Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. You can always reach us at thehonestdrink at gmail.com, Instagram, or WeChat. This episode is hosted by Howie, Eric, and myself. And today, we continue down the topic of digital technology. But we do so as it relates to some current events and developments in tech.
So we talk about virtual reality, the Clubhouse app, Dogecoin, cryptocurrency, and virtual influencers. It was a super casual conversation. None of us are experts on any of this, but that won't stop us from talking about it. So without further ado, happy Chinese New Year, and here we go.
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Why? That feels kind of good, doesn't it? Why? Just making sounds. Why do you like to make? Well, isn't there a certain type of therapy that you just scream and it's just a scream therapy? If there was, I think I should do it. I used to say that I had Tourette's back in college. Okay. Just as an excuse to make weird sounds. Yeah. Like I'd be in class and I'll just start being like... And the teacher would be like, what?
like uh sorry so were you like the class clown i was yeah i was runner up in my high school class clown really who was number one not some dude
That's bullshit. That's like the worst to be like runner up for class clown. Yeah. Runner up for biggest idiot. It's like, if you're going to be the biggest idiot, just winning is a fucking thing, right? It's like, you cannot fail more than to fail at failing. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, so what kind of person were you in high school? Uh, well, I was runner up for biggest fucking idiot. It's like, you couldn't even be the biggest idiot. Like what the fuck? You failed at even being that. Oh,
Howie. Howie. Yeah. Okay. What are we drinking? Oh, we are drinking Jura. Origin. Origin. Ten years. It's the brand called Jura. It's Origin. Is it Jura or is it Jura? Don't play this game. Why you gotta do that? Why you gotta do that now? Don't do it. Now I'm thinking maybe it's Jura. It's J-U-R-A. But it's Scottish, right? Silence. Yeah. Single malt scotch whiskey.
Okay. 10 years. Let's cheers. Cheers, guys. Cheers. Cheers. It's nice to bring back the name of the whiskey. Yeah. I think some people have said we haven't been mentioning the names of the whiskey for a while. Yeah. Yeah. I totally forgot about that. Anyway, we're doing it now. Chinese New Year's is coming up. You guys got any plans? I'm staying here. Because you can't leave. I mean, if you leave, you need to have your... You can leave. You can leave, but you have to get your 河酸. Yeah. You know?
So you need to get tested.
And I'm lazy. Okay. You know how many lines are? Oh, yeah. Long ass lines. Yeah. I mean, half of my office just they were like, fuck it. I'm not going. Yeah. That's why I think in Shanghai this year, it's going to be a different New Year's than usual because most people are staying here now. A lot of people are staying. There's even an article I read where like the local government was thinking about creating a few like events or something like that in Shanghai because they
they know that a lot of people did not go back. - This begs the question, do you think a lot of those businesses are gonna be closed now? Like the restaurants and bars, usually a lot of them would be closed over this time 'cause Shanghai's kind of dead. - Well, I think Tuyi and like, you know, like basically the two major days, like New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, they'll be off, yeah. - But do you think they're gonna open all the rest of the days?
Just because everyone's here, they're going to want to go out. They're going to want to eat and drink. Part of the reason why they shut down is because employees go back. So if the employees are not going back, maybe they will open. Hopefully. Let's see. That'll be interesting to see. We'll see that next week. Where can we go without getting a test anywhere? Like Suzhou? No, you can't. Even I was saying, going back to Vivi's hometown, which is in Jiangsu, not far, like an hour and a half drive.
And we did the research. We're like, yep, we need to do the test to get into that city. So Suzhou and Wuxi. Probably. Because I've been there. When were you there? January. Yeah, but this whole thing just started. For us, I don't think it's about where we go. It's just the fact that we're coming from Shanghai.
I think any city in China that is accepting people from Shanghai, you have to get tested. Well, even my father in Zhongshan in Guangdong province, he was saying that he can't go anywhere because he hops to the next city. He's going to have to do the test.
So it's like, yeah, it's just whether or not you want to go through the test. And you have to do the test in your originating city or you do it when you get there? Originating city and when you get there. I'll take the anal swab. Is that true? Are they really doing the anal swab? I heard about that. I saw an article about that, but it was shared on WeChat. I'm not sure if it's fake news or not. They were talking about there's like a more accurate testing method now called, not called, but it's like the way they do anal swabs. Swabs.
So I'm thinking like that's kind of fake news because it was shared in a group chat. I don't know if it was just, you know, a meme. You haven't heard anything. I haven't heard anything about that. Have you, Eric? Not too... I saw a good meme though. I think it's fake. It's got to be fake. There was a meme around it. It's like you get the test, right? And then if you, you know, if it smells like shit, then you know you don't have it. But if you can't smell it, then...
so it's the opposite test you don't test the person oh that's funny but you know it's one thing for sure um because you know usually in chinese new year uh i mean i know justin you go back to taiwan for you know a period right um and also hong kong right yeah yeah um eric sometimes goes back to the states right um i'm i'm
Sometimes I'm traveling for vacation or I visit my family back in Hong Kong or Guangdong. But this is the first time where there's no plans at all. So I'm staying here. Everyone's staying here. You're not leaving for a couple of days? You said you might be. Not anymore. Oh, really? Because I told you we found out about that. So one thing that I've been thinking about is just...
you know, taking in more time to just do more reading and like, you know, thinking about life in general and stuff like that. Because, you know, at least for me, personally speaking, when I'm really busy, I never have a chance to really stop and think, right? I'm just going and going and going and reacting and reacting. And then I just don't remember anything I'm doing anymore. And I don't even know where I'm going, right? And so recently I made a point to stop reading
And think, right? And just like, you know, think about what tomorrow brings, you know, what the next week brings, what the next month, year, 10 years. Take a breath. Yeah. Have you guys been able to do that at all or thought about doing that recently? I don't know. I feel like my whole life is that. That's all you do. You just almost spit out your whiskey right there.
Yeah. I mean, I'm constantly just thinking just about my life. Well, I mean, so last night for dinner, I was having dinner with my mom and Vivi. And we were talking about, well, one thing we were talking about was like kids, like having kids. And also just like, you know, if we were to have kids together.
Where would we raise them? What kind of profession we would want the child to have? Just thinking, just fantasizing. And then I just came in. I just dropped a bomb. And I was being really negative. I was like, maybe we don't even need kids because look at what the future is going to be.
Just think about what the future is going to bring, right? Because we're living in a time right now where you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Because of technology, we've talked a lot about technology and stuff like that. Because of future technology and the way things are going, you really don't know what tomorrow is going to be like. World War III. Well, I don't think even about World War III, but think about it. We've never lived in a time where we didn't really know what tomorrow would bring.
Right? When we were younger. That's debatable. I think every time doesn't know what tomorrow is going to bring. Well, in general, you're just sort of like, I mean, even just going back to when you're 20, like think back to when you were 20 and what life was like. Did you ever think that in the next five, 10 years, life's going to be so different? Yeah. There wasn't this like global angst of like, oh my God, what's going to happen? It was just about like, you know, life is life. I mean, forget about technology. We were talking about like COVID, you know, even just the idea of,
of bioterror even in the future. Forget about like natural, but man-made, you know what I mean? But also like social media, we were talking about with during the social dilemma episode, right? Where that's leading. Right. And then like recently I've been watching a lot of stuff with like VR and I mean, that's more entertainment, but who knows? Maybe it could become other things. Oh dude. I think VR is going to be like, it's going to change the game. It's going to change. Have you guys been, I mean,
Keeping up a little bit at all with VR at all? What's going on with VR and AR? No, I'm just kind of like, you know, I'm just, I wouldn't say excited. I'm just very curious as to what VR is going to bring, how it's going to change the porn industry. Priorities, Justin. Priorities. I mean, it will, it's going to be a game changer. Well, I mean, a lot of technology is first embraced by the adult industry.
Is that true? Yeah. They're pioneers. Like what? Like what? Well, even, okay, let's talk about VR. But when VR first started coming to fruition, I mean, who's the one that first jumped on the bandwagon and started creating content with VR? Like a plethora of content. It was the adult industry. It was the Japanese. No, not even. I thought it was the Japanese. Like they were like really big onto like the adult industry. Not even. Not even. Not even. I mean, yes, but. They started making the sex dolls first.
Yeah, sex dolls, but I'm talking about VR right now where you're in an immersive environment where what you're viewing is being reacted to the way your head is moving, right? Aren't they known for being really good at technology? Who's they? The Japanese. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And they also are some of the pioneers in the porn industry. So if they're leading in technology and leading in porn... They are the pioneers of the porn industry. Like...
Well, I wouldn't know. Like, how we... Like, we defer... Justin and I would defer to how we... They're one of the most creative when it comes to the porn industry. Let's put it that way, right? That's putting it nicely. Yeah. Or another way you can say is they're probably one of the most perverse cultures in terms of porn. Well, I did see this one show. I think it was on Vice, where there was like a mini doc about people who are creating robotics that are very lifelike, human-like. Mm-hmm.
and purely meant to be sexual partners or life partners. And one of the companies that was getting one of the subject matter was this guy who created this doll that basically can respond to your actions, has a moving mouth, lifelike body parts.
And he was asked, how far are you from bringing this to reality? He's like, are you kidding me? I already sold like 10,000 of these. But it still looks really fake. It's still not real. It's not like her. Oh, with Joaquin Phoenix? Yeah. Actually, her is not a good one because her is not about the female robot body. But what's the other one? With the female cyborg. Girl in the Box? No. No.
Ex machina. Ex machina. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, not realistic like that. You know, that's realistic. That was super, super realistic. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, he thinks that he's, like, another 10 years from there. But, I mean, I mean, just think about that. 10 years. What does that mean? That's nothing. That's a blink of an eye. Right? That's a blink of an eye. 10 years of... We've been in Shanghai for 10 years. Right? So, it's like, think about if it really gets to that stage in 10 years' time. Like, men are kind of fucked. Not just men.
Think about it. Women are fucked. Do you think women are going to embrace sexual robots as much as men are? Well, there is an analysis between the reaction between a male and a female to a robotic partner. And for men in general, it was all about...
satisfying sexual needs and secondly would be loneliness right for women they tended to be not less towards the sexual needs and more towards if there was like a sentient robot that looked like a human male it would be more about partnership as opposed to the sexual needs
Can we rewind a little bit? Sure. Sure, Eric. You can do whatever you want. Okay. I love the conversation on VR and I want to... Go back on that one? No, well, I want to talk about that for sure. And I also want to connect the dot between VR as a technology and social dilemma, what we talked about last week. But before, I just wanted to go back quickly and not dwell. You made a comment around the...
level of optimism today being perhaps at its lowest in your lifetime. And so I wanted to quickly touch on the question, is the sentiment on the future right now, today, truly at its lowest in our lifetime? And I'll make the argument, a very simple argument, and I'll just go backwards in time as far as I can sort of remember, and then a little bit about the history books. So
A little bit more than 10 years ago, we had the financial crisis, which was like the biggest crisis that we've had since the Great Depression. Before that, we had the Iraq War and then terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. That was pretty scary. Before that, we had the Cold War, nuclear weapons and literally being a blink of an eye.
you know, kind of away from the destruction of the world. We had the Vietnam War and then we had the civil rights movement. It was a very tough time. So I'm kind of curious if we were to actually go back to the media, the journalism and the sentiment at the time, like what people really thought in terms of their optimism about tomorrow. That's really good. That's a really good point. But I think all those things, all those events that you brought up is taking much more of an American through an American lens, right?
Right. Whereas what I think what's different about today is this is a global, global, much more global than any of those events were. Now, you can argue the housing crisis affected global markets as well. And it did. But a lot of those other events was primarily through an American lens. And it impacted, I think, the American state of mind much more than globally.
than anywhere else. Whereas today it's affecting so much of Asia, Europe, it's been devastated, America obviously, but everywhere, literally everywhere in the world. So I feel like it's a different feeling today because it's global. You make a good point. And certainly I think I was taking sort of more of a personal American perspective, but I'll offer two points. One is the Cold War, that was truly global.
I think we all would acknowledge that that was a global thing. And then I think if you were then to look at the specific sentiment of the time, and I don't want to get too much into...
Chinese politics. That's a sensitive topic. But I think the events in the late 80s and following that probably were not super optimistic as well. So anyways, I think it's probably worth a double click. It's probably worth going back to the history and really understanding, like looking at the books written at the time rather than just sort of inserting our modern perspective. Because we always think it's like... Or recency bias. Yeah, it's recency bias. That's a great, that's a good one.
But anyways, I just want to make that point. But going back to virtual reality, I think how you like to follow this stuff and like it's always great conversation. I'm curious, what are the latest developments in virtual reality that you've read about? I have no idea. I really know nothing about it. You follow this stuff a lot more. I don't really follow it per se. It's just that recently I had a little time on my hands that I read about.
read a little bit about it you deleted your social media accounts freeing extra time so then you could explore other technology that's gonna fuck your life up even more so awesome well you were one of the first you were one of the first people I remember like I came I went to your apartment once this was a long time ago
And then like, like I came in and you were like sitting there on your couch with like, like an Oculus machine, like around your eyes. Not really, but like that thing you put around your phone. It was the Google, it was the Google cardboard. Yeah. You were just sitting there. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, okay, so I'm no expert, but there was one tech... But a connoisseur of virtual reality. I'm interested in it. It's definitely interesting to me. But there's this one technology that has come out. It's just a development kit right now. But, I mean, it's pretty much usable. And it's pretty interesting. Is it on?
Okay, good. You don't need to voice it out loud. So basically, okay, so VR, you guys scorn. This is what I get, the scorn. It's a lot of scorn, Eric. It's kind of like that. It's a lot of fucking scorn because if it's not on, I would turn it on. You don't need to ask me. I was just wondering. I saw four red lights on. I mean, I'm not a tech guy. Can I come back? When will this ever be over? Okay, go on. Go on now. It's a part of it. So basically, as I was saying...
This new accessory for VR. So VR, so you wear this headset, right? And within this headset, there's a screen. And for example, a lot of VR gaming has come out where you're controlling characters, but you're in that world. When you look around, it's reactive. And to your eyesight and stuff like that, where your head is moving.
So there's this new accessory that's come out. And basically, it's like a type of, they call it BCI. It's like brain controlled interface. And it's this thing that you attach to the back of your head. And it reads the visual cortex part of your brain. Wait, is it like intrusive? Like does it actually have to go into your brain somehow? No, no, no. It's just this round thing, right? It's called NetMind.
I think the company is called NextMind. And basically it's like this round thing that you attach the back of your head, right? And on this circular thing, there are these little like sensors and they attach it back to your head. And then you basically turn on your, the software that comes with it and a test to make sure the connections is on and how it works is this is mind blowing. So it's a screen and you have like first, the first step was like, you look based off your eyesight, this accessory will read where you're looking and
and know what you're looking at and control things based off of that. It's like telepathy. So you're looking at the screen and there's like three gray boxes, right? And it tells you, look at the left box and look at that box. Look at the right box, look at the right box, look at the center box. Okay, now it's calibrated. Now it's all on you. And whatever you look at will light up. And then boom, it lights up. Boom, lights up. And the guy who was doing this review on this developer kit said,
He was like, holy fuck, you know, it's like looking at right, bam, looking at left, bam, and that's done. Second, that's the next thing is like creating music. So there's like drum set and there's like synths and stuff like that. You look at certain parts of the instruments and starts playing a loop. And by combining what you're looking at, it creates a song.
And it all worked seamlessly. And then the next game is like a Mario type of game. It's like a platformer. So the computer controls the character moving forward. And all you're going to do is look at the enemies that you want to kill and look at the items you want to grab. It's like, bam, the head explodes. Boom, items grabbed. And everything was seamless. When I watched it, this test run of this equipment,
It was seamless. And the guy was like, holy shit, how is this working? This is insane. Yeah. Yeah. And this is just like the tip of the iceberg. You know what I mean? Yeah. This is the tip of the iceberg. So with VR, why is it fascinating? It's because right now we're only, I guess right now in terms of what the market is offering is mainly from a consumer level is interactive content, which is video games, for example, right? Yeah.
And you're playing video games in the VR world, right? So you can watch movies in a VR world. It's content. But from an industrial perspective, doctors are using VR to practice their surgery. Pilots are practicing flying, et cetera, et cetera, right? So that's one. It's another industrial way of using VR.
Now, eventually, VR, I think, is going to become a combination of VR and AR, which is augmented reality, AR. It's going to be a combination of basically you don't need to be anywhere except for your seat that you're sitting in and do almost anything you want.
you know what i mean and it just opens up this whole possibility of a new way of living and that blows my mind so if before bci brain controlled interface accessories came out i didn't even think about that i was just thinking about okay you're looking at the screen you have controls in your hand and you're manipulating something within the screen right but now with bci it's like yeah it's not just your hands whatever you're looking at it's like telepathy you can make things happen with your brain which is by looking because there was this company was explaining
It's that you don't see with your eyes. You see with your brain. Your eyes are just compute. It's just a transit system, right? For your brain to compute and let you understand what you're looking at. Can I take this for the moment?
but not the end destination of this conversation. Can I take this slightly into a darker realm? Ooh. Ooh. Okay. I love it. Love it. So BCI, I mean, like that's like, like matrix like shit. Right. But I mean, you know, right now it's just sort of on the surface, right? It's not like a intrusive COVID test where they fucking stick something up your nose or whatever. Right. But anal swab. Exactly. But I mean like, okay, so we're starting to, this is like,
Sounds like it's just scratching the surface. Yeah. Right? Just scratching the surface, like internet 50 years ago, that kind of shit, right? So eventually they can tap into your brain. Now let's go back to social dilemma.
Will we eventually get into a BCI dilemma? If companies can basically hack your brain just by you looking at something, what does it mean if they've got an interface into your brain with virtual reality? What is that? I'm curious. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, it's the same thing with Elon Musk's Neuralink technology, right? Well, Neuralink is invasive, right? So that's different. It's an actual chip into your brain. But the idea is the same. It's focusing on actual how to plug into your brain, right? Whether it's intrusive, invasive or not. Yeah. I mean, I think the implications are very dark. There's a lot of companies that are all exploring this type of technology or this direction. Yeah.
But the thing is, is society really going to go all in on this or not? And if it becomes ubiquitous, then we're talking about all the kind of dark
dark scenarios there is. But if it doesn't, then it kind of keeps remaining more of a fringe thing. Because the thing with VR is VR is not new. VR has been around since like the 80s or 70s. Decades. Decades. Why isn't it more widely adopted? Because it's not top of mind until Howie mentioned it in some of the technology episodes.
Like China being such an advanced place, I don't walk around seeing people with VR stuff. That's the interesting thing with VR because it's not like, I was saying it's like it's not a new technology. It's been around like decades ago, but it went like it lost like popularity. Like it was big like in the 80s and then like it was like this new technology. People are like, oh, wow, VR, next thing. And then it completely just fell off the radar, lost all popularity. No one was really doing anything with VR before.
And then now we see a new spike and a new renaissance in interest in VR and in the implications. And the technology besides BCI, but the technology beforehand for the last few years
has relatively more or less remained the same. It was more just like the pixels and resolution has been better, but the base technology has not really changed since like the 80s, right? I think the biggest problem with VR during this period of time of invention to mass usage, let's say, is there's a couple of 門檻, a couple of obstacles that they had to cross, right?
you know, until they can make it even more easily accessible to the general public. So one of them is what you just said, resolution, right? So the screen resolution, like how clear, how realistic is the world that you're looking at? The graphics. The graphics, computing power. Now, only recently do we have computing power that's strong enough to be able to run something that is 360 degrees that's interactive with multiple elements moving at the same time. So that's just like...
pure technological advancement, right? And we're only gonna get better and better with that, right? That's a given.
A second one, it was a big one, is like a refresh rate. So basically is the screen refresh rate, the hertz. Because anything below a certain number, I forgot what the number is, you get easily, easily you get motion sickness, right? And so you can't play for a long time. You play for like five minutes, 10 minutes, you start feeling a little queasy and who's going to play something for a long time? So only recently do we have certain, like I think the, I feel like the Steam one,
is is close but not there yet um but basically you can play for a longer period of time without getting sick but you still get sick you know for the for for many people they're still not there yet but it's getting closer the third is size so you have you need a computer to run a powerful computer to run vr you know but only recently the oculus quest 2 which
which came out last year, is a portable one that doesn't need a computer. And this is a recent development where it broke like 2 million sales or something like that. And it's starting to get that ball rolling to make it more mainstream.
And this is the first step. And I think that's the biggest thing is the size, the ease, the sickness, and the resolution. I think all those combined, you're going to have developers creating software. You're going to have developers creating games. You're going to have corporations create different type of softwares or algorithms or platforms or whatever to help their company grow or become more specialized or whatever. So that's going to happen normally. But it's just the technology has to catch up.
Interesting that you mentioned some of these things. So I was just Googling some of this crap. But here's the headline. Elon Musk talks Mars, Neuralink, I guess that's the company you mentioned, Dogecoin, Robinhood, Cobra Kai in a surprise where? Clubhouse interview. Interesting. Yeah.
Wait, so Elon Musk was on Clubhouse? Yeah, yesterday or two days ago. Yeah, that's why everybody's been talking about it. Really? He was on Clubhouse himself? He just popped in. Oh, wow. I just dropped a bunch of buzzwords. This is, THD is clearly on the forefront of the world. But yeah, listeners, Clubhouse, Neuralink, this is like the fucking shit. Explain to the listeners what Clubhouse is.
Clubhouse is this super cool new app. Basically, you can get on and you can listen in to conversations. So I think Elon Musk was having a conversation with a couple of people and you can just dial into the channel and you can kind of like eavesdrop on that event. And so there's literally like millions of people on Clubhouse. It's invitation only. So each time you join, you get two invitations. I've invited, of course, my two clients
best friends in the world, Justin and Howie. And then, you know, there's all kinds of crazy topics, but it's really like real time. So rather than chat and just processing all that garbage, you can actually hear people in long form conversations and you can even participate in them. Think of yourself attending an event with speakers on stage and people talking and you being allowed to speak on stage as well. Yeah. And so it's kind of like,
I think people have referred to it as like podcast or Instagram or Facebook 2.0, 3.0. Because before you had all these people online, but they were posting in quite rudimentary fashion, like pieces of text. And now you're going to actually hear them live speaking, but it's interactive. And so it's kind of like you're part of this event and it's interactive. You may not be speaking, but you're there live. And it's different than just consuming content on YouTube.
Yeah. So, Elon Musk was on there talking about all this stuff. Yeah. I want to see if it's recorded somewhere. It's on YouTube. Because Clubhouse is live, but it's not sort of, you know, you don't go on there to look at recorded stuff. It's on YouTube, huh? Yeah, I think so. Because what happened was there's a 5,000 participant limit to each Clubhouse room.
And when Elon Musk went on, obviously it's the first time it hit the limit. But there's still so many more people that want to be a part of. So there is like these secondary rooms that got created that stream somebody that was in the room to stream it to the other chat room. And then people picked up their YouTube channel to stream it. It's basically the audio, right? Stream it on YouTube. So it should be on there. I think that's what I love about Elon Musk. He seems out of all the big names, he's always willing just to like...
just to go on platforms and just like pay and just appear. And he's really thinking about the future. I mean, he's not content. It's like making money is one part of his life, but he's dedicated to doing something that's going to take human beings. Like we're thinking, you and I are thinking, what am I going to have for fucking dinner? What am I going to do next week? How he's been thinking about, oh, what am I going to...
you know, I've got some free time. What am I going to do after CNY? He's thinking like, what am I going to do in a hundred years? Yeah. Crazy, right? On a related note, Jeff Bezos has handed over. Oh, he stepped down, right? He stepped down. Yeah. What's the story behind that?
So there's another Jeff Bezos clone named Andy Jassy who's worked with Jeff for 20 years, a couple years younger. So Andy's going to take over the company. He's basically a Jeff clone, super, you know, kind of hard-driving, ruthless, and smart. And Jeff's going to focus on future initiatives. He's got a lot of shit going on.
But there's lately in the news, because every time I see headlines, and granted, admittedly, I have not really looked into it, but every time I see headlines of Jeff Bezos stepping down, it's always attached to some sort of anti-union headline as well. Is there anything? Is that connected in any way? Like, what's the reason for him stepping down? Is he stepping down by his own volition or...
Is he being pressured to, or is there some sort of other narrative going on? I don't know. I don't know. Because every time I see Jeff Bezos' headline, it's always attached to some sort of anti-union headline as well. Because lately with Amazon, there's been this big effort to unionize, right? From the workers? Yeah. I don't know. I do know that Andy Jassy, you know, he...
He made his mark at Amazon building the cloud business as basically a startup within the company. And it's one of the leading growth engines in the company. And if you look at some of these second generation CEOs or second or third generation CEOs, they've had tremendous success. You look at Satya Nadella from Microsoft taking over from Steve Ballmer and from Bill Gates.
You look at, you know, Tim Cook, you know, it's interesting. Well, that's a little bit more debatable. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a Tim fan, but, you know. Yeah, Tim Cook? I know. I know. What company was he again? What's that? What's that company again? But it's interesting, right? Some of these companies have pivoted from their founders and sort of like,
moving into new spaces, right? You look at Microsoft, I mean, moving into the cloud, like it's very, very different than what they were doing before. Talking about new things, because when you had just mentioned the talk that Elon gave us,
in clubhouse you mentioned uh doga doga oh yeah so there's a coin yeah dogecoin is like see i don't even i i don't even know how to pronounce it you're like doggy coin yeah i was like doga that's how little i know about it yeah but i see it fucking everywhere what the fuck is that about what is that about it's a joke it's a joke it's a joke what do you mean it's a joke coin what is it it's a it's a it's a virtual currency but it's a joke
What do you mean by it's a joke? Explain. Elaborate. I wish I could explain a little bit more. I just know this is a joke. Well, you're into crypto yourself, right? No, not really. I mean, I was for a certain point in time. Yeah, you were really big into crypto. Yeah, it was a couple years ago. But even at Dogecoin, the little that I did research on, I just basically saw that it was not really usable. It was just like based off of a meme of a Shiba coin.
Okay. You know, being like... You know? And they've created this like virtual currency to, I don't know, support the meme or something like that. So it's kind of like a GameStop type of deal? What do you mean by that? Where it's like... It's kind of like a joke? Well, it's definitely...
Okay, Dogecoin was not meant to be a serious currency, but it became serious because investors were buying it by the bulk. Just like GameStop. Yeah. Yeah. Well, GameStop, the whole thing is because it was really manipulated by Reddit users and stuff like that. It's not like traditional investors and stuff like that. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know. Maybe. But Dogecoin, it's like a joke coin. People liked it because it was cute. Oh, so it's not a real thing. Well, it's a real thing. Maybe it's a thing now. I don't know. But years ago when it first came out, it was a joke. Okay, so no one's actually investing in Dogecoin as a serious thing. No, I mean, obviously they are investing because if the price of it is skyrocketing, it's because people are buying it. So it's not... Okay, so this is where I'm lost because...
It's a real virtual currency. It's just there's no application for it, I think, from when it first came out. So then why are people investing in it?
Are they just trying to fuck with people? Because GameStop, the only reason why the Redditors invested in GameStop was to fuck with the people on Wall Street manipulating that stock, right? So in a way, it was like a joke, right? It was like fucking, you know, no one's really taking GameStop seriously. Well, Dogecoin rose up again also because, not totally, but in part due to Elon Musk posting about it.
Okay, let me... You did it about it. Let's look at the facts. Yeah, bring it in. Let me... Wheel us in here. Let me go to one of the media sources that was not called out by the social dilemma, right? Wikipedia. Can we trust it? Can we trust it? Some of it, yeah. It's free though. So we are the product? Well, let's just go. Okay. Okay.
Wikipedia is open source, right? I donate $50 a year every Christmas to Wikipedia for the last 10 years. I love Wikipedia. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. You donate money to Wikipedia every year? You can donate money to Wikipedia? How do you do that? Is the donate function on Wikipedia? Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. You've expanded our horizons. Now tell us what Dogecoin is. You're a saint.
I get reminders every time I log into Wikipedia. It's like, save us. We're going out of business. Just like my old university. Okay. Let me read off a couple of things. So first of all, there's actually a coin. It's a very nice little gold coin called the Dogecoin. Okay. Anyways, it was introduced in December 2013. Okay.
And it reached a market cap of $5.3 billion US on January 28th, 2021. So that's like nine days ago. So, okay. It was co-founded by IBM software engineer from Portland. So a couple of guys and they just wanted to reach a demographic that was broader than Bitcoin. Okay.
So it started off as a real... It's a real virtual currency. It's just not like a lot of the other virtual currencies are meant for certain type of platforms or actual digital usage. But I believe, you can continue, but I believe that this was more for fun.
Absolutely. You're right, Howie. What does that mean for funds? So they decided to create a payment system that's instant fund and free from traditional banking fees. So kind of irreverent. So they wanted something where people can kind of
you know, like IOUs where people can pay each other based on, you know, blockchain, whatever it is, and free from banking fees. But isn't that just cryptocurrency in general? It's cryptocurrency, yes. But that's all cryptocurrency. Yes. That's the ethos of all crypto. Absolutely. So why is... They made it fun. They call it Dogecoin. No, but a lot of different cryptocurrencies are used for different platforms or different type of usages. Yeah.
They're all competing for people to buy into the currency and to mine the currency, etc. Think of it this way, Justin. So as far as I can remember, coins have had significant figures of head on the coin. Like you had like, I mean, fuck, like Lincoln on the penny, right? Or Roosevelt on the dime or Washington on the quarter. They put a fucking Shiba on it. I guess that's kind of funny. So that's the only difference, right?
I mean, there's probably other subtle differences. But anyways, okay. So going back to the recent history. Okay, so three recent events. In 2017 and 18, during the cryptocurrency bubble, Dogecoin briefly reached a peak of about two cents per coin, putting its market cap at two billion at the time during that bubble. Now it's five billion. In 2020...
there was a TikTok campaign to get the coins priced to a dollar. And then in 2021, in January, which is just this year, as a result of attention from those same wonderful, I think Wall Street bets, is that the Reddit? Yeah. Yeah, Wall Street bets. It went up 800%, partially encouraged by Elon and the GameStop short squeeze. So yes, Justin, your instinct was right. This is somehow related to some of that trickery.
Yeah. Or populism. Yeah. See, this is, you know, because as you know, Howie, I've been a little more skeptical on the whole crypto thing in general from the get-go. Look, I see for the long term, I definitely see the direction going more cryptocurrency, right? I just was skeptical about the lack of control of
and all the different types of cryptocurrency there was on the market right and i just could not see a way where any sort of security could be built around it and that was kind of the whole ethos of cryptocurrency was that it couldn't there was no regulation around it it was completely it's blockchain right so it's decided by all the users and
I don't know the technical shit, but it's like it's not regulated by any one source, like a bank or a country, right? But that's at the same time where I feel like the weaknesses also lie because according to this, cryptocurrency is just as easily manipulated as anything else. Of course. Right? So that's what scares me. That's the heart of cryptocurrency currently. It's easily manipulable.
but I don't think that's what you want in a currency. Right. It's not backed by like the US government, which makes it a lot more. So on the surface, cryptocurrency on the surface, just like you described, Oh, it's like if you're using, um, some sort of financial transaction, no system. Um, yeah. Use cryptocurrency because, um, it's safe. Uh, you know, it's, uh,
It's liquid. I think people use cryptocurrency, well, not liquid, but people use cryptocurrency because it's not regulated and it's not monitored. It's private. It's private. Yeah.
And so, like, it's a relatively safe form in the sense that, like, okay, it's, you know, it's based on pretty proven technology. Yeah. Right? Like, pretty robust technology. And then I can do stuff in a very liquid way because it's electronic and I can have transactions and no one can know about it. Yeah. So, on that level, I mean, the general public all understands that and accepts that. But if you...
I guess look from a different angle. You can see a market where I could, if I'm an investor, I have some money, I can easily manipulate this if I have enough people with me to play the waves. You know what I'm saying? So that's what I'm saying. And then there's no backing, there's no security, there's no default in terms of any of that. Well, it's just from general, I mean, I'm not, I'm definitely not one of those people that does investing. So I'm not that knowledgeable about that. But I can say that Bitcoin from day one has always been
I mean, it's the OG, right? And people who play or invest in cryptocurrency have always said Bitcoin is the safest bet because there's no way in hell. There's too many Bitcoins out there. There's no way in hell that that's going to go down, right? It will go down in value, the peaks and valleys, right? But just like it was down for only a couple thousand US dollars for the past couple of years and suddenly this year it hit 40,000.
out of nowhere you know what i mean um yeah you can bet that there's a hell a lot of people hello hello a lot of people that made a shitload of money during that time yeah you know what i'm saying because it's getting manipulated but it's never going to go to zero it's not going to become nothing it's not going to you know what i mean there's yeah but that's what they said the whole no way it'll ever kind of phrase that's exactly what they said about the u.s housing market too before that crashed
Right? I don't know. I'm getting too much about money here. None of us are really into that. Why are we talking completely out of school? But I think what I'm going to do is put a little bit of money in Bitcoin. You know, just put it on side. I don't know. Is it a good time to do it? Don't ask me. No? You can give me the money and I'll think about how to use it. Yeah, fuck you.
Just put it there, leave it on the side and see where it goes, you know? Kind of hedge my bets a little bit. $600 billion is the current market cap for Bitcoin. Crazy. Yeah, I bought Bitcoin when it was at like $16,000, which is already really high. You know what I mean? And... What's it at now? I think like $34,000. Oh, wow. $33,000, $34,000. But yeah, anyway, it's... I mean, you really got to put your head around it, you know, to play the game. It's crazy. Yeah.
Yeah, I see it as all just like, it's all a game. No matter what you're doing, it's all gamified except it's just who's playing the game. That's the only difference. You know what I mean? But everything... And who's controlling the game. Exactly. Like, a lot of people are playing the game, but who's actually setting the rules for the game? Yeah.
I think that people are attracted to it because they feel like the people that are setting the rules for Bitcoin are different than the people that set the rules for the traditional currencies, which is a game that's been played for hundreds, if not thousands of years. It's hard to get into it or figure out the rules. And people are into Bitcoin because somehow they perceive Bitcoin and crypto as being, okay, it's a new frontier. I can get in early, but still. I don't want to miss out on it. Well, it's also the growing distrust for banking institutions, right?
which is completely legitimate in my point of view, from my point of view. Like, I think, like, so long have we been so dependent on banking institutions. But through my recent experience with a few of them, it's been...
it's shaken my whole kind of trust in banking systems and at the end of the day they're once you open up an account you're signing away a lot of rights that are in fine print and they ultimately have all the autonomy in the world what to do with your account not not necessarily what to do with your money because you can take legal action against that
But I mean, they're doing all sorts of stuff with your money that you just don't know. Of course. And they can close your account at any given time, anytime they want, without any real reason, just because they want to. You can just close it? Yeah. What do they do with the money? They return it back to you. But like in their kind of on their terms, basically, it's really fucked up. Like banking institutions have a lot more power over your money than you realize and
And it's the few that actually run into these situations that kind of realize, oh, fuck. Banking institutions, it's not like this...
It's not as safe as we usually think, we're traditionally brought up to think they are. You know what I mean? They're private institutions. They're people behind it. They're private institutions whose main goal is to make money. So it's like giving your money to any other company and just trusting them with all your money. You know what I mean? It's the same exact thing. And maybe that's why people are more comfortable giving their money to a server who just needs to be fed electricity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That's where blockchain, I think, really has its appeal. Blockchain is about counterbalances, right? Checks and balances, I mean. Because it's not like one computer or one server controlling...
your transaction or your money or whatever. It's, I mean, each transaction is based off of whatever the X amount of other regular, unbeknownst to your transaction computers and people that are okaying, you know, or giving codes or, you know, this stuff to allow it to happen. That's kind of, I guess, the initial, um,
safety measure, I feel like intrinsic safety measure built into blockchain is that it's based on the population of users, right? To determine the value of your currency and at the time of the trade or, right? Is that kind of how it works? It's not determined by anyone. It's determined by the whole network itself, right? And it would have to take everyone on that network to fall a certain way to manipulate
the value of the currency? Is that how it works? I think we're opening up a can of worms if we really want to start understanding cryptocurrency. And I don't think the show's about that. So maybe we should start backing off on that. All right, where are we going now? No, because I only brought up cryptocurrency because you mentioned Dogecoin. Dogecoin. Dogecoin. I still can't pronounce it correctly. And because I see it on the headlines everywhere, and we're kind of talking about current events a little bit, right? Yeah.
I see it on the headlines everywhere. I just had never had any idea what that was really about. I mean, I would say just chalk it up to once again, the world that we live in, the direction that we're heading towards this digital revolution that we've been living a part of for the past X amount of years. And we will continue to live in for the X amount of years in the future.
You know, this, I mean, the digital life. Well, that's why I don't want, I don't want to repeat myself, but I'm going to repeat myself. And this is from, you know, what I said in our last episode about the social dilemma is the impact is, I think, going to be similar to that of the agricultural revolution. You know what I mean? It's going to change the way kind of civilizations function. It being? Technology. Yeah. Yeah.
Right? And technology in the way that we're seeing it play out now. Not necessarily, because a lot of technology is a very general term, right? A bicycle is technically technology, right? But kind of digital technology, I think, to be more specific. Let's, I mean, okay, let's, I want to talk about something. Let's talk something a little bit more innocent, right? But maybe it may turn sinister, but let's talk about something a little more innocent, at least,
We like to twist everything into a sinister lens. Yeah. So, um, I was having a conversation with a friend recently, Reggie, shout out to Reggie. Um, we're talking about virtual influencers. Okay. And I know, I know before we started recording this, uh, I mentioned to you guys, you guys didn't really know much about virtual influencers. So a real quick, uh, uh, definition for people who don't know virtual influencer. I mean, everyone knows what KOLs are, influencers are, um,
Honestly, I think you take for granted the amount of people that actually know what KOLs are. Well, KOLs is a term used in China and Asia. Influencers are used more in the West. So for people who have influence to public opinion based off of their social status or popularity. So you have celebrities, you have...
you know, models or whatever, intelligent people that have a huge base of people that want to listen to what they say. KOL's key opinion leaders. Yes. And then influencers are people who influence people. So a virtual influencer is what you can kind of expect. It's somebody that is digitally created virtually that is an influencer. So what does that mean?
So you can have somebody that is 3D modeled, like you watch 3D movies or games. You have a 3D model of a person that's created in software.
Or a cartoon character that's drawn. You know? Basically virtual. Not real. Not skin and blood. Okay. Right? A virtual influencer. Now, these people have social media accounts. They create content. They sing songs for new albums. So, it's like if Mickey Mouse had like a Twitter account or something like that. Sure. You can say that. If Mickey Mouse... What is that? If Mickey Mouse... God damn it, Eric.
If Mickey Mouse was created to have his own personality and create content just for the audience, you know, and he's like, Mickey Mouse was posting on his Facebook or WeChat moments like, hey, I'm here. Yeah, if Mickey Mouse had a doing account or something like that. Yeah, exactly. So that's basically a good metaphor for what a virtual influencer is. Now,
Now, the idea of the virtual influencer is becoming more and more popular because, for example, there's one that's called Little Michaela, for example. She was created...
from this company and became a virtual influencer and many brands were using her as an ambassador to push products. For example, there's one famous commercial that Lil Miquela created with Gigi Haddad for Calvin Klein and they're in the same environment shot like a commercial but she's just like a normal girl. She looks kind of cartoony but like realistic cartoony girl and
And she's just there posing, modeling, as if she was a model. And she has an Instagram account and literally millions of followers. She has like four and a half million followers right now. And people eat everything she posts. She's like, I'm having ice cream at this store. And literally, it's a store.
that exists and she's there having ice cream in her hand. You know what I mean? And people will be like, oh, she's like, oh, look at these shades from Zara. They're so nice. That's fucking fascinating. Yeah. And people follow and there is actual ROI based off of the things that she talks about. Like there actually are spikes in sales, you know, spikes in awareness whenever these virtual influencers are
quote-unquote influence so what's the bigger picture here because i have to assume on some sort of level that the people who follow these virtual influencers know that they're not real of course and that it's a corporation behind this character just like if disney would be behind mickey mouse okay
to push their agenda. Like they have to know on some sort of level, right? 100%. I'm going to, I'm going to add onto this because this little Michaela is, is 3d rendered, looks kind of human, like, like very close to like realistic, but not there yet. Okay.
League of Legends, the video game. Yeah. You know League of Legends? League of Legends. Yes. Okay. It's a video game, one of the most popular video games. Competitions are based upon people win millions of dollars. LOL. LOL. Exactly. And so the characters from League of Legends, which is based off of heroes, champions, these powerful characters, literally come out, formed a K-pop group, and released albums. And their first single was...
I forgot what it's called, but his first single came out, 450 million views. And they become virtual influencers. Now, all of a sudden, they're doing their own Instagram and they're doing... And they're cartoon, like pure cartoon, because that's what the game is. It's like a cartoon type of character, you know, like illustrated as opposed to like pure realistic looking humans. Yeah. Well, see, okay, if they came out with a song and everyone downloaded this song, I get that because if it's a catchy song, it's a catchy song, whatever the fuck...
the characters are, right? So they're just interested in that song. But to continue down that road of now these are becoming influencers and they're promoting products, promoting things that you're following is a different story, right? That's a little bit different. But I guess you can make the argument at the end of the day, content is content, promotion is promotion. And it doesn't matter if it's a real person promoting this or a virtual character promoting this.
I mean, if you're into that content, if you're into that product or whatever, then you're into it, right? I guess, I don't know. It makes 100% sense. I mean, it's actually, it's not surprising at all. The reason is, I'll give you a couple of examples that seem to justify this, right? Number one, every person you see in a commercial is like acting. It's a virtual influencer. They're not real.
Everyone that's promoting a product on TV is acting. That's not them. Because there's distance between you and that person. But the difference, I would say, you're 100% correct. The difference, I would say, though, is even though you know they're acting, if you buy into that person...
Like if I buy into Dwayne, Dwayne, the rock Johnson or something, and I believe in his character, what I perceive as his character or LeBron James. And I, I believe in what I perceive is to be his general character and you know who he is.
Then I kind of trust it's, it's all about trust, right? So you trust his character, then you trust his opinion on things. And if he is willing to appear, even though he's being paid to appear on these commercials, there's some sort of built in trust with that product just through association. But with, with a virtual character, that's not real. How do you as a human build that trust with this character that,
when you know it's not a real person making their own decisions at all. You make a valid point. I'll offer a counter example and I'll maybe add to what you were saying. The counter example is that there are a lot of non-celebrity people that promote products on TV and that are clearly acting, like the testimonials. So I think there is a precedent to a virtual influencer, a person that you have no idea but who acts genuine, right? Yeah.
And then adding to your point, there is a trust aspect. So, whoever's programming the virtual interface will need to then build in certain cues. Like for instance, if I'm building the visual interface of this character, then the way they smile, their bodily reactions, their facial reactions have to mimic people that are telling the truth.
So there is technology that's sort of built in, right? And again, ultimately, the people that are building the virtual influencers are either a company that's doing it on behalf of a marketing agency or the marketing agency has an in-house team. It's just another form of marketing. And just like you build a relationship with a character in Disney, you're building a relationship with this particular character. Exactly.
I actually don't see... There are nuances to all this that we can unpack, but I don't actually see... It doesn't surprise me at all. Let me back up what you're saying. So there's another virtual influencer who's like the top male in the West, Knox Frost. Yeah.
And basically, this guy, yeah, that's his name. And all his posts, like he has a personality. And one of his things is that he's a little bit emo. Like he's a little bit like not so sure about things. And so, he asks questions and he like explores how to become better. He's like you. Yeah, totally like me. 100%. He looks like me too. And yeah, so he has this personality built in. Bet you he's getting laid. And people are responding. You know, people respond. Yeah.
You know? And just, I mean, just like you said, when you think about when people play video games or when they watch movies that they're really like moved by, they get into the characters. It's acting, but they're into the characters and the characters become believable. Yeah, but could you have a conversation with these characters? Why couldn't you? Okay, hold on. So, where this is going is tapping into human beings' responsiveness and natural connection to storytelling, right? It's all about storytelling. And...
this person has sort of been placed on a pedestal as well. Just like I would not probably have, you know, true physical engagement with Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. It's the same thing. And so it's really the storytelling behind it. Now what's probably even more interesting is that the existence of these characters is completely understandable and even predictable where society is going. The true question is that can these individuals
Virtual influencers exist without a human creator. Can we get to the point where they have their own true virtual agency, right? And they have their own virtual motivations. I think you mentioned this in the social dilemma episode we did, where these algorithms are working in a way where they're not even being programmed and manipulated by a human being. And they're completely autonomous. I would say absolutely 100%. That is...
that is going to happen. And that's not, it's not already happening. And that is the, the singularity or whatever you want to call it. Well, yes, that is definitely one thing that people are trying to break the code that they're trying to break to get to that level. I mean, this is the fucking dude. It does look like Howie. Let me see. Yeah.
Oh my God. Oh shit. It's so lifelike. Yeah. Yeah. And they pose and everything as if they're real people. Yeah. Oh my God. I want to bring in a new conversation, a new angle to this, should I say? Because one angle is the idea of- It is creepy. It's very creepy. One angle of AI is when it's singularity, when it's autonomous and stuff like that. But what about the other side? What about-
Because I think this plays into what we're talking about with why virtual influencers are successful right now. So the other side is the young generation are really accustomed to creating digital versions of themselves, period. When they play their games. Avatars. Yeah, avatars. Digital avatars. Exactly. So there's a digital representation of themselves, whether through a profile picture or through any other or some apps like Zepeto. I don't know if you ever heard of Zepeto. It's huge. Yeah.
So Zepeto is like you take a photo of yourself and it transforms your person into a digital version of yourself. And within that world, you can accessorize, you can live, you can interact with other people. Like Second Life? Yeah.
Sort of, but it's a social media platform. So basically you're connected with your friends, you're showing off, you're taking photos as your digital avatar with your friends in environments together. You know, you're playing mini games and you're buying through virtual currency. Well, it's just like these games where like League of Legends where you have your character and people are interacting online. Yeah, but that's a game where basically, this is a social media platform where literally you have a digital representation of yourself in this world with your friends in this world taking photos. Mm-hmm.
That's it. Taking photos. So, okay. So you have that now, like, let's, let's just think for a second based off of what has been popular within the past three years of Zepeto. Um,
And that's just one software. I mean, that's not even the end all be all. There's even ones where for young kids, I don't know what they're called, but I know that there are social platforms and games for kids where they literally, that's all they know is the digital versions of themselves. Like they don't show like real pictures of themselves.
The whole world is based digitally. I only know Justin digitally. Like, that's it. Period. End all, be all. So they're used to this. So they're used to being able to communicate in this way, this way of thinking. Now, as they get older, let's fast forward another 5, 10 years. The 10-year-olds of today, in 10 years, the 20-year-olds start, you know, 25-year-olds start making money and whatever, however it is then.
They're used to this way of thinking, this way of living. Not like us. They're primed for this. They're primed for it. Not like us. Not like us. We have all these questions to them. They're like, what? Yeah, I'm going to follow that. You know what I mean? It's like a given. It's like, duh. Yeah, exactly. That's the world we're heading towards. Yeah, but see, I don't mind that as much when you know there's another individual human behind that avatar. Okay, I get that. But when you already consciously know, it's like it's not hidden, right?
But you know it's not an individual human behind this avatar. It's a corporation. It's the agenda and messages that a corporation like Coca-Cola or Disney or whoever wants to push for you to kind of treat it the same way is strange. That's the leap I can't make. How is that any different than that same Coca-Cola corporation hiring people
you know, whoever Jackson wine, Pepsi, Jackson Wong, right. To come in as an ambassador to be like, this is delicious. You know, I'm so cool, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Swap them out with a digital avatar. Same thing. Justin, I, I get your point. And I mean, maybe rather than sort of like argue it, right. Let's take a different form of it. Um, could we, could any of us see ourselves, um,
building a relationship with a virtual friend at some point if it became sentient enough where we could have dialogue with it. I mean, that's really the next question. Some people are already able to do that. Some people are... I'll tell you right now, I would totally be able to do that. I would totally be able to do that, but I still draw a line. I still draw a line because...
Because whether it's, it's not a matter of if it's a human or not, it's just a matter of if it's an individual sentience. Like, so if it's a human or if it's some sort of AI, right? I can, I can, I can connect those dots and I can, I feel like I would definitely be the type to be able to fall in love with like an AI, just like the movie Her, right? With Joaquin Phoenix or anything like that.
But as long as I know that it's some sort of individual sentience, whether it's artificial or human, is not really the main point. The main point with me is that if this voice talking to me was not an individual sentient, like thought, but it was a culmination of a bunch of people in the boardroom at a corporation deciding what this message should be,
then I don't think I would be able to fall in love with that. Like, I just wouldn't be able to because I know this is like, they had a boardroom meeting about this. This is a bunch of shareholders. This is a whole corporation of people deciding and designing what this should be. And it's not like...
It's not some sort of single source of a message or an idea. - Which is understandable. Which is understandable. Like, let's break this down. So we talked last week about, I mean, probably your consumption of social media being less than the average person. You've made conscious decisions in your life and rational decisions to do things. You have chosen not to suspend reality.
But the reality is that you are not the iconic human being. Like you are not the Knox Frost of all human beings, right? You are, you know, you're practicing certain higher level sort of
thinking, but people are able to suspend belief, right? People are able to deceive themselves. People are able to convince themselves otherwise. And that's absolutely what's happening. That's absolutely what's happening. Like who's to say that we're all rational human beings. There are human beings that fall in love with people that don't even love them back and convince them that that human being loves them back. Yeah. You know? And so the ability for human beings to tell stories, to believe stories, um,
that aren't even true is not unprecedented. It's unlimited. And the fact that people can believe QAnon, the fact that people can believe election was stolen, the fact that people can read fake news and believe that shows you that it's absolutely possible. Maybe not with you, Justin Yang, but... No, no, no. I'm not saying I'm above it. Well, we're not. None of us are above it. I'm a victim of it too. None of us are above it categorically.
But there are specific instances where maybe we're more susceptible than others. Now, Justin is definitely susceptible to AI, though. For sure. What makes you say that? Because we are AI. You say that with such conviction? I'm AI. You're friends with Eric? Oh, just a little known tidbit about this show. Eric is not a real person. Yeah, he's AI. He's an AI software we have on the show.
that brings a third voice into the show. He's not an actual human being. Honestly, how could someone be so smart, articulate, have such great points and then inject humor at very strategic points in the conversation? That's unreal. Listen to the way he talks. Honestly.
Honestly, the way he talks, I'm sure we can convince some people that he is not a real human being. Well, then that's why it's Eric with an A, not E. It's AI. I think from now on we should... It's not a human being. Oh, my God. That is so true. You just gave away our biggest secret. Yeah, I know. This show is actually only hosted by two people. It's me and Howie. Eric is just a software we play off of the iPad. Yeah.
and uh we hope that's what you think right you're like but like i mean could you ever start a podcast with two virtual reality people well you already have you're the only human on this show you realize that right my whole world's being peeled apart right now but um but can you imagine like you okay so what about wally you guys seen wally right oh the cartoon yeah disney cartoon yeah the pixar cartoon pixar pixar yeah what about it you remember wally remember the people in wally
They sit in the chair, like, floating around. They're all fat. Okay. And, like, everything they want is just in front of the screen and, like, drinks come and food. And it's just, like, stuck. And they can't. All their limbs become immobile because they're stuck in the chair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, is that our future? It could be. It could be. I mean, just think about it. Just think about just a few of the stuff that we've been saying. Just a few. Yeah. I guess you're right because that just made me feel, like, about, like, I've cried a
at like watching like Disney or Pixar cartoons before. Of course. And those cartoons were made by big conglomerate corporations. And the story was written by a board of people. Characters were decided by a board of people, right? How it all came out was decided by a whole team of people. And I felt so emotionally connected to that story and to that character that I would actually cry, right?
So I guess it's not a far stretch that I could actually go ahead and buy something because a fake character is promoting this thing, right? I guess that's not a stretch, I guess, at the end of the day. No, that's a great point. That's a great way of looking at it. Remember Land Before Time? Did you guys watch Land Before Time? Yeah. Oh, my dude, Land Before Time. I think that maybe the takeaway here, Justin, is that there are things that...
First of all, AI is pretty advanced these days. Me as an example. But I think that one of the takeaways is that when we look at the world, there are things that sometimes on the surface, we feel like we can never accept these things, right? Like we, like to our current sort of like point of view, no way. But the reality is that there are already things that
that we're accepting that we're accepting that are examples of this and so you know what is it right what's that sort of deeper underlying principle is it storytelling is it whatever it is i think those are the things we want to unpack because we're already um i wouldn't say a victim but we're already dealing with these things that are potentially very scary
Yeah, that's an excellent point. And this goes on to a whole other topic that we can talk ad nauseum about later on and throughout the years, really. But it touches upon the idea of like, we touch upon this every now and then on this podcast is that what are some of the realities of this world that we take as a given and
That maybe aren't real. You know what I mean? Or that we're just kind of... That aren't real. Yeah. Do you have an example or... No, I don't have an example.
But like, you know, like what are some of the realities of this world that we think are just like, okay, that's the reality of this world. But just aren't really, we're just duped to thinking, you know? We're making assumptions all the time. I think it's- Like for example, just to play devil's advocate, okay? And this is just a really stupid example just because you just brought this up.
What if QAnon is real and we're the ones in the dark and being like, well, no, of course it's not real. That's so stupid to think about. You know what I mean? Like, I'm just saying like this type of shit, like we just don't know. Like we really just don't know at the end of the day. Right. And everyone is so fixated on their own belief system that anything outside of that belief system is just so preposterous and ridiculous. That's absurd to even think about. But if everyone thinks about that way, then what's real?
We talked about the antidote last time, right? Like reality versus, you know, fake news and that kind of stuff. And I don't think there's a definitive answer, right? But we did come to the conclusion last week that
that if something's making you angry, if something is making you feel conflict and negativity, and if something is pushing you in directions that you don't want to be pushed in, number one, it's by design. And number two, it's probably not a good thing. And so while we don't know, we can't ever prove and distinguish, you know, black and white truth versus falsehoods.
I do think that if you look at the people who do believe in QAnon, I don't know if that's the kind of lifestyle I'd like to lead. You know what I'm saying? So I think sometimes you go back to the simplicity. It's like, I think you made another comment, like there's always been these big Macs and kind of crazy things, right? And so I think sometimes it's also about what serves you in the best way.
what really serves you as a human being. Like, so, you know, I mean the things of, you know, of working out, eating healthy, all these things, they could be conspiracies, but,
But you know from your experience that these things bring you positive energy. So at the end of the day, you have to be a little bit focused on yourself and ask yourself what actually makes you feel good in the long run. And I think that's a powerful filter because human beings, regardless of conspiracy theories, QAnon, these types of things are kind of like inventions of our modern times. But human beings have survived for thousands of years and what works for them.
And the QAnon believers feel good about breaking down the child slave trade. Yeah. I mean, I only brought that up is because, you know, we constantly preach on this show is that like, you know, question your own hard set beliefs sometimes, you know, and be careful about being so hardcore about your own beliefs because...
you know some of them can be altered and they might not always be 100 correct and you know and so so i always try to do this about my own beliefs even though absolutely 100 i agree i i believe in what i believe in you know what i mean but it's like it's just being mindful totally say yeah it's totally being mindful and if you think about q anon or ufos or whatever it is it's like
You know, show me. I think Matt Gallant made this excellent comment. He said, I'm always willing to change my mind. Show me the evidence and I'll concede the point. You know, so like I don't want to see that kind of stuff out there, but I haven't seen any evidence of it. So I'm not going to spend a whole lot of my energy thinking about it.
We went on a loop on this one where we talked about QAnon, talked about VR, we talked about Dogecoin. Oh, Dogecoin. I still can't say it. You're like, dogecoin. Yeah, dogecoin. I keep wanting to say dogecoin. Dogecoin? Dogecoin?
Dogecoin. What else did we talk about today? BCI. BCI. Virtual influencers. Virtual influencers. Knox Frost. Actually, that's Howie's virtual identity. And we revealed that you are not a real person. Eric is AI. Actually, I was waiting for our 100th episode to reveal that. I'm sorry. I couldn't hold it in. You know, you got to give it out. You ruined it. You know, next thing you know, it's going to surpass QAnon.
Like the whole conspiracy theory, like Eric is actually an AI. And he started with the honest drink and he's going to take over the world. Well, you're not programmed to do that. Yeah, we're going to shut down. As he looks at me intently. Should we tweak his little algorithm a little bit? Because I feel he's getting a little lippy with us lately. We should give him some personality. We should give him some intellect.
Let's add plus 10 for intellect and personality. Okay. Anyway, let's wrap it up here. This was a crazy one. All right, guys. That's it for today. I'm Justin. I'm the AI, also known as Eric. And I am Howie, a.k.a. Nick Frost. What was his name? Knox. Knox, dude. Knox. Nick Frost.
Nick Frost. You're thinking of the Shield guy, Nick Fury. Maybe, I don't know. Samuel L. Jackson. Samuel L. Jackson. I motherfucking hate it when you motherfucking talk about motherfucking references and shit like that, motherfucker. Only AI will remember quotes. Yeah, only AI can do that. Only AI can pull up a Samuel L. Jackson voice. Either AI or a genius. All right, guys. Cheers. Cheers, guys.
The rest of the stars will see my back. But I really want to see you in my back. I'm looking at the front.