382. The Birthday Situation

This is Do by Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, use voice to text. I'm so sorry. I got you waiting in the lobby. Oh, the lobby. You got he's got me waiting in a lobby. Aw jeez. Do you know that line? Oh man, Rick. No, I don't. I uh Frank Pantangeli, Godfather too. He's he's the guy with the mustache. Here's the thing. The guy oh my god, Alex, this episode. The guy who played Clemenza uh in Godfather One wanted too much money for what they were willing to pay him. He asked for a pretty extravagant amount of money to come back for Godfather 2. And it wasn't gonna happen. So basically they created Frank Pantangeli to kind of like stand in for his character.

And luckily that actor's great. The character's great. There's one where he goes in, he's gotta talk about like the risottoes and he goes in, remember during the uh I think it's you know during uh during during the big party where the senator comes to the party? This isn't in Cuba. It's before is it the one before that? No, no, no. So like the yeah yeah yeah, you're you're on the right track. The movie it starts out at the top. Hi, how are you? I'm uh wonderful. This is not this is not relevant this is not relevant. It's just a g it's a great scene. And he says, He's got me waiting at Modabi. And then he goes, Cheech a puin to the door. I'm sorry. Okay, this is gonna be a good thing. No, don't apologize.

And I am uh Okay, here's the thing. Pl please don't apologize. I uh stop telling me what to Okay do you that's why I said please oh sorry thank you yes please um please um and uh I have concerns about this episode because I'm so fucking excited I mean I always enjoy visiting with you, but I'm so excited. Are you recording on your end? I am indeed. So I've got I've got Zoom. I've got Zoom. I've got Uh a good zoom, I've got audio hijack, and I think I'm I might have I've got local and cloud, but I think we'll be okay. All right. Yes. My audio quality's been garbage and I'm I'm looking forward to it not being as garbage. You know, the thing is, uh, as you know better than anybody, we tend to thrive under pressure in life.

Look at you. You're like a diamond. Mm, or a pearl? Uh some some kind of a thing mentioned in a at a prints. We don't say that anymore. Uh a sapphire. What do we say now? We say um I'm uh uh uh a a sapphire as they uh I'm I'm ki no, no, I am not a sapphire. Shine bright like a diamond. Shine bright like a diamond I think that's a Rihan that's the Rihanna song I know. Wait, there's that and I know Umbrella Brella Umbrella. That's two Rihanna songs I know. Ha ha ha which is just Did it get in your head? Yes. Doesn't she have great dimples? No. No. What? I don't remember what she looks like. I don't know what her okay. I uh I apologize, I revise it. Okay, forget uh. This is gonna be a really good episode.

Here's the problem. When I'm excited about the comments. Huh? What's the pressure? Where where where is it? Oh um I okay, here's the thing. Forget it. Never mind. Okay. Hi everybody. No, no, no. Um beep beep beep When I'm excited about the content of an upcoming episode, those tend to be the worst episodes for me. Not this, but just in my life. Uh it's better because I thrive under the pressure. So I can shine bright like a diamond. You know, 'cause the beauty of improv is when things go wrong. When things go right, it just seems like you're doing uh as we used to say in Cub Scouts, you're doing a skit, they call it. But um uh I'm excited about I'm excited to talk about the challenge for this week.

I am very excited about a topic I've kind of shoehorned possibly into this episode. I'm so excited about something I started playing with this week. And and I've added two really good challenges to the spreadsheet that I'm kind of excited about. Ooh, I I'm going to it is this I mean we talked about media so we've got the death out of the way we're like in the afterlife. There's media in it's media at chase The uh uh no we we've already fucked ourselves with the godfather. So this is just the cigarette. That wasn't a challenge. The uh no no I mm fair do you think a lot of people start smoking because of intercourse? They just need something to do to fill the time after that. Huh. I the only time I have had a puff of a cigarette is because of a girl.

So I think that it's possible. Like if you've um completed an activity and someone hands you a cigarette. Like this has never happened, but I think if someone were to hand me a cigarette in that situation, I would be like Thank you and not make a comment. You just got two indications that you're officially in the club. First of all, you you bone down with somebody and whatever that means to you, but then also someone offered you a cigarette because you're such a grown-up. No, that literally didn't happen. I am saying that I went, oh gosh, I'm loud. Um I went outside. to I interrupt people. Um I'm gonna cut that out. That made me grumpy. I what made you grumpy? No no I'm not. Um I don't like it when people s on the internet say that you interrupt me because if that was True.

I feel i there's like an implication of the thing. I do interrupt you. I interrupt you a lot. It's part of the show. Yes. And I would yeah, but uh if I felt like it was a problem, it's it's our show and I would interrupt back. Anyway I uh was never in a situation of the case. I should show to come out, that's all I could poise I know. Poist post coitus where anyone handed me a cigarette But if that if it did happen, like no bits. If it did, I think I would panic and say yes. The the one time I tried to smoke a cigarette, it was because it was a social situation where a girl I liked and a few other people were going outside and I was like, Yeah, I'll join. Oh yeah, now now is now is time for smoking with girls.

I'll go with you 'cause I smoke and I'm a girl. Yeah, it was like, oh yeah, we're gonna well it wasn't just two people liked uh w one girl, but That's I don't know if this is what is on your mind for the many topics, but that's one form of socialization that's kind of gone and uh At the workplace, at least, you know, like during class in college, people would leave for smoke breaks. And I would sit there like I'm not an art fag. They would go have the they were fags who would go art outside. You by that you mean cigarette. I I suppose, yes. Yeah. Yes. Cross the pond. Mm-hmm. Alright, well Should we do an experiment where I try not to interrupt you for the rest of this episode? No, I No, no, no, no.

It's not a troll. It's not a troll. But like I don't want our listeners to be mad at me. I think it's part of the bit, but I would be happy to try and and I would be happy to try and stop doing that I don't like it. No. No, I'm kinda. Um, what about s smoking? You were going somewhere and then I decided to talk about how bad I thought cigarettes tasted the single time. Or not maybe cigarettes are good. But you might have thought that about cooters. Exactly. It is one. I uh exactly. It could have just been one. They both taste like nine volt batteries. Do you ever lick a lick every I know I know I don't even have to ask. I know you've licked a nine volt battery. I don't even have to ask. I bet you've canceled stuff to to lick a nine volt battery.

Oh, have you never licked a nine volt battery? Is that uh I don't think so. Do you know okay, first of all, these used to be everywhere and now they're pretty rare. Do you know what a nine volt battery is? Yeah, I I even seen one in a very long time. It's got the two the negative and positive terminal on top. Yeah. There's a thing that we all knew back in the before times, which is if you wanted to see So like, you know, you get batteries, you know, nobody used to have like battery um testers. Like that wasn't a thing. Oh In the seventies? Oh sorry, nineties. Never mind. Never mind. But if your el if your electronic quarterback if your electronic quarterback is being a little janky, you take out the nine volt battery and you you put the two terminals on your tone.

And it is a little zippy zap. And if you feel if you feel like, you know, like if it's really fresh, it's a little painful. Um, if it's dead, you don't feel anything. And now you know, and you can tell in between, like, how much of a charge did you get from the 9-volt battery on your tongue? And that tells you like roughly how much charge is left in it. But there's a feeling, but there's also something. This is this might be synesthesia. I think it's not. It's something that I would describe as a very specific and memorable taste. Uh and now he's gonna do this afternoon. Well, if it's a challenge if it's a challenge you should wait. Let's not make it a challenge. That's too weird. Go buy a nine volt battery and do it and see if it's like any I don't know.

I don't know what your life is like. We did shock each other for about a half an hour about a decade ago. I don't know how wholesome that was. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! I put my tongue on that. It was unpleasant. Oh dear, you put it Oh, so you've so you know what I'm talking about. I I suppose I know what it is like to shock a tongue, but like a slightly it's a well the the primary thing is like uh it's a shock with undertones. of sour. Yeah, it yes, and there's l an aftertaste, which I didn't expect. Yeah. And however you feel about that particular taste, there's a reason that that particular taste or sensation has been associated with certain kinds of uh grown up activity. But uh s is it so ever go downtown on a lady Okay, I'm not adult button.

No, seriously, did you ever do it? I've y yeah. You know what to say if you don't want to. I know you're not a big eater. Um excuse me. Uh how are you? You good? Uh I am well, thank you. I'm gonna calm down now. And um I'll just see where the show takes us. You wanna drive? You can drive. You don't need to be calm. You're excited. I know you are excited about the challenge. If we're gonna pretend that that's part of the show, that's not true. Sometimes Sometimes it is. Oh my gosh, we could save Chat GPT Canvas Talk. F for the after show. What if we did the after show first? Oh shit. I was thinking about that a lot. No, I l I the I do absolutely l I absolutely love that for all kinds of reasons.

But my only Fear or concern is so you're saying we we record the if we were to record the after show now, and then we're done with that, we record the main episode. We've I think we've done that once or twice before. We have never done that. I've done that on previous shows. We we would just release But my concern would be then the in the public thing that came chronologically after there would just knowing me, and you, there would be references that wouldn't make sense. And then people wouldn't have a way to listen and know it's that would be kind of weird. I'll do whatever you want. We can talk about it now. But you know, uh uh no uh hi everybody. This is a podcast here we are in Spain. This is a podcast.

Yes, and I need uh I need uh type of a job and a pizza topping and And something that tastes like a nine volt battery. Did you get my joke? I just I pretended that somebody said, Hey, are you eating out tonight? And the person responds by saying, Boy am I It's her birthday, so she gets to pick what I eat. Isn't there a bit okay there's a bit. There's a bit. And I want to know if this is a thing. I have I have a I have a drafts document that the world will never see until uh the executor of my of my estate because I'm not gonna do a will. I want Syracuse to have to figure this out. He all I want is I'm gonna leave it on a note right before I go. John Syracuse has to deal with my estate. Because I just I love thinking.

Perfect. He'll be the one who finally finds this, which is my list of things in drafts. Um this is it's kind of like There's a very funny bit in Parks and Rec where Andy where they go to the doctor. Remember and they try and get all their health. the health insurance stuff and then he runs into an ambulance. It's a very funny episode. Yes. Yes. It's a very funny Andy episode. But there's one where he's like he says something about bottle I don't know. So I think he says something like he has this whole list of things. And I think it's what they call a fun run. Like he's just doing a bunch of like you know, on the spot, like sort of bits quickly that were written quickly or and he he gets he says something like this is list of things that he's thinking about.

One of them is, I don't know who Al Gore is and I feel like it's too late to ask. I have a list of things, a private, curated, careful list of things where it's definitely too late for me to ask Let's put one here right at the top. Is it you know have you ever met somebody, become acquainted with them, become friends with them? Perhaps they know you better than you know them, but You're three years into the relationship and you're still not really sure what their name is. Ye mm not re No, no. Me neither. Um But me neither. But if I had, that would be the kind of thing. Oh, hey, how's it going? And then you turn into Kent from uh the Iron Giant like hey Ranger, how's it going, sport? Hey buddy.

Hey Chief. And um yeah, I have a lot of those and several of them involve sex stuff that I I have the gist of, but I'm not gonna look up And if you try and look it up, like it makes it it diff I have a lot of things on that list. And um yeah, I mean, you know, there's There's some sex stuff on there that that I wish I could get clarified. Maybe I've answered somebody's question out there about nine volt batteries. I don't know. But one of those one of those little things. Oh no, do that today. Do that today for sure. Get yourself some fries and a diet coke from McDonald's And then go get you get you a nine volt battery. But like, you know, one of those is like a bit that is in TV shows. And like as somebody who grew up in Generation Z Top, I've learned not to let media and culture have over much of an impact on you without you understanding its role?

Like I just always assumed like three girls in high heels would show up in a red car and give me a makeover. Like, you know, like in a Z Top video, and it never really happened. But there's was a joke that people make, sometimes men, sometimes women, but people in a relationship go, oh, you know, he there's a thing that this guy gets to do because it's his birthday. Yes. And I think it's anal intercourse. Yes. It could be it could be a beege But I think it's like this is a thing I don't particularly like or want in our how how you say regular rotation. Not talking about spinners. Not talking about pros. But the but but but it's his birthday and then like sometimes guys make that joke, it's my birthday.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Are you aware of this bit? Yes. I I have to say that. Are you aware of this? Like let's just say we could even make it as abstract as there's a sex act that the guy gets to do on a girl because it's his birthday. The girl lets him right are you and like it seems like it's kind of implying that it's in the butt. Usually. Yes, but I think it there's other huh. Hmm. See, I I kind of want feedback because I uh did always You are officially in charge of receiving it all? Yes. Get ready. You are now officially in charge of receiving all of our listener feedback about birthday anal. Yes. I I wanna know if there is uh something that is other than like it because birthday anal, definitely a thing.

But you think it's do but like but okay two two parts first I want to hear this but first of all do you agree that that's a bit at least And like then the second part, which is more complex complex, is like, do you think that's a bit that's based on like a thing that happens often enough? Do you think there's a lot of women who let a guy fuck him in the ass once a year? Yes. Okay. But I don't know what came first. The pop culture. I don't know I don't know what happened first though. Is uh the special birthday treat just something that has existed through all of uh human history. Or like something that comes down like from like old English law where I see You know what I bet it is? I bet it's like a diet.

Or I interrupted you. Oh see the world is no, I interrupted you, the world is out of balance. Oh, Jazzbreak But or was it that s it was a bit on a show as Exactly and now it seems That's see, that is some good ass cultural criticism right there. Farm pardon. No pun intended. Every pun's intended, you piece of shit. Um but uh I I mean in the bit as one could like backfill the oh dear, I don't like that either. As one could fill the dumpster of the bit, I think it's that, hey f hey AFab, I'm your A mab, and I want to do butt stuff. And the person goes, like, okay, I tried butt stuff. I did I just some people really, really, really like things with their butt, in the inside of their butt. And that's that's one of my questions actually is about what butt sex means because I think people mean different things.

It's on my list. But Penetrative we've got to get off this in a minute. That's what she said. Um the seeming story would be Guy Wants to do thing. and says, hey, can we do thing? And woman goes, mm, you know, I've done or maybe maybe it's like, no, you can't do thing. Like that's no, that's not really a thing I want to do. And for a variety of reasons, like it could just be you can't see my face. And I think that's strange, right? Like there's all kinds of reasons and it's, you know, very unpleasant to some people. But but A Amab says, Yeah, but like, can we do this? Just like and and and I bet Amab A Fab says, Y you know what? You can do it on your birthday. Because first of all, that means I can go back to to watch and you know Survivor and be left alone for the night.

I don't I don't have to go into some sexual odyssey before I go to bed to get up for work in the morning. Can we do this as a standing meeting? There's so there's okay. There's Vanessa, Vanessa, have a seat. I'm good. I'm good. Yeah, you know, guys, can I just say one thing? Yesterday was Doug's birthday. Oh. Oh. Oh. Happy birthday, dog. You mentioned the the the a-mabbiness and the a a f fabius because that's how it's framed. It's definitely framed as dude wants to do thing to girl But I've uh there's also been like uh really like unfunny sit uh sitcom bits where it's like a pegging joke and a lady's like Now we get to do it on my birthday, and there's an implication that she gets to do something crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. But uh part of the birthday situation And this could be this could be because I uh know a lot of gay men who l enjoy the butt stuff, but but uh anyway, there's a lot of preparation involved. I didn't realize how much preparation goes into this. Yeah, we should probably kind of pin in this one because Yeah. But I'm saying that like You gotta plan. I didn't know I didn't know prep I didn't know prep was actually a name for for for an actual medical thing. No. No, you kept talking about it. I didn't I thought that was like putting on a dental dam or something. Dental dam? Please need braces. Do you want to talk about chat I mean are you have Are you interested in ChatGPT Canvas?

I'm trying not to respond sarcastically because I was literally just listening to you and our friend Jeff. Oh my god, you're listening to that podcast? Oh my god, how funny. I put that in notes because I think people would like it. I mentioned on that episode that I had like the episode where we where we talked about the episode where we talked about Chat GPT. That helps. I mean, in the episode that I'm talking about, where you talked about the episode that we're talking about now on this episode, I wanted to find out. Yeah, you remember. I got that reference almost. I'm gonna have to ask GPT. But I was like, oh yeah, which episode was that? Because you will not be surprised to know that even with all of our episode transcripts, not all a lot of our episode transcripts in GP chat GPT.

It's like, oh, I don't know which one we've talked. Yeah, I'm like six in um because I'm trying to automate it and it's not uh well We can talk about the laptop saga and uh later, but it is easy if you have a laptop. Which or a computer. I uh have not had a computer for I mean Matt has a computer that I get to use very often, but I haven't for a No, I was recording into a Zoom H6, like one of those field recorders via the mic that I I'm talking into now. And talking to you over a cellular connection. And then uh we should probably put a second pin in that because you should have a computer. We should work that out. In that case we probably I don't know, we don't have to talk because it's only available I'm only getting Canvas on the website.

I'm not getting it in the app. That yeah. I uh so I'm using Matt's computer right now and I just opened it But I still can't open the link you sent me, and I believe it's because collaboration is not available, at least according to the chat I was having, which is the first thing that's the same. The second link you should be able to at least see what it looks like. Yes, I can see it. I can't know because it would just Can I just put a stake in the ground then about why I'm excited about it? And then after you've had time, maybe we'll come back. I don't know. I I uh I hadn't I hadn't heard. So this is a thing that was announced toward the beginning of this month, I guess. And somehow like there's been a lot of like interesting to me tech stuff happening lately.

I mean there's You know, it's it's been neat to have eighteen point one myself, but now that other people have eighteen and eighteen point one, you know, that's that's kind of exciting and Um I set up my he my AirPods Pro as a hearing aid. Um Oh isn't it good? It's pretty neat. It's I haven't really had a chance to test it yet, but I yeah, it's really neat. Um but there's all just a lot of really neat tech stuff. consumer tech stuff that's really in my wheelhouse right now. So I don't know, whatever I miss this, but I don't really exact exactly understand what Canvas is. I've read I guess I'm not a good reader. Sometimes I think the things people write about this are kind of confusing to me. But anyway, Canvas, how do you describe it?

Well, you know what? Let's go to the page. Um is that okay? And I'll be I'll try to be quick about this. I'm not interrupt myself. Don't be quick about this. I'm not sure what I'm saying. I I have I uh let me get here. I'm gonna send you two links. Um Because I have had access to a computer for about an hour. Matthew's at work. And uh b but before that I was talking with the ad well, advanced voice mode. Is now I think everywhere, or at least I don't know how to switch to the side. It's like if anybody's got a plus account, they should have it. Anywhere that's geographically, you know available. Right. And I was just asking it about Canvas and what it can do. And we went on a tangent and it just reminded me how I continue to love to c collaborate with uh with this.

But uh r then I am in the browser now and I upload my gigantic um JSON file of um the uh of my mood numbers that is uh what's your mood number five when you send me okay all right Like a decades w not sorry, not a decade, uh like at least a couple years worth of it. And so then uh but now Uh uh before it gave me like a graph that obviously doesn't make sense because if you're tracking your mood one through five, one three. Now again you're learning, right? You're learning. Yes. Yes. No, no, but not just like you're not just like reviewing aggregated data. I mean like in my example that I'm gonna give, which fucking blew my mind, I've learned a lot of stuff about what I can do better to get the kinds of things that I want.

But like did it did did it can I can I here's what I did. I just said two. So right now I am on the web, I'm at chat GPT40 with canvas is the pull down for that I've had. And all I said was describe how Canvas is different from straight 4. 0. And so it says Canvas is a feature that allows you to interact with larger, more focused pieces of content like documents, reports. stories or code compared to the usual conversational responses, here's a breakdown, right? So I think the headline for a lot of folks, which is really neat if you're like fairly like new to programming, I guess, or you know, scripting or development, is like, yeah, there's this it's interactive. So like there's which I guess it always is in the sense that you can always ask for things, but I it's it's I'm not I'm not doing a good job explaining this because I don't really understand it myself.

But examples my example I think will hopefully help this, but like if you make More than ever, if you're you're doing something to make code or changing code, it's got some really neat interactive ways to improve that. It'll do stuff like automatically comment out like why it's doing certain things. And I haven't spent a lot of time with that. Um but other ones like you can ask when you ask to make images now it's apparently I and again I haven't had time to this this is my my third second or third day of this You you have much more ability to interact and say exactly what you want about the image. And then I think another one of the banner ones is along the lines of what Apple is trying to do with writing tools, which is a much more interactive way of dealing with things that you've written or that you've collaborated on which HPT to write.

And the canvas part of it I think is just to imply that, you know, To draw you in more to like this being a collaborative process and I I that's not a very good explanation, but But I can't explain it either in it like let's say I could talk and say words in uh a way that made sense. uh just in general, I couldn't like I don't know how I literally don't know how this is working because this is sort of the way most people expect an LLM to work because I'll go back and say, hey, can you change this? Yes. That's a good way. That's a great way to like I thought it always should do this, right? Yeah. I w instead of having to explain, well, no, you g it it's not like learning off of the thing, I'm like, wait, it's doing exactly what I not exactly, but like Oh wait, wait, wait, wait.

So I don't know what's happening. While we're having all these arguments and just disagreements and dust ups about whether ChatGPT can actually reason, spoiler alert, it can't There's another thing happening over here that just further amplifies the parts about this that you and I and Jeff and similar find magical about this. And while at the same time perhaps being away if you like if you haven't fucked around with this stuff before, geez, what a dumb thing to say. But like if you haven't before, this isn't a bad place to start. for precisely the reason you said, which is it does a lot more of the like, you know, uh, you know, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Like th there's some stuff in this that I'm good. Here's my hot take. Um I'm as excited about this as I was when I first got on ChatGPT. I am still sort of in shock. It's all just there. It just it just does the thing. Yeah, I'm I'm still like wait, I I ha I've barely played with it, so I uh like I put in my example data at uh oh I guess it doesn't have timestamps. But it it's like wait, wait, wait. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And I went to I was like double checking the map. Like it's doing m math. Well it's almost like you feel like your balls are in the photo. You're like, wait a minute, how did you get that? Like what how did you like Uh how did you in like five seconds make some kind of a correlation that in a million years I never would have seen?

Uh hey people, welcome. If you're I you're right, it it is hard to explain because Uh what we're saying is that it's doing what an LLM on the surface cannot, which is immediately interact with data or sorry, um immediately Manipulate data. It can do all kinds of stuff. Of y it can do stuff by you just asking for it, but a lot of times you don't even really need to ask for it. And then there'll be a lozenge at the bottom that says like the little buttons that are suggestions. And for the first time that I've You since I've started using an app like this, the suggestions are like, whoa, holy shit. That's exactly what I was about to ask you. Yes. And another reason that this I think should be an introdu a good introduction for people is You If you just go in blind, I I hit um surprise me, you know, like the old Google button I f I feel lucky or whatever.

And it went to boring uh i suggestions like tell me a story and and all that but even if you just push that button it takes you through interesting things that previously uh regular chat GPT couldn't do, but I think it's something that a person would assume that a quote artificial intelligence would be able to. And that's where I like technically I don't know how it's happening. Did I send you that Tech Radar article? I think I did. Four ways you can use Tech. No. Oh shit. Okay. Um I wish it was a little bit easier to find and send links in ReadWise. I'm gonna copy original. I'm clicking. Okay, so this is a tech radar piece that, with all of our, you know, dithering about this, I think this right here is a pretty good Like if you know a little bit about this stuff or have played a little bit with this stuff.

I mean, if you know a lot about this stuff, definitely read this. But even if you just know a little bit about this stuff, I think um this This is a pretty good piece. Uh let's see. ChatGP, this is by I'm sorry, this is um Tech Radar, an article by Eric Hal Schwartz from a week ago today. ChatGPT became a reading for you. Skip the headline. Oh sorry. Uh four ways you can use No, skip oh no, I was saying skip it because it's bad. Sorry. Okay. But there are actually four really good ways. Um ChatGPT became more collaborative when OpenAI released Canvas mode in October, switching to Canvas, bada da. Uh but it gives you these four four ideas, uh a couple of which might blow your mind a little bit.

Check out the section um called weekly planning. And I mean really check out all of them. But can I can I talk about like wh how this blew me away or what like what blew me away real quick? And then we can talk more about it when you've had more time to play with it. But so like as with everything, like you just gave a great example of what can be a little bit of a mixed bag with these things, which is like, okay, you know, ChatGPT, at least in my brain, is kind of famous for like not being really great at telling you what it's good at. And part of that, I th I don't know how much of this is human massaging and prompt injection on their end, but a lot of times, yeah, it does give you silly like like read me a bedtime story or you know those kinds of things so you could say to somebody I always this sounds so insulting and I apologize but it's like if you want to show your grandmother a funny thing a computer can do that would be fun In 1970, probably seven, we went to my our friend's house for dinner, the Myers family, and their weird son, who was definitely What do they call him?

Not a kaiju. What's the kind of guy who just sits around and watches anime in his room all day? Uh a uh weeboo. Kotaku. Uh but he was he was you know he looks basically imagine any yearbook photo you've seen of anybody. for the middle four years of the 1970s. Like, you know, basically like Mike Stivik on All in the Family, like Rob Reiner's character with the weird mustache. And he had written uh a a dating ha ha dating program. And you sit down and and it's basically a program that just insults you. But it was magical as a command line thing. This is in the 70s. But it was its own computer. Well, I don't know what it was. Altair, I don't know what could people have for computers then. But He had done this thing and it was like, whoa, that's that's really if you wanted to show your grandmother or grandfather a funny thing that a computer can do, you know, saying like, oh, it'll tell me a story, and you're like, okay, like that doesn't feel that distinguishable from anything else I'd read on the web and it doesn't include my interaction so much.

In an example like that, it helps to do something, I think, when you're doing a demo like that. to make it about that person without being weird about it. So you could say, Grandma, what when did your grandpa get married? And you say December 24th, 1957. That's actually my parents' anniversary. December 24th, 1956. You say, okay, what was the number one song? What was the headline in the New York Times, etc. ? That's I think that's a can something like that is a good example because it's grounded in something that would make that person go, I don't know what song that would be. How much is that doggy in the window? Or, you know, off feeder zane by Vera Lynn or whatever, some song. You're like, oh my God, it just did that?

And you're like, yeah, yeah, it just does that. It's crazy. And also I could say, like, I can do a search and find out what year this building was built. And you're like, wait, you just do that and you'll again la da da da. So what I'm trying to say is that just telling a generic story may not be very fun. going too far to where I'm saying, what time was my wife born? And Too creepy. But somewhere in between. So for me to make a big connection with this, I can make a I can form a compare bond with these things over fairly general information, but it's when I have a specific itch to scratch and the presence of mind to do it that that's when I go Whoa. So I've only played with this for a few days.

Here's a few examples of things that I've done. And what I want to focus on real quick to get you guys excited is like you can find lots of places they're going to talk about writing. Um, they're gonna talk about coding. You know, there's all that kind of stuff. I think of of of the stuff that's being discussed about this, that's that's kind of the highlight. I want to take you back to December and January, like December twenty-three, January twenty-four, where I was, you know, going through my health problems and you you and our listeners might remember My shrink certainly remembers the amount of time I was spending between ChatGPT and playground, API playground, basically just doing anything I can to be able to just upload.

It seemed it seemed so straightforward and like such a good fit. I don't know if you remember I got kinda frustrated though because I would go through all of this stuff that to brought out both the best and worst of LLMs. It brought out the best because it's like, yeah, you go to playgrounds and you just up upload a fuck ton of JSON and it can do stuff to it. The other side that's kind of a bummer, apart from not knowing arithmetic or reasoning sometimes, is that it doesn't it's not really talking. And in some ways it's not really listening It can add stuff to the prompt to change what you want, but you may remember, or at least I remember, for the life of me, I could not get it to remember. I'm going to put this carefully.

I could not get ChatGPT to remember that it knows how to parse this JSON data and it knows what I want out of it. So like even something just as simple as track my blood pressure, like from this, you know, and uh I won't go within all the stuff, but like for the sake of argument, anything in your life that's exciting to you that can be turned into CSV or JSON. this applies, right? And in that case that became kind of frustrating. I spent a lot of time on I don't regret it because I got to spend time with my friend ChatGPT and learn a lot, but it seemed pretty elementary to be able to do that. So just keep that in your mind for a second that what my struggle with trying as hard as I could and so sometimes for six hours a day to make this thing work the way I thought I wanted it to work and the way it seemed like it wanted to work.

And then of course you know how this is the frustration of like, I look, dude, I you know same way as with the person. You're like, I you know I've asked you not to like burn popcorn in the office kitchen, but you keep doing it and like, you know, it's starting to seem like you're a little willful. Um, so my here's some quick examples for me. I I have to go to my document for this. Um, I just put in some random stuff. Uh my stuff is mainly gonna be about like weird weird data stuff. Um And oh I see it's up here. So look for example, so I mentioned this in that podcast episode with Jeff. What we're talking about is an episode of Overtired that went up, I think, today. And uh you know, it's if you like my bullshit.

Jeff's awesome though. Um Uh but like for example I mentioned on there how I've always wanted to have an easy way to make a timeline of my life. Like if you can just set aside for a minute whether that's useful or whether you you would like want that, listener. Like just for a minute, like go. Like I would like to be able to say Oh so okay, so like where I'd said fa I had a document, for example, called Family Milestones, where I made a custom GPT where I uploaded the birth dates of all the import a lot of the important people in my family and my life. And then was able to do stuff like say, like what I that demo I just mentioned, I could say, what was the number one song when the day Grandma Stein has turned 40?

And it can do that like ringing a bell. I gave it a lot of context. I gave it a lot of data. I massaged it. I played with it. It became very reliable. Eventually memory comes along. for Chat GPT. So it can start kind of like persistently remembering more things like that. But that's two things to keep in mind. Frustration with trying to make my own personal private medical bot And then like the ability to under to add context and information about you to stuff. So life timeline. Real quick, speaking of uh context. before ChatGPT could quote remember a little bit about what was in your conversation the current conversation but when you mean memory There's literally a part now of ChatGPT, at least in GPT plus, where it has a list of uh what you've told it and you can go in and edit, okay, this is M my wife, this is my kid.

And you can also delete like if you're me and ask it weird ass shit. Well also, as I said to Jeff, I filled mine up in less than a week. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I was putting in everything. Like I was like, this is it. I found the solution. Like I I'm gonna have it remember everything about every device that I have. And then I can just ask it questions and find context. Yeah. No, no, that that that's a good way to put it. But That timeline, for example, like what are the kinds of things that somebody like me would want from a timeline like that? Well, in my head I can imagine there's a row for where I lived. There's a row for who my best friend was or who my girlfriend was. There's a row for uh what grade I was in or you know where I was working.

You know what I mean? Like and I can see that all kind of working together and I could say, okay, when I was working at this place you know, I was living in this part of Tallahassee or, you know, whatever. And I played with that a little bit and it went okay. There's another one I did where I I wanted to go straight into some art stuff. I'm gonna give you the one that that blew me away. And it's okay if you guys are not impressed by this, but if take just take it in context that I grinded so fucking hard on this, I bought like four different apps in December. Just for trying to get my data out of Apple Health in a way that I could do stuff with. I bought apps on the Mac. I got every like thing that can munge JSV into CSV and vice versa.

And I tried all the different ways because sometimes it likes JSON. And even if you've like it's super like well detailed JSON, I'm out there trying to find what is the ICC medical JSON format for this? And I'm like, go learn I'm I'm just doing all this stuff and then it won't remember it. And remember how I'd get sad because I felt like I lost a friend? Doing all of that, okay. Here's what I did. And I'm gonna speak candidly for a minute. Sometimes I take um cannabis edibles. And um over time I've I've wondered I just kind of vaguely like what impact that has, like, for example, on my sleep. Let me say from the start, this did not make the thing that I wanted. Instead it made something far more interesting that tells me a lot about the future.

And I thought, okay, well there's an app that I use for writing down. We all, you know, you and I, for example, we have apps for health stuff, we have apps for habit stuff, we have all this stuff. I have an app where I write down when I take medicine. I have an app, you know, where I write down like just various things that happen. Not this is different from the journal calendar. This is like, okay, uh it's you know eight o'clock and I want to go to bed. So I've taken my sleeping pills and I'm gonna have this one, you know, a small edible. So what I did was I went to that app and exported all of my data. All of my data. Now remember, the app that I use for in this case tracking did I take an edible?

has I can't even tell you how many pages did I write today in 2009. It's got it's datum. I just don't like to be freaky about security. But I still use datum to track stuff like that. It's really easy. I made a bookmark on my homepage on iPhone. Just because it's real fast to go in and mark down especially things. I have an uh like a category called face. And it's just stuff I put in my face. Did I drink a coffee? Did I do this? So understand I don't even know. I can open it up. There's like hundreds and hundreds of rows in this, very few of which have to do with taking an edible. I got that. So export that as a CSV. I exported from auto sleep, I exported my sleep data. And that's where it started.

Okay. And I just thought for this, for shits and giggles, why don't I just ask this thing, you know, what do you what do you think about this? So I'm in ChatGPT 4. 0 with Canvas. I upload my autosleep data. I upload my entire corpus of datum data. And I ask a three-word question. Which is, I think, a good question to ask pretty often here. What are these? And it says, here's what the data looks like for each of the uploads, auto-sleep data. And then it in parens it says what dates. It's so for I haven't told it anything. All I did was upload these two things and say what are these? Auto sleep data. It's got dates for sleep records and then it has the names of the fields, right? Sleep related uh metrics such as bedtime.

week time, etc. And then the other one is this file appears to be some kind of personal tracking or inventory. It has columns like name, date, amount, Categories attributes. Entries such as night drugs and weed indicate tr a tracking of substances, because I have had different kinds of edibles. Right? Is that is that what we call it? We call it edibles. Different kinds over time. And for each one of those in datum I vendored in how many milligrams of of this or that are in it. So that's all nascent in that data. Again, presence of mind a long time ago. Just capture this information. Maybe someday there'll be a use for it. This is the first use I found for it. I uploaded a file of my sleep data.

I uploaded a file of that bit data. And then I said, analyze correlation between sleep and drugs. And that says, okay, there's insufficient or incompatible data. Would you like me to further clean it up? And I said, yes, please. correlation and da da da da shows a small negative correlation and blah dah da blah. I said do different types of weeds show any kinds of correlations? It goes through this, analyzed THC, dosage impact on sleep, etc. Then I uploaded more Apple Health stuff. And this is just all in the service of saying, I just dropped a bunch of data into this and it figured out what it was and what I might want to do with it. And that's where that lozenge I mentioned, a little button that I mentioned earlier, after I'd done this, one of the first little suggestion buttons I got at the bottom was You know, click to do this, um, analyze impact of THC on sleep.

I at a point when I hadn't told it that yet. It inferred that I gave you this other this data and blah blah blah. But there's another one though that was even uh I guess I had told her at that point, but there were several times where it like it intuited what I might want to do next. And guess what happened? And this is not to drag Any product. People are always trying to drag you into these arguments with services and companies. But you know, Marco had made a remark on ATP a few weeks ago about an app I've used in the past. Marco's in on the quest for something that uh uh that I'm also on the quest for, which is a sleep app that makes it really easy to tag in the morning. It isn't just about emojis.

Please don't send Marco every he's seen them all. But you know, this service I've mentioned before and made a joke about, made jokes about before. It's the app that I've used in the past, the service where I've made that joke. You know, it says the correlation it remember this? The correlation it found was you weigh more when you're in Washington DC. Yep. So whatever. But okay, can I just point out then at that point It now has three months of all of my health data plus this other stuff in D D L D. And so uh I uploaded this, I gave it more sleep data. And I said, merge the new sleep data with the health metrics. Bob's your uncle. Just it figures it all out. That's all fine. I said check the correlation with new sleep metrics.

That's all I said. And it gave me these five bullet points. that are very similar to just the table stakes of what an app like that well I don't want to name it because I don't want to drag the guy. He's nice. But like, you know what I'm saying? Like I basically unintentionally made that app just by trying to find out if THC has an impact on my sleep. What sorry what impact it has on my sleep. sleep. Now I didn't get that. I didn't get like but that most of that's just because of the way of the haphazard way I record all this data, I think. But it's able, I basically accidentally made an app that finds correlations. with shit in my life and all I had to do was drop s this is the least I've typed in this app in months.

Yes. And it just it just starts putting and says, oh by the way, here's a scatter shot. Or sorry, a um here's a scatter graph. of like the distribution of this data. And you can immediately just go in and say, well, like do the do more of this, less of that, that kind of stuff. Does have you gotten any sorry I talked a lot. Have you gotten any of that yet? Well, always my test is first, here's this very strange, weird uh way I track my mood, and I did the same thing. I just put uh uh I I sent you the thing oh god, it doesn't even show the graphs. Uh at least it says like uh you can't. I think you still can't share anything that has Anything but text in it, including crap. Is this for energy or mood?

And I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh my goodness, oh my goodness It immediately sees it's the number. A qu a question that if you ask a stranger would sound nuts, but I bet you knew what that meant. I meant I I knew what it meant, and then it said uh would you like to try some of this? And there I I think there were four pill buttons of uh when do you when are your you uh in the best mood when uh sorry I'm turning by like No no I did that I did stuff like say well what is the what is the moment what is the minute in a given day that I'm most likely to be asleep? Boom and was able to say like 315 a. m or whatever. And uh it it it was like, do you wanna know when you're most energized? I'm like, w k kin yes please, yes, please.

Uh uh Everything that I like you said, it w it it was like accidentally making that app. But the scatter I wouldn't call it the way I gather data scatter shot necessarily. Well, I'm sorry, I was I was complaining where it's like what I was describing, there's a s a scatter is a kind of graph And I said it's got our shot, but like, you know, you can tell it whatever you want. You could say, okay, that's good, but make it chronological, or just say this is x-axis. They can probably do this in regular ChatGPT, but like make this x axis, make this y-axis, but exclude any that do this and do that. Remember you're also manipulating the data. I was able to have it fix and normalize and let's remember, back in December, January, that was a huge problem for me.

I keep firing it up. I eventually I think I told you this. I had an I had a playground where before I could type anything in the prompt, it used 100,000 tokens. It took me 100,000 tokens just to get because again, now the XY problem, right? I'm just shoveling, shoveling data, shoveling instructions. Remember how you did it this time. And do that and describe this for me so that I can I want to add a bullet to your instructions on how to do this. Write that up for me. So you know you know what I'm saying? Before I could do anything and with this, I'm talking like in 30 seconds. It's going and and as ever, this is not a tech story, you guys. This is not a tech podcast. This is not if you want to turn this into a tech story, do it on your show.

That is adjacent to this. I'm talking about a human experience thing where that is tech adjacent, but where like you drop in three or four files and before you can even tell it what you want It's offering you things that it thinks are interesting. And that's bananas to me. You don't get that even in, I mean, even in apps that are just grinding on years of data, you come up with stuff like I don't know, that you there's more sunlight on days where you're visiting a place with lions or whatever. And you're like, oh, I can see that. Or or you get stuff like eighty with 85% certainty, I can say that you ha you have lower you have more sleep when your heart rate is lower. And you're like, okay, that's that's cool.

Yeah. I mean, it's good. It's kind of I I'm not sure which is cor correlative with which, but you know, and that's the problem, right, with those services and apps is I It'll use the data it's got to provide you a level of certainty about what it knows. I'm not saying this is perfect. I'm saying this is the excitement that I felt when I first started using this of like, oh, this is indistinguishable from magic, at least for the purposes that I want to use it. for. I uh I I finally f uh found out. I w I was trying I was asking it to do uh things for the x-axis, but it was for the y-axis. I'm just like I'm sorry, I'm at the y-axis You don't need four and five. I just want you to show me one through three.

And it the graph was still broke. This was like with decimal points. And it was doing exactly what I wanted. And I was like, and then I just wrote Sorry, can you make it easier to read? And it it made it exactly how I wanted it. With the right number of decimal points. I was trying to do so much of that stuff with overt instructions. Again, like I said in that thing with Jeff, like, you know, treating it more like a smart vending machine. And so I would say, oh, and remember this and remember that and remember that. And eventually, as you probably may remember On Playgrounds, you can have all kinds of uploaded files. And I had one called instructions. md. And one of the meta instructions was, before you do fucking anything, reread your instructions.

Like as as Alex, as little Alex Horn would say, all of the information is on the task. Like please just always and I'll because I'd be like I have a line in there that's like, remember that you know Remember that you know with this link, you know the ICC like uh schema, you know the schema for this JSON. I started I got an app, Alex, that let me build my own schemas. So I I was now I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, but now I'm out there going, well there's four general kinds of things that are in I think it's called ICC, but like the standardized like you know medical format thing. like learn that and it'll go, okay, great, learned it. And then you come back the next day and it's like I've never met you.

And so I would try and solve that by shoveling data and instructions in there. But again, like Syracuse is smart to remind us all you're doing is telling it more things to put into the prompt for next time. It's just as he says, it's all input. But like that's the part where like just off the dome for me, having experienced that stuff, mainly with ChatGPT But like getting to that now, so what does that do? Well, that's neat. I'm not actually overconcerned about that question that I asked. But again, just because it's anodyne and easy doesn't mean it's not useful. But you know what it sure does do is it says, okay, the uh this can now Easily do a thing, apparently, that it couldn't easily do before, and perhaps just was resistant to doing before.

And like I don't it's a black box, right? I don't know it's Title. A black box full of secret sauce. A black box full of things. That's horrible. No, not. Does the box have to be black or can it just be the friend? No, not but oh god, no We could try some other ones right now just for fun, but like I'm saying this is way more than a pin and I'm sorry you guys I'm so excited by this. I care so much about this stuff and I it's become such a personal thing. Who are you apologizing to? This is uh no no no no the the people uh who don't wanna hear this have left and the people who are s Extremely passionate about this like me and who get g yelled at on the internet by everyone because I've stolen all the data.

Well, there you go. There's your answer, isn't it? Well, but that's the thing. Yeah I've stopped apologizing. You can hear the yelling before it happens, title. The yelling no the yelling in my head is constant. The thing is it's not even yelling though. It's it's like, you know, the kind of sweep where you go like, hey buddy, there's that. But no, there's the more often it's like, ugh, you again. You're not really you're real you really don't learn anything from anything, do you? No, not really. That's the the voice is more like, uh boy everybody thinks everybody thinks you're really stupid about everything I keep going back to uh the uh the the one that got got me in trouble is like, huh When you tell me that I'm using a piece of tech wrong, the same and it sounds exactly like word for word how you're saying I'm doing gender wrong or how who I am marrying wrong, like Do you really I know it is not a good it's just the vibe.

I d I don't know. It gets it's really weird. I'm like, what the fuck? Alex, I d I do not disagree at all. I have a very dear I have a very dear friend to whom I have said, do you have a methodology for knowing the difference between? a very strong opinion and a law of nature. Or you know the the way I like to ask you questions sometimes is like how would you know that you know? Sort of more like um I forget which one it is. Teleological, ontological, I forget which, but like um Uh what's the word for that? No, what's what's Descartes' argument for God based on hm. Anyways, um No, you know, this is the ontological, there's the teleological, there's the uh Uh uh Anyways But like uh do you have a thing in you as a human being?

That gives you the tickle for like solving the problem that needs to be solved in your mind rather than the one that you're comfortable solving. And like if if you're comfortable solving the problem of here's a data dump of everything I know about a thing and you don't know that, so you're bad. I said something to Jeff in that podcast, which is a pretty good episode if you like my bullshit. Um I um forgive my saying this. Um it's a very what you're describing is also a very privileged. thing to say. The whole like learn everything from the bottom up. Again, just every time you say that, like we talked a lot, for example, during uh the pandemic about single moms trying to raise three kids and their kids have to go to McDonald's to get Wi-Fi.

Like that's not I don't think that's that's a straw man. I don't think that's an extreme thing. If you ever just think about how people in the world get from one place to another on public transit, and it will completely change your view of the world. And if you think those people don't exist, You're a bad person. Yeah, this isn't starving children in Africa. These are people No, but if you're not a bad person, but people can very easily gloss right past that and go, Well, it takes too long for me to get through this one-eighth mile part of town and that frustrates me. For example, and you're like, well, you know, uh, you apparently have forgotten the thing you were certain you'd never forget, which is that like, oh, you know about a thing.

So now you've integrated that into your life. One thing I'm I'm trying I'm not putting this is not my strongest thing to say about this, but I do want this to become a grace note, is like it is there is something weirdly privileged about the way Sometimes people are very comfortable saying, like, you th uh uh gatekeeping, for example. Like you're you're not allowed to be you you shouldn't be doing this unless you also have done X. You shouldn't be allowed to do this unless you also know and have proven that you know why. All the way down to like you should you shouldn't be allowed to have an opinion about this unless you're not have learned the same things in the same order that I have. I'm not I don't again I don't want to make a straw man.

I'm asking all of you, our dear listeners, our friends, you magnificent bastards. We f have a few, we banded brothers, start start interrogating yourself a little bit for times that you might accidentally be turning into a homemade asshole. Because of something you think you want to be right about and you think you're on the right side of history. And I'm not talking about like being canceled and shit like that. I'm not talking about that at all. I'm just trying to say like, well, not everybody has time to learn all of the Python Nobody has time to learn all of the Apple script. I had tons of time to fuck around with this. Thank God. Well, yeah, I was close to dying. But like I had time enough at last to be able to play with this stuff and get frustrated with it.

in December and January, but to then see the sort of the future of that. What's illuminating, what's invigorating to me about using this right now, just fucking around, is like, oh We've we're starting to turn a little bit of a corner with this. It's doesn't change anything about what people are skeptical about or understandably even cynical about with this. I I read the same magazines and books that you all do, but but that's but the but the truth is like if you can drop in two text files And it gives you an observation about your life that would have been difficult for you to find on your own. That's that's potentially even more powerful than finding out how many British TV shows David Bradley's been in.

And that's not nothing. I've found that. Very good. We just watched that. I made my family watch Reigns of Castomir a week or so ago. Oh good n oh Man, that fucking Lannister song. Yeah. That's also the but like also, you know, we've recently gotten Pedro Pascal. Pedro Pascal rolls into town to go to Joffrey's wedding. Big insult. Because they didn't send the guy from Star Trek, who's in the wheelchair. The uh The like uh the the medieval wheelchair. You remember that? Who's the I think he's like a hand no he's like a handsome gay guy. He's from uh is it um where where's the place they're from? Is it Marine? Tar? No, not Tarth. Uh they've got all the well, supposedly of all the emeralds, it's cover story.

Um Pedro Okay, let's do this. Let's do this. New thread. Chat GPT. Yeah. Wait, how do I get wait a minute? Where my where my canvas at? Oh, that's because I'm in the app. Okay, this is another thing. Completely very confusing what works where. The fact that memory doesn't work everywhere still is a little confusing. And right now I'm in the link, so I s, you know, sent you a a link that was made uh in the or a link to something made in Canvas and it won't open uh be uh obviously or uh what should should be obvious like oh you can't share canvas with people. Okay, so then I click on it thinking that it'll just take me to the same conversation in bro my browser, but nope, you go up to Chat GPT 40 with Canvas and it it's sh showing you that.

Yes. But then it says, but it you're s it's still I'm logged in and it's still making me go to the other one. It's frustrating. It's frustrating. Okay, here's what I did. Okay, so I'm gonna read you the words that I've just typed. Cause because you know really just I'm just a dumb fucking monkey. I am in chat GPT 40 with canvas. I said Pedro Pascal Game of Thrones. And it says Pedro Pascal played the character Oberyn Martel, um, also known as the Red Viper. You killed my sister! You murder, you rip You know, anyways, uh if you got the mountain on the ground, just don't dance. Fucking finish him off Just finish up! God damn it. Pedro Pascal played the character Urban Martel. You know what you know what my next prompt was after that?

Da-da-da. Urban's storyline leads to a memorable fight scene with the mountain. And my n you know what my next uh ready for this? Okay? Go off. His brother the His brother the prince was on Star Trek? Wait, actually that's like in the style of of um of uh a Griffin Newman, right? Haunted corn maze actor tips please? Anybody want to do one do a Yahoo? Haunted corn maize actor tips, please? Um, so what I typed was his brother, the prince, was on Star Trek. What the fuck does that mean? You know what it means? Yes. Alexander Siddig, who played Doran Martell in Game of Thrones, also had a significant role in Star Trek. He starred as Dr. Julian Bashir on Star Trek Deep Space Nine, one of the main that's a Billy loves this character, one of the main characters throughout the series run.

So I don't know where I'll go next with this. Maybe I could ask it to map uh Oberon Martel's uh stick fighting skills with my blood pressure or something. I've discovered people do not read the same magazines as you because I read many of of I do read the the magazines and they're like, oh Merlin You're just pissing the big thing. Yes. Yeah. Like oh Merlin, you're you're pissing in a water bottle and dumping it into the ocean for the Oh my god, you should read this new wired article on Tradwife Noodle meals. You can get a pot. They have a trad wife pot you can buy now. Click here. I think so but I I the the the Tradwife water wasting. You ever had trad wife wives? I I do think it is interesting to interrogate interrogate, okay, what is this doing?

No, sorry, you're you were saying you don't think So like implying that we're not all on the same page as everybody, you're saying. using. Like, okay, yeah, our how much w water it is wasted? Oh quote wasted. Like, yeah, that's that's interesting. Let's interrogate that. But you and so I looked into it and Because it's a black box and it's just all smooshed in, like we don't know anything about this tech. And I'm like, why are you taking a a page out of the Ben Shapiro fucking not just Ben Shapiro, but just the whole like reactionary playbook. Can you fill that in for me? Okay. When um someone's like you are using Is this adjacent to the what I'm calling the privilege thing? Is it kind of similar?

It is it's not just I I wouldn't even say that. I guess if you want to say that like it's privileged I guess No, go ahead. Sorry, XMY. Give it to me. I guess yeah, it's uh uh it's like, uh, because you're looking up sword fights, the ocean is going to burn and it's like, wha what d is it? Is it really? It's it's not. If you go and look for it, it's like, uh, because You kissed a girl, the rapture will happen. Oh, so like kind of like specious connections. Yeah. Which is pretty funny for people who like to talk about how dumb these this app is at making connections. I think It just makes me sad because as I've said before, it's bo people are boring about it's how many times can you post about that on social media?

I'm like, you sound like uh I I I I don't I don't know. People like CSED I wasn't gonna talk about I know. People like to feel safe and they're And my it's my theory. So like I one thing I always fall back on is something I said in the document, which is you can't if you can't understand somebody's motivation in life, at least consider that it could be because of fear or money or both. Which I find to be um as heuristics go, there are worse heuristics out there than like going, oh, well maybe that's because of money, or maybe, you know, i et cetera, et cetera. The other one is just security. People like to feel secure. How do we feel secure in life? Boy, it differs a lot from person to person.

But one way that we I think tend to want to feel personally secure. I mean, why does the cog why do cognitive biases exist? Why does confirmation bias exist? Well, in some ways it's because we want to feel secure. Well, what would that have to do with security? Well, in some ways the ultimate security is to know that you're right about almost everything. And that you're navigating a world where there are people who are right about things and people who are wrong about things. But like I in my day-to-day, just encountering people over fifty-eight years, There are not that many people who are constantly, honestly, openly saying, yeah, there's this thing I've thought, Jesus, for 35 years, and the entire time I've thought it was wrong, but I continue to believe it.

Nobody does that. You know? Did you listen to Ezra Klein's latest? Yeah. But like it the one about um Trump's real. To understand Trump, you here's the thing. You need to understand that one about um disinhibition. Yeah, and uh the about Trump is how he is. But it was like dude, I don't know. I I I sent it to Madeline and I sent a bunch of people and I was like, look I I I I I've I know to avoid the notion of like skeleton keys in life or like this explains everything, but like th there is something really toothy about saying I mean I'm gonna really I I really suggest listening to this episode. I think it's very, very good now more than ever. But Ezra Klein is basically saying it's one of those ones sometimes he brings in the producer to act like she's inter uh interviewing him, but he just did a monologue and it was fucking great.

And it was basically about that one of the defining characteristics we talk about is he is Trump a narcissist. I think the episode's called What's Wrong with Trump. And it was about like all the stuff we've been talking about. Like what what is he doing? He's bananas out there. What's he doing? He's you know, he's playing YMCA and dancing and he's doing this and like he's just he's obviously very confused and not well and like I've always had this niggle as you know. Since 2015 of like I still feel like there's something as far as our own security about what we believe, there's something that benefits our own sense of being right to constantly be confused about why, quote, anyone likes Donald Trump.

And like Uh's been a journey for me to like legitimately in good faith try to understand that even though I absolutely do not agree with it. Again, see also People in America tend to believe that knowing about something is the same thing as agreeing with it. Um so but he really gets at something, which is that what if you really look at it, keep boiling it down, keep boiling it down, keep boiling down. This is my my one my words. If you boil off everything else, you know what you're left with is a lack of inhibition, which is absolutely colored by again, Fred Trump's voice. Like it it's still it's very colored by the fact that he doesn't want he can't be wrong is this, but like does it help you better understand you know, that it's like that book What's Wrong with Kansas.

Like d the people would do things that are not in their econom from an economic standpoint or economic uh psychology standpoint. Like they do stuff that's not in their interest, but they just like how Trump do And it's like you can't understand that. You're like, okay, well, these people are stupid. They're low information voters. They're blah blah blah blah. And it's like, well, are they, or is there something about his lack of inhibition? that means a lot to them. Right? I'm gonna listen to it again. I thought it was w what did you what was your takeaway from it? w the one and not one, one of the many things that made my ears perk up was when he was like, No, it's um yeah, sure, there might be an element of dementia, but when you saw Donald Trump dance uh dancing to his playlist on stage for thirty minutes, that's not a man that's d confused or uncomfortable.

That's a man who has no inhibitions and and no shame. Which is a completely different POV on that It sounds similar. That's a com no, he was he's not deranged. Like yeah, he's deranged, whatever, in this way. But like that's not because he's sundowning. It may not be because he's sundowning, it may just be because You know, he's not inhibited about being in front of people who love him and just sucking that in. This also gets us into why is it Trump gets say again? He's he's amongst hi his people. And that's why it is uh it's kind of like what we were trying to t talk about, but you know, Ezra Kind's gonna Ezra Kind, like that is what makes Trump more dangerous is because All he is completely among people who are his yes men.

There are otherwise otherwise they would not be there for more than Half a day. Right. Yeah. No, I mean it's not no mean it mean, but it's it's true. No, no, that's it's fac it's this keeps bringing us back to Cash Patel. Why does somebody who looks like the amazing Larry and has no actual talent? Apparently he's got a law degree. How does Cash Patel keep moving up inside that weird organization? It's because he is Jesus. Did you read the sorry? Did you see the Atlantic article about No, I just try to No, stop, stop I'm so glad I have Apple. You're so mean to the Atlantic. They have so much good stuff in there. And what do they do to piss you off? They have some they have some good writers. I don't think they have Good taste or good editors.

So a lot's come out in the last couple days where s I guess it's one of the generals, uh oh, who was it, the the army, the chief of staff guy. A lot of more anecdotes are coming out and so like one of the anecdotes, which is hilarious as somebody who watches a ton of Hitler videos and history videos, is that Trump had said he needs he needs generals like Hitler had who are unerringly um loyal to him. And he's said versions, so you're probably that was the big headline from it, but like and The guy joked with him in a way that I think is pretty clever. He's like, are you talking about Bismarck's generals? Like kind of like are you talking about the Franco-Prussian War? Like which which generals are you talking about?

Because well, let me just give you a few. Uh Uh let's see. Oh you got Rommel, the Desert Fox. He was implicated in one of the uh numerous plots to kill him and had to commit suicide. Uh uh uh Gehring lied uh about the abilities of the Luftwaffe. He was so busy stealing art that he couldn't get supplies into Russia. That guy was kind of a piece of shit. Like They were not loyal to him, but that's different. It's that's a different part of this. Let's stick with the first part of this, which is just he is disinhibited from saying to the highest-ranking general in the United States, I need more generals like Hitler. And the other anecdote was I'm sor I apologize. This is uh this is unpleasant. I'm sorry to say this, but I do remember an anecdote where a woman who was in the armed forces was assaulted?

By her colleagues and then they buried her and hit her body. Yeah. Trump did a whole big thing publicly. You can watch the video of this with her family. I think in the Oval Office and like put on a whole big show about like how much he cares about, you know, tremendous person and just shit that he always says. And then he makes a big show of saying, Oh, you know, we'll pay for the funeral. I'll pay for the funeral. I'll write you a check. Just send me the invoice. Cut forward at some point uh he says, did we ever did they ever you know, did you ever talk to those people again? And somebody says, yeah, they sent us a bill for $60,000. And he says he says it he's furious. And he says, don't pay it.

Um no way does it cost sixty thousand dollars to bury a fucking Mexican. Oh Jesus fucking Christ. So these fucking people, these fucking people are always trying to like bleed me dry. Now that there's one angle of that. This gets into a lot of my problem with cable news, for example. You know my long running bit. We're like every time Dana Bash has the opportunity, she does that quote about standback and standby and how he's directly and I'm like, no, no, no. Uh no, that's just because that was mouth that was word salad, and now the press tries to make sense of that, and now he has to make sense of that. That was just him just saying shit. because he's disinhibited. And again, no skeleton key, no skeleton key.

But like it sure does explain a lot when you then season the disinhibition with these other factors that are all in evidence about him being I don't know if he's a malignant narcissist, but he certainly seems a little bit self-involved. He certainly seemed a little bit like somebody who looks for his own interests above others. He's you know, there's all the usual like just standard personality flaws that any fucking person has. It's just he has, you know half an order of magnitude more of, but then season that onto that disinhibition and stuff starts making a little more sense. Why is it the crazier he acts, the more people like him? I don't know, man. Did you ever watch Passion of the Christ?

Did you ever watch Gladiator? Like, do you know how those movies end? It ends with somebody being basically treated very, very badly, treated very unfairly by some kind of a mob or crowd in power, and yet they persevere. Right? Like in Gladiator, again, Prima Nocta. That was a bad start. But like, right, you know what I'm saying? Like that is that is a story that America loves. Yeah. And um I think what did that have to do with all of that is that a phrase I don't love from journalism. Oh, this has to go. I have a new list, I gotta add this too. Your priors, check your priors. If you go into this in the same way that I said last episode, like if you haven't caught up on how weird this guy can get, like this is the week to start catching back up, you know, with the dance party and all that kind of stuff, like When when you to put this stuff into context, it's really useful to have more than one way of looking at it.

Or to have an updated view of what these things can mean, and to look at the world as a dynamic environment, and to benefit from the ways that even short periods of history, even nine years of history, can put you someplace so different from where you were before. Think about how we thought about this election in June. Think about how we thought about this election in the first week of August, and think about how we think about this election right now. That's a lot of relatively seismic as some people like to say, a roller coaster of feelings. And that's just since my kid got out of school. Like when you put that stuff together like a learned person, you pretty quickly discover that There is something beneficial to doing more than showing up and trying to tick off every box to prove that you're still right.

What are you right about? You're right about whatever it is. whatever your thing is, how you raise a kid, how you use a turn signal, how you learn to do development, or even put more saliently. How you learn to realize that you have a problem that could be fixed by an app that could write you five lines of code that change your life forever. Make that a cron job, you've changed your life. And you didn't have to learn programming. Does that mean you don't need to learn programming? Nobody said that. Nobody said that at all. But if you just go into these things ticking off your boxes to show that you're still right, you're basically your like confirmation bias uh pilot list. Like you don't grow as a person.

You You kind of can't grow as a person. And now you're actually kind of closer to Donald Trump than you were before. Because now whether that's about ChatGPT or Donald Trump or Python, you're still focusing. an unintentionally large amount of your attention at proving that you're more right than other people and you will find the evidence to prove it. And with something like this, like I said to to Jeff on that podcast I keep mentioning, like he wanted to talk about like curiosity, the role of curiosity. And I was like, well, there's one kind of curiosity that's somewhat obvious, which is like, oh, I just like knowing about new stuff. But there's another kind of curiosity where like I don't want to just know about the new stuff.

I want to understand more about my r what my relationship to that is or could be. Which is a good deal more than just saying, I'm gonna look at this long enough to be able to write fifteen hundred words on how it's potentially dangerous to people who have a Patreon. Well and if you're yeah if and if the answer is it's not for me or I am not intro if if this isn't for me or I can not be involved with this or it's not relevant uh to my life then it is But even if it is relevant to their life. Like do you know that when I'm referenced when I'm referring to a book, I don't know how many years ago, 20 years ago, like What's the Matter with Kansas? Why do people why does candidates vote the way they do?

I have no idea what the thing is. Well there are two books that got a lot of in in that sort of like pre-Malcolm Gladwell world, there were two books that got a lot of attention that I remember. There was there was a lot of like weird controversial books about culture in the 90s, Robert Hughes, people like that. But um the but in this instance, what's the the notion of what's the matter with Kansas is like why is it that people let's just talk about money. We're gonna have to call it economics. Why do people consistently make decisions that are at odds with things that would benefit them financially? Does that sound familiar? Well, guess what? In 10 years, that's going to be all kinds of stuff about behavioral economics.

Which is, you know, not a new idea then. But Daniel Kahneman, he wasn't I didn't have a poster of Daniel Kahneman in the nineties. I didn't know all that shit. That's one thing. Why is it that people and that's kind of the whole basis of freakonomics in some ways, is like, why do people Do these things that to a rational person you would go, Well that's at odds with what your actual the interest is. Another book that came out at the time that I remember was Bowling Alone. And it was just it was one of those like, you know, uh what is it what are they called? Foxes and badgers? Some people know a lot about one thing and people some people know a little about a lot of things I'll look it up for the after show.

But bowling alone was just a way of saying, you know, in some ways bowling has never been more successful. When I think of bowling, I think of my mom. in particular who had like a 230 average, which she was really good. My mom would bowl every week with her friends. You know, she had she had bridge club with my dad where they played bridge at somebody's house. They did all these things socially. There was church groups. There was, you know, you name it. Um, but isn't it interesting that the number of I don't know how they quantified this, but like the number of people who are going bowling on the rig. The way I would look at it is like the number of hours bowled in a year has gone up from where it was before.

But almost all of that rise in bowling um is happening with people who are doing it by themselves. Whereas bowling used to be no no but bowling used to be seen as but this is the kind of behavioral economic stuff that I think is interesting. It's what makes people get to these second and a half level of turns out shit where they get to go, oh, that's different from what I thought. Okay, cocktail party chatter, next thing. But if you don't make a habit of interrogating how much your behaviors, thoughts, and act, you know, uh your behaviors, your thoughts, your cognition, your all those things, how they're unintentionally moored to things that are actually not an updated idea? Teaches you a lot.

Whereas I'm going in there and I'm like, I'm just fucking raw dogging it. I'm just walking in there like, let me just give you all the JSON and you tell me how to become more interesting. raw transcript