#171: Anthony Pompliano … on Bitcoin
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Intro: Anthony Pompliano is an entrepreneur, investor, writer, and podcaster on topics of decentralized finance.
Army
Iraq
Will there always be war?
Bitcoin maximalism
Money is a belief system
Bitcoin
Censorship
Bitcoin as main currency
Scarcity creates value
Money is time
Eric Weinstein vs Bitcoin Community
Ray Dalio
Bitclout
How to get Bitcoin
Investing
Volatility
Philosophy of the meme
Dogecoin
NFTs
Virtual reality
AI
Bitcoin resources
Book recommendations
Can money buy happiness?
Meaning of life
#172: Ryan Schiller
Librex
Deep Fakes
Silencing of ideas
Building Librex
How Librex took over Dartmouth
Anonymity
Private vs public life
Building a sense of community
Refusing to sell user data
Moderation
Freedom of speech
Scaling
Yik Yak
AWS and Parler
Safe spaces
Jeffrey Epstein
Chess and poker
Advice for young people
Book recommendations
Mortality
#173: Nic Carter - more on cryptocurrency
Intro: Nic Carter is a financial researcher, investor, writer, and podcaster on topics of decentralized finance.
Can humans fully understand reality?
The dollar system
Bitcoin
Opendime
Core values of Bitcoin
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
How Bitcoin works
Bitcoin blocksize wars
Layered scaling of Bitcoin
Lightning network
Schnorr/Taproot update to Bitcoin
Criticisms of Bitcoin
Bitcoin failure modes
Bitcoin vs Ethereum
Vitalik Buterin
Creative destruction
Future of Bitcoin
Tesla, Elon Musk, and Dogecoin
NFTs
Bitcoin maximalism
On writing
Writing a book on Bitcoin
Bitcoin resources
Book recommendations
Advice for young people
Meaning of life
#174: Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution (April ‘21)
Intro: Tyler Cowen is an economist, writer, and podcaster.
Economics
L: But, from my perspective, economics is sometimes able to formulate very simple, almost E = mc^2 … models of how our society will function when you do a certain thing. But it seems impossible … to think that a simple formula … can describe behavior of billions of human beings. … Do you have a sense that there’s a hope for economics to have those kinds of physics-level descriptions and models of the world? Or is that our desperate attempts at humans to make sense of it …
T: I don’t think economics will ever be very predictive. It’s most useful in helping you ask better questions. Look at Game Theory. Trying to think it through …
L: Are you surprised, speaking of USSR and US, that we haven’t destroyed ourselves with nuclear weapons? That … that’s a good example of an explanation that perhaps allows us to ask better questions. It seems … Are you surprised? Do you think the game theoretic explanation …
T: I think we will destroy each other with those weapons eventually, Look it’s a very low-probability event … We got very lucky. But if you keep running the clock, it will happen. It may not be, USA and China, USA and Russia. You know, it could be the Saudis and Turkey. … But, it simply will happen, in my view. At best, we’ve got 700-800 years …
T: Could come any time. Probably not in your lifetime. But the chance presumably increases the cheaper weapons of mass destruction are.
Nuclear war
L: Is there something about our human nature that allows us to fight against it … as we get closer to trouble, we get better at avoiding trouble.
T: I’m not so negative on human nature; as an economist, I see the gains from cooperation. But if you ask, are there outliers in history? Was there a Hitler? You let the clock tick; another Hitler with nuclear weapons — it will happen!
L: So your sense is fundamentally people are good
T: It’s a trembling-hand equilibrium. The fundamental … is cooperation. But every now and then, somebody does something crazy. And you can’t always beat Hitler. Sometimes Hitler drags you down.
L: Is it possible the crazier the person, the less likely we are, and so we’re safe. … Like, my dad thinks, if you have a graph … evil people can’t also be geniuses. This is his defense of why evil people won’t get ahold of nuclear weapons … Not even the evil of Hitler we’re talking about. He probably deluded himself and the people around him that … he was doing good for the world. Terrorists, that want to destroy themselves and the world; those people will never be skilled enough to do that level of destruction. So … it’s unlikely that the kind of events that will lead to extinction of humans.
T: I accept the argument. But that’s why you need to let the clock tick. It’s also the best argument for bureaucracy. That selects against pure evil, because you need to build alliances. … Could you imagine 35 years from now; the Osama bin Laden has nukes, or bioweapons. Osama was pretty evil …
The American dream
Capitalism: pros and cons
Is competition good for the world?
Free market
Anarchy
Ayn Rand
L: … we’re doing a whirlwind introduction to all of economics …. Ayn Rand comes up .. throughout many conversations. A lot of people really despise her; a lot of people really love her. … Does she make; do you understnad the emotion she arouses … thoughts on her philosophy of objectivism? … this formulation of rational self interest? Or more, negatively, the selfishness?
T: She was a big influence on me growing up, particularly Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. The notion that wealth creates opportunity and good lives, and is something we ought to valorize. One of her key ideas, I think it’s completely correct. That said, as a philosopher, I disagree with her on most things. As a boy … I read Plato before her. In a Socratic dialogue … whomever you agree with, you understand the wisdom is in coming together of different points of view. She doesn’t have that. Altruism can be wonderful. To pound the table and say “existence exists.” I’m not sure it’s very meaningful. … She was Russian. I’d ask her, if she was still alive … I’d ask her about Russia, which she never talked about. She’s much more Russian than she seems at first … purging people from objectivist …
L: Assuming she’s still not around … but if she comes to your podcast, can you dig into that? Do you mean her personal demons, around social and economic Russia of the time
T: The traumas she suffered there … the music and literature; her view of relations between the sexes. Why she carries through the old Russian vision … Sexual dimorphism … very strong women … an Eastern European vision. That’s in her, that’s her actual real philosophy. That’s not talked about enough. …
L: That certainty … without it, she could’ve been a Dostoevsky
T: She became a cult figure.
L: It’s interesting the notion that no one person is wise, … the wisdom is in the coming together of different people or ideas.
T: …
The case for big business
L: Your book, Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero. Can you explain?
T: If you look at hte pandemic, a catastrophic event. Who has saved us? Amazon has done remarkably well, upping their delivery game. I’ve ordered hundreds of package. Direct delivery food … it’s gone remarkably well. Switching over, our entire higher educational system … to Zoom. Zoom did it. … If you look at resources, competence, incentive, who’s been the star performers? … the NBA even, cancelling the season as early as they did. … And then pulling off the Bubble
Clubhouse
Loneliness
L: I have a sense (from an AI perspective) that there’s a deep loneliness in the world. An iceberg of loneliness in all of us.
T: Are Turing bots going to outperform Clubhouse? You can just say “here’s the kind of conversations I want.” … It’ll be better than ordinary Clubhouse …
Eric Weinstein and economic growth
L: We’ve talked to EW … he has a sense that growth, the entirety of the American system is based on the assumption of growth. Do you think it’ll continue or will we stagnate?
T: I’ve long agreed with him, Peter Thiel, and others … that growth has slowed down. In my book The Great Stagnation. But the last five years I’ve become more optimistic. … mRNA vaccines … green technology … will repair our GDP. An anti-malaria vaccine … space … area after area, there’s this surge of breakthroughs. … Rooted in superior computation …
Communism
L: .. you’re bullish on America … What do you think about communism? Why doesn’t it work? Is it the implementation? Anything you find compelling? …
T: You could argue my life as a tenured professor comes close to communism. The Soviet Union devolved to a set of decentralized incentives … It wasn’t even central planning. … descriptions of the Soviet system—weird mixes of barter and malfunctioning incentives. … But in terms of consumer goods, quite a failure. That’s what I think of the system the Soviets had. .. Required an increasing pile of lies … alienated people but created an elite. People that no longer believed in the system itself … or even thought they were doing better by being crooks, than say, by moving to Switzerland. … By Gorbachev’s time, if you’re No. 30 in the hierarchy, you’re better off in Switzerland.
L: …
T: You can’t use price incentives … shortages everywhere; people trade favors … barter, bribes, sexual favors, family friends … you lose more and more information in the prices, practices, and norms you had. … That would be my take. But you’re the expert here.
L: Well … it’s more personal than it is scholarly …
Putin
L: Vladimir has held power for 21 years … it’s still possible now with a new constitution that he could hold power longer than Stalin. What do you think about the man, the state of affairs in Russia, the system they have there. Is there something intersting to you as an economist?
T: … As you know, the Russian economy, starting 1999, 2000, has quite a few years of excellent growth. Putin is still riding on that. IT coincides with his rise as the truly focal figure. Pretty recently, they’ve had a few years of negative growth in a row; the economy is too dependent on fossil fuels. … You need a concordence across different types of power. Social, political, economikc … The Russian system under Putin has never had that. Ultimately his incentives is to steer the system where economic power is in a small number of hands in a non-diversified way … the way it’s set up … That’s really structural, what has gone wrong. On top of that, you can have an opinion of Putin, but you’ve got to start with those structural problems. The number of Russians who love Putin, and it’s sincere, that’s a real phenomenon.
L: Yeah I’m really torn on that. Putin’s approval rating seems to be really high. I’m torn on whether that has to do with the fact that there’s control of the press, which is the people I talk to …. or a genuine love of Putin and appreciation …
T: A lot of that would go away if the press were freer. Singapore realizes this … people in Singapore have done a great job. If you’re discussed by the press, you don’t look good. Tech company execs are realizing this. That high popularity, i view as bear-ish for Russia. I’d feel better about the country if people were more pissed off at him.
China
L: what do you make of the other big player, China? They have a different, messed up but also functioning system. They seem better at encouragiung entrepreneurs. What do you make of the entire Chinese system? Why does it work as well as it does, currently? … Possible benefits …
T: Amazing what China has done. Perspecrtive, if you clompare them to Japan, Singapore … they’ve done much worse. That’s both living standards, or … I hesitate to cite democracy as an un-alloyed good. But there’s more freeddom in all these other places. They have all these problems of history—but they managed … one of the true great mass migrations from countryside to cities … that will sustain totalitarian systems. the moved to an oligarchy, where the CCP … has been really good at governing; has made a lot of good decisions. I don’t know how long that streak will continue, with one person so much now holding authority in a more extreme manner. The selection pressures … probably become worse. The state-owned enterprise losing relative productivity … we’ll held Jack Ma on this island … it smells bad to me. I don’t feel that it’s about to crash. But I don’t see them supplanting America. I think they’ll muddle through and have various problems.
UBI
Disagreement with Eric Weinstein
Money, Bitcoin, and Ethereum
L: Are you bullish on cryptourrency?
T: No one knows what money is; probably no one ever knew. … Bills of exchange in medieval times—was that money? Maybe it’s semantic … Waht about credit? So being confused about it is natural for humans. If more of that, that’s probably a good thing. Now crypto per se, I think Bitcoin has taken over a lot of the space held by gold; that seems sustainable. I’m not short Bitcoin. … The price changes … I am deeply uncertain about … it seems connected to ultimate visions of using it for transactions ni ways, I’m not sure … whether it be prediction markets. .. I’m not sure the demand is really there once it’s regulated. I’d say I’m 40-60 optimistic. It’s somewhat more likely they fail, but I take them very seriously.
L: We’re talking about it becoming one of the main currencies in the owrld
T: That I don’t think will happen
L: But now it’s $50K for a single Bitcoin?
T: I don’t think we have a good theory for the value of Bitcoin … It’s like valuing an Andy Warhol painting. … Now a good Warhol could be worth over $50 million; that’s an incredible rate of price apopreciation … Bitcoin has seem a similar trajectory … but I don’t pretend to know when it will stop
WallStreetBets
MIT
UFO sightings
Contemporary art is misunderstood
Mexican food is the best in the world
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Book recommendations
Advice for young people
Love
Mortality
Meaning of life
#175: Yannis Papas
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Tim Dillon and absolute power
Mortality
Immortality”
Dogs
Power
Hyenas
Nature is metal
Battle of Crete
History is written by the victors
History Hyenas podcast
Bernie Madoff
Jeffrey Epstein
Hitler
Conspiracy theories
Andrew Yang and New York City
Podcast with Lex's dad
Andrew Yang and the prison-industrial complex
Queen Elizabeth
Advice for young people
#176: Robert Breedlove … scholar in Bitcoin
Sovereignty
Territorial imperative
Property
Anarchism
Inflation is theft
Volatility is truth
Taleb and Bitcoin
Life is information propogating through flesh
Intelligence
Space and time
Pragmatic truth
Creative destruction
Capitalism vs Communism
Jordan Peterson on religion
Inflation
What is money?
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin vs other cryptocurrencies
Can governments ban Bitcoin?
Bitcoin toxicity is tough love
Crypto scammers
Eric Weinstein and Bitcoin
Satoshi Nakamoto
Money is energy
Proof of stake vs proof of work
Morality
Collapse of the Soviet Union
Jordan Peterson and Bitcoin
Book recommendations
Advice for young people
Love
#177: Risto Mikkulainen, back to CS!
If we re-ran Earth over 1 million times
R: That’s (not) a bad question for CS; we are building … models. We can run a computational model … and ask that question. How much variation will we see if we simulate it. … Some irregularities. It took evolution a really long time to get started … There are things that need to be discovered .. and they probably will be …
Would aliens detect humans?
Evolution of intelligent life
Fear of death
Hyenas
Language
The magic of programming
Neuralink
Surprising discoveries by AI
How evolutionary computation works
Learning to walk
Robots and a theory of mind
Neuroevolution
Tesla Autopilot
Language and vision
Aliens communicating with humans
Would AI learn to lie to humans?
Artificial life
Cellular automata
Advice for young people
Meaning of life
#178: Michael Malice and Yaron Brook
Desert island thought experiment
Communism
Immanuel Kant
Donald Hoffman
DMT elves
Humility
Jordan Peterson and religion
Ben Shapiro: facts don't care about your feelings
Why Ayn Rand is controversial
Selfishness
Communism and fascism
Authoritarianism
Bitcoin
Anarchy debate
Dangers of communism
Favorite character in Ayn Rand s Atlas Shrugged
Advice for young people
Does love require sacrifice?
Back to the island
#179: George St. Pierre
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Love of winning
Suffering
Fasting
Carnivore
Fear
Strategy
Mind games
Mental games
Science of fighting
GOAT
A fight vs Khabib
Free will
Consciousness
AI
Aliens
Dreams
Father
Life and love
Advice for young people
How to learn
Bruce Lee
Tie choke
Best martial art for self-defense
Meaning of life
#180 - Jeremi Suri
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Power of charisma
US presidency
Aliens
Bill Clinton
Students of history
George Washington
Putin
FDR
Henry Kissinger
Realpolitik
What is a just war?
Cold war
Communism in the United States
Vaccines and the future of the human species
Book recommendations
Learning another language
Advice for young people
Grandmother
Meaning of life