Tag: podcast notes

Podcast notes – Charles Duhigg (Smarter, Faster, Better) on Jordan Harbinger

Guest Charles Duhigg – business journalist, author of Power of Habit, Smarter Faster Better

How to think is more important than What to think

Power of Contemplative routines – habits to give us space to think about right things
eg, on way to work, think about upcoming day

Jerry Robbins (sp?) wrote nightly letters to friends – a habit to think about what happened to him that day

Charles’s own: every evening he tells his wife everything that happened that day, describes those things in detail to her, pushes him to think more deeply
Jordan also does verbalization – explaining his day, his problems – with podcast guests, business partners, romantic partner

Laptop notes vs Longhand notes
Laptop 3x more info from lecture, copy verbatim
But longhand notes score much better on recall test later
“Disfluency” – act of thinking, encodes more deeply

Productive people have checkin systems – eg, Sunday afternoon, review what happened last week, plan for next week

Productive people perceive choices where others see just chores
eg, Marine Corps changed basic training to force recruits to make lots more choices – you figure out where the cleaning supplies are, you determine whether to throw something out or keep it
eg, when going through your emails, look for ways to exhibit agency, make a decision, turn chores into choices
eg, grading papers is a boring task, before doing it, one professor goes through  his mental mantra to internalize that grading papers > helps university > funds his research > helps to cure cancer

Brain is a tool we can choose to change and manipulate

Carol Dweck – internal locus of control, growth mindset – instead of complimenting a kid on how smart they are, compliment how hard they worked (effort is a choice, being smart isn’t)

Google’s quest to build a perfect team – the result? They found WHO was on the team didn’t matter as much as HOW the team interacted
Two behaviors always helped
1. equality in conversational turn taking – one person doesn’t consistently dominate, and others aren’t always silent
2. ostentatious listening behavior – show you that I’m listening, mirror back what others say
Creates atmosphere of psychological safety

Google – a tech company completely reliant on computers – has a rule where everyone must close computer before start a meeting – they know this is more effective

Visualize what’s coming in specificity / detail – what we expect to occur, what exactly we’ll do or say – which helps prepare us and mentally primes us for that behavior

Why are some people more creative on a fixed schedule?
It’s a product not of creative individual but a creative process – commit to the process, yielding ideas on a schedule
Disney movie Frozen – was on brink of disaster just months before release – “anyone can be creative if they have the right process” – take your own experiences and frame in new original ways
They held an offsite – took turns to share your favorite cliches / ideas – lots of women on the team – realized key themes were Princess + Sisterhood – sisterhood is complicated, relationships can be nuanced
the breakthru was realizing the movie’s heart was about the sisters’ relationship and helping each other

Most creative people collect ideas and fit them together – “creative brokerage”
Hamilton = Hip hop + Founding fathers

Wrote this book because he wanted to improve his own productivity
At that time, his book Power of Habit was doing better than he expected, he was also writing an award winning series of articles, but he felt miserable, too busy, stressed, felt overwhelmed by minutiae and process
How to find better balance while still accomplishing major goals?

Developed contemplative routines
-each evening, he tells his wife about his day, what he liked and disliked – looks forward to this chance to review with his wife
-on subway in morning, he visualizes how his day will unfold, which better prepares and primes him
–

More change than ever in world, people are anxious about it
Answer is to think more, focus on right goals, build mental models to focus better

Podcast notes – pmarca and cdixon on Bankless talking web3 and crypto

Guests: Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon

A16z – new $4.5B fund, largest crypto fund ever – venture investing, mostly early stage, 10+ year time horizon, open source, contribute to broader crypto community, doing a lot in policy, invest a lot in content and media, 72 people team and growing

cdixon = “Kendrick Lamar of mental models”

Internet’s original sin – it was illegal to have money on internet, do business online – US government was paying for it then, was a fed funded research project w/ taxpayer money
Ethos as non-commercial, open source, free software movement
Impossible to imagine Netscape, making money on internet
Internet built as zero-trust, lack of economic incentives created many problems such as spam, reliance on advertising

Netscape created javascript, cookies, SSL – core internet primitives
SSL was controversial, classified as munitions, government thought only terrorists would use encryption
Narrative battle then – information superhighway (eg, AOL, Disney) vs decentralized (eg, Netscape)

Encryption was used in warfare, but not in daily life
Invented SSL protocol to enable encryption
Govt still tries to ban encryption periodically, same fights

Many early actors do have bad intentions – but stopping them means you also stop the positive uses and limit the potential; it will create jobs; importance of privacy for sensitive data (health, finance)
If these technologies exist, you want them in your country so you can better regulate and observe them

Bull case for open systems:
Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun – “Joy’s law” – no matter how many smart people work for your company, there are more smart people who don’t
“Permissionless innovation” – internet was like this, PC, iPhone, crypto is like this
Generational component to this – kids see this as their opportunity; older people have status quo bias, their power is at risk
Doomed to fight these things over and over again

Cathedral vs Bazaar
Cathedral = Microsoft (hierarchical, centralized)
Bazaar = early PCs (open systems)
Encarta vs Wikipedia

Crypto picked up baton of open source software, open systems
Disadvantages is 2 step process – recruit developers first to build the software, which attracts the users

Early protocols were not human readable – binary code
Internet protocols (eg, SMTP, HTTP) – text based protocols, human read & write, easier to build on it, write your own protocols
Was meaningfully slower this way
Did this to drive demand for broadband and innovation on top

First laptops were 43 pounds and early reviews were scathing – the critics were right but didn’t see the future
When there’s a movement and attracting world’s smartest people – the critics’ list of problems becomes the precise opportunities

Internet – right answer is always to LIBERATE – ethos of freedom of speech, John Barlow’s declaration of independence of cyberspace
Web3 bringing trust to an untrusted network
Can imagine entire global economy running on blockchain

Net neutrality – Twitter originally described itself as free speech wing of free speech party
Lot of those advocates are now advocates for censorship – 180 turn
Ethos shift – all these companies are under intense pressure to censor and block

Crime wave in 1920s, 30s – car plus tommy guns – new thieves with new tech – created mass panic and lots of bank robberies, but then banks and police adapted. Society adapts
Full anarchy isn’t a good idea either – question of judgment by leaders and community

Mental model for software – as flexible and plastic as writing fiction – massive design space
Questions of whether capital can have too much influence over governance – it’s a problem that can be solved with more innovation and better design
Becomes question of political philosophy – Machiavelli said 3 forms of government, rule by one, rule by few, rule by many
Lots of direct democracy experiments fail – California propositions, Florentine direct democracy so catastrophic it led to anarchy
Historically most democracies have some level of representation / delegation
Full democracy may be unrealistic expectation
But different communities can make different tradeoffs

On internet as things are increasingly adopted, more embedding adds more friction points to governance process
Speed running history of finance, and now speed running history of governance

Blockchains are core tech – new kinds of computers, “computers that can make commitments”
Two other movements – money / defi, web3 (reinventing internet services owned by communities)

Web1 = democratized information – “read”
Web2 = democratized publishing – but controlled by small sets of companies – “read write”
Web3 = democratizing ownership – “read write own”

Networks’ hardest problem is cold start – tokens are powerful solution to this

Lot of people are uncomfortable with money – intellectuals in particular see ideas as superior to money
Another view – money as a tool, crystallized human effort – incentivize and measure value between people
We tried societies without money – Soviet Union is an example and it didn’t go well
Money is fundamental tool to build civilization

Key turning point for modern civilization is “clear title to land” – once you have that, you have motivation to improve it, build on it – then you can borrow against it, which is what makes R&D, business, modern economy possible – unlocking capital

Web 1.0 – closest to ownership is domain names – and was linchpin for how web stayed somewhat decentralized
Domain name isn’t a consumer product, which limited its potential
RSS didn’t succeed but there’s alternate future where RSS + crypto (value ownership) could have avoided lots of web2 problems of centralization and censorship

NFTs – way to connect culture and art to internet – history of art has always been a big deal, value is tied to provenance (is it real, did artist actually make it, who owned it before)
World has fraction of art we should have – funding art has always been a tough problem
Allowing artists to access global market of patrons
Bullish on global explosion of creativity

Jack Dorsey’s critique of web3 – “you don’t actually own web3, know what you’re getting into”
Jack believes in decentralization, differ on details (believes BlueSky can do it on Bitcoin instead of other blockchains)
Norm of a16z portfolio ownership is sub 5% – which is less than web2
Moxie critiques – new things re-centralizing like OpenSea – but OS doesn’t own those NFTs, they’re all on blockchains, more pressure on take rates and more competition

Processes of tech adoption
1. Ignore
2. Refute – list of criticisms
3. Name calling – people getting mad, realize it’s gonna be a thing, represents re-ordering of power and status; we’re entering this phase now

How many web3 critiques are just critiques of capitalism

Western culture has 800 year history of freedom of speech and expression – important to keep these

Early Bitcoin had a libertarian culture which skews right, which also gets confused in the debate with broader crypto and what crypto is like today

In long run, the truth wins
Internet is winning – fundamentally a good thing
People use it, buy into it, get value from it

Advice to young people
-look for place you can make contribution (don’t believe in follow your passion)
-focus on satisfaction over happiness (deep and enduring over temporary and fleeting)
-all of this stuff is about people, great teams – people who share a lot in common, sublimate themselves, work together
-hard work (work life balance isn’t as important when you’re young, there’s no substitute for hard work, great things require intense effort over long time)

New tech there’s a magical window
For mobile it was 2009-2011 (Snap, Instagram, Uber, Venmo, huge influx of builders, funding)
With web3 we’re in it now, magical few years, hence the massive fund to go all-in

—

notes are unedited, any mis-reps are mine

Podcast notes – Hasu and Su Zhu on the Sovereign Individual – Uncommon Core

Last few months crypto lull
Growth tech stocks doing poorly
General washout

Now back to idiosyncratic crypto world
Equities bounced off lows
Are we entering stagflation? Or road bump to secular deflation?

Tech is long duration, story about future
Bonds and fiat are locking in huge losses

Investors realize they have to own growth, can’t sit in fiat or bonds, commodities prices will correct

Regardless of recession / stagflation, world can’t turn away from tech
Longer term, people will allocate fixed % to crypto, and this % will grow

Rare that stocks and bonds go down at same time – happened in 2008
Only natural bond buyer is pensions – fixed annuity
Otherwise it’s just Central Bank – Europe, Japan, US – scary long term because it means government is lending to itself
Only works in secular deflation environment
Technology is wage dis-inflationary

Inflationary spike becomes dis-inflationary because it forces businesses to change, adapt more technology, reduce labor – eg, like ordering food from tablets instead of waiters
This will only accelerate as boomers retire – some think this will be wage inflationary (labor reduces) – but it will be opposite because tech Overton window will open, bring more tech to increase automation / reduce need for labor
We will see this in every industry

If people wanted, they can live very cheap lives – like in Japan
Demographics are also deflationary (slowing population growth, birth rates)

Inflation will top Q2 (2022)
Govs want deflation now, by crushing demand, scaring everyone
They don’t think we’ll still have inflation in 3 years – they know it’s transitory

Stagflation = economy slows, recession, but there’s still wage and price growth
1970s similar environment – oil + commodity spike
Stagflation is dangerous – lots of mortgages + job destruction + rates cycle

Today’s different – less labor entering workforce
Many commodities can be substituted – eg, if gas prices high, people don’t go to movie theaters, etc
Media likes to talk about inflation, good for engagement / clicks – but secular deflation is harder to understand (even though reality in Japan for 30 years)

We won’t enter recession unless Fed forces it
Also will be massive easing in Japan and China

China has massive deflation problem coming – inflated house prices, shrinking demographics, no immigration – must print a lot of money to prop it up
Only question – can they handle rising food prices?
Given reliance on fertilizer which Russia controls

Crypto is entering big leagues now
But still too small for macro to really matter

Ukraine-Russia – no one can argue how speculative crypto is now
Net good – Ukraine using it, people can save wealth and escape
Most people view world as what “should happen” and what “shouldn’t happen” – should Putin have invaded? Etc
Better to focus not on “should”, but on what WILL happen next – and clearly crypto is out of bag

Also crypto in Middle East – parallel system of finance
Benefits of credibly neutral systems
Geopolitical moves – instead of what should happen (“should crypto be adopted and used”), it’s a rational response to what is actually happening in world, and expected outcomes

We sanction people because we can’t arrest them – eg, Russian oligarchs
Suspension of rule of law in pursuit of higher purpose
What are the lines we can’t cross? Eg, we can’t kill dictators’ children
These depend on norms
Crypto can be used for sanctions too – there’s no tech that’s useful for people that ISN’T useful for criminals
Precarious subject since governments are actively writing crypto rules and regs right now
Each society will answer differently based on priorities
For example, India still buying Russian oil bc it’s a life or death necessity, and believe America is hypocritical because even America doesn’t follow its own sanctions (eg, still buying Russian oil too)

Short term, America / Ukraine will win
Long term, other countries will move away from dependence on existing financial systems, embrace alternate systems / credibly neutral

West will continue to adopt crypto as freedom of values, speech
Governments outside west will also adopt – credibly neutral money + platform

“Crypto will become all the things”
Mega-political force – peer to peer encryption – not ban-able similar to how printing press isn’t ban-able
500 year epochs enabled by tech transitions
Printing press attacked power of Church, Church tried to ban it but ultimately failed

Hasu – “Printing press as disintermediating technology”

Now we’re seeing this with p2p internet encryption
US military said it’s military grade tech, we should ban it

Sovereign Individual – as we enter information society, work and value will be increasingly on internet, and nation state monopoly on violence / control will weaken
Where you’re born will have less claim on your productivity
Very disruptive to large governments

Hasu – Nation state is one of great innovations in world history – but today, would be great to have more competition / experimentation

People will move to places advantageous to self (eg, low tax), or with others they met online, setup their own communities

Generational gap never been bigger – older generations are shocked you can form these strong bonds online
Some older guys think internet is actually net-bad
But for young, all their social moments happen online
This pluralism will blow peoples’ minds

Hasu – need one country with free land to allow establish charter cities

In Japan, average age of farmer is 67, you can get free land if you move there and develop the land

China supporting more relaxation, less testing, less stress among young
See the troubles if stress / pressure on youth continue

Dubai – their biz model is sell land to foreigners – almost like metaverse – zero tax on everything, but I want you to buy land here – like a token gated community
Compelling flywheel – freedoms of a liberal monarchy
Monarchy which has business model to attract talent and capital

Liberal democracy promise is everyone gets a voice – but then majority tyranny over minority (eg, poor over rich, dominant ethnicity over ethnic minorities)
Nordic models seem to work

Peru – Fushimori abolished Parliament, very popular move with people who thought Parliament was corrupt and ineffective – transitioning democracy back to authoritarian / monarchy

Ethno-states will be on rise – only way people willing to sacrifice for nation

Crypto abstracts away idea that you must save in your native fiat – but instead save in common with global like-minded individuals

If huge institutions were buying and staking crypto, would almost be anachronism – individuals have been buying these dips, pushing crypto forward
Interesting end game – what are people doing to transact with each other, secure their own wealth? How will governments react to people doing this?

“Back to first principles”

Podcast notes – Worldcoin CEO Alex Blania – Epicenter (Sebastien and Friederike)

Guest: Alex Blania
Host: Sebastien Couture and Friederike Ernst
https://epicenter.tv/episodes/435

Background
-Vertical farming
-Caltech physics

Sam (Altman) was already working with Max on it
Alex became friends with them, became a cofounder
Brought on friends from German uni, Caltech
Lots of physicists as a result

He’s CEO, there’s 100 people, runs daily business
Sam is cofounder & chairman, involved in every big decision
Max is great zero to one guy

Started Worldcoin 2 years ago
How to accelerate societal transition into crypto & blockchain, should be net positive for society

Initially planned to launch a token, accessible to everyone
How to solve sybil resistance so everyone gets a fair share?
Built hardware device, “the orb” to verify this
It’s a platform for other projects, as well as for their own token (Worldcoin)

Onboarded 450K users already, now ready to scale

Initially thought about sybil resistance for months
Lots of existing solutions with problems – KYC, network topology
Only truly scalable solution is biometrics (it’s unique to each person, only need to do it once)
You can use ZKP in crypto to make it privacy preserving while maintaining scale
Didn’t want to make a hardware device, it’s a brutal endeavor

The Orb
“Proof of personhood” – how to prove you’re unique and alive, not a bot or attacker
First liveness check, checks you’re a real human
Calculates unique ID from picture of eye – from eye muscle – only eye biometric data really works, fingerprint and face don’t
Iris hash stored in L2
User can then prove they’re among a set of people
But doesn’t reveal public or private key – only proves you belong to a group of people
DB of iris hashes is stored on an L2

Team is very extreme on privacy
Biometrics aren’t your identity, just your passport
Orb users receive 2 key pairs – one is eg ETH wallet private & public key, second is biometric data keys (semaphore key?)
Only thing you can prove from the hash is that you belong to a group of users (eg, you use a specific app) – which is more secure than eg, your Google username
Expect to eventually open source hardware designs

SC: Concern that hardware becomes hacked or corrupted, open sourcing hardware would be helpful. Is there a nightmare scenario?

Real concern is malicious people who build own orbs and pretend it’s the official Orb
Need to be very transparent and educational about this

SC: Got a DNA kit for Xmas, but decided to send it back – it’s the unknown unknowns he can’t square

Worldcoin is truly privacy preserving by its design and usage of ZKPs
Token is L2 on Ethereum, optimistic rollup
Will allow minting token on other blockchains like Solana or Near

Right now if you lose your semaphore key (the Orb specific key), then you lose your identity – still need to solve for this

They’re building own app to help with onboarding

New users sign up, receive Worldcoin tokens, with governance rights
Experimenting with incentive mechanisms
10B tokens, capped supply, 8B to users
Early users receive more tokens – a gradual unlock over time (eg, 2 years) – more like UBI
Other projects will also airdrop to Worldcoin network – should start happening soon

They’re very excited about UBI, especially when AGI gets closer

If reach supply cap (eg, if literally everyone in world adopts it), let’s see what governance / community decides to do

Started as small team in SF apartment

Plan to make 50K of these orbs every year
Already onboarded 450K with just 30 devices – think about the eventual scale
Each device can onboard 800-2K people/week – the numbers are much better than they initially thought
Operational load is insane – how to educate, properly onboard

30 devices – spread widely, very experimental, across globe (Europe, Africa, Indonesia, etc)
Want to find operators who would otherwise run companies
Strong Pareto distribution – the best ones onboard a lot more people
Eg, operator ran a crypto club in Kenya, onboards a lot of young people there

Worldcoin not tradable today – you receive IOUs today – wait until main net goes live
Young people find it cool and exciting
Becomes platform for other protocols and tokens
Orb operators receive stablecoin payments, not Worldcoin

How do you align operators?
Eg, operator could trick people, go to elderly home and scan everyone’s irises
Tough problem, still experimenting, seeing these problems already with just 30 orbs

Corporate structure
US entity, German entity, Swiss foundation
Small team in SF, most of team in Europe – in small town in middle of Germany, did this during covid so they could work together
Swiss foundation for token issuance
Figuring out how to properly setup DAO, with governance rights, etc

Raised $25M from top VCs @ $1B valuation – a16z, SBF, CoinFund, etc
Plan 10% to foundation, 10% to external investors (including above VCs)
// I’m not sure if he’s referring to token allocation or equity ownership in company

FE: How does this align with fair launch mission? If want to do global UBI coin but insiders own 20%

20% is less than other projects, those investors like cdixon are great partners to have, but early advisors / investors thought it was too low and wouldn’t work
Even now they think it’s a struggle since hardware + global scale requires a lot of capital

Incentives should all be aligned around the token, not the company itself

SC: seems like it should be a public good

“It will become a public good”

“I love our investors”

FE: What’s the meme for Worldcoin?

Bitcoin is 0.9 Gini coefficient, Worldcoin will be 0.4 (much better)
Everyone gets ownership in this thing, new playing field

FE: You’re creating value first and foremost for the investors…is it gonna rub people the wrong way? Will it get forked?

We can adapt and change – issue other tokens – etc – have talked to Balaji about this too

SC: Ukraine conflict will accelerate crypto regulation
In 20 years, how will WC make world better?

Solve Sybil resistance
Biggest onboarding to web3
See path to 1B users in <3 years – “was very surprising to us”
UBI deployment

Expect 10M+ users by end of 2022

Open SDK soon – under 3 months

Orbs will lead to different user distribution than other crypto networks – because orb operators spread geographically, and then onboard high penetration locally
This network will give other builders access to lots of new users

Will launch Discord and Telegram relatively soon

FE: wouldn’t personally use biometrics, prefers “web of trust” to scale in truly decentralized manner – “you don’t want to have a conductor for this”

Podcast notes – Gone Girl author and screenwriter Gillian Flynn on craft – Writers Ink

Guest: Gillian Flynn
Host: Writers Ink

She wrote Gone Girl (book and movie), Dark Places, and Sharp Objects (HBO series)

Gone Girl screenplay
-Wrote the book, and really wanted to write the screenplay
-her father was a film professor
-she naturally writes “film-ically” (writing in scenes, seeing and visualizing scenes)
-It was her 3rd book and was hard to adapt (unreliable narrators, internalized monologue)
-When she wrote screenplay (it was her 1st professional script), the script was getting too long (after 2 hours / ~120 pages) and she got nervous
-David Fincher came aboard and said “let the writer write”
-They closely developed it together – “We both are real work horses”
-“I’m certainly not afraid to rewrite and rewrite” – “what moments hit”
–no placeholder scenes, “no, let’s figure it out”

Childhood film geek
-Would request printed screenplays to read
-Loved Psycho as a kid
-Saw Alien when she was 6yo
-Would talk w/ her film professor dad after, about what worked for the films and why

Book writing process
-very scatter shot approach
-“only written 3 books”
-Sharp Objects was her first book, talk about female violence and how it’s handled across generations
-as she finished Sharp Objects, started Dark Places about a girl who became famous because her family was ax-murdered
-in this way, the books kinda tie together – some sort of kernel that goes from one book to the next
-don’t outline – tried it and failed miserably, eg, Sharp Objects’ killer wasn’t even in the book’s first draft (!) – someone read it and said “I thought X was killer” and Gillian realized she felt the same way, and so re-wrote the book
-when started Gone Girl, had just gotten married, was thinking a lot about gender roles
-“I just write and write and write”
-was a journalist for 10 years – at last minute your 10K word piece can be cut down to 200 words, so you stop fearing that process, don’t get too precious about work,
-she treats it as a 9-5 job – not writing the whole time, but doing related activities
-sometimes it’s flowing, and sometimes she’s like, “does my brain work at all anymore, how does one even write”
–night owl – prefers writing 10pm-3am and then sleep in, “synapses are clicking the best” – but can’t really do that now with kids,

Revisions process
-how does she know when it’s done? “when I’ve read through it, and it’s the book I would want to read”
-tweaks until last minute, with each publisher print, she’ll notice different fixes and edits
-very small group she allows to read it before she sends to editor: husband and 2 friends

Gone Girl book
-editor was skeptical about the unusual story, unlikable / unreliable characters, whodunnit with reveal halfway
-stunned at its success
-helps to broaden what’s acceptable eg, trend of female main characters who aren’t very likable (before, publishers would turn down such concepts)

She has her own book imprint now – Zando Publishing – seeks quirky books, doesn’t require a large existing marketing platform

Doesn’t use social media often – “I’m a novelist I can’t write in a pithy clever manner”