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Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
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Today I am chatting with Chris Dixon who is a general partner at Andre and Harwitz.
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He has a long-standing history in the tech field.
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He started off in a way as a blogger and we now have out the paperback edition of Chris's recent book, a very stimulating and provocative read.
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It is called read, write, own, building the next error of the internet. Chris, welcome. Thanks for having me.
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Let me ask you a very fundamental question so people can see where you're coming from. Sure.
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So, if I listen to music today, not on my stereo, I'll go to YouTube and Spotify.
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What's wrong with that arrangement?
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How is it you think we can make it better? Yeah. Yeah.
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I mean, so the kind of core thesis of of my book and and kind of the core thesis of my career now um is that um you know the internet began as a decentralized network which what that meant was that if you created a website or let's say you were a musician and you created a website and you sold your music you would sell directly to the consumers and there would be no one s no intermediary in between taking money um from from that transaction.
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Um the challenge with things like Spotify and YouTube and just generally the structure of the modern internet is that you've had these um services pop up which um you know are very dominant. It's very consolidated.
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Sort of 90% of the internet traffic runs through you know less than 10 uh services and companies um and they have very high what we call take rates on the internet business.
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The take rate is the percentage of money flowing through the system taken by the uh network intermediary. Right?
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So YouTube actually is the most generous of the social networks.
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they give uh like roughly 50% to the creators and take 50% for themselves.
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Now, that's that's actually a low take rate on the internet.
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In any other area of the economy, as I'm sure you'd know, uh 50% for an intermediary is a is generally a very high rate.
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Um Spotify is 30%, um they also, but then of course musicians, there are, you know, many other layers of fees on top, including the music labels.
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Spotify's own statistics. It's on their website.
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They I guess they're glad about this.
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the or they think it's a good stat is that it's something like um uh some something like uh I think I don't remember the exact number it's like 8,000 of the 8 million artists make more than $50,000 a year so a very very small percentage make something like the average American living and so the question is is that because people
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aren't paying for music that's not people are paying for music people are you know advertisers are spending a ton of money on YouTube I you know Meta and Google and these companies are making a ton of money the the problem is um uh primar in my mind primarily economic that we've now sort of these and I go
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through this by the way in detail in the first part of my book I kind of go through the history of the internet and how this happened but we basically this in my mind and why I got into the internet was it was meant to be it was a very exciting vision I mean of course it came out of academia and government and things but this vision that you'd have
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an internet that's sort of owned and operated by the people that use it where sort of if you visualize a network the money is flowing to the edges of the network um there were all these great ideas like there's a famous blog post by Kevin Kelly called a thousand true fans. And the idea was because you're removing
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And the idea was because you're removing intermediaries, you know, musicians and creative people can now make a living with only a,000 a,000 customers.
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If you do the math, if someone's paying $10 a month and you have a thousand of them, that's 10 grand a month. That's 120 grand a year.
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That's a pretty good living for, you know, somebody doing something they love.
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That was always the vision.
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That's what I got excited.
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vision. That's what I got excited. I got started in the internet in the 90s, you know, and and the internet was like that in the '90s and it was like that in much of the 2000s and then and I go through this and I think because of the incentives of the way these these services were set up because of venture capital because of a bunch of things, you essentially had a bunch of
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incentives to consolidate and and network effects of course that these services get more valuable the more people that are on it which has a winner take all effect and we ended up in a place you know you look around about 10 years ago and we got to a place where there's roughly 5 to 10 services that are dominating the internet, taking all the money, taking all the economics, take and and also have control. That's a
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That's a whole separate topic.
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This is, you know, going to the topics of like deplatforming and rules and if you go on YouTube, there's all these debates around demonetization.
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So, um, in the book, I go through this.
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It's kind of the history of the internet, how this happened, and then what are the effects?
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There's economic effects, there's governance or control effects.
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Um and you know and I think more broadly this what it does is for example as you mentioned YouTube and Spotify it creates real challenges for creative people.
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Now throw in artificial intelligence you know which I think is obviously an amazing uh technology and incredibly powerful and I you know generally very excited about what it will do but um I think left unchecked will likely further um you know on its current trajectory will likely lead to even further consolidation.
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and it rewards companies with large amounts of data and capital and things like this.
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Um, and so the reason that I'm involved with, you know, blockchains and crypto is I see blockchains as a potential counterbalancing force to those consolidation trends.
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But there is a reason why the older internet dwindled, right?
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For me as a listener, Google, Alphabet, they've upgraded YouTube in some very significant ways.
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The search function is amazing.
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The algorithm to me is useful.
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Uh, it used to be you had to, you know, download a YouTube video and then you'd watch it much later.
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And now it's all seamless and great.
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Why aren't I just better off in this new world and I left the decentralized internet behind and my music listening today is much better than it was 20 years ago? Yeah.
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So my so so kind of my argument just structurally is kind of a thesis antithesis synthesis.
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So the the first and that's read right own the first year of the internet were what you're referring to are protocol networks.
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So that was the worldwide web and email.
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These were decentralized networks with no company behind them, not owned by anyone.
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They're really just kind of standards, sort of like a language as a standard.
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Um, and and actually the case study I use in the book is RSS and sort of the fall of RSS.
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Like why did RS I mean RSS is still around but in a very niche way.
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But at one point it was, let's call it 2008. I was there.
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I was blogging about this at the time.
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It it was a legitimate kind of contender.
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Like you could have imagined a world where you were getting your YouTube and other kind you know and Twitter and all these other services through a decentralized protocol not RSS as you imagine it like just like a you know bad visual interface but as the underlying structure and then you build graphics and streaming and all these other things in it.
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So why didn't that happen?
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And I think to your point it didn't happen because it wasn't good enough.
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It wasn't it didn't offer the same user experience. Right.
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experience. Right. And so my so so so that's so so so um and so you're absolutely right about that like they these services won because they were they were better because they um and look one of the big reasons they were better was and I have a again a case study of this in the book is subsidization so YouTube for a very long
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time and and to this day um in some areas is subsidizing video hosting costs which is very expensive I mean so I look I've seen this from the other side you know I work in venture capital for for I've now worked in it for I don't I've been investing for almost 20 years and and these companies like YouTube and Twitter, they raise a lot of money. What
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What do they spend that money on?
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A lot of it is for subsidizing the hosting costs because the basic idea, right, is these are winner take all markets.
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They have network effects and so what you do is you subsidize along the way.
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Um, and so like let's imagine 200, you know, YouTube came out 2005, you're sitting there in 2007, you're a video blogger and you have two choices.
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You can set up RSS and pay hosting costs or you can go to YouTube and do it for free, right?
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And that was one of the big um value propositions of YouTube early on.
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And if you used it back then, I did.
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Um and and that subsidization is something that those protocol networks, they're just there there's no company behind it. They can't offer subs.
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RSS couldn't offer subsidies.
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It's like a there's no now so but isn't there some priori reason to expect the centralized service to spend more innovating and innovate more rapidly than the decentralized service?
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Precisely because there is some monopoly profit there.
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Well, I I think there's a couple of things I think.
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So, um if I could get to maybe just briefly to blockchains.
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I think what I think of blockchains are as uh a new a new architecture for building internet services where there is no intermediary.
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Decentralized is another way for saying no intermediary.
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um where you have very low take rates and you have sort of what I the way I think of blockchains is the benefits of protocol networks of the old networks like you know the societal benefits in that the money flows to the edges the control is by the community but it it is able to blockchains are able to do some of the things you're describing.
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So, a blockchain can offer incentives.
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Um, a blockchain can have a treasury, right?
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This is this is the architecture of a blockchain.
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They have thing called smart contracts.
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And a smart contract, this is something that's sort of hard for people to get their heads around, but it's not a a company or a person.
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It's literally a co piece of code that owns tokens and money and can use that money to do things like the YouTube subsidization.
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Um, uh, so my my kind of core argument is that protocol networks are better for society.
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are better for society. corporate networks as I call them like YouTube are have a lot of advantages as you're describing like competitive advantages um and blockchain networks done right can ideally be the best of both worlds they can have the societal benefits of protocol networks but the competitive advantages of of these corporate
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networks now to your point anything that's decentralized uh there are some coordination costs like and and I think like a good case study there would be Linux versus Windows right um so you know Linux is now I don't know what the percentages antages are but I think it's well above 90% of the operating systems are Linux if you rewind to the '9s when it was
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starting out it was you know it was a kind of a mess it was like on a list serve and a bunch of discord you know uncoordinated people now you did have a very important kind of leader bully pulpit leader in in Lionus um but it was sort of a uncoordinated mess and you're right there are is overhead and coordination costs you don't have um you don't have you know a
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hierarchical management structure that can be very efficient the the flip side and Why I think Linux one um is that open source benefits from what what's known as composability and that's the idea that anyone in the world can write a piece of software once put it on GitHub as a public resource and then anyone else can use that as a Lego brick
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to build another thing right and so you get this I I I say in the book that composability is the is to software as compounding interest is to finance you know it's the it's this thing where like you basically just keep you know one person builds something and you never have to build it again and you reuse it and you built the Lego bricks up and I
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and I think that's one of the main reasons that open source has you know taken 90% plus market share AWS every embedded device you have um every you know data center uh Android devices and so forth um so so you're right there's diff there's a different set of trade-offs like it's tougher court to coordinate building a decentralized protocol or a blockchain protocol on the
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flip side you have other benefits you have lower take rates you can offer incentives through tokens um you can uh benefit from composability sort of the re everything is open source and reusable but there is you know legal free entry in the sector and people can go to Andre and Harwitz they can go to you personally and ask for VC money to
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do something like I recall a bunch of people told me I should try mastadon which was decentralized I did I didn't like it most people didn't like it that's now a bunch of years ago no one has come to me in at least five years and said oh Tyler you need to try this new decentralized service like what why isn't that happening? What what what's the benefit
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What what what's the benefit the service might be offering me that's like concrete?
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Yeah, I have a section on mastadon.
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I mean I think there's architectural flaws in the whole thing and it's you know so for example if you've used it there's this whole concept of servers and you have this very challenging problem of coordinating across servers and it's very fragmented.
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So that might be a separate topic.
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Look, I think I think a broader thing is that let's talk about is um in in you know the when I think about where blockchains are getting adopted.
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If you look at where they're successful right now um it's mostly in financial applications.
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So stable coins for example um I think that the numbers are kind of shockingly high.
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If you Google Visa stable coin dashboard, Visa is I think a pretty neutral party.
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They have a dashboard that tracks it. It's $3.
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5 trillion dollars in stable coin transactions last month, right?
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And that's been steadily going up. Um, it's been going up.
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You know, these are people sending.
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So, stable coin, just for your audience, is a something like it could be a dollar or a euro, but it's backed by an asset in a bank.
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So, there's Tether, USDC.
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Um there's, you know, there's a there's a bill that just made it through passed the Senate Finance Committee and is going to be voted on the House hopefully in the next six weeks and and hopefully passed that will that will it's congressional legislation to put you know full rules around stable coins and I think will you know all of this growth has been happening before there was that kind of clarity and I think that could really accelerate it.
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accelerate it. So, but you're the reason I'm getting saying this is that look I mean so it may just be I think there's really interesting things you can do with blockchains and social networks but the reality is in 2025 it could just be that we have social networks the network effects are strong and the areas to
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focus on when you have new architectures like blockchains may be other areas um this is in you know in software there's a phrase green field brownfield right green field is do you go after you have you have some breakthrough AI or crypto or whatever do you go after existing use cases and make them better or do you go after new use cases? And so what you're
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And so what you're describing is more brownfield.
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Like it look, it may just be that some of the wars are fought and they're over.
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Um, you know, there's three billion people using uh Facebook apps and like at some point the network effects are so strong that even if you come up with something that's much better, it may just be a challenge.
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I'm sure some of your challenge on something like Macedon is just that your friends aren't there, you know, network effects.
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So, so, so to to your I guess to your question, I mean, I'm very excited obviously about blockchains and this new architecture and I think, you know, we make investments in a lot of different areas because we like to, you know, experiment and try and sort of try a bunch of things, but I think right now the most likely areas where we're going to see increased adoption are in these areas where things are kind of more broken.
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And I would say that's in sort of payments, uh, financial services.
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And then I think there's a lot of interesting stuff happening also at the intersection of crypto, blockchains, and AI.
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Well, with stable coins, once the Trump people are no longer in office, that's it's four years from now, but what do you think the regulatory counter reaction will be like?
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The stable coin issuers, they are subject to runs, right?
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There's nominally 100% reserves, but there's no guarantee.
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Well, there are 100% reserves for for in the legislation and in the USDC has 100% reserves.
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Te te tether is debated because they're not audited in the US and people don't know.
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They say they do, but but the bill the bill would actually require 100% reserves.
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But why isn't the equilibrium that I have my stable coins overseas where they're not regulated and de facto the sector is not 100% reserves and there's a lot of runs.
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Why isn't that what ends up happening?
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Well, what we're hoping to do is that I mean and then in the bill there'll be all sorts of things.
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So, for example, if you go to Coinbase, there'll be, you know, there'll be restrictions on offering um unregistered stable coins that But that's a US-based firm, right?
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The lowest foreign firms, Estonia, Argentina, wherever that will offer me a better deal precisely because they're not 100% backed.
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It'll be a higher return.
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I won't care about the social risk I generate by putting my funds into a more runprone firm.
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uh why don't we have to worry about that?
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Well, so you know the what my hope is and what often happens, right, is so first of all, I'm not I mean I'm not an expert on every aspect of the proposed stable coin bill, but there are um reciprocation kind of requirements.
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So if other countries want to access them and participate in our financial services and KYC and AML, they they're expected to have similar um rules that historically our financial services uh regulations tend to propagate um to a lot of other countries.
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So my like my hope would be that the US does something here and it and a lot of other countries follow that lead and that becomes the norm and that people, you know, want and and there'll be rules like you can't call something a stable coin.
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You can't get it on a registered exchange if it's not.
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Um and so that would be my hope.
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But look, I'm sure there will be there will I'm sure there will in crypto there's no question there are scams and there are bad things and I'm sure there will be in the future.
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Um I think that the best solution to it is to have smart regulation that um that that incentivizes or requires uh things to be built in the proper way in a way that avoids things like bank runs.
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Now that by the way the bank run thing like just to be clear like there were a bunch of stable coins in the past like Teral Luna which had a bank run and collapsed um that was not asset backed by dollars that was a sort of circular thing that was backed by its own token um and had bank and had a bankrun thing.
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So that has happened as you say.
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Um the hope would be that the you know the sort of these existing ones and the new ones and the regulations around them would require full asset full full onetoone um asset back and then therefore make bank runs impossible.
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But circa 2025 we've seen a lot of international cooperation break down.
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So the WTO basically doesn't work.
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The UN I would say has not worked in some while.
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intellectual property law that still works.
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Uh agreements on, you know, trying to end various wars, those are not working.
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So, it seems unlikely to me that the US could convince the world in essence to copy our stable coin regulation.
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Even if we tried to use Swift, you know, we've pushed the Swift incentive on countries very hard. It's shown its limits.
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Uh again, why why don't we just end up with these significant corners where the most profitable stable coins are outside of what the US wants to do with them?
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Well, I think it's partly also what do you want to do with the stable coin?
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Like who's using the stable coin?
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So like I mean so my assumption so I'll just give you an example like the Stripe founders, you know, I think of Stripe as a very smart financial services firm and who by the way were not particular like they had done crypto like 10 years ago and then really soued on it.
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I think you know Patrick and John pretty well.
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know Patrick and John pretty well. um they had actually really soured on it and when I saw them would say oh you know crypto they are very you know like go watch them I just watched them on the all-in podcast a few weeks ago they acquired this company called bridge the stablecoin company and they're and they
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actually in their annual letter they just put out they called they called uh stable coins the um room temperature superconductor right which of course is like a holy grail kind of thing um they're using it for as they like I don't know I don't have you know their financial statements in the thing but as they describe it they're using it for things like treasury management. So I I
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So I I believe they the example they gave was SpaceX moving money from um you know one one jurisdiction to another.
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Um a very a very popular use case is international invoicing.
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Um and so so um you know you're a importer and you have to send out 50 invoices to various countries you can now do it in a fully digital way with very low fees and very quickly.
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Um the Strike Founders one of the interesting things they said is it's not just the lower fees.
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So just to give you a sense on the fees, you know, you now, this is as of a year and a half ago basically because the infrastructure in crypto has gotten better.
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You now basically on things like base, which is L2 and Salana, um have hit the well, we we've thought of as long as the target, which is 1 second, one penny to to transfer things, right?
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That that's where we kind of are now technically.
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Uh if you go your viewers, if they don't if they want to check me, they can go download the Coinbase wallet and try it and you can see it.
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Um the uh and so you know one of the big benefits that Strike Founders talked about is that the fact that you can now because it's fully digital end to end sort of like email you can fully automate the whole thing.
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So like a big problem for example with invoicing is invoice fraud.
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People send you an invoice and it's like a fake you know place to wire it to.
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Now you just it's fully digital.
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Stripe has effectively what's like a reputation network.
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You know one computer sends a request to the other. The other one checks it.
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It checks it against Stripe's database.
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Is this a whit listed address and does the whole thing end to end low fees internationally?
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So to your question like sure will there be people at the at the fringes who do who want to maximize yield?
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Sure there's always that kind of behavior probably it's the internet like the internet has edges.
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The question is can we marginalize it and can we and will these legitimate companies like Stripe and look what I'm hoping stablecoin bill passes you know I think Visa will enter Mastercard will enter PayPal will enter Fidelity's already said they're going to enter Bank of America said they're going to enter I think you're going to have every bank
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probably issuing I hope a stable coin the way you have them issuing credit cards you know these all have users and customers the banks will have a button that says send a stable coin and so what I'm hoping is that there's enough legitimate actors around this who create a network effect that to your point that yes there will be that stuff, but it will be marginalized. Right? In that Right?
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In that world, should we infer that the Federal Reserve loses control of the money supply?
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Create a stable coin, it's backed by a T bill in a funny way, it's like a private open market operation, right?
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And I I'm fine with that.
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I'm not sure the Fed controls the money supply today.
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Uh but does that become a macro issue?
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I I feel like I'm I'm talking to a famous economist.
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I'm on your I'm on your territory now.
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It's dangerous because I'll I'm not an economist, but I haven't figured this out myself either to be clear.
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I'm I'm genuinely asking various people.
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I asked Austin Goulby the same question because I don't know. Yeah.
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I mean, it's you look I mean like I think I believe that st the last stat I saw stable coins are 4% of they hold 4% of treasuries, right?
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So, if this grows a lot, it will be, you know, it will be meaning it already is kind of meaningful, but it will be meaningful.
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Um, look, I I like I I guess one is I think of it more in terms of payments and all the things, you know, payments and then all the adjacent things you can do around payments versus a bank account, right?
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And sort of replacing, you know, folks like banks and the Federal Reserve that control the money supply.
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supply. Um, so you know, that's kind of at least how I where I think kind of the focus should be and not um the the um like I believe in the current draft of the bill it's you can't offer yield to the consumers and I think that's something the banks are fighting for as
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so this is still a political thing going on but uh they don't want that because they think if you can offer you know essentially a treasury bill like a yield and the consumer gets the yield that that will become more attractive than bank accounts. Um, and so I think this
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Um, and so I think this will also, you know, be a question is sort of is this optimized more around payments or more around kind of savings use cases.
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Um, um, sorry, what was and I I want to make sure like I I don't I'll have to defer to I would also say just on a I would also argue the other kind of national security interest here and you've had others write about this in various editorials is it's it's another way to popularize a dollar, right?
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It's a way, you know, it's a it's already we've seen the demand for it and if we legitimate it, it presumably will make hopefully the dollar more popular and and increase its uh status or maintain its status as a reserve currency.
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Fractional banking stuff, I probably have to defer to you on that as I can speculate a little bit, but it's an from a amateur perspective.
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When the AI trade with each other, do you think they'll prefer Bitcoin or stable coins? It's a good question.
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We actually just made an investment in a uh project that's doing uh uh it's a it's a agent uh sort of stable coin infrastructure for AI agents.
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We haven't we haven't like officially announced it yet, but I I guess I can talk about a little bit.
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But the um the idea is sort of you know a lot of things with AI, right?
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Is is there's the technical side, but there's also the legal side like how do you deal with KY AML and liability and all those kind you know there's a lot of questions that come up if you have an AI going out and doing stuff and spending money.
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Um and so that's actually turns out to be a really interesting area of innovation and the person we just invested in is sort of a you know a a veteran of that world of sort of the regulatory money world. Yeah.
24:00
Like to your point I mean if if you're if you're transa you know one of the knocks on Bitcoin as a payment system right is the volatility.
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You don't want to you know have something that that changes value a lot when you're paying for something.
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But if it's a machine a machine presumably they can do that in milliseconds or microsconds and volatility becomes um a mood issue.
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Um there's a there's a guy David Marcus who was the he ran the Libra project at Facebook and spun out and um we funded his startup. It's called LightSpark.
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It's doing exactly what you're describing which is sort of a a payment system built on top of Bitcoin.
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And his argument is Bitcoin's preferable because it's because it's not the dollar that a lot of countries will want some it's sort of the only crypto asset that is credibly globally neutral um that that no country sort of sees as the you know sort of a a US thing or some other country thing and therefore should be kind of the the currency of the internet right and I think that's an interesting argument.
24:55
I wonder sometimes if the AIs won't create their own crypto tokens and say, "Well, basically the senior age from Bitcoin has gone to early humans."
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You know, we can design one better because they're already smart, but they're going to be really smart and we'll have to learn how to trade their stuff.
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stuff. it it people have done experiments like that but but yeah like once they have sort of emergent capabilities I guess it all depends on on uh you know what we allow them to do and what systems we plug them into um but uh but if there's anything where
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there's a clear cookbook right and you can do it digitally online no one built crypto for the AIS but if you had wanted to build the money for the AIS I'm not sure you could have done much better than crypto I think that's right um how will AI I change how the web is organized. Will it just be totally
25:45
Will it just be totally different in 5 years? That's a great question.
25:49
I you know um a couple of things I'll say on that.
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Uh and and all this obviously in the context of you know like our firm does a lot of AI investment.
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I'm very I think it's generally a great thing.
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Um the technology is amazing and impressive and every day you see new new amazing things and and I I you know there's these debates around whether it's going to slow down.
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And it I my guess is it's not going to slow down.
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Just there's so many smart people and so much money and so many different ways in which it can improve.
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You know, it was pre-training and now it looks like it's reasoning and um and so, you know, it's like and they'll probably come up with some other method in a year that that does that.
26:25
And you know, we haven't even begun to scratch the surface around like, you know, uh humanoid robots and and haven't gone deep on video and other other forms of media modalities.
26:33
Um I think one one thing I think a lot about though is the sort of economics of the internet.
26:38
Um uh and specifically um I have a chapter in the book on this.
26:44
I I think of the internet as having kind of an implicit covenant right now between so you have these five to 10 companies Facebook, Google um you know Amazon etc who control most it's like 90% plus of the traffic and the money.
26:56
Um and and just to take Google as an example there's sort of then there's the rest of the internet the sort of long tale of the internet.
27:02
there's, you know, my blog, your blog, a cooking site, a travel site, whatever it might be.
27:06
Um, for 25 years or so, there's been this implicit covenant between the kind of distribution centers like Google and the kind of content providers like us, right?
27:17
And that and that covenant is, hey, you let us sort of fair use, you let us take a snippet of your content, uh, you know, index it, put it in our search results, and, you know, and we'll sort of or let us let people share it on my social network or whatever it might be.
27:30
But the, you know, and the trade is we'll put a link there and you'll get some traffic back and then you can have ads or subscriptions or make it free or whatever you choose to do, right?
27:38
So that's been kind of the equilibrium state that evolved.
27:41
You know, it didn't it wasn't like if people sat down and decided that, but it evolved into that and it's worked reasonably well.
27:46
I think, you know, it's worked more to the favor of the distribution side to the Googles of the world.
27:51
And we see that in like, you know, Rupert Murdoch, Fox sued Google over it, a bunch of I think Facebook just removed News in Canada because they're upset about it.
27:58
So, it's not it's not that happy, but it sort of worked. Okay.
28:01
Um, what happens in a world where you just get the answer and there's no need for a link, right?
28:05
Which is kind of the world we're in now.
28:08
I don't know about you, but I'm using I'm probably using, you know, claw and chat GPT and all these things more than I'm using Google.
28:13
And I read fewer books also.
28:16
It's not just media sites.
28:16
Why read a book when you can ask for a 10-page printed report on the history of Edward III? Yeah. Exactly.
28:21
And so, and and and so book Yeah.
28:24
books are a whole another thing, but but just the the rest of the internet.
28:28
Like if I'm not going to click, like why am I going to click through? I mean, look at St. Stack Overflow.
28:32
I actually used to be on the the board of Stack Overflow.
28:33
They got acquired, but um and I and I love the service.
28:37
And so Stack Overflow is a is a programmer Q&A site, right?
28:39
programmer Q&A site, right? And it it it the traffic is down I think I don't know 80% now um because of you know because of these new because what basically happened is the AIS went out trained on chat over stack overflow on GitHub and then created these amazing services like copilot and cursor right which are by
28:57
the way amazing I actually I use these on the weekends and stuff I I I use cursor it's unbelievable product it you can you know type a English sentence and get code out of it but it it obiates the need to go to these websites right and the traffic is down and My concern is Stack Overflow is the canary in the coal mine, right? This is the first thing to
29:13
This is the first thing to go of course, but what if you know what are we in five years?
29:17
Are we ending up with just sort of the rest of the internet atrophy atrophying and we have five to 10 services and you know look and this is all it will all like I I love the AI stuff. It's better.
29:29
I use it, but I worry that we're gonna sort of look around in five years and realize we just recreated, you know, a, you know, sort of a structure that looks like, I don't know, broadcast TV in the 1970s.
29:42
You have four channels, right?
29:44
Um, and and and sort of the beauty of the web, the serendipity, the diversity, uh, you know, the the ability for somebody to just spin up a blog and, you know, this is how I a lot of my career got started.
29:56
got started. But I think you did you've been blogging for what 20 years or something every day like is that you know is that kind of the ability to do that going to be lost um because there's now no way to sort of get discovered anymore because links aren't really needed right so I mean on the one hand
30:11
look it's great for people I'm not you know I'm by no means anti- AI or technology but I do think we need to think about and I'm a little bit surprised more people aren't thinking about you know what kind of internet do we want and are we creating the right incentive systems to maintain that and
30:25
like what and by the way more broadly like look at these this just today um the new chat GPT was it 40 image thing came out which looks amazing it's gorgeous yes um and there's going to be I'm sure more great stuff like that like what are we you know I mean look I it's again it's great but like what's our
30:42
plan for graphic designers what's maybe it'll be emergent and new jobs will pop up and um what's our plan you know in two years we're going to have the ability to make a Hollywood movie one person you know what's our what's our plan for all of these other you know uh jobs, parts of the internet, parts of the you mentioned books. Like look, I
30:58
Like look, I agree with you too.
31:00
It's it's it's easier to get that thing on Henry the third.
31:03
On the other hand, do you want to, you know, do we want a shrinking book industry?
31:06
I think it's already kind of shrinking too much in my opinion, book the book industry.
31:09
And do we want that to go further? I don't know.
31:11
Like, let's say a media company calls you in somewhere like Atlantic, The Economist, New Yorker.
31:17
I'm sure you know these products, of course, and they say, "Well, this is happening.
31:20
We'd like some commercial advice from someone who knows the sector."
31:24
I mean, what what would you tell them to do? Yeah.
31:29
I mean, it's hard because it's I think it's a systems problem.
31:30
It's a tech it's a tech problem and a systems problem.
31:33
I'm not sure that a single node in the system like the Atlantic um has a lot to do.
31:38
I think that um yeah, so I mean it's I mean so it's really a structural I yeah it's it's a I mean look I think there's a lot but does personalitydriven content survive?
31:46
Like is that the innovation rather than so-called facts?
31:51
Well, okay, look, one very common pattern with technology is death of the middle barbelling. Um, right?
31:58
And so, just to give you give you maybe you probably know this, but to give your listeners context, um, what that means is, you know, you have, uh, so the internet pops up and before the internet you had a lot of midsize retailers like J C Penney and Sears and other sort of, you know, those kinds of things.
32:12
things. internet pops up and what happens is um you get this barbelling effect where you either want to be really really big like Amazon and Walmart and take advantage of scale or you want to be uh boutique uh hightouch
32:27
high brand value Gucci you know Hermes and so forth and in in fact the two right the two sort of biggest winners of this era from a stock perspective were Amazon and LVMH which is a private equity style rollup of those high-end brands Right. And what And what and who lost?
32:43
It was the people in the middle, right?
32:45
It was Kmart, Sears, all those sort of companies that went bankrupt. Um why does that happen?
32:51
Because technology tends to unbundle.
32:52
Like because basically they were Kmart and Sears were kind of this artificial bundle in a sense of distribution, merchandising, you know, you had you you you could bring the stuff to them but not all the way to them the way Amazon does.
33:04
And you had a little bit of service and you had sort of all this stuff in the middle, right?
33:06
And once you had this new tech, you could kind of unbundle this and you can go all scale or all hight touch, right?
33:11
I think the same thing has happened in media.
33:13
Um, we've had a barbelling effect and the winners have been either like 30 second dopamine hits of Tik Tok and Instagram reels or three-hour, you know, podcasts, right?
33:24
Um or or high-end, you know, severance and and high-end um long form content, right?
33:30
And what what's suffered generally has been the 30-inut sitcom the middle, right?
33:35
the 30 minute, you know, game show the third, right?
33:37
So, it's either and and that and that matches human needs, right?
33:40
Like you're in line for to buy something and you want a couple dopamine hits and you watch TikTok and then you're, you know, want to lean back and get something and you want a three-hour I think that surprised a lot of people how popular three-hour podcasts are like Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman, right?
33:52
That's because that sort of that's the other kind of need and this turned out these 30-minute things were just there kind of artificially because of the constraints of the medium of TV and things.
33:59
So I think to your question like I haven't I don't have like deep thoughts on this but I think that that my default answer for media would be would be you're going to have a barbelling effect.
34:08
to have a barbelling effect. you're going to have highly automated um scaled out AIdriven content, you know, and so somebody comes up with a you know new Star Wars thing and you have a whole you know Reddit community and they're all like building these a AI AI created you
34:23
know serial movies and things right um and then I my expectation is you'll have um uh on the flip side you'll have uh rising demand for for very kind of bespoke human things um that could be you know live like we've seen this like live Concerts have become more popular in an age of of machine created music. Um uh you know fine art like the
34:42
Um uh you know fine art like the sphereed books you know like I don't know like right I mean you know this people say this all the time that chess is now more popular than ever even though AI is you know better than humans in chess like there is in the end we're monkeys who like other monkeys and like you know like there is this sort of fundamental human nature that doesn't change.
35:02
um machines can do very powerful things and can be useful.
35:05
things and can be useful. But I think you know that that would be my that would be my naive default assumption is that is that I think look I think the other really interesting thing with media that I think about so when film came along like the first cameras and photography you know there was this um these famous essays like um what was it
35:23
uh art in the age of mechanical reproduction Benjamin and like there's all this kind of discussion of like what is the future of art now that we can take a picture like where's the what's the role of the artist the representational artist and of you know that the rise of photography coincided with art becoming abstract and um you know all those sort of modern art movements. Um and so in some sense the
35:44
movements. Um and so in some sense the camera did replace did did did replace the representational art but another thing happened right which is a new medium was formed which is a you take a a photo and you take a series of photos and you make a film right um and so you had two things happened when the camera
36:00
when the camera developed right you had uh the old medium uh get sort of replaced and and of course high art then sort of pivoted into into abstract art um but then you had a brand new medium that simply couldn't exist before right and that was film and a whole industry created around it. So like one thing I like to think about
36:16
So like one thing I like to think about is when I think about media is you know so maybe AI will be like the camera and it will replace it.
36:24
It'll replace illustration.
36:25
The role of the illustrator will go away and AI will replace it.
36:28
But on the flip side maybe it will enable a a new sort of AI native form of media that couldn't have existed before.
36:35
What will AI competition for A16Z look like?
36:39
You have an AI competitor. What are they like? Yeah. Well, it's funny. It's it's a good point.
36:45
I mean, look, I think what is venture capital, right?
36:47
Venture I mean, that's goes to a question like there's there's there's different sort of venture capital today is a bundle of services.
36:53
It's a um there's obviously the sort of choosing well, we raise money and then we go sort of there's some picking aspect of like choosing what to invest in.
37:01
And I think in that picking aspect, I think AI could do a very very good job and probably beat humans in a lot of ways in the near future.
37:09
Um there's another aspect and this is I think one of the smart things about about what you know my the founders of the firm Ben Ben and Mark did um is there's a very human aspect to to what we do right there's a hightouch human aspect to a lot of what we do is and a lot of how we think we succeed is we we create a culture and a group of people where entrepreneurs decide they want to work with us.
37:31
Um, again, we provide all these sort, you know, we spend a lot of our fees that we make instead of on our own salaries on a set of people that help them, right?
37:38
And so, but can't AIS do that?
37:39
They're great therapists, right?
37:41
Yeah, they can, but at some point, you always need like I you're always going to need some somebody to to design and or at least for some foreseeable future, you're presumably going to need someone to help you build and design the robots.
37:51
And think of us as playing the role of advisers to the people that are that are building the robots.
37:56
And hopefully, there will be some rule for that, at least at least for some period of time.
38:01
If an AI applied for funding, let's say it was legal in terms of the bank transfers.
38:05
I mean, would you consider the proposal?
38:10
I think in I think right now they're limited and they can't they just can't do stuff like they can't open a bank account. They can't send money.
38:14
But yeah, I think it's I think it's super interesting.
38:17
Well, they'll do it with crypto, right?
38:18
And maybe this is in two years from now.
38:20
You'll get a proposal from an AI and you'll get the AI quote unquote on the phone, the Zoom call.
38:25
I don't even know how you would do it.
38:28
Maybe you just refer it to your AI.
38:31
Yeah, we've been I mean we've been actually talking about it semi-seriously.
38:33
Like I mean we haven't done anything yet.
38:35
I also had this like Mark Andrea and I were talking about you know should you you know should there be like a nonprofit that that uh you know that's built on a blockchain that uh you know sort of like what um were you involved with the fast grants thing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
38:50
So like I I thought that was really interesting and inspired by that.
38:53
Imagine fast grants, but it's a blockchain version that uses AI to give out the grants as an example.
38:57
Like that's actually something that we were just I mean it is like a brainstorm.
38:59
I'm not like a serious idea, but but that type of thing, right?
39:03
Like um you could call it faster grants, right? Faster. Yeah.
39:07
No, I thought what you did was really inspiring and like you know, I had this I had this whole I actually wrote out a business plan.
39:11
I haven't done it, but um and it was like you you have a a DAO.
39:16
So this is a like a entity on a blockchain.
39:18
sort of an autonomous entity on a blockchain and it's sort of like think of it like what an endowment does.
39:23
So if you go to like Yale or Ford Foundation endowments like I first time I learned this is when I raised venture capital I walk in there I'm like Ford foundation aren't they this this organization that gives away money.
39:31
Well they have this other side right which invest money.
39:34
So so endowments are sort of two things right there's invest the money and give away the money.
39:37
Um and they're very different and like the invest the money they wear suits and give away the money they don't and it's just like two different organizations.
39:45
And so the idea was could we create a blockchain autonomous AI entity that um is like an endowment.
39:49
And so half of it is like investing and you're investing in tokens and this and that and the other half is giving the money away all fast grants, right?
39:56
Um so that's actually an idea.
39:57
I think it's pretty cool and if someone did it, I'd be excited to help out.
40:00
I haven't gotten around to it, but I do think that might be like a future thing.
40:04
And so and the idea right what's cool about an endowment is if it invests well um it can it kind of just snowball and just get have more and more money and then you use the kind of some portion of the returns every year to give that out and hopefully it just becomes this kind of self-sustaining thing the way that the like university endowments have.
40:19
If I ask you how will AI change politics what's the most confident prediction you have?
40:26
Well this that's a good question.
40:29
I um well you know generally on the I'd love to ask your question on this.
40:33
love to ask your question on this. I like a I'd say well a couple things like one I think there's going to be a lot of political drama around AI in the next couple of years first of all and this is this is not AI changing politics it's politics potentially changing AI maybe it's a little bit of a different question like I think there's going to be um issues around copyright safety I
40:54
think these I I believe these are not going to be settled in the court they will be settled in Congress like they are too important um I just sort of went through this with crypto like we just had four years of kind of regulatory struggles in the courts and now it's going to probably be decided in Congress and I think ultimately the same thing will happen in AI because it's just too important. So I just think that and
41:08
So I just think that and that's that's one topic.
41:10
I guess I would say another thing is I would say is I'm I wonder thing I think about is how many problems in the world are intelligence problems versus political or coordination or regulatory problems right so like you know building housing is a hot topic right now um is does more intelligence help us build better housing or probably the opposite because the smarter people lobby harder to stop it.
41:35
it. So I I would argue right housing is more of a regulatory or you could argue a collective action problem probably collect you say collective action something I think it's a collective action problem right um and you know does AI help with that maybe I you know I don't know um I I like I think AI can do a lot of really really interesting
41:55
things I do think a lot of the most challenging things we have in the world right now and a lot of the kind of gating factors to productivity growth economic growth are actually uh and just human wellbeing I believe are kind of um collective action problems um coordination problems um getting people to agree on something. Um you know I could look at the internet
42:14
Um you know I could look at the internet how did the internet change politics?
42:19
The internet changed politics by changing the way information flows.
42:20
Um right and I think we're only beginning to see the effects of that.
42:25
to see the effects of that. Um it you know I think I think I think one way to think about the internet is social you know like there's always technologies always has sort of first order and second order effects right so like the first order effect of the automobile was you can get from point A to point B
42:40
faster the second order effect was suburbs trucking highway system you know sort of all the next 50 years right the first order was like get go somewhere faster that's 1900 to 1930 or something and then I don't know when it was and then like the next era was like all of the sort of second order things, right? So, I think about with the internet, the
42:58
So, I think about with the internet, the first order thing with social media.
42:59
I can tell people I had a burrito for lunch or something like this.
43:02
The second order is you suddenly have a whole different political dynamic, right?
43:06
You can have an insurgent political movement like Trump or Bernie Sanders or something that comes, you know, that that sort of bucks the system and counters the establishment.
43:13
You can have a whole narrative universe that counters, you know, you have COVID and you have the establishments world and then you have the podcasting version of it.
43:22
And it it you know it restructured how information flows and you people obviously will debate whether that's a good or bad thing but it's clearly had that and I think we're in the very beginning of that of how the you know I my view is like we're probably you know really the social media didn't become a mainstream thing until smartphones probably I mean mainstream is a sense of like three billion people probably until 2012 or something.
43:41
So we're still you know relatively early in that in that development.
43:45
development. And now AI I think a big question like for example maybe you know it's very possible in 5 years that people get all their news and political information from an AI you know who created that AI was it created by um you
43:57
know someone with a political agenda is it open source like I think I think AI open source AI if I you know if I can pick one issue that will make the AI future better my own my own belief is that that we have very strong open
44:12
source AI so that we can have it can be you know people can have a choice um it can be audited it can be open um our kids will be top AI the news will be formed by AI so to your question on polit politics I mean politics is downstream of culture and information
44:30
flows and AI will will reshape that and and who who controls that reshaping to me seems like the key question as you know not many countries have serious AI companies and even those in Europe may or may not last, right? They're not
44:44
They're not obviously mega profitable.
44:46
So, let's say you're the government of Peru and you can turn over your education system to some foreign, maybe American AIS.
44:54
You can turn over how your treasury is managed to the AIS.
44:58
You can turn over your national defense to the AIS.
45:00
And none of these are Peruvian companies most likely.
45:06
In in the final analysis, are we even left with the government of Peru or is it in some sense been pseudo privatized to the companies that are running the structures and indeed to the AI itself?
45:18
Well, that but this goes to open source, right?
45:20
I think it's I think you're the answer but even open source is managed by someone, right?
45:23
Like a version of DeepSeek is embedded in Perplexity. That's worked great.
45:27
Like it's still someone's company.
45:29
Yeah, I mean I guess I do think it's I I think you have a great question.
45:34
I do I do think it's different if they can get the open weights of deepseek and and the Peruvian people and government can you know fine-tune or change those weights and decide on I do think that matters.
45:44
decide on I do think that matters. So just you know I'm not trying to dodge your question but I do think the architecture there really matters right are you getting do you have may maybe they maybe not every country has the ability to do that um but but maybe without open source we only have two countries left in the world US and China
46:01
possible I look I think if you want an argument for open source economic planning seems like an obvious thing that you would that you would involve AI in um and you know right I mean that just seems like a first one of the first things you'd want to do in government eventually is have AI do, you know, set your interest rates and your to the extent your central planned economy. Um,
46:19
Um, decide on your, you know, production schedules and pricing and such.
46:24
Um, and that, you know, if you bought an AI off an economic planning AI module off the shelf, presumably would be pretty opinionated on how to do that.
46:32
And the person who creates those opinions would have immense influence.
46:35
Um, so um, you know, again though, I I think those countries will insist.
46:43
I think that one of the reasons that open source will eventually be a dominant one of the two dominant model.
46:48
It will be it will be competitive with proprietary AI is partly because of the questions like this.
46:53
I think these governments and a lot of companies will demand open source but even then it seems there's room for intermediaries.
46:59
So if you just passed Deep Seek or or or Llama over to a relatively poor government, you know, again, take the case of Peru, they need a McKenzie like entity, which is maybe the AI company itself, to come in, tell them how to use it, how to integrate it with their systems.
47:18
Uh does this mean American soft power has just won?
47:21
Like it's either America or China?
47:24
These are hard questions.
47:26
Well, um, look, I think there's a I think there's it might be a good thing, too.
47:33
You know, if everything in Peru is is run by American AI companies, the quality of life will be much higher.
47:38
I think they may not like it.
47:40
I do, you know, what I think Peter Teal said, uh, crypto is, uh, what do he say?
47:45
Crypto is libertarian and and AI is is, you know, socialist or com.
47:50
I think what he meant was I don't think either of those is right.
47:53
No, but I I think the I think the the twist I would put on it is AI is tends to be centralizing.
47:58
It tends to be consolidating power.
47:59
I do think and and I think you're making that point which is the people that produce these things if they're very powerful things that um that that manage much of the world um being one of the countries and companies that produces them seems to give you immense power.
48:14
Um and I think that's I think that's what makes like the China move into Deep Seek and thing very interesting. Um, right.
48:19
I mean, well, I mean, there's a number of interesting things about that.
48:23
Like, one is the fact that they are so competitive so quickly and with a relatively small team and all the other things.
48:28
I mean, I guess we shouldn't be surprised.
48:29
There's a lot of brilliant people there.
48:31
Um, but um but the second one is a strategy.
48:34
It seems like, you know, sort of taking this uh this kind of count this kind of counter strategy of doing open source and um we'll see if that lasts.
48:43
But um um you know um and look, we haven't seen yet.
48:46
I would expect India is going to have some interesting stuff.
48:50
You know, Russia, I mean, there's a lot of smart people in the world.
48:53
And the fact that Deep Seek was what is it like 150 people?
48:55
I mean, right, it may be, look, it may also be there's another I think there's another thing which we may be trending towards which is AI is incredibly important, but it's also just kind of a commodity.
49:04
Um, the foundation models uh you know, doesn't mean there won't be businesses.
49:10
uh there'll be businesses at the I think that I think actually the emerging cons consensus sort of in the in at least the people I talked to is that the value you know you're going to have cloud providers like um AWS and such and you're going to have you know of course like end user applications
49:28
like you know cursor and whatever some lawyer will have their law firm thing and you know every sort of vertical will have their have their product but it may just be the foundation models end up being like you know pietorch or whatever like you know math libraries or it's essentially it's large scale statistics. It's it requires heavy engineering of
49:45
It's it requires heavy engineering of course to do the training but the sort of tricks and secrets end up propagating and a bunch of people know them and um you know it's sort of it's it sort of becomes kind of very large scale statistical analysis of of data source
50:00
sets right and just a lot of people have it maybe um what do you if that comes about what do you think is then the dimension that determines which companies dominate so one argument could be well Meta and Elon they just have a lot of resour sources uh they can be in this for a long time. Another argument is well open AAI has
50:18
Another argument is well open AAI has the most powerful brand name with chat GPT and so on.
50:22
But what's your commercial intuition on what other factor sets into play?
50:26
Well, one one framing I would say is so if you compare the internet to mobile, right?
50:31
Both were smartphones, right?
50:33
The the rise of the internet in the 90s, the rise of smartphones in late 2010s, early late 2000s, early 2010s, both were massively important tech movements.
50:42
important tech movements. U a big difference was with the internet I would say you know something like 90% of the net new value sort of market cap value went to uh startups went to new organizations that didn't exist before
50:57
the internet Amazon Google and such right with mobile n on the flip side 90% I something like 90% I haven't done exact study went to incumbents right the the biggest sort of pure mobile uh startup was it's probably Uber I think it's like 100 whatever it is $150 billion. There was Snapchat. You know, There was Snapchat.
51:14
You know, Instagram got bought for a billion.
51:16
But the vast majority of market cap kind of value actually went to incumbents.
51:21
If you look over that what it did for, you know, Apple, Google, Facebook, and all the other Amazon, they all did fine in that era.
51:28
They created mobile apps.
51:28
They leaned into it and their user base went from whatever desktop was at the time, you know, home desktop, let's call it 400 million to 4 billion to 10x.
51:35
And if you look at the stock, by the way, the best, it's very hard, almost no venture firms over the 2010s beat uh the strategy of buying Apple stock or the Boston Celtics.
51:49
So like that turned out to be the winner of the mobile era or the incumbents.
51:53
And so I think one one way to frame your question is will AI be like mobile or like the internet?
51:59
Will it be an a techn you know and so and like the concern would be the concern quote unquote I work in venture capital. I'm biased, right?
52:06
capital. I'm biased, right? The concern that we invest in small companies um the concern would be it's more like mobile and that it just ends up reinforcing the strengths of the big companies Google and Microsoft and Facebook they have more data they have more money for the
52:20
training they have the infrastructure they have the distribution right they you know how how is somebody going to create a competitor to Facebook they'll just make you know Llama is already great and they'll pump it through all their channels and so will Google and they have more data and so so forth so
52:33
so that that would be the sort of the I don't know the degenerate outcome from the from the venture capitalist perspective is what I look it could be great for the world though you know it could be I I think it's I think it's the consu a lot of this will be consumer benefit consumer surplus I think and
52:47
that's good and I'm happy about that and if you know and we'll we'll always find things to you know there'll always be some vertical thing or some other thing for VCs to invest in so I think that might actually be a really good societal outcome do NFTTS have a future um I think of so I I think of um the So let me say what an NFT. So one of the
53:06
So one of the things a blockchain allows you to do is to create digital assets, right?
53:11
Um this is sort of one of the unique things is you can create a you know bitcoin is a digital asset that that exists on a on a blockchain.
53:18
Um and those digital assets can be either fungeable or nonfgeible.
53:23
Fungeible means you know interchangeable. It's like a currency.
53:26
Any bitcoin can be exchanged for another.
53:27
Nonfgeible means it's a distinct um asset.
53:29
Um and so do you know do blockchains have a future?
53:33
Of course, I believe yes.
53:35
And then on those blockchains, will you have some assets that are fungeable and some that are not? I think definitely.
53:40
Um uh when people think NFTts, they think, you know, people buying JPEGs.
53:46
Um that may or may not come back.
53:50
or may not come back. the idea that people will have, you know, digital assets that, for example, could represent a movie ticket, an NFT, it can represent a physical, people are doing, a lot of people are doing this now, where they represent like a pair of
54:02
tennis shoes or a piece of fine art or some other, you know, housing deed or some other um if we have a future, which I'm hope I hope for and I'm pushing for of of, you know, people transacting with digital assets on blockchains, I think very much that some of those will be non-f fungeible. Um, and like I think
54:17
Um, and like I think some of them will be um, also purely digital.
54:23
Like we're seeing a bunch of these people doing like make video games and you have a, you know, sword or a gun you can buy and it's an NFT and you can resell it and do other things.
54:30
And so as the digital world becomes more and more important, you have, you know, you'll have virtual worlds, you'll have metaverses, you'll have these kind of worlds like Roblox and and many more variations of things like that.
54:40
You will have, I think, digital assets in those worlds.
54:44
and some of those and I think a better you can have those either locked inside of the game owned by the game maker or you can have them on a blockchain where the user can move them around and control them.
54:52
I think that's a better architecture. So the answer is yes.
54:55
Um but but in the in the true sense of NFT not in the kind of caricatured sense that every that people think about associating with the kind of 2021 bull market.
55:05
Won't NFTTS become the property rights system for the AIS?
55:08
I I think that's I think that's a good outcome.
55:11
that's I think that's a good outcome. I think it's the right way to do dig it's basically what the reason my book's called read write own is is that read sort of read and write is a common phrase referring to the first two eras of the internet and my argument is that that if this era if blockchains are successful this era will be about
55:25
ownership digital ownership and so blockchains enable digital ownership um and that ownership can be something digital something that's digital that represents something non-digital like a I mean non-digital like I was going to say a stable coin whatever like something in a bank something off blockchains like in a bank can be something in the purely digital world. I
55:41
I think it's the right way to do to represent digital ownership.
55:44
One way to think about the internet today is it's sort of this world in which there, you know, it's sort of like imagine the offline world where you could never own something and every time you go to a new venue, you have to change clothes and use all their stuff and you can't take it anywhere else.
55:58
It's this weird structure on the internet now.
55:59
You go to Twitter and you gain followers and yet they own your followers and they you can't take them with you and you go to play a game and everything's stuck inside that game.
56:07
Um and and the idea sort of the one of the ideas with the in the blockchain world is we can we can shift that power back and the user can actually sort of have this persistent inventory of things that they own and control.
56:18
That's what a crypto wallet is.
56:20
And you can take that to different services and you unbundle the ownership of the data from the providing from the provision of the service.
56:25
What's your favorite book in philosophy?
56:31
I've actually been getting back into philosophy lately.
56:32
I did philosophy years ago in grad school. Uh favorite book, man.
56:36
Do you read are you into philosophy? Of course. Yeah.
56:38
Plato's dialogues quine word and object parf reasons and persons nosic those are what come to my mind right away.
56:47
So I did analytic I did analytic philosophy.
56:49
I actually was in a grad school program and dropped out.
56:52
I did analytic philosophy.
56:53
So actually a coin was one of my favorites and word and object and like two dogmas been piricism all those kinds of things. I like Donald Davidson.
57:00
Nosik I loved anarchy state utopia.
57:04
Reading that with RS is a great pairing.
57:06
Um you know um uh I used to love Vickenstein so you know both early and later. Yeah. Yeah.
57:12
Um I I was into logic so like Fraga Russell but now that this was a grad school now I'm actually I'm trying to finally understand continental philosophy. I never understood it.
57:20
Um and I've actually spent the last three months sort of in a philosophy phase.
57:26
I've been watching a lot of videos. Highly recommend this. Do you know Brian McGee? Amazing. Sure. Yes.
57:28
I watched all of his videos.
57:30
This guy Michael Sigru was a Princeton professor.
57:32
great videos in continental philosophy.
57:35
I've been reading um that's sound pretentious.
57:39
Like I'm not saying I understand this or I'm an expert on it, but I'm struggling in reading it.
57:42
I'm trying to read uh being in time right now of Haidiger.
57:44
Um and so yeah, I I um I would say when I did analytic, I mean probably like Victor, I really like Krypkkey.
57:52
Paul Krypkkey um I liked his books a lot.
57:56
Nelson Goodman was one of my favorites.
57:58
Um uh like fact fiction for funny enough, I just bought it again.
58:01
Fact fiction and forecast.
58:02
Um um Crypkkey there's a naming necessities is this kind of legendary book on reference and language.
58:09
Um I've never been persuaded by that one.
58:11
It always felt like slight of hand to me. He's very very smart.
58:14
He might be the sharpest philosopher.
58:17
Uh but I like the book on Vidkinstein better.
58:19
He basically invented modal logic.
58:21
I don't know if you know that story.
58:23
He was like in high school. He was 15 years old. I've heard. Yes.
58:26
So he's like a true prodigy.
58:26
But um well naming a necessity.
58:30
well naming a necessity. I mean like a lot of philosophy you have to take it in the context like naming a necessity I I think of it as a response gosh this is I'm I'm forgetting all the whole history of it but it was kind of a as I recall it was a response to the descriptive theory of reference like Russell you know so you would have um anyways and so it's kind of like you have to re I think you have to take
58:53
these things in a pairing um I was just actually last night I was with a group of people I got a lecture on philosophy and and it was great cuz he went through it was Hume Kant um Hegel Nze and like I don't want to go too much into flaw but
59:08
I but like I've always struggled with Kant and and then he but then he went into Hegel and explained it sort of um the the the Hegel kind of struggled with Kant in the same way that I did and then improved on it. And so for me these are
59:20
And so for me these are always and I'm not trying to go into the details of this too much but the point is for me a lot of it has to be taken in like as a as a dialogue between thinkers over multiple periods.
59:30
And so um are you getting anything out of Haidiger because I sometimes say I've looked at every page of that book but I'm not sure I've read it. Um it's a good question.
59:41
Um and I have a friend who's really into it and we we spent we've been spending time together and he's trying to teach me.
59:46
Um uh yeah, I I guess um how how would I would also if you want I'll send you some videos um that I think are really good.
59:56
So that they've helped me a lot. Um I get it.
59:58
I like I've always got it from like an intellectual history point of view like if you want to follow kind of the history of postmodernism.
1:00:05
history of postmodernism. So like there's like H highaidiger and then Derereda and just sort of you know what's going on in the academy today with um you know relativism and you know discourse and her hermeneutics and just like you know I think it's modern
1:00:20
political implications to um that that were really probably kicked off by Nietze and then Haidiger right and so I've always sort of understood in that sense I think what I struggle with and I understand him as a theory of psychology um I think of like describing the
1:00:35
experience the da design and being in the world and like to me it's an interesting theory of psychology um sort of how do I experience like you're thrown into the world you don't know this whole idea is very appealing to me like that and then just that whole kind
1:00:47
of story he tells you're thrown into the world ready at hand versus present at hand I think this idea of like knowing how versus knowing that sort of different kinds of knowledge is a very interesting idea do you watch um John Verviki no I highly recommend um he's got his 50part video 550. Um, you'd like Um, you'd like him.
1:01:08
He's a philosopher, cognitive science, uh, really smart guy.
1:01:10
Um, and he's got a 50-part video on the it's called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.
1:01:15
Um, I've watched like 30 of them or something.
1:01:18
or something. But um and the idea is sort of you know that modern the modern world we sort of lost religion and lost philosophy and now people are seeking meaning in their lives and they're see they're finding it through drugs and I don't know what video games and whatever and that we should go back and look at
1:01:36
all the great thinkers and see what how do we find meaning and sort of is this mission of it but he's very he's very sophisticated on the philosophy stuff um and he goes through the 50 parts like Aristotle Plato you know Buddha Jesus like It's just like literally every great thinker and how do they think about how you find meaning in life? Very Very very interesting.
1:01:52
Um and why was I saying this?
1:01:56
Um she I for I lost my Oh. Oh.
1:01:58
And so a big part of his uh thinking is sort of there's many different ways of knowing.
1:02:02
And one of the things that we've done in the modern world is we've forgotten that there's more than just propositional knowledge.
1:02:07
More than just knowing that there's knowing how, right?
1:02:11
There's know and like religious traditions are very good at knowing at at at embracing multiple kinds of knowledge.
1:02:16
That's why you don't just have right like this is the mistake that the Redditor makes about analyzing Christianity.
1:02:20
Look at it as a set of propositions when in fact it's a way of it's a form of life.
1:02:23
It's about a community a community co-development and meaning rituals and like you know so I think the Haidiger stuff is very interesting on those topics of like different kinds of knowledge.
1:02:33
Um, and I I guess I just am very interested in like in you know we we all you and I sure have this sort of default naturalistic physicalist scientific worldview and and I'm interested in um sophisticated thinkers who have a different worldview and trying to understand it.
1:02:52
And I think I think about John you know John Vonoyman had this great phrase he's like you don't someone asked him about set theory andor he said you never understand set theory theory you just get used to it.
1:03:00
And I think that's true of a lot of these other alternative philosophies is like like it's not like there's going to be like one argument you're going to read at Paidiger and you're going to be like, "Oh my god, I I my worldview changed."
1:03:10
Like you just kind of have to submerge yourself in it.
1:03:11
And that's what I'm trying to do of like a year.
1:03:13
You just kind of keep keep seeing it from different angles and then hopefully you eventually get kind of a gestalt switch and you start to see the world maybe through a different lens.
1:03:21
And if you had to say not what you like in philosophy as philosophy, but what in philosophy has stuck with you when you make venture capital decisions, what would you cite?
1:03:35
Well, I think the look I do think the mode of I think that just I one thing I like about philosophy is like the move just like the literally the moves they make.
1:03:42
It's almost like a chess game, right?
1:03:43
Like um like they're just very like nuanced argument style.
1:03:51
Um, you know, like I like I only reason I'm hesitating.
1:03:54
I don't know how how much you want me to go down this path, but No, BB's as nerdy as you are. Okay. Well, like um Okay.
1:03:59
So, like uh cons uh are you familiar with the K's um the the um uh synthetic opriori? Sure. Yeah. Right. Okay.
1:04:11
Sure. Yeah. Right. Okay. So like like this is just a really interesting so like you so so Hume comes al so actually Ros lock but then Hume comes along and says okay like let's let's analyze how we get knowledge and he says there's really just two ways you get knowledge you get knowledge through what he called relations of ideas or matters of fact so
1:04:26
sort of you know math right it's just like you can kind of you could sit in a room and think about the the numbers and and decode or all bachelors are unmarried is a famous example like it's it's embedded inside of the words that to be a bachelor is to be unmarried that's relations of ideas and then there's empirical matters effect, right? And that's things we go out and and and
1:04:43
And that's things we go out and and and and see in the world.
1:04:45
And so Hume asked this, you know, the famous skeptical question, okay, well, if that's the case, where does something like induction fit in, right?
1:04:52
Where does causality fit in?
1:04:54
Where does time and space fit in?
1:04:56
Because they're neither, you know, purely true based on the relations of ideas.
1:05:00
And it would be circular if we learned induction through induction, right?
1:05:05
Like how do we know that, you know, the sun will rise tomorrow?
1:05:08
Well, it's always risen in the past.
1:05:10
Well, how do we know the future futures will be like future pasts?
1:05:11
And kind of goes through the whole skeptical argument, right?
1:05:14
Um, and then Kant comes along and says, okay, that's right, but what that means is there there are other preconditions for knowledge, which is a really interesting move because what he's saying is I mean, this is the what a transcendental argument is, right?
1:05:28
Is you're not kind of going from premises to conclusion.
1:05:32
You're going from premises to preconditions to those premises, right?
1:05:35
premises, right? So I'm just giving you an example like that move that that kind of plasticity of thought like that is just a very like like I almost when I first saw that I was like can you do that like you can go and like so he says look you can't fit you can't I'm not sure you can do it to be clear oh no I know not either but he's like you can't fit causality this Khan's favorite I think but then induction a whole bunch
1:05:56
of things that we just that are our modes of intuition you can't fit them into Hume's two buckets and so then he argues of course you know 300 pages and very nuance that there that therefore there must be another bucket right there must be this other precondition of
1:06:08
thought, the modes of intuition and then he deres his whole kind of beautiful system outside of out from that and then you know Hegel comes along and changes that changes some of the preconditions. So, I think just the I just feel like I
1:06:17
So, I think just the I just feel like I learned when I did at least in grad school just like this kind of um just this just freedom and I guess uh I I use plasticity.
1:06:28
I don't know just like the kind of the like you kind of learn how to do these moves and meta moves like intellectually that I I find really interesting.
1:06:35
Um and it just forces you to really think like you can just sit there.
1:06:39
I've spent like an hour just sitting there and trying to understand these ideas and I sometimes I feel like I don't and it and it just really forces kind of intellectual honesty on you. Um I don't know.
1:06:48
I I so it's almost like meta like I honestly I've read philosophy for years and I don't know if I've ever actually gotten any conclusions out of it.
1:06:55
I think there's just like you can sort of see both so both sides and you can I could feel like I can argue both sides.
1:07:01
I feel like that about a lot of things in in like politics too and things.
1:07:05
I feel like I can argue I can give a pretty good argument for a bunch of different things and you know I don't know I think you get better at at analyzing and understanding all the things and that philosophy helps you with that.
1:07:15
I don't know if you actually get answers.
1:07:16
Before we say goodbye I'd like to recommend Chris's book again.
1:07:20
Read, write, own, building the next era of the internet.
1:07:25
Chris Dixon, it's been a pleasure. Thank you. That was a lot of fun.