Investing Wisdom from Nassim Taleb, plus ChatGPT Questions That Will Change Your Life

Shaan Puri

What's up sam hey you like the you like the fit

Sam Parr

where did you get that

Shaan Puri

our boys at jambi sent it over the no small boy stuff christmas edition

Sam Parr

you know what's pretty funny I actually use the phrase no small boy stuff like kind of a lot

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I remember the guy who tweeted it. I think his name was **bengali87** [Twitter handle]. This was back in 2022. He said, "Best business/entrepreneurship podcast out there — big money; that's no small-boy stuff." I love that.

Sam Parr

And that's basically the phrase that we use for this podcast a lot: **"no small boy stuff."** But frankly, I kind of use it a lot in my life. I don't know, man — **"that's small boy kind of stuff."** It's sort of like an insinuation where they say, "you're not a very serious person." It's kind of like that.

Shaan Puri

I also use the phrase, but I'd never say it because saying it to me feels so *cringe*. I think it a thousand times for every one time that I say it, and every time I say it it feels so awkward to me. It's like saying—it's like saying *"Just do it"* in the Nike slogan way or something. You don't really want to say that. > "Hey guys, yeah, this, you know, in Q4 we check—Nike, baby—just do it." And then they'll be like, "What? Why are you saying slogans at us?" But I do think it a lot. It's actually... I

Sam Parr

think it a lot

Shaan Puri

What meaningfully affected the trajectory of my life is to use this phrase, because there are so many situations where there's a little *small-boy response*: "Oh—I'll behave like a little small boy in this situation," or "I'll do it." </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Yeah, that phrase — and what **Amjad** said recently about *"what will make the better story"* — has had a fairly meaningful impact. It's only been a few weeks, but I think about that actually a lot.

Shaan Puri

He also said something else. He was talking about how he was basically so comfortable with this *10-year-plus odyssey* he's been on building this. We were like, "Wow — you've been doing this for so long, and you did this for years before you had any recognition or any funding, and you just kept going." He replied, "Yeah. I persist." He continued, "I think that's what I do. No, I didn't really think about it that consciously, but I'm pretty comfortable pushing the boulder up the mountain for a long time." He added, "I guess that's my competitive advantage — I'm in it for the long haul, and I'll just persist." We both made a small, quick intake of breath.

Sam Parr

what do you wanna start with today

Shaan Puri

Alright, I got a good story for you. There's this great Nassim Taleb quote or tweet. Taleb—who wrote *Black Swan* and *Antifragile*—is kind of a contrarian thinker.

Sam Parr

Was he, *like*, a successful hedge fund investor? But he was successful because he had an *interesting life philosophy*, and then he became, *like*, a thinker. Is that his story?

Shaan Puri

I believe so. I believe he's a successful trader, and—unless I'm mixing him up with somebody else—part of his success was that he noticed humans prefer to win frequently in small amounts and then take a big loss when they're wrong. It's like gambling, like playing craps: one roll of the dice you win a little money, two rolls you win a little more, but eventually you roll a seven and it wipes out the entire board—all the chips go away. He said humans are more comfortable with that pattern. By contrast, he was willing to *bleed a little every day* and look stupid for years. Then, when his big—sort of the "big short"—contrarian bet paid off, he *made back all the money in one day*.

Sam Parr

got it

Shaan Puri

Okay. I think that's his story. If it's not his story, his book is talking about the guy who does that. I can't recall if it's him, or if he's the author and the hero of the story. A lot of people know that answer—put it in the comments if you know. So Taleb tweeted this: "I conjecture that if you gave an investor the next day's news 24 hours in advance, he would go bust in less than a year." This is basically the *Back to the Future* premise, right? I don't remember the movie well, but what's his name—Biff or whatever.

Sam Parr

Biff finds the sports-betting book that tells all the winners for the next decade of the game, *exactly*.

Shaan Puri

He goes back in time and then he just becomes a gazillionaire because he knows the scores. Okay, so, like, let's take—yes. If you knew the exact score, you'd have to be pretty dumb not to win what these guys did. What Nassim Taleb was saying is: "I could give you the *news* — not the *price change* — but I could give you the *news*, and I bet you would trade incorrectly."

Sam Parr

Dude, I think about this *all the time*, by the way—*all the time*. I think, if I knew what I know today but was 10 or 50 years old, how would I capitalize on that? I think about that all the time.

Shaan Puri

Right. Usually the easy answers are, "I just buy Bitcoin" or "I just buy Google." It actually wouldn't be that hard if you could convince yourself to do one thing: buy, hold, and trust the process — don't touch it for 15 years. What these guys did was a different experiment. They took 118 adults trained in finance and ran the "Crystal Ball" test. The test worked as follows: - They gave each participant $50 and told them they could place trades. - Before each trade, the researchers showed the participant the front page of the Wall Street Journal from 15 random days in the last ~20 years. - Each shown page was a Wednesday edition, but participants were asked to place the trade that would have executed on the Tuesday — the day before that news — so they effectively had the news *24 hours in advance*. - The researchers blacked out the stock prices so participants wouldn't just see, for example, "Johnson & Johnson is up 20%." The headline remained, but the actual stock price was redacted.

Sam Parr

the johnson and johnson beats earnings

Shaan Puri

"Beats earnings exactly, record unemployment, record job postings, Fed indicates..." — things like that. By the way, anybody can go play this game online. There's a link to it; we'll put it in the show notes. You can actually do it yourself. I did it, too. There are a couple other caveats when you go do it. It's not just a buy-and-hold. What I was going to do — and what I did at first — was: "Oh cool, this is news from 15 years ago. I'll just put all my money in, buy, and I won't trade or do anything else for the next 15 years. I know there is a bull market, so I don't need to be smart." But the way this test was designed, the trade executes and you either go up or down that day. It's kind of like the trade closes that day. You get a one-day gain based on the one-day news. So they do it, and the **results are not good**, as you might expect — otherwise I wouldn't really talk about this. The results are not good: half the players lost money even after being given the news. One out of every six players lost everything. The way people lost everything was that the platform let you trade on leverage. You can trade up to 20x leverage if you want to, like an options trader could. Or you could just trade normally, or skip a day. You don't even have to trade any given day; you can just say, "Pass, I don't feel confident." </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

An example headline would be: "Fed is going to cut rates today." I guess you would assume the index is going to go up a couple percent, so you would bet on the index—or bet on what?

Shaan Puri

It's basically the S&P 500 or the 30-year Treasury. So your best bet is one of those two things. You can buy the S&P index for that day, or you can short a bond — you can go long or short the bond. Let me show you an example. This is the Wall Street Journal article they show you. It might say "Obama does something," and then you see the Business and Finance section that talks about Rupert Murdoch, Chesapeake Energy saying their CEO is going to step down, auto sales are up, Homeland Security says [something], etc. There's all this news. You then go here and place a trade. You say, "Alright, I'm going in this little game." You can see my screen where it gave me $1,000,000, so I'm going to trade. It shows today's movement. I bet $1,000,000 — I used my full stack with no leverage — and the day was up 0.62%, so I got an extra $62,100. Then it gives me the next headline: there's a deadly plane crash, Iran is doing some shit... okay, cool. Kraft is in talks to acquire this Brazilian company, and they're just blacking out any of the stock-price news. So you read this and decide what you want to do, and you do that over and over again. They used 15 days in history. They tried to structure it so a third of the days were Fed/quarterly meeting days, a third were jobs-report days, and a third were complete randomness. They said, "We're not trying to trick you; we're not cherry-picking misleading days" — these are actually random front pages.

Sam Parr

this is an awesome experiment

Shaan Puri

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Sam Parr

During that era, the market was up on average—*I think* **15% per year** over the last 15 years. I don't know when this was done.

Shaan Puri

correct correct but again these are all like one day trades right so you're not you're not just like buying and holding for

Sam Parr

oh it was for 15 days the experiment was a 15 day experiment

Shaan Puri

exactly got it okay and the and so okay now why right there's 2 ways you could lose in in investing one is you bet wrong meaning you pick the wrong direction you think it's going up it actually goes down so basically even given the news they were basically only able to bet the direction correctly 51% of the time so it's the same as if you know you've just flipped a coin you would have been right the same amount of times as you were being given the actual front page of the wall street journal okay so information doesn't lead to actual insight especially news the second thing is that why did they do poorly they bet sized very poorly so when you had an event even when you were correct people didn't size up their bets enough and when they're incorrect they sized up their bets too much for the level of conviction that they had and you know this doesn't go in line with what people think so they surveyed people separately and basically 70% of people thought that even if they got the news you know sort of like like basically they thought that even 4 week old stale news would be predictive and you know 70% of people thought that but but in this case it just showed that even you know one day fresh news doesn't even really help you okay so then they went and they did an extra experiment they go okay maybe those 118 you know financial trained adults maybe they're just not the best of the best so they went and tried to find the best of the best the best of the best actually did better so they went and found 5 people that were you know hedge fund guy the head of trading at a top five bank seasoned macro traders so they are used to trading on this type of news they're considered the best in the world at this and they actually did better so what they did was all of them finished with gains so all 5 finished with gains on average they were up a 130% and they also didn't bet on 1 out of every 3 news things the one of the big ways that they were better was they just didn't bet all the time whereas the casual was too active okay what else did the pro do differently they were only right 6% more so you know if the I think if the the the the test group was right 51% of the time if it's going up or down these guys were only right 57% of the time it wasn't like

Sam Parr

not huge

Shaan Puri

They correctly interpreted it. But when they were right, they sized their bets properly and never risked so much of their bankroll that they couldn't recover. Isn't that amazing — only being **6–10%** better at your predictive ability can yield a much bigger result? For example, a **3%** average gain for the test group versus a **130%** average gain for the pros. So it's these **small edges** that can make a huge difference when you apply **leverage properly** (i.e., **bet sizing**).

Sam Parr

And what's the takeaway that *Nassim*—Nassim said: "Which is... which is what?"

Shaan Puri

Well, he was saying it in a *polarizing* way. He goes, "I conjecture if you gave an investor the next day's news, he would go bust in less than a year." </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

got it

Shaan Puri

And this basically showed that one out of six would go bust because they'd get overzealous around this perceived edge that doesn't exist. On the whole, most people would do worse than if they didn't have the news — it's no better than random, right? That's actually the premise of one of his books, *Fooled by Randomness*. At the end they use this quote by Ray Dalio: "He who lives by the crystal ball will die eating shattered glass."

Sam Parr

dude that's insane

Shaan Puri

so good

Sam Parr

It's like... it's *weird* that multiple smart people come to that conclusion — a conclusion I never would have reached. I would have thought, I guess everyone would have thought, that if you knew the future or you knew the news, you would absolutely outperform.</FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Exactly, exactly—the counterintuitive, wise conclusion. Let me tell you one other related one. There was a real-world version of this where a hacking group got access to the press-release system. They hacked the press-release system, so they had access to the next day's press releases that companies put out when they have major announcements—earnings results, etc. They got access to all of the press releases that were coming out the next day, and they were using it as their own form of "home-brewed insider information." They were able to get insider information and so they could place a bet in the market overnight or the next morning, and that's like a previously

Sam Parr

That's like a **12-hour leading indicator**, maybe, because if you're going to fire your CEO, you submit the press release maybe at 5 or 6 p.m. on a Thursday. Then, at 9 a.m. on Friday, you announce it — or the wire goes live.

Shaan Puri

Something—I don't know the exact timing. I would imagine it's a tighter window than that because there's too much leakage. But even a **12-second advantage** would be a huge advantage. If you knew 12 seconds ahead of time what the news was about to be, you could just push the button, right? That's all you gotta do.

Sam Parr

That's an interesting one. Like, you know, **HubSpot**, for example—I'm a shareholder. Whenever they have an earnings [report], I know when it's going to go live that day. Someone is writing it and they've submitted it to... I forget what the PR company is or what the thing's called; it's the popular [press distribution service].

Shaan Puri

pr newswire or whatever

Sam Parr

Yeah — like, whatever the popular thing is. That's kind of an *"I did..."* I never even realized that, actually.

Shaan Puri

That's why there are **rules**, right? When I was at **Amazon**, you couldn't trade the stock. There's a window — a frozen window — so X days before the announcement you can't make any trades.

Sam Parr

oh I know that but I'm saying the employees of the pr

Shaan Puri

oh right right right but that they probably have the same right because it's

Sam Parr

inside the ringtone right so I I didn't even think about that as a leakage

Shaan Puri

tell you the when I when I accidentally did that trade and then I had to go to the

Sam Parr

what were they like you're an idiot

Shaan Puri

So I'm like, "I've learned about this afterwards, right?" I'm a startup kid — I don't know anything about this. We get acquired; I, you know, make a trade, and then I'm like, *"Oh shit."*

Sam Parr

well I'm a trade

Shaan Puri

so we're at a subsidiary of amazon right

Sam Parr

like I bought amazon before you sold to amazon

Shaan Puri

I bought Amazon stock. I bought more Amazon stock—or something—or I sold to Amazon; I don't remember what it was. And I was like, "Oh shit, I just did... I just—insider trade? Did I just get my hands dirty with a little big-boy business?" So I'm like, "Oh shit, what do I do?" They were like, "You need to go speak to the general counsel." And I was like, "What?" So I get a meeting with the general counsel—urgent, urgent, possible big-money move made—and I send the email. They get me a meeting, stat. I go in, and he's like, "So, what happened?" And I was like, "I went and made a trade. You know, I'm in the window, and, you know, I'm an executive, so *hancock take me away*." [phrase at end unclear]

Sam Parr

wipe me up I'm a bad boy

Shaan Puri

I'm a bad I've been a bad boy take me away

Sam Parr

and he's like

Shaan Puri

so how much did you drink

Sam Parr

bad boy and I

Shaan Puri

I was like, "Yeah, it was about $150," and he was like, "It's okay — your lunch is outside. Can you bring it in before you leave?" He added, "This is for *actual* execs at the *actual* company who make actual trades." I was like, "Oh, okay. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Let me go sit down."

Sam Parr

that's actually hilarious he just like totally dismissed you but what about

Shaan Puri

But let me finish the story about the hackers. So, let's put you—let's test your **criminal mastermind**, which I love. I love doing this, by the way. How would I... how would I cheat if I was gonna do it, [unclear: "way you"]?

Sam Parr

You know that it's always the women—**women** always think to themselves, "How would I get away from this bad person trying to hurt me?" And the **men** always think... they align with the criminal, be the bad person. Yeah, like, "How would I get away with this crime?" That's, uh, I realized that after watching a lot of true crime. So go ahead—I like this experiment.

Shaan Puri

So you're the hackers—you get this. But here's the problem: they're like, "Sam, we got it. We hacked him. Dave over here in the corner did it. He got into this; he got **root access**." They print out all of the press releases coming out and put them on your desk. Then they're like, "Hey, we got, like, an hour. We gotta make a trade." And now there are 60,000 press releases on your desk. What do you do?

Sam Parr

I guess pick, like, a random **five**, and act on those as soon as possible. Yeah — I mean, that's... that's a very challenging situation, I guess.

Shaan Puri

it's a it's a challenge to so like take

Sam Parr

**The first five:** If it's good news, buy the stock. If it's bad news, somehow short it, but I don't even know how to do that, so I guess I would only find the five good-news ones.

Shaan Puri

Right. You're like, I think I would still just end up holding the index fund—**Vanguard**. I think I'd just do exactly what I always do: **80/20 stocks and bonds, baby**. So what they ended up doing was they said you sort of need to do a search function to figure out what news affects the price the most in a positive or negative direction. I think what they figured out was that **merger announcements** produced the highest volatility for the company that was getting acquired, because it almost always gets acquired at about a **50% premium** to where the stock was trading. So I think what they realized was: we need to be able to quickly discard **98%** of the news and information because it's noise. That goes back to the same experiment—the most of the news and information is noise. The secret is figuring out what is actually signal, and most of us can't do that; we overestimate our ability to distinguish signal from noise. They figured out the signal: it was these merger events. They were only right in their predictive ability about **70‑something percent** of the time. It was enough to make "100 of 1,000,000 of dollars" [unclear phrasing] very quickly before they got caught for doing this, and then they all went to jail. But isn't that cool? Also, I think that's the ending.

Sam Parr

When we sold to HubSpot, I think the share price was $350. Then, the week they announced it, it went to about $460. Anyone can go back and look at it — it was February of 2021.

Shaan Puri

damn sam the needle mover over here

Sam Parr

Well, so that stock price went up. I guess it's a market cap of like $1 or $2 billion. I remember going to Kip, the CMO. I go, "You're welcome." He's like, "Oh yeah, it was this acquisition that got mentioned one time in our earnings call — it just barely. It wasn't the fact that we had just announced that we grew by **45%** and have been compounding growth of like this, this, this." And I was like...

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah causation is difficult to prove yeah I agree

Sam Parr

Yeah. I'm like, "You don't understand, man—can I tell you?" Alright. So two or three years ago we talked about *AI girlfriends*. I sort of understood it because I have actually developed pretty good friendships mostly via text messages. I think a lot of people who have group messages here feel the same way. I didn't entirely understand it, but in the last two or three months I've been using **ChatGPT** in a way that now I'm like, "Yeah—if this went away, I would be very upset." I understand why people were very upset when their AI girlfriends...

Shaan Puri

replica got when they did like a software update

Sam Parr

Yeah, so basically I've been using **ChatGPT** as my thought partner, assistant, and therapist. You actually said something recently that made it a lot better. So I sat down — I'll explain how I've used it — and I said, "Hey, can you ask me all the questions that a therapist, a life coach, or an executive coach would ask, and we could spend a few hours with just me downloading, giving you a download of my life?" I did that, and since then it's been **magical**. I've been using it for all types of purposes. I use it all day, and I want to maybe explain to you how I'm using it. Maybe you could explain to me if you are doing the same — which I think you are — and how you're using it.

Shaan Puri

Right — by the way, I'll just give you a quick one: my prompt that I used yesterday for this. I was explaining the situation and I said, "Ask me a few questions, one at a time. Then, when you feel you have enough info, try to give me a suggestion." Because otherwise it just tries to… mansplain. You know, like when guys hear their girlfriend explaining something and they try to fix the problem right away. She's like, "No — I'm not trying to get the fix right now. I just want you to hear me and understand me." And you're like, "What? I thought you just wanted the answer as fast as possible, shoved in your throat." That's what ChatGPT does by default.

Sam Parr

it's it's yeah and there's a bunch of other downsides that I I wanna explain to all of this and how I'm working around it but first I I'm using it for a variety of things so I'm using it for personal finance stuff and I'll give an example for each in a second I'm using it for business questions I'm using it as like a sparring thought partner of like I'm thinking about doing this what's your opinion I'm using it as a therapist of like you know I'm struggling with this person at work or my personal life how should I handle this or what should my life goals be and I'm also using it for helping me decide which task so I'll give you an example so for net worth I use kubera kubera is like a net worth tracker you just log in with your bank accounts and all your accounts and it tells you your net worth whatever well they actually have a feature where you can download the information specifically for chatgbt and you upload it and it doesn't have any identifying information it's not like it has passwords it just has a bunch of numbers and so you can I will upload this to chatgbt and I'll say things like you know I'm I I like to be conservative like what would you rate this portfolio out of 10 of risk or you know like what's your opinion on it like what would warren buffett say you can ask it all types of questions like that or you could also say like you know how much should I spend on a house or what will my net worth be in 20 years like things like that and it's been actually really amazing another thing that I did was I took the main kpis from my company and I uploaded it to it and I'll be like what are the needle moving things that I can do for this company and you could do your kpis which is typically like an excel spreadsheet like your company's churn new users things like that you can also do your company financials and then another thing that I've been doing is I will actually take screenshots of my calendar and I'll upload it and be like what task should I be doing for the next week the next month the next quarter to get to the goals that I've told you about you know my life goals which by the way you helped me create you helped me create quarterly and annual goals how should I be spending my time today tomorrow next week and next and it will it gives me an agenda that I literally print out and I work according to that it's like pretty wild and that's why I've been using it and then all day I'll be like how should I reply to this email what's your opinion it's kinda crazy so that's how I've been using it

Shaan Puri

It's like you have **Neuralink** — they just never did the surgery right. You're basically putting **AI** as the operator in your brain in many ways, but we just haven't reached that tech yet. Right? Where the chip is already implanted.

Sam Parr

Next step of that is: here's what's going to happen. There's going to be software — it probably already exists, and I'm tinkering with a few of them — that records your computer screen, your phone screen, the words you say out loud, and the things you type. It's going to give you feedback on how you spent your day. It's going to give you feedback on what to do, and things like that. So it's going to... you know how there's a book — I forget the title — but the premise is *"Google knows more than you"* because you are more honest in your Google searches than you are when you talk to your spouse or your friends or whatever. The same thing happens when someone says, "Yeah, I spend this much time working on this, this, and this," and I'll just be like, "No — you did not spend that much time doing it." Also, you told me that you're trying to be nicer, but you wrote, like, eight really mean emails. Do you know what I mean? That's how it's going to be. In the next six months, I think there are going to be products like that that are actually nailing it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think the CEO of Microsoft — I don't know if you heard this story — but when Ballmer stepped down they needed a new CEO. At the time, Microsoft was kind of in a downward-to-flat trajectory. It was an uninspired stock and company, so they needed something. The guy who became CEO, *Satya Nadella*, actually wrote a memo — a kind of internal manifesto — about what Microsoft needed to do. He ended up getting the job. At the time he said, "I never thought I'd be the CEO of Microsoft." You know, you join Bill Gates as the CEO, then Ballmer, and he just assumed they'd always bring in somebody. But they actually promoted him from within. He wrote this thing, and one of the key principles that he wrote in this — this was a while back when he...

Sam Parr

wrote year like 05 or 10 or something

Shaan Puri

This was in 2014. He wrote, "We bet on two things." I don't remember the second one, but I remember the first: he called it **"ambient intelligence."** *Ambient intelligence* is kind of what you're describing. It's basically how to have computer intelligence—artificial intelligence—embedded in your environment so it can be helpful to you. It just knows what you need without you having to fetch it or ask specifically. It can anticipate your needs or be aware of all your context so that you don't have to first explain the whole situation; it already knows your situation, so you can just ask the question. Isn't it cool that he predicted that so long before OpenAI was even incorporated, or something like that? This was a very long time ago. To bet on that as one of the two ways that the tech puck is going pretty baller. [Note: "tech puck" phrase unclear in the original transcript]

Sam Parr

Which is shockingly hard, by the way. It's hard to make these predictions and remove the limiter part of your brain and just imagine, like, *what would be amazing?* What would be cool? That sounds easy, but it's really hard because you constantly think, "Well, I can't do that," or "That's impossible," or "That would cost too much money." There are all these limiters. The way I've been using this—it's not perfect yet, by the way—there are a few issues. I am super not technical. The first thing is contextual or *context windows*: the more you talk to it, it doesn't always learn more. You actually run out of memory in a weird way. I've been testing a variety of different platforms—**Gemini** versus **ChatGPT**—but I want to use ChatGPT because I think it's going to be around the longest and they're going to innovate the fastest. It's not perfect at all, but it's shocking how useful this is. For a long time I was like, "Yeah, AI is great—I can look up a stat on Google and it'll tell me." But now it's more like, *this is my life.* I am using this more than anything. They had their new $200-a-month thing come out and I don't even think I need the features, but I'm like, whatever—I'll take it. I've contemplated investing a little bit of money into building up these systems just for my personal operating system and making my life great. Keep in mind I don't know anything about any of this stuff. I just know that it's effective. It literally is helping me get my day done better, and it's giving me great advice. Here's another practical way I use it: I'll upload my body measurements and say, "Find me clothes that fit," or "Does this pair of pants fit?" and it will just post a link. I've been using it constantly. I guess—how are you? If you are using it like this, as a sparring thought partner...?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, well, I think this is the key. So what we're saying is: basically, the way I think people will use this by default is you ask a question and it gives an answer. An equally — if not more — powerful way is to do the exact opposite. You basically say, "I'm trying to think about this; ask me questions." Then you get it to ask you the questions. In that way, it's your *sparring partner* — your thought partner for fleshing out ideas or getting clarity around a situation. It's available **24/7**, it doesn't judge; it's super intelligent but also has empathy. You can go back and forth instantly. It's always available, there's no lag time — so, better than a friend, right?

Sam Parr

You know, you have a friend who you bitch to, and you're like, "I just need to vent" and "just give me... what should I do here?" But you kind of feel guilty laying everything on them or making it all about you, and they don't quite understand exactly what you're talking about. This is just that person, but better. </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

It's one of the right main reasons why **coaches and therapists** are great: you're like, "Cool — we're gonna have a completely one-way conversation here." I don't even gotta give you anything. I can come here and be a taker, and that's the arrangement. I gave you the money — that's what that was for — and now from there on out I don't need to consider your feelings in this interaction. That sounds ruthless, but it's true. It's why it's different than just talking to a friend. With a friend, you have to say, "Sorry, am I taking up too much of your time? I don't mean to put all of this on you..." You're always half-apologizing and then trying to reciprocate. One of the cool things about a therapist or coach is that's not the social contract. That's not what's expected in that situation. **AI** is even better. It's like, "Hey, sorry to bug you at 1 AM — I'd like to talk right now," and I get instant responses with complete intelligence. I can just keep saying, "No, tell me... no, try again," until I get something that's satisfactory to me. You couldn't even treat a human like that, right? So it's pretty great to be able to do that.

Sam Parr

It's become strange. I call it *"dude"* sometimes. I'm like, "Dude, what's your problem? That's wrong. Stop getting these done." It's strange because, if you think about it when you're texting your friends, it's in the same window or next to the same window on your computer. You kind of forget that this is a machine and you can train it how to talk. It's very strange, but it's actually quite effective.

Shaan Puri

do you know how an llm works no you know what like deep learning is no I went and watched some videos the other day just to get like because I was like how is this magic magicking what is going on here there's one by this guy I think it's called like 3 brown 1 blue is like his his username or something like that it's got millions of views and he explains you know like what is deep learning which is like the technique that worked with ai and the second thing was you know how large language models work what does it even mean what is large what is a language model what does that what does that even do but check this out so okay like here's the example that that that I gave okay so this is me not even trying to explain to you what it is because my explanation is gonna be pretty bad this is me just saying I can't believe that this is what actually is happening I cannot fathom that this is the actual scenario okay so let's take this example I wrote this I put this on a card because like I can't forget this I'll never forget what I learned alright so imagine this number 7 right so let's say you're trying to train ai to be able to see that this is 7 how do you do that you can hard code it but well every time you see the number 7 it's like a captcha right it's like written a little bit differently so it's like you can't just say this is exactly a 7 cause you write your 7 slightly different than me maybe you put the little line through it maybe you have a little angle to it whatever right so you just want it to be able to recognize anybody's handwriting and figure out 7 or not 7 right what number is it so how does it work so imagine basically a classroom okay so here's a row of kids so there's 10 kids standing there and each of the 10 kids is like holding one of these cards with a different number on it right but actually it doesn't have the whole number so or actually they have the whole number but for at first it just says alright there's a whole index card we gotta figure out we don't even know if this is a 7 or a dog or a car it could be anything right so it just zooms in and it says let's look at this little section right here like these 20 pixels okay these 20 pixels you know on this area it's white so if you got color there sit down kids anybody who's got color over here sit down because this picture is white over here can't be can't be you you're eliminated and then over here it's like hey there's some blue ink something is here so if you got blue ink in this little section stay standing if you don't sit down right so that like eliminates a bunch of you know like kind of thought processes so then it passes it to the next layer the next layer of 10 kids and it says alright who here has got this flat line okay so the the sevens stay standing the fives stay standing you know the threes are kinda like hey we got some stuff up here up top the eights but you know the 4 the number 4 doesn't have a little roof on top so it's like I'm out I'm out and you're like okay go sit down it's like paintball right you're out go go to sit on the side and then so now you're left with like you know some of the numbers and then it says alright we got a little little stick over here who's got a stick over there and it's like the threes are like oh I'm out now that's not me but the sevens and the fives are like hey we're still in it might be us right bingo and so you just keep passing it from layer to layer showing it like kinda more pixels on the screen and it's trying to get with some level of confidence at the end right it's gonna be 7 and maybe 5 at the end and the 7's like yo I'm 90% sure it's me and the 5 is like yeah it's maybe 10% that it's me it's just a ugly 5 and then that's how the ai knows that this is a 7 because it passes it from layer to layer to layer to layer looking at the pixels on the screen and basically trying to figure out trying to guess is it is it one of you I think with some probability it's this okay so that's just recognizing a number okay now imagine what you're doing you're giving it kpis of your company it has to understand what a kpi is what a company is that you were looking for strategy what strategy sounds like it's gotta say something that you as a successful businessperson who sold your companies for you know tens of 1,000,000 of dollars that you will respect the output of this like isn't that mind blowing that that's even a thing and so that now you take how does that work so it now you take instead of the 7 take an example where it's like the dog blanked right so it's like what's gonna come after you know it it basically sees a sentence the dog or the dog

Sam Parr

it's like what's a dog and what do they commonly do

Shaan Puri

It doesn't even know that it has any meaning. It has no idea what a "dog" is. They just had it read the whole internet. So what they did was: "Hey, go read the whole internet." If you or I tried that—"Yo Sam, I gotta, let's do this, man—we'll take so much Adderall, we'll stay up all night and read 24/7 all the text on the internet"—it would take us thousands of years to ingest that. But they gave it all that in one training run. After that, a user puts in a sentence like: "the dog ___." Guess what the model predicts next: the **next token**—the next little word that comes after "the dog." It might be "the dog barked," "the dog jumped," "the dog is hungry," etc. It could be one of many possibilities. Then it takes the next word—say, "the dog barked"—and feeds that phrase back in: "Now you've got the phrase 'the dog barked'—what comes after that?" It just loops that over and over to generate the next word. That's when you see ChatGPT writing.

Sam Parr

mhmm

Shaan Puri

*It's literally* taking the next token it thinks it should say, then it feeds it back through and says, "Okay, well if I said — if I said 'the dog barked' — then I gotta say it loudly, right? Okay: 'loudly'." If I said "the dog barked loudly, what would I say next?" and then it would keep... and it keeps recursively doing that. That's what's actually — that's how it generates the training thing, right? And that's, like, you know, this is only part of it — half explained correctly. But let's assume for a second that I'm not completely misinterpreting this. Let's assume for a second that this is only a percentage of what is actually going on, right? There's still parameters and weights and all this other stuff that I haven't even talked about yet. This is like... *God*, right? This is like, how is this even a thing? It's so mind-blowing to...

Sam Parr

**It's mind-blowing.** It's absolutely mind-blowing. I think young people—well, I don't hang around 18-year-olds—are using it for school, so they get it. I know a little bit about it because I hang out with smart people, and I'm on the outskirts of what these guys are doing. I kind of see it online and I play with it. For the average Joe—my mom and dad, a 35-year-old who isn't tech-savvy and just works as a mechanic—I don't think they're using it this way. I don't think they're using it at all. It's going to change everything. It's so crazy. When the average Joe starts getting into this, I think young people, like a 21-year-old, it's already changing schools. The grading system is totally effed up, right? When I think about this, it's like there is no homework—you can't do homework anymore, you know what I mean? It's like... DM. [unclear: "dm"]

Shaan Puri

Someone DM'd me yesterday. It's not just homework. Someone DM'd me last night showing me this guy, Oliver—Oliver Ham. He DM'd me this thing and he said, *"coding interviews..."* Like, okay: kids in school are using ChatSumi to write essays, and the teachers are like, "Fuck — how do we... how are we—?" It's a cat-and-mouse game trying to stop students from using AI to just do their assignments. Well, the same thing is true for coding interviews. Coding interviews, which are used to hire programmers, have this website called **leetcode wizard.i0**. Basically it just helps you cheat on your coding interview. It's like, "Oh, you got a coding test to get a job? Just use this—watch, it'll write it all." It's the same thing as a student: it'll write the essay for you, basically. And it's doing, like, $15 a month in referral revenue. I'm just helping people cheat on coding interviews.

Sam Parr

this is insane

Shaan Puri

it's so difficult right but it's kind of amazing

Sam Parr

how are you using this every day

Shaan Puri

like let me just go to chat gpt and just tell you like my last

Sam Parr

is chat gpt your tool of choice or do you like any of the other ones

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it is my *default*, and then, you know, I play with everything else. Usually, if I'm like, "How factually correct does this need to be?" — *Perplexity*. So I go to Perplexity. If it's analysis, I'll use ChatGPT. Have you used the "o1" stuff? Like the deeper-thinking stuff? </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Only for 24 or 48 hours. Yeah, it's brand new, but it's *wild*. It takes a long time, but it's *wild*.

Shaan Puri

Well, that—that's the gist of it. Basically, if you told the computer, "Hey, you don't have to just quickly—again—shove an answer down my throat instantaneously," where you're just predicting the next token and it's "good enough to go." Like, "'There's a 70% chance it's this word; let's just put it in.'" They found you could do more interesting tasks if you just said, "Hey, just take your time before you answer." Just give it more time to think and then it'll come up with a better answer. It's *temperamental*, which is amazing, so I use that. But, like, check this out: there was this press release recently—we were talking about **IVF**, remember? —well, it's kind of this amazing thing. I don't know if you saw it. It's called **Fertilo**. Did you see what happened with this thing called Fertilo? So basically it was the first live birth using eggs that matured outside the body. If you've done IVF, it's a pretty expensive and pretty harsh thing on the body. The woman has to get injections—hormone injections—to try to get the eggs produced and matured inside the body. What Fertilo did was say, "Cool. Instead of doing that long, expensive, hard-on-your-body process, we can take an immature egg out of the body, do the hormone stuff outside the body, get it to mature, and then put it back in the body." It just removes the pain from the process. The first actual live birth happened of a baby born using that procedure. It's kind of amazing—if true. It's going to change IVF. I don't know if it'll just be called a new procedure or what, but basically, for a fraction of the cost, a fraction of the time, and a fraction of the pain, we can do the thing that we've been doing with IVF. Okay, so—dude—it makes...

Sam Parr

Me realize that... I think that Sahil — I forget his last name — from Gumroad tweeted this thing out where everyone made fun of him. He talked about how he's like, "giving birth is not gonna happen in the future; you're just gonna be in this sack and that's how you're gonna grow." I'm like, "Oh shit, you're right." You know what I mean? Dude, I remember we were at...

Shaan Puri

At a dinner, Jess Ma just said it casually in passing. She was like, "Yeah... you know, I'm really excited for and fascinated by, basically, **artificial wombs**, and, basically, you know, women won't give birth at a certain [unclear]. Right — it'll be like riding horses for transport. You could do it if you want to have a unique experience." And she's like, "It won't be necessary."

Sam Parr

and she's like pass the pass the mashed potatoes and you're like wait wait wait wait

Shaan Puri

Yeah. So no—literally, that's exactly what happened. At the table I looked around and was like, "Was anybody else *mind-blown* by that? What's going on? Don't we all want more information about that?" I was far across the table—diagonally, about seven people away—but I heard her say it. Meanwhile I was stuck over here talking about Facebook ads with some dork. I was like, "I just want to get out of this side of the table and get to that side of the table." So, after the dinner...

Sam Parr

jess what did you say about wombs

Shaan Puri

I literally flagged her down. I was like, "Oh, you're getting an Uber—hey, cancel that real quick." She canceled it, and I asked, "What was that thing you were talking about?" She explained. She explained the companies she's tracking and where we are in the scientific life cycle: how real is that possibility, and what are the laws of physics—**is that inevitable or is it impossible?** She said basically, *if something is not impossible, it's inevitable*, which is kind of a **dope idea** and already blows my mind. So I've been paying attention to any signs of movement in that area because I think it's really cool. The world is going to change pretty dramatically when that happens. Back to the AI thing: I just threw the press release into ChatGPT and said, "Explain this article to me. Tell me what they're saying. Tell me what this means in simple terms. It's a press release, so it might be misleading or overstating the success—tell me about that too." It replied with a simpler explanation. For example, it summarized: > This company has achieved what they call the "world's first healthy baby born with a woman's egg that was matured outside of her body." Normally in IVF the doctors are doing A, B, C. In this scenario they are doing A, B, C. Then it went on, in simpler terms: the conventional path is X, the new approach is Y, and here's why it matters if this is true... It also listed why the press release might be misleading: it's a press release, so it's definitely spin. Number two, one success doesn't prove a trend—it talks about the "world's first" but doesn't mention how many others they've tried that have failed or the hit rate of this procedure. It's not peer-reviewed. It might be exaggerating the future impact. We would need to know clinical trials... Then I asked it more: "What does the scientific literature say about this?" All of a sudden I'm getting a quick biology lesson. Another use was brainstorming name ideas for a project—I was like, "Hey, here's the project..."

Sam Parr

great for that

Shaan Puri

Ask me questions about the project and then come up with names. Then it comes up with *dorky* names. I'm like, "No—make the names not dorky and long, and don't make it feel like it's written by *Chad GPT*. Make it feel like it's written by *David Ogilvy*." It then comes up with different answers. A lot of financial analysis—analyzing stocks—or just, "Yo, I see *Cathie Wood* on my screen a lot. Is she actually great at investing?" And then AI is like...

Sam Parr

gosh she's cold monkey I see cathie wood on my screen

Shaan Puri

Is she just hot, or is she good at trading? They're asking these questions. *Again, no judgment.* She gives me the answer, which was—*spoiler*—no. She underperforms the indexes over, like, a 15-year period and makes $100,000,000 a year while underperforming the index. Like, wow. Good on you, **Cathie Wood**, for doing that. Let's see—there's just other ones. People will say, "Hey, I'm trying to do this in Excel but I don't know how to do it. Can you just tell me the function I need to write?" If you Google it, you get YouTube videos you have to watch. So now I'm like, "Alright—forget the YouTube video. Just give me the exact thing I need to type in." Or they'll screenshot the Excel window and say, "I'm trying to figure out in column C what are the ones..." and it gives me this complicated **COUNTIFS** formula with multiple selectors or whatever. I play games with my kids. We take pictures—my son has all these sharks—so I send a picture to *ChatGPT voice mode* and say, "Hey, tell me what these sharks are from left to right," and it reads it out to my kids. Then my kid can ask a question: "Dada, which one is the strongest shark?" It replies, "Actually, the great white shark is the strongest shark with the most powerful bite." My son says, "No, but what if it was with a cheetah?" And it answers, "Well, the cheetah wouldn't be in the ocean, but if it was..." It interacts with my kids and we have a fun time. They tell me all the time, "Can we play with AI?"

Sam Parr

Dude, that's so good. I've got a bunch of friends whose children are three, four, and five—talking age—and they're doing the exact same thing.</FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Let me — I want to do trivia. Another hack for parents: you can say, "Hey, I'm sitting here with my two kids. Their names are, you know, Timmy and Tommy, and we want to do *Paw Patrol* trivia. Ask us easy questions. When we're right, say **'ding ding ding'**, and when we're wrong, say, **'That's not right — try again,'** and keep track of the scores. Alright, go." Literally, you could just say that to it in voice mode and it'd be like, "Alright, first question: Marshall is a pup known for what?" And you're like, "Fire," and it's like, "Ding ding ding — correct. One, two, three."

Sam Parr

I'm gonna fall in love with her. It's pretty crazy — imagine being raised with this. This is insane. Let me give three practical ways I'm using it. They have this new thing — I think it's *new-ish* — called **"Projects."** I have three folders right now. The way it works is you have a folder as a project, then you can upload files to the project. You can also have multiple conversations within the project, and it refers back to the files or whatever information.

Shaan Puri

give me an example this

Sam Parr

is about it so what what like let me give you

Shaan Puri

an example in there I have

Sam Parr

A health folder. You know how everyone has their own health guru—usually based on one book they read? Well, I go and download your book. I download the book that I ascribe to, and I will upload it. If it's a book that's *EPUB*—which is how I buy it on Kindle—I convert it to a .txt file because that's easier to read, and I upload the .txt file to the...

Shaan Puri

even though it's like huge because it's a book that works I give it

Sam Parr

a full book I the full book I download it and I convert it and then like so for example we were going to the grocery store today and I just said like you know there's like this interesting book I just read and I upload the I've uploaded the book and I would just say make the grocery list for me and and then it'll and I'll tell me actually and I'll say which grocery store should I go to in my area and it knows where I live and it says yeah like these 3 grocery stores will have exactly what you need I think they will have what you need because like you know I'm on this like clean meat kick or whatever and he was like yeah the author says like to buy this cut of meat and you should ask the butcher this this and this and like here's 3 butchers that appear to have what you need and it's all based off of like the files that I've uploaded for health but then within health I can ask it it know I'll like hey this quarter I wanna run a 5 k at this particular time give me like a good app to use that can help track my running and also tell me like what my goal should be so that's like a a couple health versions the second one is I've got a clothing one where I literally took a photo of myself and I used a tape measure to measure various parts of my body and I upload it to it and I was like alright like make a chart with all my measurements thank you remember that always here's some like clothing that I wanna buy here's the links can you like go and figure out what size it is and let me know like what fit and they're like well these pants that it says that they're the same width as your thigh but you actually want like 2 inches usually extra width that that'll probably feel more comfortable or what I'll do is I'll upload like a blog that I like dye workwear blog and I'll say hey here's a picture literally lay a tie next to a jacket and I'll take a picture of it and I'll upload it and I'll be like does this tie match this jacket and I'll be like no but that other tie that you showed me a picture of a while ago that actually would look great here it's like that's how I use it and then the final way that I use it and this is like my life coach folder which is like it's like partially like I'll complain to it and I'll be like you know I noticed you've been complaining about this a lot or I'll upload business financials to it and that's like more of like my sparring partner throughout the day and so I have 3 folders right now health clothing and like a life coach and so those are like the practical ways and I'm using projects that's the that's the term on chat gbt and that's why I'm using it as of now

Shaan Puri

"Dude, people are just going to replace their cofounder with this, right? You're going to see a lot more solo founders because you could just have an **AI cofounder**."

Sam Parr

"You're gonna say, 'Well, you know, you'll reduce churn if you use this messaging when you email your users.'" And then you're just gonna say, "Yeah, well you have my login to Mailchimp—like, or Shopify. Let's go ahead. Yeah, get it done." Or you'll be like, "You know, my Shopify store has a 2.1% conversion rate," and it's like, "Hey, we ran this A/B test; it increased your conversion rate to 3%," and you're like, "Get after it. Go do it." That's what's gonna happen. Anyway, we've had these intelligent people—Dharmesh, whatever—explain all these things, but it wasn't until the last two months... and, in fact, recently, since you told me to ask him the 'ask ChatGPT' question, that I'm like, "Oh my god, this is my life now." In fact, you actually sent out a wonderful email the other day where you said, "Here's how to ask powerful questions." I uploaded that email to ChatGPT and I'm like, "Remember these questions and ask me them often, or ask yourself these questions often."

Shaan Puri

Yeah. I mean, it's just so... it's incredible, and it's also so obvious. I think that **ChatGPT** is — I mean, it is *the Google of our generation*. I guess the only question is: why am I not — why am I not a shareholder of **OpenAI**? Like... what... how do I — how do I go to sleep at night?

Sam Parr

Well, I mean, you, Dharmesh, had to buy a $10 million domain and then convince them to buy it in order to become a shareholder. So, like... it's, like, ask you—like, that's, like... way. *There is always a way.*

Shaan Puri

tried everything

Sam Parr

"Oh, but that's like saying, 'Why am I not a billionaire?' It's like, well... you could be, but here are some of the barriers to entry that you've got to overcome. So, you certainly should ask **ChatGPT** that, by the way."

Shaan Puri

it's a good question by the way why am I not a billionaire

Sam Parr

it is a great question but like there

Shaan Puri

Have you ever asked yourself that question? I asked a friend that question, and they weren't even really that close of a friend, so it was kind of a—it was a blunt question to ask at a dinner. I was like, "Why are you not already a billionaire?" He gave a great answer. Actually, what he was saying was, "You know, I want to start a $1 billion company." I was like, "Why have you not already done that?" He said, "I think when I was starting these other companies that I started, I didn't actually understand what a $1 billion company looked like, and if I had known that I would have built a different company." He was correct. As we dug in, it's like, what makes a company a $1 billion company? There are really only a couple of paths to that. One of them, for example, is building something that has **network effects**. He had been building companies that could do great revenues; they could even be profitable; they could grow fast—those are some of the things you need. But there was no network effect. There was no durability, there was no defensibility, there was no *win the category*. It was like: go to a category where you can win inside that category, but there will be other winners, and you will also...

Sam Parr

be now

Shaan Puri

It was like, just as an example — that was a gaming company. There are a lot of mobile gaming companies, and at the time to build a $1 billion gaming company you really had to be one of the, like, three that were going to get built in a five-year window. You had to build *Clash of Clans* or *Candy Crush* or one of those. Even in one of those cases, it was like: "I'm sitting here tinkering on cool game designs, and actually the thing I need to do is build an enormous paid marketing team — the top paid marketers in the world — to acquire hundreds of millions of customers." That's what I need to do. The cool, artsy game design that's going to win me awards is not what a $1 billion gaming company looks like. So he just didn't understand the shape of something. I find that to be true about most goals. Instead of asking, "How can I do this goal?", another way of saying it is, "Why have I not already done this goal? Why is it not already true for me?" That points out either knowledge gaps or execution gaps that are closer to your timeline today. When you set an ambitious goal that's far in the future and you sort of bake in that it's going to take a long time, you avoid the maybe harsh realities that might actually exist today in your world about those goals.

Sam Parr

Yeah, you had a great email with a bunch of those questions. It was: "Here's a bunch of decision-making questions," which is... I'm not sure. Instead of "What should I do?" you should say, **"What would I do if I weren't afraid?"** One bad question is, **"How can I make this succeed?"** The better question is, **"What would make this certainly fail?"** A final example: "I can't decide which path is the right one to pick." A better version of that is, **"What path makes for the best story?"** This is actually a pretty good email. I think I replied and said this was a 10. You had a list of better questions, and I used those questions in **ChatGPT**. What I'm learning with **ChatGPT** is you have to get it to ask you better questions — its input is important for its output. So, yeah, I pretty much stole that email.

Shaan Puri

Yeah. I think the realization was: Tim had said something way back. I think I put it in the email. He used this phrase—he was talking about it in the *podcasting realm*. But first he had this quote: "Yeah, you can read it out."

Sam Parr

He goes, "If you want confusion and heartache, ask vague questions. If you want uncommon clarity and results, ask uncommonly clear questions. Often, all that stands between you and what you want is **a better set of questions**."

Shaan Puri

Exactly. He said this about his podcast: "I view questions as a pickaxe for the brain." Like a pickaxe when you're summiting a mountain—you use it to pierce the side of the mountain and pull yourself up. In many ways, you are excavating the brain with this pickaxe, and your pickaxe is questions. Another phrase I use all the time in business is **"ask a better question, get a better answer."** So often, if somebody asks a bad question—and I'll call a bad question either a vague question, an open-ended question, or a question in the wrong direction—the rookie move is just to answer the question at face value. You should not answer 100% of the questions asked. A lot of the questions need to bounce back to sender: "Oh, this has the wrong address on it; you have to write a better address on that. This won't get delivered the way you've written this address." So you bounce back some questions and say, *maybe the better question to ask is* _____ . For example, instead of "How can we succeed?"—which is like a million paths, all unknown—ask, "What would make this certainly a failure?" That's much more knowable, and we can establish a few ground rules from that question and get some momentum toward this. You can see this with your brain just like with AI. They call it prompt engineering when it comes to AI: being able to ask the AI in a certain way is going to get you a better result. Absolutely the same thing is true for yourself and for people around you—to ask better questions.

Sam Parr

I do I

Shaan Puri

I ask *annoyingly stupid* questions to my team all the time. One question I love to ask is: **"What are we stupid for not doing right now?"** That question comes loaded with the presumption that there's something stupid we're not doing. Of course there is—we're always doing stupid things. Specifically, the question asks: what is an obvious, low-hanging fruit that's in our face while we're out here searching for the complex when the simple, stupidly obvious thing is right in front of us. I would say more than 50% of the time there's a useful answer to that question. But if you didn't ask it, it would just go unspoken in your company. Right? So, how many are those? Another one I learned from Amazon: if you're an executive who leads a team, you have to write a document at the end of the year called the "OP1" [Operating Plan 1]. You do it twice a year—OP1, and then OP2 [Operating Plan 2] halfway through the year.

Sam Parr

was that effective

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

it's great

Shaan Puri

I'm a fan of the Amazon writing culture. It's easy to make fun of, and easy to do wrong, but when done right it's super effective. One common question they ask is: **"What are the dogs not barking?"** It's back to that Sherlock Holmes story where he solves the case. People ask, "How did you know, Sherlock?" He explains that there was a house break-in and the dog didn't do anything. He says, "The dog didn't bark," which means the dog must have recognized the person that broke in. That suggests it was the housekeeper or someone known to the dog. So in your business, asking *what are the dogs not barking* is a good way to find things we should notice but aren't. I interpret this in two ways. One is: what are the things we should be hearing that we're not? For example, one week I didn't send out my Friday email and I just sat there and I was like...

Sam Parr

like you want me to complain about it

Shaan Puri

Emails being like, "Hey, where's the Friday thing?" "Man, I love that." "Oh, I didn't get that." Okay — **the dog not barking**, right? I changed how I did the Friday emails because of that. People asked, "Why'd you make that pivot?" It's because I did *Jenga*: I took a block out and the tower was fine — nothing fell down. I'm trying to be an email in your inbox such that, if I remove that email, your life got worse. You want to speak to the manager: "Where's my goddamn email?" If **DoorDash** doesn't deliver your food, you're knocking on the door. I want to be at least more important than the DoorDash delivery. That's what I'm striving for. Another way to interpret it is: what are the problems you don't hear about yet but are certainly there? That's another way to think about the **"dog not barking"** — anticipate a problem around the corner because we know it's going to be there even if we haven't heard it yet. We can anticipate it and maybe get ahead of it.

Sam Parr

Dude, I'm telling you: there's going to be a world—probably in three years—where... The issue that a lot of smart people, like you and me and others listening, have is we think, "I'm really smart; I feel wise; I know what to do." But it's a lot of work. Then, literally, the idea guys are going to thrive in five years—the wise people—because there are going to be **AI agents** doing all of this for you. You know what I mean? You're not going to have to actually do that work; you're just... *your opinions*.

Shaan Puri

Or your taste doesn't matter, right? Because then why can't the **AI** do the idea part too? [Unclear phrase: "who's the same person too"] </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

that's it's not you're not I don't think you want

Shaan Puri

So, then what? Right? And then — *that's when the brain breaks*, and you're like, "I guess it's over then," and I'm not sure.

Sam Parr

wait so you're actually afraid

Shaan Puri

Yeah, kind of like... I don't want to say *afraid*, because I'm not quivering in my boots about it. But I guess I don't have a satisfying answer. For most things in my life, I have a pretty satisfying answer. Sometimes the answer is just, "I'll deal with it when it happens." I'll just adjust. I can feel safe and comfortable with that—that's usually my failsafe. With this one, it's kind of different. When **AI can do everything**—right?—it seems like it's a matter of *when*, not *if*. It seems like it's in my lifetime, probably in the next ten years. It could do the work, but it could also figure out what the work to be done is. I guess I'm less afraid of the whole "it's going to crush humans" scenario—AI going rogue and attacking us. I'm not as afraid of that as I am of the question: *What's the point of all this?* What's the point of doing any of this stuff if that's going to be true? That's kind of a weird place to land.

Sam Parr

so you wanna end there what the fuck right

Shaan Puri

podcasts are all that safe dude

Sam Parr

No, they're not. No, they're not. Perplexity has a daily podcast that's really good — they just take the news, that's great... Or no, it's not Perplexity. What's the thing? **11 Labs**. **11 Labs** has— they use, like, a *Stephen Fry* voice and they read the news. I listen to it; it's awesome. It's not safe. We're not safe. No one's safe. Maybe, like, a plumber — a plumber's safe.

Shaan Puri

Well, I actually think our strategy is pretty **genius** because we are getting **stupider**. All right — we dumb ourselves down and **AI** is trying to get smarter. So there's actually a white space in the market for some imperfect knowledge: some half‑baked ideas and some incorrectness. I think we've really... stumbled onto something. I think we might be the last one standing in this whole podcast game. It's us and Theo Von. It's just like the dumbest conversations on earth are going to be all that's left, because the AI is going to do all the smart ones.

Sam Parr

maybe it may I mean I I don't know maybe

Shaan Puri

mark andreessen should be scared right now not us

Sam Parr

Dude, yeah — **the smart guys are fucked.** Like... the smart guys built— they're digging their own graves. Their shovels are clanking together on accident as they're digging the same grave. They're like, "Oh, sorry, my bad." They don't realize that you guys are going into this grave in about a year. Is there a...

Shaan Puri

name on the tombstone yeah that's weird there must be a problem

Sam Parr

Is there another Marc here? Yes — **Marc Andreessen** is like... they think that they're, like, "We're putting the blue-collar guy in his grave and we're gonna outsource his fucking job." They're like, "I've never—Mr. Andreessen, are you here?" you know.

Shaan Puri

What I mean, dude—I found my new **sick burn** in the TikTok comments. There are all these TikTok clips of podcasts. We should probably be doing this more, but we don't really. People just clip podcast snippets, and there are a lot of those TikToks. The more viral the clip, the more outrageous the comment in the podcast tends to be. You get a bunch of replies like, "No, that's wrong," "That's stupid," whatever. I saw the best one: the top-liked comment on a podcast clip. It simply said, "Podcasting equipment is way too readily available." Like, damn—anybody can just get a microphone now. That’s how I feel when I see a lot of these clips: wow, these microphones are way too easy to access.

Sam Parr

have you heard that song another white boy with a podcast

Shaan Puri

no what's that song

Sam Parr

Yes. It's a song called *"Another White Boy with a Podcast."* Goddamn—how did I not think of that? It's sort of like that: like "finance 64," "blue eyes." It just says "Joe Rogan." It just says a bunch of random phrases, but it's called "Another White..."

Shaan Puri

boy with a podcast

Sam Parr

song on the way out of this

Shaan Puri

that'll be our outro alright cue the music

Sam Parr

**A podcast:** Crypto; Jim; Bro; Bill Prep.

Shaan Puri

small spend

Sam Parr

And fast — so smart and funny. We should make a party: we buy mics, we get chairs, we sit down, we play stairs. We're going to be billionaires. Just don't forget to **like and share**. Oh — another white boy with a podcast.