Making Sense - Sam Harris - #290 — What Went Wrong？

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:38.840 okay just a brief housekeeping here i hope you all enjoyed the beginning of the oliver berkman

00:00:53.140 series on time management that i previewed here in the last episode again the rest of that will

00:01:00.540 soon be appearing over at waking up in our new life section and the whole point of the section is to

00:01:07.800 bring relevant philosophy and science to bear on the question of how to live a good life and that

00:01:15.300 will include conversations between me and outside experts but also courses designed by other people

00:01:23.060 and we have some interesting courses already in the works there also i enjoyed the previous podcast

00:01:29.840 with peter zion and ian bremer that was a new format where i invited a subject matter expert to

00:01:37.620 ride shotgun with me and help facilitate a conversation that was somewhat outside my wheelhouse

00:01:43.000 perhaps i'll do more of that or even begin moderating some debates here i've thought about doing that

00:01:49.800 for a while and this seems like a good provocation in that direction and also just a reminder that we

00:01:56.640 launched the best of making sense podcast where we surface some of the evergreen episodes from

00:02:02.220 previous years i know many of you are enjoying that but for those of you who haven't discovered it

00:02:07.680 it is a separate podcast where subscribers to making sense get full episodes and otherwise we release

00:02:15.700 half episodes in podcatchers everywhere okay today i'm speaking with mark andresen mark is a co-founder

00:02:26.220 and general partner at the venture capital firm andresen horowitz he is one of the few people to

00:02:32.440 pioneer a whole software category used by more than a billion people and one of the few to establish

00:02:39.700 multiple billion dollar companies mark co-created the first proper internet browser mosaic which then

00:02:48.880 became netscape which he later sold to aol for 4.2 billion dollars he also co-founded loud cloud

00:02:58.320 which as opsware was sold to hewlett-packard for 1.6 billion dollars and he later served on the

00:03:06.920 board of hewlett-packard from 2008 to 2018 mark holds a degree in computer science from the university of

00:03:14.680 illinois and he serves on the board of several andresen horowitz portfolio companies applied intuition

00:03:22.160 carta dialpad honor open gov and samsara networks and he is also on the board of meta otherwise known

00:03:32.360 as facebook and in this episode we cover a lot of ground we talk about the current state of internet

00:03:39.280 technology and culture some of what has gone right but there is much that is in the process of going

00:03:45.860 wrong we discuss mark's background in tech the birth of the internet how advertising became the

00:03:52.720 business model for digital media we talk about the three stages of the web and the birth of blockchain

00:03:59.460 how successful technology reorders status and power in society the bitcoin white paper the mystery

00:04:08.140 surrounding the identity of satoshi nakamoto the importance of distributed consensus bitcoin is digital gold

00:04:15.620 how society has performed during covid james burnham and managerial capitalism the ubiquitous

00:04:23.540 principal agent problem negative externalities risk and regulation trust and institutions what the

00:04:32.160 fuck happened in 1971 regulatory capture banning trump and alex jones from social media perverse incentives

00:04:40.560 and philanthropy and other topics anyway i really enjoyed this conversation mark knows a lot about a lot 0.96

00:04:49.440 and uh he's a very fast talker i'm a slow talker so those of you who listen to this podcast on 2x are

00:04:58.640 probably screwed for this one anyway i now bring you mark andresen

00:05:04.480 i am here with mark andresen mark thanks for joining me hey sam it's great to be here

00:05:15.040 so we have a lot to talk about you are a man of many talents and wide experience and um we haven't hung

00:05:22.800 out much but i've spoken to you enough to get a glimmer of your um polymathic intentions if not actual

00:05:31.880 achievements it's really if you see you cover an incredible range of material in your um just in

00:05:37.560 your your information diet i want to get into to what you're most focused on and and worried about

00:05:44.680 these days sure and i also want i want to talk about your background a little bit because people

00:05:49.480 will know some of it but i think in having you recapitulate a little bit of that journey

00:05:55.400 into tech you might be able to give us some insights as to what we should be thinking about now

00:06:00.360 but first a high level what do you how do you describe yourself these days in terms of what

00:06:05.400 you do professionally and what you focus on yeah so my career has had kind of three stages so far

00:06:10.840 so you know stage one was in as an engineer and i was i was trained as an engineer and sort of that

00:06:14.760 that sort of method of engineering is kind of central to to everything as it turns out that at

00:06:19.720 least i i do and think about then i became an entrepreneur so i went into into business despite

00:06:24.280 having taken zero uh business courses and sort of went to the school of hard knocks and so um

00:06:30.120 you know went into business and started you know originally my first company with my partner jim

00:06:33.320 clark in 94 and then my second company with ben horowitz in 99 and then so forth and so on and then

00:06:40.040 you know phase three starting in 2009 was to become an investor a professional investor a venture

00:06:45.960 capitalist and so that's a phase three and then maybe some someday one more phase but uh at least

00:06:51.240 those those three have kept me busy so far oh and then you know what what we do you know so what

00:06:55.800 does it mean to be a venture capitalist you know basically we're uh think of it as like we're a hub

00:07:00.840 that's the sort of center of flows of basically ideas people and money would be the way to think

00:07:06.360 about it so we you know try to stand the leading edge of all the new areas of technology we try to

00:07:11.800 know all the really smart people who are working on new technology and want to be part of the

00:07:15.800 technology ecosystem and then we we raise we raise and then we actually raise money and we invest money

00:07:20.200 um and we you know we get very we invest in startups we get very deeply involved in the

00:07:23.800 companies we are typically on the board we're you know we're very often the the founders kind of you

00:07:28.360 know main outside confidant advisor you know we can we we you know we get the call when things go

00:07:33.560 horribly wrong and you know try to pitch in and help and you know and then try to maximize the

00:07:37.240 success for the companies that you know they kind of hit hit a chord yeah and how would you describe your

00:07:41.720 politics at this point so i would say mostly i'm sort of uh you know on an ice flow all by myself

00:07:49.320 headed slowly out to sea i think there's a few people on that flow with you probably at least on

00:07:55.960 nearby flows uh drifting together and apart so i i i this is you know i i could go on at length about

00:08:02.360 this i i i was always kind of a centrist democrat like basically everybody else i knew in in tech and in

00:08:07.240 the valley you know the valley is like you know 99 you know the picture always gets painted the

00:08:11.560 valley is a bunch of radical libertarians or something and in reality it's just like 99

00:08:14.920 basically clinton democrats and now you know kind of whatever warren democrats bernie democrats and so

00:08:21.320 you know i i was always that up until like call it 2015 2016 and then like everybody else i was just

00:08:26.440 completely shocked by really by two things one was trump winning you know both the nomination

00:08:30.920 election and then also just the the huge shift on the left you know that that took place and so i i

00:08:35.640 kind of checked out of traditional politics in 2015 and kind of went on a spirit walk and decided

00:08:40.600 to try to kind of reread everything from scratch and figure out what was going on and i've kind of

00:08:44.040 come out the other side and sort of a weird fuzzy undefined state so i don't even know that i even apply

00:08:50.680 any labels you know i'm not doing anything politically i'm i'm completely out of it so i'm mostly just

00:08:55.720 trying to learn and understand at this point more than like have positions yeah well that describes my own

00:09:01.080 political identity pretty well at this moment perhaps we'll get back to that i think i don't

00:09:05.720 think we'll focus on politics but the political context will inform much of what we say about the

00:09:13.000 breakdown and and rebuilding or failures of rebuilding uh around institutions and solving the

00:09:20.760 massive coordination problem of how do we get strangers who don't trust themselves all that much

00:09:26.360 or trust one another all that much to collaborate but uh before we talk about your background earlier

00:09:32.760 again high level what would you say have been a few of the the influences or life experiences that

00:09:40.280 you currently consider most formative of your worldview on a day-to-day basis you know i think you

00:09:46.680 look part of it was growing up in the sort of you know midwest i i used to think i traveled sort of

00:09:52.440 this weird road from like rural agricultural midwest all the way to kind of high-tech silicon valley and

00:09:56.840 it was kind of you know an unusual thing and then i i discovered years later i discovered tom wolf the

00:10:02.120 great american you know novelist reporter wrote a long form profile of a guy named robert noyce

00:10:07.800 who was basically the inventor of the microchip um and the creator of you know intel and basically the

00:10:12.200 creator of the tech industry as we know it today and he wrote this profile of bob noyce and bob noyce

00:10:16.600 basically was like an iowa farm farm boy you know who grew up in like rural iowa and then moved to um

00:10:22.040 you know moved to the valley and sort of created created the valley created technology as we know

00:10:25.800 it today and so it's and then you know wolf also pointed out like that's the story of like philo

00:10:29.400 farmsworth who created television and you know and many others and so there's there's like you know

00:10:33.800 i always described the valley is like this intersection of like 1950s style midwestern tinkerer

00:10:38.840 engineer you know the the guys with like the brush cuts and the white short sleeve polyester shirts

00:10:43.960 you know like you see in all the old photos of nasa or something it's it's kind of got that kind

00:10:47.160 of square culture engineering kind of nerd culture and then it's got the kind of 1960s

00:10:51.160 california counterculture you know which is because it happened here and so that that stuff

00:10:54.920 all kind of threaded into it and it's it's it's like it's like balance on a knife's edge between

00:10:58.440 those two cultures and so i definitely you know kind of come out of that of that kind of former

00:11:03.320 background so yeah i mean going from you know there to here you know was was was very important

00:11:08.120 you know like partnering with my you know my business partner jim clark was you know a very

00:11:11.240 successful entrepreneur you know what that was the founder of one of the most successful

00:11:15.000 companies in the history of the industry and i i kind of got lucky and that i got to work

00:11:18.520 with him at a time when he wanted to start a new company and all the smart people he knew

00:11:22.120 were kind of working at his current company so he had to go get fresh blood and i happened i

00:11:26.040 happened to be newly arrived and so you know we kind of we kind of hooked up and built built our

00:11:29.720 company netscape that was formative uh the dot-com crash was a very formative experience you know we

00:11:36.200 hit that really hard and then you know look the last you know the last 20 years you know the fact

00:11:40.600 the internet didn't die after 2000 and like there was like a whole second tech boom and then you know

00:11:45.960 everything kind of magically coming together starting in 2007 or 2008 between the iphone

00:11:50.680 and broadband and social networking and everything else that created the world we're in today you know

00:11:54.600 all this stuff at this point has worked you know way beyond any expectation any of us could have

00:11:57.960 possibly had so you know kind of kind of seeing that all crystallize and come together you know has

00:12:02.280 really really really taught me a lot and then of course you know now we're in whatever weird state

00:12:06.120 we're in today yeah that's kind of how i got here so what was your academic background before you

00:12:11.400 became an internet pioneer well you did a cs degree yeah so i was a classic midwestern kind of story

00:12:16.840 which is of course you know the purpose of a college education is to make money like this fairy

00:12:23.000 stuff and so i went to the u.s news and world report issue in i think 1988 and i looked up the

00:12:29.400 income levels by a bachelor's degree and of course the top degree was electrical engineering at that

00:12:34.360 time and so and then i looked for the top double e schools and the number three school was uh

00:12:39.000 university of illinois which was right across the border so you know that that made those two

00:12:42.520 decisions easy i got in school and discovered i hugely preferred software which i should have

00:12:47.240 known because i was always coding as a kid but i just software there's just you know double e's

00:12:52.600 are you know tremendously important and have done a lot to build the modern world but software

00:12:55.960 there's a level of creativity that's just hard to do in atoms and so uh you know i kind of

00:13:00.200 got seduced by software and then got a computer science degree and so let's talk through

00:13:04.600 what happened with mosaic and netscape for a few minutes i mean most people will associate

00:13:09.800 your name with netscape but it was mosaic first right i mean you started this company

00:13:16.360 and um what was the name change about what happened there well it didn't start as a company

00:13:21.880 and so it started as a as a project it started as a project at the university of illinois and so it

00:13:27.160 started as a federally funded research project at what was at the time at the time called the national

00:13:32.840 center for supercomputing applications which the sort of short version is remember when al gore

00:13:37.880 said that he invented the internet yeah it turns out that story is actually largely true in the sense

00:13:42.760 of what he actually said was the full quote was i took the lead in creating the internet in the

00:13:46.600 senate and that story actually is true which is in the senate the u.s senate in the mid-1980s

00:13:51.480 funded two things that ended up being very important for my career one was they funded the internet

00:13:55.720 backbone they ended what was called at the time nsf net after the national science foundation

00:13:59.640 and then they funded what were called the the four national supercomputing centers when and

00:14:03.640 one of those just happened to be at the university of illinois the significance of that was basically

00:14:07.640 they just dropped like a ton of money on on these four these four universities including illinois to

00:14:11.640 basically buy state-of-the-art computers and then hook them up to the the internet and you know this

00:14:15.160 is starting in the mid-80s and so by the way by the time i got there in 89 this was kind of underway

00:14:19.720 and so we we had in retrospect basically a modern computing internet networking broadband graphical

00:14:25.800 environment just you know basically five ten years before the rest of the world so you could kind of

00:14:29.640 see it working was that pure serendipity or did you actually know going to illinois that you were

00:14:34.760 going to have access to unusual computer resources well they were you know like i said they were number

00:14:39.080 three ranked for double e nationally it was like mit stanford and then university of illinois so that

00:14:43.480 reflected that they were top 10 cs at the time so they they were no i mean they were by far the best

00:14:47.320 engineering school in the midwest at that point um and it was just too much of a leap at that point in my

00:14:51.640 life to go to the east coast or the west coast so right so the reason they rank so high is because

00:14:56.040 they were so central like they had they had that you know they had these very advanced programs and

00:14:59.400 all these resources and so you know i had a glimmer of it i knew about it but you know i didn't fully

00:15:04.360 understand the import until i got there and i saw it right and then basically and what happened was

00:15:08.440 nsf basically just like funded this essentially to build the modern internet at the time as a research

00:15:13.000 as a research you know something for scientists at the time this is back in the days there was actually um

00:15:17.000 it was actually illegal to do business on the internet during this period right there was

00:15:20.200 something called the the acceptable use policy that basically banned all commercial transactions

00:15:24.280 so so it was purely a research thing nobody really envisioned it having real world applications at

00:15:28.840 that time it was just kind of for scientists and academics but you know there was a research group

00:15:33.880 there that had the job of basically writing software to make the internet work for you know people

00:15:39.320 and we basically had a project that started as kind of a renegade project that became an official

00:15:43.080 project that was this thing called mosaic which was the first browser that kind of got widely used

00:15:47.160 to kind of pull in all the functions made everything graphical and then made it work really well and

00:15:51.240 fast and secure and so forth and then everybody started using that on the internet as it then

00:15:55.480 existed and that was basically that was when i was making six dollars and 25 cents an hour

00:16:00.360 yeah well i hope you invested that wisely because i'm told compounding really works

00:16:04.680 well until recently yes right until until inflation yeah until the last two months

00:16:09.640 months so then you formed a proper company netscape and what happened what what happened to netscape

00:16:18.920 as a product yeah well so first of all it was very it was very tenuous that we ever even started

00:16:24.200 that company because it was it was so there was such a wall of negativity it was so universally known

00:16:29.880 that the internet was not something that ordinary people would ever use right and and if you read the

00:16:33.880 newspapers and magazines at the time they were just wall to wall when they wrote about the internet

00:16:37.000 it was primarily either as an object of curiosity that would never matter or negatively if this

00:16:41.160 thing's never going to what year are we now 93 94 right right okay yeah kind of 92 93 94. the first

00:16:48.280 issue of wired magazine i bought the first issue of wired magazine off the newsstand and i think 90 early

00:16:53.000 93 when i was working on mosaic or late 92 and i remember uh bought it like four in the morning going to

00:16:58.920 do a do a snack run and i saw this thing on the newsstand and i you know i was excited finally a

00:17:03.240 magazine for me and i went back to my office and read it from front to back and it didn't even

00:17:06.440 mention mention the internet right and i was like okay i guess i guess i guess i'm on the wrong end

00:17:10.920 of this whole thing so and it's not that wired got anything wrong it's just that that was universally

00:17:15.240 the view and all the experts said that and all the big company ceos said that it's just this is not

00:17:19.080 a this is not going to be a thing so what was motivating you at that point did you actually believe

00:17:23.560 that everyone was wrong and realize that the internet was going to be a way to not only get rich but

00:17:30.440 just basically do more or less everything that was going to prove indispensable in the future or

00:17:35.800 were you just tinkering and and following your interests without any big picture vision so it

00:17:41.320 was actually a process of elimination which is we kind of tried everything else instead

00:17:45.720 basically concluded that nope it was just going to be the internet and so uh my partner jim and i

00:17:49.880 actually had other business plans that we kind of cycled through trying to do at the time interactive

00:17:53.720 television was this big idea and then we we tried to do we had a plan for an online gaming network

00:17:57.720 that's sort of like what xbox live today is today we basically worked through all these other ideas

00:18:01.720 for kind of advanced you know aol at that point was starting to work a little bit so it's like

00:18:04.920 what would it mean to do one of those like a proprietary consumer service and we we kind of

00:18:09.160 kept you know just we we have the startup mentality of like okay let's from scratch make a business

00:18:13.240 plan for building a company that does anything like this and and basically we cycled through all

00:18:17.560 the other ideas and and and then you know the background kind of mosaic kind of kept growing

00:18:21.640 right it kept going after i left illinois and you know more more people were using it and it was just

00:18:25.640 like you know i was and i still had my you know it's my email login and so i i had the i had the

00:18:30.120 account i had um i had the account mosaic was was free for academic use but it had a we put a provision

00:18:36.120 in the license that said you have to pay for commercial use and we just did that as a placeholder

00:18:39.800 because we didn't have a business model at illinois but i had the email box i had the email box

00:18:43.720 where people would send in commercial inquiries where they would want to do something you know

00:18:46.440 in the commercial sector with it like e-commerce or whatever and so you know there were hundreds

00:18:49.720 and hundreds and hundreds of these like messages coming in from people who wanted to do crazy

00:18:53.160 crazy things like i want to build a bookstore on the internet like that's crazy uh lose my email

00:18:59.000 jeff yeah exactly well actually you pre-jeff right pre-jeff you know even before that and so yeah so i

00:19:05.960 just like at some point jim and i literally looked at each other and we're like okay this internet thing

00:19:10.280 might actually be the thing like maybe all these other experts are just wrong maybe this actually is

00:19:14.360 the correct thing and you know i look the internet had all kinds of problems and issues that i could

00:19:18.040 take you through it as long litany of you know people had all these complaints about it that were

00:19:20.760 correct it's not secure and you can't do transactions and blah blah blah blah blah and

00:19:24.920 it's not fast right and it's just like well you know look if the network effect really takes and

00:19:29.880 lots of people sign up to use this and lots of businesses come online then it's going to drive

00:19:33.560 an investment wave that's going to solve all these other problems which is basically what happened

00:19:36.920 and so we we we kind of did what in retrospect was the obvious decision which is we just leaned

00:19:40.920 in hard on that right and how did the business model get anchored to ads because of all the

00:19:47.800 things that could have gone differently in the beginning um and maybe the tech wasn't there you

00:19:52.840 just said there there was no way to pay for things but it seems like that could have been an early

00:19:57.960 priority and i'm not sure you entirely share my my view of just how diabolical the ad-based economy

00:20:05.560 has been in the end but i wonder what what was that moment like where you just slap a banner ad on

00:20:12.360 it and that's how you you monetize the future of digital media yeah so it's because we had no we

00:20:18.200 had no native money all right we had no native ability to do money we had no way to do microtransactions

00:20:22.840 we knew this at the time so we we knew right up front we like look there needs to be a way to

00:20:26.120 send and receive money there needs to be a way to do e-commerce there needs to be a way to do

00:20:28.680 microtransactions we knew this at the time there were two kind of big things and we were in a position

00:20:33.240 to do it because we had the we had the browser but we also had the servers and the e-commerce software

00:20:36.760 and all the back of the back end stuff and so we were in a position to do all this

00:20:39.400 so we figured there were two parts of the problem part one was cryptography right so basically security

00:20:45.480 right so to be able to have like secure you know secure communication and we invented this protocol

00:20:49.080 called ssl for secure cryptography it's the it's the first widely used kind of delivery of the

00:20:53.720 science of cryptography to consumers you know sort of happened as a consequence of the nescape

00:20:57.720 browser and ssl and that's by the way that's still in use ssl still the encryption method for

00:21:02.520 the internet today so so that part worked and then the other part was like okay you need to plug

00:21:07.320 into the existing banking system right you need to be able to plug in so people can load you know

00:21:10.760 have their credit card their debit card their bank account their checking account because they've got

00:21:13.720 all their money somewhere and they've got to be able to you know kind of get it to the internet

00:21:16.920 and so for that we went and we started talking all the big banks and the big credit card companies

00:21:21.240 and you know we got again this kind of wall of skepticism and everybody kind of told us basically

00:21:26.760 basically f off this is never going to work and then we got our big meeting that kind of really

00:21:31.480 hammered this home for me we we found this guy at uh just i guess i shouldn't name names specifically

00:21:37.160 but one of the very big credit card companies let's say uh there was a cto who was like considered

00:21:42.200 we were told he was like the visionary for the payments industry and the guy that everybody listened

00:21:45.640 to and it's like if you can get him on your side you know you can really do something here so we had

00:21:49.160 him to our office he had not used the internet or mosaic or netscape at that point so we sat him

00:21:53.960 down in front of a workstation and you know with the keyboard and a mouse and a big screen

00:21:57.720 and you know had it all queued up for the demo and said you know and i and i basically pointed

00:22:01.480 on the uh you know the the first link on the screen and i said you know click here and so

00:22:05.000 of course he reaches up with his finger and touches the screen um and this is you know 1994 right so

00:22:11.320 there's no touch screens yeah so nothing happens um and then i'm like no no you use the mouse and so

00:22:16.200 then of course he looks at the mouse and then of course he picks it up right and so you know and

00:22:20.520 you know what how could that possibly be the case well because the the entire banking payments

00:22:24.360 industry at that point was on mainframes from 30 years earlier they you know they didn't do

00:22:28.680 new things that's not what they were in business to do and so i remember in that meeting you know

00:22:34.040 it's just like okay this is it we're sunk there's no way this can happen so so you know we tried

00:22:38.680 microsoft tried other people tried awl tried and it's just there was never any way to do it and so

00:22:43.400 you know if you can't charge people for things then you got to run ads and that basically is what

00:22:46.760 happened hmm let's maybe give us a a short primer on on the stages of development here we have a web

00:22:53.720 one web two and web three i'm imagining you envision web three as ushering a new age of monetizing

00:23:02.200 everything potentially in a secure trustless way right let's climb there what do we mean by web one

00:23:09.240 two and three at this point sure so my partner chris dixon has sort of the best encapsulation of this

00:23:13.880 he says web one was read right and so the big breakthrough was you go online you could read

00:23:18.520 stuff you could see stuff you could do searches you could do all this but you were like you know

00:23:22.120 you could consume web two was what he calls read right right so and that's sort of the social

00:23:26.520 networking blogging video youtube you know kind of user-generated content era right so not only could

00:23:31.080 you read you could do what you do you could you could uh you know not only listen you could produce

00:23:34.840 podcasts and that that led to the you know kind of the whole the world that we've been in and then

00:23:38.840 he says web three is read write and own right and and own means you can own value right you can own

00:23:45.080 money you can own digital assets right you can own you know you can you can have ownership claims on

00:23:49.160 things right or you or you or you know you could equivalently you could say read write pay you could

00:23:53.000 say read write you know make money you know you could apply whatever term you want to that that

00:23:57.320 third one but basically basically fill in all of the economics and all of the capability of having

00:24:04.200 incentives and ownership that really should have been there from the start that like i said you know

00:24:08.680 we tried to get in from the start but we just didn't have the technology for now we basically

00:24:12.200 have a chance with these new technologies of blockchain cryptocurrency web3 you know we have

00:24:16.360 this we have basically we think a chance to kind of do the other half of the internet is how i think

00:24:21.000 about it or the you know the other third and it's basically have a trust layer a money layer and

00:24:26.280 an ownership layer that rides on top of the sort of untrusted unowned you know kind of space

00:24:31.960 that's been the internet so far and then kind of you know fill in all the things that we wish we

00:24:36.040 had been able to do from the start but but now we can actually do i wouldn't be alone in noticing

00:24:41.000 that there's a fair amount of skepticism about web3 at this point and a fair amount of schadenfreude

00:24:45.800 watching cryptocurrency crash or almost crash in recent months do you view that skepticism as truly

00:24:55.560 analogous to all of the naysayers around web1 when they thought the internet was just going to be

00:25:00.920 a bust and that no one was ever going to migrate away from you know their answering machine even

00:25:06.200 this email thing wasn't going to take off or do you think there is a greater foundation for a

00:25:11.720 perception of uh misspent dreams and failures of scaling the technology around the the energy

00:25:19.400 concerns the cost of it all the capacity for fraud the tulip mania aspect of the kind of the

00:25:26.760 investing landscape or the speculation landscape there how much of this is an echo of the the

00:25:31.960 early 90s and how much of this is a a genuinely new condition of uncertainty yeah so there's a lot

00:25:38.760 in there and we can you know we can go through each of those points here's the big thing i'd say

00:25:41.960 overall look a lot of things just don't work right so a lot of people have ideas for things that don't

00:25:46.360 work and so you know it's always possible that the critics are correct and it's always possible

00:25:49.720 something either is just never going to work or the other possibility is things are just too early

00:25:53.240 right what happens a lot of new technologies is they just take time you know there were people

00:25:56.920 doing analog there were people doing mechanical television 30 years before philo farnsworth did

00:26:00.760 electronic television they did mechanical television like the 1880s 1890s with like spinning wooden blocks

00:26:06.040 representing pixels right right and so there's this prehistory you know it's like what was it

00:26:10.840 paris had a telegraph system working through uh flashes of light through uh long glass tubes under

00:26:15.560 the streets of paris in like the 1830s right which was not practical right because the tubes kept

00:26:20.120 breaking but like people you know people had that idea way before the telegraph rolled out so

00:26:23.480 so anyway you know look for any new technology maybe you're just early maybe you're just wrong

00:26:26.760 altogether maybe it doesn't happen for the new technologies that do work you see basically a

00:26:32.680 pattern of the reaction to them um and i used to kind of think i was making i was kind of fantasizing

00:26:37.960 this and then i found a book that kind of explained it this book by this mit guy named elting morrison

00:26:42.520 50 years ago where he kind of goes through this is even pre-internet but he goes through the

00:26:45.320 whole history of new technologies and he said there's basically a three-stage process to the

00:26:48.600 adoption of any new technology stage one is just ignore right where basically just people pretend

00:26:53.400 it doesn't even exist and of course that's you know the internet was ignored basically from the

00:26:57.640 1960s through to the like i said kind of even into the even into the early 90s stage two is basically

00:27:02.840 vigorous protest and that's the stage where basically it's like a it's like basically here

00:27:08.040 are the 30 reasons this can never happen or call it the reasons phase right so here's the 30 reasons

00:27:12.440 this could never happen and usually what that is this is a laundry list of everything that's technically

00:27:15.880 wrong with new technology right so the internet it was it's too slow and it's not graphical and it's

00:27:20.360 this and it's insecure and the hackers and you know fraud and you know all this all these sort of you

00:27:25.160 know basically by the way real issues right these are all issues that actually had to get fixed and

00:27:29.480 then ultimately were fixed and then he said stage three stage three in the book he says is when the

00:27:35.000 name calling begins and so stage three is basically rage and what he basically says is it's basically rage

00:27:42.040 it's basically the existing power structures basically just like go incandescent with rage

00:27:46.520 and and he said the reason for that is because any new technology that works is a reordering of status

00:27:51.320 and power right in the system and basically the you know the status quo is you know what do they hate

00:27:56.280 more than anything else you know reordering of status and power right there's only downside for them

00:28:00.360 and so they just go crazy and that's when they pull out all the stops and they call you names and they

00:28:03.480 try to put you in jail and they do everything under the sun they can possibly do to sabotage it

00:28:07.240 and then you know and then look it has to prove itself right it has you know to get through those

00:28:10.520 three gauntlets like it has to be a real thing so so like i said it's not predictive that because

00:28:15.400 something goes through this it's going to work it's just that every single time something works

00:28:18.760 like this it goes through these stages and so at this point like i'm like i'm like inert to it right

00:28:24.680 like it's just i've seen it now so many times in the exact same sequence of of things that i'm just

00:28:29.560 like okay fine you know bring it this is what they're going to do we're just going to keep going

00:28:33.000 but what percentage of your time and commitment of resources at this point is focused on web 3

00:28:40.920 i mean we might actually need to i know i've done this on other podcasts but we probably should

00:28:45.560 define web 3 a little bit more just differentiating you know cryptocurrency from everything else that

00:28:50.920 could be done on the blockchain but um you can do that but but then how much of your attention and

00:28:57.160 and material resources are aimed at that at the moment yeah it's look it's a very big push for us

00:29:02.600 so we have a very big group in the space now it's probably a third of i would say you know you could

00:29:06.440 you could top line it and say maybe a third of the firm in terms of a combination of people and money

00:29:10.280 right which for us is it's one of our big it's one of our biggest it's one of our biggest things

00:29:13.800 okay so so give me the potted definition of web 3 at the moment yeah so let's take the three terms

00:29:18.600 that we kind of again kind of conjoined so so blockchain is like the underlying technological

00:29:22.440 breakthrough so so basically what happened was this this this this person he she it or they

00:29:28.280 named satoshi nakamoto never never identified are you swearing that this is not you

00:29:32.520 it is definitely not me okay although if it was that's exactly what i would be saying yes

00:29:38.200 but still i trust you somehow in the in this trustless environment well say you know same

00:29:41.880 is true for you if it was you you'd be asking you'd be pretending to ask me the question without

00:29:44.680 knowing too so i think it does stand a better chance of being you given our different backgrounds

00:29:49.160 but um do you have any suspicions about who it is or whether it's a single individual

00:29:54.200 yeah there are suspicion most of the people in the space think it was a combination of people it it was a

00:29:59.640 it was a deep technological breakthrough and it built on you know it was one of these things that

00:30:02.920 built on 30 years of prior work it was against one of these things that had kind of a long wind

00:30:06.360 up before and before it happened and so it was somebody and he he she or they posted a lot on

00:30:11.000 forums and you can read all the posts as it was in development so you can kind of see whoever it was

00:30:14.600 had like a very deep knowledge in the space and that that kind of reduces it down to a pretty small

00:30:18.280 number of candidates just given the nature of the technology at that time so it was probably

00:30:22.440 people think it was a handful of those people probably working together this is the bitcoin white

00:30:26.440 paper uh which one is this 2010 nine 2009 2009 well by the way profoundly significant by the way just

00:30:34.200 profoundly significant this gets missed but 2009 was the low of the economy and the stock market

00:30:38.680 and everything else and the high of unemployment following the financial crisis right so it was

00:30:42.360 the last year you would expect a major new break like everybody was in a horrible mood in 2009

00:30:47.160 i remember it very clearly because we started the firm then and everybody was like uniformly negative

00:30:50.440 that you could start a new venture capital firm and so in the middle of just like complete

00:30:54.120 misery and by the way in the middle of like the collapse of the prior financial system right

00:30:57.160 the sort of what we call the trad financial system right just being like completely trash

00:31:01.240 and discredited and falling apart and having to be bailed out right this like magic thing happens

00:31:05.480 this paper comes out and it just like you know basically redefines the industry it was a very special

00:31:09.480 moment did you see its significance immediately no i didn't no i no i wouldn't claim that you know

00:31:14.760 it was something kind of people knew about everybody read it people talked about it a lot it

00:31:18.600 it was like a parlor game in silicon valley for the first five years or so which is it's like you

00:31:23.720 know like even in silicon valley right it's like okay this probably is not going to be a thing like

00:31:28.120 really internet money you know geez right like all the reasons why you know you shouldn't be able

00:31:32.680 to do that can't do that it won't work uh but you know what the the silicon valley parlor game of

00:31:37.240 that is less maybe for you know some people had foresight and saw it but a lot of people didn't and a

00:31:41.000 lot of us were like wow but wouldn't it be cool if it did right and so then the parlor game was like wow like

00:31:45.640 you know what if you know we always have the joke it's like on earth two right you know this stuff is

00:31:49.960 all working right and it's like well what would earth two be like if it really had bitcoin everywhere

00:31:53.640 and it's like wow this is a really cool idea and then at some point you know we we and others were

00:31:58.200 just like okay like we need to stop being idiots here and basically just be like yeah this is actually 0.90

00:32:02.920 a thing this is actually going to happen this stands a very good chance of actually happening 0.97

00:32:06.680 our credit our partner biology srinivasan you know was the guy who kind of got us really clued in

00:32:11.160 on this and you know kind of sat us down at one point it's like look you guys have to stop

00:32:14.040 thinking about this as hypothetical like this thing is actually happening and so you know we

00:32:17.480 were early relative to the world but there were other people in the valley who were ahead of us

00:32:22.280 and is there a um kind of an initial cash of bitcoin that has not been claimed which is satoshi's

00:32:31.080 coin or there's an initial wallet that is still has the coin sitting in it or what's the the story

00:32:35.960 there yes this is part of the great kind of mythic legend behind the whole thing so you know all

00:32:43.800 the bitcoin is basically based on this underlying science of cryptography right which is a you know

00:32:48.120 it's an ancient science but in its modern form you know it's a 50 60 year old kind of thing in terms

00:32:53.400 of the way we use the technologies now the so-called public key cryptography and so it's all based on

00:32:58.040 that and as part of that you can have what are called private keys that are uniquely yours and as

00:33:03.160 part of that you can sign messages with your private key and and such that anybody in the world can

00:33:07.960 decode them or read them but only you could have written them right so you can have like absolute

00:33:12.040 validation that you were the you were the right you were the creator um and then the the and then

00:33:16.120 bitcoin wallets basically work the same way like you have a private key for the wallet and anybody

00:33:19.880 who has the private key can decrypt it right it's like a bearer instrument in that way but anybody who

00:33:23.960 doesn't have the private key you'd like can't you know they have no claim to it and so in very you

00:33:28.520 know along the over the years various people show up and claim to be satoshi but like none of them

00:33:32.040 can like demonstrate that they have the private key none of them can you know so therefore you have

00:33:35.480 nothing so anyway we sort of know we know how to recognize satoshi when we see he or they which

00:33:41.880 is they can use their private key to sign things they could also use their private key to unlock

00:33:45.640 the money i don't know what the current value is i'm gonna guess it's somewhere in the neighborhood

00:33:49.640 of 30 to 50 billion dollars us dollars today right that is sitting in a wallet somewhere that the

00:33:54.680 satoshi key unlocks that money has never been touched but that's an extraordinary fact if

00:33:59.880 yes if it's a single individual or a group of people i mean this is even without that this is

00:34:05.960 one of the best kept secrets ever but when you look at the treasure of sierra madre incentives that

00:34:13.480 are growing with that kind of wealth locked up in a box how do you explain that this is just this

00:34:19.240 person is ideologically so pure and enamored of the brilliance of this founding myth and moment that

00:34:27.240 they're just they're not tempted to suddenly own 50 billion dollars yes exactly so so this is the

00:34:34.040 amazing thing the fact that money was not claimed for a long time right and by the way the message

00:34:39.560 has stopped after the bitcoin white paper came out satoshi stopped posting in public and so and by

00:34:45.320 the way you have to pause for a second here to say how prescient must this person have been to not

00:34:49.720 only develop this thing and write it and create it after basically 30 years of people trying to do the

00:34:53.560 the same thing by the way like this this was the breakthrough how prescient was he she hit or they

00:34:58.200 that not only did they get the technology right but also they knew ahead of time that they needed to

00:35:02.280 stay anonymous right like that's not normal like it's not like i've never been anonymous like it's not

00:35:07.880 normal in our industry to be anonymous yeah and so whoever it is had like tremendous tremendous

00:35:13.240 foresight to to to to know to do that and then yeah to not claim the money so the the prevailing view

00:35:18.120 for a long time was he she it or they are dead right which is the most most obvious thing and and

00:35:22.200 and you know there there is at least one candidate for satoshi who did pass away so you know it's

00:35:27.080 it's certainly possible that's the case it's also possible by the way something very embarrassing

00:35:30.440 happened it's possible he she it or they forgot their key yeah forgot their key which would be

00:35:35.320 embarrassing yeah the kind of thing that might torture you for a long time and then this weird

00:35:39.640 thing happened i don't remember there was newsweek magazine did this cover story claiming that they

00:35:43.480 had uncovered satoshi nakamoto and they they okay so this is several years ago now this huge uh newsweek cover

00:35:49.960 story and they said we found satoshi and they identified an older gentleman who is a japanese

00:35:55.080 american named dorian nakamoto who is like an aerospace engineer or something in like i forget

00:36:00.120 southern california somewhere like i want to say san diego or orange county and they did this entire

00:36:04.440 expose about he's the guy and the whole time he's like i'm not the guy i'm not the guy i'm not the guy i'm

00:36:08.520 not the guy and they're like yes you are and and you know in the in the cs community like we're all

00:36:12.760 like well he's not a computer scientist he's not he's he seems like he's like a smart engineer but he

00:36:16.680 doesn't have this background like this seems weird so anyway there was one final message

00:36:20.600 signed by satoshi's private key that came out at that point and it literally was i am not dorian

00:36:24.520 nakamoto uh-huh and then satoshi has since gone quiet and so now we're back we're back to the great

00:36:31.560 mystery which you know i i hope you know i don't know i don't actually i don't know if i hope it gets

00:36:35.880 solved i would you know the engineer in me would like to know but you know it may be better for you

00:36:40.120 know i think the world should have some mystery to it and if this is the fundamental breakthrough that

00:36:44.440 sort of is a division in you know before and after civilization we never find out who the

00:36:48.120 person was that i think there's something romantic about that so yeah i kind of hope we never find out

00:36:51.800 it's a great story so i derailed you you did not yet differentiate bitcoin from all else that can

00:36:58.520 happen on the blockchain yeah so blockchain is the under so basically the white paper basically came

00:37:02.760 out the bitcoin white it's very short people can read it and basically um the uh basically it says

00:37:07.240 we have this basically a data structure called the blockchain which is a way to do uh decentralized

00:37:12.120 permissionless basically data structure that everybody agrees on which we could talk about

00:37:15.880 sort of it's sort of a way to do a database but in a database that kind of is spread out across the

00:37:19.720 internet we call that the blockchain it's literally a chain of blocks and then so and and the computer

00:37:25.000 science term is distributed consensus and so that's if you read the computer science literature like that

00:37:28.840 that's the thing that was solved that's the technology breakthrough like the you know the cold

00:37:32.200 fusion or whatever of the thing and then basically said there's an there's sort of an immediate

00:37:35.880 and obvious use case for this which is digital money because if i have a if i have a basically a

00:37:40.760 database an internet-wide database that records you know debits and credits or records ownership

00:37:46.360 of assets then basically i could just basically those slots can represent money uh they can represent

00:37:51.880 value and if you own the slot today you own the money and if i own the slot tomorrow you know i own

00:37:56.360 the money and and and there it goes and and and it's this giant it's this way to get agreement

00:38:00.760 so it's a distributed consensus it's a way to get consensus of who owns what across the entire internet

00:38:05.080 and and and actually what happens and this is a subtle point is the use case of the capability of doing

00:38:10.440 digital money is sort of an artifact it's it's sort of a natural consequence of having this kind

00:38:14.840 of database and then by the way it turns out you also you you also want a form of digital money to

00:38:19.880 make a blockchain work because you need to pay the miners right and so the the way the blockchain works

00:38:24.120 is people run the code on their on their computers and you know that costs them some amount of money

00:38:28.680 primarily in the form of power you know they got well they got to buy the computers then they got to power

00:38:31.960 the computers and store them somewhere and so the way the miners get paid is with the currency that sort

00:38:36.680 of emerges from the system so you've got the you got the blockchain which is sort of the infrastructure

00:38:40.600 and then you've got this like use case artifact spin-off emergent thing which is kind of this you

00:38:45.480 know the coin the the currency that comes out the other end that was that original pairing and then

00:38:51.160 immediately upon that release people started to say okay that's great and and you know the the the

00:38:56.520 true believers right up front were like okay that's great that's obviously going to happen and

00:38:59.560 then they basically right from the beginning they started saying okay what else could you do with the

00:39:03.000 blockchain and that leads to all these other use cases that people are talking about now and that's

00:39:06.680 what we call web3 so we we we use the term web3 for all of the basically use cases of the blockchain

00:39:12.760 which includes digital money but the other you know hundred ideas that people are pursuing today

00:39:16.280 right right and how much of your investment and and bullishness with respect to web3 is predicated

00:39:25.240 on the expectation that bitcoin will endure bitcoin specifically as a if not the only

00:39:32.680 cryptocurrency and store of value that a major one yeah so bitcoin's really unusual and it goes back

00:39:40.040 to you know this original kind of founding you know myth reality which is very unusual which is it's not

00:39:44.920 changing right and so and if you just think about technology like we have this adage in in the valley

00:39:49.560 it's like technology is like bananas like like it goes it new technology becomes obsolete almost immediately

00:39:54.600 right like i i ship and you know you see this all the time now i ship a new whatever this that video

00:39:58.840 game play or whatever it's like you know a year later it's like you know it's last year's news

00:40:02.520 it's the previous iphone model right and and so you know it's it's it's the great you know glory of

00:40:07.160 the tech industry it's like we keep pushing this stuff forward we keep doing new things and so you

00:40:11.080 know we there's a museum in san jose called it you know the museum of whatever computer museum

00:40:14.680 computer history museum is you know it's fun to go to but it's it's you know every single thing in

00:40:18.520 it is something nobody uses anymore yeah because they're all obsolete and so any other area

00:40:23.640 technology you'd say you know bitcoin comes out the founder vanishes it doesn't change it's

00:40:28.200 essentially unchanged you know they made a little tinkering around it but it's essentially unchanged

00:40:31.960 since 2009 it's now 13 years old it's obviously going to be completely obsolete and by the way

00:40:36.200 lots of other people have developed lots of new blockchains and lots of new forms of cryptocurrency

00:40:39.560 and lots of new web3 things and so forth along the way and so shouldn't it just kind of fade away

00:40:43.560 you know so you know we honor it as the forerunner of what we have but we're building better systems now

00:40:48.840 the thing that's so unusual about it on this topic is that it it is digital gold right and so

00:40:54.680 it it it's it's sort of one and only like real foundational fundamental use case to store value

00:40:59.720 and and basically it's like okay it's digital gold and so like what would you if you were going to

00:41:04.120 basically write a spec for digital gold what would you say would be the main thing you would need from

00:41:08.120 it and the main thing you would need from it is that it doesn't change right right so this is like

00:41:12.280 the one application of technology i've ever seen where it's actually a benefit right it's a part of the

00:41:17.560 bull case for it that it doesn't change in particular because the amount of it doesn't

00:41:21.000 change you're not going to find much more of it suddenly yeah that's right the amount the amount

00:41:24.920 of it is fixed the amount of it is fixed but but even more than that it's like bitcoin 10 years it's

00:41:29.320 the only thing i know of where 10 years from now 20 years from now 100 years from now it's going to

00:41:32.120 be running essentially the same way that it runs today and it's just it's literally because like

00:41:35.960 satoshi's not here to change it and nobody else is going to change it and like it's just it's

00:41:39.560 it's on its track and so but it's if it's if it's literally digital gold if it's like a permanent store of

00:41:44.040 value then all of a sudden you've taken what historically be a weakness turn it into a strength

00:41:47.320 so so so my my best guess would be that bitcoin is sort of the digital gold my best guess though

00:41:53.480 also would be that it's it's it's new systems being developed today or over the next you know

00:41:57.640 10 years you know that will basically take all the other use cases and there and again it's the same

00:42:02.120 thing bitcoin is not changing bitcoin can't actually do all the other use cases and so it's

00:42:05.960 going to have to be new developments and so we're we're we're in the and camp you know this has become

00:42:10.360 a very you know this is you know this is this is a full-fledged religious war at this point so

00:42:14.360 there are um you know very strong believers with a great deal of kind of force and energy on on all

00:42:19.000 sides of this and so there's definitely you know schisms on this but we we're kind of a big tent

00:42:23.080 kind of thing and we're we're making we're making all the bets we're including uh bitcoin so but but

00:42:27.560 you you're betting that bitcoin doesn't become the digital currency you're distinguishing it as a store

00:42:34.920 of value from it being a an efficient and scalable digital dollar essentially yeah so it it can't in

00:42:42.680 its current form it can't it can't be the digital dollar it it the the the transaction processing

00:42:48.600 system of bitcoin the way the blockchain works it it's not built for that level of scale and

00:42:53.560 performance right yeah and you you can see that by the way because there's a cost associated with

00:42:57.080 transactions there's so-called mining fees and you know the cost to clear a transaction through

00:43:00.920 bitcoin is is not i don't know what it is today but it's non-trivial and so and and then there's long

00:43:05.480 delays and so we just like it's just not going to be able to do that and that's today right if

00:43:10.920 if it actually takes on you know uh you know even like a quarter of the global economy it's going to

00:43:15.000 be many you know orders of magnitude bigger than it is today and it's not gonna be able to handle it so

00:43:19.480 so this is the this is the downside of satoshi no longer being with us is like it's it's not adapting

00:43:24.280 to be able like on earth two satoshi stayed involved and bitcoin became everything but like that's

00:43:29.800 that's not that's not what's happening on earth one now look having said that there are smart

00:43:33.400 entrepreneurs that are developing layers on top of bitcoin where they're going to try to like make

00:43:36.840 that happen you know jack dorsey who's a smart guy has a whole effort to try to like have layers on

00:43:40.680 top of bitcoin to do this kind of thing there are other people trying to do it so there are people

00:43:43.720 trying to kind of augment bitcoin and kind of turbocharge it in different ways maybe some of

00:43:47.560 those efforts will work or maybe it will just be brand new systems there's also by the way a big

00:43:51.800 transition a big technology transition underway you know you know the original way bitcoin worked

00:43:56.520 was so-called proof of work where you solve all these math problems um you know to sort of validate

00:44:00.920 that you own what you own as the way the the underlying transaction processing engine works

00:44:05.000 there's sort of an overall architecture change being kind of proposed in the industry which

00:44:08.760 is to what's called proof of stake which is a sort of a much less energy you know sort of aggressive

00:44:13.480 thing and and so if and if if if ethereum is switching from from proof of work to proof of stake

00:44:19.240 and so proof of stake works like it's it's one of these phase shifts that happens in the industry

00:44:22.280 where it's just things work differently on the other side bitcoin would remain proof of work

00:44:25.880 because it it kind of can't change but but you'll you may have these new systems that just

00:44:29.160 fundamentally work both different and much better for like high-scale transaction processing

00:44:33.080 that that's a that's a you know that's a tbd but like we're pretty confident that that has a good

00:44:37.560 chance of succeeding so i guess so now i want to kind of pivot to if not politics uh you know

00:44:45.400 politics adjacent larger societal concerns you know where we are at this moment in history how technology is

00:44:52.760 coming to the rescue or failing to come to the rescue uh and i guess i as a starting point to this

00:44:58.120 chapter in the conversation i would reference the essay you wrote early in covid titled it's time to

00:45:04.520 build um which was really this you know the the technologists and entrepreneurs and and in your

00:45:11.640 case uh vc's heart cry for you know over just the misspent energy of the moment and just how much

00:45:19.400 how we should so many of us at the time were feeling that we really needed to seize this opportunity to

00:45:26.040 shore up our our society against you know the forces of fragmentation and it really was an

00:45:33.400 opportunity to get our heads straight and i i don't know how you feel about this but i think i you know

00:45:38.840 looking back on i mean obviously we're still in covid land to some degree but i look back on it as a kind

00:45:44.360 of failed dress rehearsal for something much worse i mean i think that i think there will be things that

00:45:50.360 that are that are much worse and i'm not drawing the comforting lesson that i wish i could draw from

00:45:57.960 our performance the over these last couple of years that we've learned many lessons even if we've made

00:46:04.280 some obvious mistakes we understand what those mistakes were and we're not going to make those

00:46:08.840 mistakes again i just feel like we're we're all waking up from a bad dream and in in the waking state

00:46:15.800 some of the the horrible creatures of the dream are still with us and that we're not all that much

00:46:21.240 wiser take me back to the moment you wrote that essay and give me your your view of the last couple

00:46:27.240 of years what did covid do to us yeah so that essay was a primal scream i think it probably comes across

00:46:34.200 that way and i kind of say that in the essay so so it was it was at a very specific moment it was when

00:46:38.520 the you know covid was hitting in new york city um and you know we all thought you know we all thought

00:46:42.360 covid was going to hit us hard everywhere it fortunately it didn't but like you know in

00:46:45.800 retrospect like there were specific moments like the it you know italy was a catastrophe and then

00:46:50.680 and then you know new york city was a catastrophe there were some others but it you know it fortunately

00:46:53.960 it didn't actually hit the rest of the country the way it hit new york but at that moment it seemed

00:46:56.920 like we were all really in for it yeah to the degree to which new york was in for it at that time

00:47:00.440 which was you know very catastrophic for people in new york at that moment you know those were the days of

00:47:04.280 just like constant wailing you know ambulance you know sounds everywhere in new york and so the mayor of

00:47:09.480 new york he since departed bill de blasio uh put out a call and said you know the people with rain

00:47:15.960 ponchos could please donate them to local hospitals for use of surgical gowns yes that inspires confidence

00:47:20.520 in our civilization just like gee you know by the way is this a family podcast or can i swear you

00:47:25.960 swear to your heart's content jesus you know i was like jesus christ like like really like you know

00:47:32.440 the civilization of the united states of america 240 years in or whatever literally like we're using rain

00:47:37.560 ponchos for surgical gowns in hospitals in new york city honestly like that's where we've gotten

00:47:42.520 to you know we don't you know we don't have masks we don't have this we don't have that and and now 0.62

00:47:46.440 we don't have freaking surgical gowns so it's like this is just ridiculous and so that that that that

00:47:52.040 sort of and then you know what i try to do if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation

00:47:58.360 you'll need to subscribe at sam harris.org once you do you'll get access to all full-length episodes of

00:48:03.720 the making sense podcast along with other subscriber only content including bonus episodes

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00:48:33.720 so

Making Sense - Sam Harris - July 21, 2022

#290 — What Went Wrong？

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