TRIGGERnometry - How the Media Broke the World - Liv Boeree

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

Liv Boeree is a British science communicator, television presenter and former professional poker player. She is a World Series of Poker and European Poker Tour champion, and is the only female player in history to have won both a WSOP bracelet and an EPT event. She has a degree in astrophysics and uses her YouTube channel to discuss science, game theory, probabilities, extinction risk and AI. SPONSORED BY Fum - Head to www.tryfum.com/TRIG and use code TRIG to save an additional 10% off your order today. We are proud partners with GiveSendGo - a world-leading crowdfunding platform that believes in free speech. Go to givesendgo.com and raise money for anything important to you. Become a Premium Member to receive exclusive benefits https://triggernometry.supercast.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This incentive structure is a big part of why we're seeing such incredible polarization. Even the really respectable papers are leaning more and more into click-baity, rage-baiting tactics in order to maintain their market share. On average, the average person just doesn't know where to go to get reliable information anymore. People don't tune into the news to find out what the facts are. They find out to get the emotional hit. It just feels like there's this force, like a razor-blank. coming up through the fabric of reality, of like shared reality,

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or find the link on your podcast listening app to join us. Support us and help change the way we have conversations and make the world saner. What's this Molek concept that you've come up with to describe where our media and new media ecosystem is going wrong? Well, I didn't come up with the Molek concept. It actually comes from an old, originally comes from this old Bible story about this horrible cult that was so obsessed with winning wars. They were willing to sacrifice more and more of the things they cared about up to and including their children who they would sacrifice in a bonfire in this like burning effort. of this demon god thing called Mollock in the belief that it would then reward them with, you know, all the military power they could want. And so this sort of story became a kind of like

synonymous with this idea of sacrificing too much in the name of winning and like the forces of when competition goes wrong essentially. And then in I think 2014, Scott Alexander of Slate-style Codex, or now Astral Codex 10, wrote this amazing blog post called Meditations on Mollock, where he's like, he basically connects the dots between all of these mentions of Mollock throughout history and put it into like modern game theory terms. Because he noticed, he's like,

it seems like there's this mechanism where the same sort of mechanism that is driving a lot of different problems in the world, whether it's like tragedy of the commons type problems where companies will take shortcuts to get, to keep their share of the market or whatever, you know, like use cheap plastic packaging or something like that because that's the most cost-efficient thing they can do. But then it's like creating all these negative externalities

for the future or deforestation. All of these sort of tragedy of the commons type situations are created by these like misaligned game theoretic incentives, as well as things like arms races, you know, the fact that we ended up with 60,000 nuclear weapons on Earth, far more than we would ever need to, like, maintain mutually assured destruction, is again, because it's like the game theory dictates it.

If your opponent does, you know, builds up a stronger arsenal, now you've got to do it and now they've got to do it and so on. So it's like, it's these like screwed up short-term incentives that each individual person is technically rational for following, but if everyone does them, creates these bad outcomes for the world, that's kind of what this mollock thing is, and that's what it sort of becomes synonymous with.

And I was, you know, I'm sure like you guys, just generally appalled at the direction that the media has been taking over the last few years. I mean, it's... If it bleeds, it leads, there's been like a strategy they've been using since whenever, right? but it feels like since the internet and certainly since social media that the competition dial has been turned up and it feels like even the really respectable papers are leaning more and more

into click-baity rage-bait tactics in order to maintain their market share essentially and so it's the same kind of mechanism like you know you're an editor and you notice that you're a your readership numbers are like waning compared to your competitors, and you notice all your competitors are now doing like more, like, slightly more click-baity stuff. Well, now you kind of have to do it too, right? Because if you don't, you're going to get left behind them. And this is again, this same mollock mechanism.

So, yeah, I made like a whole little short film about it. It's very good. I've really enjoyed watching it. And the interesting thing to me is that for a while, there was the narrative, well, the mainstream media is dying, corrupt, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which is true. The new media is the answer.

And I think there's an element of that that can potentially be true, but new media also is subject to various algorithms and various incentives that clearly, I mean, I look at some very popular YouTubers who comment in our space and stuff, just the titles and thumbnails. And I'm like, if I just ingested that for a week, I don't think I'd be a very happy, emotionally stable person. Right. You know, they are doing, you know, and every now and again, we'll have a thumbnail that says something along those lines.

But I'm just saying it seems to me like while the new media potentially offers a solution, it is subject to many of the same flaws and perverse incentives. Yeah, it's just a big old attention game, right? Everyone is trying to compete for each other's attention, whether it's big media companies, whether it's individual influencers, people, even like government orgs, you know, NGOs. Everyone is trying to get their voice heard. And so it incentivizes people to do whatever tactics are best at doing that. And it seems like the best emotions for going viral. I mean, they're certainly not like cool-headedness or nuance, right?

It's fear, rage, and then the occasional, like, really, like, sort of exciting, happy story. But rage in particular, even more than fear is, is, like a sort of action-triggering emotion. And because the business models, not only of influencers, but also mainstream media now, is more like how can you maximize impressions? You want an active emotion that encourages people to go out

and like share and comments. And that's why rage is just so useful. And the most effective way of triggering rage is like getting people well, you know, whipped up into a tribal frenzy. And so it's this, I think, you know, this, like, incentive structure is a big part of why we're seeing such incredible polarization.

You know, it's hard to say, where did the polarization start? It's been, there was this really cool, like, like chart that was posted, I'll try and send it to you guys, that showed how, it looked like, I called it the mitosis of Congress. I don't know if you saw it.

It's like, do you send it to us, we'll put it in. Yeah, it's like Democrats and Republicans over the years. is like how much sort of overlap there was in like opinion, and, you know, it was in aggregate. And just over time, it's become more and more and more polarized until the point now, it's like there's basically no overlap ever.

And what's interesting, though, is that this process started before the internet. So I don't think the internet is the cause, but it's basically just turned up the acceleration. Because it's, you know, the tails were already coming apart. It's just that, yeah, it's like it's turned up the competition. dial and everyone's leaning into it harder and harder. It's really interesting that you say that because if I think back to our country of the UK and we're talking about generating rage, I mean, who did that better than the tabloid press

in the 80s and the 90s? I mean, they were masters of it. There's a Netflix series out about David Beckham. And David Beckham during the World Cup, he got sent off for basically a little kick out at an Argentine player who then made a meal out of it. And then he became a national hate figure. The Daily Mirror put a dartboard with his face on it, and they generated this campaign against him where he became the most hated man in the UK. So it's been going on for a long time.

What I find interesting is how, in a way, these mainstream media outlets are doing this even more because they realize they're becoming less and less relevant. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, that's the thing. Like, I'm angry at them for doing it, you know, when it, particularly like the BBC, right? And to be fair, I think they have held on perhaps the longest out of all the outlets. But, you know, there's certain things, particularly like I see them make articles around the text space or something like that.

Areas that I know. And I'm like, okay, it's very clear that you have a particular political slant. Usually they lean left, not always. But that interview between Elon Musk and the BBC journalist where the BBC journalist ran out of questions. Like, I'm like, we will spend the next year working incredibly hard to get Elon on the show. And we would be desperate for every extra minute of time.

And this guy just wanted to attack him. And then he ran out of attack questions. Well, OK, I'm bored now. It was unbelievable. You've got one of the most relevant men on the planet and you run out of things to say. Yeah. Yeah, it's not ideal.

No. Well said. But more generally, like, yeah, it just feels like there's this force, like a razor blade coming up through the fabric of reality, of like shared reality, that is trying to, like, bifurcate everything. That's what this, again, I keep calling it Mollock, you know. It's helpful to almost think of it as a kind of agentic entity. What does that mean, sorry?

Like something, I'm not saying actually there is a force that wants us to fight, but it's almost helpful to think of it as there is this like demon that is like one it just it it's lifeblood is people being at war and people arguing and people fighting and the world doing badly because we aren't able to coordinate and that's the sort of outcome of this because like we're the type of problems the civilization is moving into you know I have a background in philanthropy and like a global catastrophic risk I've sort of work in like semi in research in that but certainly in like communicating about it. And almost all these problems,

whether it's, you know, future pandemics and there will be worse ones than COVID, or climate change or any of these big, really big problems, they're all a result of us not being able to really coordinate effectively. If we could coordinate well, then they would be relatively trivial. Like we've known roughly what we need to do to mitigate climate change, you know, or at least temperate, but we haven't been able to get our act together to do it

because there's so many incentives for everyone to defect each time. It's like, well, okay, you know, you're a poor country who's trying to get, grow their GDP, and they've got a bunch of coal. Of course, like, what are they meant to do? Like, you know, this is the fastest ways to lift our people out of poverty. But technically, they are defecting from, like, the global optimum, which is no one uses coal, right? And, like, uses perhaps a slightly more expensive, but cleaner source of energy. And so the problem with this, like, media issue in particular, the fact that, like,

the media are becoming increasingly polarized. Everything is more optimized towards like rage and like volatility and and hype unnecessary like hyperbole and that kind of stuff is that now, you know, okay, yes, you'll get like little echo chambers where people really, really trust their particular news source. But on average, the average person

just doesn't know where to go to get reliable information anymore. It's really, really hard. And if we can't like collectively make sense of these difficult problems, how the fuck are we going to then like communicate and coordinate on actual reasonable solutions, which is one of the reasons why, like, you know, I think COVID was always going to be too, it was so transmissible. That was, the cat was out the bag really as soon as that, you know,

it took them too long to, it took some government too long to realize they needed to do something. And then in the end they wound up going crazy. You know, they acted too slowly in the beginning and then they lingered with stupid solutions for too long. but if we can't have a shared understanding of reality and we have a media system, which is meant to, like the purpose of the media is to, you know, in an ideal world, inform people about the nature of reality

so that you can get like a healthy parallax of views and come to like sane conclusions kind of as a hive mind. If the media are doing the exact opposite of that, like making people whipped up into frenzies and splitting them apart, then we can't coordinate on these problems. Well, you make really good points. One of the things you said there that I think probably isn't true, though, is I don't think the function of the media, at least in terms of observable behavior, is to inform people.

I think politics, culture, and everything to do with those things has now become entertainment. The media is entertainment. The news is entertainment. People don't tune into the news to find out what the facts are. They find out to get the old. emotional hit. Right. It's like a dopamine source.

Yes. And the tribal rage that comes with it, obviously, is a very powerful stimp. You know, it's a drug. But I'm curious to talk about this concept of shared reality because I suppose we've got to a point where wherever you think, I mean, this is why the trans debate has become so prominent because you're just going, it's two groups of people who can't even agree on something as basic as biology, right? And so, I mean, how do we have a shared reality if there are people who can't define what a woman is and there's other people who think it's the, do you see

what I'm saying? Right. I mean, I don't know. I think with issues like that, like almost every cultural issue is the reason why it's so front and center, even though in theory it shouldn't be, you know, like there's far bigger issues in the world about, like, you know, trying to define what is or what isn't a woman. Like, it's... Not to some people, if. The feminists would disagree with you. But the thing is, I agree with you that in terms of the issue itself,

it's insignificant compared to the problems we face. However, I would argue if you have a disagreement about the very concept of truth at that basic level, that is like, whoa. Yeah, no, and you're right. It points to, and this is the thing. So whether it's trans stuff, whether it's the debate over capitalism, all of these different cultural hot topics. I think the reason why they are so successful in meme space,

again, if each, like, war topic is in its own, like, entity, is because there are genuinely, like, valid perspectives from both sides. And, like, any that which is going to create tension, Like where, because the system, like, because the media, the way their incentive structures are set up, they are opt, you know, they are being funneled into focusing on whatever topic will get the most clicks and views. And thus, anything that has the maximum amount of tension because there are conflicting arguments and viewpoints, they are like messy things. Like, you know, yes, I am someone who believes strongly in, you know, I think biology is the closest thing, you know, it's one of our solid paths. to reality. At the same time, I very fundamentally believe that people should be free to live and choose how they express themselves. As long as they don't hurt other people.

As long as they don't, yeah, sure. So these are two fundamental things, but they are like, you know, that creates tension, you know. There will be certain things where someone's choice like butts up against the rights of someone else's. And it's like, what do we do in these? And I think in part why these issues have taken. off so much is because, let's think, like, you know, like the trans issue thing, it became, because it's not like it's a new concept, right? The concept of trans people have been around for at least, you know, there's been, like, writings of it for, like, certainly the last century. But it's like the media latched onto it, because it was like, the media machine, this entity

that wants to just, like, keep the wheels churning and maximise profit, noticed, oh, this is a thing, this is a potential trigger point. Let's lean into this. And then it became. more and more inflamed than needed to be. Is that so... I'm really curious to explore this with you, so this is why I'm pushing back. We are kind of in the media, and we talk about that issue quite a lot.

Now, I can tell you from a personal perspective why I am interested in it. I'm interested in it because I think truth matters, and what we are trying to optimize for here is the truth. So when someone says, you know, Abra-Cadabra, Stacy, I'm now a different person, I respect your right to call yourself whatever the hell you want. But as you say, it butts up against the rights of other people.

And also there are truth claims being made in that discussion. And I'm like, if we can't even agree about truth at this basic level, how are we going to solve any problem? So to me, I understand your perspective. And I bet you there's lots of media outlets that have focused in on it because they're like, this is why you get the clicks. But for me, it's like, while some children are being hurt by this problem, And while we can't agree on truth, we have to get somewhere on this issue.

We have to find a way to resolve those tensions, which you're right, exist. But truth matters. Right. The thing that I would want to talk about when we're talking about the media is personal responsibility. And look, you can argue that these corporations, these organizations are evil, you know, they're manipulating us. And that very well may very well be true.

But there's also a part of it is you have agencies. and you are allowing yourself to be manipulated. No, it's a very good point. This guy, Patrick Ryan, came up with this term psychosecurity, and he's been saying, like, the biggest issue of this decade, in his opinion, I'm not sure if I would completely agree, but that we all need to be thinking about and working on is this idea of psychosecurity,

same as you'd have cybersecurity for your computer or your physical security for your house or whatever. we need psychosecurity to protect ourselves from the increasingly powerful manipulation tools that are flying about on the internet. And whether these tools are being used because someone is evil or whether these tools are being used because they're simply stuck in a like, you know, a for-profit incentive game that makes you, you know, they're funneling, they're trying to just maximize their profits. So it's like more the game that's evil. It doesn't really matter. The point is we're spending more and more time on these devices.

and these devices have not really been built for mental health. They've been built for, again, kind of either maximizing profits or maximizing, just getting people to stay on them for as long as possible. And so how do we build these psychological defenses against these various things, whether it's like TikTok trying to just turn you into a fucking drooling, moron, just scrolling a thing,

or the media trying to turn you into a, like, foaming at the mouth, politically polarized, rabid person. It's how do we build up these psychological defenses without going full armish and going like, okay, no more phone for me. It might be, that's right. And the thing is that AI is going to make this more, like, to speed all this up because, you know,

AI is like, it's such a broadly useful technology. If you can hack intelligence itself, then anything that, anything that there's an incentive to use intelligence for, it will get used for. And that includes all the really good stuff, solving all these big problems, but also speeding up the existing problems we have. It would be terrifying to think if, like, all the really partisan news outlets suddenly got AI, you know, really personalized AIs for each individual user to get them to keep getting even more and more angry. That's the way

things are trending. Wow. Yeah. Like every company on Earth is waking up to the fact that AI is like, there's going to be an AI tool to speed up their company, and that means all the good ones, but also all the bad ones, and even the criminal ones. Criminal enterprises will soon have access to AI for whatever crappy thing is they want to do. Casinos wanting to addict people to slot machines.

Those are already sort of dopamine hijacking enough, but that kind of thing. I mean, arguably, that's what social media is. It's our first, like, interaction on a broad scale with, like, rudimentary AI. Because it's, you know, they might have started out really, basic algorithms, but these things are getting more and more intelligent, more and more

personalized. Like my Twitter feed, damn, that shit knows exactly. Save with my Instagram as well. My Instagram is like my Twitter is what makes me all like fired up and like intellectually interested in something. And Instagram is all the things that just like when I just want to chill out and like, you know, I want to be entertained on the toilet. It's just here's funny, here's funny animal doing that.

Here's silly thing there. They're so tailored to my brain because I've been freely. giving them my information all this time. And as AI gets better, this is going to get stronger and stronger and stronger. And that does not sound like a good thing. It doesn't seem like it. No. We'll get back to the episode in a minute.

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to save 10% off when you get the journey pack today. That's tryfum.com and use code trig, T-R-I-G, to save an additional 10% off. 10% of your order today. Give it a go. It might just help you kick that bad habit. Back to the interview. And this is the thing that I'm worried about because I think it was a few months ago

when Elon and a few people, they signed a document requesting that there's a moratorium on AI. And as noble as that is, and despite I would like that, the reality is that's simply not realistic. No, it's going to, well, again, it's like a coordination problem. Because also, like, how do you, you know, where do you draw the line? Technically, Google Maps is an AI. AI is so broad as a term. So you need to, like, they...

I think the purpose of that letter was just to, like, raise attention. And it did a good job. Definitely did a good job. You know, the type of regulation that I think makes the most sense in the interim while we're figuring this out is, like, regulation on what are called frontier models, which are, like, they're just the leading most powerful ones. So, like, technically, GBT4 was a frontier model six months ago. Whatever is currently being worked on now, the upgrade to that, is now a frontier model.

And the thing is, with these type of things where, like, you know, I think it was pretty irresponsible for OpenAI to go and just release, or even, like, Microsoft, and they were using Bing. They did that first, actually. There's no way they could know what the downstream, and we still don't know what the downstream effects are of having such a powerful language manipulation tool. released to the internet, released to a billion people,

nine, you know, eight billion people. And to be fair, there is no way they can know until they do it. So like these companies are going to be just running real-time experiments on humanity. And if it turns out that these experiments actually have a bunch of unintended consequences, we won't know until it's, you know, either too late. I'm not saying that like the current models are a risk of extinction,

they're not. But there's maybe like downstream second, third order effects, again, contributing to not knowing, you know, polluting the information ecosystem, this kind of stuff, that we won't know until they've become so integrated into the economy that they're almost impossible to extract again. And that's the thing. Our economy is getting more and more integrated into AI or vice versa. So some like one one like the sane thing that could be done is like more regulation on frontier models because that will, A, that sort of making, it's putting the responsibility on the most power. people within AI, the biggest companies.

So minimizes the risk of regulatory capture. It's only really affecting the big boys, not the little guys can still carry on developing. And those are also the models that are most likely to have unseen risks and big, big consequences. But in terms of this wider question of, like, AI speeding up the misalignment

that's already inherent within our sort of economic system, I don't know. It's just so hard because it's like, it's like a game of whack-a-mole, but instead of like 20 little things, it's like 20,000. And it's also, from a personal point of view, more and more I've just had the realization that the amount of time that I spend online is also proportionate to the amount of misery that I feel. I've realized as I get older.

that the less time I spend online, the happier that I am. Because life really is all about connection. It is. That's why people love podcasts. Because it's about people connecting in a way that we rarely do anymore. Sometimes because our lives are so busy, the only time in my day when I actually get to sit and have a conversation with another human being

for a prolonged period of time where my phone is off is to do this. Wow. And that's fundamentally unnatural. Yeah. And I think more and more that in order for us to be happier, we need to kind of just take a step back and have that personal responsibility. Yeah, and there's like genuine wisdom in the saying, go out and touch grass. Yeah. Like truly, everyone laughs about it, but like, no, people are so disconnected, not only from each other physically, just from the physical reality.

The digital realm is, it is a universe of sorts, but it's not. not a universe that we evolved out of. Yeah. And it almost feels to me like it's like this reality that's growing stronger that's like feeding off our consciousness in some way. I like in my video I did this thing, like, because that's like how I feel sometimes when I'm just like on my phone and I'm sitting with my friends, then I remember like 15 years ago we'd be sitting around and we'd be all like up in each other's stuff, you know,

talking or whatever. And now half the time, like these things are like, like they're like an appendage on our arm that is just like a parasite sucking all of our attention into and we're just like they're feeding them as opposed to them adding to us that's that's the thing it's like how do we it feels like that's the trend hmm how you not also agree that i think we we love to bang on about how evil social media is but it's also fucking great it's fucking great how many friendships do do we have all of us because we're on social media how many amazing people have we connected with how many amazing things have we learned? How have we improved our understanding of the world? Right.

And I think the same thing is the case with AI. I'd be curious to hear kind of what you think are the biggest risks, but also the biggest rewards that will come from that. Yeah. So, I mean, there's like kind of four different categories of risk. There's the unintended consequences type stuff. So, like, you build such, like, an incredibly powerful model that it, you know, especially, let's say it learns to, or you doesn't even have to learn to. People are, like, already trying to build models which can edit their own code and, like, recursively learn. So, like, that opens off, like, a pretty obvious can of worms, at least to me. You know, it's like, now something can basically evolve itself. It's going to be doing it at a faster rate

than any form of biology. So that's, like, the whole sort of, like, Darwinian type thing. And it doesn't have to turn evil and want to kill us. It's just like it might be so good at, and fast, you know, its goals might not be perfectly aligned with ours, and it would therefore perhaps just use all the resources that we need, you know, or our environment is not suitable to its. And it wouldn't intend to kill us. It just, we would be a byproduct of whatever it continues to do. That's like one category. That's like the most like classic extinction risk type thing. There's lots of sci-fi when in my youth about this, which is a benevolent AI- realizes that the root of human misery is humans. Yeah, I mean, that's a very anthropomorphized version of it. I think, like, that's less plausible than just the idea of, like, an unintended consequence

of, like, it's, like, it wants more compute, and the best way to get more compute is to turn every little bit of silicon it can find into chips, and that we need that silicon for other stuff, you know, just, you know, just biosphere changes, that kind of stuff. That's, like, the extreme sci-fi type of thing. But then there's the more near-term things, again, like speeding up the misalignment in the system, like basically bad, not bad companies, but like companies that are just wanting to do their thing, maximizing for profits or whatever, and now are made even faster and more efficient at doing that, like, you know, cutting down the rainforest or all these things.

And then there's like the bad actor problem. So, you know, because like one argument people put out for like open sourcing is like, well, if we open source, then we can get more people to, like, be thinking about how to build, incorporate safety. We can hive mine this, which seems nice in principle. But the trouble is, if you completely open source a very powerful model, a model that had been kept closed source, you'd put all these safety measures in. Well, now, any bad guy, and the thing is, is that we do have a 1% rate of psychopaths on this planet, and it only take even like a percent of a percent of them, you know, if they found a way to make these things, you know, to truly cause the max

damage they could, you know, like, think like ISIS-type mentality people, something like that. Now, like, how do you protect against them? You can't. So there's that sort of category of risk. And then you've got the fourth one, which is sort of structural-type problems that might come from, like, basically, the sudden shock of such a powerful new technology becoming ubiquitous. So, like, mass unemployment is a classic one. Yes. You know, we're already starting to see signs of And I'm not convinced by the arguments that it will be able to create new jobs fast enough to fill in the gaps of all the ones it's displacing. Like it doesn't seem obvious to me that that will be the case.

So there's those kind of risks too. Sorry, I just wanted to finish on the benefits. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you know, in your video, you talk about negativity bias, right? Human beings have, we prioritize negative information. and I said to you, what are the risks, what are the benefits? You're like, risk, risk, risk, risk, risk, risk, let's move on. No, you're absolutely right.

No, you're totally right. And that's the difficult thing, because there are so many problems that AI can help to solve. Right. You know, like a lot of the environmental issues we have, because we haven't figured out how to have a, like, more abundant, clean source of energy. AI could help us figure out nuclear fusion. So we need it for that. It could help us do with drug discovery. So, you know, especially if like there are all these new potential pandemics on the timeline.

Because that's the thing. Again, with AI, it's what you call a dual-use technology. Not all of the different flavors of it are, but certain categories of AI tend to be dual-use. They can be used for good or for bad. But I kind of am like bipolar on the topic almost because, you know, when I spend a lot of time thinking about these coordination issues, you know, like how do we coordinate for climate change or whatever, we almost need some kind of superintelligence to help us better coordinate on these things in a way that doesn't also then just lead us vulnerable to tyranny or nightmarish type top-down scenarios. So, you know, the bull argument for like going all in on AI as quickly as possible

is that we won't be able to solve these other problems without it. But then it opens up new cans of worms that might make these existing problems or even brand-new ones worse. So it feels like it's like this minefield we have to navigate to get through. But if we get through, then it's like, ah. Yeah, and it's also as well, the reality is that there are people who, I mean, we don't live in a unipolar world. We live in a multipolar world. And the reality is, is that if we don't invest in AI, China, Russia will do.

So that's the classic, yeah, the moloch trap. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so we're right back into that. Yeah. But one thing that I really wanted to talk to you about live moving on is poker, and in particular, strategy. Firstly, how did you get into poker? Because you studied astrophysics at university and then you became a poker player.

Are those connected? Is it mathematics? No, it was very, very random. I graduated, really didn't want to get a real job. Sounds familiar. Anything I could. And I started applying for game shows in the UK. What type of game shows?

Just any of them that would accept me, basically. I was on Golden Balls. Oh, really? Okay, that type of game show. That one, I defected, I stole. Yeah, I feel bad about that one. What else? Codex with Tony Robinson. Okay, yeah.

That was great. They locked you in the British Museum overnight and he had to solve all these clues. But anyway, one of the first shows, in fact, the first show I got on was one that said, could you use your powers of skill and deception to win 100,000 pounds?

That's a lot of money, yes please. So, yeah, and I got selected as one of the five contestants, and then they did this big reveal that they were actually going to teach us how to play poker. And the loose premise was, like, which personality type is best suited for the game? And I was the professor, as they called me. And I didn't win the show,

but I just absolutely fell in love with the game. At the time, I was really into metal music and wanted to be a rock star. And I was like, oh, wait, this is probably easier in many ways because I wasn't that good at guitar. A way to like, I wanted to travel the world, basically, and live a very ridiculous life. And poker seemed like a fun way to do that.

Wow. Okay. So how much of it is luck, how much of it is strategy in order to become a good poker player? So it depends on the time horizon you're talking about. Like, if the three of us sat and played for half an hour, it's basically all luck, assuming you know roughly how to play. But if we played for a week, I'm going to win probably 98% of the time, something like that. I don't know how good you guys are. Maybe one of you very good.

No, no. I think you underestimate your success rate in that scenario. It can be closer to 100%. Right. So basically, there's a lot of luck in any given hand, there's. there's a lot of luck and randomness because the deck is shuffled between each hand, etc. You can't control what cards you get. But the more you play, the more decision points there are, the more any edge that the better player has accumulates. And how much of it is about

reading people's emotional cues, tells, etc.? How important is that? If you're just some purely analytical nerd that can't read people at all, can you be a successful poker player? Yeah, so let's put it this way. The best poker player on Earth is the most analytical nerd you can imagine because it's an AI. It's an AI that doesn't know human emotion, it doesn't read people in that way. It's just so good at calculating the game theory, basically, these Nash equilibria. It's so good at that that it is able to beat the very best humans on Earth consistently. If they were to sit and flick buttons against this thing for infinity, this thing would crush them.

So what that says is that the game really at its core is a game of maths. Wow. Yeah. Now, that's not to say that there isn't this level of meta-information that you can use. And what's interesting is how the game's changed. Like when I first learned to play, and certainly like the decade before, like in the 90s, the best players in the world were incredibly, they were like these old-school hustler-type guys, you know, like the classic in the casino with the cigar.

they would make these sort of inspired intuitive plays that they couldn't even explain why they did them. They just had really strong gut feelings. And their gut feelings were really, like, very accurate, at least more accurate to everyone else. So that's why they were so good. But as, you know, the game moved into online poker more and we started having like more data, basically,

to synthesize and analyze. And then we started building software to analyze that data. The game became more and more of a science and less of an art. and this has sort of trended towards this very mathematical style. Now, that's not to say that the very best players these days know how to do both types. They are very mathematical, they understand all the game theory, but they're also great readers of human behavior.

Those are the very best players. But still, technically, they would lose to the machine. That's how good it is. And how useful is that ability to read other people in poker? to normal life? Like, can you tell what we're thinking now? I can't tell what you're thinking. Like, what you learn in poker,

and I think this is true in almost anything, any kind of, oh, there's the fly. What you're really looking for is figuring out what someone's baseline behavior is when they are not doing the activity, so they're not in a poker hand or they're not in a negotiation. You know, are they a naturally relaxed person?

Are they quite tense? Are they extroverted, introverted, etc.? And then you want to see how they deviate from their baseline when you're actually in play. So some people are naturally very intense when they're playing, and then all of a sudden they become all languid and something. That can be sometimes some relevant information. But the trouble is, as well, is that fear and excitement present themselves very similarly. So that's a real tricky one when you're like, you know, we're playing and you go all in.

put me to the test. And I can see your heart is going and you're breathing fast and your like your mouth is clearly dry. That could be excitement or fear. So one little thing I've found helpful is sometimes to like let just like make someone sit there and sweat it for a few minutes. Like pay attention to how they are after three minutes or two minutes, however long I can stretch it out for. Because if they are excited, you know, if they have a good hand, typically that excitement will wane. You know, they've made their big action, and now they're just waiting to see what you do,

and they don't really, there's nothing more they have to worry about. So they'll typically calm down, but if someone is bluffing, their heart's still going after two minutes, and they're still very, very stressed. So that can be one way of discerning. But again, like the main thing is that there's no one-size-fits-all, and you just have to be,

it's something that you really can't explain. People just have to gather through experience. And I was going to say, Liv, how does mathematics work with poker? You get given your hand. How do you then discern what the best play is with your hand? Because obviously you don't know the hands of other people. Right. So it's all about this concept called like ranges.

We're going to get quite specific here. So, you know, you're playing. Texas Holden, you get two cards out of a deck of 52, there's 1,326 possible combinations of two cards that you could get. I hope those numbers are right. It's been a long time. If they're not, they're not. I'm pretty sure that's the number. And so, all you know, so to begin with, you know, I have two cards out of a possible combination of, that's one combination out of 1326. So that's like, right now my range is 100% of uncertainty to you. But then, let's say, you raise and I now re-raise, well, now you can narrow down that range, because I'm probably

not going to be re-raising with, like, let's say, the bottom 40% of those cards, right? There might be some and so on. But over, as the hand progresses, your job is to try and extract as much information out of me as you can, while at the same time giving as little to me as possible, because I'm trying to do the same thing, right? So you're trying to narrow down the range of cards your opponent could conceivably have by putting them to the test or seeing how they behave, while keeping the range of perceived cards that you have as wide as possible. So that's what you're trying to do in fundamental terms. And then there's basically sort of mathematics you can do within that.

Let's say, I bet 100 into a pot of existing 100. So now you have to call 100 to win 200. two to one, right? And now you can see this stuff like basically pot odds and then like these combinatoral calculations you can do to see if you're getting the right kind of price. I won't go into the minutiae of that. But that's the kind of stuff. So there's a real strategy behind it. And the question I think that is really relevant for everybody watching this and particularly people who aren't interested in poker is, has that helped you to strategize in life.

And also, what are the best poker strategies that you can take for real life? Yeah. People can implement. I would like to think it has because one of the main things poker teaches you to do is to just be comfortable with uncertainty. Be comfortable with just seeing things probabilistically,

which actually leans into, kind of brings us full circle back to this issue that we have with today's modern media. Right? We don't know what's quite true. You'll, some, you know, oh, they found aliens. You know, the Mexican Congress are being shown this alien shape. Well, what's the likelihood that it's real? What's the likelihood it's not?

Okay, that may be a silly example because that's pretty obvious that it was not real. But, you know, some of these things, you truly can't know, and you might never find out what the truth is. And so you, what poker teaches you is to be like, okay, well, I'm like, I feel like 30% of the time they have this kind of hand. and then 40% of the time this, so then 30% of the time they have that or whatever. You know, you're very used to thinking about things probabilistically

with this, like, grey scale. And that's the most useful skill, by far. Because, I mean, even things like trying to take it, you know, decide whether to park illegally somewhere. Not that I would advocate that, but, you know, you're running late for a meeting. Shit, I don't want to get a parking ticket. but I don't want to be late for my meeting.

What I would do is go, okay, well, what's the probability I'll get a ticket while I'm parked here? Okay, it's probably like, I'm here for half an hour. It's probably only like 10%. Okay. How much is the ticket if I get it? It's $100. All right, so that's an expected loss of $10. Would I be willing to pay $10 to park right now and be on time for my meeting?

Yes, okay, I'll park. You know, that's the kind of thing, these expected value calculations, which you don't learn in school. And they're so useful. They're so important. So yeah, living with just grey scale and probability is probably the number one thing. We'll be back with our guest in a minute. But first, we want to take a moment to talk about our partners, GiveSENGO.

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Go to give sendgo.com today. That's give sendgo.com to start raising money for whatever's important to you. And now, back to the interview. The next thing is learning how to deal with luck and randomness. Because one of the hardest things in life is like, let's say we have a big success at something. Is it because we did a really good job? We were just better than everyone else? or was it more because we got lucky, or some combination of those two?

And again, like poker, it's like I won very early on in my career, this huge tournament, this European Poker Tour tournament. And after that, basically for a period of time, for the next six months, because it was such a big tournament, I got so much attention for winning it. I just assumed I was God's gift. And I stopped studying the game as hard. I started playing in bigger tournaments, like riskier tournaments, etc. and my win rate just went, like, absolutely plummeted to the floor. And that's because I got fooled by randomness a little bit. Like, I obviously did a lot of stuff right to win that tournament,

but I also had so much luck on my side. And our egos have a tendency, you know, the narrative we tell ourselves is we like to take credit for our successes and outsource blame on luck. You know, oh, I just got unlucky when things don't go well. And poker teaches you to basically, be honest with yourself. You have to be epistemically humble and like really scrutinized, you know, okay, what was the cause of this? Was it because I was, I did things right or because I got

lucky? And therefore it trains you to be more focused on process as opposed to outcome and results. Like if you develop a good process, it's kind of agnostic to whether luck is on your side or not, then that's the benchmark you should measure yourself against. So that's the other one. And then the third one is like, don't overprivilege your intuition in situations where your intuition is not best suited. Because, again, like, the natural thing, if I'm playing in a, if I was playing poker and I couldn't, you know, my brain wasn't working well, and I couldn't think through all these combinations and so on is go, well, I'll just go with my gut. And after 15 years of playing, my gut was fairly reliable. but certainly for the first five, ten years of playing, my gut was not very good.

And so that would be, I would often use my intuition as an excuse to just not do the boring number crunching. And again, people, I've noticed that's a trend that seems to be widespread in the world. You know, you look at these memes online if you search for like intuition, everything, the internet says, oh, trust your intuition 100% of the time.

It's always right. And it's like, that's just bullshit. But after even 15 years of playing poker and thinking I have great intuitions, I would still have an error rate. I'd be so sure that someone was bluffing me. And then it turns out that actually they had a really good hand. But my gut was like screaming, no, cool, cool. And it was wrong. So that's the other one.

Be careful of like overrelying on intuition and instinct in situations where really you just need to do the like the boring number crunching. And it's such a powerful message because so many people make decisions that are emotional not based in rational. and then it turns out that they're terrible decisions. Because you're not making an objective choice, because you're letting your emotions hijack your decision-making process. Yeah, and the reason, you know, if you're just doing stuff purely on instinct all the time,

you can't go in and then scrutinize what your thought process was. At least if it's like you're doing something like logically, you can look back at it and go, okay, that's probably where my bias and my emotion clouded this bit. But when it's like pure intuition stuff, it's a black box you don't know what's going on in there and they're still vulnerable to emotional bias and that kind of stuff

so yeah it's I don't know I wish I had like a clean clean answer to like how you do it I'm curious is it possible to control your own tells um is that something poker players work on you do

um I mean again like I should caveat this I haven't I quit poker like four years ago, you know, properly now. I'm not sure what the latest strategies people are doing. You definitely, like, I would practice. It's not like I would sit in front of the mirror or anything like that, because I would watch videos of myself.

Like, you know, if I played a final table, I would then go back and watch it afterwards if it was televised to see, oh, okay, so this is how I was behaving there. Good to know. I'm gulping a lot, and I'm clearly, you know, when I was running a huge bluff. But, you know, I was. A good poker face is basically something that's just, it doesn't have to be a deadpan. It's just something that is natural to you.

Some people are naturally very animated, so you just want to train yourself. Basically, it's through exposure therapy of being in like these stressful high-stakes situations. The more you're in them, the less you're going to have the flight or fight response. So that's really the training you can do. You know, you can't train your poker face for if you're like for a huge final table until you've actually just been there and done it and felt how it felt and dealt with all the physiological annoyances

that your body throws at you. I remember the first time I did question time. I was completely calm on my way there. The drive Francis came with me. Completely calm when we got there, completely calm as we did the warm-up. And then when it came to the actual show, I suddenly couldn't move my body for like five minutes.

I could just do this. And the rest of my body was just like rigidly stuck. In one place. But then as well, the show went on, I relaxed into it. But it's amazing how, like, it just flipped and it's not something that you truly control. Second time you do it, you are actually relaxed. Yeah. Yeah. I still, you know, I do a lot of public speaking these days and I still get, like, incredible straight fright each time. I did just for the first time try beta blockers, you know, which are,

like, they're meant to help just like slow down the heart rate and so on, just like the help the physiological symptoms and they did actually really help. So I kind of wish I'd discovered these long ago when I was playing poker. But yeah, it's, I don't know. I think some people's bodies, there's a lot of variation between people as well. Practice obviously helps,

but a big thing I learned is just like, I learned to accept that I'm just always going to have a high heart rate when I'm stressed. And that's just how my body responds. Having long hair would actually help in poker I would do this a lot to just try and hide it. But yeah, just it's kind of get comfortable with the fact that you are going to be stressed sometimes. And there's just like, the worst thing you can do is being stressed about being stressed, right?

Yeah, it's practicing acceptance. Yeah. I think that's the most important thing. When you are in a situation and you feel stressed, you go, okay, why am I feeling stressed? And most of the time, it's because you're catastrophizing. and actually once you analyze it and you take a step back and go this is just an emotion, that's all it is.

And that's a really, well, it's certainly with me, that's a really good way I've found to deal with that, that realizing that you're not your emotions, you know? This is just a thing that is temperate. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity,

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Yeah, it was 1.25 million euros. It's incredible. It's a good one. week. It was a good week. It was 25. You were 25 and you thought thank God you weren't a 25 year old man. I was much better. What did you do with it? No, I was actually pretty, I was pretty reasonable. I bought a flat in London and then put a bunch of it back into poker. As I said, probably a bunch of it into that six months after where I wasn't playing very well. Did you think like this is the beginning, this is it now, I'm going to be winning like this every few months or every week or whatever.

I thought I was God's gift. I mean, so would anyone. Really? I mean, to be fair to you, if I was 25 years old and I won a poker tournament, where I won 1.25 million euros. You'd be dead. Oh, yeah. And before my inevitable death, I would be a raging dickhead.

Yeah. I mean, I didn't do anything too nuts and to, in terms of lavish spending. I mean, I just, it was more just like, so after winning that, the British press, speaking of tabloids, got hold of it. Daily Mail turned up at my parents' house. My mum didn't know, so she let them in.

They were taking photos of my childhood pictures. They're all in there now. Yeah, I was on the front page of like a bunch of tabloids that week because it was, you know, there was some angle there. I don't know quite what their angle was. I guess it was just like I was a young, cuteish girl who had an interesting story. And that was, I mean, it was the highest high that week.

Talk about dopamine spikes, my God. And then once it all sort of settled down, I think I probably had like a big crash as well. And I remember wanting that, having that taste of fame, that was definitely a thing that was a part of my brain that wanted to get back to. It was like, okay, well, I need the next wind so I can keep that going.

And then when it didn't come as easily, that was interesting to adjust to. And why did you stop? In the end, a combination of things. A, the game has gotten so much harder. Really? So much harder. Yeah, well, again, so AI, big part of that.

Like online poker is basically done for high stakes money. You can play low stakes or whatever, and that's fine. because you can now have an AI that is playing effectively in real time that's far better than anyone else. It's just there's incentive for people to cheat and use them. So there's that. Then also the average player is just so much better than they used to be because all this strategy information has been very democratised.

These tools are very easy for anyone to work with now. So the average Joe is just much better at poker. And then thirdly, I just kind of got bored of it as well. I've been doing it for a long time and felt, you know, various forms of itchy feet. Also, it's like, you know, the ultimate zero-sum game by definition. And I wanted, I felt like I should probably do something else than just that for the rest of my life. It's a little bit more positive sum, a bit more win-win. And plus you got a taste of the sort of the celebrity and now you make content.

Now I'm one of those people I try and justify it to myself that I'm doing I really really believe in the content I'm making let's put it that way yeah perfect that's a good reason to make content explaining these concepts of like

shitty game theory you know the like competition gone wrong in society and like trying to think of like get more people thinking about it to like hopefully we'll then hive mind a solution to this definitely feels like my calling

I hate that phrase but why do you hear that phrase I don't know it feels because you're British yeah because here everyone's like it's my mission

and I'm so blessed I can hear my mum stop posting stop bragging but no I really really believe in in finding ways to defeat Mollock and I think this is my

best way of doing that I seem to be good at making these little films about it. And I've, not to pimp my podcast in after I just launched this podcast called Win Win, which is about finding win-wins in seemingly win-lose situations. Yeah, and I'm so excited to see the type of guest. I saw the announcement instantly retweeted it because it's going to be great. On that happy note, before we go to locals where we ask you some of the questions from our supporters, the last question we always end with is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

The one thing we are not talking about enough is whether you want to call it mollock, whether you want to call it coordination problems, multipolar traps, inadequate nash equilibrium, whatever word means the most to you, these forces of short-term incentives that are misaligned with what the world actually needs and are creating these race to the bottom spirals

within industries or within little sections. We aren't talking about like the meta-level stuff, you know, the actual fundamental structures of these systems sufficiently. Everyone's just too busy pointing fingers going, you did that, and therefore you're bad. And it's like, let's focus more on the, you know, it's like basically don't hate the players, hate the game. And how do we fix the game?

That's what we're not talking about enough. Deliverie, thanks for coming on. Thank you. Head on over to locals where we continue the conversation with your questions. Why do you think women are so bad at poker? I mean, I think it's a joke. But a serious question, women do underperform in every available metric. I'd like to know what you think are a mix of factors that are responsible for this.