Joe Rogan Experience - #2234 Marc Andreessen

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Marc Andreessen is an entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He is co-creator of the world's first widely used internet browser, Mosaic, cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and cohost of "The Ben & Marc Show" podcast.

www.a16z.com
https://pmarca.substack.com

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Transcript

0:01
Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan
0:07
podcast by night all day right hello hello good to see you
0:14
thanks for having me back my pleasure good to see you where the world's still uh functional it's amazing yeah amazing
0:21
um we we wanted to talk you wanted to talk about the postelection sort of a wrapup yeah sort of where we stand are
0:27
you happy very happy it was a weird one morning in America that was uh one of the first times ever I felt hopeful
0:35
after an election like you should have seen the Green Room at the comedy club everybody was like yes yes so my theory
0:41
is the timeline like in a science fiction movie the timeline has split twice ah in the last in the last like
0:46
nine months what was the first split there was when Trump got shot oh and and
0:51
there was that moment where the world was going to head in two totally different directions right if he got hit yeah yeah and we saw the most
0:57
conspicuous display of physical bravery I've ever seen right moment exactly and it could have
1:04
gone you know horrifically badly for the entire world after that so that was timeline split number one so that other
1:09
timeline's out there somewhere yeah and I don't want to visit it boy imagine being stuck there what kind of horrible
1:14
Karma no I mean that's a totalitarian dystopian nightmare that's the bad place
1:20
yeah um and then uh timeline split again on Election Day I know you're you fancy a good conspiracy theory yes and uh that
1:27
that gentleman being able to pull P off what he did and you know the way it
1:33
happened the way it all went down is it's a Lee Harvey Oswald 2.0 yeah oh
1:39
yeah clearly yeah the shooter and yeah that we still don't know anything there's no call for disclosure there's
1:47
no call for a press conference there's no toxicology report the toxicology
1:52
report had to have been done yeah wouldn't you want to know like what kind of stuff this kid is on that made him
1:58
want to do that or if anything so my theory is it's almost as if the
2:03
people want us to think it's a conspiracy like it it's almost like the whole thing is almost
2:08
orchestrated like it's just it's so strange you know this is like the rapid cremation like the whole thing was just completely bizarre and then you're
2:14
exactly right like no hearings no no nothing now having said that I expect that this will change right so do you
2:19
think they're going to do a dive into what happen I mean I would I I don't know if they will but I you know I certainly would if I was in a position
2:24
to do that I wonder what they can actually find I mean I don't know if they wanted it to be a conspiracy that
2:31
people talked about or if that's simply the best way to pull it off yeah or it's
2:36
just yeah or it's just you know as we saw I think in the hearing afterwards maybe just a systemic collapse of confidence there's also a confidence in
2:43
the fact that the the news timeline today is so rapid the when things are
2:49
relevant and people are paying attention to them is you have a couple days yeah even with an assassination attempt on a
2:56
former president where where where people were murdered and and there's it's in and out yeah that's right I
3:02
think it's exactly I think the news cycle now is like a two to three day social media Firestorm and we just cycle from one to the next yeah and we have
3:09
the memory of goldfish and right they you know things right things that would have been eror defining just come and go with astonishing speed uh and shock by
3:16
the way I I should say I don't think there was a I I doubt there was a conspiracy I think anything's possible I think it's just we have a confidence
3:22
collapse and I think we saw that on display when the when the director at the time you know testified well there's
3:27
all the elements that it could have been a conspiracy kind of the thing which is like it also could have been systemic
3:32
confidence collapse and then it's like okay would it be better off for the instit you know if it looks like a conspiracy right like you know which
3:39
World okay two timelines which world you would you rather live in the one with the conspiracies or the one with just like incompetence everywhere well I
3:45
think you have both simultaneously I don't think it's binary right I I think there's incompetence everywhere and
3:51
conspiracies are legitimate they're real yeah and that one seems like conspiracy the fact that his his house was
3:57
professionally scrubbed there's no social media record of this kid online there's no nothing he's the only kid of
4:04
his generation who's that fired up about politics to have no online Footprints like it just doesn't make any sense and he's a regit republican like the whole
4:11
thing is like so weird and he was like a bad shooter and then he became a great shooter and well he definitely trained
4:16
like you could train someone to become a good shooter this is all you have to do don't move and do that get all your
4:22
mechanics in place understand technique and positioning breathing it's not like the most complicated thing from a prone
4:29
position right but the fact that he chose to use iron sights I thought was weird too there's a lot of weirdness to
4:36
it you know from 140 yards with a scope that is an easy shot yeah well then that
4:42
he could just like wander up that's the different timeline the different timeline is he has a scope and that's it okay all right right that would have and
4:48
Trump's dead yep and then boy boy do we live in a crazy world then yeah
4:54
completely bizarre I mean what does the streets look like right now yeah what kind of like protests and riots and yeah
5:01
you think January 6 was nuts if they had killed Trump that would be January 6 on steroids everywhere yeah that's right
5:07
and we would we would experience it I mean you know I don't when I was a kid my my high school high school history teacher got us a bootle copy of the the
5:14
zuder film really which you know like what a gangster High School history he was actually pretty focused on the he
5:19
really loved the Kennedy assassination so we spent a lot of time on that and and you know you know you kind of watch it frame by frame and you can kind of
5:25
see what's happening with there's lots of questions but like when things like that happen you know today it's going to be in high definition 4K Ultra surrounds
5:31
on forever yeah right playing out in real time forever and so like I yeah I very much don't want to live in the
5:37
world where those things happen well we are very fortunate yeah I mean I like I said after the election I was like Wow
5:44
voting works yeah yes yes about that about that voting works that's nice like
5:49
they don't have the system completely rigged and then but they kind of tried
5:55
to rig it at least with the media the where the real rigging in the 2020 elections I mean you can cast all your
6:02
conspiracies upon it in terms of like mailin ballots and all this Jazz but the
6:08
real rigging was the collusion between social media companies and the
6:13
government to suppress information that would have altered the effect of the election that's legitimate oh yeah for
6:19
sure yeah that was like direct interference and it was you AED and eded by a lot of former you know intelligence officials and by and by the current
6:24
Administration you know tons of pressure on censorship coming from this you know the current Administration and all their kind of arms of the censorship apparatus
6:31
um you have your hands in the Tech Community you have your fingers in all that jazz like what was the General
6:37
attitude about all that stuff when it was revealed how did how did people you
6:43
know how did your peers respond to that I think anybody in social media the internet companies knew it so I it was
6:49
pretty widely understood I mean look there's nothing that happened at Twitter in the Twitter files it wasn't happening all the all the other companies right so
6:54
it's it's a consistent pattern if you got the YouTube files they would look exactly the same and of course we should get the files right and now we we
7:01
probably will now with you know this new Administration is probably going to like carve all this stuff open but yeah know like it was a pattern and then look you
7:06
know the companies bear a lot of responsibility and the people in the companies you know made a lot of I think bad judgment calls but the government
7:12
the like the Biden White House was directly exerting censorship pressure on American companies to sensor American citizens which which I think by the way
7:19
is just flatly illegal like I think it's actually subject to criminal charges like I think there are people with criminal liability who were involved in
7:25
this so there was that there were also members of Congress doing the same thing which is also illegal and and then there was a lot of funding of outside third
7:31
party groups that were that were bringing a lot of pressure down on censorship yeah and just an example of that is there's a unit at Stanford you
7:38
know right next door um you know to us that um you know was the internet censorship unit that was funded by the US government wow and exerted tremendous
7:45
pressure on the companies to censor and it was and it was very effective at doing so does it smell like sulfur when you walk those Halls it is very dark and
7:52
Grim um this whole thing is is is very bad um and so Stanford oh yeah St yeah
7:57
Stanford Stanford by the way another unit like that at Harvard you know a bunch of universities got pulled into this a lot of NGS and nonprofits got
8:03
pulled into this and so the Twitter files showed us kind of the basic road map um and then there's this thing
8:09
called the weaponization committee that uh Congressman Jordan is running that has also revealed a lot of this but I I
8:14
would imagine the new Trump Administration is going to come in and Carval that wide open and I know that there are people in you know being appointed to senior positions who are
8:21
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blinds.com for details one of the things that I found really kind of shocking was
9:44
when they revealed how much money the Democrats had spent on the election and how much money was spent on activist
9:50
groups yeah right it's like more than a $100 million right yeah there just there's extensive Government funding of
9:56
polit of of of politically oriented noos yeah NGO is one of those great terms like non-governmental organization all
10:03
right like what what what the hell is that right what is that tell me I don't know well it's it's sort of a charity
10:09
and but what it sort of but most of the time it's a it's a political entity it's an entity with a political agenda but
10:16
then it's funded by the government in a very large percentage of cases including the the NGS and the censorship complex
10:21
like the government grants National Science Foundation grants like direct State Department grants yeah right
10:27
direct money and then it okay now you got an NGO funded by the government well that's not an NGO like right that's a go
10:34
right right and then you've got a conspiracy you like when censorship then you have a conspiracy because you've got government officials using government
10:39
money to fund what what look like private organizations that aren't and then what happens is the government
10:46
outsources to these NOS the things that it's not legally allowed to do like what
10:52
like like censorship oh okay like violation of First Amendment rights right the government so the first so
10:57
what they always say is the first amendment only to the government the First Amendment says the government cannot cannot censor American citizens
11:03
and so what they do is if you want to censor American citizens in the government if you're smart you don't do that what you do is you fund an outside
11:08
organization and then you have them do it boy right and that's what's been happening right and and that's like
11:14
hiring a Hitman like it's not okay to murder someone but you can hire someone to murder someone and then you're clean yeah and if you want to solve a murder
11:20
it's not enough to find out who the Hitman was you have to find out who paid the Hitman right you want to work your up the chain and so a lot a lot of this
11:26
traces into the White House the best offense the companies have is that a lot of this happened under coercion right
11:31
because when when when the government when the government puts pressure on you like it might be a phone call it might be a letter it might be the threat of
11:38
Investigation it might be a subpoena it could take many forms but when the government does that it carries you know
11:43
that's a very powerful message it's like a message from a mob boss right it's like don't you want to do me a favor
11:49
it's like you know yes Mr Campo I do right like I like my corner store I'd like it to not catch on fire tonight
11:55
right and so there's the there's this overwhelming Hammer blower pressure that comes in um and by the way even when the
12:01
government doesn't talk to you directly if they're funding the organization that is talking to you then it's very clear what's happening and so you you come
12:07
under incredible pressure and so the the the whole kind of chain this whole chain of governments activist universities and companies was corrupted and then on top
12:13
of that people in the companies in a lot of cases made a lot of decisions that I think they're probably increasingly starting to regret what was confusing to
12:19
me was that the government spent so much money on these activist groups during the election and I didn't understand
12:27
like what purpose that would serve like what what function would it serve
12:33
to spend all this money on these activist groups that already support you supposedly yeah like are you bribing
12:40
them to support you are they what are they are they are you paying them to go on talk shows and consistently uh repeat
12:49
the government's message the current administration's message like what what would be the function of that so I think
12:54
in some in some cases just it's just pay to play right so for as example we know that Comm campaign paid certain onair
13:00
personalities you know follow and then there were there were you know which it's your point people were very supportive of of kamla who then gave her
13:05
you know interviews that that wenten really well and so I I think in some cases you just have straight pay to play that's just how that system works it's
13:11
just expected and then I think you have other organizations like like these Nos and others activist groups where they're they're actually you know they actually
13:16
do field activities right and so there's you know maybe there's a get out the vote component or there's you know social media influence Downstream
13:22
component or some other you know kind of field activity that's happening in support of the election I just didn't think that they pay like when it's still
13:30
unclear whether or not celebrities got paid to endorse her right right have you
13:36
they've mixed it up cuz there's like Oprah Oprah says her production company was paid to put on the production but
13:41
she was not paid for the interview yeah whatever but it was you know two whatever $2 million million it was initially listed as one and it turned
13:47
out it was 2.5 if I have a production company and my production company gets paid $2.5
13:53
million to endorse Trump right and then I go I didn't get any of that money right people like shut the [ __ ] up of
13:59
course you got it's your company what are you talking about and also how much does it cost to do an event yes how does
14:06
it cost $2.5 million to put on an event like are you feeding people gold sandwiches like what are you doing like
14:12
how is that possible yeah exactly so yeah and then because the fact that it's deliberately out fiscated of course is a
14:17
is a clue as to I just thought the really bizarre one was the allegations
14:22
and I I'd say unsubstantiated allegations it's been alleged that Beyonce got 10 million
14:30
and lizo got $3 million Eminem got $1.8 million really yeah I think if you just
14:36
like published all these numbers these celebrities would all get so mad at each other that you then you would learn everything got short right Liz Liz was
14:43
Furious right now right yeah lizo is probably listening to this right now being like what well I wonder if lizo was like I didn't get [ __ ] I would say
14:50
it but why haven't they said it like Beyonce has been mum about the whole thing I I think I would probably say
14:57
like I didn't get any money to do that yeah but that was a weird one too because a lot of people thought Beyonce was going to do a concert right and she
15:03
just went out there and talked and everybody was like what the [ __ ] CU they all came to see a free Beyonce concert
15:09
and then she just said I want to support KLA Harris and everybody's like good good now if you like it then you should
15:15
have put a ring on it right come on we love your songs yes
15:21
that's what we're here for yes I just didn't think that it was even possible
15:26
that a I I didn't think candidate would ever pay for an endorsement yeah I mean the
15:32
fact that it was even alleged yeah yeah well you know and then there's of course there's there's the the even stinkier version arguably which is all the all
15:38
the social media influencer campaigns now there's you know tremendous amount of Payola that's for sure because I know people personally who are approached
15:45
multiple times yeah and offered a substantial amount of money to post things in support of Harris yeah and
15:52
like I'm I'm Pro capitalism and I'm happy for them that they get paid but like maybe we should know yeah that seems like something you should
15:57
absolutely have to disclose it should be like like say if I was going to do an ad for you know whatever a certain Coffee
16:05
Company Black Rifle coffee and I did it on my Instagram I'd have to say Ad I have to say this is an ad it's a paid ad
16:11
yeah and that's part of the thing yeah you know yeah unless it's your company y
16:16
like you're supposed to say they're paying me to do this y yeah well you know look the good news with these is we learn each cycle we learn a lot about
16:23
how politics works we learn about a lot about how fake it is we learn a lot about the things we put up with for a very long time I mean everybody's always
16:29
like freaked out by like whatever the new guy does but like this real scandal in most cases I think is just the way the system already works it's a sneaky
16:36
system yeah well another fascinating aspect of the system that we learned out
16:41
this time around is the uncontrolled aspect of it like what uh Trump called
16:47
earned media right was much more powerful than anything else yeah the uncontrolled version of it like one of
16:54
the things that unfortunately for them mass media or corporate media has done
16:59
is they've diminished their credibility so much so much so that like Joy Reed
17:04
was on TV today talking about saying that Trump is going to shoot protesters
17:11
and all just wild unsubstantiated crazy [ __ ] yeah and the more they do stuff
17:17
like that the more that they say things like that the more it diminishes their impact and the more it drives people to
17:24
Independent Media sources yeah I'm sure you've seen the ratings collapse that they that they've they've been you know they're down to like they're down like
17:30
MSNBC is down to like 50,000 people in the 18 to 20 18 to 49 demo that is so wild which is Tiny right it's so crazy
17:38
it's really tiny so I think that's happening um the Gallup organization has done polls on trust in institutions
17:43
including you know media for the last 60 years it's been a steady slide down um
17:48
and in the last you know four years it's fallen off a cliff I think it's really oh there's another study that came out um the kids are now watching a lot less
17:55
TV kids are just giving up on TV and they're just you know they're on YouTube and Tik Tok and Instagram and other
18:00
things um and so like I I I think it's tipping uh question I've been asking myself is when when will the as you know
18:07
famously 1960 was the first television election right the you know sort of Legend has it because it was the one where the televised debate really
18:13
mattered and if you saw the televised debate you saw confident Kennedy and nervous Nixon and if you heard it you experienced something different and
18:20
handsomeness and vitality and health right and all all these things um sort of positive positive spirit positive
18:26
energy um I'm actually not this this might be have been the first internet election or maybe we actually haven't
18:31
had it yet like I feel like we're really close to the first internet election but maybe it's not all the way there I think this is it I think this there's an
18:38
argument that this is it right and that you know all the you know all the stuff especially in the last six months all the you know podcasts obvious in your
18:44
your show played a big role but like I think there's a real if you're going to run in 28 like I think there's like a
18:50
fully internet native way to run these campaigns that might literally involveed like zero television advertising and maybe you don't even need to raise that
18:56
money and maybe at to your point if you have the right message you just go straight direct yeah might be a completely different way to do this I
19:02
think that's the only way now and I think if you do pay people it's not going to have the same impact you know I
19:08
think these call her daddy shows and all these different shows that she went on I mean I'm sure they had an an impact but
19:15
I think that in the future I I'm sure they're they're scrambling to try to
19:20
create their own version of this show this is one thing that keeps coming up like we need our own Joe Rogan right but
19:27
they had me well number one they had you number one they had you they had you and they drove you away is that number one
19:32
number but they also have you know ABC NBC CBS CNN right but that doesn't work anymore those that's like you know like
19:39
you're using smoke signals and everybody else has a cell phone it doesn't work yeah that's right that's right it's just
19:45
it's it's a bizarre time it's really interesting though like as you said like we're in a great timeline and I think um
19:53
it's a fascinating timeline too because there's so much uncertainty and there's so much right we're at the verge of AI
20:00
you know uh open AI you know Alman has said now that he thinks 2025 will be the year that AI becomes sentient whatever
20:07
that means you know artificial general intelligence will be will emerge and who knows how that affects I I've said
20:15
publicly and I'm kind of half joking that we need AI government yep you know
20:20
I it sounds crazy to say but instead of having this like Alpha chimpanzee that runs the tribe of humans how about we
20:27
have some like really logical fact-based you know program yeah that you know
20:33
makes it like really reasonable and Equitable in a way that we can all agree to Let's govern things in that manner
20:39
right so you can actually simulate this today because you you can go on these systems sh GPT or clot or these others
20:44
um and you you can ask you know how should we handle issue X how should this be right we've done that right how should the department of energy do
20:50
whatever nuclear policy or whatever and and what I find when I do that is I discover two things number one of course these things are these things have the
20:56
same problem social medias had which is they tremendously politically biased and you that's on purpose and they need to
21:01
fix that and that's going to be a big Topic in the next several years but the other thing you learn is if you can get through the political basically bias and
21:07
censorship if you can actually get to a discussion of the actual issue it's you get very sophisticated answers yes right
21:12
very logical very straightforward and it will explain every aspect of the issue to you and it'll take you through all the pros and cons yeah and you know I
21:19
mean it might be the way to go yeah which is so horrifying for people to think because everyone's worried about
21:25
the Terminators taking over the world and like if that's the first step as we let them govern us well look there's
21:30
nothing stopping a a politician from using this there's nothing stopping a policymaker from using you know as a tool you start out at very least you
21:36
start out using it as a tool there's nothing to prevent you like for example I think military commanders in the field are going to have basically AI
21:42
Battlefield assistants that are going to advise the most strategy tactics yes right how to win conflicts and then it'll start to work its way up and then
21:47
they'll be doing you know War planning um and then if you're a general if you're you know Sergeant or a colonel or a general it's going to just mean you
21:53
perform better um so maybe there's like you know the human the sort of man machine kind of iotic relationship you
21:59
could imagine that happening more in the in the policy process and the in the political process and there's also AI controlled Jets which are far superior
22:07
they they did uh Mike Baker was telling us about that they did these simulated dog fights and the AI controlled Jets W
22:13
100% of the time over humans yeah and there's a bunch of reasons for that and part of it is just simply the speed of
22:18
of processing and and so forth but another big thing is if you don't have a human in the plane you don't have the
22:24
they say the spam in the can you don't have the you know you don't have the human body yeah in the plane you don't have have to keep a Human Being Alive
22:29
which means you can be a lot faster and you can move a lot more quickly gfor much much higher g-forces yeah and then
22:35
there's no option for someone to go crazy yeah that's yes that's also right
22:41
yes exactly there's no there's no human element yeah you know which is a real element yeah no like I think we're going
22:47
to it's going to be common to have like mach five drone you know jet drones within within a few years and you know
22:52
they'll be a fraction of the size of the current you know man planes which means you can have like a lot more of them and
22:57
so you kind of want to imagine you know a thousand of these things like coming over the horizon right at you um and it
23:02
really changes it's actually I think going to be very interesting it really changes the fundamental equation of war in the
23:08
following sense fundamentally in the past the people who won Wars are the the one the people who had the most men and the most material right you just needed
23:15
the most soldiers and you needed the most equipment um and in this drone world that we're talking about it's going to be the people with the most
23:20
money and the best technology yeah right so for example small states you know small Advanced States like Singapore
23:25
will be able to punch way above their weight and then kind of large uh sort of economically or technologically
23:31
backwards states that normally would have won will now lose and so it's it's going to be a recalibration and then it
23:36
has the the good news is you're not putting soldiers at risk right so you'll have a lot less lot less death the bad
23:42
news arguably is it'll be easier to get into conflicts because you're not putting soldiers at risk so there's going to have to be a recalibration of
23:47
like when you actually like lean into an attack I'm sure you're aware of all this U UAP disclosure Jazz that you see on
23:55
television um the more I look into into it the more I think at least a
24:01
percentage of it a healthy percentage of it is [ __ ] and there's probably some
24:06
government projects where they've developed some very sophisticated propulsion systems that they've applied
24:13
to drones and that that's what these people are seeing and this is one of the reasons why they continually have
24:19
sightings over secured military spaces like out in the Eastern Seaboard like
24:24
there's areas over Virginia where they continually see them in San they see them off the coast of San Diego where
24:31
there's a place where you would test stuff like that well so of of course we know that that was the case for a very
24:37
long time for sure from the 50s through the 80s because the development of stealth right was was highly classified
24:42
and the SR71 was brand new at one point and so you had these like you know alien you know do you pay attention to any of
24:47
that stuff course of course 100% yeah and then and then and then by the way we're not the only ones and so I I I you
24:52
know my speculation would be that a lot some of the military based stuff is is you know the Chinese doing something similar and you know we got a glimpse
24:59
into that with the balloon you well that was Goofy though they got shut down but still the fact that the Chinese are
25:04
flying surveillance balloons over American territory and they were able to slip through our early warning systems and just like you know loiter above
25:10
military bases and like you know take lots of you know imagery and do whatever scans they do yeah and like literally
25:16
nothing was happening and we didn't even know they were there most of the time and so like you know I just say that's like a tip of the ice it feels like a
25:21
tip of the iceberg kind of thing where if if they were doing that there probably other things going on well I had read that someone had commented that
25:27
similar things had happened during the Trump Administration but they didn't tell Trump because they didn't want him to shoot them down interest interesting
25:35
I for the record I'm Pro shooting them down yeah I think you should probably shoot them down and taking pictures of
25:40
[ __ ] they're not there's not even people up there [ __ ] shoot them down what's the problem yes exactly yes um do you
25:47
think there are any of those that are not of this world there's I I don't think there's any way to know from the
25:52
outside have you ever like pondered it late at night sitting on your porch staring up at the sky of course of
25:58
course it you know ra you know racist number one is is there or not and then if if if it is you know did it recently
26:04
get here or have they been here for a long time you know did they arve 5,000 years ago tuer thinks they're demons and
26:09
angels you know I mean demons and angels are demons and angels real it's like you
26:14
know literally you know probably not but like certainly they're metaphorically real and are there kind of Shades of Gray between literal and metaphorical
26:20
you well the actions are certainly demonic and Angelic right actions of human beings Mass things that happen in
26:27
the world are uplifting or horrific yeah evil evil people doing evil things are possessed I mean they're they're
26:33
possessed by something like something is going on right and like you know what's what's the dividing line between you
26:38
know an actual Supernatural Force and and some sort of psychological sociological thing that's so overwhelming that it just takes control
26:44
of people and drives them crazy like you might might as well call that a demon yeah it's fascinating because like when
26:49
you think about from theological ter like when you think of it from a religious perspective you know people
26:56
would apply what would a demon do what would Angels do what is a what is a uh
27:02
what is the will of God and what is like the evils of the the worst aspects of
27:07
humanity you would you know you could apply them to so many things in the world but we're very reluctant to say
27:15
that something is demonic yeah like even though it's clearly demonic like clearly
27:21
in action like this is what a demon would do a demon would possess people to Gun Down children exactly know and you
27:29
know use drones to shoot down a wedding party a demon would do that right exactly so a friend of mine is a
27:35
religious scholar he's a teaches at cathol Catholic University and he's a religious history scholar and he says
27:40
that um medieval people would have had a medieval people were psychologically better prepared for the era ahead of us
27:46
with AI and robots and drones everywhere than we are um because medieval people took it for granted that they lived in a
27:52
world with higher Powers higher Spirits Angels demons all kinds of Supernatural entities and they just it was just
27:58
assumed to be true and in the world we're heading into you that we're arguably already in you know there are
28:04
going to be these you know new forces these new entities running around doing things um and you know we're going to just we're going to struggle and we're
28:10
going to you know we're going to catastrophize we're going to conclude you know like AI is the end of the world yeah the medievals would have said oh
28:15
it's just another Spirit like you know it's just another kind of entity yeah it's better it's better than humans at some things but so are angels um and so
28:22
we're going to have to like change our mentality we're almost going to have to become a little bit more medieval we're going to have to open up our minds to the kinds of entities that we're dealing
28:28
with with wow yeah which which also could help us actually deal with people like maybe maybe maybe there's an
28:33
explanatory way to think about human behavior here that seems less rational but might actually be more rational well
28:39
you express yourself uh very brilliantly in describing the current state of woke
28:46
ideology as a religion yeah that's right and that the the way you described it was brilliant because you were you were saying it has all the elements
28:53
excommunication adherence to a very strict Doctrine all these different aspects of it saying things that you
29:00
everyone knows to be illogical and nonsensical but you must repeat it you know these things are indicative of
29:06
people that are in Cults or people that are a part of like a very like a serious fundamental religion yeah well I mean of
29:13
course the big difference between woke and those traditional religions is woke has no concept of redemption right right no concept of forgiveness right which is
29:20
a very evil religion you do not want that yeah also well it's ill conceived
29:27
right cuz it's like immature it's an immature religion yes it's absolutist it's inherently totalitarian it has to
29:33
be because it can permanently destroy people yeah um W also understand something that the Greeks understood which is that being ostracized and being
29:40
put to death are the same thing um and so when the Greeks sentenced somebody like Socrates to death they gave them
29:45
the option of just leaving but the problem was really yes Socrates could have just walked out and left no kidding
29:52
the reason that was considered equivalent sentences is because at that time if you were not a citizen of a particular City you would get killed in
29:57
the next city you'd be identified as the enemy presumptively and killed so there was no way to survive without being part of
30:02
your community wow and and that's what the Ws figured out is you can do the same thing if you're able to like you know nail somebody um on you know on on
30:09
charges of having done something you know unacceptably horrible then you make them toxic and all of a sudden they you know they can't have sure you know
30:15
people you know they lose friends they lose family they lose they can't get work you know and before you know it
30:20
like they're you know living you know severely diminish damaged lives some people then go on to kill themselves I don't know if you have been paying
30:26
attention at all to Blue Sky I have but I have multiple friends that have accounts on Blue Sky that uh
30:34
are very sophisticated trolls and are pushing like the woke agenda to a
30:42
satirical Point like to like parody but like on the edge where you're not quite
30:47
sure well they'll say enough real things that make sense and talk about their own anxieties and personal issues with stuff
30:54
and then say [ __ ] ridiculous [ __ ] and it's fat fascinating I bet it works it
30:59
does work that's what's so terrifying it's like all the outcasts of Twitter all the people that were like I can't
31:05
take this a few of them come back which is wonderful I love when they come back I'm gone I'm GNA go to Blue Sky [ __ ] you
31:11
people like a bunch of them went to threads for a while like Stephen King he went to threads came right back they all come right back they can't the
31:18
marketplace of ideas like okay you could go to like a Fruit Stand in the middle
31:23
of the [ __ ] desert and that's a Marketplace or you can go to the farmers's market where everybody's at like where you going to go that's right
31:29
you're going to go to the farmers market tons of people it's a lot of fun a lot of activity that fruit stand's [ __ ]
31:35
Baron and deserted there's no one there there's very few choices yeah yeah it's not fun and it's win-win to have well it's wi it's win-win to have them back
31:42
on Twitter because it's good for them because they want to prti and so they need an they need an audience so they they win and then we win because it's
31:48
really really fun to dunk on them but it's also weird for them to not want any
31:54
push back at all like don't it isn't the whole things supposed to be about an exchange of ideas like if you have a
32:01
controversial idea and someone disagrees with it don't you want to hear that position I I know I do I want to hear it
32:07
even if I vehemently disagree with it I want to hear it I want to know where how do you how's your brain work how are you
32:13
coming to these conclusions what makes you think this way who are you what do you like I want to go on Instagram I
32:18
want to look at your pictures I want to see what you're up to what are you doing you know yeah what you do with your free time you know what are you complaining
32:24
about yeah yeah I want it's like it's a fasc ating education on human psychology
32:31
and to to watch people Express themselves publicly and then also be attacked publicly by strangers which
32:37
never happens in the real world like at scale the way it happens on social media
32:42
and I think it's a an amazing time for people to examine ideas if you can
32:48
handle it yeah my favorite term is Marketplace of idea yeah you can have a Marketplace of ideas
32:55
it's just going to be one idea right so blue sky is a Marketplace of ideas sure yeah X is the marketplace of ideas that
33:00
that final s makes a lot of difference yeah right but the thing about X is it really is diverse there's I follow tons
33:08
of like kooky leftist Progressive nutbags that like have bizarre takes on
33:15
everything and they were 100% convinced that KLA Harris is going to sweep all the swing States including Iowa they
33:21
were all in and I was like this is wild yeah like is that going to happen are they right like this is crazy but they
33:28
were 100% convinced and it's it's fascinating to see all these different
33:33
kinds of people to see the Charlie Kirks and you know the the full-on left wik cooks and see them all together right
33:41
you need that yeah look so one one of the ways I think to think about this is all new information is heretical by
33:47
definition right so so anytime anybody has a new idea that it's a it's a threat to the existing power structure so all
33:53
new ideas start as heresies and so if you don't have an environment that can tolerate heresies you're not going to
33:58
have new ideas and you're going to end up with complete stagnation if you have stagnation you're going to go straight into into decline yeah right and and and
34:05
I think this is the the aberant nature this is the timeline split I think that I think the last decade has just been like a really weird aberant time where
34:11
things have not been working like they should and and you know in 2015 Twitter called itself the Free Speech wing of
34:17
the Free Speech party right and Elon Elon has not like J Elon has restored it
34:22
right right he brought it back he brought it back to something that everybody thought was completely normal 10 years ago yeah and I think I hope
34:28
this last 10 years increasingly is just going to feel like a bad dream like I can't believe we tolerated the level of
34:33
repression right and anger and you know emotional incontinence and you know cancellation campaign emotional
34:39
incontinence is a great term yes there has been a lot that's emal just diarrhea
34:46
in your emotions just spraying rage in all directions and so I I you know I I'm very at the moment at least very
34:52
optimistic that there's a cultural change happening here that's even more profound than than the uh than the political change I have a lot of respect
34:57
and also sympathy for Jack dorsy I I like him a lot as a human being I think he's a brilliant guy and I think he had
35:04
very good intentions but he was a part of a very large corporation and he had an idea for a wild west Twitter he
35:11
wanted to have two versions of Twitter he wanted to have the Twitter that was pre- Elon where there's moderation and
35:18
you you know you can't dead name someone and all that jazz and then he wanted to have an additional Twitter that was
35:23
essentially what x is now and he just didn't have the ability to push that
35:29
through with the the board and the executives and all the people that you know were fully on board with woke
35:35
ideology yeah so the experience that people like Jack have had running these companies in the last decade has been
35:41
and I don't mean to like let them off the hook for their decisions but just the the lived experience as they say of of what these people's lives have been
35:46
like is just daily pounding just every single day it's like meteor strikes coming down from the sky exploding
35:51
around you getting attacked from every conceivable Direction being called just incredibly horrible things being attacked from many different direction
35:57
well he's already left Blue Sky well yeah so so irony of Jack is that Jack then created BL Blue
36:04
Sky which is kind of exactly the opposite of anyway where he thought it you know oh by the way you know the new
36:09
the new name for it of course is blue cry yes know that exactly um yeah but
36:14
he's also got you know look to his credit he's still trying and so he's got Noster you know which is another another it's called nost no oh okay it's his
36:21
kind of new this is it's actually his third he's going to keep swinging he's full credit full credit he's going to he's going to keep swinging and by the
36:27
way full credit he supported Elon you know they they mixed up a little bit but B and lar she's been very supportive and was very supportive at a key time and
36:33
well I I also found it fascinating that when there was any sort of a right-wing branch of that stuff like gab or any of
36:40
these they would immediately be infiltrated by Bots as well like my friends that troll on Blue Sky but these
36:46
are Nazis like these are Nazi Bots these are people that would just spew horrible hate and then gab would be labeled oh
36:54
this is where the Nazis go this is a a a right-wing psychopath yeah social media
37:00
app yeah and I think frankly I think you get the same thing if you start out if I think if you start out overtly political on either side I think that's what you
37:05
end up with yes and so I I just like that that that doesn't seem to be an effective route to Market um it seems
37:11
like you have you have to start from the beginning as a general purpose service but you need to have some sense of the astral guard rails you're going to have
37:17
around and by the way every social media service internet service that ever works there's always some content FES and
37:23
restrictions because you can't have child porn you can't have in to violence you can't have terrorist recruitment right and even the First Amendment
37:28
there's like a dozen cars that the Supreme Court has ruled on over time there are things like that that you can't just like say right I can't say
37:35
let's go join Isis and you know let's go attack Washington like it's just it's literally not not allowed so there there's always some controls but you
37:40
need to have like a spine of Steel if you're going to hold back the the the the censorship pressure and and you know
37:46
there's basically substack um you know company I'm involved you know doing very
37:51
well you know smaller smaller than Twitter but doing extremely well fantastic and they've done a great job I think of holding the line on this and
37:58
then obvious and it's an amazing resource there's so many brilliant people on substack I love substack I get
38:04
a large percentage of my news from substack that's right it's really good and it's so valuable and it's such a
38:10
great place for people who are independent journalists and Physicians and scientists to publish their ideas
38:16
and actually get paid for it by the people who subscribe for to it I think it's fantastic and there's lots of
38:22
people on the far left and the far right right so you actually have the full spray of like when a farle person gets upset at you know somebody working in
38:29
the New York Times mad because they're not far left enough they quit and they start a and substack welcomes them in yes which is which which is why they
38:35
don't devolve into a gabber or something like that because it it really is a plat it really is a platform it really does Welcome All convers well it's also very
38:42
difficult to subvert in that same way because substack is essays right you're
38:48
you're reading people's essays and papers on things and like these are long form things that are very well in a lot
38:54
of cases very well researched and it's not the kind of thing you could just [ __ ] post on you know there are comments
39:01
but it's just like they don't hold the weight that the actual article holds right so my partners my partners at work
39:06
um uh they've observed that I tend to be able to inflame situations from time to time I can tend to be provocative and
39:11
get people really upset and so the the the rule they've asked me to comply with is I'm allowed to write essays for
39:16
example in substack and I'm allowed to go on long form podcasts but I'm not allowed to post really right exactly
39:23
well you have rules it's the rule it's the rule now by the way I struggle I struggle against the rules cuz I can't I
39:28
can't help myself from why do they want you to have rules because otherwise i i i inflame people too much I drive I
39:33
drive people too crazy you do it on purpose sometimes I mean sometimes you have to sometimes
39:40
it's unintentional did you ever hear about when when the entire continent knew when the entire country of India was mad at me no oh I I spent one night
39:46
with the entire country of India basically wanted to kill me it was like it was it was incredible I oh my goodness what happened I mean I was in a
39:53
Twitter debate with somebody back when I was just posting freely on Twitter and it was a debate about economics and the topic of colonialism came up and I I
40:00
made a comment in a in in a long Thread about you know colonialism and it and it turns out the the Indians are still
40:05
extremely sensitive about the topic of colonialism um and I did not understand
40:11
um the mindset and the historical orientation and I tripped a line and I
40:16
stayed up all night and I went hyperv viral in every time zone in India every hour there would be like an entirely new
40:22
activation W and I and I was like I was like front page headline news top of the hour TV news like all the way across
40:28
India ow yes it was like a I do not recommend this as an experience I I by the way I learned how many incredible
40:34
indian-american friends I have um because they all rallied to my you know my side you know said he's he's not you
40:39
know Mark not literally calling for the recolonization of India like that it's not actually there a problem with the
40:44
language barrier as well right language and then just I what my B is just historical context Americans have a
40:50
different we Americans experience history differently than almost everybody else history for us is just like stuff that happened in the past
40:56
that doesn't matter anymore more but a lot of other people around the world experience history is something that really still matter like really matters
41:02
to their lives today yes they they just they they they live in history more than we they have a deeper understanding of
41:07
kind of how they got to where they were and the things that happened to their parents and grandparents and ancestors and so there's just a it's just it's
41:12
just you know I don't if it's you know better or worse it's just a different way of experiencing reality yeah anyway I recommend learning that lesson not by
41:19
enraging a billion people I experienced a small version of that recently because I said we shouldn't be using long range
41:26
missiles on Russia M okay and the ukrainians like and Ukrainian Bots a bunch of people came after me cuz I was
41:32
saying like the Biden Administration I was like [ __ ] these people and then I think some people misconstrued that as
41:38
[ __ ] the Ukrainian people which I absolutely was not saying I see I was saying [ __ ] whoever in the last days of
41:45
the presidencies decide to escalate this war because it appears that that's what they've done it appears that they're
41:51
leaving Trump a giant mess right at the very least right so good news is I am
41:56
allowed to go on podcast in the the it's your bring it up though because it's your substack thing it's it's because it's basically Mark
42:03
you you need you need to explain yourself in long form yes you can't just say a thing exactly to your your example
42:08
you can't just say a thing and have people extrapolate from it they'll extrapolate it's not their fault because you haven't it's your fault because you
42:14
haven't explained it right right and so if you write something long form or if you go talk for three hours at least you'll the context will be there and
42:20
then if they want to get mad at you that's fine but you can point everybody to the transcript and it's clear that that's not what you meant do you also
42:26
think while you're writing how things could be misconstrued so let me like do a really good job of being very clear
42:33
about this 100% yeah you kind of have to yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah like I had Jimmy corsetti on the other day and
42:39
he is an expert in uh ancient history and ancient civilizations and we had
42:44
these fascinating subjects and one of them that came up was the Nazis and their fascination with the occult and so
42:50
you had to like Clearly say listen [ __ ] Hitler okay can I be really clear [ __ ] Hitler [ __ ] the Nazis okay I not in any
42:58
way okay now that we're clear let's talk about where the swastika came from [ __ ]
43:04
Hitler did I say [ __ ] Hitler let me say it again [ __ ] Hitler but the swastika is this ancient symbol and he's like
43:09
talking about like why did the Nazis have this fascination with the occult with ancient civilizations and so we got
43:15
into it but it was like one of those things where it's like all right we're hitting the third rail everybody get your rubber boots on you know let's
43:20
let's uh save everybody here yeah I've got a friend in the entertainment business who uh is quite leftwing but
43:26
really likees World War II documentaries o and so he'll be like yeah I saw this great documentary last night about
43:31
Hitler and I'm like I bet you [Laughter]
43:36
did you can't even have a copy of mine camp in your house oh a student at this
43:41
is actually one of the Stanford crazy stories a student at Stanford was reported to the disciplinary board the de the the Civil whatever discip
43:48
disciplinary board for reading a copy mind confence in the quad oh my God that's so crazy which is a book that's
43:53
been you know assigned for you could buy right now on Amazon 80 years colle kids these people were and like how to
44:00
not do that again yeah that kid was like nearly brought up on charges nearly expelled so like yeah that's that's yes
44:07
this this is the role that I that that I hope that we're leaving well it's just an awful way to look at things it's it's
44:14
so awful to think that if you read about someone horrible you support them yeah that's right it's just so crazy like
44:20
what how are we going to study history yeah right and how are we going to and how are we going to prevent bad things from happening again if we can't if we
44:26
can't repr why they happened the first time especially something like the Nazis like how how are we going to learn like
44:33
what happened clearly 1920s Germany was very different than
44:38
1945 Germany what the [ __ ] happened in 25 years so what we're essentially talking about is the year 1999 America
44:47
versus 2024 America right imagine a shift of that magnitude so crazy that
44:53
there's a Holocaust in 2024 and in 1999 everybody's just hanging out yep that's right well you should probably study
45:00
that and you should probably not reprimand someone for reading a book on this yeah that's right yeah exactly look the German people went along with it
45:05
right and so like how you know how did that happen how did that happen right and how many you know did they was there active agreement was there passive
45:11
agreement was there you know what what what are the steps where things go horribly wrong and how can we recognize
45:17
those because those steps have taken place multiple times in history recorded history we know about them so like if we
45:23
see them happening today maybe we should stop it and nip it at the bud what better way than to read about when it
45:29
already happened yeah one of my observations about people talking about current events is we know conclusively
45:34
that prayer eras all had hor horrible moral problems disasters you know catastrophes Wars and all kinds they
45:40
made all kinds of horrible mistakes but we are completely certain that in our time we figured it all out right right we're 100% convinced that we have it all
45:46
dialed in and the one thing I know for sure is people 50 years from now are going to look back on us and they're going to say oh my God those people were
45:51
awful 100% right it just it's but like in what way right in what way are we
45:56
horrible I mean certainly a lot of the way we treat each other is horrible especially with the amount of information that we have available but
46:03
it is fascinating also that if you you know I I visited Athen last years last
46:09
year and I got to tour the ruins and I'm was like oh I wonder when it all went South like when did they when did they
46:15
know this had fallen apart like when when was it in the peak of everything
46:20
they probably thought hey we have the most amazing sophisticated civilization that's available on Earth and we will
46:27
maintain this yeah this is we will be the center of intellectual discourse and the the home of democracy This Is Us
46:34
yeah yeah and then no now there's like shitty apartment buildings next to the paron you're like what happened
46:40
something horribly happened and we don't want to think that could ever happen to us today right we want to think we're
46:46
American [ __ ] we're going to keep this [ __ ] rolling forever Leonard skinnard free bird let's go Second
46:52
Amendment come on and we're going to we think that it's just this is this is the future we America is the shining star of
47:00
the world and we're going to carry this on but probably not like historically I
47:05
mean the what is the longest running dominant civilization ever the Romans
47:11
existed for what a couple thousand years like how long did the Greeks run how
47:16
long did the egypti the Egyptians might be the longest running especially if you like take into account the possibility
47:22
of alternative history timelines where they you know like Egyptian hieroglyphs they have kings that go back 30,000
47:29
years right here it is Egypt and Mesopotamia there it is one estimate measuring the time of the first pharaohs
47:35
the use of hieroglyph writing to the native religion was replaced by Christianity ancient Egyptian civilization endured for about 3,500
47:43
years but I bet it was more than that well the I mean the the argument is just things just really didn't really change
47:49
right like change as we historical change of the kind that we understand where things actually change the way
47:54
people live changes really kicked off with the Greeks and so that was sort of the default status qu civilization for a
48:00
long time the the Greeks kicked off change as we understand it and then and then and then and then the Romans do you know about the fish ponds the fish ponds
48:07
The Fish Cicero fish ponds no so the Roman Empire you know ran for you know in it sort of Roman Republican Empire
48:13
and it sort of help which you consider as Dynamic phase it's sort of vital phase ran for a few you know few hundred years but maybe 400 years total
48:19
something like that and um uh towards the end as it was sort of falling stagnating and and increasingly starting
48:25
to fall apart uh friend of mine says when the rose got dangerous and nobody could quite explain why um right which sounds familiar by
48:33
the way um CIS ciso was you know one of the great one of the great Roman Statesmen and he he wrote these letters
48:38
that we have and in the letters he sends these letters to all of his aristocratic friends and it the the theme in the letters is basically all of the actual
48:45
competent capable citizens of Rome are at out in the countryside at their Villas perfecting their fish
48:51
ponds right they've Pullen into themselves they built their themselves their own protected environments right
48:57
um right where they control everything and they're completely focused on ornamentation they're completely focused
49:02
on their clothes and and on their you know Lifestyles right Kardashians they were Kardashians I'm sure I don't know if the
49:09
Kardashians have fish bonds but if they did they would be spectacular fish be amazing F no doubt they would be the most amazing fish ponds we have ever
49:15
seen um and so he kept railing he's like stop with the fish ponds like stop working on the F like get get back out
49:22
here rejoin the Senate like get back involved in the system let's keep this thing from caving in yes and I think
49:27
look you know the significance I think of you know Trump actually talked about this on the campaign you know his version of this talking on the Campa
49:33
campaign Trails he's like look I could be off on a resort I own all these golf gol golf I many things I could be do in my life of course and he's 78 years old
49:40
he probably would like to do that exactly right and he's you know surrounded his family loves him and like you know grandkids and like the whole
49:45
thing and he's like look I'm not doing it cuz like I need I need I need to do this and it's interesting because you
49:50
know he doesn't use you know he's not referencing cico when he says that but it's it's that Spirit right that ciso talked about where you know when times
49:57
get tough