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Okay.
Search this video
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All right, so Liv Boeree.
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I say that to prime myself.
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Ladies and germs, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss.
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Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show.
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This is a rare in-person interview.
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I think this is the first time doing a full shebang with video since COVID, the appearance of that little bug.
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You may have heard of it.
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And let's jump right to the intro.
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And I guess today is Liv Boeree.
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That's b o e r e e on Twitter @liv_boeree.
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She's one of the UK's most successful poker players, now a resident of Austin, Texas, winning both European Poker Tour and World Series of Poker Championship titles during her professional career.
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Before poker, she studied astrophysics and now focuses her time as a TV host and YouTuber specializing in game theory, futurism, and rationality.
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What a world we live in that you can now do that on YouTube. It's [ __ ] amazing. It's incredible.
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She also gives seminars on high-stakes decision-making and recently spoke at the annual TED conference about the application of poker thinking to everyday life.
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In 2014, she co-founded Raising for Effective Giving, r e g parenthetically. I'll try that again.
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She co-founded Raising for Effective Giving and {parentheses} r e g. Let me try that again.
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In 2014, she co-founded Raising for Effective Giving, r e g, a nonprofit based upon the philosophies of effective altruism that raised more than $12 million for its carefully selected list of maximally cost-effective charities.
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You can find her online, livboeree. com, livboeree. substack.
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com, and on all of the things, all of the socials, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube.
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You can certainly search and find her. Liv Boeree.
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Liv, welcome to the show. It's nice to see you. Thank you for having me.
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We can go so many different directions.
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I thought we would start actually maybe in an unexpected place.
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So, I asked you before we started, what color would you prefer?
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Black, blue, orange, or I think it was yellow. what it was for. It was for Mike cable.
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It was for Mike cable so that I can tell which line is feeding into which input on this recorder.
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It certainly looks a lot better in audio, right?
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So, it does have a certain clown car appearance to it when we do it in person with video, but when you said black, I said, "I bet it's going to be black right beforehand." And it was black.
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And the reason I said that is I read something about you and Metallica.
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And to get into the zone coming here on the drive over, I listened to Orion, the remastered. Oh, great choice. Yeah. Nice choice. Very very yeah.
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Because my first Now we're really getting off track here, but that's okay. There is no track.
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My very first album I ever bought was on cassette tape, and it was Master of Puppets.
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And can you guess why I bring up Metallica?
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Well, they were my love that bordered on an unhealthy obsession from the ages of like 16 to 22.
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So, that's probably I would guess That is the I don't know how you would know that though.
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Well, you know, we do research over here. metalinsider. net.
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The Iron Maiden of the poker world, they called you.
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And there's a short discussion of The Unforgiven.
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And this led you, I guess, in some respects into guitar.
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Do you still play guitar? I don't.
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You don't, but you did for a period of time. I did, yeah.
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From like 16 or 17 till 24.
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Basically, until poker took over.
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So, do you then have typically one obsession at a time?
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Do you ever have multiple obsessions simultaneously?
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Or do you tend to have one obsessive fixation and that is where you put your energy? I used to.
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I used to be very There'd be a shiny new activity would come along and I would If it ticked enough boxes, I'd be like, "I have to become the best at this."
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I would rarely become the best at it, but I would certainly, you know, go go down the rabbit hole deep enough to become proficient.
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And I was like that, I would say, until some point in my probably my early 30s, somewhere some point around the age age of 30, where I lost that a little bit.
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And in some ways that's good because it means I can try more, you know, a greater breadth of things, but it comes a little bit at the cost of then not ever picking I'm currently struggling with the fact that I'm I'm being too much of a jack-of-all-trades, master of none.
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Like not knowing what I'm Am I going to be focusing on YouTube?
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Or maybe I should just do speeches.
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Or maybe I should actually just start a company and give up on this silly like public-facing stuff.
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You know, it can be a bit of a blessing in a curse, I guess, of not not fixating on one particular thing.
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But certainly as a as a teenager, certainly with metal.
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Cuz I think, you know, with teenagers, they so often you you don't Because you haven't formed your identity yet. Right.
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You will form it typically around a genre of music. Sure. I was a metalhead. You were a metalhead? Oh, for sure. Oh, sick. Right. So, yeah, you get it.
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Like and metal is so I mean, I say was as if it's past tense, if I'm in the gym, I'm still a metalhead. Right, exactly.
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And but you don't look at You don't live it in your visual No, I mean, I have like from the neck up, I definitely have the sort of early era Well, actually, no, like mid-era Pantera look to it. Phil Anselmo.
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Like a little bit, you know, Phil Anselmo after he's, you know, Vulgar Display of Power era whatever, yeah.
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Yeah, so I was kind of uncool until the age of 16.
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And then metal came along and I was like, "Oh, this is this is what I was waiting for."
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And then I just went all out, you know, I had the piercings, red hair, black hair, blue hair, the guitar, and just would not listen to anything but metal.
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And not just like sort of new metal. I hated new metal.
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No Korn or anything like that.
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No, I wanted the really heavy [ __ ] Like Pantera was like a That was like a nice day on the beach.
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You know, I'm talking like Dimmu Borgir, Burzum, you know, those some of the the Swedish Swedish black metal or Norwegian black metal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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You get to the Scandinavian Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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death metal and you've gone really deep. Yeah, exactly.
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But Metallica were a huge forming part of that.
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They were the one sort of classic metal band that I still was like I just loved so deeply. All right.
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Let's let's paint a picture here.
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What was your the age range of your competitive poker career?
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And then we're going to back into that by going to some very early early chapters. But what was the span?
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Cuz I'm trying to overlay that on what you just said.
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So, I first learned to play poker aged 21. Mhm. Yeah, it was 2005. I'd just graduated uni.
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Didn't really know what I wanted to do.
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Thought I was going to carry on in physics, but I decided to take a gap year because I mean, when I first started taking physics, I was like, "Oh, I'm definitely doing this. This is so interesting. I love it."
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But then the more time I got to spend with like PhD students or even people doing their masters, they seemed I don't know, they just didn't seem very happy.
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And I don't know, just personality-wise, I was wondering if it actually was going to work for me.
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Because all I really wanted to do was go out partying and clubbing and go, you know, see all the rock shows, metal shows.
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And I was also still wanting to be a rock star at the time.
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And I was like, "Uh, I just don't know if this is going to quite work, me sitting in a lab you know, fiddling around with lasers."
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So, decided to take a gap year.
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And I think I signed up at Oh, I was doing like random like goth modeling sometimes. And I As one does. In their gap year. Right.
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Well, I I you know, just any way I could make some money and I thought, I don't know, I enjoyed dressing up in my my heavy metal costumes as as often as possible.
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And I was like, "If I can get paid to do that, that'd be great."
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I also got paid to be a cage dancer in rock clubs in London.
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Yeah, well, you know, I was I was admiring the the boots on the way in.
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This is a the shoeless household, so thank you for accommodating.
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This is not the my least metal sock ever. I'm so embarrassed.
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These are gray and pink striped socks with hearts all over them.
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So, yes, it's it's Well, it's like the hard exterior, the goth death metal exterior, and then like the the soft sweet Uh inside.
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I mean, you don't understand how much pain I'm in actually the fact that this is these I have so many Like most of my socks are black.
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I just grabbed whatever I needed to.
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So, goth modeling, which I also did during my gap year. Totally lying. I'm kidding.
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Goth modeling, cage dancing. Mhm.
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And and then And then, yes.
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So, I think I signed up for this like website that would advertise different TV shows or modeling opportunities, that kind of thing.
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And I remember seeing an ad which said something like, "Could you use your powers of skill and deception to win 100,000 pounds on TV?"
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And seeing as I was, you know, rapidly getting pretty damn broke because dancing in a rock club cage doesn't pay you anything really.
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And I had some student debt mounted up.
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But really didn't want to get a real job for, you know, my parents were like, "You have to like What are you doing? You've moved to London. Get a job."
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So, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to This seems reasonable.
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I wanted to try being on TV. I like game shows.
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This seems like a game show. I'll apply."
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Turns out, they wouldn't tell us what what it was that we were applying for because they needed to keep it a secret.
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But turns out it was a reality show that was looking for five beginners at poker to teach them how to play, and the sort of loose scientific premise was they were looking for five different personality types to see which, you know, is most suited for the game.
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And so, I got selected for that.
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What was your personality type?
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They called me the professor.
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Which I most certainly was not. can see it. I can see it.
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I I was I literally turned up in skin-tight tiger print spandex self-made trousers.
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Now, did you do that because they had put you in the professor category?
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Was that a rebellion, an act of rebellion, or did that just No, I mean, that was genuinely how I dressed. emoting.
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No, it was it was my genuine appearance.
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As I said, I lived and breathed metal. Sounds good for TV.
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Right, and I think that's probably why they selected me, honestly.
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Like, I was strange, very, very overconfident to the point of like cocky 21-year-old brat.
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Unheard of with 21-year-olds. Yeah.
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I just thought I was the smartest person in the world, and I think I even said something like that in the interview, like the audition.
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And they're like, "Oh, we're definitely bringing you in."
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is going to be a good one."
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And I didn't disappoint because I ended up having a complete meltdown on the show.
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Like, I'm so glad this is not on the internet.
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Basically, on the final I think we played like seven preliminary rounds where we would the five of us would play. Yeah.
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And then like that would accumulate points, and those points would translate into chips for the final game where we would play for the 100,000.
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And I was winning, you know, I was leading going into that, and clearly I had a knack for the game.
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And I remember the the hosts and the the professionals that they could brought on the show to teach us were like, "Oh, you're definitely going to win.
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You know, you are the most talented at this."
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So, I was so sure I was going to win this thing.
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And then I ended up making not to get too technical, but basically I misread my hand.
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Oh, no, I didn't I misread the board.
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I made a straight on the river. The opponent bet. I was so excited.
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I was like, raise, which was basically all my chips.
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And then I looked at the board again and noticed there were four diamonds out there.
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And I didn't have a my I had two black cards.
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And audibly went, NOW, I'M NOT I'M NO PROFESSIONAL, but is that what one would call a tell?
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Yes, that is a that is a tell. Do not do that.
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And my opponent, who was a really nice guy called Lee, was like, "Well, I guess she doesn't have a diamond."
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And he was like, "I'm all in."
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And instead of, again, keeping my my cool or anything, I just started crying, like melted down.
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are high-fiving in the background.
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And and and and they were like, "Oh, Liv, what's the matter? Tell us more."
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And I was like, you know, makeup everywhere.
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I think I I I like run away from the table.
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They try and follow me with the camera.
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It was just, you know, classic reality TV meltdown stuff.
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So, that was my intro to poker, but I just completely fell in love with the game. Mhm.
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And funny enough, while I was in the during the filming of that, which took 2 months, I went to a local card club in London to try and get some practice.
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And they had this now sort of infamous this £5 rebuy.
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So, you know, it was the cheapest tournament they had. What is a rebuy?
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means that for the first hour or so, if you bust out, you can just buy back in again.
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So, considering it was only £5 entry, you can imagine it's just pandemonium.
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Everyone's going in every single hand.
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And people were easily like spend like £100 in their entry overall, you know, 20 rebuys. Good for the house.
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Yeah, but I turned up with £10 because I was like, "Well, it's a £5 tournament.
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Why would I ever need more than, you know, £5 for the entry and £5 to buy a drink, and that will be my my day."
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So, you're like a player in a video game with two lives where everybody else has like 100 lives. Right.
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Yeah, and most people were were doing that. Yes. Only for the first hour.
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Then once that period ends, then if you bust out, you're out. Yeah.
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So, anyway, I go and this is the first tournament I ever play. And I enter this thing.
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Somehow get through this carnage period in the first hour.
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The zombies that just keep Yeah, I think I did rebuy once with my other £5, so I didn't buy a drink.
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And anyway, I ended up winning it. Mhm.
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Ended up playing till 5:00 in the morning.
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It was like 120 people in it, and I came home.
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I remember just having this, you know, they paid me out in 10s and 20s, I think £750 or something like that, which was more money than I'd never seen that amount of cash before. Just so much money.
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And I remember going home to my boyfriend at the time and waking him up at 5:00 a. m.
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and just throwing the cash on him.
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Like, this is the best thing ever. This is my game.
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I'm I must be the best in the world.
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Like, you know, it's my first ever tournament, basically, and I win it.
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So, even though the the TV show did not go well, and I didn't win the 100 grand, I'd already got the bug, basically, from that little win.
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So, let me weave through this and inspect a bit because I have many questions.
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What do you think helped you during the show itself to make it to the final table?
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What were some of whether they're your characteristics, things you learned, things you observed, trained abilities, anything that comes to mind that you think helped in the very early nascent stages? Of that tournament?
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Yeah, the TV show, and then I have more questions.
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I mean, I think the thing that was most helpful early on for me in poker was I was just so pathologically competitive. Mhm.
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I just had to win and like prove that I was the best in this game.
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translated to just more study time, more practice.
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laser focus and then this like ruthlessness.
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Because the thing about poker is that you actually you do have to be really ruthless in the game. In what sense?
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In terms of being willing to put people like what, bluffing people, right?
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If you're not comfortable with bluffing someone at the poker table, which I don't think it a lot of people say, "Oh, it's lying."
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It's like it's not really lying.
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No, it's just a form of it's a strategy within a game as defined by the rules of the game.
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It's an integral part of it. It's sanctioned lying. Right.
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If you're not willing to do that, then it's not the game for you. Play chess. Right.
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And then you have to be just willing to I guess it's really laser in and pay deep attention to what is going on because technically at any given moment, even if you're not in a hand, there's really valuable information Mhm.
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being exchanged about the way people, you know, the types of cards people play, the way that their bodies move when they're uncomfortable versus comfortable.
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Are they a naturally aggressive person or are they naturally scared?
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What are the things that make them scared, etc.
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And certainly in the beginning, I was just because I didn't know anything about the actual statistical sort of the the mechanics of the game.
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All I could rely on was the, you know, the stuff I knew, which was looking looking for when people are bluffing.
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Looking for when people are bluffing.
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Okay, so let me ask you about the statistical side because you're coming out of physics. Mhm.
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You have, it would seem, a huge competitive advantage.
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Why would you not begin to study the tables and the statistics and so on? Well, I did too. You did that as well.
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And the thing is that the statistics required in poker to actually, you know, at a high level are you're not going to learn within the first month. Sure, right.
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And also, people didn't even really know cuz this is 2005.
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Even the top players in the world back then didn't really understand game theory.
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Like, even an average player understands it today.
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So, you know, I was reading I read all the books I could get my hands on.
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So, I guess my sort of physics training helped to an extent with with being willing to just like dive in and research on this like on a big amorphous topic and you know, not even clear directions of where to start.
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That probably gave me a bit of an advantage there.
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And then, presumably, I have an higher than average IQ from, All the cage dancing. Exactly, really helps.
17:51
Uh and all the drinking and guitar playing and chasing after rock stars, yeah.
17:54
Um but that which I think obviously helps in any kind of strategic game. Yeah.
17:59
But honestly, the thing about poker is the beautiful thing about poker, in fact, is that in any given if you're if you're talking about one night, you can have the literal best player in the world, a a medium player, complete beginners, and provided everyone knows the basic rules, then technically anyone can win.
18:22
It's only over the long run does anything actually meaningful start happening. Right.
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And so, even in this TV show where we played, I think, eight different games, statistically, it's not that meaningful the results over that time period.
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There's so much luck going on, and I didn't realize that early on in the game.
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Like, winning that big tournament of not a big tournament, that the £5 rebuy, it gave me an immense amount of confidence and love for the game, which I think, had I not had, I wouldn't have then pursued it as much as I did.
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But it can also delude you a little bit because I then just assumed, "Okay, well, I'm going to win this.
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There isn't that much luck.
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It's just who's the best player wins."
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And I think that's partly why it was such a kick in the face when I screwed up and didn't win the 100,000.
19:06
When you say you fell in love with the game, aside from things that maybe you've mentioned already, what made you fall in love with it? What was so appealing?
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I mean, there's an inherent excitement to it, of course, because there's a blending of skill and chance. Yes. And money.
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I mean, there's stakes built into it.
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winning the the potential of just winning you know, making a living where I don't have to go and sit in an office and I can do that.
19:33
That was obviously a big driver. carrot. Yeah.
19:36
There's just so many different skills that it draws upon.
19:41
So, there's the statistical side, you know, the scientific side.
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There's the the game theory.
19:44
If you really want to dive deep into math, and I mean, these days you can, you know, work with simulators, you know, you computer science stuff basically and go in that angle.
19:54
But then you've also got this more There's like an art to it as well, you know, with psychology, men trying to mentally model what level someone is thinking at and be one step ahead of, you know, they're they're going to zig, you're going to zag, that kind of thing.
20:08
And then also just like there's a scientific way to read body language, but sometimes you just get like a vibe that you can't explain. Yeah.
20:13
So there's just so many different approaches you can take to it and like today I'm going to work on my body language reading and today I'm going to work on my pot odds and my combinatorics.
20:23
There's never a dull moment and there's always a new situation as well.
20:27
Like even after playing for 10, 15 years, I'll still see something crazy with like the cards run out.
20:33
Like, you know, straight flush against quads, that kind of stuff.
20:34
Like these incredibly rare scenarios will sometimes happen or people will do weird things or some strange ruling will happen that like everyone's scratching their heads like I don't know what the right call is here.
20:44
It's it's there's such depth and complexity to the game. Okay.
20:49
So, I'm going to admit something. It's embarrassing.
20:54
I've been fascinated and drawn to poker for a very long time and I've never learned how to play properly. No way. It's true. Wow.
21:01
Now there are many excuses I may have for this.
21:03
One of them is that friends of mine like a guy named Jason Calacanis want me to play, but it's mostly because he wants to take all my money.
21:14
Because he's going to be far better than I am.
21:17
And that's a compliment, Jason.
21:17
Uh I'll teach you how to beat Jason.
21:21
And a lot of these investors are very confident.
21:24
I know some of them certainly, particularly the quants who I've observed from afar, seem to be pretty confident. Mhm.
21:35
I had a little a little bite of the bug probably 5 years ago when I did an episode of a TV show bringing it back TV where I trained for a week or 5 days probably to play heads-up against a whole cohort of folks including some pros and I was able and I was trained by I want to give him credit, Phil Gordon, for that.
22:02
And for a very short period of time until the next skill I had to learn for the next episode pushed it right out of my head.
22:10
Had a lot of fun with heads-up.
22:13
But one night when the filming had finished and I was like, you know, let me go try just a regular table and I got slaughtered.
22:21
Like it did not translate at all which I expected would largely be the case, but I just got dismembered.
22:26
I mean, Well, that's a heads-up is a very different game to playing against eight people. Yeah, totally.
22:32
So yeah, one-on-one totally totally different game.
22:37
But it actually brought back in a way my love of mathematics and statistics which I lost not to make this like a confessional, but I lost it in 10th grade because I had this one teacher who just had this huge axe to grind with the boys in the class and almost all the boys ended up quitting math or avoiding it after that class.
22:54
My brother had the opposite experience and then later became a PhD in statistics.
23:00
So, it's amazing to look at these divergent kind of points, right?
23:04
Where you have a fork in the path depending on your experience.
23:07
So my question after all of that word salad is if if you were to suggest a way of learning or to teach me an approach to learning Mhm.
23:18
regular poker, whatever that means.
23:24
The type of poker I'd play with my friends who are like, let's play poker, right?
23:28
How might you think of approaching that?
23:31
Well, given that you are I mean, you're pretty well-rounded in your personality and that you like both sort of human interactive things, but you can also nerd out really hard. Yes.
23:42
I don't think there's really a wrong way to teach you poker.
23:43
Like if I was to teach my my mom or something like that.
23:47
My mom is the most sounds strange to say it, but she's the least autistic person in that she is so able to intuit social situations and unbelievably emotionally intelligent.
24:04
But could not she like phobic of math.
24:06
She's interested in sort of scientific concepts, but if you actually try and get into the technical weeds, she's just like I she she cannot.
24:14
It's like she would be in arms with Molly right now.
24:16
Just like she's just a she just feels.
24:18
She's a very feel-based person.
24:19
If I was to teach her the game, you know, I would take her to the table with group of fun people and, you know, we would slowly just like turn the cards over and, you know, talk through.
24:30
I'll give her the hand rankings.
24:31
I would take it very steady in in terms of like this is look at the way that they're acting.
24:37
So they seem quite confident.
24:37
You know, take a more human approach to it.
24:42
But I think with you we would want to jump sort of straight into the game theory to an extent.
24:46
So let me apply some parameters if I could just to allow us to conjure an image.
24:51
So let's just say he's really going to want to take my money now which he will probably.
24:56
So let's say I had a game with Jason and you can pick the sort of minimally viable period of time over which you think I could learn to be competent enough that I might have a chance. Is it 4 weeks? Is it 12 weeks?
25:10
And this is also not knowing how how good Jason is. I've no idea.
25:18
Cuz I've always refused to play. He's pretty good. Okay, great.
25:21
So let's just say you know, if luck is on my side having some chance in hell. Well, here's the thing.
25:29
So you have a chance in hell anyway.
25:30
If you sat down and just played just going to be Jason.
25:33
It's going to be an entire table.
25:35
Well, no, but even if you were playing one-on-one against Jason.
25:36
If you guys sat down, assuming you know the basic rules of like which hand beats what. a chance.
25:41
Okay, but let's you know, assume the very basics.
25:43
You know what betting chips means and whether you have a straight on the river or not.
25:46
Assuming that, you and I could sit down and play 10 hands and it's basically 50/50 who wins.
25:55
Okay, let's say you can pick the period of time of training, right?
25:57
So however long it is and then Jason and I are going to play a thousand hands, let's say. Exactly. Yeah, a thousand hands.
26:07
You're already your chance of beating Jason over a thousand hands probably with like just knowing the rules is 45%. Wow.
26:18
That's how crazy it like that's the thing.
26:19
But maybe it's a bit less than that. Maybe it's Sorry, Jason.
26:21
Maybe it's let's say 37%. Maybe 35.
26:26
Uh I'm just going I'm going to get a phone call after this.
26:29
Um Uh but you know, could we get it so that you are a favorite against him?
26:42
Eight weeks of intensive? Okay. Yeah.
26:42
If you If you sat and studied all the charts, Mhm.
26:48
because that's what it is really these days.
26:49
So poker is a Now that we know the mechanics of the game, basically there's this thing called game theory optimal solutions to different scenarios which is basically, you know, if you have jack nine suited on this type of board against a person in this position, you will want to check raise them 30% of the time and check call 70% of the time or something like that.
27:07
Basically there there are like answers to what you should do in different scenarios with what frequencies.
27:14
It's all about frequencies.
27:14
And so now that we know this and and you can run simulators to give you the answers of all these fictitious scenarios.
27:19
Now it's changed the game into a basically who's willing to you know, learn as many different scenarios as possible and like basically emulate them in their head when they go and play. Mhm.
27:30
So it's a very different type of game.
27:32
It's more like kind of almost studying chess moves.
27:35
just going to say it sounds a lot like studying like chess scenarios.
27:36
And it wasn't like that even 10 years ago.
27:39
It was very very different.
27:41
I mean, there was some it was more about you you'd sort of do combination calculations in your head and that kind of thing, but that was kind of the limit of it.
27:47
And honestly it's actually one of the reasons why I in the end didn't like the game as much anymore.
27:54
I've been doing it for 12 years anyway and I've I've just starting to get itchy feet naturally, but it required more and more time spent to at the top levels at least Just for incremental gains. Exactly.
28:07
Diminishing returns in terms of hourly because also what it means is because it's like these game theory optimal solutions exist, it means that there's technically this perfect style of play that any one of any one person can play.
28:19
And the more the more people study this style, the more people are close to it.
28:25
And so that means there is a ceiling of how perfectly you can play.
28:27
Like technically if you and I are both two computers that are able to play this game theory optimal style, we're just breaking even against each other over infinity.
28:35
Over the short time, you know, if we play for an hour, whoever gets the best cards will therefore win, but over infinity we will just break even.
28:41
And so that meant that you would have to be putting more and more time in to win a sort of shrinking pot of money essentially.
28:49
Which is why I I don't now recommend to people to go out and try and be professionals in poker.
28:52
and be professionals in poker. But I still absolutely recommend that people to go and learn the game because it is probably the best way to It's It's the best mini analog for the type of complex decision making that you need to do in life that you could do
29:08
And we're going to come back to this because I do think with my very little exposure to poker and having watched some on TV and nonetheless having had my ass handed to me when I tried it live that particularly maybe an easy map is investing and poker because there's there's just so many variables that are similar. Mhm. Mhm.
29:33
Which is why I think so many investors are drawn to it.
29:35
And also give a plug, All-In podcast, check it out.
29:38
That's Jason podcast with his buds.
29:39
It is a fantastic fantastic show.
29:42
I do think it is one of the the best newest podcasts that I've put into my rotation.
29:47
So, don't take all my money, Jason.
29:52
8 weeks, what is the density of practice look like? Is that 2 hours a day? Is it 10 hours a week?
29:58
What does the distribution look like?
30:01
To be confident that you're that you will have like a 60/40 edge on him, I would want to do like 40 hours a week at least. Okay. Oh, yeah. All right, 40 hours.
30:10
How does that break down if we have You said 8 weeks, right? Yeah.
30:17
So, hypothetically, let's say week one, what does the schedule and curriculum look like?
30:24
So, in the first week, I think we would I mean, I would sit in a just run out lots of different hands.
30:31
I think in person is better than online.
30:36
So, you actually just get to play with the cards, feel what it's like.
30:37
You get really familiar with the betting patterns and that kind of thing.
30:40
And we would talk about the more sort of general things like you know, why are we betting?
30:46
What what are we seeking to find here?
30:48
Okay, we want to find information.
30:51
We'd get into the idea of like ranges.
30:53
Kind of a strange word, but basically, you know, if we're playing a hand right now, I don't know anything about your cards.
30:59
All I know is that you've got two cards out of the, you know, a thousand and whatever the number is combination of two cards that you can have.
31:06
So, right now your range is 100%. And same back at you.
31:09
And then as the hand progresses, basically, I want to narrow down the perceived range that I think you could have.
31:16
You know, now I gain information so I can narrow that down and put you on a hand.
31:19
While meanwhile, giving away as little information about my own possible range.
31:23
So, keeping it as wide open to you.
31:26
So, it's about maximizing deceptiveness Sure.
31:29
while extracting information out of your opponent. Mhm.
31:32
So, I'd teach you about concepts like that and we would talk about ways that you can do that.
31:36
And then I think we would go and actually play a little bit in person just so you get used to the again the kind So, we'd need to find a table somewhere. Yeah.
31:44
I mean, probably invite friends over and we'd just have some have some games.
31:47
And it was so much fun anyway.
31:49
Those are the best type of poker games.
31:51
Bring in my card mechanic and take all their money. Exactly. Yes.
31:55
And then after that, I think we would start I don't know at what stage, but you know, once you seem competent and and are able to you're able to do sort of basic math calculations in your head about like okay, well, I have to call $100 into a pot of $400. I'm getting four to one. What does that mean?
32:11
What how many cards are there that I need to hit etc.
32:13
So, these kind of pot odd calculations, that kind of stuff.
32:17
Could you just take a second and explain what you mean by pot odd calculations?
32:20
So, pot odds are basically you know, like in investing to an extent, if things go well, what do you win versus how much would you lose?
32:27
And then how do you bet size accordingly?
32:33
What's that Right, exactly.
32:33
Or like, you know, let's say you're you're trying to hit a flush and there are nine cards left in the deck that can help you, say out of 36.
32:42
So, you have a 25% chance of hitting the card you need and meanwhile the pot is offering you five to one.
32:47
Well, now it's actually a profitable thing, right?
32:50
You're you're guessing the pot is offering you more than the odds that you need to to hit your card.
32:53
So, man, I haven't talked about this stuff in ages.
32:57
It's really interesting seeing my brain's like, oh, find the words.
33:00
So, those kind of rudimentary types of math calculations that you need to do.
33:04
And then as you get more comfortable in that, then you would start doing more like combination calculations.
33:10
So, again, like as you're sort of narrowing down your opponent's range, there will be presumably some hands that they will have that are better than your hand.
33:19
You know, so what we would call value hands that they would be playing, but they would also have some bluffs in there.
33:24
So, you need to try and think about what are the conceivable bluffs they would have given the sort of story that's been told.
33:30
You know, like pre-flop they raised early.
33:31
So, that means they probably have stronger cards than than weaker cards.
33:34
So, you can narrow it down to like the top end of the cards, you know, like aces, kings, ace king, ace three suited, that kind of stuff.
33:43
But then on the flop when an ace came out, they actually slowed down.
33:45
So, that maybe suggests that they don't have an ace.
33:49
Maybe they have more like nines, tens, eights, you know, to a pocket pair like that.
33:53
You know, weaving together bits of evidence to be able to narrow down people's ranges and put them on like conceivable bluffs versus conceivable strong hands. So, that kind of stuff.
34:02
After that, if, you know, you're seeming to grasp all that, then we would actually start looking at the the solver charts.
34:08
So, these are these like simulators.
34:10
There's this one called PioSolver that was at least popular in the day when I was playing. How do you spell that? P I O P I O PioSolver.
34:17
I think it's still the main one.
34:19
And at least when I was, you know, using it, that was back in 2016 or so, it would take many hours to run a sim.
34:28
So, you know, you'd be like, I want to know what the optimal play is with jack nine suited on a 10 eight four rainbow board or something like that. And then let it run.
34:36
Folks listening, I have no idea what that means either.
34:38
It's like I don't know how technical to go.
34:39
I love how that sounds though.
34:42
Yeah, there's so much jargon in poker. I need a rainbow board.
34:44
That's probably where we would start.
34:44
We would start with glossary because there's so many there's so many terms.
34:50
The vocab is is, you know, there's there's just so much going on there.
34:52
But yeah, so we would start running simulations so you can see and understand like, okay, this is this is what the optimal solutions would be in these certain situations.
35:01
Because once you know what the optimal solutions are, then now you can you're sort of equipped with this like really solid baseline of what the the perfect play is where you don't have any information about your opponent that you can just follow and know that you know, at worst you'll be breaking even, but you'll still be beating them.
35:18
But then because you know what the perfect play is, you can look for ways to exploit their screw-ups because in reality, everyone, even the pros, are making mistakes.
35:26
They aren't playing this perfect GTO style.
35:30
But you can't really know the way that they're screwing up until you know what the GTO is in the first place.
35:34
So, it acts as this like baseline benchmark of high quality play.
35:38
So, we would sit and we would study these charts and if over that course of 8 weeks, I got you so that you were able to like emulate these charts to you know, I don't know how to quantify it, but to a good amount, that would be more than sufficient to beat Jason.
35:55
Because he's, you know, he's not a full-time pro. He's good.
35:56
Like he's played a lot and we've only played once.
36:01
And I was more just like bemused at the amount of words that were coming out of his mouth.
36:03
Well, I was going to say if his poker is anything like his basketball, his ability to [ __ ] talk Oh, man. incredible. I mean world-class.
36:11
He's very good at getting under your skin if he wants to get under your skin. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
36:14
We've been at a few parties together and he has he knows how to ruffle feathers, but he's so funny. I love him.
36:22
Excellent interviewer and moderator.
36:22
I just want to second the recommendation that was made earlier. Okay.
36:28
So, let's depart from the training for a bit. We may come back to it.
36:35
Actually, let me ask a question I haven't asked in a long time.
36:40
Maybe similar this is like we're kicking in the gears, starting the old car, trying to like turn the key. Get it to turn over.
36:47
If you could predict the main reasons, the failure points, the reasons I would quit in those first 8 weeks, what do you think they might be?
36:59
Assuming that I had the time. Right. Right. And the interest.
37:01
What are the what are the things that might break me or cause me to walk, give up? Mhm.
37:08
If for some reason you couldn't wrap your mind around what these charts mean, I guess that would be a sort of breaking point, but I just don't see that ever happening to be honest.
37:18
So, it would be more that I think the reason why you'd walk away is because you're like, actually this isn't that much fun and I'm not playing for I don't care enough about beating Jason.
37:26
You're not playing for super high stakes.
37:29
And you're like, this is not worth my time.
37:31
I'm just using Jason as a stand-in cuz it's fun. All right. Okay.
37:34
I don't I don't care enough about beating anyone. Or exactly.
37:37
Like they're just the opportunity cost would be too high.
37:38
That would be the only reason, I think, cuz I think you would find it fun otherwise.
37:45
And I would have to I wouldn't have to, but ensure that I have a certain frequency of play after putting in 40 hours a week for 8 weeks.
37:52
Otherwise, the decay rate would be brutal.
37:56
and part of that time, by the way, in that 40 it's not just studying the charts, it's also going out and actually practicing and getting real because assuming you're going to play one-on-one in the in the flesh.
38:05
Um so, a a big part of poker that we haven't touched on yet as well is emotional control, understanding yourself and your own emotional, you know, your own biases, not only cognitive, but also the way, you know, different negative emotions will will arise, which they will in the game, particularly with someone like Jason who is so adept at like saying things to needle.
38:25
And that's a big part of the game.
38:26
Getting the verbal bamboo shoots under your fingernails That would be as important, particularly if you're playing for a particular, you know, you're training for a big match.
38:38
The mental game side of it.
38:38
You know, cuz it ultimately you can study all the charts and think you're a GTO machine and like, oh, I'm I'm fine, but then you get down there and he looks you in the eyes and it's like, well, you screwed up that hand, Tim.
38:49
Like what are you going to do?
38:51
What are you going to do, huh?
38:52
You know, and just goes full Jason on you.
38:53
Like you'll forget everything, the red mist.
38:55
Um I call it the white noise. Red mist. I've never heard that. Okay, I like it. mist descends.
39:00
Like if So, there's there's two mental blocks That's when one might go tilt. Tilt. Exactly.
39:07
If I if I'm catching the lingo. Yeah, tilt. Very good.
39:08
For those who don't know, tilt is what people do basically when their emotions get the better of them and they start playing badly.
39:17
Now, is monkey tilt just an exaggerated version of that? Yes. Okay, yeah.
39:22
Monkey tilt is just like one of the flavors.
39:27
Now, the reason that this is fresh on the mind is not too long ago, I was in a a non-sober state and decided that it was the perfect time to start making stock trades.
39:37
And my friend was watching me and he's like, I think you may be full tilt right now and I was like, do I look excited? Do I look upset? I'm not I'm not on tilt.
39:50
Those didn't work out very well, those traits.
39:52
But the red mist, when the red mist but you call it the white what?
39:56
Well, so there's there's two. There's the white noise.
39:57
So the white noise is when it's less about So red mist is when you're angry.
40:04
Someone has wound you up.
40:06
That would probably be my Achilles heel. Right. The white noise.
40:09
Yeah, and the white noise is where for whatever reason, perhaps you know, you're just really tired or you're really stressed, but you'll go and consult your brain and it comes up with nothing. Okay, yeah.
40:22
You're just beach balling. Just beach ball.
40:23
Yeah, so it's And I've had that a few times.
40:25
Like I remember having it in the World Series day four or something, day five and it was a really big pause and I just needed to think.
40:34
And then but then my brain was like, well, this is a really important decision, you know, you just really pay attention to this one.
40:37
Like, are you paying attention?
40:39
Well, I'm not sure you're paying attention. Listen to me.
40:41
And so there's this little voice and then I was like, okay, pay attention.
40:44
Let's count the combos of what they've got and just nothing.
40:49
So in the end I was like, you know, my system two.
40:50
Have you met with system one, system two? No.
40:53
Okay, uh Oh, wait a second. System one, system two.
40:55
Is this like Daniel Kahneman?
40:57
Yeah, it's a Daniel Kahneman thing.
40:58
Maybe if you could just give some context.
41:00
His thesis is that we have two modes of thinking.
41:02
System one is like your intuitive.
41:04
Like if I ask you, what's 5 + 5?
41:06
You immediately know the answer is 10.
41:09
Just so you it kind of your gut instinct.
41:10
I just got a shot of adrenaline cuz I thought you were going to make me do multiplication tables. Well, wait. Woo! Okay. All right.
41:15
So that's your system one.
41:15
It's just the things you immediately know an answer to or you you know, it's like an unconscious process.
41:22
You know, if you technically it's system one if you're driving down the street and someone cuts in front of you, you'll you'll your body will take over and you'll swerve cuz you don't have time to do a sort of cost-benefit analysis of going left or right.
41:32
And then your system two is the like conscious thinking. Mhm.
41:35
So if I was to ask you what 471 + 88 is It would be 500 and 60 I didn't even forget the numbers now. Nine? 471 and 88. 471 and 88. What's that? I got that wrong. 471 Yeah.
41:54
Nine, five five five five nine. Is that right? 559 I've no idea.
42:02
Five it's 500 Well, I can't even Anyway Whatever that was.
42:05
You can't you can't use your gut feelings for that. Right.
42:10
You have to think it through.
42:10
You have to do the calculation mentally in your head.
42:12
So that's your system two.
42:14
And poker is really interesting because I'm on five hours of sleep.
42:19
I just want to buy myself a little bit of wiggle room on the mental math.
42:24
answer my own question and I have no excuse.
42:27
May I make a quick aside? Mhm.
42:27
One of the coolest things I've ever seen was when I was 15 as an exchange student in Japan and I I I got to know multiple kids because it's mandatory that every kid learn how to use an abacus.
42:42
And something like one out of every 30 or 40 kids would get so good that they no longer needed the physical abacus.
42:50
They could see it in their minds.
42:50
And so for party tricks their friends would just lob these like three-digit multiplication problems at them and they could come up with the answer.
42:59
It would take them a second because they actually had to physically map it out.
43:04
map it out and move these beads and so on in their minds, but astonishing.
43:07
My partner Igor can kind of do that. Yeah?
43:12
It was one of the ways he got me, honestly.
43:13
He just just throw numbers at him and he'll He hasn't done it in a while and he'll hate that I've mentioned this cuz now everyone's going to do it to him, but he can usually answer within like a second or two. Wow, that's fast. Yeah, it's hot.
43:27
Rock stars to mental mathematics, you know?
43:30
Yeah, so those are I can't remember where I was going now.
43:32
So where you were going is we were talking about system one, system two and that white noise moment. Yes.
43:38
And that is not a time that you can rely on system two.
43:39
Is that what you were going to say or is that Right, exactly.
43:42
Cuz system two has shut down. System two is offline. Yes, offline. It says not compute. There's nothing there. Hello. 404 404 404.
43:47
Yes, the screen of death.
43:51
And it's bad when that happens in poker. That's [ __ ] terrible. Yes.
43:57
And that is you know, if you're playing you know, it could be various reasons.
44:01
It can be because you're wound up.
44:03
Someone's gotten under your skin.
44:06
Uh that will shut it off, but also just pure adrenaline and stress.
44:09
You know, you're excited.
44:11
Even I've had it when I had a really good hand. Yeah.
44:15
And I was really I was like, oh man, I'm going to win a huge pot here. This is so exciting.
44:17
And I'm like, well, I need to think through what the optimal bet size is. And again Yeah.
44:23
Cuz I just it just it's it's so hard because I think you'll you'll put into Well, you know this stuff better.
44:27
Like your your sympathetic nervous system is in is in play, right?
44:31
So you're kind of in fight or flight and that is not conducive to slow cognitive thought.
44:37
It's conducive to immediate you know, physical stuff really useful for, but not so good for the mental.
44:43
So let's talk about the regulation, the self-regulation.
44:44
So I'm in front of me some notes, obviously you can see them.
44:48
Those who are on audio only will not be able to see them.
44:52
That's fine cuz it makes me sound more professional if you think I'm doing everything off the top of my head.
44:57
So at one point you turned 500 euros into 1.
45:00
25 million euros, which is around 1.
45:02
7 million and if I'm getting roughly Mhm.
45:07
I believe that that math right.
45:07
That was at the EPT San Remo.
45:12
And it was 500 euro buy-in or $500 It was a 500 euro satellite tournament into the main event buy-in which was 5,000 euros.
45:21
So everyone was buying in for 5,000, but I won my way in because I couldn't afford the 5,000. Yeah.
45:26
I I won my way in through a feeder smaller tournament.
45:28
So a few just housekeeping questions about this.
45:32
How long after that first tournament win after the TV show was this?
45:40
This was 2010, so five years. Wow. All right.
45:47
So five years later this happens.
45:50
Presumably in this tournament there was less and then crying and running away from the table. Correct. Okay.
45:56
So what type of self-regulation did you learn over that period of time and then subsequent to that?
46:03
Oh man, that that tournament was nuts because you know, the TV show was in 2005.
46:09
I didn't actually really turn fully professional whereby I was living off it until 2000 like late 2008. Mhm.
46:16
You know, I was still sort of playing casually.
46:22
Couldn't really get my act together enough to to be you know, I wasn't good enough really to be living off poker before then.
46:27
I've been playing on the circuit now for like a year and a half and I played some bigger buy-in tournaments.
46:34
But I'd never made like any like really big final tables or anything.
46:36
And this Italy one kind of happened by accident.
46:40
It was a Remember the volcano that went off in Iceland? Yeah, I do.
46:42
And it shut down all of European airspace.
46:44
I was in the south of France for something completely different and I couldn't get home and someone I heard that there was this tournament going on in northern Italy and it was like a train ride away.
46:55
So I was like, all right, screw it. I'll go there. Thank god for volcanoes. Bless that volcano. Oh, yeah.
46:58
And then I arrived and there was this like this feeder tournament that is called a satellite that night where you know, it was 500 euro entry and one in 10 people would win the ticket for the 5,000 the main event.
47:08
So I won my ticket that night like 4:00 in the morning and then went and played it the next day starting at noon.
47:17
And a very strange thing happened to me actually at noon before the tournament started, but that's like another topic I think we can get into later maybe. Wait a minute. You can't leave that.
47:26
Just give us a teaser and then maybe we'll come back to it.
47:29
I had my first of a handful of completely unexplainable borderline metaphysical experiences. Okay. All right.
47:40
I won't say what it is, but it'll be better if we talk about it later.
47:44
But anyway, so I had a very strange thing happen just before the tournament started at noon.
47:47
And long story short, six days later it it turned out it ended up being the largest tournament ever held in Europe at the time.
47:55
Leaving that undescribed is what I call keeping the audience listening.
47:58
You got to keep watching.
48:00
And now for short commercial break.
48:03
I ended up being the attracting the biggest field of players of any tournament in Europe to date.
48:07
At the time at least was over like 1,200 people. So huge huge tournament.
48:14
And six days later I was on the final table down to the final nine.
48:18
How many hours a day are you playing?
48:20
I played like 10 hours a day on average.
48:23
Some days were a bit longer, some days were a bit shorter.
48:26
So you can imagine how exhausting that is.
48:29
Also because the longer you're going, the more intense it gets.
48:32
Cuz in the beginning the stakes are like, okay, I might lose my 5,000 euro buy-in, but as the tournament wears on and you know, there's less people, your your chip stack is worth more and more in terms of equity.
48:41
So your loss aversion starts to Oh, yeah. go go vertical.
48:45
But by the time of the like, you know, the end of day five where we play down to the final table, the final nine I you know, for ninth place I was already guaranteed I think 90,000 euros.
48:57
I only had like I mean, I think I had like 50,000 pounds to my name at this point.
49:02
So I was already guaranteed double my net worth for whatever happened on that final table.
49:06
And first prize was you know, the 1.
49:08
25 million euros or the 1. 7 dollars.
49:12
And that morning I did not sleep.
49:16
I mean, I I don't know what I I think I got some sleep the night before cuz I I'm somewhat of an insomniac anyway.
49:22
So if I have a something on the next day that's big I often will just not sleep very well and so you can imagine this cranks it up to 10. And I was dreaming.
49:29
You know, you I don't know if you ever have that where you've been doing a lot of a particular thing like trading or whatever and you sort of a semi sleep and see the thing? Yeah. I was playing poker.
49:38
I was like I was lying there I had pocket jacks, I had a king queen, you know, just these fictitious hands.
49:44
My brain just could not shut off.
49:46
And that was my night the night before and I was just like in a complete tears cuz I'm like I'm not going to play tomorrow like I'm a mess.
49:53
I was so nervous before the final table.
49:55
I like threw up three times on the way like walking down to the thing.
49:57
It was It was so stressful but like I don't know once we actually started playing once I got the cards in my hand it was just like I just switched into this like mode of I don't know it was weird.
50:09
Was that the first time that it happened or did that happen to you before?
50:15
Not to that extent because I think it was a perfect storm of like such extreme nerves and being such a mess beforehand and then like actually you know being able to play well.
50:26
I don't know that that day also felt more than I'd ever had it before but I had I had that before where I was like able to like get into the zone very well.
50:32
if you just spent all of your nervous energy. You know what I mean?
50:37
Like that tank was empty. Yeah.
50:39
So you needed to switch to a different tank.
50:41
Yeah, I don't know I but as I'll go into the story honestly it felt like I had something guiding me that whole time.
50:45
It was a very strange experience.
50:48
And anyway, I won and it was right.
50:51
Of course I'm not going to let go of this metaphysical experience.
50:52
So we're going to we are going to come back to that probably quickly but before we do for people who are not going to bank on having metaphysical experiences or or the feeling of being guided what else have you learned about regulating Yeah.
51:07
whether it's the white noise or especially for me of personal interest when someone is actively trying to [ __ ] with you and disrupt all of your systems.
51:21
The best thing I found is super simple is just breathing like three deep breaths.
51:27
It's so you know, cookie cutter but it just works. Yeah.
51:31
Just close your eyes and inhale in you can feel even if your heart's pounding like my my heart's actually pounding a little bit now cuz I'm retelling the story it's funny.
51:42
You notice that you feel your body you breathe in and you breathe it into your belly and I I imagine like my favorite color Yeah.
51:48
which is usually a mix of like turquoise and purple something like that and I just I'm sucking that in Mhm.
51:54
and it pulling it down into my stomach and then it's just like this settling feeling and it's half of it is just like bullshitting myself you know, like I'm just like Is it interrupt exactly?
52:06
And it and it just is enough to like settle your nervous system a second just ground you back to here and then be like okay now what's the problem you know.
52:13
Another thing that's helped as well is I just like laughing at myself. Yeah.
52:16
Like oh you're taking this one awfully seriously oh silly like like like almost like playing a silly little in my head just to like make light of the situation a bit but that requires a lot of ability to sort of step out and observe the situation cuz obviously once you're in the red mist particularly the red mist more than the white noise.
52:35
By definition you are like animalistic you are you you don't have the ability to step outside and observe a situation well.
52:40
So it's I think just practice really.
52:44
Practice being getting angry you know, practice reading I guess a way you could do it is go like go read something that you know makes you angry.
52:51
Like really like reliably gets your blood pressure up and then try and like build in some kind of trigger that makes you do the the three breaths thing. So for 99.
53:01
9% of the sadomasochistic users of Twitter myself included just go just go on Twitter.
53:06
Yeah, just go on Twitter every day you'll be reliably offset.
53:11
for 2 minutes Oh man Twitter. Oh.
53:15
What a nasty there we're at that's turned into. So sad.
53:16
You know as you're saying this I'm imagining I'm imagining Jason listening to this and formulating in his mind that's why I was smirking for if he sees me taking deep breaths he'd be like yeah Timmy take those deep breaths come on buddy you can do it sorry I upset you oh yeah I have yeah just close your eyes don't even look at me.
53:36
No close your eyes don't look at me don't worry.
53:37
Just don't let me know he's here you can't hear me yeah yeah yeah he'll just It's not like everybody's waiting for you or anything.
53:46
All right before before I lose track which I wouldn't but what the hell happened in the morning?
53:53
And you can contextualize this however you want. Sure.
53:55
No I mean what happened was you know, like I'd played a bunch of these tournaments not not of ones quite this size but I'd still played a lot of tournaments at this point.
54:05
And I was there before before it actually started usually I people turn up late but for some reason I was there in my chair before the first hand was dealt and I remember they the the company PokerStars whose event it was
54:19
you know, they dimmed the lights they're like welcome to EPT San Remo huge we've got incredible field blah blah blah and then they they dimmed the lights and they put on on the screens around the room just like a promo exciting promo video you know. And I remember distinctly the music it
54:32
And I remember distinctly the music it was Chemical Brothers Hey Boy Hey Girl which I always loved always loved that song. Yeah, good choice.
54:36
Yeah and you know, I was like oh this is cool yeah I'm excited and while I was just like listening to it just like out of nowhere this like like a bolt of lightning felt like it was like this like and this voice in my head said you are going to win this tournament.
54:55
And it was sounded like my own voice but what I can't remember is whether it was I am going to win or you are going to win but I'm pretty sure it was you are going to win but it literally sounded like my own voice.
55:03
And it was so your own voice.
55:06
Yes it was like the you know, when you speak in your head like the the voice you hear like at least I think most people have that right like You know, that Tuesday voice that everyone hears.
55:17
Oh man I'm letting it letting it all out here.
55:19
Um just you know, it sounded like how I would sound in my own head to myself.
55:26
And it said you are going to win this tournament.
55:29
And I got this rush of goosebumps like really like that you know, it's even happening a little bit like hairs up on my arms to the point where I was like what and I remember looking around the room like did did I just say that out loud did anyone else hear this and everyone else was just like in their phones or whatever and I was like well that was freaky.
55:48
Then the lights came back up and they're like okay cool shuffle up and deal and I was still like stunned and I was like okay cool and then I sort of a little bit forgot about it but then like halfway through the day I got in a big pot and I lost half my chips.
56:00
And you know, it's it's always a bad feeling when that happens and I was like oh man I'm nearly out the tournament.
56:02
I guess that was [ __ ] you know, so like there I had like little multiple moments over the next few days where I you know, clearly it was a real thing because I I like checked in on it you know, and I was like oh this and I even told a friend of mine on day mean check checked in on it meaning you remembered that it had happened?
56:22
That it had happened but because obviously the rational explanation to this is that like it was just a false memory you know, that I have retroactively remembered something that didn't really happen as a way of like making Exactly multiple points at which you referred to it.
56:37
Yes and I even have a friend my my my friend Melanie who was there and I bumped into her in the in the women's bathroom on like day two.
56:43
And she's like oh you got a lot of chips it's going well I was like yeah yeah things are going well.
56:49
Really weird I feel like I'm I'm going to win this in fact I like I almost had a premonition that I did and she's like yeah you seem really confident and we actually had this conversation and to the point that she after I won it she was like what the [ __ ] was that you you like predicted this.
57:00
I'm like I know I don't know.
57:04
So I don't know how to explain it.
57:06
Now I think you said string or series of experiences is that type of experience in poker isolated to that?
57:18
Or I should and it doesn't have to be constrained to poker. Right.
57:21
wondering what other stories you may have that Well I so I had a few so what was interesting was after Actually may I ask a I apologize for doing this herky-jerky questioning style but did you have any of those types of experiences when you were younger? No not that I recall. No.
57:41
I was not like a weird kid or you you know, that had Sorry let me start again. kid.
57:46
You weren't like the kid from The Sixth Sense.
57:48
No I wasn't the Sixth Sense kid no.
57:52
No I did not is to answer that question.
57:54
I had not really ever had I think anything you know, like I never saw a ghost or anything like that.
57:57
I'm not asking about ghosts.
58:00
I mean don't lump me in with the ghost hunters come on.
58:05
I don't but that I want to just paint the picture of that I was a very in fact like a deep skeptic. Right.
58:11
Well you still are a deep skeptic in a lot of ways.
58:14
Right right but like certainly then like I'd never had anything weird that I couldn't really explain in any conventional way.
58:18
I've certainly not had any time loops or or anything like that or weird voices in my head. Yeah.
58:25
But yes to answer your question of like is it a sort of common thing in poker?
58:29
No not so much common thing in poker but have you since had more of those types of experiences?
58:37
Not of like explicit premonitions no.
58:40
I've not nothing even close to that.
58:40
I have had one really notable thing that is Yeah I'm I I am happy to talk about it.
58:52
If you change your mind we can cut it later. Exactly.
58:55
For want of a better word I had an extreme energy healing.
59:00
An almost accidental one.
59:02
So it was a few years ago and seemingly out of the blue I started getting this very unpleasant sensation in my ear where it was like a sort of low frequency buzzing humming quite frequently like so so some some kind of tinnitus. Yeah.
59:20
But it was almost like a pressure and voices particularly men's voices became distorted to the point that they were unbearable to to to.
59:31
And it was really bumming me out cuz it I it would come in like clusters.
59:32
I would have it like for a few hours and it would go away and come later on in the day.
59:37
And it it was stopping me from doing any social events, because any any loud scenario was unbearable, but particularly men speaking.
59:43
I just couldn't handle it.
59:45
And this went on and off for a few months, and I went and saw a doctor, multiple doctors, and had hearing tests, and they said, "Oh, you're losing your hearing in the the low frequencies of your of your hearing in that ear.
59:58
We think you have Meniere's disease."
1:00:00
Meniere's is this degenerative thing, which usually people end up completely deaf when they have it, where basically the the nerve cells in in the inner ear uh start dying.
1:00:09
They don't really know why.
1:00:11
They think it's something to do with like salts and ion channels.
1:00:11
And it's incurable as far as I know.
1:00:14
And and so I was told that's what I probably have.
1:00:19
And they're like, "We're really sorry.
1:00:20
It's, you know, it was just bad news to find that out."
1:00:22
And also because one of the symptoms of it is you start having balance problems as well.
1:00:28
You get like these vertigo attacks, and people be like vomiting and so on.
1:00:31
And so you can imagine I was like really down in the dumps finding this out.
1:00:37
And then cut to 3 months later or so.
1:00:39
Uh I go to Burning Man, and I have for the first time one of these vertigo attacks on one of the one of the days.
1:00:46
I mean, I wasn't completely sober, but um it was not a good time as you can imagine having a vertigo attack while not being sober for the first time.
1:00:52
So I was then really down in the dumps.
1:00:55
And then on the last night of the burn I was talking to you know, some friends, and I started talking to this girl who I kind of I don't know that well, but she's a friend of a friend, and I mentioned about my ear, and she's like, "Oh, well, I I do energy healing. I'm an energy healer."
1:01:12
I was like, "I don't I I don't know what that is, but sure.
1:01:14
Do whatever you want to do. Yeah, have a go."
1:01:17
She's like, "I I I can try."
1:01:19
And she sort of put her hand over my ear for a few minutes, and then she says, I remember her saying something like, "There's something there. I need to get it."
1:01:27
And she starts sucking over my ear with her mouth.
1:01:29
Like not touching it, but just like And it was really unpleasant, cuz I was like, you know, you can imagine that sensation of someone like inhaling over your ear.
1:01:36
I was like, "Oh, please stop."
1:01:38
She's like, "No, I need to get this.
1:01:39
There's something there."
1:01:40
And she does it, I don't know, for a few minutes, and then eventually kind of collapses in a heap on the floor crying and freezing cold going, "Oh my god, that was that was bad.
1:01:50
I don't know what that was.
1:01:52
That was really really bad."
1:01:55
And I again, I was not fully sober, so this is a slightly retelling, but I just remember being so shocked because I I just didn't expect anything to actually happen.
1:02:05
I didn't really feel anything other than this like unpleasant sensation of her sucking, but I was so shocked at the way she was now reacting. Because she was shocked.
1:02:14
She she she she did not seem to expect whatever had had just happened to her.
1:02:17
And she said afterwards, or she, you know, she came around after a little while, and she's like, "I don't know what it was. It was like bad energy. I don't know. It's gone."
1:02:24
I'm very pleased to say it's fully gone and it's it's gone away.
1:02:27
And I was like, "Well, okay, what does that mean for my symptoms? Am I cured?"
1:02:30
She's like, "Yeah, yeah, you'll probably have symptoms for a couple more weeks, and then you'll be fine."
1:02:35
And that's exactly what happened.
1:02:38
And I haven't had any problems since. So, yeah. I don't know.
1:02:43
Uh it kind of just blew my world open because aside of that premonition thing, which I'd kind of forgotten about, I have not ever subscribed to anything like that. I like I'm a physicist.
1:02:54
In fact, like, you know, I I I kind of built a career of being a like materialist rationalist physicist.
1:03:02
And I don't have any time for any of that stuff. It's all nonsense.
1:03:04
It's all confirmation bias.
1:03:05
You know, like no one's ever actually tested it empirically or proven it, you know, like show me the study and I'll believe it.
1:03:12
But here I am having that experience with like two what feel like pretty incontrovertible data points that something that I cannot explain happened, and fortunately with incredibly beneficial to me. Like such a blessing. So, yeah.
1:03:32
So these these experiences are particularly interesting to me, right?
1:03:36
As direct first-hand experiences.
1:03:42
Of course, second-hand now that I'm listening, but are are particularly interesting to me when I'm speaking with someone who has demonstrated a very well-developed ability to use system two thinking and rationality and reasoning and mathematics and so on in not just the world, but in competitive arenas, right?
1:04:08
So you have a calibrated and also tested ability to use those faculties that you've developed.
1:04:19
And I'm glad you're mentioning these things just because weird [ __ ] happens, and the idea that we have it all figured out is ludicrous, right?
1:04:27
I even though humans at any point in history, whether you go back to the Middle Ages, Dark Ages, I'm sure, you know, 6,000 years ago or whatever it was with the Egyptians, I'm sure they thought they had most things figured out.
1:04:40
And it's just so clear when you begin to really poke and prod.
1:04:44
And as you gain more years and have more experiences, especially if you start pushing into some strange corners, that there's a lot we simply don't understand.
1:04:55
And even if we were to say not chalk those up to false memories, but let's just say we chalked it up to placebo effect. Right.
1:05:04
Nonetheless, even if it were just placebo effect, incredible.
1:05:07
That doesn't diminish the absurd inexplicability of it with the current sort of mechanisms that we understand, right?
1:05:21
And that's super exciting to me.
1:05:22
It's super exciting to me.
1:05:24
And it doesn't mean that you nor I would advocate that people accept everything at face value. Of course not.
1:05:31
There's horse [ __ ] everywhere.
1:05:32
I mean, we're sitting in Austin, like the the world capital of spirituality.
1:05:36
There's so much nonsense and so many charlatans, but I do pay attention to people like you who have demonstrated in other areas that they have the ability to think rationally and have some grasp of you have a very good grasp of science and so on, right?
1:05:57
That's kind of one of the first litmus tests for me.
1:05:58
If someone's sharing something with me, I'm like, all right.
1:06:02
Can this person show me Can they fight logically out of a paper bag, right?
1:06:07
Like can they Have they demonstrated any ability to use structured reasoning in other places?
1:06:15
Are able to cross-examine their own beliefs? Right. Exactly. Exactly.
1:06:27
And are they skeptical in other areas, or is it just like, "Okay, they accept anything as long as it's alternative, but they reject, you know, like Western science for any number of reasons that don't make sense to me."
1:06:43
Like if you've ever had antibiotics, Western science may have saved your life, and there there many other examples.
1:06:48
I certainly wouldn't be here for more for Western medicine, let's just say, not science.
1:06:55
I struggle with where to even take this, cuz there's so many directions it could go that are pretty strange.
1:06:58
And I don't want to co-opt physics, so please give me a slap here if this is just an amateur butchering the the good name of uh physics, but when I when I talk to I've had a number of cognitive scientists on the podcast, like Donald Hoffman.
1:07:17
I've had physicists on the podcast, although some would consider Michio Kaku more of a science communicator, but still has some fundamentals.
1:07:23
I've had private conversations certainly with a number of physicists.
1:07:30
And I'm I I I lack the the foundation of mathematics necessary to fully appreciate it, but when you even start to look at the conversations that were being had between Einstein and Bohr way back in the day relative to quantum mechanics, putting aside even the say the experimental design and evidence for quantum entanglement that have been done, I think in the Canary Islands and in other places, stuff is really strange, right?
1:07:59
Like just even space-time itself as an objective reality.
1:08:05
I mean, there are there pieces people can find online by qualified scientists on the death of space-time, right?
1:08:12
And thinking about that as almost a a UI that we have evolved to utilize, but not as the one and only user interface to whatever we might be contending with.
1:08:27
And like Donald Hoffman even thinks that well, and not just Donald Hoffman.
1:08:31
I mean, he he thinks that consciousness essentially gives rise to space. Yeah.
1:08:35
And while a lot of theoretical physicists poo-poo his ideas, and I think by and large they are correct to, even they would agree that it seems like space itself is an emergent property.
1:08:50
It's not a fundamental thing, you know, we're not objects rattling around in a big empty box.
1:08:54
It is a thing that emerges from basically interactions of mathematical functions.
1:09:03
Whether it's on a substrate or whether it I don't know if even needs a substrate.
1:09:05
I'm I'm too rusty on that stuff, but it's super weird.
1:09:06
If you dig into the fundamental structure of this reality.
1:09:11
And this is not like a, witchcraft shop with like tarot cards in the display case.
1:09:15
Not to knock that, right?
1:09:17
But like we're talking about some of the most esteemed scientists in a hard science with peer-reviewed publications and so on.
1:09:27
And if you just look at that stuff closely enough, like space-time is well space itself is essentially coming out of observers interacting with each other.
1:09:37
Consciousness is interacting with each other.
1:09:38
But it's really from what I can tell really granular legit physics.
1:09:42
I mean it's it's a math paper basically.
1:09:45
It's beyond my pay grade. So I don't know.
1:09:47
I may need your I want I want to send it to like Sean Carroll.
1:09:49
I don't know if you've ever had him on.
1:09:51
Sean Carroll I haven't had on but my brother introduced me to his podcast Mindscape. Is it Mindscape? Excellent podcast.
1:09:56
So if Sean Carroll is out there listening or if anyone knows him let him know I'm a I mean he may not want to hear this I don't know what his been will be a big but big fan of his podcast.
1:10:08
He is a damn fine thinker and a damn fine communicator. He really is yeah.
1:10:12
And he had an excellent episode on I think it was sort of a archaeological exploration of Stonehenge and other artifacts as external mnemonic devices. Hmm. Super cool.
1:10:33
So Liv, Olivia, question for you.
1:10:36
How do you as someone who is a trained rationalist materialist although you may not identify as solely those things.
1:10:44
I don't want to imply that.
1:10:47
How do you integrate some of these experiences into your life, your framework, world view?
1:10:55
What do you do with that? It's tricky.
1:10:56
I think with all these things it's like walking this fine line between gullibility, open-mindedness, whatever you want to call it and skepticism and and cynicism.
1:11:08
And I think where my poker training comes in handy is that poker trains you to think in probabilities.
1:11:15
You're never certain about anything.
1:11:17
Like you could have aces or you could be bluffing me with six four suited that missed the card it needed.
1:11:22
So you become very comfortable in terms of like living like holding concurrent belief states in your mind with different weighted probabilities of those things being true.
1:11:32
So with these like you know these two weird unexplainable experiences that I had, you know, whether it was the ear thing was just pure placebo which would still be crazy because it would mean that they basically I have the ability to heal my mind by thinking I was going through some kind of like thing being sucked out my ear. Fine.
1:11:48
Yeah, potentially heal your inner ear.
1:11:49
Yeah, like like I literally told I had a degenerative thing and I was going to go deaf and like no one's been cured of it and this is miraculously gone away.
1:11:56
So whatever the hell happened, the point is I didn't go and change my life.
1:12:00
I didn't suddenly go and be like that's it.
1:12:01
I'm going to go and practice energy healing and become a witch and so on.
1:12:04
Like I still am an adherent to the scientific method.
1:12:08
It's just that I've now broadened my you know but as you mentioned like you know it's almost like people believe in the scientism as opposed to being scientists.
1:12:15
A true scientist is that you are maximally curious and you truly you do your best to devise experiments in order to get reliable robust results that can you can use to predict the world and you try and minimize all the biases and things that could mess up your experiment and give you a faulty result.
1:12:31
result. And so there's no reason why I can't incorporate these two data points in terms of I mean I haven't gone out and done any science I really should I guess go and do some tests and see if I can try and recreate those that that experience but it's very
1:12:47
difficult because it was set and setting were very important in what happened there I would assume anyway I don't know that but Well when they make the Netflix series about it and they recreate the entire environment and then you can sit down and try to recreate Yeah. So what I
1:12:58
So what I I guess I've done is I have upweighted you know whereas before I would have given the probability that like energy healing is a real thing I would have given it like a you know well probably if you'd ask my old like skeptical self I would have literally said it's zero but you know I wasn't so such a bad Bayesian that I would give it actual zero I maybe like one in a million. Bayesian. Oh that's good.
1:13:23
We can't we don't have time to go down that road.
1:13:24
No no but like you know I would have given it a one in a million.
1:13:28
And now I have updated it you know with this evidence to how many orders of magnitude do I want to go?
1:13:36
I mean I will give it I at least give it a one in 100. Yeah.
1:13:41
But do I give it more than I still give it I think it's more likely that there is a an explanation through what we know conventionally that is still more probable than that it is something completely like some completely novel thing that is untapped.
1:13:57
But that said you know I've actually had a few other little ones I won't go into but like other little data points of just like weird energy things that have happened in certain scenarios where I've like it's helped me and so on.
1:14:04
But it's still important to keep the like skeptical hat on. Yeah.
1:14:13
And you know extraordinary beliefs require extraordinary evidence.
1:14:15
And in order for me to like give up everything that I know about current our current understanding of the world I would need significantly more data points and I think that would just not be practical way to go forward.
1:14:29
Yeah I would also add to that that if folks want to be proper skeptics you owe it to yourself and to the people you interact with to be an informed skeptic.
1:14:38
So if you are going to invoke the name of science and not invoke it like the name of Odin in some like you know God works in mysterious ways kind of way you need to actually my opinion have the ability to read a study and understand a study and study design.
1:15:00
It's not good enough to get the journalistic interpretation from the Wall Street Journal or fill in the blank online publication that's not good enough.
1:15:09
It's also not good enough for you to just get the gist of a few sentences in an abstract. Confidence intervals. Right.
1:15:15
So confidence intervals understanding powering because you also find folks who I was I've been saying sciences and but I guess it's scientism the sort of like capital S.
1:15:23
In either case it has a capital S and it's not good.
1:15:27
So if if you come to that one of the telltale characteristics that I've come across is they'll ask if something was a controlled study or a placebo control or randomized study or randomized control you know RCT and they'll say well how many how many subjects were there or what was the N if they get you know fancy and I might say 20 25 and they're like oh yeah small study. Nonsense.
1:15:49
And I'm like it's not that simplistic.
1:15:56
There are a lot there are quite a few variables you have to take into account.
1:15:59
So recommendations for folks who are interested.
1:16:01
Number one studying the studies by Peter Attia MD excellent series of blog posts that take you into the fundamentals of understanding how to dissect and understand a study.
1:16:15
Uh which includes meta-analyses and gets into the risks of taking meta-analyses as gospel also because garbage in garbage out and there's there's a lot to it.
1:16:27
Another recommendation actually a podcast that I did six years ago I realized when I pulled this up.
1:16:32
This is podcast number 194 The Magic and Power of Placebo.
1:16:37
This is with Eric Vance who wrote a book called Suggestible You subtitle The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal.
1:16:48
And he's written very widely on placebos an excellent book.
1:16:51
Uh many of his feature pieces are are exceptional.
1:16:54
There's a great piece in Wired magazine probably 10 years ago on the the evolution of the placebo effect and how it has changed depending on the culture Hmm. and other influences.
1:17:04
So in certain places say a placebo pill in a blue capsule or a red capsule will perform better than other colors.
1:17:11
It's really not a blue or red one at this day and age That's true. That's true yeah.
1:17:14
We could pick other colors but the the context that surrounds that is is really really interesting.
1:17:19
And then the last thing I would recommend people check out is cognitive biases and looking at both frameworks intended to avoid them and just getting a better understanding.
1:17:30
So you can go to Wikipedia and just look up cognitive biases and get a pretty basic list.
1:17:32
You can look at something like Poor Charlie's Almanack with Charlie Munger although it's a bit dense and Yeah it's intense.
1:17:40
it's a little user unfriendly in a lot of respects but what were you going to say?
1:17:45
I would recommend some of Julia Galef's work Yeah absolutely.
1:17:46
the scout mindset and motivated reasoning. What was the first one? The scout mindset. Scout mindset. Yeah.
1:17:55
I mean she did a TED Talk on it but she's just written a book on it as well.
1:17:58
And I think she actually goes in if I remember rightly she goes in and she says that g a l e f is Yes.
1:18:01
You know when I first learned about rationality like I I you know I read everything on LessWrong if people know that which is incredible resource for it and you you know really breaks down you know how you get this you know your brain which is like the map to match the actual territory which is the universe as accurately as possible.
1:18:20
But where I think it's maybe lacking a little bit now because I've had some of these weirder experiences where I wasn't you know in a the classical sense rational like I I you know clearly went off the beaten path into some like weird land but it was actually very beneficial to me even if it was like some completely useful fiction it was still useful. Yeah. Yeah.
1:18:41
You know and this idea of like useful fictions I think needs to be explored further. Yeah.
1:18:45
I'd also add that much like poker science I don't think a lot of folks realize is largely a game of probabilities.
1:18:54
You don't prove something 100% most of the time.
1:18:57
It's like well Literally never actually. Exactly.
1:19:00
I mean you you can have overwhelmingly compelling data even with say an observational study say with the sort of quintessential example would be a cigarette smoking causing lung cancer right?
1:19:13
But most of the time it's like this suggests with this degree of certainty that this is the case.
1:19:18
But when you start to look at the replication crisis which is not just in social sciences, it's all over the place.
1:19:26
And especially if you start to actually roll up your sleeves and get involved in science, whether that's as a subject.
1:19:34
I've been a subject in studies at all sorts of places.
1:19:36
I started doing it as an undergrad.
1:19:38
I was a subject in one of Daniel Kahneman's studies.
1:19:42
And it was not very intellectually engaging.
1:19:45
It was like space bar every time that like a you know, green square popped up or something, but needed the $7 an hour or whatever it was.
1:19:52
And I've been a subject at Stanford with heat exhaustion experiments.
1:19:54
That was also not terribly fun.
1:19:58
Marching to exhaustion with like a esophageal probe and an anal probe kind of meeting in the middle in fatigues with weights on a treadmill in a sauna to like complete some kind of mental collapse. Jeez.
1:20:11
Yeah, so why do I do these things?
1:20:12
Because I'm interested in seeing the process.
1:20:15
And even some of the best science you could point to in the most prestigious journals, when you actually get in there, it's a lot messier than people think, right?
1:20:23
And but people want to have confidence in something and religion has become so out of fashion that they look to the high priests of science and they're like, at least I have the confidence in this being true.
1:20:35
So I actually wanted one of my next videos I want to make on this, which is about basically these signaling prestige bad incentives that get society stuck in these kind of these traps essentially.
1:20:49
So we're stuck in one of those with the current status quo of of the way science is done and this is not at all to knock any scientists.
1:20:55
You know, they're doing their absolute best.
1:20:56
But this the way the system has been designed, we give all the reward to the people who first create the like, you know, make the new fancy discovery and don't give it any credit to the people who then actually replicate it and verify Yeah, totally true.
1:21:10
So there's this incredible incentive to be always looking for some new novel thing Yeah.
1:21:16
in order to get that, you know, your thing published in nature and get those research dollars for the next time.
1:21:19
But it doesn't actually really advance human knowledge because so many of these things don't replicate.
1:21:25
So it's sort of like we're sort of stuck in this spiral of just like everyone's trying to do whatever they can to get in the journal. There's a name for it.
1:21:31
So there's this really incredible short online book called inadequate equilibria. Okay.
1:21:35
By the guy who wrote most of the stuff on LessWrong, Eliezer Yudkowsky.
1:21:38
And I recommend inadequate equilibria Yes, it's it's name. Heavy name.
1:21:44
Oh man, I know it sounds it's so good.
1:21:46
It has one of the best things.
1:21:48
It has a a discussion a fictitious discussion with an alien from a perfect society.
1:21:52
A basic person who thinks everything that's wrong in our society is because of like there's bad people being greedy and then with the cynical smart economist.
1:21:59
And they have this three-way discussion talking about like reason why the US healthcare system is so expensive and it sort of goes into this meandering thing about cool premise. It's so good.
1:22:07
Like I like you must include this in the show notes.
1:22:11
How long would you say it is?
1:22:11
Um I mean ideally they read they could just read chapter three honestly.
1:22:16
It's like a 40 45 minute read. Oh, yes, sure.
1:22:18
Yeah, it's like a book chapter and you can kind of read it standalone.
1:22:23
We'll put this we'll put it in the show notes.
1:22:24
But basically it's it's talking about these traps that we can get into where it gets people now speaking game theory.
1:22:30
It it it gets society stuck in like shitty Nash equilibria.
1:22:33
So a Nash equilibrium is when, you know, two people or multiple people are playing in a strategy where it would be bad for anyone to deviate from that strategy.
1:22:44
It's like everyone's stuck doing that.
1:22:45
But not all Nash equilibria are actually created equal.
1:22:47
There are some where if everyone was doing you know, X instead of Y, everyone would be happier.
1:22:52
They'd also be like, you know, now stuck in a new thing.
1:22:54
Like a good example of this would be well, so I just made a a video on uh called the beauty wars uh about this like fictitious thing called Moloch, which I call like the demon of negative sum games basically.
1:23:06
It's like the god of negative sum games.
1:23:08
It's the a force of bad usually economic incentives that make people sort of sacrifice things that they want in order to optimize for a short-term goal.
1:23:17
And the example I talk about is these beauty filters on Instagram.
1:23:21
I don't know if you've spent any time They are horrifying.
1:23:23
I mean in how dramatic they are.
1:23:26
I'd never seen these things before until my girlfriend showed them to me and I was They're mad. dumbfounded.
1:23:31
They're so Well, they're horrifying not only in how impressively good they are at doing stuff, but also how now the really insidious ones are the subtle ones. Mhm.
1:23:42
Because there are some where you would never you'd go online and you would not be able to tell.
1:23:46
If you don't know the person or even if you know the person, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell.
1:23:50
You just think it's a good picture of them.
1:23:51
They're so subtle, but they're so effective.
1:23:53
It seems like there is clearly just some kind of optimal face structure that, you know, our eyes find pleasing and it just tweaks people, makes their eyes a little bit wider apart or a little bit bigger or their lips you know, it changes the proportions just right that it sets the dopamine spike off in your brain.
1:24:06
And it's going to make online dating really hard. Oh man.
1:24:09
Well, so as a girl on Instagram on the field.
1:24:12
I'm not on the playing field, but But right.
1:24:15
But were that sounds like a headache.
1:24:16
Well, and but also for people who use them.
1:24:18
Like so I'm a girl on Instagram, you know, I for a while certainly like made a lot of my career off the way I looked.
1:24:25
Like there's such an incentive pressure.
1:24:27
You know, if I want to keep playing the game of trying to grow my Instagram like a sexy picture Yes, the arms race exactly.
1:24:31
And that's what Moloch is.
1:24:33
Moloch is this like the god of arms races and it's like these these bad incentives.
1:24:37
Like the cheap thing for me to do is just to use one of these AI filters on on on all my pictures and I know I'm going to look good and I'm going to get a ton of likes and it'll grow my thing, but it will make me miserable in the process.
1:24:47
And if you polled most particularly women on on Instagram, they are not having a good time with these things either on themselves.
1:24:55
Because if you then like compare your face side to side, you're just like, man, I you you just it just makes you feel ugly.
1:25:02
And so we're in this weird situation where no one wants to do stuff that makes them hate their face, but they're doing it anyway.
1:25:07
And that's what the this it's like a lower Nash equilibrium.
1:25:11
You know, we could all be in a higher Nash equilibrium where we're not doing it, but instead we're all stuck down there because of these bad game theoretic incentives.
1:25:16
So this is my current obsession, this thing called Moloch and I think about it all the time.
1:25:21
M O L O C H for people wondering and we'll we'll link to that in the show notes.
1:25:26
So just to underscore this for folks because I do suggest that everybody check out your YouTube channel.
1:25:30
What's the best way for them to find your channel?
1:25:31
Probably the best thing is if they search for my name and then the beauty wars. Mhm.
1:25:36
That'll link to the video I just talked about. All right.
1:25:40
And then you can find my channel from And uh just for the spelling everybody, it's Liv l i v last name B O E R E E.
1:25:50
Which means I learned just beforehand drunk farmer. So they say. So they say.
1:25:56
And I did grow up on a farm. And I did drink a lot. It's so good. So good.
1:26:02
Yeah, Ferris, you know, the best I can tell You're a big wheel. It could be that.
1:26:10
It also refers to Ferris like ferrous oxide f e r o u s. Ooh.
1:26:15
Because apparently some of my progenitors were silversmiths.
1:26:21
I don't know how it all fits together.
1:26:24
Seems like a very dubious story.
1:26:26
I'm not sure, but I want I want some story to go along with the last name.
1:26:31
But I don't have drunken farmer. That's an amazing one.
1:26:34
Uh Liv, we should do a round two sometime.
1:26:37
We're we're practically neighbors.
1:26:38
We have so much we could talk about.
1:26:40
We've got a million other things even in the notes in front of me that we could cover and should cover.
1:26:45
I'm thinking about this training. Are you going to do it? We'll see.
1:26:49
Requires more mezcal to make that decision.
1:26:51
I think we could we could condense it down.
1:26:54
We don't have to do the full eight weeks.
1:26:55
I think commit to even three weeks honestly.
1:26:58
I think you would Jake would still be better than you at that stage. I have to say that. No, he would be. All right, three weeks. Three weeks.
1:27:06
I'm going to I'm going to sleep on that.
1:27:08
I do my best thinking when I'm asleep. Let me sleep on that.
1:27:13
Is there anything else that you would like to say, any closing comments, places you'd like to point people, anything at all you'd like to say before we before we wind this down?
1:27:23
No, I mean I guess do check out my YouTube.
1:27:27
Now I've moved to Austin and I'm like building a studio and everything.
1:27:30
I'm going to be ramping up production again.
1:27:31
So I would love people to go and just sub to my channel so that they catch my stuff.
1:27:36
Because of, you know, playing the rat race the attention wars.
1:27:39
That's the name of the next video is the attention wars which is about that like why Twitter and everything is making us so angry and hate each other. Oof, yeah. That's a big one. Talk about a nasty game.
1:27:49
Yeah, and Moloch Moloch's in that.
1:27:52
Moloch Moloch's all over that. [ __ ] Moloch.
1:27:56
So Liv, we're going to link to everything in the show notes.
1:27:58
People can find you at livboree.
1:28:00
com also, which I would imagine has links to many things.
1:28:06
And we'll put links to everything we've discussed, all the resources, inadequate equilibria, and uh all other good things in the show notes at tim. blog/podcast. And so nice to see you.
1:28:19
Thanks for taking the time. this is awesome. Thank you. Super fun.
1:28:23
And for everybody listening as per usual, thanks for tuning in.
1:28:29
And until next time, just be a little kinder to yourselves and to others than you think is necessary and take care.