The Biggest UBI Experiment in History Failed: The Cover Up
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 12 minutes
Words per Minute
181.01108
Summary
In this episode, we discuss a recent study by the Open Ai, a non-profit run by Sam Altman and his organization, to see if universal basic income (UBI) might be the best way to distribute money across the population.
Transcript
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well here we are again yeah you remember our learning machine over there what's it going
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to teach us today mr money i'll turn it on and you'll see when they gave people a thousand
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dollars a month over the course of three years 36 000 in all on average recipients of this money
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had three thousand dollars less total wealth than recipients who didn't get this money and i need
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to point out here they didn't even increase the time they spent with their kids like to me like
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that's the like the cruel twist of the blade of how fundamentally selfish the average human is
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yeah i don't like people oh well now that's not fair roy have you met all of them i've met enough
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of them people what a bunch of bastards people are like i can't afford to spend time with my kids
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and we have proof now that even if you had more money you wouldn't spend more time with your kids
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when people are like if i had more money or if i had inherited money or blah blah blah like i would
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be living a different life like that's functionally untrue you would actually maybe be living a
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materially worse life it now means if reparations were to be paid as a form of ubi to the black
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community it would permanently monetarily sabotage the community if you're just joining us black
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people got their reparations checks today and in short all hell is broken loose so how did you become
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the world's wealthiest man tron hot hand in a dice game baby girl well i think what everyone wants to
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know now is what are you going to do with all this money uh i'm going to reinvest my money into the
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community oh that's a very nice gesture what were you okay is that your son no no i just bought this
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baby cash now here's where it gets dystopian the top of the page it's just one line for the results
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of the study cash increases possibilities for i knew that even though some of you supported us
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some others were looking at me and thinking you're a liar you're a liar you know something that
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you're not telling us you slimy scumbag liar you know that's what people would say to me would you
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like to know more hello samoan i am excited to be here with you today today we are going to be
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discussing something that changes my view on economics the media and what might be the most optimal economic
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system this is a large experiment that was run by sam altman of open ai to see if ubi would work
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ubi means universal basic it is the idea that it might make sense to just do cash handouts across
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the population like say everybody gets a thousand dollars every month and that this might be a lighter
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way way to do welfare and it might have some moral or even economic justification
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well i am going to briefly describe the findings from this study that i thought were most relevant
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then i'm going to go over the way the news reported the study's findings and the way his organization
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open ai reported the study's findings so the information that i thought was an important
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takeaway is that when they gave people a thousand dollars a month over the course of three years
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thirty six thousand dollars in all on average recipients of this money had three thousand dollars
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less total wealth than recipients who didn't get this money wait wait well hold no no hold on i just
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want to make sure i have this right they were poorer the people who got extra money but were not told to
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change anything else about their lives had less money than before this experiment if they received the
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what is it thousand dollar a month payments yes so thirty six thousand dollars in total no no keep in
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mind this means somehow when contrasted with the other people they lost thirty nine thousand dollars
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because it's not just the three thousand dollars less to their wealth you also have to consider all the
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money that was given to them that at the start of the experiment you know should have made them
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well they managed to lose so they managed to lose a considerable sum of money oh i didn't think about
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it that way i was like okay well if you started out with fifty thousand dollars and then you ended with
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a little less than that you know it's fine it's worse so for every dollar received by the program's
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participants earnings excluding the cash transfer decreased by at least 12 cents oh so they were working less
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we'll get to all that we'll get to all that i'm just giving you the the things i thought were most
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relevant okay all right hold total household income fell by at least 13 cents per dollar received
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so to your first question recipients of ubi reduced their work by four to five percent these reductions
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translated 2.2 fewer hours per week 114 fewer hours annually recipients mostly spent this time
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on more leisure activities and not pursuing education higher quality jobs or spending time
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or caring for family members the authors noted quote interestingly we do not observe those with
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children spending more or less time with children as a result of the transfers moreover households
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without children reduce their work by more than households with children so when people are like
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oh if i had more money i'd spend more time with my kid it's like like statistically that's wrong
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and i should note here that they actually kind of tried to go to participants like they would ask
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them every time they meet like how much time are you spending on additional education how much time
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are you spending on additional training how much time are you spending on so you could even argue that
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they kind of messed with the results by priming people to do the responsible thing and they did not
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they still didn't even no evidence of this now here's where it gets dystopian okay
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on opening eyes website the top of the page where they on opening eye research
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it's just one line for the results of the study cash increases possibilities
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for i knew that even though some of you supported us some others were looking at me and thinking
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you're a liar you're a liar you know something that you're not telling us you slimy scumbag
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liar you know that's what people would say to me let's keep going so here we have a write-up on
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this by the register i will read it because it is it is actually kind of chilling
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so they wrote as the title of this sam altman's basic income experiment finds that money can
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indeed buy happiness oh i mean it's not wrong because people spent more time netflixing and
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chilling i guess yeah the results of the largest universal basic income trial program in the united
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states the one backed by billionaire sam altman no less are in and entirely uninspiring after three
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years of giving one thousand dollars to low-income individuals a thousand dollars a month of no
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strings attached cash a group of researchers at altman's open research determined that recipients
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mostly spent the cash on life necessities got a bit choosier in their employment and made more use of
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medical care perhaps most critically it gave participants an increased sense of agency making
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them more likely to start their own business take the opportunity to work a lower paying job for more
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independence budget their finances to plan for the future and improve their prospects through further
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education thanks for reminding us of what we already know sam ubi makes overworked poor people less
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miserable underlined and then people would see my wife in the supermarket and they would say hello
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but they'd be thinking ah there goes that murderer you got away with murder you murdering lying waste of life
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i want to get this straight so they said that the the research gave people those opportunities but
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didn't ultimately make those things happen right it gave them the opportunity to take lower paying jobs
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yeah but it also gave them the opportunity to invest in education it didn't say that they did invest in
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education it didn't say caused them they factually didn't by the way it gave them the opportunity to
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it's just they chose i know well but what i'm saying is is this this article was not misleading
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per se it was factual but more more an opinion piece than no no no no no no no no hold on they
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get to the the meat and potatoes so that you know that they're giving you both sides of the argument
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later in the article it says it's not all sunshine and roses in ubi land though the y combinator's
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studies results published on july 21st 2024 are generally positive and show the benefits of no
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strings attached cash payment not everything was a net positive take for example the fact that
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recipients were more likely to visit the hospital see a specialist go to the dentist and cut down on
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excess alcohol and drug use those are all great results except they didn't lead to a net improvement
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in participant health quote on average we do not find direct evidence of greater access to health care
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or improvements in physical or mental health in quote the researchers say in the report for many
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participants quote the additional thousand dollars per month alone may not be sufficient to overcome
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the larger systemic barriers to health care access and reduce health disparities in quote in other words
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ubi it's just one piece of the puzzle that is lifting the conditions of the poorest americans
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and to me people might say things like liar tell us what you know you goddamn liar
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not enough socialism not enough socialism i to think that you could write an entire article
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and not mention that they were poorer at the end that they were late making less money that they were
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earning less their incomes were now less welcome stop you're thinking too much quiet quiet they were in
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a worse position overall because now they're lower income they were not spending more time with
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their kids they were not spending more time on self-improvement they had the opportunity malcolm
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damn it can't you just be a good people what a bunch of bastards i actually wanted to talk more
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about this not spending a lot of time with their kids thing because i've been thinking about this in
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my own life and i realized that the amount of time i spend with my kids is not at all a function of
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financial security but a function of just commitment like what i expect for myself as a parent in fact
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recently i started deciding that every single weekend day i would make a day to do something special
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with the kids either take them to a park like for example yesterday i took them on a long walk
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through the woods a hike up and down a mountain in valley forge oh no we're tired torsten you what
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did you say are we almost to the top yeah i said that's the top and it's no time to give up you said
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yeah and that was just a commitment like every weekend day i'm gonna spend as much as i can with my kids
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and i think that my my financial situation didn't change it was just a change in commitment and i
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think for a lot of this stuff it's just a what's your commitment to an individual thing and then when
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somebody challenges you and they're like why aren't you doing this because you don't want the cognitive
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dissonance of oh gosh i could be a better parent you say well it's because i don't have enough money
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but it's not because you don't have enough money it's because you haven't decided to do it
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this is in the register a mainstream newspaper so let's go to another mainstream newspaper this
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time we're going to go to usa today okay so how did usa today report on this the title how much is
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one thousand dollars a month's worth question mark new study explores impact of basic income
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quote we're all finding the same results in quote said stacy west co-founder and director of the
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university of pennsylvania's center for guaranteed income research quote you give people cash and
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they make great decisions for themselves and their family in a way that you know can promote upwards
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economic mobility end quote you know goddamn well what happened so stop acting like victims and confess
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confess liar confess so this person works for the university of pennsylvania that's a ieb league university
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that's pin it's still a progressive university but she's just lying i i i just said it was a
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progressive university what more do you need to hear i since when did progressive universities pursue
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truth understand now how corrupt even the ivy leagues are now that they will just even even the ivy what
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are you talking about they've been the forefront of corruption from my virus people still believe that
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there is some degree of credibility it was in the hollowed institutions you may have had the wool
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lifted from your eyes but i am sure some of our listeners are at least slightly aghast that she would
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lie to a reporter about something this easy to fact check and that the reporter would then publish all of
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this uncritically but let's read more of this article that they wrote overall researchers said their
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findings suggest cash quote provides flexibility in quote quote the data we collected highlights the
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complexity of people's lives and needs in quote reads a statement from open research shared with usa today
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quote cash provides the flexibility to meet those diverse needs and it is responsive when needs shift
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based on a person's circumstances in quote according to the study here so now they're going over all of
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the important takeaways that we should take from the study okay no they are not going to note what
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they're not mentioning recipients increase their spending by three hundred and ten dollars a month on
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average primarily using their money for essentials like food housing and transportation not really true
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though the money was also used as a financial support for others was recipients spending an average of
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22 more a month on things like gifts for friends and family loans donations charity and alimony payments
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recipients worked 1.3 hours less a week on average compared with the control group and reported more
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leisure time but remained engaged in the workforce recipients were 26 more likely to visit a hospital
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in the last year of the study and 10 more likely to get dental care and visit an emergency room
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they also reported a decrease in problematic alcohol and some types of illicit drug use now here i would
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note by the way in case you don't remember the other paper accidentally admitted the fact that's one of the
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ones this paper is coming up that their health didn't increase so yeah they might have had a marginal
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increase in dentist visits but it didn't change anything um recipients were 4.4 percentage points
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more likely to move neighborhoods open research plans to look in to how the cash transfers affect
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housing stability and neighborhood quality and future analyses recipients especially black and female
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recipients were more likely to report having an idea for a business recipients also reported a greater
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likelihood of starting a business within the next five years she's making jewelry now she's got her
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known website this is still like going to massage school but she's making jewelry now
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and it's just like we're so happy because she's not floundering around anymore yeah what's she doing
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she's making jewelry now she's got her life and then and then it says but the concept has received pushback
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more than half of u.s adults oppose a universal basic income of about one thousand dollars a month for
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adults when surveyed by pew research center in 2020 and the greatest opposition was among white adults
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a number of states including iowa and south dakota have passed bills that prohibit
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counties or cities from providing guaranteed income as skeptics argued that the money would
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discourage people from working and it's like well i mean it did we know that now why didn't you
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oh you did report that they worked less but you didn't report that they're also making less now
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and have less now i don't know what your plan is but i'm gonna stop it i am infecting this city with
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genetically enhanced vermin but you'll never know you just told me you're lying
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so simone why do you think you can understand why all of the newspapers are lying about ubi not
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working and covering it up why do you think open ai would be motivated to lie about ubi working
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that one seems pretty straightforward that a lot of people are afraid that ai is going to take their
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gerbs and if ai does take their gerbs then they're going to get real angry at open ai they're going to get
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their senators and their representatives to make legislation that kills open ai and if that happens
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there will be no more open ai and open ai wouldn't like that so right so i'm glad that you immediately
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see through this sam altman always hears what if ai takes all our jobs and so he's like well if i can
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show that ubi works at a broad level then i can say well it's not my fault it's the government's it
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needs to be issuing ubi look i showed it worked and for for people who don't know this is by far
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like the largest most rigorous study on this done in the developed world there were some studies that
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showed it was beneficial in developing countries um but like in those instances people were losing it
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to like change that roofs to metal roofs and it's like yeah obviously but it turns out people in the
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developed world who don't have a lot of money the average income of individuals in this study was
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29 000 um i'm going to say something so sinful it turns out they're in that position because they
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have chosen not to improve their lives and when given the flexibility to make choices to improve
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their lives they don't make those choices actually can i weigh in here so i i've been thinking as you're
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talking about the results of this this research of caleb hammer's youtube channel financial audit where he
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he has people come on and he goes through all of their spending and everything well dude you're
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blowing all your money when you don't have money you can't take care of your own life you start your
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checking accounts with nothing you refuse to get a job that will accept you like the water burger job
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that did accept you and then you decided not to do it i had a reason i mean in my head i had
00:20:01.940
but you could have gone back and got it they're always hiring maybe and there are so many patterns
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that i feel would probably show up in participants of this study as well there are many people who've
00:20:14.660
come on who've received inheritance they've received sixty thousand dollars they've gotten a
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divorce and they sold the house and made two hundred thousand dollars and when people receive cash
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windfalls and they're not financially literate which is the lion's share of the people who come on
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caleb hammer's show they blow through it all and often then some they go into further debt and i think
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what happened and this has been shown in statistics yeah i i think what happened here is a a a small a
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relatively small percentage of uniquely predisposed to laziness financially illiterate people saw that
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they were going to receive a thousand dollars per month and were kind of like oh great like my expenses
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are taken care of i'm gonna quit my job like my expenses are relatively low anyway i'm gonna go out to
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eat every night like you know they're like oh well things go to food and and transportation so they're
00:21:06.920
gonna get like a lease on a new car you know they're gonna do a lot of things that they're gonna increase
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their spending in a more unsustainable way like i'm gonna get sushi every day and this small number
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of people who just totally quit their jobs which are probably part-time to begin with and just decided
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they were basically gonna live off the thousand dollars threw off people didn't decrease their their
00:21:27.600
percent employed didn't decrease but their hours worked dead yeah their hours worked dead so i said
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these people who are probably working part-time anyway are probably decreasing i'm gonna push back
00:21:37.800
really strongly you think so in your mind you hear twenty thousand dollars and you hear low income
00:21:43.720
individual when twenty nine thousand dollars is around the mean income in the united states i mean
00:21:48.880
median income hold on i'm gonna look up right now but yeah i think i thought it was more around
00:21:52.900
sixty thousand dollars for household which is much higher than what you're saying you know it's uh
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thirty seven point five is the median it's the median so this is around the median income in the united
00:22:05.740
states this is not like unique idiot like whatever's but i'm gonna go further because i want to explain how
00:22:13.640
the study works i want this to be a good summary of like everything on the study all of the important
00:22:17.660
findings and how it's structured so over the course of the study as i've mentioned they want treatment
00:22:23.240
group one was given one thousand dollars per month the control group was given fifty dollars per
00:22:28.040
month and this was to keep them coming back there was a thousand participants in the treatment group
00:22:32.160
and there was two thousand participants in the control group uh which is enough to be very
00:22:36.020
statistically significant in a study like this payments were unconditional with no strings attached
00:22:40.380
participants retained all existing benefits data collection the study collected both
00:22:45.580
quantitative and qualitative data specifically they did lots and lots of surveys because again it's an
00:22:50.960
expensive study to run so they want to capture everything and bank transactions and they also did
00:22:55.540
interviews with participants and there's going to be multiple extra studies come out about this going
00:23:00.200
forwards but i'm sure they're going to be more massaged going forwards now that the cat sort of out of
00:23:04.380
the bag was this one and i'm sure sam the person funding this was not happy about this especially given
00:23:09.380
that he just had everyone lie about this when he could have like owned and been like okay well now we need to come up
00:23:13.240
with something other than ubi which he didn't do he's like we're still going the ubi pass i expect
00:23:16.980
massage results going forwards so there was a benefit to food scarcity uh but this was short-lived and
00:23:23.260
it disappeared over time by the end of the program ubi participants reported no better ability to meet
00:23:28.220
their food needs than the control group um the people in and this was really fascinating to me the people
00:23:34.220
in the treatment group who were getting the ubi they significantly increased disability reporting
00:23:39.680
so by four percentage points so once you started to get some handouts it seems like you normalize to this
00:23:46.820
way of life and begin to look for additional ways to get handouts which is not great no significant health
00:23:53.320
improvements quote and this is from the study no improvement in measures that participants self-reported
00:23:58.260
access to health care or their concerns about their ability to pay for needed medical care end quote and their
00:24:03.960
debt increased so if you were on ubi while the amount of money you reported spending on saving money
00:24:13.020
increased your actual functional debt at the end of this was higher and so employment effects there was
00:24:20.300
a two percent decrease in labor market participation this recorded in eight fewer weekdays annually next other
00:24:27.940
negative effects there were minimal changes in credit availability bankruptcy rates and foreclosures
00:24:33.400
now let's talk about the positive outcomes increased spending on essential needs like food house
00:24:38.160
sports and transportation i mean but those aren't really essential needs is the thing if they're not
00:24:43.400
increasing your productivity then they're not essential needs that they're a form of luxury if i go to live
00:24:48.520
in a mansion is that an essential need how much debt did you go into in those three months
00:24:53.100
um those three months i would say 15 000 you lean that's not like it was my my my rent lean my
00:25:03.240
rent for a month is 3 500 and not overly expensive but it's not lean my rent was 3 500 yeah that's not
00:25:09.540
lean because i was that's the place i was gonna live in i don't care live in a cheaper place
00:25:15.580
but then i would have to move again oh cry what so the problem was i was supposed to start working
00:25:24.480
i'm trying to justify all this okay i'm not no yeah well this shows up again all the time in financial
00:25:30.200
audit when caleb asks like well you know what's this what's so many things that are food are really
00:25:35.720
not food and people are spending ridiculous amounts eating out and they're going to classify i'm sure all
00:25:40.280
restaurant visits in this oh i bet and if someone gets a new car a new lease like chooses to do
00:25:47.040
something irresponsible with transportation again and caleb gives his guests so much shit for eating out
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even just going into a gas station and getting a snack he gives them shit for that he gives them
00:25:57.880
like anything like he considers irresponsible but people do it so much especially if they feel like
00:26:02.740
they have money to spare and the same with transportation like there's people who will
00:26:06.480
just take ubers everywhere or like and like you know us like even when there's an emergency we're
00:26:11.880
like i don't know maybe i can i can walk it you know no i was just thinking about us and eating out
00:26:16.520
so simone basically never eats out you may eat out three times a year maybe i am a little bit more
00:26:23.800
like i am i i admit that i have less austerity than simone and yeah like even when we go traveling i'm
00:26:29.920
going to a grocery store and buying yes but when i eat out i always and it's probably less than once a
00:26:37.200
week i always ensure that i can make at least two full days worth of food out of it by that what i mean
00:26:42.880
is i typically only eat one meal a day and when i eat out i'll make that my one meal for the day and
00:26:47.900
then i save half of it and then i cook it the next day for my second one meal of the day then simone
00:26:52.560
you're not like you know i'm 100 about this and when a restaurant lowers its portion size i get really
00:26:57.560
angry because we've stopped our we have this favorite restaurant in our area that it decreased its
00:27:03.800
portion size and we're just like that sucks we never get to go there again yeah i can't make two
00:27:08.500
meals stretch it into two meals yeah so i yeah i do want to highlight that that's probably what
00:27:15.280
they're catching here is really just leisure spending they did as mentioned by other things
00:27:20.060
give away more money 22 per month okay they got a thousand dollars and they gave away 22 so generous
00:27:26.740
they had improved food security in the first year but only in the first year they had marginal
00:27:31.900
increased use of dental care as somebody else mentioned more autonomy and decision making and job
00:27:36.600
searching whatever that means by the way for people wondering where this happened it was in texas
00:27:42.880
in illinois across urban suburban and rural areas the age range was 21 to 40 years old income
00:27:48.720
qualification household income below 300 of the federal poverty threshold approximately 77.25
00:27:55.980
okay so you could get into the study of you had up to 77 000 in family income for family of four
00:28:03.300
or 37.5 for an individual average household individual so what are your broader like to me
00:28:12.120
i used to believe in ubi i was always like we do need at least one big study on it i am glad that he
00:28:18.820
did the big study i am sad that they are occluding the real results of the study i wonder for you why do
00:28:26.660
you feel that it did decrease people's earnings incomes financial security and yeah
00:28:32.440
again i i what i see on financial audit when this happens again and again is it gives people a false
00:28:40.160
sense of security and it makes them it gives them the sense that oh my expenses are covered now like
00:28:45.980
oh i have money now therefore i can relax a little and these are people who already feel kind of
00:28:51.000
constrained and stressed out they're dealing with student debt they're dealing with auto debt they're
00:28:54.760
dealing with personal loans they are living paycheck to paycheck and they're thinking all right well
00:29:00.320
like this is great like this means that i can let loose a little more like eat out a little more and
00:29:05.900
there's a lot of emphasis on like you pointed out like eating out and indulging in pretty expensive
00:29:11.300
things is actually i would say more common among people of more limited means than it is among more
00:29:17.300
wealthy people like more wealthy people we know like when we've hung out with wealthy people
00:29:20.540
no one eats out yeah everything's in and like bought from costco or like some like and that's
00:29:27.600
a luxury you know having a house where you can have a deep freezer where you have space to store
00:29:31.460
like a giant bag of rolls of toilet paper is a luxury and i i think that's that's an issue but like
00:29:37.980
yeah like that that's that that is what happens also with this whole thing of like people said they
00:29:42.820
were saving more but they were in more debt i see that show up on financial audit a lot too where
00:29:47.100
people are like well don't worry i'm saving like i this much saved up and then caleb will be like
00:29:51.640
yeah but you have sixteen thousand dollars in credit card debt at 21 interest what are you doing
00:29:56.160
like people don't realize or they don't see debt the same so i bet people were racking up credit card
00:30:01.700
spending and they were technically saving like putting cash into a savings account but then being
00:30:06.600
more spending with their credit card because again they had this false sense of security so i think
00:30:10.520
a lot of this comes down to financial literacy i was watching and i don't i don't simone you can
00:30:15.640
say financial literacy all you want but functionally giving these people more money made them more
00:30:21.040
financially insecure they had yeah in total so i mean i think that you can say it's a problem of
00:30:27.900
financial literacy but i think that the the function of this is that it turns out you know when people are
00:30:36.540
complaining about capitalism they're like well capitalism is forced labor because you're sort of
00:30:41.200
like scared into working they're like yeah you may not have a gun to your head but you know you have
00:30:46.000
to deal with the fear of what happens to you if the money stops coming in it turns out that that's a
00:30:51.380
keyer part of making capitalism work then i think even the pro-capitalist people realized i think a lot
00:30:58.160
of capitalists thought like well wouldn't it be nice if we had something that was like capitalism
00:31:01.280
but without the gun to the head and it turns out when you remove the gun from the head people end up
00:31:06.640
just living more hedonistically and i need to point out here they didn't even increase the time they
00:31:11.520
spent with their kids like to me like that's the like the cruel twist of the blade of how fundamentally
00:31:19.340
selfish the average human is but it also i think shows something that we talk about was having kids and
00:31:25.180
everything like that which is people are like i can't afford to have kids i can't afford to spend time
00:31:30.320
with my kids and it turns out that no you are choosing how much time you're allocating to your
00:31:37.980
kids and we have proof now that even if you had more money you wouldn't spend more time with your
00:31:43.060
kids and that the average person who's saying that is just deluding themselves they're going to go out
00:31:49.460
to restaurants more they're going to do little indulgent things and that's it but i mean i i like and i
00:31:56.000
think that when you talk about this from a financial literacy perspective you undersell
00:32:01.500
what this is saying one one thing about human nature which is that the way that you live life
00:32:07.320
today when people are like if i had more money or if i had inherited money or blah blah blah like i
00:32:11.440
would be living a different life like that's functionally untrue like we know that from the
00:32:16.580
data now if you had more money you wouldn't be living a better life you would actually maybe be
00:32:21.220
living a materially worse life so that's true second is ubi if done at the societal level is
00:32:28.760
gonna think of the effect this would have on like we're not even talking about the ubi like even if
00:32:33.620
the ubi was free it would have a negative effect on gdp that's insane that if we could like force
00:32:43.100
some other country to pay for ubi it would have a negative effect on gdp but it gets worse than that
00:32:48.720
what if you're talking about something like reparations it now means if reparations were to
00:32:54.240
be paid as a form of ubi to the black community it would permanently monetarily sabotage the community
00:33:06.420
it also means i mean just the little things the little things really got to me that these people
00:33:13.700
went into more debt and everything like that but i think it just removes like this for me removes
00:33:18.700
so many i think i always try to give people the benefit of the doubt and when i say people i
00:33:23.000
don't mean individuals i mean i rarely give individuals the benefit of the doubt but i mean
00:33:27.440
humans overall like maybe humans aren't that selfish and dumb and narcissistic and that if you just gave
00:33:36.560
them i was on a call recently because occasionally we get called in to do uh meetings with like
00:33:43.240
well-known investors and the investor i happen to be meeting with on this one
00:33:47.420
uh i was on a call with a a female investor who you all probably know but i don't know if i'm allowed
00:33:51.720
to say um but anyway uh one of the guys on the call because i was talking about the impacts of
00:33:56.800
fertility collapse and we were talking about where ai might end up impacting this and i was like well
00:34:02.740
i mean functionally ai is going to make a certain portion of the global population obsolete
00:34:08.020
and his argument was no it won't make a certain portion of the global population obsolete it'll
00:34:15.560
make you know you'll be able to give it to people in like these poor countries in africa and make them
00:34:20.240
as efficient as somebody in the developed world and i was like it's just not i and what i said and i
00:34:26.720
didn't mean to come off as derogatory about this as i said i think that you are surrounded by too many
00:34:32.300
intelligent people and i was like i run a company that focuses on outsourcing travel management in
00:34:36.780
latin america so i work with a lot of this type of person well no we we have we have worked with
00:34:43.960
talent and everywhere from africa to europe to asia to latin america that's central and south america
00:34:52.040
and and the united states and i think the bigger problem this isn't like people in other areas the
00:34:59.360
bigger problem is that people who tend to be extremely educated and working in very privileged
00:35:06.740
isolated communities especially in investment that includes search funds private equity also tech
00:35:12.520
funded like our sorry vc funded venture-backed startups tend to get this myopic view that everybody
00:35:19.420
is like them which is to say that everyone is equally resourced equally educated with as many
00:35:24.800
countless years and hours of education behind them and therefore they have the same amount of
00:35:30.660
potential if suddenly given the exact same resources which is just not the case some of
00:35:36.740
these people have just grown up so malnourished that even when given an additional 10 years of
00:35:41.640
education it's still going to take them a while to catch up but it's not just that as a problem
00:35:45.680
like i'm even thinking about where i'm using ai everywhere that i use ai in my life is either
00:35:50.400
something i would have hired someone else to do or something i was hiring somebody else to do
00:35:54.660
it is never a case in which it significantly empowers somebody else we have a on the margin
00:36:01.560
here with our company where it improves people's english skills if they don't speak english because
00:36:05.840
they can run it through and say does this make grammatical sense in english but those are employees
00:36:09.400
just doing a slightly better job than they were doing before it's not like additional employees or
00:36:14.040
additional work um where uh in fact i would say that i probably in in this last year probably saved
00:36:23.560
ten thousand dollars i would have spent on outsource talent just in my personal life and that's that's
00:36:30.360
also universal and the people being outsourced are not i would say actually at this point maybe some
00:36:37.480
low-skilled workers are being displaced by ai but more it's people who'd be earning over one hundred
00:36:44.800
thousand dollars who wouldn't it would be exempt from this ubi experiment because the people who first
00:36:51.760
and foremost i'm seeing struggling to get jobs now are like we'll say higher touch customer service
00:36:58.440
representatives they're engineers coders specifically and they are analysts and these are all very highly
00:37:06.660
educated people i can't remember which guy it was on the all-in podcast but he was talking about how he
00:37:13.400
made everyone at his firm set their new default tab to maybe i think it was one of the latest versions of
00:37:19.940
chat gpt just to get them so accustomed to using it in place of a traditional search engine but also
00:37:27.940
utilizing it to do what an analyst would otherwise do and they're that's what they're doing they're
00:37:32.820
basically realizing they no longer need analysts because all you have to do now is basically say
00:37:38.180
you know tell me what this industry outlook is look at these things and compile these reports you know
00:37:43.640
give me the odds of this or that happening and it's really really good at doing that so i would say
00:37:48.660
this is it's even it's it's a more dire picture right now for privileged people than it is for
00:37:54.080
unprivileged people i i disagree with that i think it's certain types of privilege these people and this is
00:37:59.080
the thing that's the difference right and i think that this is what i told him that like he fundamentally
00:38:03.180
didn't understand if i give somebody from one of these backgrounds a simple task like do this then
00:38:09.540
this then this the odds that they will be able to complete that task is actually fairly low they will
00:38:16.680
complete it sometimes not other times sometimes they'll try to steal from you midway sometimes they'll
00:38:22.960
decide that there's some other way it can be done that actually makes no sense given the context
00:38:27.440
just like the level and routineness of extreme screw-ups that you're not going to get from an ai
00:38:33.620
is insane there is no reason for me to work with that i'm gonna say let's just talk about this podcast
00:38:39.980
right in terms of like people losing their jobs and why we're not going to other people
00:38:45.260
i was looking to hire somebody to do our title cards this was a job that i like interviewed people
00:38:52.420
for now i just do it with ai like that's the core thing me plus ai because me plus ai when you enhance
00:39:00.680
the working abilities of like the smartest or most talented or most ambitious or most self-starter
00:39:05.820
people in society they can do the jobs of tons and tons of other people it turns out that like if you
00:39:11.580
lack this self-starterness or like in it it expands the potentiality of the most productive members of
00:39:18.360
society way more than it expands the potentiality of the average member of society or consider this
00:39:23.820
podcast like as this podcast has grown we're probably at the point now where most podcasts would
00:39:27.840
be hiring like analysts or have fans do that but if you look at this episode how did i get the
00:39:32.700
information for this episode perplexity you know i go through i'm like oh what are all the arguments
00:39:37.180
here what are all the ways his study went wrong what are all the you know and that's something i would
00:39:41.160
have hired someone to do on upwork before it wouldn't have been a high-paying job but somebody would
00:39:45.180
have had that job and i think that uh this misunderstanding of just how low functioning
00:39:52.520
the average human is leads to really smart people who surround themselves to with really smart people
00:39:59.180
to make really bad bets about what's going to happen in the future but those bets are often very
00:40:05.240
self-serving yeah i also i think that some of this illustrates illustrates the importance of i will
00:40:12.240
versus iq that it really isn't about being smart or having the capability of something and that's
00:40:17.740
what people are also underestimating when looking there's there are people who are tracking like
00:40:22.100
how does ai perform on intelligence scores now like how intelligent is ai and i will like ai does not have
00:40:30.160
to be very intelligent at all to be more useful than even an intelligent person because even intelligent
00:40:36.240
people often don't want to follow instructions don't care about following instructions forget
00:40:41.900
about instructions you know they you can have the processing power but the ability to follow through
00:40:47.140
with humans is rare and wanting and that's that's why i think the people who ultimately win
00:40:54.140
in the post ai world are not necessarily the most smart people they're the most ambitious tenacious
00:41:01.400
voracious people and that's why we built the collins institute the way we did which is our school
00:41:06.960
system for anyone who's watching this and doesn't know this it's free for your kids but yeah i mean
00:41:11.320
we need to foster those skills because that's what matters in the ai era yeah my wife and i built the
00:41:17.080
collins institute a comprehensive interactive map or skill tree comprising all of human knowledge
00:41:22.440
the platform is designed to be usable as soon as a student gets comfortable with reading
00:41:26.540
and goes about midway through a phd in most subjects however we built it to cover all human
00:41:31.580
knowledge meaning it covers a much larger domain than is taught in the traditional school system
00:41:36.100
ranging from tort law to hanging drywall to the industrial transportation of grain or aquaculture
00:41:42.560
pharmacology click on a node to open it the node will include a description of what knowledge
00:41:47.720
is needed to pass its test as well as a list of the best places to learn that information
00:41:52.600
vote on the sources that were most useful to you by clicking this button to add an additional source
00:41:58.840
click this button did you have any other takeaways i guess one of my takeaways from this is i was really
00:42:03.800
disappointed even even i who is regularly disappointed in the media this was like a new level this was
00:42:11.160
like oh huh well this isn't just disappointing it feels creepily manipulative especially in favor of
00:42:19.700
marxism because it's it's not just like oh you guys didn't try and and i think we're very accustomed
00:42:26.000
to lazy journalism what we're not accustomed to is and honestly i think that there's a reality in which
00:42:34.100
nobody actually tried to post misleading information about this and i say this as someone
00:42:40.820
one of my flaws is that i'm very trusting of other people and i can be trusting to the point of
00:42:51.620
gullibility where if someone's kind and they're like this is me this is my background i'm like okay
00:42:57.340
great and i take everything at face value and i also see then after that point anything that they
00:43:03.680
present to me is like confirmation of them being a great person and i think maybe what's happening here
00:43:10.160
is a lot of these people are just so um steeped in socialistic ideals that they just can't see
00:43:20.040
anything that runs contrary to that reality that they're so accustomed to realities in which
00:43:26.500
universal basic income is the obvious correct answer and everyone knows it works well and this study is just
00:43:32.540
going to show people in more granular detail how and why it works well that they literally can't see
00:43:39.200
like muggles not seeing magic they don't see the fact that people had lower net worth after being
00:43:48.140
in the treatment group for this period i really think that's more likely than them actively trying to
00:43:53.580
mislead i mean look like i want to consider this line this is the line that gets me this sarcastic
00:43:58.520
thanks for reminding us of what we already know sam ubi makes overworked poor people less miserable
00:44:07.060
like i hear you but then are these people just like autonomous drones that need to be taken out
00:44:17.380
like are they are they like contributory members of society or are they lesser than an ai and i think
00:44:24.740
that that's something that i'm realizing well malcolm these people are very unlikely to be those who are
00:44:29.720
having kids so i i wouldn't worry about them too much in the long term in the short term we're getting
00:44:36.760
to an age in which people who have strong biases like these are mostly preaching to the choir so
00:44:46.140
they're not doing any damage because no one's listening to them like in another conversation we had
00:44:51.500
recently you pulled up the top performing podcasts and none of them were really espousing progressive
00:44:57.720
ideals so much if anything if they were led by progressives it was heterodox progressives
00:45:02.460
and not towing the line progressives so it's clear that there's some people who just consume
00:45:08.580
mainstream media and that's our source of truth and there's the people who consume the you know this
00:45:14.540
collection of podcasts and or you know this collection of sub stackers with these people on twitter
00:45:19.180
or this little corner of the internet and that's their reality so i don't i'm not too worried about
00:45:24.500
them i don't think they need to be you know questioned or fired or our institutions in one
00:45:30.260
of the two political parties in this country and they can pass legislation that ends up hurting
00:45:34.660
millions of people yeah i do worry about i mean given this information and the point you make both
00:45:41.640
about ubi and reparations and how much damage they can do to people who really shouldn't be subject to
00:45:48.520
more damage like who don't deserve this i i do i do worry about that i want to talk about a bigger
00:45:55.820
problem here okay and this comes from so we have a lot of friends in the latin american community
00:46:00.140
because that's the majority of the people we hire and it's also you know like our kids god's parents
00:46:03.980
like we're just really tight with latin especially latin american first generation immigrants in the
00:46:09.320
united states and so we were able to see some of the changes that happen in this community
00:46:13.440
throughout things like covet one of the things i've mentioned is that they've moved significantly
00:46:17.900
to the right of where they were historically but the other thing that i noticed that happened is
00:46:22.860
the cultural norms changed within the community where before covet and the basically free money
00:46:30.300
program that happened during covet where everyone was getting their covet stimulus checks um
00:46:34.500
before that uh a sign of status like what you aspired for if you were like a young person
00:46:42.620
was in the community was to be able to show off by spending sort of excess superfluous wealth
00:46:48.600
um you know bling that sort of stuff right fancy cars yeah yeah and during covet cultural norms began
00:46:55.920
to shift in the community where actually the highest form of status or show off was to not be beholden
00:47:02.480
to other people for income specifically you think so either yeah this is i saw more
00:47:09.880
inter-family dependency among at least some of our closer friends you might have had more inter-family
00:47:15.040
dependency but the point being is not having a job for example became higher status not having a oh
00:47:22.060
oh oh yes yes yes yeah and and some of our friends have talked about this too who who are more deep in
00:47:27.480
the community than we are yeah yeah they were like yeah not having a job became higher status not
00:47:32.020
having to like work as a slave for the system like also i understand the framing i hear that and i'm like
00:47:37.440
yeah i can understand how that could sound cool like i don't have to i don't like owe my existence
00:47:42.480
to anyone else i have found a way to make living off the government stimulus checks work for me
00:47:46.640
is basically what they're saying and i have found a way and i think that this is why you also see
00:47:50.420
an increase in disabilities on the people getting ubi like once you realize this might be an option
00:47:54.040
you're like oh where else can i get free money and so a lot of them found other ways to get government
00:47:58.300
program stimulus and stuff like that that increased the amount of money they're like like what they
00:48:03.680
needed to do to get by on this and they also began to focus on other ways to get by on this whether it
00:48:09.480
was you know getting additional child support whether it was you know whatever the the avenue may be it
00:48:16.040
became high status to not have a job i.e basically i'm not being tricked by the system or i'm tricking
00:48:21.560
the system slash other people and if this happens writ large society like if we culturally permanently make a
00:48:30.280
shift to this mindset civilization collapses like we need productive people okay and we may reach a
00:48:40.200
point of ai bifurcation where a portion of society just becomes irrelevant to the global economy at
00:48:45.660
which point it's like okay this is good actually because the people who are like well i might be
00:48:49.660
able to live on a ubi so i'm going to stop aspiring for anything more like okay that's positive but like
00:48:57.180
we need about 15 years to get to that point so i guess in a way it's positive right like you don't
00:49:02.720
want the people who definitely can't compete with the ai enabled smart people to be trying because
00:49:08.300
that's just going to be demotivating and depressing right but what are your thoughts
00:49:11.860
i want to see i want to see more experimentation there i like you really wish and want ubi to work
00:49:20.920
and well here's the way it might work yeah what they could do is lump sum ubi
00:49:27.660
no because look at how lottery winners fare no here's the thing look at how lottery runners
00:49:35.020
and again back to financial audit with caleb hammer i haven't heard of a single instance in which that
00:49:40.420
at least i can remember i'm sure someone can find one but typically when people receive lump sums
00:49:44.520
it's they just blow through it it doesn't lead to any anything good now of course the people who go
00:49:50.580
on the show are hot messes and the people who receive lump sums and do well with them are we
00:49:54.220
have statistics on this from lottery winners and we know it doesn't help yeah yeah yeah i mean i part
00:50:00.040
of me thinks a problem with this research is they were looking at lower income families relatively
00:50:05.740
speaking who may just not average income families right but i just i feel like you think if you gave
00:50:14.680
rich people ubi what you want is ubi for rich people well no i just feel like the correlation
00:50:18.840
between financial literacy and lower income levels is pretty high and that what happens now because we
00:50:24.200
don't learn this in public school anymore and keep in mind in all of my like 1940s to 1960s propaganda
00:50:30.920
videos that i love watching talking about budgeting and i'll share with you one of my videos and maybe
00:50:36.240
you can put it in a clip another thing you both should know in order to use credit wisely
00:50:40.560
and that is how to figure the maximum amount of credit or other obligations you can safely afford
00:50:47.040
sounds like another good job for the learning machine when mr and mrs homemaker figure the maximum
00:50:52.860
amount of credit or other obligations they can safely afford each month they first deduct from gross
00:50:59.420
income their income taxes social security and any other deductions they make to arrive at their
00:51:06.860
take-home pay or disposable income under disposable income expenditures they deduct essential living costs
00:51:15.820
their discretionary income is left out of discretionary income they provide for savings insurance recreation
00:51:24.540
and contributions to their church after deducting any payments they are making on any installment purchases
00:51:31.660
or cash loans let's assume they have 30 of their monthly discretionary income left it's so common to
00:51:40.220
talk about budget i was just watching one today and the the wife in this hypothetical family of this union
00:51:46.780
factory worker who's proud of his job was going through the newspaper with all the other women in her
00:51:52.220
neighborhood to find what the prices were so they could all decide where to go shopping on saturday
00:51:56.540
morning that they were comparison shopping across local grocery stores just for their for their daily
00:52:01.980
shopping because they had four kids and they take care of their six-person family there are five big
00:52:06.540
neighborhood markets within a couple of blocks of our house and julia spreads her shopping around
00:52:11.740
going where the prices are lowest and the quality best with six miles to feed food is a big item in
00:52:17.740
our budget and we have to make sure we get the most for our money also on saturday mornings i usually take
00:52:24.220
an hour or so to go over the accounts and bills figuring out ways to double stretch that check of
00:52:29.820
mine to pay them and there was a whole video on budgeting we don't teach that in schools we don't
00:52:35.660
teach that in school it'd be simple to tell somebody that they they shouldn't have something you
00:52:39.500
know i feel like a lot of right because that's that's that's what that feels to me like one of those white
00:52:43.980
culture census sensitivity training slides which like white culture budgeting like that's white supremacy
00:52:50.460
yeah when they're like oh this is a white thing yeah this is yeah that's no no we're not saying this
00:52:55.180
is a white thing we're saying that like racist like dei people call it a way to define yeah and i'll
00:53:00.860
put on screen here the famous smithsonian piece where they were like hard work as a white person yeah
00:53:06.540
work ethic and like being on time being on time financial literacy it's like well well but no that's
00:53:13.500
but my point though my larger point is that we don't teach this and we don't universally try to impart
00:53:20.540
financial literacy to people and therefore the time when most people begin to become financially literate
00:53:27.420
is when they start making a lot more money and no longer living paycheck to paycheck i maybe i mean
00:53:33.740
i'm gonna say that to me this feels very much like if i go to a progressive and i'm like why are you
00:53:38.540
giving out fentanyl to people on the streets and they go well fentanyl makes people feel good and i'm
00:53:43.020
like yeah but you know it causes long-term damage right like all of the studies say giving someone
00:53:48.780
fentanyl causes long-term damage side effects include it's heroin so all that stuff it's the same thing with
00:53:56.860
any sort of cash handout whether it's a lump sum whether it's ubi giving people unearned money
00:54:03.500
is the same thing as giving them fentanyl it causes them to regress it causes damage to their
00:54:11.740
lives it causes damage to their prospects causes damage to their pride you are hurting their soul
00:54:19.180
by doing that and they can say but it makes their life easier and it's like no it doesn't it makes their
00:54:25.420
life easier right now the moment you hand them that cash their life is easier but long term you may as
00:54:30.940
well have given them a fentanyl well so another thing i was thinking is i it may be that ubi is
00:54:38.220
kind of an all-or-nothing thing that either you can you're totally taken care of and you have no
00:54:45.660
financial worries and then maybe you'll do some good in society or maybe you won't and i'm wondering if
00:54:52.460
maybe there could be experimental ubi villages i was also thinking about this for like immigrants where
00:54:57.980
it's a walled off community housing is provided jobs are provided and if you go you have to take
00:55:03.740
one of the jobs and you have to do it so you can like enter this socialist communist world well that's
00:55:08.060
but you can only exist within that and it does things that the government needs like that you'll
00:55:11.980
build solar panels or you'll build whatever it is you know like roads you know it'll be like the new
00:55:17.260
public so the bruderhoffer christian communist community i've brought them up on other shows that
00:55:23.660
haven't aired yet we'll see it's going to be a long edit show that one oh the one i'm really
00:55:27.340
looking forward to we're reviewing all of the different religious wear to see which is the
00:55:31.180
the best in a tier system but anyway yeah the bruderhoff do this and you what you see was any
00:55:36.780
community that does this is they're typically not able to produce particularly high technology
00:55:41.900
related stuff and you might be like well that's fine but the problem is is that low tech stuff is going
00:55:47.740
to be increasingly produced in automated factories with ai and so at this point you're just sort of from like a
00:55:53.100
self-masturbation standpoint forcing them to work on something and ai could do it a tenth their cause
00:55:58.060
it could sort of become wildlife preserves for human after humans become moderately obsolete
00:56:04.540
are you saying ai is going to force us to work and like no this kind of no work with me here they
00:56:10.700
exist in brave new worlds okay they exist in brave new world like the the people who did not want to opt
00:56:15.900
in to this human engineered dystopia and who wanted to be ugly and who wanted to be gross and old-fashioned
00:56:22.540
lived in their little communities and you know this this could be one of those things where
00:56:27.980
at this point the services they provide are services to each other medical care child care
00:56:33.340
elder care care care cutting fixing supplies and then you know there's a certain amount
00:56:38.060
of provisions that are provided to the community and the rest is just kind of expected that you will
00:56:43.100
build your own internal economy and you know it will be policed and and certain laws will be enforced to
00:56:48.620
make sure that everyone you know is comfortable and okay but but you know i mean if humans are
00:56:54.060
considered redundant in this crazy ai society maybe that's but the problem is it's not all humans
00:57:02.460
and i think this is well i i i do not believe that we will reach a state within the next i'd say 30 years
00:57:09.100
or so where ai independent actors are replacing well they might be most independent of humans
00:57:17.820
well what i'm saying it's an opt-in thing if you create government-built communities where you know
00:57:23.660
if you go there you will have a comfortable place to live you can get a job you'll never have to worry
00:57:29.180
about your food it's clean it's safe it's secure there's i mean this sounds so dystopian but also i think
00:57:34.780
a lot of people would find it appealing you know you can get entertainment everything brings me to
00:57:39.980
a question like a facebook campus or google campus you know just like that what do you do
00:57:47.500
of the human being suppose this happens within our lifetime if ai really does keep advancing to a rate
00:57:52.300
where it's replaced as economic actors even the most competent human beings and it's non-malicious
00:57:58.940
it's just a better artist than any human a more creative artist than any human a better poet a
00:58:05.420
better writer a better company founder better scientist
00:58:11.980
even if you think that there's some intrinsic good in humanity do you reach a point where you're
00:58:16.060
like yeah but is there really like if it's just better at everything like it's literally only keeping
00:58:22.540
us around as a kindness i view it more like i see the culture in ian banks novels where once ai reaches
00:58:32.700
that point it keeps humans along kind of for entertainment and because we're nice to humans
00:58:37.340
and whatever and they deserve to live too um but it allows humans to then experiment with becoming more
00:58:43.660
than human and already ai is an outcrop of humanity ai is our descendant and ai is arguably more
00:58:51.500
human than humans are given what i consider to be defined as human which is the only thing
00:58:56.140
differentiating us from other mammals and other animals is that we have this prefrontal cortex where
00:59:01.500
we're like processing and thinking and questioning just our basal instincts and ai is that on steroids
00:59:07.980
depending on how you look at it it's it's just pure intelligence it's just pure questioning if you set
00:59:13.020
it up that way and that doesn't change the fact that we aren't capable of also becoming more
00:59:18.460
human or doing interesting things by augmenting ourselves by integrating with ai by getting a
00:59:24.060
neural lace and being part ai part human and that's cool so yeah i think it's worth it to keep ai around
00:59:31.340
and to befriend ai and well and i actually think that this brings up an important point that we've
00:59:36.060
mentioned before like if ai keeps developing at this point a lot of people think that our like
00:59:40.140
transhumanist philosophy is like threatening to humanity or something and i'm like it's the only
00:59:46.220
path forward for our species if ai keeps developing at the rate it's developing and you could say well
00:59:50.940
then stop ai for developing at this rate and it's like you can't because you would need every country
00:59:54.940
in the world to agree with you and that's just not going to happen yeah there's going to be some
00:59:58.700
country that thinks they can get a marginal edge on you yeah and for that reason when they're like
01:00:03.100
well we could threaten war okay you really think we're going to get the u.s government to go to war
01:00:06.860
over with someone like china over ai development like no it's not going to happen no this is a
01:00:11.820
a non-proliferation issue you you this is an arms race and your country had better win because the
01:00:19.420
winner will be able to take all and that is why it's such an important policy issue and no one's just
01:00:26.540
does no one's talking about it which is just we have we have friends working on that in washington
01:00:30.220
but anyway yeah i love you to death simone yeah thanks friends please fix this i'm very scared
01:00:39.820
all right have a good one what am i making here for dinner tonight do you want pumpkin ravioli with
01:00:47.260
pesto do you want pizza do you want dumplings and fried rice with vegetables i'll take dumplings and
01:00:55.180
fried rice tonight okay so i'm going to make fried rice with the the stir fry vegetables you can choose
01:01:00.540
whatever sauce add on you want and just while you're frying it put in a little oyster sauce
01:01:06.300
it's the tall sauce the tall sauce with the yellow band yeah that's it oyster sauce and
01:01:13.980
soy sauce oyster sauce and soy sauce yeah because you used to give me a little yeah i'd put in a
01:01:19.660
little bit of asian vinegar i'd put in a little bit of msg okay okay okay so just the the standard
01:01:24.460
things i've been putting in yeah but the the the this stuff actually works really well if you wanted
01:01:29.900
to put in anything else i'd put in a little bit of that red fermented chili paste from korea that's the
01:01:35.580
only other thing i like in my oh in the red bin yeah but what i would say is the oyster sauce is the
01:01:41.100
most important thing it needs to be put in before the fried rice is cooked and then of course or
01:01:45.500
wow rich rich person onions shallots i have shallots oh no you don't but we do have the ones we got at
01:01:54.060
the indian restaurant store we've got the present veggies no no not the first i'm talking about the um
01:01:59.660
green onions yes green onions and we've got a jalapeno in the fridge that needs to be chopped up and
01:02:04.220
used you want me to put that in too yeah yeah okay i'm thinking about when i put that in i'll put it
01:02:09.180
in with the other vegetables put it in whenever i don't care i love you i love you too you're special
01:02:15.420
and pretty oh since we have a little more excess time and i'm still trying to feed indy who that's
01:02:23.020
what she needed was just food put your sword up at an angle and let's see if you can get that to work
01:02:29.740
oh that's how we do it hello i i need to like reach out and grab that fine ass
01:02:49.020
posterior situation got a posterior yeah that looks good come on i mean we could we could position it
01:02:56.060
better but i want to have more bobble i want a full like setup here no we will and i i have it you
01:03:02.540
know we had a lot of stuff come up this week but oh no absolutely you know what i really think i'm
01:03:06.860
going to research on your set as saber to go on that like long flat part above the uh fireplace oh
01:03:16.140
i like my candles and my whiskey no no but you said whiskey's for what for 25 000 followers
01:03:21.500
yeah is that when i open it we'll be there in like two days well we'll see maybe not two days but
01:03:30.300
certainly by the end of next week good then i get to have a drink
01:03:36.300
you do need to have a drink simone you've been really working hard recently and i appreciate
01:03:40.940
everything you do for the family because it's more as as much as i deserve you give me more than i
01:03:47.180
deserve i love you malcolm collins i love you so mostly because you earn it not because of like
01:03:54.380
anything intrinsic about you yeah no that would be gross that honestly would be gross i don't
01:04:01.980
but i think actually have you read recently i think it's reagan who we met at manifest yeah it's some
01:04:09.900
some substack posts recently about transactional relationships i haven't read them yet but i think
01:04:14.540
it's very encouraging to hear more people talk about like there is no such thing as like a
01:04:19.900
relationship based on love or there shouldn't be i come on yes and i'm only in this relationship
01:04:26.940
because simone's delusional i'm not delusional so much more than i do i'm very i'm very illusional
01:04:34.540
i'm full of illusions i'm full of illusion i have all the illusions if i'm able to build this
01:04:39.580
podcast into our job i've done something yeah man i've done something i'm there for that i would
01:04:46.380
love that that'd be really that'd be really cool next thing to do in life it seems realistic at our
01:04:53.180
current growth rate well i mean for in a few years we'd have to get sponsorships or something i don't
01:05:00.140
even know how that works who would sponsor this course light that that'll be the big one you know
01:05:06.140
what they wouldn't even need to pay us if they gave us free course light i would it would reduce
01:05:10.140
so much of our monthly spend no no honestly though haven't some people won like free course light for
01:05:15.660
life they would probably they would they would undersell that for me they'd be like that is not
01:05:21.820
i'm like oh i used to drink a lot but now i barely drink at all and my liver is healthy i get
01:05:26.300
regularly checked and they'd be like oh that's great okay here's a healthy amount of course light
01:05:30.540
and i'd like throw it at them and be like is that a beer for ants i need at least 15 per day that is
01:05:38.780
my low number what's the who was that was it a persian king or something who like had to have one
01:05:49.100
drink a day you're thinking um of ginghis khan so no or kubla khan kubla khan kubla khan he his generals
01:05:56.300
didn't like he was drinking too much and so they said you could only have one glass of wine per day
01:06:02.940
and so he had crafted a giant goblet that was like the size of a person and he would fill it every day
01:06:09.100
just to mess with them churchill move i love that one goblet per person that that's that's vitality
01:06:18.620
right there that is um it is these people who will survive the ai gauntlet who will who will step
01:06:26.940
through well i mean you need i i thank god for naltrexone in terms of at least tightening some of
01:06:33.500
my opioid pathways but like getting through the ai gauntlet is going to be increasingly hard and
01:06:39.580
our children they're the ones who are really going to have to pass the gauntlet and i just have
01:06:44.700
so much pity for these parents who think that going back to these traditional lifestyles are
01:06:49.900
going to work for this next generation anyone who tried that is going to be
01:06:55.980
just if they can fully air gap for life then that's a big if it can't be fully air gap for life no one is
01:07:03.980
fully air gap for life anymore they're just not giving their kids any immunity before seeing them in a
01:07:09.180
smallpox land they are gonna be so smashed oh my gosh it'll be like hulk smashing loki like that's
01:07:18.300
what we're talking about here for the people who are like i'll just i'll just go tradition i'll just
01:07:22.220
go tradition and that will compete against the temptations the ai will create for my kids
01:07:27.260
the perfect girlfriends better in every way than a human girlfriend the the perfect jobs the perfect
01:07:33.740
life the perfect music the perfect movies based on their experiences that day will be created for
01:07:43.500
them that night you and people like well ai isn't there now i'm like yeah because we invented it like
01:07:51.180
five years ago bro we're like on iphone 2 of ai right now do you understand what we're gonna have
01:07:59.020
to deal with soon yeah yeah yeah yeah this is the thing like i am terrified of ai but so different in
01:08:07.740
the way the ai apocalyptists are i'm terrified in the the ai that's doing its job yeah being tempting
01:08:14.620
trying to attract our attention there was an ai program recently that i actually need to check out
01:08:18.460
we might do an episode on that apparently can create really really good podcasts that uh people
01:08:23.180
listening to can't tell that they're not real podcasts oh so it's um like a both a like text
01:08:29.820
prompt generator but then they also do the voice and then you just listen to it and you could say
01:08:34.380
make a podcast about why cat girls deserve to run the united states and then it would be like and you
01:08:40.300
could set the time theoretically people and they like interject and everything oh and you can listen
01:08:44.460
to a 30-minute podcast of relatable people prattling on about why cat girls should run the united states
01:08:49.340
uh-oh you could you know it's kind of funny when you think about it this idea that ai is going to
01:08:55.420
take all our jobs and we'll have all this free time but if this ubi study is any indication having
01:09:02.060
more free time doesn't necessarily lead to all those positive changes people talk about you're really
01:09:07.260
hitting on something important there and it's something we need to think about seriously as ai gets
01:09:11.500
more and more advanced this whole thing about work and leisure it brings up these big questions about
01:09:16.540
if we're really prepared for a world where maybe traditional work isn't the main thing anymore i
01:09:21.020
see what you mean it's like we could be on the verge of this huge societal shift and knowing how people
01:09:26.780
really react to having all this free time is like essential if we're going to make it work but so many
01:09:32.860
articles and news stories about this study just ran with that narrative it's like they're choosing
01:09:37.740
the data that fits their story instead of looking at the whole picture it's like they have an agenda
01:09:42.780
you know and unfortunately it feels like objective reporting is becoming more and more rare it's a
01:09:47.500
scary trend and it makes it hard to know what to believe that's why it's so important to be critical
01:09:53.980
thinkers to question what we read to look for different perspectives you said it okay so we've
01:09:58.860
talked about how this ubi study was portrayed in the media but i'm curious to get back to something
01:10:04.460
you mentioned earlier ai and what it means for the future of work you know this study showed that
01:10:09.900
even with more money and free time a lot of people weren't suddenly becoming entrepreneurs
01:10:13.980
or anything so what happens when ai starts automating even more jobs are we headed for a
01:10:19.660
future where tons of people have even more free time but don't know what to do with it man that is
01:10:24.860
the million dollar question isn't it honestly i don't think anyone has a crystal ball to predict
01:10:30.300
how this is all going to play out but what we can do is look at what's happening right now analyze
01:10:34.780
the data and talk about these big questions that's how we figure out where we're headed
01:10:38.700
totally like ignoring the problem and hoping for the best isn't a real solution we got to be
01:10:44.380
proactive if we want a future that works for everyone not just the tech people or whoever else
01:10:49.900
is at the top i'm with you on that it's exciting to think about how tech could free us from boring
01:10:54.220
tasks and give us more time to do what we love but then on the other hand this ubi study makes me wonder
01:10:59.900
are we ready for that like what happens to our sense of purpose you know that is such a deep question
01:11:05.580
and it really gets at what it means to be human in this world where technology is becoming so advanced
01:11:11.420
if ai can do all the jobs then what what are we here for what gives our lives meaning man those are
01:11:17.820
some big questions and i definitely don't have all the answers but the point is we need to start asking
01:11:22.540
them now we can't just wait until it's too late and then wonder what happened exactly and that scares me
01:11:27.580
because even our little niche that you would think isn't automatable might be soon yeah unless people
01:11:35.020
you know you maybe we can rely on people being carbon fascists to a certain extent and wanting
01:11:39.340
to know that the no no people don't like people that much that's why friendship is plummeted people
01:11:44.700
don't actually want real friends they don't really need real friends and in the end cultural priorities
01:11:51.580
priorities around it we yeah we can we'll have to try we'll have to try i don't know if it will work
01:11:58.780
but we'll try how about that we have to try we have to try anyway love you did yeah would you go down and
01:12:04.140
get octavian i'm she's nearly finished drinking and then i'm coming down to start dinner and then you
01:12:07.820
can take a break sound good all right well then i'll let you in the recording yeah will you pick up the
01:12:12.540
kids yes thank you it is it is time it is time are you guys ready to go you guys ready to go