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NET Society is unraveling the latest in digital art, crypto, AI, and tech. Join us for fresh insights and bold perspectives as we tap into wild, thought-provoking conversations. By: Derek Edwards (glitch marfa / collab+currency), Chris Furlong (starholder, LAO + Flamingo DAO), and Aaaron Wright & Priyanka Desai (Tribute Labs)
00;00;16;00 - 00;00;22;16
Aaron
Chris. I think, we have a new king of the Chad swords. You nailed that call from a couple months ago.
00;00;22;18 - 00;00;39;13
Chris
It's, of all people. It's, the genetic code in the valley is decided. We don't need to think. We don't need to introspect. We should just do. Now, the funny thing is. Right. Like, did you do you see that Schwarzenegger doc that came out in Netflix, like, a year or two ago?
00;00;39;15 - 00;00;48;26
Aaron
Yeah, I actually that was pretty, pretty good. I didn't, you know, hadn't heard from in like a decade. But, you know, it's kind of like can do attitude. I think he's always been a little infectious.
00;00;48;29 - 00;01;10;04
Chris
Yeah. I mean Arnold's very much like don't think just do. Now, I think that went over fine because he's a bodybuilder action star slash real estate developer with Mark here. I guess maybe he he carries a little more weight than that. And people that people didn't want. Mr.. And I introspection coming out. I don't know.
00;01;10;11 - 00;01;19;05
Aaron
Do you think he was just rage baiting people? Do you think that's a actually he has zero introspection, or do you think he just was saying something provocative to elicit a response?
00;01;19;08 - 00;01;24;00
Chris
I think he likes to rile the feeds up every, like, quarter or so.
00;01;24;03 - 00;01;31;21
Aaron
But it is kind of wild, right? I feel like as the, info war for our feeds and our attention continues, maybe it is the right strategy.
00;01;31;24 - 00;01;40;14
Chris
He can't be everywhere. Cover everything. You can't monitor all the situations all at once. And even if you can watch it, what is it going to do for you?
00;01;40;16 - 00;01;53;02
Aaron
I've been thinking that a lot recently. Like with all the stuff in the Middle East. Like, I feel like this is the first time I can't get a clear pulse on, like what's going on. And I'm just like, why am I even wasting my time? I'm just not going to introspect anymore. I'm done with it.
00;01;53;05 - 00;02;14;26
Pri
Do you think the whole like Chad absurdism slash retard maxing is sort of just like an evolution of the high agency you can just do things concept. It's just like dumbed down. So it is more of a medic. But like, do remember that like string of that idea of like, oh my God, high agency people. Like they just do whatever they want and can like, yeah, that was like a meme on the internet.
00;02;14;26 - 00;02;33;28
Pri
And then I don't know if you remember, like Jared Kushner, that was like that New York mag article that was like Jared Kushner, solve the Middle East crisis. After reading 26 books on the Middle East. And everyone's like, you can just do things like, yeah, you can read, read 26 books and like, you know, solve a 100 year, whatever, six year crisis.
00;02;34;00 - 00;02;34;18
Pri
And so the.
00;02;34;18 - 00;02;38;04
Chris
Way that crisis is looking really solved right now. Totally solved.
00;02;38;10 - 00;02;47;28
Pri
Yeah. But like, I feel like there was like a whole thing on line. Like I wonder if this is just the most, like, memetic ridiculous version of that. Being a high agency person.
00;02;48;04 - 00;02;50;25
Aaron
It's a little Nike too, right? Like, just do it.
00;02;50;27 - 00;02;52;26
Pri
Let's go ahead and just do things.
00;02;52;29 - 00;02;56;12
Aaron
What's happening? Yeah, I mean it it feels. Oh, whoa, whoa.
00;02;56;15 - 00;03;01;26
Chris
Welcome back. Terry. I'm sorry. Is this a full a full net society team today?
00;03;01;29 - 00;03;05;16
Derek
Let's go now. Oh, no. What's up guys?
00;03;05;18 - 00;03;06;17
Pri
Hey.
00;03;06;20 - 00;03;36;22
Derek
I just I want to live in a hot take real quick because, like, I'm, I'm getting caught up on this Marc and Jason thing about. And like, I think the direct quote was I'm looking at the direct quote now. It's like he practices almost zero introspection. This has to be totally performative, right? Like he I think like the best counterargument to this is like his whole life is about, you know, like writing mental models out and you know, being very thoughtful about this, the words that he says.
00;03;36;22 - 00;03;48;27
Derek
And yeah, there's something about this statement like zero introspection that feels like it has to, not that it has to be, to Aaron's point, just like rage bait, right? Like this can't be his actual view.
00;03;48;29 - 00;03;51;27
Aaron
It's a little hard to read, though, I think. I mean, I think I think.
00;03;51;27 - 00;03;53;25
Derek
That's the act you actually think he.
00;03;53;25 - 00;04;09;06
Aaron
Is. He he has moments, right? That's why he said almost none. But like it I mean, clearly, I mean, you know, a lot like he's a little bit like Derek Jeter to me. Like, you know, he sometimes his points strike me the wrong way. But I mean, his track record just continues to, like, mount up.
00;04;09;14 - 00;04;31;05
Derek
Listen, Mark is a smart guy. Like, even startups need to have radical introspection, right? Like you constantly have to be doing postmortems on bad products. You have to be able to recognize patterns. You have to be able to kind of like self audit your behavior to make better decisions. When I hear someone like Mark injuries and say, I practice zero introspection, it's hard for me to take that seriously.
00;04;31;05 - 00;04;43;10
Derek
Like, it just seems like a dummy comment that he threw away on a podcast and now has to stand up for. But I don't know, maybe I'm I don't know, maybe I'm not understanding his intent, but doesn't that seem weird to you guys?
00;04;43;12 - 00;04;47;17
Pri
Must be a joy to marry someone who practices zero introspection.
00;04;47;20 - 00;05;11;06
Derek
Exactly. It's like it's it's either ridiculous or it's just like, not true. I just, I don't know, I'm looking at this now and I'm hard for me to take this guy seriously. I just I don't believe that this is accurate or it has to be. He's trying to incite violence on the timeline around like these comments, which kudos to him for figuring out how to do that.
00;05;11;13 - 00;05;23;01
Chris
Yeah, one thing, like some people, when they become really successful, they open a vineyard. Some try to go to space, some by movie studios. I feel like his side quest is just riling up the timeline every year.
00;05;23;02 - 00;05;42;16
Derek
It has to be it. It has to be like this. This does this zero introspection thing hold zero water to me? Coming from him, it just comes off as very like, yeah, inauthentic. I don't know, like weird. It's just like weird that he would say those words. But anyway, that's my first take. My first taken a couple months, guys.
00;05;42;16 - 00;05;43;15
Derek
Thanks for listening to me.
00;05;43;20 - 00;06;08;18
Aaron
I think it's setting the internet ablaze a bit because one, it just kind of like feeds into the arguments that, you know, lots of folks have that like, tech is like a little like sociopathic, right? So kind of like affirms those priors. But I do wonder if there is like a little bit of a grain of truth there, like maybe, on like a scale, like there is a little too much, like, kind of navel gazing and like, not enough, like, default to action.
00;06;08;23 - 00;06;15;06
Aaron
Yeah, like you should, but you should know if your products are bad and understand why. But do you have to, like, sit in that for like a while?
00;06;15;09 - 00;06;37;15
Derek
I think you're starting more interest. I think that's a more interesting thing to say and talk about where it's like spinning out or getting completely mired in your own mistakes is certainly not the path forward if you want to be high functioning. And like I totally acknowledge that statement, that's not what he said. He said he practices zero introspection.
00;06;37;17 - 00;06;59;06
Derek
And I'm just like, there's even yeah, there are a number is greater than zero that even you saying that statement completely disqualify. So I, I yeah I don't know I think there's something weird going on too with like this humblebrag cowboy culture happening right now and so and Silicon Valley that feels like it's on. It's at a ten I don't know.
00;06;59;06 - 00;07;02;09
Derek
I don't know if this ties into the AI psychosis thing, but like.
00;07;02;14 - 00;07;04;16
Aaron
Do you think they all have AI psychosis?
00;07;04;18 - 00;07;29;13
Derek
Well, it feels like it feels like him saying that was more important to his ego than actually believing that that's true. And I'm trying to understand why that might be, because, like, I think I can objectively say that Marc Andreessen practices a number greater than zero introspection. I think we would all agree that, like, it's just not it's just not a true statement.
00;07;29;16 - 00;07;50;25
Derek
Now I'm wondering like, is this a is this a brand thing? Is he trying to like, wave a flag around, like where how he thinks about the world and get other people's to, to get other people to kind of think that that's interesting or cool? Or is this a larger cultural shift that's happening around how he thinks founders should be viewed?
00;07;50;28 - 00;07;55;16
Derek
I yeah, anyway, I don't know. I'm rambling and probably not even coherent at this point, but.
00;07;55;16 - 00;07;59;26
Aaron
Well, let's just note that we've provided more introspection on this topic than he's claiming.
00;07;59;26 - 00;08;00;17
Pri
He's definitely.
00;08;00;17 - 00;08;01;06
Derek
Exactly.
00;08;01;08 - 00;08;15;26
Aaron
Yeah, whatever. Do you know, I think it's maybe just like a default action, right. Like which is which makes sense if you're like a builder, right? Like you got to just, you know, you hear it in Brian Armstrong statements too, like you got to get stuff in the market to get feedback. You know, I think there is a lot to that.
00;08;15;29 - 00;08;43;18
Aaron
Maybe that just is, you know, just kind of his one of his animating you know, rules of life that he follows. You know, you could imagine that kind of playing out. Right. It's like not dithering. It's just kind of like getting it done. Right. He wrote that, pretty widely disseminated article on like, building like an and, you know, the building culture, like pushing everybody to kind of build more which, which I actually appreciated at the time.
00;08;43;18 - 00;08;51;27
Aaron
So who knows. But I do think some folks in the Valley feel like they're getting they're the beginnings of LM psychosis.
00;08;51;29 - 00;09;10;19
Derek
Yeah. The tonally, I think these things are actually quite like similar to one another, I guess is maybe the larger structure that's forming in my brain around this comment of zero introspection, like, I'm curious. You guys have been I haven't had the pleasure of being able to unpack some of, like, these cultural topics with you guys over the last couple of months.
00;09;10;19 - 00;09;15;23
Derek
I'm curious, where are you guys all at on like the LM psychosis stuff?
00;09;15;25 - 00;09;31;24
Aaron
I feel like you're starting to see some of it. I don't know if it's like the super glazing that the LMS do, but I don't know. Yeah. Like I was having conversation with somebody and I guess the AI system came up with some random theory and he's like, maybe it's right. And I'm like, I heard him describe it.
00;09;31;24 - 00;09;33;07
Aaron
I'm like, I don't think that's right at all, man.
00;09;33;10 - 00;09;33;26
Pri
Really?
00;09;33;28 - 00;09;41;15
Aaron
Yeah. I'm just like like, I don't know, it's like a lack of critical thinking. Maybe that's the endpoint. We're all just like, mush in the brain.
00;09;41;17 - 00;10;04;27
Pri
Yeah, I don't know if I am in an AI Ticos, but I do feel as though my brain has gotten a little bit cloudier as a result of, like, the heavy, heavy l. Use. Like, I feel like most of my day is talking into the machine and, like, going back and forth with the machine and I'm on different threads, I have different chats open, I'm switching back between them.
00;10;05;00 - 00;10;19;20
Pri
And it's not like I'm like becoming, you know, that that when you remember that venture investor who was like literally posting videos of himself like die off or whatever, and I don't even know if he's active anymore because I, like, literally think he had to go to therapy. But that was like he was early on the AI psychosis thing.
00;10;19;20 - 00;10;40;07
Pri
I don't know if you guys ever saw those videos, but it was nuts. But I do feel there was like a brain fry argument that came out of Harvard. We talked about it before, but, I do feel a little bit of that and I want and I do feel like I'm, I'm not reading as much as I used to like the reading I'm doing is in the machine itself, as opposed to like, I feel like I used to like, read more long form.
00;10;40;07 - 00;10;52;02
Pri
I used to spend more time on like Substack and other news sources, and I just find myself like not as much in the last like three months. And I'm trying to actually go back to my older ways a little bit.
00;10;52;04 - 00;10;56;09
Aaron
I don't think you have an LM psychosis. I think I just multitask, I do.
00;10;56;12 - 00;10;59;06
Pri
I do, I'm actually pretty good at multitasking.
00;10;59;11 - 00;11;03;25
Aaron
You have an LM psychosis about alarm and psychosis.
00;11;03;28 - 00;11;10;18
Chris
There are limits to how much you can multitask. I found I had limits, you know, that's like just one of those things where.
00;11;10;21 - 00;11;19;22
Aaron
I feel them to. Chris. Yeah. Even, like wielding agents. Like, I feel like I can't do more than, like, 4 to 5 threads at a time. 3 to 4, depending on the task.
00;11;19;24 - 00;11;24;21
Chris
I'm. I'm literally just down to running one window right now. I'm just like.
00;11;24;23 - 00;11;30;18
Aaron
Dedicate a man task just to, country. I, developer.
00;11;30;20 - 00;11;31;11
Chris
No.
00;11;31;16 - 00;11;51;04
Derek
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that, like, I think and what you're flagging right now is like, we're our own abilities are constrained by this tech. Like, there's only so much productivity that we can even Harnett like, when we're whatever using these agent harnesses, there's only the bottleneck. Isn't our ability to kind of, like, add new agents, to do new tasks?
00;11;51;04 - 00;12;14;04
Derek
The bottleneck is like Aaron's ability to manage them or understand them or, like, get creative, you know, in a way that it it scales like, as well as, like these systems do. And yeah, I guess I, I don't know where my mind goes is like, what is what is the out what happens like what what's the, what resolves that bottleneck?
00;12;14;06 - 00;12;35;08
Aaron
I think that's why the orchestration layer, which we're beginning to see some cool projects in, whether that's like Open Claw or whether that's some new stuff that's coming out of, Hermes. And then now, as research team, whether that's paperclip, whether that's some advancements from cloud code this week. I just think that we're cloud, not cloud code. I just think that orchestrated that orchestration layer is what reduces the mental burden.
00;12;35;10 - 00;12;46;10
Aaron
Like that's why people will choose it over, you know, other things. One, it helps them become more productive. And two, it just should hopefully eliminate some of that cloudiness or like that exhaust that happens.
00;12;46;10 - 00;12;47;01
Chris
I don't know, man.
00;12;47;01 - 00;12;48;24
Aaron
Hard core multitasking.
00;12;48;26 - 00;12;51;20
Chris
No. You're talking about productivity psychosis.
00;12;51;23 - 00;12;53;27
Aaron
That there's plenty of that on the timeline. Like that's.
00;12;53;27 - 00;12;54;16
Chris
Literally like my.
00;12;54;16 - 00;12;55;23
Aaron
God open killer.
00;12;55;26 - 00;13;00;06
Chris
Like right here man. They're running like Gary Tan with his g sack.
00;13;00;08 - 00;13;01;12
Derek
I don't even know. Honey.
00;13;01;14 - 00;13;06;22
Aaron
What what does the g stack do? I can't even figure it out. And like, isn't it.
00;13;06;22 - 00;13;13;19
Derek
Just give it to, like, markdown agent profiles. Like, it was something I have spent almost like.
00;13;13;20 - 00;13;14;06
Aaron
There was like.
00;13;14;09 - 00;13;21;01
Derek
Ten picking up G stat. But I was reading some of the comments around it, and, I kind of was laughing so hard at some of these things.
00;13;21;03 - 00;13;36;25
Aaron
Well, so I'm always a mix minds of this, like he's clearly does a great job, runs a very important program. Right. He loves you could feel his, like, passion for being able to develop again. I guess he was a developer in the past. I don't fully know his background. So, like that piece, like I love. Right?
00;13;36;27 - 00;13;48;27
Aaron
Like, it's great that you're able to, like desktop something that you were passionate about or like reinstall that. So that's great. But then at the same time, I just don't understand the product. But maybe that just could be my ignorance on this one.
00;13;48;27 - 00;14;14;23
Derek
I think the reason why it was, listen, it's not that it the thing he created wasn't valuable. It is basically just like snippets of tax code that matched his skills or profiles for agents that you can have when you're running your, when you're harnessing, you know, whatever some of these tools, that cloud code, I think the, the inflated kind of importance that the GS first of all, the name is hilarious, G stack.
00;14;14;25 - 00;14;43;28
Derek
But then the inflated like importance of the G stack when like, I think every casual hobbyist developer has already done something somewhere themself. There's like this mismatch between like, like everyone's already doing this, dude. Like there's no we don't need to kind of like make G stat go viral kind of a thing. And it yeah, I, I I'm, I'm trying to find connections to all of these things around like oh I'm psychosis and self grant like visions of grandeur and like I don't have any introspection.
00;14;43;29 - 00;14;49;10
Derek
I feel like there's a through line here and I don't and I'm it's it's mania Derek.
00;14;49;12 - 00;14;51;27
Aaron
Like like dude, this is objectively manic.
00;14;51;29 - 00;15;01;11
Derek
Some of this stuff is objectively weird behavior. I'm just going to say it. And so I'm just trying to figure out like what is happening around this stuff. That's what's happened.
00;15;01;11 - 00;15;03;15
Aaron
Derek's back and he's doing this.
00;15;03;18 - 00;15;04;08
Derek
I'm just saying.
00;15;04;08 - 00;15;06;01
Chris
Like, some of this stuff is like not.
00;15;06;08 - 00;15;19;03
Derek
Quite clicking for me. So I'm just why are so I just feels like people are acting a fool out there on the internet right now. And I'm trying to I'm trying to figure out why I'm on. I'm I'm an inspector trying to figure this out.
00;15;19;05 - 00;15;40;12
Pri
I was I'm actually with Chris on this, like, unironically, like I was in SF for two weeks in January. And like every conversation that you overhear or people you talk to like the level of optimism, experimentation, like everyone's, you know, trying different peptides. And yeah, there's a huge focus on health and longevity. And on top of that, then you have like the whole AI boom, and everyone's really excited.
00;15;40;12 - 00;16;00;12
Pri
Like, I think since I've graduated college, which was like 2010, I've never been in a tech boom, really. Like I think I was like at the era like mid boom of like, you know, whatever social media era kind of. And then I guess you could consider the crypto boom, but like, not even remotely close to like what AI is.
00;16;00;12 - 00;16;15;29
Pri
And I think people are just going nuts because it's mania mode. Like I think like the vibe. NSF was very clear that, like, this town is in boom times, like insanely. And I think as a result of that, you just get like full on hysteria.
00;16;16;02 - 00;16;33;29
Aaron
But I don't it's not hysteria to me. You know, there was this Substack article, I could try to dig it up. The people called it like the holy, like, Holy fuck moment when you like, I kind of clicks for you. And I think it maybe that dark, you know, like, this is a person. He was probably using it a little bit more like, replacement for Google doing some, like, planning stuff.
00;16;33;29 - 00;16;56;02
Aaron
And then he gets this like, holy fuck moment that he can be a programmer again. Right? And I think it's like a huge adrenaline dopamine rush. And then I think it there's just like this sick of 50 of the models that like gives like a sugar coated glaze over it all. And I think it's that combination that, you know, sometimes strikes people the wrong way or I don't know.
00;16;56;02 - 00;16;56;09
Aaron
Yeah.
00;16;56;09 - 00;17;21;16
Derek
Interesting. That's an interesting take. I think like yeah, that's an interesting take. I almost feel like, you know, listen, I'm not gonna try and psychoanalyze planet Earth right now, but there is but there is a something that you're describing, which I think is really interesting, which is the vast majority of technologists who have been tinkering around with computers the way they have felt seen is like, is basically like staring at a screen for like, their entire adult lives.
00;17;21;17 - 00;17;38;14
Derek
I mean, ever since, whatever they've maybe they've found a Gameboy and then they, their parents got them a computer, and then they built their first one while they're in middle school. And then all of a sudden they're on IRC and I am in there chatting with people over the internet. Now they're, you know, shipping code and they're building stuff, and then they go to, you know, to San Francisco to work in tech.
00;17;38;14 - 00;17;57;18
Derek
Another their day job is just staring at a screen. And the way that people, if it didn't solve all of the jobs right like that, there are still like you still want to connect to humans. You still want to connect to people. You want to be there out in meatspace. You want to feel assured. You want to, you know, feel validated.
00;17;57;21 - 00;18;23;25
Derek
And what's interesting is like some of these tools inadvertently are kind of replicating some of the last jobs that weren't being done by screens. And it's like, yeah, there's like, I don't I don't, I don't know what it is, but like, there's this you're talking to somebody and getting validated by them and assured by them, and they're helping you build things in, you know, like you would, you know, work with your spouse to kind of build a marriage or build a family.
00;18;23;25 - 00;18;43;26
Derek
And, and now and you've got this person in the trenches with you and they're not real, but like, they can self-replicating. Now, you got a lot of people helping you out, and now you've got your own little family on the internet, and it's I don't I don't know if there's a 1 to 1 parallel here with, like, some of these previous jobs to be done in the real world or around, you know, humanity.
00;18;43;28 - 00;18;50;13
Derek
But like, there's flavors of that that I think are interesting that way to what you're describing here. And like, I don't think I would dismiss that.
00;18;50;19 - 00;18;50;26
Chris
Yeah.
00;18;50;26 - 00;19;09;11
Aaron
I think it's just the rush of like, oh my God, I can do stuff now. You can. And it's a lot faster if you know how to, like, wield, if you know how to like, talk to the box like it's really good and, you know, I think a lot of stuff right now is like, performative even like you were saying, like all these developers that have this G stack thing set up.
00;19;09;11 - 00;19;15;22
Aaron
I don't think they do. I think most developers, they don't call, don't stack. They don't even know how to talk to the box though, like.
00;19;15;29 - 00;19;18;18
Chris
But you need to have a wagon. David G stack.
00;19;18;21 - 00;19;34;22
Aaron
I don't think that they do, to be honest. I just I think you see that where like they're definitely like poking around, like playing around and doing stuff, but there's no output from it. And if there's no output, like there's no product at the endpoint, like there's nothing that's actually being built. I don't think that they know how to talk to these boxes.
00;19;34;24 - 00;19;49;21
Aaron
That's how I think of it. I don't think of it as a machine, because it's like a little bit like a black box. Like, who even knows if in the long run it would be a machine. It's just like a box. And so we're talking to it all the time. Nobody really knows how it fully works. And I just think that's a new skill set.
00;19;49;28 - 00;20;10;10
Aaron
You know, I don't think that there is any more real engineering. I think there's really like context management, context engineering increasingly. And that's the only other thing I wanted to push back on. Like, I don't think it's unreasonable for him to like, be trying to build this stuff because nobody really fully knows how to do that. We probably never will really fully know how to talk and communicate with these boxes.
00;20;10;12 - 00;20;25;10
Derek
That's fair. That's fair. I don't want to completely dismiss the G stack because there is value in the G stack. I think that the thing that I was flagging was there. I mean, at least from people who are responding to the G stack, I'm going to see how many times I can say G stack.
00;20;25;12 - 00;20;26;22
Chris
You're at 15, visit.
00;20;26;22 - 00;20;28;24
Aaron
G stack.com.
00;20;28;26 - 00;20;49;10
Derek
Setting setting up a skill of like a CEO review, setting up a skill for like, someone who's whatever. Reviewing bugs, setting up a skill for someone who's like, you know, doing kind of finishing touches on the engineering side, a skill for QA, like, these are things that people are kind of already informally doing without branding it as something that they created.
00;20;49;14 - 00;20;52;23
Derek
And that's the thing I'm flagging. Not that the G stack is invaluable.
00;20;52;23 - 00;21;11;01
Aaron
That's fair. Yeah, I mean, I even this is what like kind of drives me crazy about clod. Like they call it like a clod agent when it's just a single prompt that's probably poorly constructed by the person that's putting it together because they have no clue how to talk to the box. So yeah, I don't know that we are time here.
00;21;11;01 - 00;21;41;28
Chris
We can bring another G into this, which is our managing money. Who was on the show last month? He seems to have like turned a corner in all of this and, you know, starting to throw his hands up around the, management of the set up. And is it worth putting the time in to be constantly fixing your clod bot, your g stack, you know, versus actually, we'll we'll bring Marc Andreessen back just doing things right.
00;21;41;28 - 00;22;02;24
Chris
Like, I feel like G is kind of turning a corner here. And maybe this is tech open cloth. You know, or maybe people just wanted a little too much from these things before they were ready to provide them. Like, you know, our you and I, we work very similarly. And it's like you can just prompt things. You don't need any set up.
00;22;02;24 - 00;22;20;04
Chris
You don't need any instructions. Your instructions are in the prompt and the machine knows what to do. Like I work out of a markdown doc, like I work out of a spec, I turn my spec into an implementation doc and that's all I do. Everything else is window dressing. Yeah.
00;22;20;06 - 00;22;44;04
Aaron
Yeah, yeah. And it's not that dissimilar. And I think that that's what I kind of find frustrating. Like, you know, maybe somebody needs to kick that off, maybe at some point you could build a abstracted version of that. I don't think we're there yet. It's like kind of the rebranding of a lot of this stuff. And I just think, I just don't think that many people know how to, you know, just how to like, describe or build a system, which is kind of what you're doing when you build a product.
00;22;44;04 - 00;23;03;25
Aaron
Right? Like it's like being a director of a movie, like theater, that's a skill set. And it's not an engineering skillset necessarily. And that's, I think, part of the disconnect. I imagine, Gary, because I think he ran some companies beforehand. Again, I don't know his full history. He's probably pretty good at that as well. So I'm sure he kind of feels that power like, as he's, as he's building the G stack.
00;23;03;27 - 00;23;13;24
Aaron
I do think we're at like pico open claw. We probably crossed out like two weeks ago. I see some people like complaining about, you know, how they're they're sick of it. They're going to put it down.
00;23;13;26 - 00;23;16;17
Pri
You're seeing some stack of it. Like, is that what you were getting?
00;23;16;24 - 00;23;17;12
Aaron
Yes it is.
00;23;17;13 - 00;23;19;13
Pri
Some of that is you. Okay.
00;23;19;15 - 00;23;39;14
Chris
No, but I mean, just went from open claw to Hermes and I think he found that one better, but then he still ran into a bunch of other issues. I just feel like G is getting closer and closer to the deep stack he wants to be like. I think everyone ultimately needs to just get down to the context window.
00;23;39;15 - 00;24;04;16
Chris
I was about to say the metal, but there's no metal here, you know what I mean? Like, you just you just need to, like, get the direct connect, you know, just talk to the fucking thing. Tell it what to do. It's like it has all these superpowers. It doesn't need to be pointed to markdown files unless you you yourself are, planning to, like, completely separate, step away from the whole thing and try to let it run on autopilot.
00;24;04;18 - 00;24;07;14
Chris
And what we're learning is they're not ready to do that yet.
00;24;07;16 - 00;24;24;10
Aaron
Yeah. Or if they are, it's just going to be hacker expensive, right. Which is I think why people are kind of putting down open claw. It's like it works really well with like opus and, you know, Gemini chat, you know, the GPT models, but it doesn't really work that well with, like some of the open source models yet.
00;24;24;10 - 00;24;46;09
Aaron
So it may be like I could imagine, like the further end of open cloud, like dying down a bit, then picking back up either around that project or another project like once, probably by the end of the year. Like the open source models are as good as like what we have now on the of your models. So I wouldn't be surprised if, AI moves on to a new meta.
00;24;46;11 - 00;25;13;23
Derek
Yeah, I, I I, I, I agree with a lot of this. I think, I think just to address Chris's point, which I really strongly agree with, it's like this idea of like requiring the user who's trying to direct towards an outcome to kind of like write markdown and create new agents and give them skills and do all of this while in the meantime also simultaneously just trying to get the thing that they want to get built, built.
00;25;13;25 - 00;25;37;14
Derek
That is terrible fucking UX, right? The to me, this is a transitional stage of where the world's going. My intuition is the winning consumer. Products here don't require you to be managing a team while you're trying to build the thing. It's it's going to look something that looks more like you're trying to to build a thing and things are being autogenerated for you in the background.
00;25;37;14 - 00;25;55;29
Derek
Like agents are dynamically spun up every time it uses introspection to figure out what is needed next. To kind of tied it all together. What we're dealing with right now is like this transitional stage and not the end state. And it feels messy and hard and difficult, and people are turning left and right. I mean, like, this stuff is not easy to use.
00;25;56;01 - 00;26;34;28
Derek
And so I think the, the insight that I have is like, can can we get some of the features that people demand, which is like local and not, you know, managing these things in a private setting, keeping your data, your money, your information private to you and not, you know, located on some third party database. Being able to allow these, these systems to use what they're good at, which is thinking through outcomes before you're able to get them and direct behaviors for you instead of you trying to do it for them and trying to kind of see through all of that fog and locate what, where this this product ends up, which.
00;26;35;00 - 00;26;47;24
Derek
So I guess my, my view is like, I think this could be the top of things like the self-managed agent harness, open core stuff, but it's certainly not the top in terms of like what I think the ultimate consumer package is going to look like.
00;26;47;27 - 00;27;04;00
Aaron
Yeah, I agree with that. I think the only thing I'd add to that and I thought that was great. Dirk is just cost, right? It just needs to get cheaper. You know, increasingly I just think like AI is a little bit like a, like, bandwidth almost. And, you know, people are seeing like what? Like streaming video could look like, which is a lot of the self-hosted bits.
00;27;04;00 - 00;27;23;28
Aaron
But, the infrastructure, like you were saying, Chris, the cost and speed, it's just all not there yet, but I imagine it will be in, in short order. I didn't want to say like a year or two, because who knows, maybe maybe that's like a quarter to. Because things definitely feel like they're getting compressed. But, I do think it's like a cost thing at this point.
00;27;24;00 - 00;27;54;24
Chris
Yeah, I, I have dozens and dozens of agents working in stakeholder, and in almost all of my time is spent either designing agents or managing the coordination and orchestration system between them. Within my own system, there's zero time actually spent above the surface trying to build like, productivity tools to implement that. And so like to me, I think a lot of these principles are right.
00;27;54;24 - 00;28;20;23
Chris
They're just inverted right now and put at the wrong layer. But like that shit is really, really hard. Like getting these things to play well together, to, to make handoffs understand, like hierarchies, roles, coordination, you know, like, that's a lot of hard work. And so, I don't know, maybe this is just a matter of, like, I'm doing something different than most people.
00;28;20;23 - 00;28;43;07
Chris
And because of that, I was forced to flip it on its head. Or maybe it's because, like, you know, this is just how I like to work. Maybe it's because, like, I ran, you know, product for years and years and years and, you know, I just have that muscle memory. I don't know what it is, but yeah, like, I think you can do a ton of stuff with agents and like, I'm doing a ton of stuff with agents.
00;28;43;10 - 00;28;48;13
Chris
It's just not at the production productivity layer at all.
00;28;48;15 - 00;29;12;05
Aaron
Yeah, but it's getting there. You know, like I hear Derek Thompson, he has a great podcast. He's one of the coauthors that book abundance, like, you know, he, he, he's been, was a critic saying it was like an AI bubble. And he's beginning to, like, reassess his priors just because he's seeing the power of, like, tool calling and being able to deliver, you know, stuff that's useful for him in his job.
00;29;12;07 - 00;29;30;02
Aaron
So he kind of had one of these holy like, holy fuck moments, but, hey, can I pivot just a little bit? But it's it. Or take a tangent. You know who else I think is well past the peak? And I think I may I mentioned this previously. It's just Claude. Do you guys see that cursor came out with, a model that's just as good as their programing models.
00;29;30;02 - 00;29;45;13
Aaron
And I was kicking it around yesterday and it looks pretty good. I don't know if it's as good as, like, their, their stated evaluations, but it's very cheap and almost as good as like, at the top, you know, Claude and or open AI programing.
00;29;45;15 - 00;29;47;01
Chris
Is this composer two.
00;29;47;04 - 00;30;05;07
Aaron
Yeah. It's composer two. I think it's interesting because, you know, they're almost kind of like they don't have this, like, big training cost, at least not to my knowledge. Maybe they they were doing a whole bunch of training and, they were spending a bunch of capital to that, but, it's kind of interesting, right? They like, they use the users of cursor pretty much to, to train it, I imagine.
00;30;05;12 - 00;30;13;21
Aaron
Right, without having to build out like this foundational model. I wonder if that's part of what's going to happen next, like in the next wave.
00;30;13;23 - 00;30;24;23
Chris
Okay, I'll have to give compose or two ago I saw I saw a little pop up in my idea. The other day saying, hey, we released a new model. I was like, oh, that's so cute, good for you, and dismissed it. But,
00;30;24;26 - 00;30;46;01
Aaron
No, it's good. Like, it's probably as good as like sonnet. If it's kind of they, they claim it's better than like, the cloud opus stuff. I feel like it's probably it's better than sonnet. Maybe a little less little worse than opus, but like, still pretty notable. Probably better than Gemini two. But like no cost, right? Like or limited cost.
00;30;46;01 - 00;30;55;15
Aaron
Not no cost, but comparatively limited cost compared to like what anthropic and OpenAI I needed to spend in order to get advancements there.
00;30;55;17 - 00;31;00;28
Chris
I will, I will kick it around and give it a go. If you know me, I always need more models.
00;31;01;00 - 00;31;32;29
Pri
Am I just like a Rube in all of this? Because all I literally do is just like, I like, can't be bothered to like, open GitHub and like download like look at these repos and like put skills and like, I just like use it and prompt what I want. Like it. I think it's probably more time consuming. But to this point, is it actually less time consuming just to get the output you want by like just hammering it into like a machine rather than having to, like, manage all these agents like what's actually more like efficient.
00;31;33;01 - 00;31;37;02
Aaron
So build your box, pray or buy the box. Right. That's kind of what you're saying.
00;31;37;05 - 00;31;38;00
Pri
Yeah.
00;31;38;03 - 00;32;05;26
Derek
I think for the vast majority of the human population right now that doesn't want to spend their days like like if you are trying to use and play around with agent harnesses right now, you're you're the reason why you're doing that mostly is to like try and build something like there's some concrete directive and some sort of like action or output that you're trying to engineer for, and you want multiple layers of superhuman intelligence to help you do that.
00;32;05;29 - 00;32;22;12
Derek
The problem is these agent harnesses are still so early and like they're going to be buggy, you're going to spend half your day trying to get them to work again, and to not kick errors your way and to get the exact thing that you want. And so what you end up, I listen, I'm a huge fan of these things, by the way.
00;32;22;12 - 00;32;41;11
Derek
Like they're going to get better. They're constantly improving. They're better now than they were even a week ago. But the the issue is that, like people end up spending their entire day trying to do management stuff instead of building stuff. And I think a lot of people are finding out, like, hey, maybe I don't really want to be a CEO of a bunch of agents.
00;32;41;11 - 00;32;58;15
Derek
Maybe I just want to build stuff and tinker around and try and get the payload to work myself and use these tools to, you know, in ways that can help streamline that process. So I think we're in, like this messy middle period right now where it's like the tech is very clearly going in this direction. It's to it's too awesome.
00;32;58;15 - 00;33;26;00
Derek
It's like it's it's really, really cool to scaffolding out a build to kind of create an output and giving people jobs that check each other and even things like Karpathy Auto Research to kind of like improve performance at the application layer. Like there's really cool stuff happening here, but it is definitely not what I would say, like production, ready to build the next great software product unless you're in like the top decile of all human programmers.
00;33;26;02 - 00;33;28;05
Derek
So I think that's the frustration.
00;33;28;05 - 00;33;45;05
Aaron
I like the messy middle framing. Derek. It also, you know, the sass pocalypse. I feel like increasingly just feels overstated to me. You know, like there's always going to be improvement. You're always going to need to like, you know, fix issues. Like, I just don't think a lot of people are gonna want to do that on a day to day basis.
00;33;45;05 - 00;34;03;14
Aaron
Like they just want to buy something and use it to pre maybe. To go back to your question, I don't know if you are the Rube or maybe everybody else is just, you know, they're just playing around with fun you know fun tech. We've seen that with like Unix and blockchains and, you know, bunch of open source projects, the internet itself.
00;34;03;14 - 00;34;12;14
Aaron
Right? There's a whole class of people that just like to kick around technology. And I think open cloud to its credit, really like tickles that, itch for a lot of people.
00;34;12;16 - 00;34;29;20
Pri
Yeah. Yeah, maybe. And I agree like again, we talked about this last week too, but like, I don't think anyone knows what they're doing. And so if you like, show some semblance of what, you know, like Open Club, the founder, he like, did something genuinely innovative for the for at least this like period of time. Then you're going to be taken seriously.
00;34;29;20 - 00;34;32;08
Pri
That's kind of like the phase that we're in right now.
00;34;32;08 - 00;34;40;02
Aaron
But he just he just shit. I mean, an even before open cloud and I don't I was looking into, you know, he like, released like 30 projects in a year.
00;34;40;05 - 00;34;40;29
Pri
Yeah, he did a lot.
00;34;40;29 - 00;34;50;09
Aaron
Like, he was just doing stuff, you know? So taking it all back to Mark, you know, he he was just pushing stuff out until, you know, something kind of clicked together.
00;34;50;12 - 00;35;11;17
Chris
I pre from my experience, I can say it took me about three months to be comfortable with the stack. And the only way you can really do it is just by putting the reps in. Yeah. And I think the question really is like, is it worth you doing that or not? And it really depends on what you want to get out of in these times.
00;35;11;22 - 00;35;28;22
Chris
Right. Like I wanted to I wanted to build. Therefore it was worth, learning how to do it. If you're just like, you know, if you have FOMO without, an actual intent or purpose behind it, I don't think it's worthwhile.
00;35;28;25 - 00;35;47;22
Pri
Yeah, I think my thing is more FOMO and also not being able to be, like, competitive in the future because, like, I think it's going to be so easy to code that everyone's like the expectation is everyone can code. But I think that will also be the expectation when it becomes easier to use the tools for like more normal people.
00;35;47;25 - 00;36;23;08
Chris
Think about it this way for free. I would say like in terms of like practical skills, if you can get to the point where, you can use agents to call APIs and to like create structured Json, that's probably about all you need right now. Like if you wanted to be able to do, like, hyper specific nano banana, you know, two pro prompt in which you're, you build out this whole, like, Json file so that you can accurately, you know, create an image of, like, how cringe OpenSea was last week.
00;36;23;10 - 00;36;29;13
Chris
Right? Like, that's kind of like maybe the where are you going to start crossing that cost benefit divide?
00;36;29;15 - 00;36;54;28
Aaron
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right Chris. It's I think it's the same thing. There probably won't be as much software engineering just because it will be so automated. It's just going to be a lot more context engineering. Like what can you get out of the box? Like what can you wield the box to do? And you know, I think there's a there's an emerging people that know how to do that know how to do stuff like tool calling or context management or context compression.
00;36;54;28 - 00;37;12;08
Aaron
It's just a different skill set, and it's just not widely distributed. Doesn't mean that a ton of people don't learn that, but I just don't think they have yet. Maybe that that's what a lot of folks are going through now, Chris, because I do think it takes like 1 to 3 months to put in those reps to understand how to get them, you know, something more out of the system.
00;37;12;10 - 00;37;28;18
Aaron
I also think, you know, because engineering is, is probably, largely going to go away. It's why, you know, apps and games and, and, you know, all this other forms of media are just going to be much more interactive, much more like fully fledged software products. I think the app starts coming.
00;37;28;21 - 00;37;47;26
Chris
So let's not talk about the potential SaaS Pocalypse. Although I will say it's kind of alarming or like it's worth keeping an eye on how persistent these, private credit fund withdrawals are and just kind of monitoring that situation because those two things go hand in hand.
00;37;47;26 - 00;37;52;16
Aaron
What do you learn in there? Yeah, I've seen that. I've seen that was a blue owl. I haven't followed that.
00;37;52;19 - 00;37;54;20
Pri
That situation closely Chris, either.
00;37;54;23 - 00;37;55;17
Aaron
What are you seeing there?
00;37;55;24 - 00;38;30;26
Chris
What I've learned is the Journal thinks this is important and runs like three stories a week about how private credit funds are having to limit withdrawals, and that the fate of requests are far more like widespread across the industry. A lot of this is like fund to fund stuff and a lack of good diligence. And so, you know, people are realizing that they have their money in essentially black boxes that are invested in a black boxes, and there's no actual accountability or auditing.
00;38;30;26 - 00;39;08;23
Chris
And so, should markdowns take place, should there be defaults or, you know, people not making their, their loan payments here? The people just are realizing, like they're they're in it. They put themselves in a position where if things get bad, they're rat fucked and they're trying to get out of that. And it's happening not just in the corporate lending sector, but, you know, a lot of these like, buy now, pay later, or like there's a lot of the loan structuring on the consumer side that sits around, private credit that, people are, are starting to yank themselves out of as well.
00;39;08;26 - 00;39;22;21
Chris
And so, like, I haven't looked deep into this, but what I do know is like how to read the journal and if the journal is picking up, you know, and, focusing in on these continuing series like it's important to mention to.
00;39;22;24 - 00;39;30;25
Aaron
Yeah, they're worried somebody's worried in the in Wall Street about it. Is that all that like a firm stuff? Chris. Like that. Isn't that the company where you can.
00;39;31;01 - 00;39;37;15
Pri
There's a lot of this private cutting kind of stuff stemming from. Yeah. I mean, like the, the original source.
00;39;37;17 - 00;39;58;09
Chris
Well, the original source was when they did all the banking reforms and they made it harder for banks to lend money, you know, like it was a lot of those balance sheet capital requirements coming out of like the GFC and, you know, stuff after that. And so what that did basically was created an opportunity for, you know, high, high net worth individuals.
00;39;58;09 - 00;40;23;02
Chris
Anyone who's got like extra money lying around to, in effect become the bank. And so that's why like the private credit industry as, sort of taken off. And if you think about the fact that, like, I don't know what interest rates are right now, but, you know, they're five, 6%. Right. And private credit is going to give you, you know, 10 to 12% returns depending on your risk profile.
00;40;23;05 - 00;40;46;15
Chris
And so if you're looking to diversify, you know, out of out of public equities and stocks and, and whatnot, and you actually want like more attractive rate of return than, you know, being in Muni bonds. You know, if you're going to get to like three and a half if you're lucky, you know, I mean, New York munis, because they're tax advantaged and very stable, are going to give you like 2.7% anyway.
00;40;46;15 - 00;41;02;10
Chris
Like, you can see. Well, if you go into private credit, you're going to get for that. And so it just became a huge growth field. And it's basically like a shadow lending network or not even a shadow, but, you know, became a replacement for like a lot of commercial lending activity. The banks used to do.
00;41;02;12 - 00;41;06;05
Aaron
Classic I don't know what else to say here, Chris. So the government stepped in.
00;41;06;05 - 00;41;11;10
Chris
I was actually going to say I was going to turn it into something else, and I forgot where the hell I was going.
00;41;11;15 - 00;41;18;09
Pri
Well, now I feel like I need to really spend a little bit more time here because I think you did. We just like, flagged the next financial crisis. Great. Can't wait.
00;41;18;09 - 00;41;20;16
Aaron
I mean, some people have been worried about that for a while.
00;41;20;18 - 00;41;22;25
Pri
For a while, for a while I feel like.
00;41;22;28 - 00;41;58;04
Aaron
But it's like kind of the same story, right? It's just like best intentions trying to fix a previous issue, create the next issue, like over and over and over again. It seems like the SEC that was trying to solve some of crypto's issues if folks ever haven't been paying attention. So with this, like clarity, act like, slowly snaking through, the US, legislative process, the SEC this week kind of jumped in trying to provide more clarity, pretty much like a literally like a wish list of what, folks wanted in terms of just classifying did a whole bunch of, digital assets.
00;41;58;07 - 00;42;21;29
Aaron
So it kind of made clear that, you know, digital commodities are going to be treated as commodities collectibles, which probably would include, you know, NFTs, a whole bunch of other things, different, things that are used and or more utility based or commodities. So they kind of just affirmed a lot of what the ecosystem said and wanted. Question as to like how sticky that is, but hopefully they don't make the same mistake as, private credit.
00;42;21;29 - 00;42;24;26
Aaron
Chris, when they, start enacting these rules.
00;42;24;28 - 00;42;48;05
Chris
Anytime you enact rules, right? Like the first thing people are going to do is trying to figure out where is the gray zone. The margins are always in the gray zone. And so I don't know if you can create do any sort of rulemaking nowadays without unintended consequences. Just because the whole world is so attuned to what's the arbitrage, the jurisdictional arbitrage that this enables?
00;42;48;08 - 00;43;10;09
Aaron
Yeah, it feels like even worse now, now that we're like, so stitched together with the internet and people can move around so much. Right. Like even from state to state, you know, you want to put in like a different type of taxation system, like good luck. You know, you have to compete with the most permissive one. So it does kind of create like either a race to the bottom or at the top, depending on your vantage point, around a lot of this stuff.
00;43;10;11 - 00;43;28;00
Aaron
It's tricky business. Talking about rules, do you guys see, Bernie's on the hunt to to, to start an acting rules related to I. Did you see this video that, he posted yesterday where he pretty much asked Claude to be terrifying, and then it was terrifying. Like, literally, he was, like, living out the meme.
00;43;28;00 - 00;43;48;21
Pri
And now it's becoming very political, though I feel like I'm feeling it way more on my timeline. Like there's, like people who are mapping it out and data as well, and then they're also putting like a, you know, a geographical lens on it. It's like, which regions and countries are more pro AI, which are antis. So you're like layering and like almost like this geopolitical element to it as well.
00;43;48;21 - 00;43;52;27
Pri
It's just like domestic politics feels, it feels like it's heating up.
00;43;52;27 - 00;43;55;15
Aaron
But hating AI is the next, luxury.
00;43;55;15 - 00;43;59;14
Pri
Believe I saw that tweet. It feels right. Kind of.
00;43;59;17 - 00;44;00;10
Aaron
Yeah, I think so.
00;44;00;14 - 00;44;04;04
Pri
In the United States, though, just in the United States in the Western world.
00;44;04;06 - 00;44;05;10
Aaron
Yeah. Well.
00;44;05;12 - 00;44;10;09
Chris
We have the privilege of hating things that can make life everybody's life better.
00;44;10;09 - 00;44;26;01
Aaron
Yeah. And cheaper. I just I just thought it was funny. You know, they're staking out that position, whether that's a good or bad one. Right above my pay grade to figure out. I just thought it was funny because literally, like, was the meme, like he didn't even understand how these things work. He's like, be scary. And it's like, I'm scary.
00;44;26;03 - 00;44;28;22
Pri
He's like, wow, I'm scared. It's like, okay.
00;44;28;24 - 00;44;37;14
Aaron
It was like Mo Buck. That was like Mo book, right? Like the last time we saw that, people are like, it's so crazy. And they're like, telling it to be crazy.
00;44;37;16 - 00;44;42;17
Pri
This is going to be fun, I bet. I wonder if it'll heat up around the midterms a little bit, too.
00;44;42;20 - 00;44;44;01
Aaron
Maybe. Yeah.
00;44;44;04 - 00;44;45;27
Pri
I guess definitely. One 2028.
00;44;46;00 - 00;45;07;24
Aaron
Yeah, 2028. Feels like, you know, so I guess by what I think you're right. It probably just be a steady hum up. Yeah. I just wonder how effective it will actually be, you know, not to, like, dwell on the, terror. Thompson, but, you know, obviously, clearly like a thought leader in his in his party. And it seems like he's turning the table or changing his perspective on something.
00;45;07;24 - 00;45;19;22
Aaron
So I wonder if if it gets, like, a little bit more complicated for folks that are staying at that position because I do think there is efficiency gains, like people just want to get stuff done, probably spend more time with their kids.
00;45;19;25 - 00;45;21;29
Chris
Who wants to spend time with their kids, fans.
00;45;22;01 - 00;45;31;00
Aaron
Or friends or family, you know, or just, you know, do something else that agents. Yeah. Out of the box here.
00;45;31;02 - 00;45;33;04
Chris
Maybe I babies.
00;45;33;07 - 00;45;36;21
Pri
Do we want to talk about the Vanity Fair article or. No.
00;45;36;25 - 00;45;41;07
Chris
Did you think you brought it up. You're the how are you the expert on this call?
00;45;41;12 - 00;46;07;07
Pri
I, I am not really the expert on on the call, but it is notable of, of, you know, just timing in general. It feels like crypto hasn't really had the best PR and press. And it's honestly a weird time to even highlight crypto people just given the lack of like public interest around it. Although obviously there's definitely interest on the political side and on the hill and stuff.
00;46;07;09 - 00;46;38;04
Pri
But anyways, like Vanity Fair wrote, this article covered probably what 8 or 9 people like ad like I think it was like that, swan room and had just them quoted talking about the environment. It was kind of like a mix of NFT, more, market makers with like Novogratz, you had like Devin and his wife Yugi, talking like NFTs a little bit, melt, all off of Polychain on the venture investing side.
00;46;38;04 - 00;46;51;29
Pri
So it's kind of like this, like mix of people from different corners of crypto. There's a lot of memes that were generated after. And like, I mean, now I think we're all over it. I think that was like at the beginning of the week, but it definitely made waves. I can't tell this because there's like nothing else going on.
00;46;51;29 - 00;47;19;17
Pri
But Vanity Fair to me is like, it's like up there with like The New Yorker and Vogue as far as like, quote, established magazines I respect. And I think their coverage has gotten a lot better with new leadership. But I just thought it was interesting that they covered it and like what they decided to talk about. There's nothing there that I feel like substantive that we don't already know or like, or it's like explaining how bitcoin mining works and stuff, and it kind of quotes people on their perspective on the market and, and stuff like that.
00;47;19;20 - 00;47;41;06
Pri
I thought, I thought the author was like, definitely had an agenda to kind of dismiss a lot of it and make it maybe not. It reflected in the in the most positive light. But, there's definitely some like, choice quotes and stuff that I don't know if we had like the best. Like, I, I feel like it could have been represented a little bit differently.
00;47;41;06 - 00;47;50;09
Pri
But yeah, I'm putting it nicely, but I just I definitely feel like it. It caught a wave for sure. On social media. And that was kind of interesting to follow along.
00;47;50;11 - 00;47;55;21
Chris
It was a form of hazing, you know. Oh, you want to be in Vanity Fair? All right. We're going to make you look like clowns.
00;47;55;27 - 00;48;00;17
Aaron
I agree with you, Chris, that it is a form of hazing. I'm kind of curious why you think that.
00;48;00;25 - 00;48;26;07
Chris
Dennison had a nice tweet, like, kind of analyzing it from his perspective as a former commercial photographer in which he walked through, you know, each of the photos explained how they were framing them. You know, the one with Cathie Wood. They stuck her in a corner. The drape was disheveled. There was a, a bellhop carriage in there, and they shot her far away and down to to make her appear more diminutive.
00;48;26;10 - 00;49;00;27
Chris
The open sea couple, you know, they had, not standing straight there. Kind of like pillars, like the body, the body positioning. And so I, I'm going to assume, you know, there are hundreds and hundreds of pictures taken of that day. And then they went back through, around and, you know, maybe, selectively picked them to create this, you know, sort of a shambolic, you know, presentation of, okay, well, there's all this money, you know, these people have clearly done well, we're just going to make them look a little foolish, you know?
00;49;00;29 - 00;49;20;03
Aaron
Yeah. To me, Chris, I think that was a really nice way to phrase it. It felt like just like old money, attacking new money. Like a story as old as time, right? Like, and eventually, like the first. They mock you, right? And then you get acceptance at some point. So, like, crypto is not going away. Clearly Wall Street once crypto.
00;49;20;03 - 00;49;35;08
Aaron
Right. And views it as kind of a that's a big piece of its future. Russell wouldn't be moving the way it's moving. So at some point, you know, folks that do well in that industry, are going to, you know, have to just get folded into to the upper crust of, of New York culture.
00;49;35;14 - 00;49;53;27
Chris
If anybody shares the upper crust of New York culture, Soviet, I assume it is, you know, to some degree, I do feel like this is a bit of like a buy the ticket, take the ride sort of thing. You know, I can imagine someone like Meltem probably kind of had it a good idea of what she was getting herself into and just didn't give a shit.
00;49;54;03 - 00;50;22;18
Chris
I think maybe a few other people there just showed up because her friends ask them to come. And then there were probably a few people who were genuinely hurt by how they were presented and was were expecting to get fair treatment. But I don't, you know, I mean, technology and, journalism have been very adversarial for a while, and crypto has had a long history of, you know, both not representing itself to the best of its ability, but also being misrepresented.
00;50;22;18 - 00;50;46;20
Chris
And, you know, maybe you just saw a collision of those two things. And, you know, such is life. I did find it interesting that like OpenSea, man, oh my God. Like, you know, how do they manage the timing of their public relations so, so poorly to have, you know, had to punt on the token, which I think everyone kind of felt like was inevitable.
00;50;46;22 - 00;50;54;23
Chris
And then the very next day, the open CFTC came out, you know, it's just like, oof, you guys just cannot get out of your own way.
00;50;54;25 - 00;51;23;03
Aaron
I think that's a little bit of just like the story of crypto, right? Like, in general, like it's, great technology. It, you know, feels like it's just like in part raising to the bottom. It increasingly like, makes me feel like it's like peer to peer file sharing, like, the lanes are, like, so polluted at this point that it kind of, like, degraded the utility, like the core magical utility of the technology underneath it, like putting aside the legality of it, like it was really cool tech.
00;51;23;03 - 00;51;40;04
Aaron
And it's it feels like it's like a little bit of an echo of that. And even with those regs that we mentioned before, they're all great. But like, I would love to see folks that really focus on that kind of make, you know, safe, stable, no manipulative markets. I just think that that's like the last missing piece here.
00;51;40;06 - 00;51;50;26
Aaron
Like it's great that we can like, classify them. One way or another, but, and get some rules. The road that's super important that like we need to have like safe and sound marketplaces for people to do stuff 100%.
00;51;50;28 - 00;52;12;01
Chris
Yeah. This is a common problem and I don't really know how you're going to solve for it, because the people who are most incentivized to abuse and manipulate the system always have an edge. And, you know, I do think it was funny that the title of that Vanity Fair piece, you know, crypto's true believer, is blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00;52;12;07 - 00;52;42;16
Chris
And I think everyone who is profiled there, you know, are a class of true believers. I'm not questioning them, but I think it's more like your everyday true believers. They start believing after like narcissists, you know, fuck the whole industry over for the 99th time, right? Like there's there's a believer fatigue, which is just, you know, it's like Lucy and the football, you know, how many times is it going to get yanked away from you before you?
00;52;42;16 - 00;53;11;29
Chris
Like, I'm just not going to try to kick the football anymore. And so, you know, I think that's, one of the real core issues around crypto is if you want to believe in it, well, that's fine. It works great in theory, but in, you know, in practice, like the surface area for abuse remains far too open and it's far too accessible for anyone who wants to rip and run and scam their way through the space.
00;53;11;29 - 00;53;33;28
Chris
You know, to to drain the money of people who actually want to believe in the system. And I have no idea if, when or how that problem will ever be solved. But like, look, I barely do anything on chain anymore, and it's because, you know, it's just simple, like ROI on my time and my money. Is it worthwhile to participate?
00;53;34;05 - 00;53;39;08
Chris
No it's not, therefore I well, you know, it's a very simple calculation for me.
00;53;39;11 - 00;53;58;17
Aaron
Yeah, I that's what makes me feel like it's like, file sharing. Right. It was it's complex technically. Like file sharing was complex. Technically there was like risks. Security risks. Right. Like you could download viruses, you could download something that you didn't want. You know, it was like a little bit of chaos just in the search and discovery layer of it.
00;53;58;20 - 00;54;18;05
Aaron
And there was legality questions too, right. And that got cleared up like over time, like after some big cases involving like YouTube and some other like actions. But in the wake of that, it wasn't like everybody went back to peer to peer file sharing. They kind of moved to like Spotify, YouTube, etc., etc.. I wonder if that's kind of what what happens in the long run?
00;54;18;05 - 00;54;36;18
Aaron
Chris. Maybe there's like another set of rules or a couple court cases that kind of like hem in the marketplaces a little bit more and like put more liability on them so that they can start better policing those, those like, and if you look at where the, you know, the action went in crypto, a lot of it went to prediction markets where they have a little bit more control over that.
00;54;36;18 - 00;54;49;06
Aaron
Right. They are like like in a certain sense, like safer marketplaces. Doesn't mean you're going to not lose your shirt. Many folks do. But at least, you know, like what's going on there. It's like reasonably transparent, right?
00;54;49;09 - 00;54;54;17
Chris
I'm losing my shirt to insider information, not to the structuring of the marketplace itself.
00;54;54;19 - 00;55;13;24
Aaron
Yeah, it's kind of like that. So and I'm not there's plenty of issues with prediction markets. So, you know, with all the caveats kind of related to that. I just mean more like it's pretty clear, like what you're putting capital into, there's like a clear endpoint to it. The volumes, even though people question that like, are published and transparent.
00;55;13;24 - 00;55;32;22
Aaron
Right. Like it it just there's a little bit more clarity on that. The insider trading or insider piece, I don't know if it's insider trading in the legal sense, but, you know, those questions I think are tricky. But then you see, you know, at least Poly Market last week teaming up with none other than Palantir, I guess just to start to solve those problems.
00;55;32;22 - 00;55;40;03
Aaron
So but I don't want to go into that like that, that rabbit hole. Who knows why that, partnership was put together.
00;55;40;05 - 00;56;04;01
Chris
Well, here, we'll, we'll go to a different rabbit hole because in your file sharing leads to Spotify analogy. Tempo just launched or it's launching. I can't remember where the heck tempo is, but I know there was a bunch of news about it last week, and that seems to be what you're implying is that the crypto rails and crypto is a back office replacement.
00;56;04;03 - 00;56;15;10
Chris
You know, ultimately wins, but permissionless ness or decentralization or all these other things might end up going by the wayside because they can't ensure fairness.
00;56;15;12 - 00;56;41;25
Aaron
Yeah. Or and that's like the big problem for those that think about, decentralization. It's it's not just, trading of assets. It's like the sanctity of the marketplace itself, like how do you create like a safe, fair marketplace? And I think that that's kind of the missing piece, you know, and that's where, at least in the last couple years, when people are getting excited about meme coins and like celebrating, like the abuses that were happening there, like, that was just completely bizarro to me.
00;56;41;28 - 00;57;00;24
Aaron
Yeah. And like, that's, you know, that's not like a recipe for long term success. Like, that's just a recipe for mass extraction and contraction. And I think we kind of saw that play out over the past couple of quarters. And I think Wall Street's kind of cheering that though, because like now they can come in, you know, they mow mow the lawn.
00;57;00;24 - 00;57;18;05
Aaron
They'll probably continue to mow the lawn a little bit. And then though, you know, kind of build it back up. So, but I think it's because of that. Right. Like I think as the bigger players come in, they, they may either express they know that that's advantageous. Maybe they feel like that's an edge for them because they understand how to build or how to operate in those types of markets.
00;57;18;05 - 00;57;36;28
Aaron
And I think they'll probably continue to push for more and more guardrails around them because they they see the utility. Right? Like 24/7 global markets, right, for all assets. They didn't didn't you, flag this to me pretty like hyper liquid is now trading more, you know, like gold than crypto assets or something. Or gold and oil and.
00;57;36;28 - 00;57;44;26
Pri
Silver and like oil I think is more than their crypto trading. By the way, did you see the write up on, on, in the Wall Street Journal?
00;57;45;01 - 00;57;46;19
Aaron
No. I mean, is that what they say?
00;57;46;22 - 00;58;02;12
Pri
I skim the article, but I think it was literally about their gold trading volumes. And how because it's like 24 seven trading. A lot of, like, traditional traders are going to hyper liquid to just like get their fix basically. Yeah.
00;58;02;12 - 00;58;07;19
Aaron
Like so they like the utility of a blockchain based system. Right. So yeah.
00;58;07;21 - 00;58;19;01
Pri
And so it's like serving like a totally different trading market. But I think that was it was kind of like surreal to see Hyper liquid, on it. And it wasn't gold. It was oil futures. Sorry.
00;58;19;03 - 00;58;35;20
Aaron
That's it. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. And it was a commodity at an 021. Yeah. But it's kind of like to go back to file sharing. Like what was the utility of file sharing like fast file download and video streaming. Right. Ultimately like that's the utility that lasted, not the like mechanism of how to deliver that.
00;58;35;22 - 00;58;58;05
Chris
Yeah. I mean, from my point of view, this is a matter of like mentality around your business model. And if your mentality was get rich quick, one big score right like that leads to a certain set of behaviors. If your mentality is, we're just going to pick up nickels every day for 20 years, and all those nickels are going to pile up into something very serious, right?
00;58;58;11 - 00;59;13;26
Chris
I mean, that's kind of the approach Wall Street is taking to this, and it's a different a different way of doing things. And it requires like durability, structuring, reliability, confidence, you know, like it's a risk management insurance.
00;59;13;26 - 00;59;14;29
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah.
00;59;15;01 - 00;59;23;18
Chris
It's just a different way of approaching things and you know, versus, hey, I'm going to release 10,000 animal fees and I hope I catch lightning in a bottle.
00;59;23;20 - 00;59;37;25
Aaron
Yeah. It's like, you know, I to to finance credit. They're trying to play long term games with long term actors. Right. So it doesn't mean that there's not shenanigans in between. But it feels like that's like the the meta structure of finance.
00;59;37;27 - 00;59;55;17
Pri
We're still early. We're going to land the plane. I feel like these I don't want to say a hit piece, but these kind of articles are going to continue just to emerge as as the whole ecosystem just cleans up and these rules and regulations get put in place. I guess. On that note, maybe we wrap the pod up.
00;59;55;20 - 01;00;23;23
Pri
So yeah, welcome to Net Society. It's me, Aaron, Chris and Derek for the first time in a bit. We're here to speak on all things tech, crypto culture, AI and more. Just a quick reminder these thoughts and opinions are our own and not of our player. And none of this is financial advice.