 Cool Yeah, this is the Rex check and call for October 2021 on October 13. Oh, how are you guys doing? Lots of big house troubles like The foundation underneath or the house is sinking and I have to have it fixed and yeah So this old house is really hitting me upside the head with expenses Sorry about that. Yeah. Yeah foundation workers. No fun contractors are really busy now. Yes Yes, they are So, are they having staffing problems like everybody else? Oh god. Yes. Yeah Yeah huge huge I just had a roof replaced And and now I'm deciding I'm finally getting around to getting some work done up in my my My lair my attic and It's crazy. I mean the contractor can't find anybody. How do roofers even get out to your property? Like don't they have like a big truck with lots of big ladders to get up on your roof And they do they have a big truck and they really wanted to know how they were going to get in and I said look You can have two, you know, there's room for a concrete truck your truck You know and there's even room to pass concrete trucks can pass each other. I've I've seen it happen So they made a trial run Fabulous and they decided they could do it That's great. That's great. The work is all done now That's done. The roof is done. Cool. Turns out I Have seventy one hundred square feet of roof So you replaced you replaced all the roof on the main building on the house Yes, and on and on the garage as well. Oh my god. So all new it's all new with everywhere. Did you replace it with Tesla power tiles? I did not I I had Tesla out here actually and Ten was very keen to go Tesla And so we spent a year trying to get them out here Off and on and they finally came and they did their measurements. They wanted me to do the measurements I said, I'm sorry. There's no place I can take pictures that will measure what you see And so they came out and they walked around and everything else took their measurements and they said there's not enough sun Too many trees and too much in the shade of the hill Too many trees mostly. Yeah, and a lot in the shade the backside all in the shade in the hill. Yeah. Yeah, that's too bad Well, we're but we're getting new solar system Yeah, but there's And it will have a tesla power wall a good and There the problem is that the tesla power walls are hard to get So I can imagine that the new Suburban chic will be having some old junker teslas up on jacks behind your house That will be like playing the role of a power wall. We're like, oh, those aren't junkers. That's actually my backup power system Exactly. That would be nice. Wouldn't it? Yeah, and you can even something we're getting we're pushing the end of the batteries And we're pushing the end of the the end of the generator and it's not happy. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah So it's not like it's not like a foundation. Okay I understand that but it is still an important part of the infrastructure. Exactly. Exactly So shamae, do you know how to jump the queue for a power wall? No No, I I'm not I'm not a fan of space Jesus. So You Elon musk oh Jesus is the the term that I've heard We have a tesla car Are you telling me you would not buy a power wall because it's tesla? Oh I would think twice about it. Um, I would look to see if look for alternatives But at this point, I think the power wall is pretty much the only one in the game. Um at the moment at least and When we bought our electric car tesla. We really was the only plausible option for what we what we needed. Yeah So but uh Musk just skieves me out. I just don't want Yeah, yeah As much as we're happy we're reasonably happy with our tesla car. We're not going to buy another one Uh, what would you buy or do you know? Um Don't know yet. It'll be whatever's you know, look at what's on the market at that point. Um, But there are definitely some good alternatives out there. Um, you know and uh, if if the uh biden bill Passes Resume, you know with at least some of it intact, then there'll be a huge discount on american built union built electric vehicles Okay, I love in part because it does gets off musk because he's anti very anti union Speaking of union. I just a friend of mine is part of iatsy the uh the television and and screen workers Union They have now called called for the strike to begin Monday at 12 o 1 a.m Pacific time You I didn't I didn't know there was a strike brewing Yes, oh, yeah Basically all the companies, you know netflix disney, etc all these companies that do streaming Keep screwing over the workers with contracts and with making Demands because the streaming stuff was never really woven into the contracts. They had before So people are working 12 plus hour days without the right kind of compensation not being fed properly a lot of covid safe safety stuff and The uh these production houses i've just been dragging their feet on making improvements And so iatsy says our contract is up and unless you they said about two weeks ago unless you Take this seriously. We're going to go on strike And they just announced that they have now have a strike date So if the production houses don't get their shit and gear by You know by the weekend Then we're going to see Every kind of production movie television streaming Everything shut down. So wait, is this going to postpone our bridgerton binge watching? You can watch stuff that's already been made. I know so feel free to Watch reruns of the office over and over again. Oh god. I can't stand the office I do not cringe humor is not my kind of humor anybody else I can't do my humor like larry david makes me like makes my skin call Like I just can't watch stuff. He does he's like I want to hear jamae's reaction to apple's doing the foundation series I haven't I was actually planning on watching it this weekend um The uh, we haven't gotten around we hadn't gotten around to subscribing to apple tv plus whatever until Um So one thing you can do if you have a bunch of apple devices in your family is you can set up a family plan that shares a whole bunch of crap So shares the iCloud storage shares the apps you download videos, whatever Um, and it all gets built to a single credit card mine in this particular case And my parents which I put on the family plan so they could actually get reasonable backups for their phones um, have a bad habit of accidentally subscribing to things that Uh, like my mom just subscribed to apple music. Jesus, you know paying for this, you know And my father to apple tv plus So this time I said well script they they took care of the subscription site inside of things We get to use it. So we use it We're paying for it anyway. Yeah And don't forget you get free apple plus if you bought an apple product in the last year So I haven't never even paid for it. You buy a phone or anything you get. Oh, I didn't know that You know, it's a bit more complicated than that, but um, because um I bought a an iphone 13 pro because I hadn't updated a number of phone in a number of years um, and that offer didn't come through because Um, I don't remember what it was but anyway If you have bought more than one and you rejected the offer Or didn't go with the offer for an earlier device you purchased and then the doesn't come from the second one I'm getting too deep into my own consumer habits. So let's move on So um worker Unskilled labor wages are going up. I mean really going up So, uh, that's going to help the inequality gap And so this this there's a lot of good news actually in economy right now so One of biden's weaknesses. I think is expectation management um, for example The idea that cobble's not going to fall in a hurry like he made a statement like oh, you know, even if we withdraw it's not going to fall real fast and then Cobble gone now he looks like an it like a moron and I think there were a bunch of people saying Hey, this is the house of cards if we backed out it's going to fall and he just nobody was listening to those people Which is usually what happens with good forecasters, right? Right jamae? Yeah And and so on this one, I think you know, I think between supply chain complete cock ups labor shortages rising wages, which is fantastic and a bunch of other stuff some inflation is inevitable like like we're And I'm no economist but Inae But I think we're heading straight for some inflation and he needs to prep people mentally for it Or he's just going to be blamed for the inflation, you know, right before the election and then who knows what happens No, I've been preparing for inflation over a year So the inflation's going up for a lot of reasons But most likely I could bottom line it for you m2 is going up, but money supply is not enough The money has got into people's hands and 0809 when they they pushed money in the economy to save it We just went on bank balance sheets and the banks didn't allow the money So the money essentially never hit the real economy got trapped Right in this instance when when the government was giving money. Thank god For covid they were directly like monetized that money went into people's real hands, right? It also paid off some of their debt. Yeah, so this time And so this none of this is bad and inflation itself anyway, so the money really hit the real economy this time And the other big problem is not big problem. The other thing that's going on the economy is that You have a record amount of debt. We are back to world war two levels of debt Now, of course, this is just because of covid. This is because of the last, you know, 15 20 years We've just been building this debt, you know, including the tax cuts trumped it to give capital yet more money Because it because it didn't have enough it just they just didn't have enough money on hand With a discount window wide open and all that it just wasn't enough money for them to grab So, um, the what we're likely to see and you'll sometimes hear this term financial repression is a term to utilize So, um, the government one last time they were in this month's debt was world war two And um, and we're talking not, you know, not absolute levels and I cannot, you know Finance all you care about relative levels like percentage of gdp. So essentially gdp is your National income and your debt level is whatever percentage of that it is So we're back up to that kind of level And we're not the only one. I mean europe's and that's basically across the western world all these western economies are in that kind of debt So the last time the way they got out of it was they in a very artful way stole from the rich to pay for And they're going to do it again. And uh, it's it's quite beautiful actually What they do is inflation runs hot and then they hold down the federal reserve holds down treasury bill rates interest rates on t bills And they they did that throughout world war two inflation would go skyrocket up 15 And t bills were paying 2 and in this way they were able to essentially do a massive transfer of wealth from the wealthy to the other side And it's called financial repression because essentially there's nowhere to go when they hold The interest rates down like that on treasury bills Your only place to go left is the stock market and go with the risk And essentially the huge amount of money out there just doesn't do that And it directly transfers the wealth back. So we're back into what what ray dalio talks about this and it's it's really neat It's very neat historical stuff because it's been happening for like 100 like for the last 700 years Our nations have done this game to get out of debt And the so that's what's going on so i'll be fine because i'm all in on game stock and um bitcoin Bitcoin is Bitcoin is stealing gold stunder as an inflation hedge And I definitely want to talk about blockchain because I saw you um did some stuff uh jim a you did something like that There's a lot to talk about on blockchain Yeah, and it's not crypto crypto is like the first manifestation of blockchain There's just so much that's going to happen because of blockchain and essentially think decentralized trustworthy database and uh 20 percent of the economy is involved in what is about to get hit with what blockchain can do And you know crypto is just basically A little piece a little sideshow what will it do to the 20 percent? I mean what would that what will it do to Well, how does that work? So what's so beautiful about the centralized um Trust trustworthy database is um, so 20 so everything that's record-based susan like um, here's where I foresee and a lot of the stuff I haven't read so i'm just projecting out my own thoughts about how this is going to work So eventually you have a Let's talk about like money when they like cryptocurrency and this is just one use case. So Um right now most dollars, you know are not physical dollars. They're just an entry on Wells Fargo's You know Journal saying you have this money. So the fact of the matter is most money is already digital period So but what do you do? You trust Wells Fargo's journal Wells Fargo knows how much money I have and I trust them Um, there's all kinds of entities throughout the economy. This is going on with So anything that's like a record like that Is right for being turned into a blockchain database and now a blockchain database is essentially a bunch of nodes Maintain the database right and it's trustworthy now. There's one can get into how that works and everything but I foresee things like uh driver's licenses Deeds to houses Deed to your car your title to your car and I think a lot of these blockchain databases will actually be like between The states and the federal government The state insurance companies the states and automobiles manufacturers because if you think about it right now when you go get a car You go to a dealership you buy the dealership basically says so bo about a car And then the insurance company says bo bought insurance from us You know and the bank says yep, we loaned him the money Everyone else seems to just go into a blockchain and every one of the nodes could just be the bank It could be the bank The auto company the dealership and insurance company and the state So all those records it's going to be actually really beautifully efficient. In fact One of the things I think these blockchain people are really missing out on Is they keep thinking this is going to dissolve governments. It's going to like poor asset on government in actual fact This this is going to be a way for governments to be much more efficient I mean So why not when you pay social security that could be on a blockchain that your employment record could be on a blockchain Essentially if we had the this kind of records on and the government keeps a lot of these kind of records the 20% of the economy I'm talking about is everybody that keeps a record the more, you know, everybody that keeps a record I mean essentially once this all gets You know gets into a blockchain and this is simply software eating the world which Andres admits he stole that from Buckminster Fuller idea This is software is going to eat these stupid records and these records really deserve to just be put on a decentralized Absolutely. Yes. Uh, so I okay, I'm beginning to get it and there's a lot to like about this. Um, So I want to speed this up just so your employment and everything was on that blockchain to realize when the government wanted to send money and figure out if someone was employed They could just do it literally in a matter of dates instead of like right now where a lot of this money That's still not reached people from kovid using four bureaucrats going. Hey proved to us your employee proved to us your You know proved to us all these things Those things could all be on blockchains literally government is going to end up being so much more efficient It's going to be wonderful Transactions are not identifiable to a human so the government won't know that you're employed or unemployed because they won't know that whatever Your spending or taking in is is you because each of those transactions ought not to be pegged to your identity They don't have to be but they can be Yeah, but isn't something that that makes that impossible It's not it's not how is the mechanism constructed, right? It's not that it's impossible. It's just that it's sort of either voluntary or Regulatorily imposed right well like think about it. Why not when you're case when so security when your employer pays social security for you and everything like that That could just be a blockchain based thing with the government And i'm talking I think a lot of these these these blockchains are actually going to be between the states and between the states and the federal government It just makes beautiful sense and they'll be the notes. It'll be their database They're distributed database. It's just a beautiful thing for them to do It just solves so many of their problems. There's also I want to give you one more like final really big thing for this so Um, china, of course is already digitizing the reminB. They're already doing it And that's one of the reasons they want there's a lot of reasons they want that bitcoin out of china. First of all, they hate capital flight They're always afraid of it and they should be they don't want money flying out of the country But the next thing is is they're introducing the digital reminB. They're gonna have and this is going to allow them surveillance capabilities Which are just really frightening But for for the rest of the world western world And by the way every bank and every every central bank and every bank in the in the world is hiring people in this technology like crazy The job wrecks are just out of control because they're not going to die. They're going to adapt They're going to get slammed. They're going to get they're going to have to change. But anyways, once money becomes purely digital Economics is going to go from a theoretical science to like oh just query the blockchain inflation So the theories that we have and all these tremendous statistical techniques we have to do Holy moly when when money is truly digital on a blockchain You can go and just query the chain. Is inflation happening when we do this? Can this happen? But the blockchain is a sequence of encrypted transactions about which, you know very little except that this amount of of Bitcoin went from A to B and you don't even really know who in A and B are or why why it was exchanged How are you going to just query the blockchain? I'm wrong about how much is obscured on the blockchain. In fact, uh, Frankly, that's why they've been able to track down a bunch of these criminals There's a lot on the blockchain and in fact the federal reserve. I mean anyways, so no, I disagree with that jerry the blockchains actually Has a lot more data and it's always showing where where it went from and where it's going to With the Nobel prizes That's totally different from blockchain, but that's you know experimental economics is huge Yes, but it is part of this move to To uh data informed economics and not just Yeah, right. I mean It's going to revolutionize economics like it's just it's going to turn it from Hey, you know, just just well look here it is. There it is man It's it's really it has some amazing possibilities for what it's going to do It's going to just completely change economics. Mr. Mayor, you agreed on how much the how much information the blockchain exposes I'm I I agree with both That it actually exposes quite a bit of information and bitcoin is is constructed in a way To hide ownership But that is purely a construction of bitcoin. That's not a that's not inherent to blockchain Blockchain is basically distributed records If you want to be overly simplistic about it You have copied your database across hundreds or thousands or millions of computers And locked it up with a with a particular kind of encryption But and then every time a change is made that gets replicated across all of the copies of the database so that there is no There is no single point of failure It's there are hundreds or thousands or millions of points of failure Uh potential points of failure or ways to basically replicate and hold the whole data true And the block the way the blockchain works is that you know, literally new data is added on to the end of it So the whole thing the whole record of everything that has happened in that that particular area whether it's money or Property records or whatever every single change is is recorded on that chain. So nothing is ever lost So it actually there a care it will carry a lot of information And depends on what and how much information is revealed to depend on how much information is put into the database that is that is That is intrinsic to that particular blockchain How do things become interesting to to blockchain Sorry, how how do things become uh Are they added to it? No, I know how they're added to it. What I want to know is what makes it intrinsic to a particular chunk of blockchain The rules So one of one of the things that people are talking about as a blockchain Use is what they call smart contracts or self-executing contracts That essentially it's a set of rules that You know that then replicated across, you know, all the whole system Um, that should a particular condition be be met then there's a whole bunch of things that happen as a result And you know, that's a particular kind a particular use of blockchain that is simply that is the data Information and algorithms that get encoded into that particular piece that particular use of blockchain There is there is no single in intrinsic to every single blockchain item other than it's a replicated database You know and there are problems with that, you know, there are a whole bunch of energy issues about how you do the verification And there are you know, and you don't have the conventional way of doing this You don't have to do half the point way at all. You don't have you don't have to but that has been the most common way And there's not there is not a at least as of what i've seen There is not a single point of agreement as to what the alternative methodology should be Um, did you get my idea where essentially I haven't read this I just came up, you know, I'm thinking about it like driver's licenses and And things for cars that instead of it being, you know, spending all that energy with independent miners If you trust the nodes if the nodes are states if the nodes are like auto companies You know if the nodes are interested actors because literally that's the way the paper trail already works Okay, so here's here's the issue Here's the issue the a blockchain system is more trustable the more nodes there are Because you need to have 50 plus one Of the nodes to be able to control the content But I also think that if you only have 50 nodes then Bad actor bad actor g op needs only to have control over 26 of them to basically be able to Have control over the entire network You know because blockchain is is dependent upon the information that is solely dependent upon the information that gets sorted the nodes And replicated across so if you control the replication You control the levers of power And if you have a hunt if you have a million nodes It's really difficult to do that if you have 50. It's really easy The other thing that I wanted to call out for the other thing I wanted to call out was simply the um The potential for Errors being hard hard written So I'm thinking about the no fly list Yeah, uh the no fly database It is rife with error But that if you put it into something that it is is now seen as the official unchangeable document Or very hard to change document It becomes these errors which are going to continue to happen that you know with people involved in this in operating in government It's going to happen. Actually, they could be maliciously And they could be done maliciously. They could be totally added on purpose. You could do a denial of service attack on blockchain. It would be pretty easy Yeah, so I think the block blockchain as a way of maintaining Usable databases is great. God Jerry would happen I'm in a room control lights. I'm in a room with a motion controller and where I sit it doesn't notice me And so I have to stand up now I just changed rooms where I here at ziba and I haven't figured out how to spool the motion sensor into noticing that I'm actually here all the time Every 30 minutes I I go pitch black Sorry to shock you. Sorry to shock you. I don't know if you have anyone to figure this out Jimmy let's go through how smart contracts get essentially and the insurance company For one, there's so many beautiful things to go down. But yeah, I'm not I'm not saying that blockchain is an evil technology I'm just I might what I am saying is that it's not a perfect technology But I and it certainly I have a point like I think that the people having thought through what if you trust the nodes Like right now, what is your how do you get a car title? Essentially the state believes a car company believes a dealership believes a bank And a whole bunch of reasons like I think eventually cars Like the blockchain will include the car manufacturer the dealer And in fact the same record of the car moving from the manufacturer the dealer will be part of the tax record that the irs Will use so if you include enough parties that you already trust well already have an interest in it I think you don't actually need to worry about the 51 percent takeover distributed database thing Aha, but I think you have a really idealized vision of what the blockchain is the blockchain is not a big queryable database The blockchain is a concatenation Of encrypted records none of which divulge a lot of information about what happened And you can't go and say hey Here's what Jerry bought at Safeway by querying the blockchain Even if all those records were put on the blockchain, which they aren't now You could not query the blockchain You could try to suck down the blockchain and do a lot of reverse You could try to reverse engineer the transactions the way they catch criminals through the blockchain is They actually to it. They think there's a time stamp on every transaction so This amount of beat of bitcoin moved from two entities at this second And we have evidence that this this transaction happened on this computer at the same second If we can correlate that we can have we have some Circumstantial evidence that this criminal did this thing But but this is not a nice big beautiful database. This is just a series of transactions Some of which are fucked up some of which are wrong, right and and irreversible because you can only add to the blockchain Jerry, it precisely is a queryable database. You are exactly wrong. It is precisely is a queryable database. That's what it is Now seriously, we're show me show me proof You're talking about Jerry remember we're talking about blockchain technology. Not the particular implementation. That's bitcoin Bitcoin has a whole bunch of intentional limitations on it to prevent That's right to prevent a lot of things prevent to keep it comparatively anonymous And so that's why they have to do this kind of inferential data Data discovery, okay, you know around time to transactions, but that's that's purely A bitcoin issue not a blockchain intrinsic issue So show me a blockchain that is a queryable database anywhere I mean, I agree that I agree that in principle is totally feasible But also also the idea that my like my driver's license And insurance records and accident records and health care records would all end up on one or several blockchains that are queryable in the way that bow is envisioning seems actually sort of impossible to me Well, I think the dmv already has one. We're just talking about a distributed dmv database between the states Yeah, and this is basically Because bitcoin has been the most visible implementation of blockchain it really gets Generalized everybody Yeah, well what it means is that basically the two of them get translated all the time Right And so what we're talking about blockchain blockchain is a particular kind of database technology that makes for you know, it replicates across multiple devices to basically make to ensure consistency And to maintain a sink a A queryable set of you know set of information About whatever whatever and I don't know about the queryable part. So I mean I think we could help Jerry out if you explain the use case of artists and music and and blockchain with Smart contracts and how that could work and that I think Jerry could really help So the smart contracts don't happen on a normal blockchain. They happen over on on ether like like the theorem A blockchain system, what is the normal blockchain distinction, but you know exactly I'm curious. I'm trying to figure out what Jerry where Jerry's going with this because Ethereum is a blockchain system Exactly based on a normal computer. It only works on an IBM No, no, no all these systems are layered right there's layers and layers of stuff that are that are happening And then we really haven't talked about the energy consumption because it's a it's actually a travesty right now and there are some Yes, and that's a that's a function of a particular way of doing verification of the data And it doesn't the verification. There are alternative methods that are harder to do And they have there hasn't been a single decision on what the alternative methods should be across systems Because doing data data verification by calculation Is crazy I'm sorry versus proof of stake. So yeah, there are different ways Jerry And also there's a that that's not gonna kill blockchain at all. That's that would be that's being dealt with But let's explain the use case for music Jimmy because I think it's a thing close to Jerry's heart And how smart contracts tied with a blockchain of who created what music Would just help artists like it's a beautiful use case I'd actually would prefer you to to describe it because I have I don't know if I if I could to give it the the detail that you could I don't know if I could okay, so the smart contracts Jerry So ether Ethereum is the one we're talking and let's literally take bitcoin and put it over there It's really a very specialized Thing and you shouldn't Ethereum is the one that's really got the potential. It's just a distributed database that can run computer code and look for conditions So you can literally if you had a blockchain that said, okay, anybody that creates music You know, let's encode it on this blockchain And we're gonna and so whatever music every every creator is tied to what they created And then literally that person could just go and say, okay This is how much I charge for this and this is how much I charge for that If you play it in a tv commercial if you put it on your youtube video And it could literally just go query the blockchain And and get them a micro payment right there boom through the blockchain through my so that And the whole transaction could just be between computers and simply the blockchain literally So I'm not I probably explain that someone really fast because we're all a little heated here But for what it can do for artists, it's just going to be astonishing and instead of sitting there with negotiations between record companies But literally set your condition the minute you use it It's going to be in the digital sphere anyway as soon as you play that music the computers are going to know you're playing this music And I was like, okay, well that person owns the music. Okay, give them a micro payment done Literally it could be such that that you could put it in your youtube video for example And it doesn't get charged till somebody plays the youtube video It's not it's so you you could literally do that jerry. It's beautiful It doesn't happen magically the system has to be programmed to use it And so youtube would have to be programmed to make use of it But what where's both? Bo's going with this is that because the system is done algorithmically to set up algorithmically You can have Get very specific conditions that get met to have very specific results because it's all and and this is the critical part Where for the blockchain it's replicated across Dozens there are dozens of us It's replicated across thousands or more systems that all that all can verify each other that this is the rule Yeah, and the that's the the value of blockchain in principle is that kind of cross verification Because if it was just a database owned by ask cap, right or something then Ask cap could make any kind of do any kind of changes and no one could Do anything about it because it happens behind the scenes. It's the one database and look This is what the database says. He must be right. Whereas You have a blockchain listing of music ownership Um, that's then can be tied into systems like you know for micro payments Then you have that kind of cross verification to make it very difficult to manipulate So it's a trust machine. I mean the economists, I remember when I was really digging this, I realized, oh my god It's a technological solution for trust So technological solution for trust when I go digging into my economists We're you know records and they call it the trust machine They wrote an article about it like three years ago. I'm like, oh, this is the trust machine And I went oh my god And if you really think about how many things go on in human relations and economic relations, they're all about trust That's why it's hard to explain while it's far going money. You trust who are you talking to? Look who you're talking to here I know the trust guy and so and actually I think he if I know if I know jerry His reaction to me that's not that's an artificial version Artificial replication to try to make trust To to have artificial trust trust it says a human interaction Um, not really. I'm kind of okay. I'm kind of all and this is worth slowing down and talking about a lot Um, so they call blockchain or whatever the trustless system, right? And I'm like actually no, it's not we're trusting that Satoshi's algorithms actually play out and that the maths and these things work Like we're trusting that the genesis block of bitcoin is actually trustworthy and findable And nobody knows who satoshi is and nobody knows where the genesis block or bitcoin is or whatever else You know, whatever else is going on. Nobody actually knows those things So everything we're talking about is built on a bunch of acts of faith that are technological and mathematical But are still kind of acts of faith that could basically blow and then the assumptions that you're talking about shamae like Um, the the corruptibility of the network, you know, uh, 50 plus one of the servers and all that I think I think are pretty true and I think those assumptions are being violated All the time as people experiment at higher levels and get abstracted away from the foundational You know, workings of the system So I'm really interested in all these things on top and I think nfts and smart contracts are really exciting I think there's all sorts of potential to pay artists. I agree but but I don't think That ethereum is a vast queryable database I think that someone could use their ethereum information and present it in a way that's queryable. That's cool but the ethereum network itself is A layer of like if you if you if you posted a an agreement with bow on ethereum, could I go read all the terms of your contract? Is it is everything on ethereum exposed openly like that? Is that how it works? Yep. It's a trust. Yep, seriously No, no, no, I mean seriously. Are you assuming this or do you know this? I know this I mean, this is a big deal This is a big deal because that means every contract posted to ethereum is completely open source. Is that correct? Yep. Yes, it is. It's not income You're happy to just to Proclaim that as as true. So I don't I don't know it all it does is run code and and Yep, yes, it is I don't know. Um, I do however have a friend who's been working Vinay Gupta, you might know who he is. Oh, I know Vinay. He's crazy, but he's good. He's smart Yeah, but he's been he's been at ethereum from from early on So, uh, if you have questions In particular questions that we happen to run them run them past him if you want to get in on From the inside perspective. Yeah So, uh, our ethereum smart contracts public composabilities mark contracts are public on ethereum and can be thought of as open apis That means you can call other smart contracts in your own smart contract to greatly extend what's possible Contracts and even deploy other contracts um The only thing this the thing where you're you're getting this idea from is is um, Bitcoin where they they really they want to hide who's who owns it But even that is very hard to do but that's anyways Yes, jerry, it is open because ethereum just runs code. It literally runs computer in a run Computer code in a box So anyway, I don't want to get and again Just toss bitcoin out the window. It's not a good example of blockchain. Please do that. Please do that So bitcoin but bitcoin as a proof of case has proven though very well this example is Is well, you've got miners in china miners in america miners in europe and it's been running now for so many years and It's and it's not been Broken has not no one has been able to to Take over the blockchain and That we know of well that no Yeah, there's actually a whole bunch of controversy around that around bitcoin the forking of bitcoin who owns the particular Machines that that run the this one particular fork of bitcoin. It's Again toss bitcoin out the window when it comes to using an example for anything And also don't don't drink quite as much kool-aid though because you're like you're all in on this Like, you know, like you sound like you're completely believing the whole the whole narrative sound like a you don't fully understand it and be you're literally I mean There's going to be lots of implementations of this and think of it as just a decentralized database So in the world we live in today We're just dealing with with centralized databases that we trust we trust walls fargo. We trust the federal reserve I don't trust walls fargo. Are you shitting me? Did you see did you see the crap they were pulling you have a bank account with them You're essentially whether you like it or not you're trusting them. So then you don't have a bank account, right? Yeah, I don't we cancelled our walls fargo account, but you do have a bank account Or it's I must have a bank account someplace and I'm trying to figure out who we're exactly We already the whole world operates on a bunch of centralized ledgers that we already agree with you You trust if you own a house that the State of Oregon or the county a blah blah blah has a record that you own it It's just another centralized data. Let me let me state the motives for or the motivation for my skepticism And I will claim that I don't know how all these moving parts work and this conversation is leaving me with a whole bunch of questions to go like look up But I watched in 2008 2009 As a whole bunch of humans on earth poured all their money into cds and cds Which had flawed math under the hood because nobody had checked the downside risk And and there was a there was a downside risk assumption that was wrong That was baked into the entire fucking system right at the root level And once everybody was jumping on this on this carousel Everybody else had to jump on the carousel if you read the big short and watch the movie Like the six people who sort of figured this out and bet against the You know bet to make money from the collapse They would never want to replicate this activity again in their lives because everybody in their world hated them It was like running against the stream was almost impossible. And when I read Michael Lewis's little article It's the economy doom cup about a little retirement A teacher's retirement fund in norman, germany that went bust because of the global financial crisis. I was like Oh crap Every they got everybody to pour their money into one system Then a few people jumped off the carousel before everybody else cashed in John Paulson made bazillions of dollars from this so did goldman and everybody else got slammed right so so I watched that happen with a whole bunch of smart people saying this is great. We're gonna not enough I'm hearing the same vibe and I see a lot of stuff that could be isn't necessarily But could be at just as flawed as oops, we forgot to check the downside risk And by the way when you don't factor in downside risk, you're obviously going to have higher than average returns Right and then and then there's corruptions in the system that show up like The ratings agencies were giving junk bonds triple a ratings. I mean junk derivatives triple a ratings, which was clearly not Should never have been happening and hasn't been fixed. So and that's a separate crisis from what we're talking about here So I'm looking I'm looking for the possible week the cracks in the foundation that 10 years from now We'll be like, oh shit We all poured our money into the blockchain ethereum. What have you and then man? We were wrong because then the whole thing fell apart And I'm not saying that's going to happen. I'm saying like I'm smelling like a plot. I've seen before I would say first of all, this is kind of an argument from accident just because this happened The financial system wasn't thrown out Financial system always suffers from financial innovation where actors outrun the regulator And they do all kinds of things that the regulators didn't even understand and that's half of the situation Regulators are always behind things. In fact, you're seeing that happen right now in blockchain The regulators are sitting there trying to figure out how to do this and and they're like, oh my god It's a whole new world that's involved in front of them. And this is all that's happening Blockchain is simply a technology which we can now have decentralized Trustworthy databases. That's it. That's all it is. Jerry period And anyone who understands a centralized database should be able to understand a decentralized database and the value of their file It's simply a technology So I think I put it this way. There is no there are no inherent technical reasons why somebody couldn't set up a set up a Broken scam like cdo's whatever using blockchain as an underlying technology because the underlying technology is Neutral the bet is not it's it's agnostic. It's just agnostic Um, you're disagreeing bow. No, that's it exactly. Yeah, it's just a technology. That's it and so it it would not be it would not be at all shocking to me if there was some kind of Financial system fuckery that happens using blockchain, but it wouldn't be happening because it's blockchain It would be happening because it's fuckery Um, it's like it's like saying, you know, you can have fuckery you can have the financial system fuckery whether you're using Digital dollars fiat currency or gold You know gold back currency you have it may be a different kind of fuckery, but fuckery remains possible I love this term. It's great So what I think You and bow are not as in so much disagreement as you as it may seem they're at you're just talking at different angles You are completely you're completely correct in saying that there are there is a A kind of halo around blockchain right now for a lot of people That make it seem like it's That make it sound like it's magical technology that'll fix everything And you know and I have to admit bow that some of what you were saying about how it'll make government great and efficient that really that felt it was redolent I'm trying to say something but but um That doesn't mean that blockchain is the opposite There is there aren't horns on it either it is a an agnostic technology of of verification and database replication That is that can be done in a very efficient way That is hard that is hard but not impossible hard to break And has the potential to make some things happen You know some kinds of transactions happen either automatically or with greater efficiency However, it is a human technology will it will and has been abused it will be and has been abused and You know fuckery remains possible Where where I think for bow what I think Jerry is getting at is that the because the technology remains hard for some people to grasp and remains in the hands of people who um Have have great appreciation of their own skills Ha ha ha ha The like there is a potentially higher likelihood of fuckery that can take place because of this because people can be bamboozled more easily more readily um, I think both of those are true That basically these are the angles of your of your images on my screen You know Jerry is correct about the fuckery bow is correct about the efficiency But what that leads to is really highly efficient fuckery Yeah, and I would like to say one of the reasons I I'm saying how government would be better I'm actually trying to say something against the greater blockchain community and specifically the libertarian idea That somehow they're going to Destroy banks and destroy government. I mean I literally I am actually highlighting when later on I'm sure in a year I hope in the future years you understand what I'm trying to do. I'm saying no This is not going to knock down governments. Yes Greatly transform banks banks are going to have to innovate and find a new place to be but in a lot of ways There are banks still have very vital Functions to serve so when I was saying Governments are going to be more efficient. That is completely contrary to what the blockchain community is saying every day I'm going to be saying things like government's done We are not we're going to be able to escape governments entirely and set up our own little crypto states blah blah blah blah That's why I'm saying wrong Wrong. Actually, this is going to be a a boon to governments and they will figure it out Did you read the long read about the C setting ship? Yeah, I'm trying to go with the the blockchain You know elect Who are now just endlessly going on about how governments are over and everything wrong. Yeah Yeah, I don't think anyone on this call or anyone who would call into this call Would be likely to fall for that particular interpretation of reality um You know for one thing we tend to be there. I don't think there are any teenagers who really call in And most of the steps that's better from blockchain of likers and stuff like that is just dribble It's dribble and it's very similar to like 1999, you know the dot-com stuff like, you know pets.com is rife It's all over the place right now. Agreed Okay, I'm done. Go ahead. Jerry. Mr. Clark You've just missed a a fun and heated conversation about blockchain bitcoin the future of the world and everything Yeah, bitcoin Pass it aside. We're not talking about bitcoin Okay, well, uh, I'll just add my two cents that You know people who are only talking about blockchain don't understand the larger domain of digital ledger technologies And they're fixated on some subculture Or cult of blockchain Uh that you know needs to you know need to expand their thinking Nice, this is roughly what bo was saying and I'll also say that, you know, cryptocurrencies are simply the The new thing that was needed once we made bare bonds illegal Right for the criminals of the planet to be able to move Value across borders without being detected I'm done Don't forget how billionaires have like flying to to Switzerland and they have all those storage facilities where they put all the work starts and everything to keep them out of You know, so yes, the fungibility of cryptocurrencies is a very useful tool for not just criminals But I guess you could call the real criminals the billionaires Criminals Yeah, I mean Yeah, you know You know criminality, you know extends into many domains of human deceit And how about those pandora papers? Oh, yeah How about them? So I hope none of these reporters get killed Like with the the reporter who's behind the panel on papers So kevin that was a very useful summary we are much appreciated I I have I'm on the other side of the conversation where I've distilled it into sound bites because my opinion has you know You know evolved toward the end of simplicity as opposed to complexity So i'll tell you the way I think about it and then maybe this will be the end of it Is that tcip is an unimpensate internet. This is another technology a distributed database That are trustworthy are trustful This is just another technology like that, but it's a big one and it's got one and it's 20% of the economy is right for Being sucked up into the cloud Well, one piece of the broader conversation here is the dweb the distributed web and how much that's going to happen over the next period and it seems to be moving strong on lots of different fronts not just Sort of cryptocurrencies and distributed ledgers Just in time, huh, isn't it? I mean we're sitting there with One monopoly asshole after another google facebook amazon, but it's some decentralization, couldn't we? Yeah, but it's still impossible to replicate what facebook does with dweb apps like not quite doable yet Yeah, I got a little eweb server in my basement. So yeah You might need an exterminator for that because you're getting a lot of webs Okay, i'm done. Uh, all right. There's a may. There's a may. Uh pick a new topic shake the magic uh eight ball and Tell us a completely different topic. We should focus on for the last stretch of our call Oh, no, you put me on the spot. Um, something else that's juicy for you That can even be oh Come on. Let's just figure out what's happening with the latest variant of the virus And how I guess we're really going to end up living with it just like the common Just like the flu or something influenza. So we're shifting out. So let's talk about that No, yeah, you got uh deltas becoming endemic And uh the The uh personization of the vaccine anti-vaccine Structure is kind of is horrifyingly fascinating. Yeah Because it's become just It's getting worse every day in that that split You know to the point where it's actually starting to have um Follow-on effects or side effects against other kinds of vaccination Where there's some people questioning getting a vaccines for Everything other things everything. Yeah, but but also like heating people up about vaccines Really serves a bunch of different things including undermining elections So so what's happening here is people are getting like really really pissed at public officials And the cost of being a public official just shot through the roof and it's mostly sorry for the lighting again mostly Don't get paid much or at all. There we go. Come on little detector Hour back. I know I think it detects when I say something it doesn't like and shuts the lights off on me um But but I'm seeing you know a piece of a piece of what the republican party is trying to do right now Is make sure that all at the local level Everything works in the favor of republicans so that the next election no matter what the popular vote is They win the election. Yeah And they're they're being systematic and clever and brutal about it very very brutal about it And you know the videos of people being threatened and we know where you live You're not going to get away with this kind of shit. That's being done intentionally And and the anti-masking and all of all of that is part and parcel of how do you heat people up enough that you can Run the table and keep winning elections And we're in the middle of that now. I don't know how to defuse it. I'd love to hear great ideas on how to Take the energy out of that. I don't know And I think you're absolutely right and that this is there is a larger goal here and the Attacks on the infrastructure of elections the political infrastructure of elections at the local and state level Is far more important than whatever, you know, the latest outrage from trump Yeah, this is because that's going to That'll go beyond Trump's uh life lifetime, you know, if you have these the system going in to make it so that The secretary of state has no has no control over the election that this if the secretary of a state secretary of state Oh, a particular state happens to be a democrat if you put in these these Tools to make it possible to overthrow the popular vote And do so in a way that that is quote unquote legal It's going to be The 22 election is going to be chaotic the 24 election could be could be catastrophic yeah and I don't know if there is a Way to get past that that doesn't involve a lot of people changing their mind Because right now the democratic party is being cautious Because it has a history it has a history of being cautious, but also It has learned that if it gets too aggressive then a lot a lot of the Social political infrastructure mass media like tends to turn against it um The accusations of being a radical are much more harmful to democrats than two robbers um Overton window, but uh, you know, and so you have a situation where We'll see examples of this in 22 Pro and there will be a lot. There'll be court cases. There will be people yelling um Hopefully nothing nothing more than yelling um But if it's not broken down after that Then 24 we will get whoever's republican as as president rather no no matter the vote So historically in a fight historically, but in a fight Usually often the person with the least to lose and who's willing to go the furthest wins the fight Um, and this is the problem with peaceful societies I was reading Howard zinn's old piece about columbus because columbus day was monday And somebody floated. Hey, here's zinn's old essay about about this is the real columbus Who was brutal and and was welcomed like the tino people were like dude. Here you are. Here's our stuff And he's reporting back to england how generous these people are and we could take everything with just a couple soldiers And and you know, you know the rest of the rest of how that plot plays out um so This has happened over and over and over again and a peaceful society Actually trying to sort of nurture the commons and the people Is usually victimized by somebody with sharpers sharper swords and more gunpowder So my question is how do you become like a puffer fish? Like like the puffer fish's only defense is spikes on its outside and when someone another fish tries to eat it It's like And then the other fish will barf it out because ow, I didn't like that. That was awful Um, well, eventually you're going to have like a jones town, you know loyalty Where the people realize that they're being, you know, sacrificed, you know At the altar of what they've worshiped and those people all died they didn't leave Well, that's okay because the demographics are arching toward, you know, a lot of them are going to die Now you will have go ahead between immigration and the coronavirus lopsided deaths You would think that the demographics would be like kicking in at 2022 2024. I'm not reading that at all I'm not reading that at all and also in in part. It's because a lot of latinos are much more conservative than you think they are And If you saw john oliver this this past weekend a lot of the Stuff that youtube and facebook has been taking down for misinformation. If it's done in spanish is not being taken down So a lot of that All the real crap misinformation is spreading like wildfire in the latin spanish-speaking community in the united states. Wow. Wow They don't have the capacity to work multi, you know nationally in this country the the stat that all of john oliver used was that 20 percent of facebook's use is english language 80 percent of their fact checking is english language That's what i was trying to say and i used the wrong term. I meant multicultural not multinational But i i knew what you meant You know, whether it's capacity or focus or whatever I mean, well, we know that that outside of the united states facebook Is not a social media. It's a utility right that facilitates commerce and facilitates banking and facilitates a whole bunch of other stuff It's built into the fabric of everyday life, you know, I can get through a day without facebook There are places in other parts of the world where you can't get through the day without facebook There are definitely places that can't get through the day without whatsapp Yeah, that's true absolutely Absolutely, what's what's happening globally much bigger than facebook or we what's app is absolutely critical and owned by So I don't know kevin if you know different. Let me know but Um, you you can in we chat and all those other apps you can actually run all of your transactions Do all of your reviews run your maps? Do you run your whole day? I don't think facebook has that feature in any country Well, I mean it's just it has more functionality elsewhere Right. Um, that's all I'm trying to indicate and you're right. We chat is much more pervasive In fact because I have to use we chat to communicate with people in china I have a completely separate android phone that only has that installed because when you install it It sucks up all of your address book and everything else So I have a we chat phones, right? You can have everything that's not on this phone Right, yeah makes total sense you know You know anyway, so you have this Yeah, that's actually a really good idea. Uh, especially for china. It's also not just we chat it's um Or not that you know, sorry we chat Is china is is massive in china whatsapp is Yes, yes, yes 100% Yeah, and you can live your life inside of we chat comfortably and the chinese government is happy with that because they've got their nose under the tent And you've seen that's possible to do with whatsapp whatsapp is has mechanisms to allow transactions and That was one of the big the big deals with that outage last week for this past week was that It yeah, it took down facebook and instagram and americans were whining about that but globally it knocked down The the economies for countries all over the world for that day Yeah, people could not do to not run their businesses could not engage in banking Yeah, if I can just go back to what you were observing about Hispanic and I use that term generally There is a huge intra cultural caste system Inside the hispanic community All right, and you know, there There's a I jerry you remember I could never hold a latin american Industry advisory council or customer advisory council in latin america I had to hold it in miami because there was no country that was neutral enough Right, it was impossible to host it on terra firma latin america. It could not be accomplished and you know the You know, so what we're seeing play out there is something that's You know pretty much as ancient as you know What we see play out in the middle east? Right in terms of you know having deep Suspicions all the way to hatreds. All right that play out and there's you know whole notionalities of some Hispanics, you know cultures are better than others, right? um Superior to others and so we've imported that too right there's a A diagram i'll find insurance act, but it was a diagram of spanish cast The cast system with with names for all of the different sort of you know It's a little bit like, you know, quaterns and octa runes and all of that among among african americans and uh It's crazy. That's how you know, that that's how you conquer societies actually You know in india the raj has very few humans, but they managed to sort of use indian groups against each other very really effectively So so much of this is social control. Yeah So much of this is social control and the question is does the dweb improve Does the dweb we can centralize social control enough that it actually provides an alternative in a way out um And can we go supranational? Instead of you know because because part of this conversation is china will have digital renminbi and will have digital currencies But those are still national currencies with national taxes. One of the promises of crypto currencies is borderlessness Okay, which is great for criminals. Oops But is really interesting in terms of jurisdictions and the idea of nation states So there's there's a thread in the air about hey is the nation state under as much pressure for its existence as general motors is um so There was a international politics Scholar named kenneth waltz He wrote a book in 1959 called called man the state and more that that remains a text that's used in political science Since in the u.s. And actually globally theory of international politics and he wrote also wrote theory of international politics in 79 that Had included the classic line comparing business corporations to countries that IBM was far more likely to collapse by the by the next century than what then was a soviet union Because that perspective that that countries had had Had weight that and they would not be changed as easily as corporations So just what you were saying there. I don't know if it directly lines up But that's just just flashed on that line that stuck with me um And you studied under waltz didn't you? Yes, I did. Yes, I did. I've got him above you in my brain But you may you know all you had to do was wait a little bit longer IBM turned out to be a little bit resilient, but it is splitting in two Oh, yeah, no, it is right in the middle of you know doing mitochondrial, you know division and You know becoming a business that is focused on more human interaction and a business that is more focused on Infrastructure and technology and it's really it's a really interesting strategic division um The point is that actually is that not that waltz was wrong It's that he chose a really unfortunate example I know to make that larger point that that I think you're right that if he had chosen I don't know france It would have that would have been He would have been right that IBM eventually does engage in mitosis and But I but I observe, you know going back to the star trek episode where captain kerrk, you know Congratulations, shatner. We're going into a little bit into space today the Is that he gets divided into two captain kerks in the in the transporter And you learn in the episode that you know the animalistic, you know limbic, you know kind of kerk You know is not functioning well with only the cerebral Prefrontal cortex kerk and they got to put it back together to be a functional captain, right? I suspect that this is going to be the problem with ibm and kindral Is that in separating The technology from the human aspects of interaction that they will have Both organizations end up being somewhat dysfunctional Um and that they needed to be together for a longer period of time. All right, but Time will tell it seems like a really a really strange way to divide the company. I like that's so interesting And amazon will buy them both Yeah, I mean the thing is having been an ibm watcher and even went to live there So I could understand it It boggles the mind. I mean well, but it's it actually is true to their core I mean that then those conversations never really happened in anybody They were viewed as threatening all the time and they pretended to hire social scientists to help them out with this, but I mean they had so social scientists The only question was did they have the capacity in a top executive team that mostly tested as being um You know, uh, no, they did That is my point. They did not have Right and this is just like sort of admitting They can't do it I don't know. I mean I Gershner decided in an earlier era that the company splitting up into smaller units was a bad idea and that we needed to stay together Now that was for a financial engineering reason. Okay as much as anything else Yes, but as I look at this, you know kind of division into two major thought camps about what business you're in I'm I'm reminded of the early days when we had field engineering. We had a field engineer in the account They say hey, you're running out of storage. You know, you know, and and they say oh, what do we do about that? buy more storage And they would call the account and they would so they had somebody embedded with the customer and You know the minute they got rid of field engineering IBM lost the capacity to sense and respond To the daily needs of businesses the new Kind role that has managed operations and has people with badges, you know in accounts IBM is going to lose on the technology side The listening and sense and respond function that they've Enjoyed right since they got back into managed operations. I look I'm going to shut up, right? We'll just observe and see what happens. All right And I'll take my one share of kinder role for every five shares of IBM and we'll see what happens It is fascinating Yeah, it is I got to go I was I was glad to be with you guys for a moment and thank you Yeah, you guys are the best Cheers at least we think we are. Yeah, you are. Bye. Here's gary Yeah, what about what's happening in europe with the wind not blowing on the north sea and now and then Vladimir Putin saying oh, maybe I'll help you out approve that gas pipeline everybody Oh, let's say the germans closing down their nuclear reactors and filling with coal Now the rest of europe is having to burn them much more cold because the wind's not blowing Wow, there's a lot going on in europe, baby Yeah, yeah Everything seems messy right now. We're in this very weird state Well, yeah, I remember the beginning of the summer when it was like a week and a half It was like yay. We're gonna get life again and then yeah Went to a restaurant for the first time in them in a year and that was the last time I went to a restaurant You know basically aside from trips to the trips to the doctor And a couple of trips to the grocery store during that during that interregnum I have been in the same 1800 square foot space since March of 2020 so you don't go to grocery stores or anything you get delivered food You get everything delivered Janice will occasionally go basically the the anti Uh The drugs I take for my arthritis are tuber necrosis factor suppressors Which basically means they are immune system suppressors And so I am at a somewhat elevated risk Yep, so I just don't take take the risk. Yep Okay, I didn't realize that yeah Man So I'm surprised you haven't like built an internal climbing gym or a trapeze that or if You pan the camera up. Is there actually a factor trapeze that's out of sight right now? No, no, that that that would Be based on the idea of me doing kind of physical exercise, which it's a concept That's an all that's an alternate reality. Is that like is that happening in a parallel world somewhere else? That's it who's here No, the the the most exciting thing here at this house is just the uh, it's pandora The the new cat that I think I had talked about last time I was here because I know I missed last month But it's still not integrated We figured that it's essentially She's dealing with kitty ptsd and she was uh, you know We got her at six months and that was she was literally off the street She had wandered into jenice's sister's backyard and then she ended up with us And she has a couple of big scars on her leg and on her belly From obviously having undergone some kind of violent episode Probably probably from another cat And so she's just incredibly skittish around other cats And I know Not well Not as much She gets bitey quickly It's it's never like a hard violent bite. It's a I'm done with what you're doing now kind of kind of bite And uh So we're doing all the things you're supposed to do to you know cross you know to introduce smells and Have visual introductions and all that but it's just being a bit. It's been a very slow process Oh, man. So that means you've got to keep barriers up inside your house to separate the cats Yeah, so it's basically pandora is kept in a in our guest room closed into our guest room with her own you know spaces and litter box and you know feeding area and etc um, and we go in there several times a day And every day we let her out for a couple of hours and put the other two cats in a different room and so It's difficult and we recognize that there's a Significant chance we're going to have to re-home her But we don't want to do it without giving it a full try Because she's when she is on her own she's incredibly affectionate I mean She's the most affectionate cat I've ever interacted with In terms of like coming up and butting her head against you and touching nose and just all the things that you imagine a Really affectionate cat would do she does But only when she's alone So Anyway, that's the excitement here Maybe if you put her in the transporter and then beam her back she'll it'll that part of her personality will split off and be left behind You know, I will give that a try. Okay. Yeah, just saying How about you Susan? What else is going with you besides a roof? Not enough Well Yes, uh, well, I keep thinking I'm going to sort of dive back in and you know write something and I You know conversation like this makes me think I can't stop thinking is my problem And it makes me think that There is I put it in a note up there, but it probably didn't Grab anybody's attention at the time, but it seems like there's a social phenomenon call it grace That people provide each other In ways that systems we have not engineered systems to do that And and that it's going to be interesting to see I mean if I had another life I might just start over You know with the idea that You know, let's let's figure out how grace happens now that we've gotten rid of god and religion Right, uh, we used to go there for that and and that's not where we can go anymore nor If I read the situation, right? Are we likely without some sort of introspection and understanding likely to Uh likely to figure out how we're going to keep any sort of grace in the system And how it is that we are going to interact with it and I think I think it's just a big deal's trust jerry I really do. I think it's uh It hasn't quite been noticed. I mean if somebody notices anything in this department I I would like to read it, but my suspicion is that If we were to look at it the way we look at trust or the way some of us look at trust Which is the the outcome of interaction And and as as bow forcefully pointed out, uh, it's it's not just interaction with other humans Although that is the primary source of it But we do we do grant We do we do interact with machines And we slowly begin to give give them our trust Um, and and it takes in a lot of interaction for that to happen Uh, and I think we're going to see see more of that so But if they're all going to be very, um You know what happens when there is a mistake? I mean, I think it will be they will be Uh More egregious and less visible And and so what's the You know, what's what's any response to that? I I just sort of like I just sort of sit here and think well It might be I should just I don't know That feels like something that needs to be on the table. It's a spiritual and a religious thing, but it just has to be there otherwise You know, we will we will We will we will just uh The social construction mechanisms that we have Uh, are are going to continue to help us evolve communities of practice of of tribes of I don't know whatever your favorite word is for all of this stuff un Be known on on uh, we're unaware that that's how things work And so I just sort of feel like at this point in my life. It's like so sad Once I understood that that's how things worked, you know, it was really very hard to figure out how people might Might take this on So Several things Susan first. I love the word grace Um, it's important to me to me. It's on my list of favorite words in my brain. Etc. Etc. Um, second It just came up for me yesterday because um Uh A year ago, I participated in a virtual conference called unfinished which was little Romanian conference That was really kind of fun. And then uh, I mentioned this idea. Have I mentioned story threading to you all before? I think so story threading So I had mentioned story threading a year ago and it stuck in their heads So I'm going to be story threading this year's unfinished conference And they're pairing me up with uh, uh kind of an artist named Emma and she and I met yesterday having watched a video which is uh, Ida Benedetto and Jessica Hartsell just having a heartfelt conversation while walking on the bay area ridge trail And in this they talk a lot about how do you handle darkness? Like how do you go through personal dark periods? And and this little nexus in my brain are these are my brain notes of their video conversation And then as a story threader My job is not to report back on the conversation faithfully But rather to to pick an angle through it and make some commentary that might be Generative or might broaden the conversation And so the thought that I connected to That was already in my brain that that this led me to was how you react to events is really really important Not getting your amygdala hijacked Yes emotional self-regulation And then that connects up to grace, right? So here's here's the idea of grace patterns of grace Uh, sanctifying grace and Catholicism divine grace. There's a whole bunch of things. There's a nice poem by your hydropole grace Grace under pressure is interesting But now I need to do a little thinking about more about what What grace means and how this this happens because one of the things and and and to be like a little bit mundane about this But to bring IBM back into the conversation Um when I was with new science associates and I started our new I started my first research service for them called intelligent document management One day bruce barlag our our co-founder and bp of sales came back wide-eyed They had just visited dave ladell at ibm and he had had my issue of Of uh, my write-up of their image plus system on his desk completely marked up in red And he was mad and bruce came back and said oh my god. Oh my god. You got to talk to dave You got to talk to dave and so several days later the next week Dave and I had a conversation and the first words out of dave's mouth are You know jerry I was reading a book the other day and I don't remember what the book was And I or over the weekend and I have a feeling that maybe we mean different things by the same words And we quickly figured out that I had said that image plus was neither strategic nor open But within shit within the world of ibm isn't that funny? Within the world of ibm Here ready and we're back um So within the world of ibm That offer was both strategic and open. It's just that those words meant completely something different to them than to an outsider like me And so of course they do that's one of the things about language So so he signed up and so he became a client Right He became a client of our service and and I realized that when bad news shows up really really often It's an opportunity and if you can relax in how it shows up and and by the time we were talking I mean Bruce came back all heated up and excited And we were kind of excited for a couple days because ibm was the 600 pound gorilla in our market We were tech industry trends analysts doing an you know emerging technologies So we really gave a damn about what ibm thought but by the time the conversation showed up I was just listening and not I didn't I wasn't Trying to manage the conversation as much as just be there and he had done some magical kind of work that allowed him to be there In the way that led to that conversation So that was that was a big lesson for me that Hey, just because an appointment gets canceled You know when the appointment gets canceled Maybe it wasn't meant to happen and the next time you talk that person will feel like there's a little bit of debt They have to you to listen differently because they inconvenience to or something All these things just kind of work in different weird ways So anyway, that's one tale of grace in some sense and I'm really interested in what everyone else thinks about grace And what are the what are the threads to pursue or how else it hits you or or anything like that because I think that If we can offer grace to the people who are busy trying to melt the world That's a path to fixing these problems And grace is one of those languages one of those words that has religious valence a lot of religious valence That might be useful in this setting I agree with that too. Yeah, well, it's a it's a uh Yeah Yes, the hijack I mean the hijacking Linda hijacking that was the word I use started to use a couple of years ago. And I um, and I think uh I think that It needs to be more I mean, there are all these things that I can try to remember the latest example I mean, just I just see them go by day by day Where you know the thing that everybody thinks is a very cool thing is is is simply reinforcing The hijacking of the amygdala You know, it's happening faster and faster decisions are making how we you know, do you like this? You know, it's like every time I buy something Every time I do anything and I'm asked to especially doing all this, you know buying uh, oh buying toilets for instance online Um Stuff like that because I'm trying to I now have running water For the first time in seven years ever here up here, right? I even have running hot water Going to the 19th century. Yes Well, yes. I mean I double tell you I said it's not even a cold water flat. What's going on here. So um And uh, but then I put up with an awful lot of stuff that my friends think I'm nuts for anyway, so um But ordering all this stuff and the zillions of times a day I'm asked to you know answer a survey and it's it's like immediately as soon as I bought something They want to know how my experience was. Yeah, I'm like, I know I know we've all had this for years. It's not news It's not anything else. It's just that it's it's it's amygdala hijacking on a scale, but I just didn't know existed With the intent Of understanding your relationship in a way that's Destructive to the relationship. It's very interesting. Oh, exactly. Which that seems to be unappreciated as well. Yeah Um any other thoughts on grace? You know, it's when you talk about grace and then immediately talk about IBM. What we do what popped into my Richard Broderick and his poem I'll watch over by machines of love and grace great, right Oh, that's what I like that. I'm gonna connect that I want to Yeah, I've got it Grace made me think of m scott pex books I really love his discussions of grace in his books the different M scott peck the different drum He talks about grace in there and I really liked it and I I think grace is happening all the time I mean people every day all kinds of people get up and do things they don't have to do This world operates on so much more Love and then then you know, we take it for granted, but it's always happening. Yeah But we talk about love and we talk about trust and and there are individuals as you're pointing out that have thought hard long and hard about it. Um, I just think it's going to become essential to um Maybe go meta on it a little bit I hope that link still works, but that's the link I have in my brain for the poem from Broderick Right Are you sending that to us? Yes, I put it in the chat. Uh, I'll let me click on the link I think it's alive. If not, I need to replace like they said All right, let's let's find a new link to the poem Any other thoughts on grace? I just like the I like that's the end of our discussion that grace is beautiful Um, and I'll and I'll wash over my machines of love and grace is also the name of an Adam Curtis documentary Which is named after Broderick's poem There we go. Yeah, it builds How interesting I think uh, I think the poem published in the Atlantic once I'm gonna find that link and if that works I will replace it Oh, no, we can poem Yeah, so here we go. This this is actually an article by Alexis Madrigal who's writing I really like Uh, which mentions both things it mentions the poem by Broderick and quotes it and then mentions and mentions the documentary by Adam Curtis. So It's a double hit and we should not be surprised. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, so I thought I did want to make one more suggestion Which is about which was as the conversation was going on among the three of you and then when Kevin joined I thought Somebody should monetize this conversation Or somebody should this conversation should should go somewhere So to that end. Yeah a couple things one I feel I feel under informed to be holding that conversation very publicly in the sense. I really need to go I know sort out more of these pieces But separately and contradictory maybe I'm now because I got a little bit of funding from the Jim rut family foundation A little bit of funding to start a podcast called weaving the world Wow, which I am launching now like I'm in the I'm in the planning phases now anybody who wants to help You're welcome to join in I've got you know, I'll tell you where to look Because we've got conversations going this morning at 7 a.m. I had a planning call for it It's a standing call at 7 a.m. On on wednesdays and To mix metaphors a lot weaving the world feeds the big fungus And the big fungus is shared knowledge. It's basically I'm I'm I tell the story about leaf cutter ants who can't digest leaves So what do they do they bring the leaves in mulch them up and put them on This fungus that they have a symbiotic relationship with which metabolizes the leaf matter and oozes a nectar and tasty fungus parts Which all of the ants actually eat and my curating my brain for 23 years feels I've always felt like alone alone ant at the fungus face And I look around and I'm like, where is everybody else? Like chame you create so much good stuff and you post it in the world I want to see it kind of as part of the fungus. I want to see it woven into the shared texture Of what we know what we see and what what we believe right because you can I'm very explicit in my brain about my belief system And and nobody's looking in my brain. Well, like a handful of people are looking in my brain occasionally But it's stuck in like a windows 95 looking interface and and so forth We're trying to liberate my brain from the brain software But if multiple people were putting in the world more about how to weave these ideas together In whatever tool they wanted to use rome research kumu the brain Miro whatnot, but if we had a way of playing together to think together That would actually work So the idea of weaving the world is to play that out and to to visit humans or groups who have interesting ideas about how to fix the world And there's there's a thousand or ten thousand podcasts already in the world of people who do a very nice job of that They have a a series of episodes where like jim rot has the jim rot show I just I just brained His interview with robin dunbar of the dunbar number, which is a really good interview Like they rut was well informed. He did a very nice job of the interview I can I can point to you I can point to the interview in my brain and how I sort of deconstructed and reconstructed it But then what I want to do is have separate episodes that look back on The episodes that look and smell like a podcast where we weave together those artifacts and take apart the things that got said Ask deeper questions slow the conversation down And then build this shared artifact, which i'm calling the big fungus shareable share shareable artifact Yes, shared. In fact, it's in the comments. It's like, you know, uh, and right now, you know, open gold mine has Some repos some repositories on github that are open a whole bunch of different way. How is this different from ogm? Um ogm is the container for a podcast that's going to be called weaving the world So, uh, they're they're similar except weaving the world is the name of this thing Yes Sounds like I need to use blockchain Wow Well, seriously Two principles that's the meat of the thing, you know, so one of the things I am actually very interested in is At some point six months ago. John Boorth recast me. So is open global mind a dow? I'm like, ah, shit. Did you have to ask that then like i'm interested? I like like and that's led a bunch of different interesting places I don't have you know, I don't have ogm instrumented as a dow at this point, but one of the sub conversations and and Boorthwick has always been interested in the intersection of art and technology So of course, he's busy, you know investing in nfts and playing in nft markets And he pointed me to a whole bunch of like nouns nft and a bunch of other strange ones And every nft I see out there is is sort of like worth like the artifact you're looking at is just a joke It's it's like bad art sometimes a little bit of good art Not usually good art and meaningless like like it's just you're you're you're betting on its uniqueness and the celebrity or something or other about it And and so forth and i'm like, what if we created nft artifacts out of the weaving the world calls? And then put those in the marketplace where you would be getting snapshots of our work to try to make sense of the world with other people With whom we have disagreements that that would be a meaningful artifact, right So Some nfts in that conversation. I mean it was so heartfelt I mean it was a delight to listen to it was informative. It was amazing to see people really argue And to really take each other to task on things and to Hold it together for a sustained period of time You mean the conversation we just had about Thank you Yeah, I mean thank god. We're not in the same room or bold would have had me in a headlock Well, just kidding No, I know but I mean I really I was really stunned by it because whoever gets to watch that I felt very privileged And I shall go back and listen to it again because There's there was a lot of subtlety in there. You kind of want, you know, the house of representatives listen to it Yeah, thanks susan. That was really thank you Yeah, thank you And and that's a big piece of what I want weaving the world to actually do Yeah Exactly like that and and To slow it down because you just said I want to go back and watch it Yes And I want to go back And I've been taking some brain notes during our call connecting up to some other thoughts I shared and so forth But I want to actually sort of not do that by myself. I want to do that with other people with other tools in a way that actually Built an asset that we can use together That preserves our individual points of view Right. So what what does this shared map the shared memory look like? Well, I think it needs to be well, sorry He beat my beat into my head said what we're talking about here is making things shareable not shared Okay, yes Yeah, yep. Yep. Yep. It's a different thing and and and what does it look like? So I'm interested in preserving individual points of view so that the ways we disagree are actually clearly visible and manifest But then if you if you only do that what you wind up with is this fractal explosion of points of view that's like unmanageable Well, yeah, but the worst thing is is to have had these points of view and have had them in contact with each other You know in a really fertile way Yes, but Finish what you're saying and then I'll finish what I'm saying. Okay. I mean maybe another metaphor Another metaphor that comes to mind is um fishbowl You know back in the day when we were actually doing all these crazy kinds of ways of getting together And the fishbowl thing was a way of bringing people in on the periphery in a legitimate way to use whatever And uh, so that could that could be part of it Yep, um agreed and we're going to mess around with formats and stuff like that. So fishbowl format could be really useful So the thing I wanted to add was To prevent or reduce the fractal explosion of content and points of view I'm really interested in what does it look like when when the four of us or three of the four of us agree that this This sort of tangle of ideas and well explained concepts works for all three of us And and so that is kind of like a collapsing of okay, this over here Is is like beautiful and and I I'm happy to have it represent my point of view and so are two of the three of you That's interesting to me because then we start to converge and connect On well explained narratives and I I did a video long ago in 2010 at the start of rex at the start One of the first video I posted about rex was called nug nuggets narratives and points of view. Does anybody remember that? Yes Do you? Oh good. So so what I said is anything that's addressable as a nugget we weave nuggets into narratives that can be Retrospective or prospective and a collection of narratives is a point of view Yes, and you know how many times you have to go over that in your mind to actually get it And then you have to participate in it so that you can tell a nugget from a this and a that and then there's times when you want to know You know and then that's a meta conversation and the You know what what happens when we do is we lose the conversation So unless unless we become accustomed to doing some of those things I mean, I think I think meta cognition and meta conversation are really important Well, sometimes sometimes the the freight of doing the meta work loses the thread and is and is an interruption But but I'm trying to get to the place where the meta work in fact enhances the conversation because you're right It can totally waylay or or you know hijack the conversation And it loses people who aren't into that particular meta language But I never met a meta. I didn't like And at that note, I I need to roll. Okay. Okay Okay, let's let's wrap the call. But thank you. Um, so And I want to see a recording of the skull too. I can't wait to like to view it Really go for it go for it And I hope to see you next month. Okay. Excellent. We hope to see you too. May the world still be rotating. Peace