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Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

passingtime.substack.com

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Re: Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

#221

Post by braza »

nerdponx wrote: post #215
nfw2 wrote: post #181

I think part of All-In's success is that it has the vibe of a group of friends sitting around and shooting the breeze. It's way less academic than something like the Ezra Klein Show, but that's the point. Is there bloviating involved? All the time, especially from Chamath. Are there bad takes? Certainly. But it's entertaining.

Being confidently wrong about matters of public policy in front of a large audience is more than just an incidental bad take. It pollutes the public well of information and thereby does a disservice to society. You do not have a right to entertain yourself with something that damages the ability of society to make decisions and govern itself.

People in this “large audience” are listening voluntarily to a bunch of guys talking about similar interest points. Some of those points they will have credibility others no; and that’s the beauty of to live in an almost free information society.

The problem with the “something that damages the ability of society to make decisions” it’s with who establishes that and what’s the self correct mechanism those institutions that establishes that has.

Re: Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

#222

Post by vekker »

nerdponx wrote: post #215
nfw2 wrote: post #181

I think part of All-In's success is that it has the vibe of a group of friends sitting around and shooting the breeze. It's way less academic than something like the Ezra Klein Show, but that's the point. Is there bloviating involved? All the time, especially from Chamath. Are there bad takes? Certainly. But it's entertaining.

Being confidently wrong about matters of public policy in front of a large audience is more than just an incidental bad take. It pollutes the public well of information and thereby does a disservice to society. You do not have a right to entertain yourself with something that damages the ability of society to make decisions and govern itself.

Problem is, the legacy media is confidently wrong about all kinds of matters too, all the time.

Why would they have the right to broadcast misinformation, and popular podcasters not?

The answer to this isn't censorship. It's in education and teaching people to think critically.

Re: Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

#223

Post by braza »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #34

All-In is one of the few podcasts I listen to where I don’t exactly like the hosts and disagree with a high percentage of what they say. But I find them interesting, and their recent shilling for Trump gave me a bit more of a nuanced insight into what they see as Trump’s strengths. I take everything they say with a huge grain of salt. It is incredible how confidently they talk about certain topics where it’s clear ev…

> I enjoy their insights on slightly less hyperbolic topics like SaaS business models and other more mundane things

I used to listen more but I agree with this point.

The most fundamental insight that I took from the show was in the episode 80 when Chammath talked about the “hard conversations” between founders of late stage companies and employees about liquidity.

At that time I was working in a late stage SaaS company and after some research I just discovered that our stock options were not only underwater but the founders screwed most of the early employees.

Honestly I started to lost interest mostly cause of the focus about US politics and Ukraine.

Re: Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

#224

Post by braza »

vekker wrote: post #222
nerdponx wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being confidently wrong about matters of public policy in front of a large audience is more than just an incidental bad take. It pollutes the public well of information and thereby does a disservice to society. You do not have a right to entertain yourself with something that damages the ability of society to make decisions and govern itself.

Problem is, the legacy media is confidently wrong about all kinds of matters too, all the time. Why would they have the right to broadcast misinformation, and popular podcasters not? The answer to this isn't censorship. It's in education and teaching people to think critically.

In Germany the alienation of the public founded broadcast midia were so deep that more than 70% of the people believed that the VPOTUS would win the election.

Most of the people that I know that consumes a blend between MSm, independent media, and citizen journalism would not expect the victory of the former POTUS.

It tells a lot about the level of alienation and narrative entertainment that our public media became.

Re: Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

#225

Post by nailer »

senkora wrote: post #43

The one that I always remember is how they shilled for Solana immediately before it crashed hard. (I have never had any position in any crypto) I feel like their show has an implicit subtext where you’re expected to understand when they are lying. You get to feel smart by recognizing when they’re just talking their book. The tricky question is whether there is any value in the podcast besides understanding their book…

If you purchased Solana at that point and held it, or purchased it during that crash, you would be very happy now.

Re: Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

#226

Post by gaia »

Wait, it gets worse: https://x.com/laurenbalik/status/1853850363004063977

-David Sacks bankrolled a company called Done Global. The "CEO" Ruthia He is a Chinese national with absolutely no medical experience. Very quickly, this turned into prescriptions for dead people, medspas doling out Adderall, the Chinese sharing health data about Americans as the whole back office was in China. Plenty of these narcotics ended up on the street, which was always the goal.

The CEO and several others are awaiting trial. They caught David Sacks-backed Ruthia He trying to flee to China about a month ago, and now she's back in jail.

-David Sacks had a whole money laundering operation set up around Eaze. His guy Keith McCarty left Eaze to found a payments system company (to support Eaze) and they have Keith McCarty with crack cocaine, prostitutes, and firearms rooming with a guy named Hamid Arkhavan involved in the Wirecard fraud, running up transactions to facilitate money laundering through porn sites. Eaze was a big advertiser on these sites to clear money laundering transactions.

-Earlier this year, conservative influencer Dave Rubin was caught up in a money laundering racket after he and his people were receiving payments from Russian assets, and the Russian fled the US overnight. Dave Rubin is another David Sacks-backed founder. Rubin was co-founder of the company Locals, which is extremely crappy Web 1.0 software used to facilitate payments to influencers. David Sacks sold this Locals plus his other company Callin, to Rumble $RUM and took a Board seat at Rumble.

There. Right there you have 3 David Sacks-backed founders all directly tied to money laundering and/or drug trafficking. Ruthia He. Keith McCarty. Dave Rubin.

Those are just the main ones with some amount of legal/media coverage on them, but there are more.

You still think Sacks is "just" a VC? The VC stuff is a front.

This isn't tech. This is the Mafia. Sacks just throws the word "software" over it to obfuscate it, but too many people have figured this out now.

He got too cocky after he and Lonsdale "lost" a bunch of foreign money with Hyperloop.

His prancing around is like watching an animal in a cage. He's got to negotiate his way out of this regardless.

Re: Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

#227

Post by tomcam »

digdugdirk wrote: post #59
olix0r wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets…

It's fascinating that Michael Crichton would have a quote like that when he's been guilty of falling into the same trap himself. It really shows how difficult it is for the human mind to have perspective on itself.

> It's fascinating that Michael Crichton would have a quote like that when he's been guilty of falling into the same trap himself.

For example?

Re: Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

#228

Post by toyg »

lmm wrote: post #220
toyg wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think anyone seriously disputes ... that the federal "deep state" doesn't matter, since elections are handled at the lowest level by state authorities - which are tightly controlled in red states, as much as in blue states (if not more, arguably), by the locally-dominant party. This is just how business has always been done in good ol' Murica. Writing sweeping statements like the one you make, indicates tha…

> ... that the federal "deep state" doesn't matter, since elections are handled at the lowest level by state authorities - which are tightly controlled in red states, as much as in blue states (if not more, arguably), by the locally-dominant party. The whole point of the "deep state" concept is that it's not controlled by the formal political structures at all - yes the state bureaucracy is nominally accountable to t…

> it's made up of humans who are unlikely to be 100% loyal to their boss

If true, that obviously cuts both ways.

But really I think you're just being paranoid and somehow biased against state employees - who are definitely not all "blue" by any stretch, particularly in red states. If you really think any low-level minion, or even middle-manager apparatchik, will risk their jobs by substantially fiddling numbers against the will of their boss, there is no argument that will ever cut through your ideological lenses.

Re: Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

#230

Post by lmm »

toyg wrote: post #228
lmm wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... that the federal "deep state" doesn't matter, since elections are handled at the lowest level by state authorities - which are tightly controlled in red states, as much as in blue states (if not more, arguably), by the locally-dominant party. The whole point of the "deep state" concept is that it's not controlled by the formal political structures at all - yes the state bureaucracy is nominally accountable to t…

> it's made up of humans who are unlikely to be 100% loyal to their boss If true, that obviously cuts both ways. But really I think you're just being paranoid and somehow biased against state employees - who are definitely not all "blue" by any stretch, particularly in red states. If you really think any low-level minion, or even middle-manager apparatchik, will risk their jobs by substantially fiddling numbers again…

> If true, that obviously cuts both ways.

It does, but ultimately it adds up to a drift towards what a typical government employee would want to do rather than what the elected representatives decided - and government employees are not a representative sample of voters.

> If you really think any low-level minion, or even middle-manager apparatchik, will risk their jobs by substantially fiddling numbers against the will of their boss

What's "substantial" though? There are a lot of things that are just a nudge at any given layer. Your boss tells you that there's some new bullshit requirement that says you have to check voter rolls against the juror database, but he doesn't sound particularly enthusiastic about it, and the department's already understaffed. So maybe you stick it on the pile, or you send an email to your subordinates late on Thursday afternoon, and maybe your boss never follows up on it and neither you do, and maybe the end result of that is that the checking never happens and your state's election laws are perhaps violated (and maybe some people who shouldn't have been able to vote got to do so), but even if the Reps win their lawsuit against your department the chance of anything getting pinned on you is essentially nil.

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