Shaun Newman Podcast - Episode #161 - Rob Long

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

Rob is a data engineer lead at Bayer Crop Science and we dive into genomes, bitcoin, NFT's, offense vs defense & what is the real world?   Let me know what you think Text me! 587-217-8500

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I'm talking about Rob Long. So buckle up, because here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Rob Long. So first off, thank you, sir, for hopping on. Yeah, right on. It's nice to be here. So you've got to give me some background on you.

You know, I've been doing a little bit of digging on your blog and, and listen to you in Vance. But maybe you could give the listeners just kind of a little background on Rob before we get into anything. Yeah, sure. So I'm from St. Louis, Missouri, United States. My education is in computer science. And my first kind of job, relevant job in that field was at the Washington University here

in St. Louis at the Genome Institute, where I helped them write sort of a processing pipeline for doing cancer research using genomic sequencing. So they would look at tumor samples and normal tissue samples, sequence their genomes, and then say, what is it that's different about these two in the genome that might have been the cause of the cancer, right? So is there a mutation in a gene that codes for a tumor suppressing compound or something like this that would control the growth or regulation of the cells? Now, you know, that was that was the early days of that kind of research.

They had really just completed the human genome project. But my job there was not like I learned about genetics and genomics doing that, but my expertise there was just the programming. And I've kind of moved on to other things in that field. I've since moved on to what was at the time, Monsanto. So I helped them kind of tracking their genomic data and doing sort of similar analyses. you would use the same sort of thing to say, okay, I've got this population of, you know,

maize that has a particular trait, and I'd like to know specifically what in the genome codes for that trait, so that when I'm breeding it, I can track that region in the genome and see which of its offspring inherited that trait. And so just like very large data sets and kind of distributed systems thinking in those terms, because all of these computations,

you can't really get them done on a single computer in a relevant time span. So you have to spread it out across a lot of computers in a data center. So that's kind of like the, you know, at least to the topic that we're going to get into here, maybe some of the relevant stuff. So when you're talking maze and dealing with farming and you can you can then look back and essentially modify it to weed out any of the bad, genomes? Am I even saying that, Ray?

Yeah, I mean, it sounds kind of like you're overstating the ability of what they can actually do with it. This is more of a retrospective kind of a thing, saying, given that we know something about this, you know, actual performance in the field, can we go into the genome and say what it is that caused that and try to find those things and make sure that they're carried along when we do our breeding program into the next generations. Kind of like a forced natural selection. Like we want the biggest best corn out there. Yeah.

But those couple that have this odd little thing, that's actually going to cause us problems in the future because we've already seen that happen. Yeah, that's right. Yep. That's like, that's probably been going on. I say this to everybody all the time, right? Like I'm from a little farming community in Saskatchewan.

And then I've been all over the place since then, but back in Lloyd Minster now for going on, going on. It's almost been a decade, I guess. But the more I start to talk to people about really, I don't know, cutting edge technology and that kind of thing, the more I realize I know jack shit about anything. And it's good to have conversations like this to kind of just like, oh, okay, yeah, all right, fair enough. That's the thing, though, right? Like it sounds really high flown and like, you know, crazy out there. And to a degree it is. But the kinds of things that they're trying to do are really not different than what, you know,

people were doing 10,000 years ago, domesticating maze in central Mexico, right? Like they were looking at what was around them, picking the things that looked better and planting more of that. You know, it's like just a more refined way of doing that over the, over the generations. Yeah. more high tech way. So you're getting into what I always talk about with, by the way, I like that you're an amateur philosopher. I like that. You're getting into what I said or keep saying or keep noticing is that, you know, the clothing changes, the process of getting from A to B changes, but the thought process over the last however many hundreds of years go on, we're all the same

bloody person almost having the same thoughts trying to do the same similar things but the technology is just increased with us so it looks different but the process is very similar yeah yeah it's just the context right like we all have the same makeup you could take somebody one of those persons out of you know central mexico 10 000 years ago and drop them in have them be born in this day and age and they'd be they'd fit right and just fine you know they'd learn everything the way we learn things and function the same way like i know i know i know you know i know know we definitely have a bias when you think back to the past that you kind of imagine people as dumber it sounds rude you know no you think of them as our kid i don't i don't think that sounds don't i don't

think when you look back you go we're smarter than most people right look at what we have and then you start to read about it just not though you go yeah you go like oh crap that's actually like a really smart thought or they've already had that i was listening to a podcast last night um i forget what it was called. But regardless, the theory was, is they were talking about looking into the past about things that can predict the future, essentially. And they were talking about AI. And that the first form of AI was back in the 1700s when a robot, I'm using, it was a

mechanical machine played chess against the top chess guy in France. and what ended up happening as they went through is he lost to the top chess guy, but he had a world-like tour kind of thing, this machine. And what ended up coming of it was there was actually a guy inside of it playing the chess, but it looked so, you know, the illusion was there that they thought it was AI, artificial intelligence. And then they brought it all the way forward to, now this podcast was from a couple years ago. They were talking about AI now on the internet and how it's actually all, and you probably know all about this, but how it's all humans doing the work, we just don't realize we're being data collected on it so that it can essentially perform and look like AI.

Yeah, no, I think the thing you're talking about is the mechanical Turk. The mechanical Turk, yeah, Rob, you got her. So that thing actually, there is a service that Amazon runs that's called the Mechanical Turk. And you can take these little micro jobs and say, is this a picture of, you know, it's sort of like those CAPTCHA things that you have to be sometimes. Well, yeah, well, everybody knows it's a picture of a motorcycle, you know, whatever. Yeah. Stuff like that.

And they're like, yeah, okay. And that's exactly what it is. So it's like this, you know, what was previously an, what would you call this, an insuperable jump, right? Like these little tiny questions that they could break it down into but just couldn't get past. somebody needed some person need to look at it and answer the question but since you know i think in the last five years uh certainly the last two years they have jumped those and now uh it is wholly different than what it was in the past that's an interesting like i think there are some things that don't have precedent right there are some new ideas there's just very very few of them right like um you

know nuclear physics is a new thing quantum quantum mechanics that sort of stuff Like, there's not really an analog. Like, you could say, well, there were big ideas about the universe in the past, but not exactly like this that had actual implications about what you would do. And to kind of like wrap it all the way back around, I think that cryptography is potentially one of these as well. It's a new thing that you didn't exactly have in the past before we had computers and computer science.

You couldn't do this stuff. Well, let's jump there then. Yeah. What is it about this cryptography that, I don't know, it's so new and so, and it's going to work and everything else? Well, it's going to work as kind of a relative thing. But in terms of the actual, you know, what's going on there, I'll try to zoom in to a piece of it and see where it takes us. So are you familiar with the concept of a function in mathematics? break it down for me like I am absolutely just go as low as you can okay so um if I give you something that says like y equals x plus one sure got right and I say X is five you can evaluate right right y is six so that's a function right it's a function on X and and why is the

kind of the name of that function right that's the thing that it gives out well that's sort of the simplest possible function that you can imagine, there are things called hash functions, which are insanely complex. But they're really, really fast to go one direction to say, put the value in there, right, and get the, get the Y out. But if you had the Y and wanted to get the X, it's almost impossible in the lifetime of our universe. It's not technically impossible, and you can make guesses. And if you make the right guess, you can say, oh, yeah, that was the X. It's easy. It's trivial for X plus one, right? I can just say, well, if Y is six, then X is five. That's really easy to reverse that. But there are functions out there. Shaw to 256 is the name of one

that Bitcoin is based off of, for example, that reversing that, knowing the output of that function doesn't help you get what the input value was. And so because of that, you have a way of creating a secret and doing things with that secret and showing the rest of the world. And people can't reverse that and figure out what your secret was. So what that means ultimately is you can sign on something. So you have a wallet, right? And a wallet is essentially just your secret mixed with some known stuff that you can say, all right, nobody else could have generated this signature.

It's not possible because nobody else knows my private key and they couldn't take my public key and reverse it. So it kind of gives you this very weird informational landscape that could not have existed before you could calculate these sort of functions. Now, yeah, we're way far out there. No, no. Okay. So I get that it's complex. I get that it's like the fact that it's as popular as it is right now. I go like, obviously there's something there.

Obviously, the smartest people in the world are staring at this thing going, oh, this can work. Okay. But it's not like, and maybe I haven't done enough and don't understand enough. But I feel like what happens when the governments just go, yeah, it's illegal. It's we're not doing this. Or we're going to have our own Bitcoin or we're going to have our own crypto. Or is that going to like stifle all that's been done to the.

this point? It could. I mean, both of those things, I think, are not not entirely unlikely, you know. I mean, I feel like the Federal Reserve is eyeballing the concept of a central bank cryptocurrency. And also, it's possible. And it sounds like when they constantly say things like, oh, criminals are using Bitcoin, right? Like they like, you can kind of tell from the things that they say where they want people to go. And it feels like they want people to believe that. which, you know, I don't think it takes a whole lot of a leap to say that, you know, cash is also used in a lot of crimes. So, you know, come on. It's kind of ridiculous. But, yeah, there's nothing stopping.

Like, the real world still exists. Somebody can come to your house with a gun and say, give me your private key. And then they got it, right? Like, if you give it to them. So it's just kind of an elaborate bit of technology that goes on top of the, all of this, but the real world still rules over it all, you know. Yeah, true, but like, like, what is it now? What's a Bitcoin now worth 60? It's in that neighborhood. It seems like it's bouncing around between 55 and 60 in the last few weeks. Like, doesn't that hurt your

brain a bit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, I've been following it since 2013. Does you get in? I'll say that it's a I've made some good decisions you know oh right on well good for you yeah and and like it was we I remember having these conversations like I used to talk to Vance about this stuff all the time back in the day there and we kind of went around and we're this like barnstorming you know talking to different groups about Bitcoin and what's going on and all that spreading the word and yeah you could have bought it for a hundred dollars pop back then which is just a insane when you think about it.

Well, yes. I mean, even if you could have got in and $1,000, you'd be laughing, right? Yeah. It's, I guess I'm, I struggle with, I, the Bitcoin thing, like, it makes sense to me, right? It's just, it's just a different form of currency, right? And it just has extreme value. But I just, is it going to be mass scaled? Like, because now there's like Bitcoin, there's, well, I don't know, there's like 50.

of them now. No, there's probably more than that. There's probably 1,000 of them. There's tens of thousands of them and there's no there's no cost to duplicating them right. You can just change the name and make a new one, right? The thing that matters is the network of people who are using it. And that's where Bitcoin dominates. Right. So you have a lot more. I mean, there are competitors. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that everything else is irrelevant. There's a lot of interesting stuff out there, Ethereum and, you know, other things. But Bitcoin definitely dominates. And I think it can be a mass adopted currency.

It's just not going to be something that is used for like buying a stick of gum or something. You know, it's not going to be transactional. It's this whole store of value concept. And that's because the rate limit on transactions, right? Like I don't know. What's the store of value? What is that? Store of value.

It's like kind of the use that you would use gold for, right? Like you buy it and you put it away and it's sitting there and it's meant for long term savings essentially or just holding purchasing power over time, which is really why Bitcoin has any value at all, right? People look at it and they say, well, I know that they're never going to make more than 21 million Bitcoin ever, right? And we can't really say the same thing about at least the US dollar, right? Like they've made massive amounts of it in the last few years and everybody's kind of like, well, we see where this is going.

I mean, they're never going to be able to stop this, the stimulus stuff. So it's just going to kind of keep rolling. And so holding dollars is like, you know, the analogy that's been used is like sitting on a giant ice cube. You're just, you know, you should convert it into some sort of wealth or some other thing that will hold value. otherwise it just melts away underneath you, the purchasing power of it. How are things in the States while we're on the stimulus? Because, I mean, all governments right now are printing money like it. You know, I get the gold.

That's why gold has been something that has lasted a long time, right? Holds its value. And it's not like you can just go print more gold. I mean, you can mine it. But that's costly. But you got to spend a lot of energy to do that. That's right. That's right.

And when you bring that back to the Bitcoin, that makes complete sense. Actually, it makes complete sense. I just think you're one solar flare away from. See ya. Right? And now it disappears. No, that's the thing, right? Like, if, you know, I think things are fine right now.

I don't, I don't, there's not like pandemonium chaos in the streets, you know. Some places there is chaos. the streets, but I don't, I don't think it's very widespread, actually. I do think that in general, crime is a lot worse over the last year than it has been. And like, it's harder to get some things. But I think relative to everywhere else in the world, I have no complaint. I've not been anywhere else in the world in the last year, but, you know, I would love to, but not, you know, none of us, none of us have been anywhere, Rob, in the last year. Yeah, exactly. So, but I think things are fine. But if civilization has some kind of hiccup and it's, you know, the lights go out for a

couple of years or something, yeah, Bitcoin can't work in that world, right? It needs to have a network and readily available power supplies. The thing of it is, is if there is anywhere where that is online, they will be able to kind of keep things going the way it works, right? Everyone who runs a Bitcoin node has a full copy of the entire network of all the transactions. that have ever happened and ever will happen, they're aggregating that, right? So it's a distributed system. So there's no single place where the one ledger is kept. Everybody kind of has a copy of it.

So it will be, it will survive in that sense. But like, yeah, if the power goes out and everywhere, which that's kind of hard to believe that that would happen. True. Then it would go away. But gold, there's like that'll be here when we're, you know, bones bleaching. in the sun situation. The goal will be fine.

You talk about the one, there's no one ledger. I've heard the discussion on the, on how everything's documented or I don't know, recorded. I don't, I need to learn the goddamn terminology, wrong.

That's what I need to do. They're just transactions, right? And the ledger is just a list of all of those transactions that have happened all throughout all of history, right? And every 10 minutes, there's a bundle of. transactions that get officially executed on the network. There is one ledger, but there's no one copy of that ledger. So it's a, this awesome term that I heard that's, that's pretty high flown,

that's called hyper object, right? It's a, it doesn't exist any single place in this world. It's just an idea that's out there, but everyone has the exact same idea if they're talking about the Bitcoin and ledger, right? Like, there's multiple kind of copies of it out there that make up this one thing. And so if one person decided to say, oh, okay, well, let's just put 10 Bitcoin to Rob Long in my copy of the ledger and see what we get with that. Like, that would be, unless you have more energy to generate the next block than like 51% of the Bitcoin mining network, which I don't. and no single entity in the world does seem to be able to get that power, then you can't defeat this thing.

But theoretically, if you did that, then you could trick everybody and come up with the hash faster. And, you know, I mean, like we could go into how all of this, how all of that works, mining and everything. I don't know how much that will help us. But ultimately the point is, is that if there's a lot, the more energy that goes into it, the more secure it is. Let's put it like that.

it's harder to overcome the consensus of the network for one bad actor. You got to rewind there for a second. You said, you said it'd be like everybody around the world having the same idea. Can you share that thought again? Okay, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, there's no like, there's no one official correct copy of the ledger, right? There's just everything that's in all of the various. nodes that people are running that execute the Bitcoin network. So when you have a wallet,

when every 10 minutes, when the ledger is updated, which is everywhere, all these nodes get updated with the same transaction? That's right. Yeah, they publish a message out that says, all right, here's the next block. You know, before I came on here, I should have really read the book of like how Bitcoin began or something along that line. Because now I'm curious, of like what you talk about mining and you know once again i should probably be asking you what's coming now instead of what's already happened since you know 2013 geez that's eight years ago and i certainly knew this didn't happen overnight and i'm certainly not acting like i didn't know about this five years ago but i remember even around this part of the world guys buying and storing

and mining bitcoin out on oil leases of all places around us that was the story right and i was like oh, all right, like, geez, I don't fully understand this, but obviously there's something there if they're doing that. No, absolutely. There's even a company out there right now called Upstream, I think, and they will install a mining rig in oil fields where they're doing flaring natural gas, right, where they're just dumping it because they don't, they can't get it to market economically. And they'll take that and run a generator, and they have a little portable data center in

container and they'll do mining and it recovers it's like converting what you would call a you know greenhouse gas emission or something like that into actual value on the network you can export the energy in this kind of terms if you want to think about it that way it's fascinating i mean yeah it's definitely the you know the oldest real cryptocurrency that is in use but i'd still say it's definitely the most relevant. There are things that have advanced since then. There are other approaches. They call that proof of work what Bitcoin runs on. So you have to have, there's no way other than just brute force doing these calculations to do mining. But there are other things that are like proof of stake that essentially say how much, how much of this currency do I

already have gives me a vote in whether I accept the new transactions that come in. And there's all kinds of different arrangements of forming consensus that you can have. And people are really hyped about getting the energy consumption out of it, which I think is fine for some purposes. I don't think you need to have that for every like, you know, like the proverbial buying a stick of gum or whatever. But as far as the like backbone, like the reserve currency, so to speak, of the internet or of crypto, I think you do want it to be very real and tied into the real economy. such that it does take a lot of energy. I think that's what makes it, that's why it's valuable.

That's why it's powerful. Has all the Bitcoin been mine? No. There's 18,000, 600,000 of them somewhat, somewhere in that neighborhood. And there will be ever in all of history 21 million of them. So it's kind of this diminishing curve of output. So you got like less than three million left. Yeah.

Yeah. And the only way you can mine Bitcoin is by having essentially a supercomputer doing equations working its ass off to find you one. And if you find one right now, you're you're kicking ass. But essentially it has to work overtime all the time to try and hopefully find one. Yeah, that's right. And then the amount of, so we could, we'll just see how this goes, right? So I mentioned hash functions earlier. The thing that you're doing is you're taking the data that is that block that you get of transactions.

And you're calculating a hash function over the data in that block. So that's the input to this thing. And you're saying there's a tiny little field that's one number that's between zero and four billion, something like, no, it's a 64-bit integer. So it's really high. right but you're basically picking that number such that the output of this hash like you could generate this and calculate this in a second and and get a perfectly good value but the bitcoin network says there should be a leading number of zeros in this output that it gives you just arbitrarily right it's just like all right we want there to be 10 zeros at the beginning of this number so just see if

you can find an input and move it around such that you get 10 zeros right and there's no way to predict. You can change one bit in that input and get a totally different output. So you can't like zoom in on it and try to find where the answer is. You just have to try random numbers over and over and over and over and over again out of the quintillions or whatever possibilities. Who is the guy who came up with us? We don't know his name. He's called Satoshi Nakamoto. this person wrote a white paper, a PDF, and like published the initial code and kind of worked with people. Like he was, there was a character on the internet that nobody ever claims to have met that created this whole thing and then disappeared, you know, like 2010, 2011, who has like the largest Bitcoin wallet that's out there, right? Because he was doing the early mining when it was first turned on and has a bunch of them because it was really easy to mine because he was stealing one.

because he was the only one doing it. But he's since disappeared, and nobody knows. Nobody knows if that was actually a real person, if it was, you know, the NSA or some other group of people or, you know, aliens that came down and gave us this magical technology. Nobody has any idea. It's always fun to hear, you know, it's like a lost treasure story or something. Well, it's a perfect way to have it, right?

You got the successful cryptocurrency. currency and the guy who started it all, nobody knows who he is. How the hell is that possible? I don't know. It's amazing, right? And it's like, it's one of the greatest parts of the whole thing for me. Like, I love that aspect of it. Because at first, then people ask that question and ever, like, back in 2013, and they're like, whatever. This is some kind of scam, you know, they don't believe it. It's like, all right. somebody's believing it i don't know if i've helped myself or hurt my brain more but that's good i enjoy hurting my brain when it comes to this stuff because at least then a guy can have something to dig into what is it uh a big thing right now is these nfts once again i i struggle with it because i watch it and i go like yeah how how well and maybe i should do this i should back up a second

maybe if you don't mind would you mind explaining what nfts are for the listeners because i assume they're like me and we're we're slow to the pickup on a lot of different things we're fast on certain things but when it comes to stuff like this i'm i'm a little lagging behind yeah sure so an nfts stands for non fungible token and fungibility is kind of the thing that makes something a commodity right so if i have uh you know a $5 bill, it's just as good as any other $5 bill. It doesn't matter which one I have. So that's fungible.

Non-fungible implies that it has a uniqueness to it that matters in some way. And in this case, the uniqueness is tying it to some kind of data, right? Now, that could be a file that it is claimed that you own or some real property somewhere, but the data points to that property and kind of indicates what that is. That stuff is not very common yet. Right now, the way most people are using these things is as a ownership, like a contract that you own a piece of digital art or some other digital asset, right? And they're still exchangeable.

They're kind of, because they're tokens and they fit this particular shape of this contract for their Ethereum, by the way, they're based on Ethereum, most of them, but not all of them. There's always exceptions, right? Except when there's not. But so they, you can still trade them and move them around in these networks. And you could store an NFT in a wallet, but it is tied to something outside of itself, and it is not exchangeable. It's not equal to every other token of that type, right?

It's a unique thing. And like you've seen people auctioning off artworks in this space and saying like, okay, well, I bid this many Ethereum. I bid that many. And you kind of look at it and you're like, okay, you know, 0.1, 10, 15, like Ethereum. And then you go and look at the conversion rate and you're like, what the heck this guy just paid $55,000 for, you know, a picture of a unicorn crying or something that looks like it was made in 1990. on a computer. What's going on here?

What is going on? I don't know. I think there's a lot of different forces converging here. And like first and foremost, people are excited about this concept. And so there's this irrational exuberance to borrow a phrase involved in it. You know, you could call it a bubble, but it's kind of weird to call things a bubble in the current day and age. It seems like everything is a bubble at this point. but, you know, probably. But also, I think that capital is looking for a place to go, right?

And so the art market has been super hot for the last few years because of this devaluation of regular currency. So it's like looking for somewhere to hide where it's not melting away. People are trying to collect stuff in this space. And I think there's a whole generation of people that made a lot of money. and are very wealthy right now because of the crypto boom, right? So people are cashing out their Bitcoin or just trying to, they're millionaires, right? And they're like, yeah, whatever, I can bid this much money on this thing here. And why not?

What fun, you know? Like I remember whatever, this artist back in the day or something. I think a lot of this is stuff that is generational too. So younger people see the style of artwork and the kind of some of the themes and they it makes more sense to them than it does to me. You know, like I get the kind of the mechanics of what's going on there. But as far as the art market part of it, I don't really, none of this art seems like it's worth paying a lot of money for. I don't know. Well, values a weird.

Subjective, right? It's a weird thing because like, I don't know, you bring. me a crypto kitty, I'm going to laugh in your face. And I'm going to be like, it's worth six million. I really don't give a shit. Right. Like, that's fine. That's right. Like, I would, but I guess I just don't have, well, once again, I go back to value, right? Like, so right now, people are taking their money and trying to put it into things that are going to hold value because they can see that by essentially printing money, for the next whatever time is not going to be good.

And so they're trying to, as you put it, hide it away into things that are going to hold the value of what they currently have. And I'm just, I'm struggling with the NFTs because I'm like, like, I get it. Like they're unique. But how do those things hold value over time unless everybody looks at them and they're like, oh, that's, that's valuable? The problem I have with that thought is, is it seems like tons of, I don't know, I beat myself up too much, Rob.

I'm not saying I'm dumb. I look at the successful people getting into it. I'm like, what am I missing? Or are they just gambling that this is going to be something in 20 years that is still big because now they own a little piece of the internet now as they're talking. I do think there's something here. I think it just hasn't landed on the right concept yet. I don't think that the art aspect of it is going to end up being the thing that

matters the most. I mean, in the long run, I mean, well, even even with the art, right, let's say that the concept makes sense, but that the actual amounts of money that are going into it are just absolutely bonkers and don't make any sense, like $60 million for some crazy, you know, whatever. Like, that's, that's total irrational nonsense. But at the same time, this is a way for artists to make money on their work. I know, not that much. right, but imagine smaller amounts. They could be commissioned ahead of time and then produce the work or sell things they've already made. And kind of the system that we have now does seem broken, right?

We always, there's a lot of conversation about copyright and trademark patents and these sorts of things. And it's not unreasonable to think that something like NFTs could replace those, right? Like whether or not it's legally enforced by the government or it's just kind of a fact of the landscape, the way things work on the internet that like if you want to use something as your avatar you have to give it your nfti address or something and then you get to use it right otherwise you just can't use it because you don't own it you know who knows um there there are a lot of ways you could imagine this becoming a thing and also pointing to real property in the real world and this being a way to say i own this because i have the nft that represents this thing that means i own it and i can

prove that I own it, you know, based on on having this kind of private, you know, key of this thing of the wallet that it's in. And I can transfer it without asking anybody's permission either, which is kind of cool, right? So that's one of the nice things about Bitcoin, right, is that I could send money to anybody anywhere in the world and nobody can stop it. There's no veto there that gets to say, well, you know, this person has actually not, you know, has been conducting hate speech or something. So we can't allow you to. to transfer value to this horrible entity, right? Like, now you could argue that that's what governments ought to be doing.

But the reality of the situation is that you don't get a veto in this unless they actually come and try to get you and stop you, right? And governments haven't exactly been the greatest judges of character over the past. No. Millennia. I mean, just do some reading and go, Oh, yeah. So it kind of gives, it's interesting, right?

There's a concept that I heard that was really fascinating that over the last 500 years, the power of defense has gone completely away, right? So like in the year 1,000 AD, if you were some feudal lord, you know, you could have a castle and an army defending this castle and there's nobody that could come and get you out of there. Like that was it. But then you have the invention of gunpowder. and metallurgy and cannons and all, you know, all of this, this technology that has come in the last 500 to 1,000 years has revolved up to tanks and

aircraft and, you know, nuclear bombs. And now there's like, there's no defense. Attack is all you can do where crypto kind of flips the script. Now it's not in the real world, right? It doesn't actually physically defend you. But as far as information goes, now the defender has the advantage. If I have a secret, you know, good luck. You know, you've got to start guessing and guess fast.

And hopefully you find the answer before the end of the universe. You know, there's so many possibilities. I would say it was up until probably after World War I before it started to go to offense. Sorry, sticking with your war thing. Yeah. All the even guns in the beginning were used for defense. Like there, there were, you sit in the truck. trenches and you hold the line. Once you hit, and all the cannons and the long range, everything like that, you put

them up high and you blast it down and you had an impregnable area. Heck, that's, let's go like World War I. Let's dig in. Let's trench and let's blow the hell out of the other side if they come near us. But we're going to send a million guys over too and they're going to do the same thing and we're going to move nowhere. I mean, I forget what the, what the, with the exact number is, but it's only like, I don't know, 10 miles of where World War I was fought at the one spot. Like, it hardly moved.

Like, it's just back and forth. And then you hit World War II. And one of the things the allies, and I guess it was the French at the very beginning got wrong, was that it was going to be the same war. And the Germans just steamrolled them. But ever since that, it has been offense, offense, offense, offense. because if you can get to the heart of an issue the fastest, what the hell do you need to sit on the line for? Now, bringing that all the way, too,

by having unique things that show you ownership. Yeah, that's a tenuous connection. I'm speaking more generally about... Yes, yes. ...than specifically about NFTs. Sorry, I... When you bring up offense, defense, and more, I just, I get, I get what you're saying.

That's, took a lot of that in school. I really enjoyed that. It's, hell, you gotta, got to listen to, you probably listen to Dan Carlin, like him to talk about World War I. I mean, Jesus, what does he do it for like 20-some hours? But it's, like, fascinating how he talks about the, the world's colliding, so to speak. But this, everything online, you keep saying the real world versus, you know, like, I don't know, this. But this is becoming more real world every day. And actually, when you're talking about the real world, I go, I start laughing because I did Vance's book club for the first time, right?

I couldn't get a little smile off my face the entire time. I was like, this is the most strange night I think I've ever had. I'm enjoying myself. I feel like I'm at a high school party for the first time. And I'm like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Like, what do I do with my hands? I mean, I don't know. I just kind of sit here, right?

Melt into the corner. But like at the same time. that gives you the ability to sit with people from around the world, hear their ideas, in a weird way because the

graphics are very, I don't know, early 90s-esque. Like, they're very primitive. But it still gives you like the hands moving, the mouth moving. You're kind of like, I get it. This is really interesting. And I'm

nervous for where this goes in 15 years. I was saying to my friends, I was like, I feel like people are going to gravitate to, you know, what's the movie, like Ready Player 1 or something like that, where you're going to want to just live in that because now you can go wherever you want to go and you don't have to leave the comfort of your house. And I didn't get that concept until I sat in the book club and went, oh, I get it now. Like, especially if this is the primitive version of it and in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, where does this go? where you just are walking around and it just feels like wow. So this is fascinating.

And I think this whole angle, like we can run this all the way back to like, you know, 400 BC Athens and say that there's this platonic kind of world of forms of ideas. That's what, that's when I say not the real world, that's the world I'm talking about this. Like, you know, the concept of a circle, for example, right? Like there are no circles in the real world. Everything is made of matter. There's some small, you know, you can zoom in and find a place where it's not, you know, a perfect line that goes around. It's actually made of little atoms, which are kind of chaotically strewn around.

You know, it's only a representation. And the place where the circle exists as an idea in our minds. And that's it. And if there were no minds to hold that idea, it would be extinguished. It would be gone, right? like if there were no people on the earth, there would still be gold here, right? But Bitcoin would be, but the gold would be pretty meaningless, right? It would just be this yellow metal that was sitting around at various places and mixed in with other things.

But Bitcoin is just gone. Like there would be no, there would be no, nobody would care about it. There'd be nothing, no meaning to it, you know. No, no thinker to think those thoughts means they're gone. So that's what I mean. And it's when we lose the ability to think those thoughts, then they just go away, right? But like, you know, a volcano doesn't go away if we're not thinking about it.

It can still kill us and bury us and ash or whatever, right? Like, it's real in a way that's different than the way Bitcoin is real, is what I mean. I got what you're saying. Okay. Okay. I guess I interpret that differently. That's all. Yeah.

But now they unite. I don't disparage it, you know, but. Yeah, it's funny how quickly the world has been. speeding up or feels like it's speeding up. I was I was saying to the wife this morning when you text it said you hadn't got the link. I'm like, God, where is my brain lately? Like I could have swore. I sent it last night.

And I'm like, but I look. I'm like, they didn't send it. Like, all right. Well, whatever. I'm like, now I got to go and, you know, and whatever. I just feel like, and maybe I'm wrong on this. But it feels like the world is speeding up and you feel like you don't have time anymore. whereas I don't know whether it's the invention of the cell phone internet whatever there was a time

or maybe it's just responsibilities maybe that's what it is I don't rob you got kids yeah I got two kids two kids too I got six and four do you ever do you ever just have days where you're like where the fuck is my head right now yeah absolutely I mean you're kind of that's that your attention is in a blender right like if you're like if you're like, oh, they're going and playing. I think I'll read for a few minutes, you know. That's like literally the moment that you crack the book, that's when, Daddy, Daddy, you know, which is fine. That's, that's kind of the point, you know, is that that's, to me at least, they're the first priority. But definitely, it does impact your ability to, like, you know, go deep on things. And the way I am, you know, a computer

programmer, I think there's a lot of these personalities in this field where if you sit me down in front of the problem, like I'm not going to get up for hours and hours until it's, until I'm, you know, way far into solving this thing. Deep focus, let's say. And not wanting to talk to people or be talked to while thinking about things. And to me, then like, parceling out your attention into little bitty blocks, which happens for a lot of reasons. It's not just kids. I mean, It can also be that you're looking at your phone, looking at Twitter, looking at whatever else that's going on there. And it just kind of pulls you in all these different directions. And it's like, you know, you don't have any time to have deep thoughts, you know.

So there's less that your mind is going to remember. It all just kind of feels like a surface level stuff going on. Whereas I think when you have larger blocks of time, yeah, you kind of form more meaningful thoughts that you can remember later on. and it doesn't feel like just a, you know, Brownhog day going over and over again. It's funny. I, when you say that, I interview every Sunday,

I interview, uh, uh, I call the, I work with the Lloydminster Arricot. So I go around and I interview, we've been getting a little bit younger here in the last month or two, but essentially anyone's 60 plus.

And for the very beginning, it was like 80 plus. so you're getting people who've lived a long time seen a lot of things seen a lot of change and they all they all say the same thing so maybe i'm just maybe i should just recognize where i'm at i got three kids that are the oldest turns five uh in uh in less than a month in april and i remember one of the fathers having five kids and he said just don't ask me about the 70s i said well why's that he's like i honestly can't remember anything like i just like i try and it is such a world win because they had five kids, you know, whatever, under 10 or it doesn't matter, right?

At that point, five kids, man, what can you do? Because you already said it, right? They're the first priority. So all you're worried about is making sure they're safe, fed, healthy, and wherever they're at for school, sport, academics. And you don't really think about much else, do you? Yeah, no. I mean, like, you sneak it in, you know, around the edges if you can, but there's no

planning, right? So what are you deep thinking about right now, then? What is something that your mind is chewing on? That's a good question. I mean, definitely NFTs, right? So it popped up and I wasn't expecting that it would become this giant thing. It just kind of happened. And so I've been kind of digging into that stuff and reading about that.

But also kind of I'm concerned about, really it's relative to what we were just talking about. about how information diffuses through society, right? So, you know, you could look at things in on a really kind of surface level, say, okay, well, there's these kind of media properties like broadcast networks and the big internet companies and they distribute information, right? Like that's where people get it, sort of. But, you know, they gather information and there's kind of a feedback loop going on. What is all exactly happening there?

And to my view, it's entirely too centralized in very few number of hands right now through these social networks and kind of what you would call the mainstream media. But I think there are technologies that were hit upon in the recent past. The blog is a perfect example of this, right? So you don't need anything to publish a blog other than a telephone, right? like at this point in history, which sounds weird to say if you were from 50 years ago, but that's the way it works. And nobody can really stop you from doing that. And there's even kind of a technology layered on top of that called RSS,

which is how podcasting works. People also use this to subscribe to blogs to get new posts or news sites or what have you. And I kind of feel like this is a technology that will become more relevant as people realize that they can kind of unplug from these places like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. And you can still follow people that you know that you're interested in, but you kind of get to set the terms and they get to set the terms, right? Like you can follow their RSS feed and there's no intermediary that can say, well,

you know, we don't let people talk about stuff like this on this network. So we're going to take these posts out or we're just not going to show you these posts or what have you, right? Or we're going to deluge you with other content that we feel like you need to hear about or whatever. It's kind of up to you. And I think that's really the point is we need some more decentralized, localized thinking out there in the information ecosystem. And so I'm kind of working on a few projects that are still, you know, in the garage mode at the moment. But I'm interested in that space, diffusion of information.

Are you on all social media then? I'm on Twitter. I don't do Facebook. I have an Instagram. I never really got into it. I'm not, I don't know, maybe I just didn't find the right people to follow there, but it never really caught my interests. You know, I think the interests, like the topics that I hit on that I like that I like that were there were like, you know,

you know, mixed martial arts and like, you know, you know, know, guns. That was pretty much it. They were very visual topics, you know, I guess. I wasn't interested in most of what's going on there, though. Well, the reason I was curious is, you know, a big movie that came out, or I can't remember how long ago that was, but was the social dilemma that talked about, you know, the how evil social media is. A lot of people, no, I'm not sitting here saying everyone left but a lot of people went oh shit didn't realize that i assume you know in this chat i assume that didn't surprise you uh but i was curious you know like are you at all worried about it yeah i am i am worried about it i think uh and yeah the guy that the the main

character or the the proponent there tristan harris is an interesting guy i don't entirely subscribe to all of his personal beliefs about things but i think his kind of message about that their goal is not to help you, right? They're not here to like some public interest to get you the right information. They just want you to be engaged, right? And so the algorithms, the AIs that are kind of shifting content around and feeding you stuff and trying to manipulate your behavior are just trying to have you, you know, let's see, ramped up, right?

They want you excited and they want you either because you're happy about something or because you're angry about something. Either way, it doesn't matter. So it just finds content that does this. It's not consciously thinking, oh, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to show Rob these things that are going to infuriate him and that will, you know, fulfill my evil plan. It's just like, oh, more good stuff comes when I show Rob content like this. You know, it doesn't know what's happening. It's kind of like back to the mechanical Turk thing, right? It actually is AI, though.

There aren't people doing this. It's just like, whoa, this post got 100,000 interactions. So let's make sure. Let's recreate it. Yeah, yeah. So, like, I see that, and that ecosystem doesn't seem to have favorable dynamics for truth or, you know, kind of the kinds of things I would like to see there. Like the adjective stoic comes to mind, right? I'm interested in building things and positive concepts as opposed to like who's, you know,

what are the bad people doing today? I agree with that. So where are you finding that? Blogs entirely right now, right? I pick individuals. So following an individual and following what they put out. Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

No different than if you find somebody enjoy their podcast, chances are that that's an easy way to do it as well. No, exactly. I mean, it's literally no different. It's the same. It's an RSS feed. And podcasts I put exactly in that category. I just,

I don't have as much time to listen to podcasts as I do where I'm sitting down and I'll be like, okay, well, I can read a few posts here from my, from my RSS reader, you know. If you don't mind Sharon, who then are you reading? Who are the guys or ladies that you're following? Yeah, yeah. Let's see. So this one character, this is a funny one. Godin. So he's kind of like this. Yeah, you know who he is. He wrote tribes, a bunch of, bunch of other stuff.

He wrote like, frick, he's got like 12 bucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's prolific. And I, he, he has a little chunk of something every single day. His blog is that good? It's interesting to me, right? I don't, I do not share his kind of like angle on, on politics and things, but I trust that he's an honorable person that I want to, I'm interested in what he thinks about. I don't think he's like just BS in me all the time. I feel like he's an authentic, right? Let's put it like that. When he says something, I believe that he means what he says.

And I want to understand what he's saying. Not because I think he's inherently correct or something, but it's kind of a way that I can consciously go outside of my bubble, right? Like I don't like Twitter would never figure out that I should be listening to Seth God. They don't know that about me, right? Like there's no way. But to me, it's fascinating because he has lots of cultural references. He's kind of like, and I can like get, if he says something I don't agree with, I can still be like, okay, but I can see why people would think that, you know, okay.

So to me, that's really valuable. And a lot of things that are focused in on different fields, you know, like the Go programming language or distributed computing or, you know, philosophy, stuff like this, just kind of. field-specific things that you can zoom deep in on. Well, with the Seth Gaudine, I think too many people get stuck in their bubble, right? Like where they don't want to, I got to be honest, having you on, Robb, I was going, I don't know if I'm going,

I don't know where this is going to go, right? Like, I have no idea, right? And if it was up to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever else, all they'd feed me is hockey. And, I mean, you can see it on the wall. see it in my face. I'm a hockey. I love hockey. But man, there's so much more to people than just one aspect, right? Yeah. No, absolutely. And like, you can make your choice here and not like, because if everybody has the same injected uniqueness, right? Like if Twitter, somebody there

was like, you know what? Seth Godin is the right way to mix things up for people that we put over on this part of the spectrum. Let's show them all this guy, right? Like, I'm, want everybody to find their own unique outlet that speaks to them. Yeah. Yeah. And then we'll all see what it compare, you know. Well, and the other thing I think people, uh, is like, I think so the arguments I've had in the last little bit is that I like Jordan Peterson, right? I really, really enjoyed Jordan Peterson. In saying that, I don't agree with everything he says. I don't think you have to follow somebody and they're invalid. Like, like, where they're just like, they do no wrong. Yeah. They say only right. It's like, well, no. You.

you can use your brain and think on it, right? Like, so for Seth, like, if his political views don't align with you, it's like, yeah, that's okay. But I still like his ability to talk about marketing and, like, how to make you presentable. And I mean, geez, he's got, I don't know, he's got a thousand different ideas. The way his brain works is like mechanical. It's like, oh, that's, that's very interesting. Yeah, he's hit upon something.

No, and I totally agree with you, right? Like, if you're out in social media space, people, like, any, one that you say, okay, I'm interested in this person's ideas or I like this person or whatever, that becomes an attack surface for you now, right? Like you are expected to defend everything they've ever done or said against an angry mob that's coming after you. And it's like, why are we doing this? Like, what for?

You know, how ridiculous. To me, it seems odd that, A, that we go like, man, you dig into anyone's history or any society's history or any government's history, you're going to find some bad shit, right? Like that, I mean, just go back and look 10 years ago, go back like 100 years ago and just keep doing that. The times have changed so much and people grow. I mean, that's, that's what we're trying to do, right? As an adult, as a young person, you're trying to learn and grow and get better, right? I mean, geez, your little kids don't understand like you can't punch somebody in the face. Well, why can't I do that? Right? You got to learn that.

Yeah. And as adults, we just keep, oh, I'm on. Oh, okay. Well, let's take that as a learning lesson instead of just piling on them. But then again, as I keep, as I keep watching, there's some, there's some, we're just watching the documentary last night on the scandal with the colleges and bribing people to get in. Oh, yeah. That one, I'm like, oh, man.

I looked over to the wife, I said, never will I ever. do something so irrational of where you're just throwing money to get your kid into Harvard or Stanford or wherever else. For what? Well, exactly. For the name. They went to Harvard, Rob. They went to Harvard.

It's like great. Yeah, congratulations. I've kept you for an hour, and I appreciate you coming on and entertaining my brain for an hour. I do appreciate it. Yeah, it was nice to meet you. Thanks for inviting me on. Yeah, cool.

Well, have a great day. All right, you too. Hey folks, thanks for joining us today. If you just stumbled on the show, please click subscribe. Then scroll to the bottom and rate and leave a review. I promise it helps. Remember, every Monday and Wednesday, we will have a new guest sitting down to share their story.

The Sean Newman podcast is available for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you get your podcast fix. Until next time. Hey, Keeners, thanks for tuning in today. I hope you enjoyed it. I've got to be honest, I have no idea what happened to my podcast. audio. My audio sounds kind of shit, to be honest. But hell, I'll have to figure that out. I'm sure it was just a glitch on the Zoom call. If you enjoyed today's episode, I got to give a shout

out to Vance Crow. He hooked me up with Rob Long. I also got to give another shout out to Mike Schultz. He said, loved your interview with Daniel Smith. Also, you have me hooked on Vance Crow now. So, Vance Crow getting a lot of love today, but a shout out to Mike Schultz for reaching out. And happy to have you on board, listen to the podcast. happy to hear you enjoy what we're putting out here. If you are the champ, it is Wednesday, get your feet off the desk, back to work, and we will catch all of you bright and early Monday, all right? Until then, guys.