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All right, this is Dalton plus Michael, and today we're gonna talk about conspiracy theories.
And I have to be honest, and this might be counterintuitive, or it might not be.
Dalton is the right person to talk to about conspiracy theories.
This is gonna be an interesting conversation.
All right, so here's the frame that we wanna take.
I will be making the point.
that at the extreme conspiracy theories were responsible for a lot of the most important innovations over the last 50 to 75 years.
And I'm going to use the term conspiracy theories.
Dalton, you have a slightly different angle.
paranoid thinking is different than conspiracy theories because there's a kernel of truth there versus a true conspiracy theory.
There's really not much there versus a kernel of realness behind it.
So this is a, we have a difference of opinion.
We have a difference of opinion.
Maybe we're arguing semantics.
I think the best conspiracy theories can have, there needs to be a little something to grab a hold onto.
So we were kind of going through some of the biggest innovations, right?
of the internet and space.
And we would both agree that fear the Russians, big drivers.
Yeah, you can research those.
But basically, the original version of the internet, I believe, was called ARPANET, was funded by DARPA, which is a defense thing.
And the idea was, if we got bombed or cities were blown up by nuclear bombs, the internet would still work because it could route around any city that was blown up.
And that was the original funding for ARPANET.
Everyone understands why we have rockets.
They are great deliverers of nuclear weapons.
So what's interesting about this one in my mind is that I'm sure there were people who either believed or who
strongly advocated the idea that the Russians were going to nuke us any day.
Like any day you wake up is a day you could get nuked.
And I feel as though that level of conspiracy theory paranoia was used to kind of motivate these industries into happening.
Regardless of how, like, if we were to do the math in hindsight, what the real odds were of getting nuked any individual day in the 50s and 60s.
There's probably 1,000 YouTube videos about that topic.
Well, they're going to probably be in the related after this.
Don't go down the rabbit hole.
This is a big one where, you know, you can't trust the government and you can't trust money.
Yeah, I mean, when the original Bitcoin white paper came out and the stuff that Satoshi was talking about, it was very directly a reaction to the bank ballots in 2008, the financial crisis.
And I think there's, you know, it was already an existing thought, but the idea that the Federal Reserve would just dilute the USD until it's worthless and we'd have hyperinflation and all this other bad stuff would happen and cryptocurrency is
the solution to the government's, you know, destroying humanity or whatever.
And in my mind, you know, the conspiracy theory there was just like, you could wake up tomorrow and your money in the bank is worthless.
It's like the banks, you know, the financial system is done.
And you're going to look like a fucking idiot for holding USD.
And I think that once again, I think we can look back and basically say the odds of that happening on any day were actually pretty low.
this pretty incredible thing was invented.
And it's still probably going to be even more useful in the future.
Another fun one, clean energy.
Clean energy electric vehicles, there is a group of people out there that believe the earth will die in 100 years if we don't solve this energy problem.
And they are extreme advocates
And what's interesting about this is that they're extremely good at advocating inside of government as well.
Like government funds a lot of this stuff.
The industry is also very good at advocating for this.
And so another example of like, hey, we're afraid of the earth dying.
Let's not look too closely at the inputs of this industry.
but industry was created, creates a lot of value.
What's the, what's the underpinning here?
You know, we were around in Silicon Valley and during a lot of the, this boom.
And so we've had many in-person conversations on this with people.
And the argument is AGI, which maybe we can think of this as some sort of AI God, super intelligence, way smarter than humans will be created.
And it is likely going to be created and controlled exclusively by Google.
We didn't want that to happen.
We could have a dystopian future where AI God is controlled by a private company.
And instead, there needs to be like a non-profit or some sort of like good for the world thing that that would create AI God.
Well, you just got to love that analogy.
It's like, I'm going to use God for good.
The analogy breaks a little.
Do you want Google to own God?
Or do you want someone else?
I feel like God owns God.
Isn't that how that works usually?
That's an interesting debate, Michael.
You know, some of you watching this might say, yeah, no, that's exactly right, dolls.
And some of you will be like, oh, he's exaggerating.
This is the understanding.
People really believe that we're going to get an AI God.
And this is what's funny about all these things Michael's been discussing is I actually take them more seriously than him, I think.
Well, it's helpful for me from the first three already.
The first one already happened.
Do you fear the nuke every day from Russia?
I guess you don't not fear the nuke every day, huh?
I don't know what I think about that.
You are more paranoid than I am.
I just think there's a tail risk.
There's not a zero percent chance there isn't like an accident or like a... I think the world's a better place with a balance of paranoia.
And so I think I take all of those seriously to some extent.
Yeah, including the AI God one, which is like, hey, if you go read all of the stuff about this, maybe.
Well, and I think the funny thing is, is that the extreme version of the AI God is similar to the other three, which is like, not only is this going to happen, it's like semi imminent.
And we're going to wake up one day, and if you don't prepare, like that's what all these things kind of have in common.
Is there's like a prepper aspect, which is like, hey, here's the secret.
You need to know about it.
And you need to prepare so that when the moment happens, moment zero happens, your position to like, you know, be uploaded in the good spaceship.
You're on the list of nice, not audience.
Now, why are we bringing this up?
I think that one thing is that I don't think that I was surprised that conspiracy theories have become more prominent in politics.
And that's certainly been the case over the last 10 years.
But that's also just penetrating the tech world.
And I think that balance is important.
And, you know, we tried to think about what's a good analogy here that we could use.
And I like the one we came up with, which is basically like, how can you tell whether you are making bomb shelters or whether you are making rockets?
Yeah, because like some people made a lot of money selling bomb shelters in the 50s.
That was a business and a lot of people have them.
And some people helped invent the precursors to the landing reusable rockets that's going to make a space industry that can benefit humanity.
And, you know, both people had productive energy and those energies were directed in to completely different areas.
Like, what advice would you give a founder to make sure that they're on the right side of that balance?
what grift is and what it isn't.
In all these examples, grifters attach themselves to all of these things and use it away to get rich from schmucks.
Basically convince people, oh, I have this new secret thing and grifted it because it's a popular thing and you can prey on paranoid people.
People that are inclined to believe in conspiracy theories are usually pretty easy to convince of other stuff.
You know what I was thinking about this?
One sign of a grifter is how fast you can monetize.
Grifters can always monetize way faster.
You start making rockets, you don't get SpaceX in a year.
Another thing that came up in the conversation before was this idea of sometimes one conspiracy theory or paranoia can be the gateway drug into all
You know, it's like, now I'm, I don't, there is no truth.
I can't believe anything.
Very hard to be productive when you're in there.
Yeah, this is an unfortunate side effect of the internet is sometimes people end up going down rabbit holes where you start off watching the history channel about, you know, the JFK conspiracy and then like, you're completely fried after spending time on 4chan.
You can't talk to people anymore.
Some folks just the way their brains work or their natural disposition of this type of thinking.
Again, we saw this, we certainly saw this with crypto and we're seeing this with AI where people literally can't function as members of society anymore.
Because they're so convinced that like this thing is about to happen and they go into full prepper mode.
And sort of want to become separatists from society because they're so convinced that this thing is going to happen.
Well, I'd argue sometimes they go so far as just like even being destructive or non-helpful because it doesn't matter, right?
It's like, if you think nothing matters, you think there's no consequences.
Why not shit on everything?
So say conspiracy theories, paranoia, useful maybe in moderation.
Yeah, well, the way it can be useful is to bootstrap a movement.
And what all these things have in common that we're listing, and there's other examples too, is it did energize a certain subset of people on the internet or elsewhere to be really into something.
And I would say a common trait amongst the people who benefited from these movements were they weren't the most radical.
that died in the wool all the way on the extreme believer, they were paranoid.
I think if you look at something like Bitcoin, probably the people that benefited the most were people that were nerds that were paying attention to Usenet posts.
And when it launched, they just like mined Bitcoin or they bought some Bitcoin.
And they otherwise kept a relatively normal life and just kind of set on it for a long time.
Because by the way, that was probably the move.
And hedging that the US dollar is going to go to zero?
Why not take that versus like sell the car, sell the wife, sell the kids.
Basically, they're like, oh, this is an interesting thing.
I'm going to buy some of this and just not think about it.
And I'm going to ignore it.
The people that were really into this were probably the ones you sold.
And so being curious about things and...
Taking upside bets I think is a good idea being skeptical but reorienting your entire life and having it Occupy all thoughts and making it hard to have relationships or hold down a job because you believe in these things
might not be the best idea.
And I think the last that I want to leave people with is that conspiracy theories drive clicks.
And so what's sad and unfortunate is sometimes when you leave things in media without any controls or any kind of principles, they can go down the kind of Alex Jones road and they can get to a dark place because
So be careful in your media consumption a while because like sometimes people are saying this stuff because they believe it.
Sometimes they're saying because they know it looks good on a YouTube thumbnail.
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