Mental Models 104 - Bear Or Bull? | George Mack | Modern Wisdom Podcast 253

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   What's fascinating about Bezos,…

   1. GMGeorge Mack0:00

      What's fascinating about Bezos, he's very similar to Musk in the sense that he has one guiding principle that every decision goes through. So for Bezos, it's just, "If it can enhance the customer experience, let's do it." Rather than, like, profit margin, it's just long-term, long-term, long-term. "Will this enhance the customer experience?" So he says this example of, "10 years from now, will people say to me, 'I want slower deliveries and a higher cost?'" And he's like, "No, no, nobody's ever gonna say that to me. They're always gonna say, 'I love the fact that it arrives next day. I love how cheap it is.' Therefore, I double down on that." And then Elon Musk, for as complex as an individual as he is, as intelligent as he is in how much he understands, every decision goes through, "Will this get me nearer to Mars or not? It's yes or no." And it's very, like, crazy how somebody as complex, sophisticated, and nuanced as that has just one guiding thing that shapes every single decision. At the scale they're at, the, uh, decision you have to make is just, "Will this enhance customer experience, or will this get me nearer to Mars? Yes or no?"

   2. CWChris Williamson1:01

      Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I am joined all the way from Dubai by the man himself, Mr. George Mack. How are you?

   3. GMGeorge Mack1:08

      I'm not too bad. I'm not too bad. How are you?

   4. CWChris Williamson1:11

      I'm well. How could we not be well on the 25th floor, this beautiful Dubai Marina apartment? There's worse places to do a podcast, isn't there?

   5. GMGeorge Mack1:19

      Yeah. It's a contrast to Newcastle and Manchester, right? Strong contrast.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:23

      Or Skype.

   7. GMGeorge Mack1:23

      Yeah, and, or Skype, yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:25

      The year of Zoom finished up in Dubai. So yeah, not, not bad. Big year, 2020. A lot of stuff's happened. What's some of the main insights that you've realized in 2020?

   9. GMGeorge Mack1:35

      Oh, it's a good, that's a good question. Um, I was thinking obsessively about remote work and the effect that that has on location. Which, I mean, even the fact-

   10. CWChris Williamson1:45

       (laughs)

   11. GMGeorge Mack1:45

       ... that we're here right now is qui- quite a good little A/B test of that. Um-

   12. CWChris Williamson1:48

       Yeah.

   13. GMGeorge Mack1:49

       Proof's in the pudding. But it's gonna be very, very interesting 'cause we were saying, like, "Are you bullish or bearish on people moving," particularly out of the UK, because the UK has very poor weather. Um, and for me at the minute, I've been thinking if I move abroad, what, what would the checklist be, or if I want to work remote? And as long as it has good weather, good time zone, and, like, relatively good economic, social activity, what does the UK have that, that... You know what I mean? Like, the UK, for me, is only viable for a few months of the year, and it's gonna be very interesting to see how many people leave en masse, or if they do leave en masse.

   14. CWChris Williamson2:23

       Mm. And I think as well, that's probably not just gonna be for the UK. Everyone thinks the place that they grew up, unless it's unbelievably good-

   15. GMGeorge Mack2:31

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson2:31

       ... is probably a bit crap.

   17. GMGeorge Mack2:32

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson2:33

       You know, everyone's disparaging about their hometown, even if your hometown was Dubai Marina.

   19. GMGeorge Mack2:38

       Mm.

   20. CWChris Williamson2:38

       'Cause it's just what you're used to.

   21. GMGeorge Mack2:40

       Mm-hmm.

   22. CWChris Williamson2:40

       It's not cool or different anymore. So yeah, I wonder whether you're going to get mass swapping of populations from different countries.

   23. GMGeorge Mack2:47

       I think once you've opened that door, even though I do think it will, sort of pendulum will swing back to more and more office-based stuff. Once you've opened that door, there's some people who are gonna refuse to go back.

   24. CWChris Williamson2:56

       Mm-hmm.

   25. GMGeorge Mack2:56

       So it's a very, very interesting time to be living through. And whether, 'cause you've got two thought processes that run in your head. You've got obviously A, vaccine comes out and things go back to normal, but even then you've potentially got B, which is you have mass migration at levels you've never seen before. Like, I was chatting to somebody in the property business, and they said when COVID happened, they expected everything to come tumbling down. But actually they had the busiest two months that they've ever had. It was like the equivalent of a year. 'Cause I've got this idea that I've been thinking about, which is you have throughout childhood, you've kind of got very clear events. You've got primary school, you've got year one, you've got year two, or grade one, grade two. And then you go, in the UK, you've got GCSEs, you've got A-levels, you've got your degree. But then in adulthood, all you've basically got is house, marriage, kids, death.

   26. CWChris Williamson3:43

       (laughs)

   27. GMGeorge Mack3:43

       But I think that COVID-

   28. CWChris Williamson3:45

       Are those the, those are the three big ones? (laughs)

   29. GMGeorge Mack3:45

       ... COVID's now an event that exists, like, there's people who are like, "Oh, pre-COVID," and then post-COVID.

   30. CWChris Williamson3:50

       Mm-hmm.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. GMGeorge Mack15:00

      interesting/nuanced Coca-Cola's business is via classical conditioning. So they ha- they used, he talks about in the speech, of you want something that never has a negative feedback loop, you want something that can never have negative classical conditioning. So with... A good example of, of that or maybe even negative operant conditioning is you start drinking the drink, and the more you drink it, the more sick you get of the drink.

   2. CWChris Williamson15:20

      Mm-hmm.

   3. GMGeorge Mack15:20

      But Cola removes all sort of taste memory. It's built to remove all taste memory, so people can drink it like water and just keep ingesting it, keep ingesting it. So that's part of one of his principles for how it can become so big, is that you can never get sort of a negative operant conditioning loop going, or a negative classical conditioning loop going, so it's just constant positive reinforcement. And then he breaks down, okay, using classical conditioning, using operant conditioning, do we go for a hot drink or do we go for a cold drink? And he basically looks at the world, going back to numbers, looks at the world and says, "It's much easier to provide something that cools people down, therefore go for a cold drink, because on average, people want something that cools them down rather than heats them up." And they, people will drink Coca-Cola in the morning.

   4. CWChris Williamson16:01

      Mm-hmm.

   5. GMGeorge Mack16:01

      But hot drinks, people tend to drink o- at certain periods, whereas the cooling effect people then associate, y- so when you're hot and you drink Coca-Cola, you have that cooling effect, you associate it with something positive.

   6. CWChris Williamson16:14

      Mm-hmm.

   7. GMGeorge Mack16:14

      So it's just fascinating, that, seeing all these principles intertwine, and he even gives examples with the trademark and with the, um, the almost changing the recipe as ways where Coca-Cola almost fucked up, but their business model is so good-

   8. CWChris Williamson16:27

      Mm-hmm.

   9. GMGeorge Mack16:27

      ... based on these mental models and these principles, that they still are getting there/have got there.

   10. CWChris Williamson16:32

       Do you think... How much of this do you think was thought through, and how much of it is emergence and luck?

   11. GMGeorge Mack16:37

       Good question. Good question. Well, he argues that you could have thought it through. And I guess that's why he invested in the business.

   12. CWChris Williamson16:41

       'Cause he's post-kalking the shit out of it.

   13. GMGeorge Mack16:42

       He is post-fucking- kicking the shits about it. But his basic argument is, is these elementary principles still exist-

   14. CWChris Williamson16:47

       Mm-hmm.

   15. GMGeorge Mack16:47

       ... so even now, like, let's say for example, you were sitting down and trying to come up with certain ideas. Using those fundamentals-

   16. CWChris Williamson16:54

       Yeah.

   17. GMGeorge Mack16:54

       ... will still be incredibly... Whether you can come up with Coca-Cola, obviously there's so much luck involved, um, and there's so... I mean, you gotta l- you've gotta go through the whole talk and you see how much nuance there is to the ways of thinking about it-

   18. CWChris Williamson17:04

       Mm-hmm.

   19. GMGeorge Mack17:05

       ... but I would say those elementary principles of mathematics, um, stuff like, that you shouldn't avoid. He was saying, like, "We should always avoid letting people have our trademark, letting people do this." Um, classical conditioning, operant conditioning. If you actually then begin to look at so many different brands-

   20. CWChris Williamson17:21

       Mm-hmm.

   21. GMGeorge Mack17:21

       ... you just see these fundamental principles beneath them.

   22. CWChris Williamson17:25

       Mm-hmm. One of the interesting stories that I heard about Coca-Cola was, I remember the world's first portable water distillation unit, about three times the size of a refrigerator, and they were trying to look at different ways to get clean water. It was this philanthropist guy, engineer, and they were looking at different ways to get it to people, and they were thinking, like, "How on earth are we supposed to deliver something like this, of this size, to the backwaters of Africa, to places where there's no roads?" And as they're there, they're sat outside of a little kiosk café, you know, like, a classic sort of, uh, Third World café type thing that's just plastic chairs, and they looked, and it's got Coca-Cola branding above it. They're like, "Coca-Cola has access to give people Coke-"... where they can't get clean water.

   23. GMGeorge Mack18:20

       Mm-hmm.

   24. CWChris Williamson18:21

       Um, and that really is just notoriety. It's interesting when you think about that, when you really zoom out and you realize that the world isn't that big. It's massive from an individual perspective, but from a market perspective, like there's only one Coca-Cola. Pepsi are also big, and there's other drinks brands that are large, like Red Bull and stuff, but no one's Coca-Cola.

   25. GMGeorge Mack18:40

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CWChris Williamson18:40

       And there's only seven billion people. There, there, you can't ... There's no room for another Coca-Cola until you kill that one off. You couldn't have two running in parallel, but you could imagine another universe in which there's an earth with 35 billion people on. Is there room for competition then, do you know what I mean?

   27. GMGeorge Mack18:58

       Mm-hmm.

   28. CWChris Williamson18:58

       Um, but yeah, that's, that's interesting. One of the mental models that we haven't spoken about yet is anchoring.

   29. GMGeorge Mack19:05

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson19:05

       And I'm a big fan of anchoring, and I was reading not long ago, uh, about ... It was from Rob Henderson's newsletter about how people can use anchoring to get laid. So can you explain what anchoring is first? And then I'll, uh ...
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Do you think Amazon…

   1. GMGeorge Mack30:00

      a- soon as you get to a certain age, that's just almost unfathomable for most people. So offering that pre-built in would be very, very interesting.

   2. CWChris Williamson30:07

      Do you think Amazon should be broken up? Is it too big?

   3. GMGeorge Mack30:10

      Fuck knows. Like, I think, um, one of the fascinating ones is sort of John, John Rockefeller's, uh, biography. And you begin to learn about that, like, how they, they, um, they broke up his businesses.I think because of the power law distribution, they're gonna end up where they own everything. But what's interesting from this Charlie talk, he says when you go through the inversion list, one of the things... so stuff you should avoid is to avoid envy. And he says that the psychology textbooks, if you go through them, there's, there's nothing on envy, right? Which is crazy, because in the Bible, it's like one of the first things, "Thou shalt not envy," and how big of a thing envy is. And he says the way to kind of get around envy is to deserve it, so people are a lot less resentful if you have like a world-class quality product. So he says, um, in here, "Third, with such- with so much success coming..." So when he's talking about Coca-Cola's thing. "... we must avoid bad effects from envy. Given a prominent place in The Ten Commandments, because envy is so much a part of human nature, the best way to avoid envy recognized by Aristotle is to plainly deserve the success we get. Therefore, we will be fanatic about product quality, quality of product presenta- presentation, and reasonableness of prices, considering the harmless pleasure it will provide." And Amazon have kind of done that. So they've still got a lot of envy, a lot of resentment, a lot of hatred, but nobody's boycotting them, and the-

   4. CWChris Williamson31:26

      From people, from people who are messaging off phones charged by wires they bought on Amazon.

   5. GMGeorge Mack31:31

      Exactly. And then, and then they're going onto Twitter or they're going onto Instagram, uh, complaining about it on an AWS server, right?

   6. CWChris Williamson31:39

      (laughs)

   7. GMGeorge Mack31:39

      So it's, um... That, that's the thing about Amaz- Everybody I know who resents Amazon for like the tax side of things and how much they're monopolizing everything still uses them. So it's kind of... Yeah, I, I don't know. It's a very interesting question.

   8. CWChris Williamson31:54

      I've watched a really... We both have watched some interesting Amazon documentaries over the last few months, and I started to see just how beastly their operation is, and you realize that there's probably going to come a point pretty soon where that growth and the amount of impact that they have, especially when they start to ramp up automated delivery, perhaps with drones or with driverless cars, that you'd be able to do a one-hour delivery, remote, warehouse to customer, without anyone intervening.

   9. GMGeorge Mack32:29

      Well, the craziest thing about, um, Amazon is that AWS was, or still is, m- profitable, as profitable or more profitable than Amazon, and nobody really knows what AWS is. So that's another business that they own.

   10. CWChris Williamson32:43

       What is Amazon Web Service again?

   11. GMGeorge Mack32:44

       Amazon Web Service. So anybody... Almost like Netflix, for example, will use Amazon Web Service, so you can imagine the amount of bandwidth that they, they, they flow through, right?

   12. CWChris Williamson32:52

       (laughs)

   13. GMGeorge Mack32:53

       So... And that, that's Bezos again. What's fascinating about Bezos, he's very similar to Musk in the sense that obvi- I think people can get so complex with it, and I understand why, but... And obviously these two are geniuses that not everybody can imitate or mimic, but he has one guiding principle that every decision goes through. So for Bezos, it's just, "We just care about the customer." That's all. "If it can enhance the customer experience, let's do it," basically. If you look at every decision Amazon make, if you go back through the book, um, uh, The Everything Store, every decision he makes is, "Will this enhance the customer experience?" Rather than like profit margin, it's just long-term, long-term, long-term. "Will this enhance the customer experience?" So he says this example of, "Ten years from now, will people say to me, 'I want slower deliveries at a higher cost'?" And he's like, "No, no, nobody's ever gonna say that to me. They're always gonna say, 'I love the fact that it's arrived next day. I love how cheap it is.' Therefore, I double down on that." And then Elon Musk, there's an interview on Lex Fridman's show where... I've forgot who it is that worked with him, and he said that Elon Musk, right, for as complex as an individual as he is, as intelligent as he is, and how much he understands, every decision goes through, "Will this get me nearer to Mars or not? Yes or no?" And it's very like crazy how somebody as complex, sophisticated, and nuanced as that has just one guiding thing that shapes every single decision, whereas a lot of us are like, "Uh, I've got this part of my life, I've got this part of my life, I've got this interest, I've got this." Whereas for those two, at the scale they're at, the amount of decision you have to make is just, "Will this enhance customer experience or will this get me nearer to Mars? Yes or no?"

   14. CWChris Williamson34:33

       Well, it makes for... When you've got a chaotic world with an awful lot of different decisions, you need a simple guiding principle.

   15. GMGeorge Mack34:39

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson34:40

       And I wonder whether in a world with far too much stimulation, um, people with poorly defined goals, goals that they've adopted from their family, from their culture, from what they think they should want, it's not surprising that people struggle with decision-making, because the single guiding principle that they have isn't theirs, and there's 40 of them.

   17. GMGeorge Mack35:05

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very important.

   18. CWChris Williamson35:06

       They have... They're being pulled in a million different directions, which comes back to direction over speed, right? Or just have a direct.

   19. GMGeorge Mack35:12

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson35:13

       Before you even think about speed, just get a direction.

   21. GMGeorge Mack35:16

       Mm-hmm.

   22. CWChris Williamson35:16

       Um, and yeah, that's a... that's a really interesting insight. I, I, I wonder how people can try and find a guiding principle in their life. You know, because it's too trite to say, "Oh, just do what makes you happy," you know? Like, you just sit and masturbate at home all day or-

   23. GMGeorge Mack35:34

       So maybe that's your guiding principle, right? Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson35:35

       Fanta-... That would work, yeah.

   25. GMGeorge Mack35:37

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson35:37

       Um, what else have you got for us?

   27. GMGeorge Mack35:39

       So this is one I've, I've made up. I don't think we've been through it before. We may have done. Um, so it's called opportunity costs blindness, so OCB, a play on sort of OCD, um, where... This is really hard to explain without experiencing it, but just how blind we are to the amount of opportunity cost there is. So often when I've found... I mean, I've not, I've not had that many relationships, but when you're in a relationship, it's either them or single, them or single, them or single. And it's so hard to actually realize that it's them or single or eight billion other people you haven't been with.

   28. CWChris Williamson36:17

       (laughs)

   29. GMGeorge Mack36:17

       So, it's so... But it's so hard to know the opportunity. Same with jobs, like we'll, we'll know certain people where they're miserable in a job and it's either, okay, job-... or leave job, an unemployed job, or le- uh, leave a job at a... So there's only one opportunity cost, but they forget how much there is, 'cause it's like the law of large numbers. I think we really struggle, or I really struggle, to just comprehend how much else exists when you can only see the options that are available to you. And you only realize that in hindsight when you go, "Fucking hell, I was, like, in this job for four years, and I was, like, having this argument with my boss every single day in the shower. How much now I'm in this other opportunity, like, how laughable that was and how serious I took that," because you don't even comprehend the amount of opportunity out there. So I think almost having a filter of, "I, right now, do not... I'm... I've got such opportunity-cost blindness. I cannot even fathom how much opportunity there is out there."

   30. CWChris Williamson37:09

       Mm-hmm.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. CWChris Williamson45:00

   2. GMGeorge Mack45:00

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson45:00

      Like, I thi- I, I think there's very few people-

   4. GMGeorge Mack45:02

      Well, I'd rather talk about myself. I, 'cause I always feel like as soon as I, you start talking about somebody else, you don't know them as well as yourself.

   5. CWChris Williamson45:08

      Mm-hmm.

   6. GMGeorge Mack45:08

      Whereas at least I know me very well. And I think that you, you can easily be in a situation where you give other people advice and you're just so detached from it. You see it, like, so much online and I just think it's a bit...

   7. CWChris Williamson45:18

      What mental model do you wish that you could implement more?

   8. GMGeorge Mack45:20

      Oh, that's a better question. Um, leverage. Leverage, 'cause I'm a workaholic by trade. Like, like, so, like, my, when I was like 11, my dad bet me I couldn't do 10 kick-ups with a football. I then spent five years training five hours a day, doing kick-ups with a football. If anything, it was a great fit-

   9. CWChris Williamson45:38

      To do 10?

   10. GMGeorge Mack45:38

       To do 10, no, no-

   11. CWChris Williamson45:38

       Five hours to get 10 kick-ups?

   12. GMGeorge Mack45:39

       I got, I got a lot better, I got a lot better at it. Um, so I started, that came as a little mini job when I was younger. But that taught me, like, power of working hard and growth mindset. So it was super valuable in that respect. But it also means that I will then try and do 100 responsibilities and I won't understand necessarily the power of leverage as much. So having more people working for you, having more code working for you, having more media working for you, is a, uh, an unbelievable tool that I'm only beginning to wrap my head around.

   13. CWChris Williamson46:12

       What was that quote that you gave me about l- lazy people make the best employees, because they'll find shortcuts to do work?

   14. GMGeorge Mack46:19

       Yeah. Exactly. So you, that, that's the part, like, I, I've said this before. If I could, you know, talk about friends and family, I wouldn't give them, like, any advice or that side of things, 'cause it's so nuanced to them. The only thing I'd say is get working knowledge of Zapier, 'cause if you have, if you have-

   15. CWChris Williamson46:33

       (laughs)

   16. GMGeorge Mack46:34

       If you have... And the reason why is because of leverage and automation.

   17. CWChris Williamson46:36

       Shout out to Zapier.

   18. GMGeorge Mack46:37

       I think Zapier, if you, if, again, going back to government stimuluses, if Zapier said, "We will pay for your five-day leave to learn Zapier," if the government said that, the value to the economy would be un- The amount of people who right now are going on emails, copying something, putting it in a Google Sheet, or going from a Facebook ad and putting it into a different document. All Zapier is, is every major app connected. And this isn't a sponsorship, by the way, I do this for free.

   19. CWChris Williamson47:01

       Yeah.

   20. GMGeorge Mack47:01

       Connected. I genuinely think if you taught people that no-code skill, the ability to automate things and almost become like a, like a developer of 18 months in, like, the space of three days, the productivity for the economy would be amazing. And the first time you have a Zapier thing that works for you, and you can just see this flowing. Like, we could be, like, now I've got Zaps running, it's the best thing ever. I know once our chat's done, it's gonna have taken 100 people from different Facebook ads and it's already automated and sent them an email. Whereas previously, I'd have to go in, get the CSV, send that. So Zapier, for me, in terms of an applied mental model of leverage, is the best thing for somebody who can't code.

   21. CWChris Williamson47:40

       That's interesting. That is really, really interesting. I, um, I like... I was taught this from my first ever boss of events company, is outsourcing. And I know that Naval's a, a big fan of if something costs you less than your hourly rate to do it, then either outsource it or just throw it away. Um-

   22. GMGeorge Mack48:00

       So, yeah, that, I think that's a great nuanced point, if it's the hourly rate type things. But sometimes I will see it with certain businesses that I work with, where they outsource too much and then they become, they become foreign to it, and they just trust people who say they're experts at it.

   23. CWChris Williamson48:16

       Mm-hmm.

   24. GMGeorge Mack48:16

       Like one of the best D2C guys I've met, this guy called Danny Book on Twitter, he said to me, he went into direct to consumer and decided to do all the ads himself. Obviously he outsources, like, learning, and he does hire consultants to come in and train them. But he said, "This is the most fundamental part of the business. I'm not outsourcing it." Whereas I've seen so many other businesses just like, "This is the most fundamental part of our business. Boom, pass it over there." So it's really interesting, like how that balance between outsourcing, but also how do you not get bullshitted by the people you've outsourced to. So you almost need a enough base level knowledge. And maybe that's, like, n- applied mental models for, like, knowing basic numeracy, so when they say certain things to you, you can check things off. But that's an issue that Charlie talks about, uh, that you need these fundamental mental models in place. 'Cause if you do outsource, you need to be able to have enough knowledge of that field to be able to call bullshit-

   25. CWChris Williamson49:01

       Mm.

   26. GMGeorge Mack49:02

       Otherwise, you can just ... somebody can sound smart and just trick you. (exhales)

   27. CWChris Williamson49:07

       I wonder how many people lie on the side of the spectrum where they outsource too much, versus how many lie on the side of the spectrum-

   28. GMGeorge Mack49:15

       Good question.

   29. CWChris Williamson49:15

       ... where they do too much. I would say, based on my experience, more people are on the latter, and that might be a selection effect from the type of friends that I've got. But workaholics, people from a classic working class background, um, they will tend to look to save money-

   30. GMGeorge Mack49:33

       Mm-hmm.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:08:17

   That's not great. Uh,…

   1. GMGeorge Mack1:00:00

      in the UK, the government NHS is the largest buyer of fax machines in the world, how backwards they are, I, I reckon even I, with a bit of HTML and five hours on Code Academy could probably hack into it. So, I'm pretty bearish on that unless they bring the best people in. So, I still think it's gonna be a shit show for a while yet.

   2. CWChris Williamson1:00:17

      That's not great. Uh, Brian Rose for London mayor, bear or bull?

   3. GMGeorge Mack1:00:21

      Massive bull. Yeah, massive bull.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:00:22

      Are you?

   5. GMGeorge Mack1:00:22

      Yeah, massive bull.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:00:23

      Are you really?

   7. GMGeorge Mack1:00:23

      I don't know. Well, I think he's like-

   8. CWChris Williamson1:00:24

      Is he paying you off?

   9. GMGeorge Mack1:00:25

      ... I think he's third favorite, and, um, I know you're probably a bear. I, I mean, I, yeah, I don't really have an opinion. I'd probably say bull.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:00:31

       Kanye 2024, bear or bull?

   11. GMGeorge Mack1:00:37

       Bear because he'll have to be... If he could win Republican or De- Democrat, then I'm, I'm a bit bull 'cause then he might do a Trump, but I think he'll have to be Independent, and I don't just don't see that happening anytime soon.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:00:47

       Yeah. The thing about Kanye is that going on Rogan and getting asked hard questions and then sitting in silence for 30 seconds-

   13. GMGeorge Mack1:00:55

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:00:55

       Like I, I, so many people are seduced by artistic capacity in one domain and presuming that it means genius across them all. Like, there's not that many polymaths out there, and-... that, that kind of, like, bizarrely, they're quite easy to spot. Like, you hear Eric speak and you're like-

   15. GMGeorge Mack1:01:15

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:01:16

       The, he'll, he'll move seamlessly from cephalopods to classical Latin music to, like, complex physics, to whatever. Stephen Wolfram, you'll hear him move between crazy different areas. It comes back to that kind of blagging it mentality.

   17. GMGeorge Mack1:01:31

       Fashion's very easy to blag as well. Like, fashion is-

   18. CWChris Williamson1:01:34

       Built on trends, yeah.

   19. GMGeorge Mack1:01:35

       ... it's, it's built on blag, it's built on reflexivity, it's just how people react to things. So, yeah, I, I listen to that Rogan thing and it, my mind is a pendulum of "Genius, madman."

   20. CWChris Williamson1:01:42

       (laughs)

   21. GMGeorge Mack1:01:43

       And it would just, it would just swi- it would just switch like that.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:01:44

       Back and forth.

   23. GMGeorge Mack1:01:44

       So it's so hard to say, right? But it's so hard to not be successful at the same time.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:01:48

       Uh, bear or bull? Sex robots.

   25. GMGeorge Mack1:01:51

       Um, personal or, or on a society level?

   26. CWChris Williamson1:01:54

       (laughs) Well, y- may- give, give us both of those.

   27. GMGeorge Mack1:01:55

       Um, I mean, probably, probably bull, I think, I- is the way it ends up, uh, as costs go down. The only thing that I can see ... the only thing that happens potentially before then is the printing viruses, I think is probably inevitable. So whether we get-

   28. CWChris Williamson1:02:13

       Oh, okay, so you get a virtual sexually transmitted infection-

   29. GMGeorge Mack1:02:16

       No, no, no, I just think we could get-

   30. CWChris Williamson1:02:17

       ... from this sex robot.

Episode duration: 1:08:17