The AI Boys Hug It Out, The Doomers Want It Banned | PW Pod w/ Mike Solana & Liv Boeree

Speaker 1

I think he sees people becoming really wealthy who are not necessarily going to be socialists, and he wants to shut it down, is what I think is happening. What is your pidum?

Speaker 2

I refuse, I don't know.

Speaker 1

Now, why don't you? I feel embarrassed for bringing her, for putting her in that position around these men. What are we doing here? For me, this is not even about data centers. What is this idea that you are entitled to every space that exists? What's up, guys? Welcome back to the podcast. We have the incredible Liv Boray in the house, wizard of poker and just brilliant woman online.

Of course, the steadfast Riley Nork, who'll be guiding us through the topics. Before we get started on today's episode, I mean, jam-packed, tons of incredible, let's see, everything from AI to a little Cornell I don't think I can say the word in the first 30 seconds of the podcast. Sex scandal, shall we call it. I want to give a shout out to Sam Blond, the founder of Monaco, who, I mean, I don't know if you guys were following this.

There was a hijacking of a plane, in the Middle East, in which one of the pilots tried to kill the other pilot and then crashed the plane. And then Sam Blond stormed through the front, and then Sam Blond kicked down the door. Took out the pilot and landed the plane himself, with of course the help of this incredible, this incredible host of, passengers.

I mean, don't screw with Israelis. let's get into it.

Speaker 3

Sure, so since the return of the Pirate Wires podcast, a recurring theme has repeatedly emerged, and that is the question of whether this, emerging, emerging artificial intelligence that we're building is going to kill us all. So, it turns out one such person who has been warning about this, former anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, may have been doing a little fibbing, despite claiming in a Fox News interview that he wasn't working with third parties as he went public with his concerns.

we reported last week that Jacob was in fact working with a PR firm called D.E.Y., which also represents other safetyists like Eliezer Yudkowsky. later, as our reporting started to go viral, Nate Sores chimed in to, take credit here. He said that he was the one who asked D.E.Y. to help Jacob, while also claiming that the firm landed Zero media hits.

Nevertheless, it does contradict Jacob's claims about not working with any third parties and still raises the important question of who was paying for this PR. Elsewhere on the AI front, Bernie Sanders has released a bill that would permanently ban superintelligence and imprison anyone working on it because, of course, he did. Meanwhile, Trump said, screw that, we're going all in on superintelligence after he signed an executive order officially rebranding AI as superintelligence across all departments and agencies.

This was, of course, at a White House tech powwow this week where all the top AI companies signed a, quote, morally binding agreement to police themselves, which will include both internal and external reviews. That AI summit was attended by just about every leading figure in the industry, Elon, Jensen, Dario, Zuck. So many cracked autists in one room, it makes you hope we had a designated autistic survivor somewhere.

Solana, Liv, what do we make of the week that was in super intelligence?

Speaker 1

Okay, so there's so much AI news. I think maybe the best way we do this, Liv, let's start with, I want to start with Bernie Sanders' bill and then get your read on it. And maybe we talk through, for the audience, one of the reasons I love, Liv, I just love, I love you. I think you're a thoughtful person. I think you're fun. you and I, I think the last time you were on this podcast, like over a year ago, had one of my favorite conversations because we disagreed, on, I think it was a safety related, an AI safety related question, but we disagreed in a way that I find to be really helpful, which is that like we agree on core values and core things and core goals.

and maybe just didn't see, From the same perspective, the AI safety question, which meant that I got to learn a lot. So, I want to start, I want to start and try and find some common ground. And I think we could probably do that pretty fast, starting with the Bernie thing. So Bernie's bill, what is it, Stop Artificial Superintelligence

Speaker 2

Act, is

Speaker 1

what it sounds like. He wants right now a pause on what people are terming advanced artificial intelligence, which is a term I'm hearing more and more. It means just what we're doing right now, and then what we're going to do kind of after what we're doing right now on the run up to superintelligence. Superintelligence until the last five seconds, and hopefully moving forward, which Liv and I will talk about in a minute.

superintelligence is, you know, endgame for, AI. We've gone from AGI to now ASI, people refer to it as. It's like, basically when we talk about the god-like thing that's going to kill us all, we're talking about superintelligence, something that can do anything immediately, is sort of inconceivable to people. It is, it is the, the final stage.

So Bernie's pausing all work on AI right now. he is permanently Planning the work on artificial superintelligence, he is putting in prison anybody who, violates this bill, or this act. And then we get to the question of two things. One, coordination with other democratic countries. And then two, how do we work with China? Well, he doesn't say China.

It's like other non-democratic countries. So that is the part where, you know, separate from banning everything, maybe there will be sanctions if China doesn't listen. It's kind of where it falls down on. And the word may is used. We could, if we would like to, stop selling them certain technologies that help them with artificial intelligence if they go and try and build ASI, which we're told is going to be the end of the world, worse than nuclear weapons.

Certainly Bernie is saying that. That's why he wants to pause it. This was endorsed immediately by Elias Ryabkowski, who is, you know, the, let's say, high priest of doom from the rationalist side of things. And what do you think about the bill, Liv?

Speaker 2

so what I've seen of it, my first thought was just like, you can't, the, the, the term ASI is too poorly defined in the document to then go and have such huge statements after about what should be done about it. If somehow it was defined what it means by superintel, like artificial superintelligence, and there was an agreement that was made that was also, multilateral, then I don't think it's unreasonable to have punishments for people who then go and violate such an, an agreement, right?

Speaker 1

And what's the description that you would be like, this should be banned permanently?

Speaker 2

so I really do not think we should be doing, recursive self-improvement right now. That's the limit.

Speaker 1

Ezra Klein also came out in the New York Times and said it should be banned.

Speaker 2

Okay. but I think that one seems like a bit of a no-brainer right now, given what we've seen. Now, of course, a lot of people are like, oh, I, they don't believe that the hugging face thing was as big a deal as it, as, as the labs are claiming it was. I've read through everything on that. I think it is a huge deal, and it's unfortunately an indication that, the suspected concerns that, like, actually beyond a certain point, AI agents will start doing really unpredictable, wacky things.

obviously they, that was in part because of really poor quality sandboxing. But the point is, is that this is just the beginning. And the sandbox, like, it seems like making hard, like, really solid sandboxes is very, very hard, and that's a hard problem. And if we're going to be going even faster on the next thing, and we're going to start making them be able to edit themselves and improve themselves in a, in a Hard to scrutinize way that's going to make this sandboxing problem even harder and even harder.

So, beside that though, like, I mean, now I'm already going off topic, like, with the Bernie thing, it, looking at the document, it seems to say that the thing that should be paused right now is only frontier development. So they're not saying, from what I can tell, pause all AI.

Speaker 1

It's advanced, no, yeah, it's, it's, it's advanced AI. Advanced AI. So improving the models right now.

Speaker 2

Extremely clearly defined. Again, not clear to me if that is sufficiently done in the document, so I, I, I can't give a strong opinion on that. but I don't know, it doesn't seem like a document that is likely to get any actual sway in government. I mean,

Speaker 1

it got it, I, I was surprised, the reason I even brought it up, I mean, Bernie's always He's always doing some crazy shit. the, the reason I brought it up was because he got to support Ove Leiser. And I mean, you have this rationalist group of people. What was that, Liv?

Speaker 2

That doesn't surprise me at all.

Speaker 1

Right. but I would say You can't really make, and this is the guy who we've talked about previously on the podcast, author of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Will Die. He has been core to the whole AI, I wouldn't just say the AI safety conversation. He's been core to the Bay Area AI conversation for 15 more, 20 plus 25 years, I mean, since the early 2000s, he's been on this.

Speaker 2

He was like the OG alignment is really hard guy.

Speaker 1

And before alignment is really hard guy, he was like the OG, we're going to build AI guy. You know, there was a whole, there was a whole process in, to his thinking that led him to the AI safety stuff. But certainly he's a core person in the movement who you can't really marginalize, who has a super, super, super extreme views, who people have, I think, tried to marginalize.

What the Jacob Coxon thing, so Jacob Coxon is the whistleblower from Anthropic, what he proves to me, we now know for sure that he's very close to Eliezer and Nate Soares, because Nate Soares is the person who introduced him to the PR firm. So when he talks about his friends who helped him with PR, this is important because there's a distinction between the EA community and how they observe the AI safety stuff, the risks and what should be done, and the rationalists.

And Jacob is rationalist, which means one of the foremost safety influencers in the entire world now is team rationalist. And that means that he's listening to Eliezer, and so what Eliezer says matters. Like this is going to be shaping everything. And so we got to talk about Bernie, who was just hanging out with Eliezer out in San Francisco.

That is clearly the person who informed all of his ideas. Now, does Bernie care about AI? I think Bernie cares about anything that could potentially challenge his own power, and this is one of those things. I think he sees people becoming really wealthy who are not necessarily going to be socialists, and he wants to shut it down, is what I think is happening.

But, you know, maybe this is still, I mean, clearly it's still something that, you know, Eliezer wants.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I mean, it, it, Ellie has, has been very consistently, you know, his P-doom, even though I fucking hate that term.

Speaker 1

What is your P-doom?

Speaker 2

I, I refuse, I don't know.

Speaker 1

Now, why don't you? Tell us, what is, what is a P-doom and why won't you give one?

Speaker 2

Because I think it's, the, the topic is just far too complex to collapse down to a single probability. And in part because we live, I, I tweeted at the beginning of the year, this is the year of hyperstition. Not because I think that that will be the word that everyone uses, but because we are more than ever living in a world where beliefs create reality.

Like literally AIs are being built upon the stories that we have told in history. And if all of the literature is just that, hey, super powerful AIs are going to go rogue and are going to see us either as an inconvenience or just don't care about us, that is a lot, that will be the majority of the corpus going into training them. now, I'm sure you can adjust that and so on, but my point is, is that, like, if you only tell stories of doom, you're more likely to get those stories.

So it's, because of that, it's impossible to just, in a, in a vacuum, say objectively, well, therefore, P-doom is 70% or 10% or whatever, because, like, you're, by doing that, you're already affecting what the future P-doom would be. So there's that problem with it. And then secondly, it's just, we don't really have a precedent, so it's just pure vibes.

So let's stop talking about it like it's meaningful. Now, I will say this, the people who have really, anyone who says, like, a middle-of-the-road P-doom, I'm just like, okay, then, so you just don't really know and you don't have an opinion, which is why I don't answer it, because that's what I am. Like, I'm I don't know. If you're saying it's ninety-nine point nine nine percent, you're basically saying, no, I have looked into this or whatever, but I have come to the conclusion that this is an unavoidable problem.

If you build a effectively omnipotent, omniscient thing, you will never be able to align it with biological life, and therefore we'll all die. Okay, fine. If you've come to that conclusion, then it makes sense to say ninety-nine point nine nine percent. Similarly, if you're like, I've looked into it, I think that there was no, you know, that actually a superintelligent thing won't, you know, will care about us, and it will be fine, therefore I'm at basically zero.

Okay, great. Then it's useful. But beyond that, it's just a meaningless thing. And also, it's just kind of being used as a cudgel. At this point, by each memetic tribe to make the other tribe look silly, and it's just like, just stop it. Let's just talk about what we're actually concerned about. Let's not try and put a number on it. So that's my rant.

How that tied in... So anyway, tying that back to the Bernie thing. So, I mean, but given that Eliezer, and I will give him this, he has been consistent. He's definitely no idiot in terms of, like, his logical thinking and so on, and his arguments, you know, I like... I think some of his arguments are quite compelling. Some of them I don't agree with.

But given that, I can see why it is tempting for him and others to go and align with someone like Bernie, who, you know, and again, I have absolutely no mental model of Bernie. I've really just not paid that much attention to him. This is maybe my Britishness and so on. He always seemed like, kind of like, this well-meaning, but Thoroughly sort of impractical type of politician who will just go for like...

Speaker 1

We gotta stop. I, I think he's evil. I think we do, we're like, we are like, oh, we, this is a comm, I do the same thing. Oh, he intends well. This is, we always do this with communists.

Speaker 2

Well,

Speaker 1

they, they intend well. Their intentions are so good, therefore we're softer on them or something than we are with someone, for example, like Hillary, Hillary Clinton, who, who gets, who gets it way harder. We say, no, that woman is, everyone on left, right, and center says this is a reptilian who wants to eat your children, like shut it down, get her out, evil woman.

But then Bernie, this beloved old guy, it's, no, what is, the guy is out in the Soviet Union on his honeymoon. He is an ardent Open socialist. His goal is Stalinism. I don't think, I guess I cannot say for sure he would disagree that his goal is Stalinism. I believe that his goal is Stalinism. I think that Marxism itself is not something that we can say, oh, well, it's well-meaning, but it's, if it actually happened, it would be a horrible prison reality where you are not entitled to your own property.

you are not entitled to the concept of private property. and the state effectively owns you, which is what he wants, which is what he's petitioning for, which is why I get so nervous when he comes after stuff like this. it reminds me a lot of the, the wealth tax. So have you followed this at all in California? okay. So you have the, the idea of the wealth tax.

I won't bore everyone with the details. High level. being framed as a billionaire tax, a medical union, one of the healthcare unions is proposing it. They're going to take 5% of all of the money owned by billionaires in all of the property owned by billionaires in the state of California. Huge disaster. I've written about it. I wrote about it for about six months.

You can read it all on Pirate Wires.

Speaker 2

How to kill your golden goose in two easy steps.

Speaker 1

Right. So immediately what happens is people start moving. if it succeeds, what you're going to see is calamitous because you, you have the situation where the state is going to have the ability to re-up the tax whenever it wants, to go after unrealized gains, to go after paper, the concept of paper billionaires. And then there's this whole voting rights thing, which means the people who are not even actually net worth billionaires, but one-tenth or one-one-hundredth of that based on how voting rights are established in their corporation, can be taxed also, which means you just can't build a company here.

And even if you could... And you're going to

Speaker 2

dismantle the existing ones.

Speaker 1

They're going to dismantle the existing ones, drive them out, and you're not going to want to build future ones. Now, why would you push, why would Bernie Sanders endorse this, as he has done? Why would the Democratic Party in the state of California have endorsed this, as they have done? It seems so crazy that you think, well, they're well-meaning but stupid.

And I think, no, I think, I think that they know this will happen, and they think that that, eliminating that rival fount of power is more important than the welfare of, of your citizens, which is also how I look at, for example, how you could get behind something so toothless in, to the question of China. If you are banning superintelligence at home, and you are pausing right now, all even work on current models, and there are no real repercussions for China in your own, in your own policy that then, again, Eliezer endorsed, super problematically, in my opinion, because of the China question, then what you're saying is It's okay.

The wealth, your, the welfare of your state is not as important as eliminating this, this group of powerful people in your own, in your own country. Here, in the case of China, it's like this very clear and present danger. It's obvious to me. If you really believe this is a problem, you really, really don't want them to have it. And there's not yet an answer to the China question on the AI stuff.

That's really the one I would like you to read. How are the safety people, it doesn't seem like there's a good answer to the China thing. If you pause at home, you can't get them to pause. So how do you, how do you crack that nut?

Speaker 2

well, I do think, you know, we've literally seen, I, I mean, I was glued to it, the, the state dinner with, between Xi and, Trump. And that, personally, I mean, okay, yeah, maybe it was just a lot of platitudes, but for me, I was like, oh, thank God, someone is finally actually trying some real diplomacy. This is diplomacy, like, especially when you're dealing with, you know, big, powerful alpha men, like, how do you make them feel good? And you, you give them, you give them gifts, you do fanfares, et cetera.

And I just thought it was absolutely fascinating. I got into like Twitter wars with people who told me that it was boring. I'm just like, okay, I guess we live in different planets. But, it's To me, like the first step, I mean, the China, it is, it is a fundamentally hard game theory problem. That's part of the problem with that. That's why, you know, and I think we should all give each other a little bit, bit of grace from all sides, because it is just like, we're ultimately under, I was yet bang on about Moloch, but this is a classic Moloch trap.

If we don't go faster, we'll lose to the other guys who might, and that would be worse, even though, and in, if we are in the case where going fast is just taking everybody off the, off the cliff, which some believe, and some portion of me thinks is possible, I'm not a certainty on that, but I think it's, I, I'm think it's certainly not zero.

then in that case, then it's, that's why I can, I can understand the rationale for Eliezer to think that, you know what, if we're all dead in five years, fuck it, I'll even assign, I'll even align with, with, Bernie. I can see that as a, as a rationale. Do I think it's wise or smart? Probably not. No.

Speaker 1

Well, this is the classic thing about the rationalists too, because aligning with Bernie completely politicizes you in a way. I saw him tweeting recently that he, he, he, he himself was, was saying, oh, it's, it's terrible the way the EAs have, have politicized, the effective ultraists have politicized this. your parade with Bernie guaranteed that, that people, on the right would find you suspicious.

It is just, there's no way for people to, to read that as anything else. He is the furthest left candidate that exists.

Speaker 2

Yeah, again, I don't know the ration, I was not privy to this, to this Bernie thing. all I can think, I'm, I'm just playing devil's advocate again, it's not my position, but I can imagine the rationale was something to the effect of, well, the Trump government have basically come out and said that they don't even believe, because this, this did happen, right? like the Trump government have gone, we're, we're going as fast as possible.

There is no, there is no risk. Yeah, basically, like the, the forward-facing things that the government have been saying, like data tax, et cetera, and the people who are like, you know, proxy government at this point, like a lot of the, the tech people, Andreessen and co, have been like, there is no risk, we must go as fast as possible, these people are crazy, ignore them, they're doomers, blah, blah, blah.

So, I get, maybe they just feel like they're like so backed into a corner, okay, I guess we have to make an alliance with whoever's the strong, you know, like whoever will listen, and if they're on the other side, you know, if, if it polarizes the issue, so be it. I, I, I don't know if that was the, the decision-making, but I could see a line of thinking that would go there.

If you feel so backed into a corner and desperate, which I know a lot of people have felt, because it felt like the, the, you know, the power apparatus, which is, you know, presence, you know, the, the admin and Jensen and Sachs and everyone like that are just completely cavalier about risk. So You know, so it's, that's the thing, it's a two-way street.

This is what I hate about this whole thing. In the beginning, because I've been here in the early days of AI safety, I started funding some of these, I was helping like fundraise for some of these different researchers when there was like no one looking into this back, you know, very few people, it was like ten people. It was completely nonpartisan, it was just like purely like, hey, inquiry and things were chill.

Then I don't, again, I don't want to point fingers too much, but honestly, the first people who started polarizing this issue and making it more of a like political thing and doing like real memetic warfare were the EACTs, who started saying like, oh, these doomers, they're all doing this because they're just hungry for power and so on. It's like, that is not true.

I know the, no, but I know a lot of these people, like maybe they- They are

Speaker 1

asking for, but Liv, they are, they are asking for power. Like when you, when you read AI 2027, their prescription for, you know, the good future that we're going to empowers a small committee filled with people just like this who will control the superintelligence that will itself, as they describe it, effectively be controlling not only our government, but all governments.

So they're, they're actively petitioning for a lot of power.

Speaker 2

I mean, I don't think that, where do they say people just like this? I think in, in the document, I'm pretty sure in AI 2027, he says to the effect of like, it should be a like cross-partisan

Speaker 1

committee.

Speaker 2

Like they're like, You know, I think he's not playing issue with people like me. But there are

Speaker 1

people who believe in what they believe in. You can't be on the committee if you don't believe in this conceptually. So, so that, that includes, that includes the, I mean, presumably it's not a committee of EAs. It's going to be a committee that are, that are running the AI in their good future that gets us to, to, to the world, the world not buy.

Speaker 2

Well, yeah, I mean, it's not the extreme EAs, but the funny thing is, is I know a few EAs who have since strongly softened their position. Well, I don't think EAs

Speaker 1

is a real thing, to be honest. That's the other thing that bothers me. I saw Scott Alexander, this is a writer in the rationalist EA space. And I read an old thing of his talking about the philosophy of, of, of EAs. They're just, it's a meme. They're just people online shit posting. It, it started as a joke. It has evolved into a vibe, a vibe.

Yeah, but memes have

Speaker 2

power. It's,

Speaker 1

who are, where are the things they, Islam is

Speaker 2

just a meme. And yet, you know, like, I don't think you can just dismiss something. It started out as just... I mean, Elon Musk has a

Speaker 1

holy book. What's the holy book of EAC?

Speaker 2

they have a whole website. They have blog posts, etc. Like, there's, again, EAC is a spectrum. Like, EA is a spectrum. Like, AI safety, everything's a spectrum. You can, by the way, for

Speaker 1

our audience who... He Doom is

Speaker 2

a spectrum.

Speaker 1

EAC are the effective accelerationists. It was clearly a joke about effective altruism that people seem to sometimes believe online. But I had a conversation with Balaji and Beth Jesus after Beth was doxxed, and I said to his face, this is a meme. This is not even a real thing. I don't understand what people are talking about. He did seem maybe slightly uncomfortable with that.

Maybe it had become more real than I realized. No,

Speaker 2

it really has. Like, and I mean, at what point does a meme become, you know, if a ton, if Elon is retweeting it, And saying, and calling himself one. If, if, and reasoning. And he also said things

Speaker 1

you can't, who knows? I mean, he also is.

Speaker 2

Yeah, you know, I mean, Elon, holds many, you know, many views, let's put it that way. But, it's, it's, but the point is, if, if something, at some points, things break beyond just being just a meme. Like EA was a meme. And you claim, you know, you say it's like this all-powerful thing at this point, and like...

Speaker 1

Well, it is. It's a well-funded organization. It wasn't ever a meme. I mean, it was, you had, you had actual intellectuals who wrote all about what it was. There was theory behind it. You had powerful, wealthy people who funded it. You can't

Speaker 2

say that EAC, EAC has, like, there are a ton of extremely wealthy people who openly call themselves EACs. I just

Speaker 1

don't know what it means either. What, what is, what, how do you, like, effective altruism, I could describe to you exactly what it is and the various prominent people who thought about it and how they've evolved. What does EAC even mean? It doesn't, it seems like a, it seems like this sock puppet that effective altruists want to believe is, is the scary enemy in the room, but that's not their enemy.

Their enemy is people not... The,

Speaker 2

the EACs, I, I, from my view... Yeah, it's trying to make, EAs be the sort of puppet. They are in charge.

Speaker 1

The EAs are all of these, all of the safetyists are effective altruists. And they have all this power in all of the labs. They were the ones, the, the EAs were responsible for, Sam Altman, you know, being removed from power. And the EAs are the ones who are, currently, But

Speaker 2

then you could also say the EAs were responsible for Sam Altman getting power in the first place because it was Elon who chose to start OpenAI because he went to, he was really scared about AI safety.

Speaker 1

Because of DeepMind.

Speaker 2

Yeah, well, he's been, Elon's been scared about it for years, since like 2011.

Speaker 1

Right, but it was DeepMind with the cat

Speaker 2

was. Right, partially that and various other things. But my point is, it's like, where does this begin? Like, it's just, it started out with a group of people thinking about, oh, wait, at some point, if we build something, if you build something that is more intelligent than another thing, usually that other intelligent thing gets to do whatever it wants.

That could be a problem if we, if, if that thing doesn't care about us in some way. Huh. You know, it all started from that root questioning and then it sort of spiraled off. And it's just like, where do we define EA? You know, it's like EA is such a broad thing as well. The, the term has almost ceased to be meaningless. You know, like I, there, there are some facets of AI, EA that I deeply like agree with and align with, like a farm animal welfare.

That's like kind of my whole thing right now. I got that, I learned about that because of EAs who like showed me about it. And I use EA principles to figure out which are the best interventions to improve farm animal welfare, you know. But now it's also like, it also spans anyone and everyone who has any concerns about AI, whether it's you're concerned about near-term risks versus you're a full on like ninety nine percent super intelligence is, who's going to kill everybody thing.

You know, so the term has become so diluted. And the way I view it is Both EAC came out of, and I think the thing that EAC has done a really good job of, and I think was important, and it was an area that the AI safety people did not sufficiently, even though I know privately they did talk about it, but they did not make it their, a big enough issue, and they should have, which is the concentration of power.

because really, like, what, what, if you, if you zoom out as much as possible with, with this, this dilemma we're in, what we're really dealing with is tension between the forces of freedom, the need for freedom, and the need for security, right? That's the, the, this is the fundamental tension we're dealing with. And if you, if you go too far in what, like trying to preserve one, then it, it, it naturally risks the other.

And the EA or the AI safety people, whoever you want to call it, the, the, the doomers, were mostly focused on the, the, the loss of control, like, oh shit, if we don't take care of security, then we're all going to die. So that Therefore, therefore they weren't as focused on the, on the concentration of power problem. And the IACTs were born out of like saying, well, if you guys aren't talking about the risk of concentration of power, maybe that means you are blind to that or even want tons of power.

And so it was a mimetic response to that. And I think that's good and healthy. We needed that. But what I don't like, and I, I don't want to name names, but there are certain members of the IACT faction who have gone and like completely, before, before IACT came along, at least the discourse was like pretty civil. People were talking about lots of things.

There was a lot of disagreement within IA. A lot. There were the people who were like more like, no, it's the near term stuff. No, it's the far stuff. No, it's the concentration of power stuff. No, it's the loss of control. And then IACTs went and said, you guys are all the same. You're all just trying to get concentration of power. You're all going for, you all want to be the overlords.

And, and, and it, it like just broke things, the ability to have nuanced discussion.

Speaker 1

Yeah, it becomes, it triggers a tribal response. Right,

Speaker 2

exactly. It, it turned it into fucking wokeism, like 2.0 and all this. And it's just like, can we just have sane conversations about the actual individual issues? Let's not lump them all into one thing. And, and, and also the conversation all went onto Twitter as well, onto X. And unfortunately, X is the death of nuance. So it was, it was a combination of things.

But, really, like, we just need to be having sane thing, sane conversations about the fact that the, the tension here is between freedom and security, and we need to find a way to optimize both.

Speaker 1

Well. Minimize

Speaker 2

concentration of power.

Speaker 1

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Riley, tell us about the data center party.

Speaker 3

Yeah, on the topic of AI and data centers specifically, viewers may have seen a viral pro data center party on their timelines this week. We can offer a unique perspective on this event because our very own Jonas Du is the one who helped organize it. The whole thing started apparently as just a house party. These guys just wanted to throw a house party in DC, but after it blew up online, Jonas and his buddies eventually got sponsors reaching out to them and ended up renting out an entire bar as roughly a thousand people RSVP'd.

There was an AI photo booth at the event, AI themed cocktails, but also some anti-AI protesters who rushed the stage at one point yelling, you are killing the world. And these protesters, it turns out, were actually invited by some of the many media outlets that were in attendance. Vanity Fair published a story called The Slow Motion Car Crash at Data After Dark, where the author writes, I brought an anti-data center activist to the pro data center party.

It didn't go. Well, she later goes on to describe the event as catnip to MAGA aligned and Dreesen Horowitz backed edgelords. And meanwhile, Jonas published a piece giving his telling of the party as the guy who literally helped organize it. What was our reaction to this party?

Speaker 1

She also talked about bleach blonde women. There's this interesting thing as I've gotten more into DC culture and political culture, which is, you know, they have different kinds of archetypes. We were just talking about like weird, very esoteric tech archetypes. They have a bleach blonde haired woman who's conventionally attractive at a data center party.

That is, that's a fascist. For a woman like Margot McCall, who is the writer of this piece. Rather than talk about data centers, obviously people have, I think, I mean, listen, it's a 70-30 issue. People across America, there's a bipartisan anger with data centers right now. I don't share it. I think it's ridiculous. I think all of the environmental concerns are overplayed.

I think that even the power concerns that I see are a bit overplayed. I think that everyone is using data centers. We're using one right now to create this podcast. You guys are using one right now to listen to this podcast, or many across the country. It's a frustrating conversation to me that has been made purposely frustrating by politicians on both sides of the aisle looking to partake in something that is just popular right before an election.

Whatever. I want to talk about the idea of bringing someone who hates something to a party in celebration of it and then playing the victim. So this is a little excerpt from Margot's piece in Vanity Fair. By this point, she writes, Fraser McCollum has had enough. This is the activist who she brought to the party. Again, this is a, this is a party about data centers.

She brings an anti-data center person to it. Boo! Shouts the crazy activist. The author writes, I see what happens next in a slow motion car crash kind of way. The besuited blonde man in front of us turns around and looks right at her. Are you booing or mooing? I can't tell, he says, his friends cackling. A few minutes later, Fraser McCollum decides it's time to go.

I feel embarrassed for bringing her, for putting her in that position around these men. You're not a victim. What are we doing here? This, like, this is not, for me, this is not even about data centers. What is this idea that you are entitled to every space that exists? You are entitled. If it's a, if it's a place where there is an opinion that you don't hold, you're entitled to go there.

This is not like, this is not a debate. This is not, oh, we're having this fun forum to talk about the complexities of data centers and we're inviting people from different sides. It's not like Hereticon, where you go there and the whole idea is like, you're sort of celebrating this idea of fighting with people about controversial ideas. This is literally a party celebrating something.

It would be like me going to a DSA meeting and heck, like, in the back, heckling Marx or something. Yeah, that's my opinion, but would I be surprised if they said, you got to go? And guess what? These data center boys didn't even say you got to go. They just said you're fat. And I think that you're lucky. I think that you're lucky that that is all they said.

I mean, Liv, what is your reaction here?

Speaker 2

I, I'm completely in agreement. It's, it It just encapsulates in the microcosm the, like, the wider ill that is the mainstream media. They manufacture crises. It's just all of the incentives rolled up into one, in like one beautiful example of all the fucking incentives. Like, they just, they just, they just want the, oh, but there's, how do we get a story out of this? Oh, we'll make one.

Speaker 1

What is this lack of self-awareness too? How do you, she's really trying to have it both ways. She says, you know, it was my mistake for bringing her here because then, because of these men, you know, I put her in this situation. First of all, you didn't even put her in this situation. The activist put herself in the situation. The activist was invited.

She said yes. She came to the party. She disrupted the party in an extremely antisocial way. those are all of her decisions. No personal responsibility, no sense of self-awareness, and then you're, you're, you're a victim. I, I really think, you know, the expectation here, if you were, if you were to open up the hood and What are they really saying here? What they're really saying is that the people there are better in a way, because there is an expectation that this group of people stand for some kind of space in which you're allowed to come and debate with them.

They stand for debate. They always throw free speech in the face of the right now, which I find is incredible. It's anything that's coded right always has this thrown, well, I thought you were for free speech, implication being one, that you're not, and two, that these are, the people that you say you hate are good. I mean, free speech is a value that I think everybody still openly has to say, at least they share.

I mean, even the hard left will say they share if they just define it in a way that's not free speech. This, it's just shocking to me that.

Speaker 2

I mean, I think it comes from this weird imbalance they have that it's just like, you guys are not allowed to have private spaces. Because that's what they're effectively saying. Like, oh, you're not allowed to have your own space with your own theme of something that you like. Meanwhile, they'll go and argue for like. Some marginalized group to have their own private thing and have some crazy door policy and like...

I just watched a video

Speaker 1

in, up in, up in Maine. dude has got his camera out and he's, viewing a public street right adjacent to one of these centers where drug addicts are given needles and exchanges. And it's of course like, you know, it's The Walking Dead and then you have these activists there who were completely outraged. They say, you have no right to be here.

You have no right to be here. And it's like, well, he, it's actually a public space. It's not a private party in a private bar. It's not even in their facility. It's outside of it, just actually doing what I would call journalism and showing the world what these people are participating in and what it actually looks like. And there's no right at all.

you, you see famously people going to college campuses just, asking questions, right? And these are often, either events that are greenlit by the college itself or on public property near the college. Students constantly are coming up and, and yelling at them for being there and this idea, you know, That you don't belong here. Now, I don't begrudge them.

Go yell at them. They clearly went there. People who go there, the guy, the change my mind dude, what is his name? Riley, I know who it is. You've got it. This guy.

Speaker 3

Crowder.

Speaker 1

Crowder. Crowder's looking for trouble. Crowder wants the students to come up and scream at him and look stupid and make him look smart. I get that, but, but what you're witnessing here is what Liv, what you were just saying. This idea that, you know, certain people are entitled to a space that is theirs, and nobody who disagrees with them is entitled to space, and it's weird to see that written down in Vanity Fair.

That is actually basically outlined there. I mean, she doesn't explicitly say this, but there's no other way to read what she's saying. Is that...

Speaker 2

Vanity unfair.

Speaker 1

It's not fair. You're right. Vanity unfair.

Speaker 2

We should, we should petition for them to relabel themselves, rebrand.

Speaker 1

I want to talk, I want them to respond to it. I think it's actually crazy to create a story and write it down and be so open about the fact that you created the story you're now reporting on. You created this. I mean, you would, it's just, it's really It's really shocking. It's not even like it's a crazy activist blog admitting this, because I think they would proudly admit this.

I think Vanity Fair is trying to say, you know, we're reporters and we're doing this great work of talking about this, you know, important event that happened in DC, which was, by the way, what was this thing? Literally, this guy Jonas, who works at Pirate Wires, tweeted that he wanted to have a party in his apartment that was a pro data center party, which is kind of a joke.

And speaking of memes, I mean, it starts as a meme. I don't really think it was fully real. A bunch of people wanted to go, they got sponsorship, and then they just threw it at a... at a, at a, at a actual location. That was the whole thing. This isn't a movement. This isn't even like a successful movement. You can't even say, you can't even say that, oh my God, well, this, this margin, this is a marginalized voice that I brought to this, you know, this, this very popular and influential group of people's party.

The data center people, the anti-data center people are winning. Across the country, again, like I said, it's a 70-30 issue. You have politicians from both sides of the aisle who are against data centers now. You're not lacking in a platform to speak about this stuff, and you have nothing but an audience willing to listen to you. You're not a marginalized voice here.

This is not even like the fake woke shit where people would say, oh, well, my voice is, you know, a minority voice, and therefore I deserve more access to whatever. It's not a minority voice. So what are we doing here?

Speaker 2

Can I give you my favorite data center stat? Give it to me. Data centers use only 3% of the water that all golf courses, that golf courses in America use. Everyone's freaking out. They're using all the water. They serve, data centers serve hundreds of millions of people. How many people do golf courses serve? A few million, maybe, but they use 30x the amount.

Speaker 1

I mean, it's like, yeah, that's true. Maybe you would say, well, they're ugly. I'm actually very much of the belief that if you think something's ugly and you don't want it built in your neighborhood, that's valid. I'm like, okay, that's valid. That is a true thing that you feel, that it's your community. We have a right to live in such a way as we want.

I see these monstrous buildings going up in San Francisco and they infuriate me. People call me a nimby for it. I'm actually, I'm a nimby. I just want things to be beautiful. That's, I'm like, yes, build it, but like make it nice. What are we, what are we pretending that this doesn't have an effect on the human spirit or whatever? You know, give me your anti-data center reasons, but I don't want any of the propaganda.

And I think the problem that these people are facing is, you know, as data centers have become really an archetypical sort of Stand in for tech bros who people hate. we're kind of searching for reasons that data centers are bad. My, my,

Speaker 2

my theory of why there's such a ridiculous overreaction to them is because they are the one physical manifestation of this Thing that a lot of people feel is bad for them, which is like the digital world, right? It's the one actual, it's the most physical manufacture, short of a computer, right? It's, they feel this machine, you know, again, I'm not making a value judgment whether it's true or not, but people feel that there is this like machine coming and extracting them, extracting their life forces.

So many people struggle with, you know, screen addiction or seeing, like feeling that they've lost their kids to their phones, et cetera, to these companies that are like harvesting their time, their attention, their data, and the data center is the like the nexus of that. So I think that's what they're actually, that's, that's, that's my only explanation of why so much vehement overreaction to them specifically.

I mean, I know I hopped on about like, I don't like the renaming of AI to SI as a whole term, but I do actually think that data center is not the right, that it's not strictly what they are. Nowadays, what we're trying to build is supercomputers. So let's actually just call those that, no, oh, you don't like supercomputers is what you're saying.

Although maybe that could backfire as well, I don't know. But they're not even data centers anymore.

Speaker 1

Yeah, what you just said, this is also why I have a problem with people, you'll notice on the data center conversation All sorts of political pundits from both sides. You see populist right-wingers do this. You see the fake abundance libs do this. They will, they will try and say, well, people are mad about them for this reason. That is, happens to be something that they personally cannot stand, which would be, it's either tech bros or it's, you know, the censorship industrial complex I've heard, or on the left side, it's like the AI stuff as people try and, as the AI safety, the AI safety thing becomes more popular among the center left mainstream political influencers.

They're like, oh, well, people are very scared of AI and that's what this is. I actually, I really agree with you. I think it's, I think it is this just general sense of kind of unhappiness with the digital. And I think that that's valid. And I, I think that, I think that, I think that most people seem, when you push them on these things to express some version of this, you, you see very few sort of Pollyanna-ish, everything is amazing, technological utopianists these days.

Most people, I think, are, yeah, I like this. I really don't like this. As you said, people do struggle with screen addiction. I think the role of this stuff in the lives of their kids is very, very, very important. I made a comment once that, in that piece, I wrote this piece about the abundance delusion for The Atlantic. And in it, I was trying to explain trade-offs at one point, which is It's always a, it's always a problem when you try and make a nuanced conversation within a spicy titled piece.

And I was saying, you know, everything has trade-offs and I talked about the telephone. You know, the, the telephone seems unambiguously good. Who would ever say the telephone is not a good thing? However, once it was really inexpensive to call your family, you were more likely to live really far away from your family. And you think, oh, I could just call my mom, but now I can no longer go over on Sunday or Saturday for dinner or on Tuesday to help her with, you know, hanging the curtains or taking out the trash.

My family is now spread across the country and that would not, almost certainly would not have happened in an age before the telephone. Now, does that mean that I want to get rid of the telephone? Of course not. But I think that we do have to think about the negative externalities of even what seems to be unambiguously, unambiguously positive technological advance.

And so in the question of like, listen, our whole lives have gotten extremely Digital really, really fast. We were not doing digital remote podcasting before COVID. That was not a very, very popular thing. Maybe some people were doing a little bit of that. Certainly when I'm taking meetings all day with my team, we were not doing, we were not doing Zoom calls before COVID.

These are relatively recent changes to our entire life. It's way more, we are way, way, way more online. And I think that you're absolutely right that there is something about the digital world that makes people unhappy, and we're having a hard time communicating that. And I don't know, really, it's like we're like, maybe we're missing language.

We also forget how, like I said, this stuff is just new. All technology is new. The internet is new. It's, it's crazy to say this. Oh, the internet is, you know, the internet's important. the internet's important.

Speaker 2

It's like the water we live in at this point.

Speaker 1

Right, but it, it, even that though is so, I was thinking, yesterday, cause I'm obviously just like everybody, super addicted to my, to my phone. I'm super addicted to X. I, I'll scroll X in the, anytime there's a second off, I, I open up X and I'm scrolling through and it's like, you're just looking for that. And you wouldn't consciously think you're looking for a hit of dopamine, but that is what is happening.

it wasn't like that, that for me five years ago. I think there are a lot of very big changes that have happened very recently that we're not really, that we're not really sitting with. That having been said, the Vanity Fair reporter, fucking idiot. Fuck that lady. Margo, give me a call. I've got a lot of opinions. I wouldn't say I'm gonna invite you onto the pod, cause this is not, this is not a safe space, to be honest.

might start mooing. Well, guys, it is time for you to buy a house. Unfortunately, that house costs 2.79 million dollars, and your competition is an AI doomer building AI and anthropic paying cash. That's why you need Autopilot, the platform that lets you invest alongside politicians, like the Trader O'Connor, and real-time traders automatically.

You build the cash flow, let Autopilot help build the wealth. Autopilot is built by the same team behind the infamous Pelosi tracker, and now includes our own Pirate Wires flagship fund, which you can find over on the Autopilot site, www.joinautopilot.com. Riley, we've got to get to this case of the Cornell 7. Oh! And for this segment, we're bringing in our friend Kat Rosenfield, who just wrote about, who just wrote about the case.

Riley, I'm gonna let you tee it up, and then we're gonna get right into the segment. Hi, Kat.

Speaker 3

Cool, so yeah, in this week's get us cancelled story of the day, we are cautiously dipping our toes into the topic of SA, which I'm abbreviating so YouTube doesn't come after us.

Speaker 1

Grape, as the kids call it on TikTok.

Speaker 3

Exactly, yes, and which is very different from Trump's SI, two very different things. So a story went viral this week about a woman who was allegedly taken advantage of while intoxicated by a group of students at Cornell University after the victim filed a new civil lawsuit earlier this month. The details are very murky here, but she claims in the new lawsuit that after consuming ketamine and alcohol, seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity engaged in sexual encounters with her over the course of several hours, which she could not consent to on account of being intoxicated.

This new lawsuit also includes pictures of a leaked group chat in which one of the male students sent a message during the encounter telling his frat bros that there was free sex available, which is pretty screwed up, but Despite there not being a verdict in this new case yet, Cornell student newspaper released the names of all seven of the accused frat members in a piece titled Cornell Won't We Will.

This has led to their faces being plastered all over social media. Several have apparently lost their jobs. Meanwhile, some online are pointing to potential inconsistencies in the victims' claims between when it happened and in this new civil lawsuit, including whether or not both the drug use and at least some of the sexual encounters were consensual.

Cornell's defending their actions at the time, which did include suspending the Chi Phi fraternity and expelling some of the individuals involved. What do we make of this case and the ensuing Me Too, too, online?

Speaker 1

I wanted to say, so I actually, I called Kat this morning. I wanted to make sure, cause I saw Kat wrote the piece, Kat's been posting about this. I knew we were going to talk about it today. I wanted to make sure that I had my My chain of events, correct before I launched into it, and then it was like, wait a minute, let's just get you on the pod.

help us understand the difference between what happened then and what was being alleged then, and now maybe where we are today.

Speaker 4

So, yeah, I'll do my best. it's a convoluted thing. So we have this, statement, there's pieces of it keep kind of floating out. At this point, we've now recently also gotten more documentation, the New York Times published some, there are also some text screenshots floating around, from afterwards. And this was all, so in the wake of the allegations that she made, the report that she made, they would have seen all of this.

It's a lot of stuff. It's like a thousand pages. The upshot of it is she went through about three weeks after the alleged assault occurred, and she described all of this stuff that happened. She said, I know without a doubt, or I can say with a hundred percent confidence that I was Graped, I guess, is what we're doing. And she also told this full narrative of everything that had happened that night.

And the summary of what she said described what legally sounded like a lot of really sloppy, unpleasant, but consensual sexual activity and drug use. Now, fast forward two years, she hasn't really changed her story, but she has reframed it insofar as she's saying that the fact that she was very drunk when she arrived at the fraternity house meant that she was not capable of consenting to anything that happened after.

So everything that happened after, she was coerced or manipulated into against her will, and that this is the basis for her civil suit.

Speaker 1

It sounds like, I mean, there's a little, so that's roughly the timeline, and then There's also a little more, we do see some texts between her recently, I think this morning we saw this, and there was some New York Times reporting on the evolution of her thinking about what had happened to her in the early days following what happened to her.

And it seems to paint a picture to me of what is obviously something she consented to but did not like and did not want to do again, that she was embarrassed by, that led to her not getting to go to a party on Halloween, and then that is what led to the dissolution of her relationship with male number one, we'll call him, who I think is a little bit gay, and we're going to talk about that in a second.

And then that's what led to her now going to the cops and saying, this was actually an assault. I mean, is that, it seems unfair. I feel, maybe even before I ask you more about this, like, I am hitting a wall here, which is that I know this is a really sensitive topic. I know that people online are out of their minds. People are like, these people need to be chemically castrated is what Jamil, what's her face said yesterday, all seven of them.

Speaker 4

She actually said full castrated. She said removal of the shaft. Okay. That's what she said. That's a

Speaker 1

crazy thing to be talking about in a case where you really don't know the details. And then I looked into the details and they don't support, they don't support what she's saying. What it looks like is she goes in and she wants to have sex with male number one. Male number one, who's so wasted by the way that he passes out in the middle of the first threesome, says he's down provided he can also have sex with male number two.

He wants to have a threesome. He seems really interested in getting naked with his frat brothers. She says, sure. They have their threesome. He passes out in the middle of that experience. Male number three comes in. This is male number three's room. She says yes. She consents now to another threesome. Male number one wakes up, wants to get involved.

She says no, because that's going to involve Sex somehow, which is not really explained. I don't understand. I don't...

Speaker 4

There are three penises and only so many orifices.

Speaker 1

Okay, but in my mind, those guys are hanging out, they're looking at... I mean, they're all naked together. I do want to talk about the gay thing in a second because I really... I do... I know it's funny, but I think it feels important to me. Anyway, she says no, and they say okay. But then that leads to male number one going to another room with her.

Again, this is the guy that she likes, who she then later texts. She wants to hang out with him again after this happens. And he's like, cool, but he also wants to have sex now with male number four as well. He wants a threesome with the three of them. So what I see is like this... There is this woman who really wants to have sex with number one.

Number one really wants to have sex with... A variety of other men. And then other men also come down, but mostly three of the seven don't participate at all by her own admission. And then this evolves. And then this evolves based on how it's perceived by her peers, and it's perceived negatively. It's perceived really negatively, and she's really ashamed of it.

And I understand that, but is that all? I mean, that's... Am I right here? Just not on my view of it all, but is it... Are those the facts, basically?

Speaker 4

I mean, you know, part of this is there are different ways to interpret what we've learned. I agree that what, you know, everything you've just said is absolutely one potential interpretation of events. The other interpretation, just to play devil's advocate slash woke baby, is that she came out of this experience feeling bad about it and tried to, you know, make peace with what it had Happened, which was actually not consensual by telling herself she'd consented, by telling the guys she'd consented, by, you know, trying to make things right with them.

But in her heart of hearts, she always knew and her friends helped her realize the objective truth, which is that really she was sexually assaulted. I, I will say, I find that second thing, you know, that's a very common kind of like, it's the, it's the feminist interpretation, it's the, you know, the extremely online, outraged Twitter people interpretation.

It doesn't ring as true to me as what you said to begin with, but we don't, we don't know, we'll find out probably. I feel like there's new stuff about this every day.

Speaker 1

Well, now she's coming back. So, you know, fast forward, it's not The case has been reopened, but she's also got this civil lawsuit. She's suing all seven of these men, the president of the frat, the frat, her own sorority for not protecting her from her own drinking is, is actually the justification of this thing is that they did not do enough to protect her from herself.

The school, Cornell, local bar or club, I think, where she was also drinking, presumably, I mean, she's underage. And we're going to have this trial. I think the guys have to do the trial because how could they ever recover if they don't? Right now, the entire world is calling them gang rapists and, and druggers, and they're, you have people calling for their castration, and they do want them permanently removed from, from, from work.

They want them, they want their lives ruined. Their people are fairly openly saying this, that they deserve this. But it's going to be a classic, a classic tale of, when it comes to the court, at least, what he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, she said. A tail as old as time. And I think it's going to got, it'll have to go, right? I mean, there's no way they're going to settle.

How do you settle something like this?

Speaker 4

Yeah, I don't know. It seems complicated. And there's been this additional wrinkle. I actually don't know if you saw this. My colleague Frannie Block, the Free Press reported it. They originally served the lawsuit to the wrong man of the same name as one of the defendants. And so his name and address, he's just like a random guy who happens to also be named Matthew whatever.

And his name and address have been leaked online and people are calling his family and, you know, saying that like he, you know, he should be castrated and they should kill themselves and, you know, all of this terrible stuff. So this doesn't exactly paint a portrait of like the most competent legal team at work overall. But I think probably, yeah, there will be, you know, there will be action in court.

I don't see at this point having committed this far what else she Anybody else is going to be able to

Speaker 1

do. Right. It seems not only slop, it's, it's this sloppy legal situation inside of what is obviously a mass hysteria. This is me too. I mean, you were the first person I saw kind of immediately saying, didn't you say you felt like 2017 or?

Speaker 4

Feels like 2017 again. Yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah. In which you have really a bunch of people projecting their own baggage onto this story and, and writing fiction. I mean, we have a fictional account right now of seven men. This is very, I mean, you go on TikTok, you go on Instagram, you go on Twitter, the massively viral tweets about these people that are complete fabrications. And I guess back in the early, what, in the 20 teens, in 2017 and before, there were these high profile cases That I didn't want to get involved in because I had a much smaller platform and people were so upset that I assumed they knew more about it than I did.

this one I've really looked into, and I don't want to be that person anymore. It was just on the sideline while people potentially ruin their lives for something that, yeah, while messy is, is not what it's, is not what's being said at all. And, and the conversation obviously we should be having is like, hey, you know, there's this telling moment in, in her text where she said, I thought that people were, more open to this kind of sex now.

And she felt shocked that it was being received negatively by people who found out about it. This is all behavior, by the way, that she also referred to as perfectly legal, the sex and things like this in the early days via text. and there is this thing where I think kids Maybe have learned from the culture and from even their own college campuses, perhaps, that you can just have sort of guilt-free, consequence-free, drug-fueled orgies, and that's totally normal.

And it's like, well, no, there are obviously consequences, just even in terms of how you feel about it. It's not a small thing. And maybe we got to get to a place culturally where we can talk about that, where even if it was totally consensual, it's still bad.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I think it's become very unpopular to talk about sex in those terms. The quest to do sex positivity, which is a big part of millennial feminism, and to kind of like destigmatize all of these types of acts that are really like kind of Olympic elite athlete level sexual activity, you know, where you're having casual sex with a lot of different people, you're doing polyamory, you're doing like, you know, butt stuff and People and kink and whatever.

Like all of this stuff is now kind of expected to be part of your sexual debut when you're very, like first starting out because it's square and boring to just, you know, have monogamous intercourse with somebody who you love and who loves you. And I think that it's created a lot of pressure amongst young people to just kind of jump into the deep end of the pool when they first start out having sex or having relationships or to skip the relationships and just go for the sex.

And, you know, they just don't really understand because it's unpopular to talk about and nobody really is that there may actually be an emotional component to this, that it's hard to do, it's hard to handle, you know, you don't really know what kind of reaction you're going to have to stuff like that until you've been out there in like the sex fields for a while.

And so there's that. And then there's also the fact that there's, I mean, I feel like there's a lot of kind of self-narrativizing going on here, where a lot of the people involved in this incident were less interested in actually doing the things they were doing than in the story that they were going to be able to tell about it or tell about themselves afterwards.

Like, I'm the kind of cool party person who goes and has orgies. I sound like such a square right now, but you know, like I had this crazy time. I had this I had group sex. I was snorting ketamine off a guy's like, isn't that amazing? Isn't that just crazy for the gram or whatever it is?

Speaker 1

I think that's definitely true based on what she said again following it, where she was shocked at how the story was playing differently. And that seemed to have a huge impact on how she then herself viewed what she had consented to in her own words. Again, this is testimony that was written down that she signed her name to, that I read. Oh, not all of it.

I read all of the I, I read a huge, I read all of, everything, everything about each experience, described in completely consensual terms. The idea that it was, rape was said, was said, certainly, again, well after the event took place and things had, there were texts that demonstrate that her experience or her interpretation of the experience had changed.

but the things that she wrote, just paint a very different picture of how it's being portrayed now. Liv, I want to get you in. I mean, you've been obviously watching it as well. what's your, what's your take on all this?

Speaker 2

I mean, I haven't, I haven't read anything about it. I haven't read any of the testimonies. Funny enough, the only insight I got that I thought was like, oh, that was interesting, was it popped up in my feed. I was not watching it. The view. Classic The View. one of the women on it, I don't know her name. Sunny

Speaker 1

Harston.

Speaker 2

Sunny, yeah. She- I follow these

Speaker 1

women very closely.

Speaker 2

Okay. Well, she, she was interestingly taking the, these guys' innocent side, much to the horror of the rest of the women on The View, but she, she was like, I was a prosecutor. She said, I've, I, or she worked in legal defense or one of the things.

Speaker 1

with,

Speaker 2

and, and she was like, in the state of New York, if like the, the, I, you know, I did drugs or I, you know, if, if you voluntarily take, take drugs or alcohol, that is not a, a, you can't then claim that, oh, I was, I was assaulted. Because if you consented to the drugs, you eventually, like that's-

Speaker 1

Well, you can't claim that, yeah, you can't claim that the drugs themselves are the reason that you couldn't consent. Exactly. If you took them of yourself. If you were drugged, that's different. If you passed out, that's different. And if you said no while drugged and they still went ahead, that's still sexual assault. But she alleges that none of that stuff took place.

I think Sunny has a son. Who's college-aged or around early twenties perhaps, and perhaps has more empathy for boys right now. I do want to talk about the boy piece for a second, because I do, no one's talking about this. You have two guys who are so intoxicated and so drugged up in the beginning that again, the first one completely passes out.

The second one is dry heaving right after the first one passes out. Jane Doe is concerned about the first one, aware enough to be concerned about the first one, and asks the second one about him, who's passed out, like, what should we do? Is he okay? Then she takes care of two while he's dry heaving in the bathroom. So these two men are very much incapacitated.

If she's incapacitated, they're definitely incapacitated. And yet we're not supposed to talk about that at all. We're not supposed to talk about the fact that they're also completely wasted. They can't consent to any of this behavior, presumably not by her logic, I'm saying, by the logic of her lawyer, I'm saying, by the logic of, I guess, modern feminism, I'm saying.

They can't consent to this. They can't consent to sex with each other. They're in an environment that is extremely, I would say, homosexual at this point. Are they waking up feeling some kind of way about it? Probably. It's bizarre what took place. Their reputations are also on the line. And no one ever talks about that piece of it. There's an idea here, maybe what I want Getting at is the infantilization of women.

This idea that women, are somehow not ever responsible for themselves. They can never actually be responsible for themselves. And I think it's really a shame that, that women are, that this is the conversation surrounding women now. we just saw, I hate to bring it back to Lindsay Clancy, but, but for me, that's the through line is, is we see these high profile cases in which women are not, they're somehow not responsible for the decisions that they just made.

We just saw it in the Vanity Fair party. You bring an activist, female activist to this thing, she shouts at a crowd, gets shouted at back, and she's not responsible. am I over my skis here?

Speaker 4

No, I don't think you are. I think you've identified something that's really at the center of a lot of feminist rhetoric, and not just over the past, like, couple of years. The through line goes way back. I've been writing about this particular dynamic insofar as it intersects with the conversation about women and drinking and sex and consent since 2013.

I have been on this bullshit for such a long time. And it really is... There's this desire to kind of, Give women all of the liberty, but none of the responsibility, because we are still collectively as a culture so incredibly uncomfortable with what happens when a woman uses her freedom and her agency and her equality to make choices that she ends up regretting.

We're really bad at handling that.

Speaker 1

What do you think is next here in the case and also culturally as this thing, because I saw a lot of pushback today. There was the reporting of your colleagues at the Free Press. There was your own piece. I see the New York Times seems to have done, I think has been doing a fairly admirable job. This morning's complicating. They did a whole piece on the evolution of her thinking about this that I thought was kind of edgy for the Times.

Do you think, how do you think the cultural reaction evolves from here? And then where do you think it goes as we approach the cases?

Speaker 4

okay. Well, I mean, what was interesting about the New York Times reporting is that it feels edgy, but it was actually just a masterclass in completely objective reporting. They just said like this happened and then this happened and then this happened. And they weren't trying to handhold Anybody to a certain conclusion. And that's like, they don't really do that anymore.

So it feels crazy that it's happening. What happens next? I mean, I was joking about this with you on the phone earlier. I think that like, maybe all of the young men decide that actually, it's, you know, none of this is worth it. And they just start saving themselves for marriage. Or alternatively, maybe they decide to go full on Greek and just only have sex with each other.

Speaker 1

Clavicular speaks of this. Clavicular speaks of this.

Speaker 4

But yeah, I mean, I do think we're in a place where it's become more clear and also more speakable to a lot of people that what's being asked for right now, which is essentially a carve out legally. For women only, when it comes to sex only, that when a woman is intoxicated, she's not responsible for anything that she does, even if she became intoxicated voluntarily, that just completely cuts against the entire project of making women, you know, equal socially, professionally, legally.

in this, with the same standing as men. And you can't have both of these things. And people are at least willing now to, to notice this, to say so out loud, to talk about it. And, I mean, my hope is that that becomes an acknowledged truth and we move forward from there, you know, agreeing that actually women do enjoy equal standing. And so they have to just have equal responsibility, that maybe this returns us to a place where we can talk more about sex that is, a friend of mine said, lawful, but awful.

talk about, you know, what we owe to each other as human beings, not within the confines of the law, but just, you know, when you're with somebody and you're intimate and you're vulnerable, like how to, you know, establish trust and be kind to each other. because the alternative is basically that the, millennial feminist movement just leads us headlong into a place where we all lose our right to vote and we've like advocated for that.

Speaker 1

Well, Thank you so much, Kat, both for your writing on this and for joining us. I'm sure it's, the whole story is going to evolve. We'd love to have you back on as it does. talk to you later. Have a good one.

Speaker 4

Thanks for letting me crash. Bye. All

Speaker 1

right. Well, that is enough for the, drug-fueled gangbang. I think it's time for a white pill. Riley.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Aid Sleep, as always, for our weekly white pill. This week we're talking about America.gov, a new AI-powered website unveiled by the Trump administration to help us all simplify the headache that is dealing with government bureaucracy. It's billed as a concierge to help Americans with a number of government services all in one place, including changing your address with the post office or registering your new business.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio said at the unveiling, starting next year, Americans will be able to apply for their first passport entirely online. We love to see the government actually making our lives easier for once. And we should also mention that the website is also notably not ugly, rare for a government website, and that's because it's the brainchild of Trump's new national design studio, which is run by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, and also the new employer of one Mr.

Big Balls, the former Doge staffer and hero in the face of Washington, D.C. street violence. Beautiful and usable government website. Yeah. What do we make of this white pill?

Speaker 1

I was here, I was in town, in DC right now, and I was at the unveiling of America.gov. And I got to be honest, I went in kind of not knowing what it was, a little bit bored preemptively, at the whole premise. I didn't think I really cared. And as I was sitting there watching folks, talk about what they had built. So Gevia first, describing the whole thesis behind the design.

You have 26,000 different government websites that have ballooned into 29,000 government websites, distinct across, you know, throughout the entire United States, doing all different parts of, servicing all different parts of the government, some of them useful, some of them not at all. You have 40 million daily visitors. So, you know, more people than watched.

What was it? The last Super Bowl? Maybe not the last Super Bowl. More people than watched something with 40 million people. I don't know. That's a lot of people every day to be visiting some piece of your infrastructure. It's ugly. It's hard to navigate. He used the example of Medicaid and had someone in the audience who had tried to get Medicaid, gave up because it was too complicated to sort of travel the government architecture and figure it out.

Then we also had Rubio get on stage and he talked about the passport and the future of getting your first passport online. And it seems, while it seems trivial, I think it's not. I think that if you are going to be Providing government services for tons and tons and tons of money, and the average person's interaction with you is only one of horror, which is how we often describe things like, for example, going to the DMV to work on your driver's license or whatever it is, or really, I mean, I don't know another part of the government that people don't complain about when they actually are interacting with it.

I think this stuff matters. I think design matters. They talked about beauty and the importance of, you know, when you walk down a beautiful government hall and you feel really inspired, as I do here in the Capitol building or something else, it is very inspiring. You feel like, I want to rise to the occasion here. They talked about these really interesting tech design ideas.

Well, not broadly throughout the tech industry, but there's certainly design ideas. You know, the design of this thing can make you feel a certain way. And the things that they wanted us to feel were unambiguously good in a way that is bipartisan, I think, to the point where I think it frustrated people yesterday. I wrote about the future of the passport.

I get so much pushback that said, this already exists or whatever, and it doesn't exist. Not as the way they described it. The site itself, I think, is fairly good. Maybe it's going to get hacked, as Trump said himself on stage, which would be very bad. But I like the idea of applying tech and design principles to the project, at least, of making government simpler and more accessible to people.

And also, I should add, these two things that they really led with, Medicaid and the passport, are super lip-coded. Okay? This is a Republican presidential administration helping old people get health insurance. That's... You should love that. Everyone on the left should love this. I think it's something that hopefully we can all get behind and be like, okay, good.

I think this. Liv, what were your thoughts?

Speaker 2

I very much agree. I think it's absolutely awesome. So desperately needed. I mean, Joe is just... Has impeccable taste. And having... Bringing him in to do this, it was such a good call. Unfortunately, there are people out there who just, I mean, Trump derangement syndrome is a real thing, right? And they will just, it's, it's impossible for some people to admit anything that, that Trump admin has done right.

and I think, so it doesn't surprise me at all, unfortunately, that there, there will just be people who will find something to complain about. you know, the proof will be in the pudding as how well it actually works. I imagine they tested it extensively, because again, like Joe, I can't imagine Joe would let this be published without it being as robust as it can be.

but yeah, I mean, It, it, what I was, someone was describing like how it, because in China, right, apparently there isn't that much backlash to tech. They're generally, you know, there's certainly not people going around attacking data centers or even complaining about them. Now, I'm sure part of that is that you can't do anything like that in China without ending up in jail.

But the other part is apparently people there feel better about technology because they haven't had, they've had better interactions with it. and presumably, I don't know, I've never been there, but like, I imagine the government services there are more streamlined or something. And so if you have yeah, people having to pay gazillions in taxes each year, and you're seeing absolutely no improvement in goods and services, and you go on a website that looks like it was written in 1998 and updated in 2002, and that was it.

Yeah, you're going to be, you're, you're going to be disdainful of the government. So I think it's, it's, it wasn't just a good idea, it was an essential idea. and I hope, I hope we do more of this. Like,

Speaker 1

it's, it's good to be

Speaker 2

fixed.

Speaker 1

Right. They've got to get the basics, they have to get the basics right. It, it, espe, and if you're going to, Trump also, I mean, he is kind of, I really think he's, he, he could have been a Democrat, and in fact, he once was. There are lots of things about him that remind me of just FDR. And his vision of what the government can be is very FDR coded, let's say.

And I think if you're going to be doing that, if you're going to be on that FDR beat, this stuff has to work. People have to be excited about it. For this particular project, I guess one of the things about it that just got me excited was this idea of simplifying Super, super sloppy bureaucratic things in general. So this idea of, oh my God, 29,000 distinct government websites and pages were really, not just websites, but pages on the websites.

How did that happen? And how do you make sense of all that information? It's exciting to be doing that. It's exciting to be using AI to simplify these things. It does pose problems that I immediately see, which is in a world where it's very easy to simplify all of these things, I think it would actually sort of incentivize the creation of more.

You know, I think about this in terms of the tax law as well. If suddenly the AI is going to be able to do our taxes, which I think is where this project is headed, it's headed in that direction, just a really, really easy streamlined way to navigate the tax code. That is going to incentivize politicians to pass many, many, many more laws.

And That concerns me. I, I think it's, it's sort of this unknowable, I don't know which direction we're going to go. It's this very which way Western man, but the technology makes both visions possible. It makes it possible to simplify things and to reduce the amount of paperwork, and it makes possible to massively accelerate the amount of paperwork that we're producing, massively, massively accelerate the amount of red tape, but then also help people navigate that.

The problem with that future would be, well, now I need AI. To navigate the basic stuff of life. You, you now have to use it or you're, or you're removed from society. That concerns me. I don't want to, I don't want that future. I want the good future. I want AI, you know, every new law that's passed, it should be finding a law that you can either consolidate, you know, blend into one that, that, that is new, get rid of.

I, I hope that we can just get on board there. But, but here as ever, so many of the things that we talk about throughout this podcast on AI conversation specifically, we seem to be coming to a question of alignment, but not necessarily alignment between humans and robots, but between humans and other humans. are we aligned on this? Do we agree that there should be less bureaucracy? And I don't know that we do.

Speaker 2

Or alignment between the state and humans, individual humans.

Speaker 1

Yes. Yes. That's

Speaker 2

an interesting, I, I read recently this great book, Seeing Like a State. I recommend everyone read it because it like, it gets you to kind of envision like, Why states behave like they do. Like they, you know, if a state could, what does it want? It wants maximum transparency. So if it could, it would like break down everything into little constituent parts and, you know, it wanted every, surnames didn't used to be a thing.

It was because the state, it was easier for the state to understand itself if people had a surname so that you could, it wasn't just like John from over there, but John blah, blah, blah. And it was a way of like adding a bit more information so that the state could, yeah, and states were smaller obviously back then, but like see how many people were living in it and keep track of censuses and that kind of thing.

And it's this desire for always having greater granularity and information about itself. And unfortunately, that means that there's always going to be, and also ability to then control the individuals who might get misaligned with what the state wants. So we have to be honest with ourselves that it doesn't matter who's in power, the state Itself, the apparatus will always be trying to add new ways to control and see what is going on and surveil and so on.

And I, I think it's a really good point I had not considered that as like, it's so true that when a new technology gets introduced that is useful, it will become the default. Like we now can't live without a cell phone, like without a smartphone. Good, good luck going around and having like any kind of functional business. But

Speaker 1

simply, good luck finding a map at a, at a gas station when you're on a, on a trip. You, people, we use our phones.

Speaker 2

Yeah. And, and so again, this is another form of AI risk, that people perhaps don't, you know, it's this idea of like gradual disempowerment and disenfranchisement because just AI becomes so useful. Not just so useful, but so ingrained into everything that you can't now do the thing without it. and I don't know if there's any way of actually bucking that trend, but I would hope that the admin who I think by and large do seem, you know, to be want, they, they want, they claim to be about small government, will take steps to mitigate that, or at least realize that that is a category of thing that is likely to be happening.

Speaker 1

Well, I mean, on the left, while the, the concept of small government is maybe not something that people are on board with ideologically, the concept of efficient government, I think there's still hope there. I, I don't think the average person is, even on the left, even on the deranged left, is glad that services are more complicated, and I do think they're happy fraud exists, but, but maybe we can more efficiently deliver the fraud.

and AI can perhaps, the various artificially intelligent systems can help us deliver that. I, I think we could get them on board with that project. If we could get alignment on the idea of the things at least that government is doing, it's going to be doing better. That to me is the path forward. So if we could just somehow, and it does seem like we have common ground here.

It does seem like, I think maybe the holdup historically, for example, in the case of fraud, is people don't know how to do it without hurting other people or whatever. But if you just could, if you could just snap your fingers and say, listen, we're not even changing the amount of money that's being spent right now. We're just making sure all of it is being spent on the things we said it was going to be spent on.

I think we could get broad agreement on that. And then these tools can really help us. And if we're clear-eyed about, you know, the potential downside in this super small example of just, we could get a lot more websites. And then you're going to really need the interface. And then if the interface breaks, the government breaks and things like that.

If we think about those things, and I don't see how we can't. They seem really simple. It's not like the alignment of the superintelligence. These are simpler than that. I think the future could be really bright. And you think

Speaker 2

of the time that has now going to be freed up. By people, like if it can really streamline taxes, the amount of time taxes take, and it's so stressful because if you don't get it right, like next thing you know, you've got the IRS breathing down your neck, who are like the scariest entity on earth, one of them at least. And I think that is a way, like, if they can focus on the messaging of that, or like make people actually see that, oh wow, this is so much easier.

Oh, I have a question. I get that answered. However many clicks it took before to get your Medicaid or whatever, making people viscerally feel, oh wow, that was simple. But there's going to be teething problems. And, you know, I hope, we shouldn't be despondent about the future of America because a very deranged side will Go and pick out flaws with this.

It's just because people are so terrified of the other side, they're going to look for it. And I don't think it's a bad, I don't, I don't think that's indicative that like America can't be healed or we can't build nice stuff. it's, it's, it's, it's just inevitable. People are going to complain about it. But I, this seems like an objectively awesome thing.

Speaker 1

And that's your white pill. Thank you, Eight Sleep. You know, every once in a while I ask myself, how am I able to step up to the fire hose of insane internet politics, pour myself a nice tall glass, and down it every single day without losing my mind or soul? And the answer is my sleep. That is why we love the brand new Pod 6 by Eight Sleep.

The Pod 6 uses a smart mattress cover that goes on top of your existing mattress. It actively cools or heats each side of the bed independently, tracks your sleep and health overnight with nine times more sensors than the previous version, and adjusts itself automatically based on your body and preferences. Go to aidsleep.com slash pirate wires podcast and use code pirate wires podcast.

Pod six starts at $19.99. Aidsleep, we love you. guys, this has been really fun. I tell you every week to leave a comment and I think it's just like bleeding into your, you know, you hear it at the end of the episodes, you don't do it anymore. I mean, a lot of you are, but I'm wondering like maybe I should tell you not to leave a comment or to play a game.

Maybe I, maybe email me instead. I don't know. I want to switch it up. Show me that you're alive. Send, send signal. I want to see some evidence that you're out there. The podcast is blowing up. It's getting better and better. Could not do it without, our amazing guest hosts. well not recurring hosts. Liv, much like Bridget and Sanjana, is a recurring co-host, for the foreseeable future.

Thank you, Liv. It's been real. Riley, thank you as ever. And thank you guys for listening. Like it, like the episode, tell your friends, shout about it on Twitter, clip us, and have a good weekend.