Yeah. Don't understand. It's wild.
Dax:It's incredible. It really feels like What
Adam:was in the wild?
Dax:Aliens were, like, touched by divinity or, like, some kind of crazy intervention that happened.
Adam:Maybe they just weren't distracted by Twitter, and that was awesome.
Dax:That's another big part when it was like, yeah. We're just staring at our phones all day. But,
Adam:it sucks. Yeah. It seemed it seems like but because we have the Internet, like, we'd be able to find all these brilliant people and put them
Dax:More information. Yeah. Which I think does happen.
Adam:It does happen, I guess. Yeah. Why? I need to I need to find more resources. I've just found your tweet, and it's just ask the question.
Adam:I need answers. Maybe next week, I'll have found something. There's gotta be a Wikipedia article or something that explains why people are so smart.
Dax:Why people are so smart? Yeah. I don't know. I think it's just a double edged thing. Like, we have a lot more information, and that doesn't mean the total number of information that is useful is has gone up independently.
Dax:So it's possible that everything that we needed to know would already existed in the seventeen hundreds.
Adam:Oh, yeah. And there's just less distractions. Okay. We'll go with that. Alright.
Adam:Alright. It's been an hour. Yeah. Do you feel do are we in a funk? Is this a is this a podcast funk?
Adam:Are we too busy with other things?
Dax:No. I don't think so. I think maybe the last couple episodes, but I I think we have our waves. And I think kinda like we're in a funk, but I think we're okay.
Adam:Apologies to those that listened to the end. You're the the OGs. You're like, I'm not giving out our
Dax:best. Suck.
Adam:We just waste so much time. No. I I think, like, there have been periods of my career, not my career. There has been periods of the last few years where I was, like, trying to make content, if you will. I don't know if this podcast was ever, like, trying to make content, but I think during those periods, like, when I'm streaming and I'm doing stuff that's, like, just talking to people
Dax:Mhmm.
Adam:I think I'm probably a little more in the headspace. And then there's periods where I'm just, like, programming a lot. And that's, like, this period, and it's just hard to, like, shift the context into talk on a podcast.
Dax:I mean, the social muscle is, like, a real thing. Like, it atrophies when you're not flexing it. And I I got the same thing.
Adam:My social muscle has atrophied because it's really not about, like, the podcast. It's just, like, talking to you. My ability to, like, have a good conversation with you is atrophied because I'm not flexing my social muscles. On that note, we have it feels like it's been forever since I've seen the terminal team. Like, we haven't done anything in person in forever.
Adam:Is April the first time I'll see you guys, I guess? React Miami?
Dax:Yeah. I mean, I guess, not if you've are you confirmed that you're gonna be able to go? Like, that's what I kind of Yeah.
Adam:Of course.
Dax:Which I heard about last week.
Adam:React Miami?
Dax:Yeah. We're just
Adam:talking about stuff. I'm sorry if I didn't confirm. No. No.
Dax:I just mentioned it last week. I wasn't sure if, Okay.
Adam:Yeah. I'm definitely obviously.
Dax:Asked the wives and confirmed and and all that. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. I think I have. Well, April's far enough away. I maybe haven't.
Adam:I'll talk to Casey. But, I mean, April's far enough away. There's nothing we're gonna have on schedule. So, yeah,
Dax:lock it in.
Adam:Anyway. Well, Casey, you're probably listening. So just we're going to React Miami. And anyway, okay. I'm gonna get off here.
Dax:You should bring the whole family.
Adam:I should. I would love to, actually. As soon as we can talk our five year old into getting on the
Dax:plane again. He decided
Adam:he hates planes. Yeah. And on that note, we'll see you.
Dax:See you.
