Are We Getting Dumber? | Ep 003 - Lemonade Stand 🍋

30:39Even like just having individual time is so important. Like I remember when I was a younger kid in like fifth grade, and I think there was a brief period of time where I went to a private school. And in that school, there was like a subset of people within the class that they pulled out of class to like work on basically like the next grade's worth of material because we already knew the existing material. We were nerds. Okay. So, but at, you know, at public schools, those opportunities were like few and far between, at least at U.S. public schools. right and like i said when you look at public education in a lot of other countries they start to take these more like uh refined approaches to different students so that they're working on something that they are more invested in i think that's this is kind of awesome yeah it's pretty cool if you were if you're doing this through i don't in a classroom that is like deployed by the teacher or the school rather than like on the at the kids like phones at an individual level right I think that's, this is really cool.

31:45Cause I think at least as, if you took this all out of the world of like technology and you just go back far enough in time, I think again, these were the same conversations about education that people are having like 10, 20, 30 years ago about how to help students succeed. And this is like a tool that allows that to happen. I want to talk a little bit about the negative sides of AI though. And it's not this, in education. And I've been hearing this all over. There's a good article about it, but also I've talked to my, I had my chat like come up and put some stories. And the level of cheating, especially in college level courses right now with chat gpt is rampant yes it is it is yeah it is viral i mean you're saying they're breaking out of the psychic prison and maybe that that means the whole system is just it doesn't work in this in this era but like the structure of it is still there and it's teetering it's not teachers are frustrated they're they're grading like 80 percent chat gpt papers they know the student did put no time into and the students are also reporting that like okay so let's say you're a student and you want to try hard well you're worried that if you don't use ai to cheat you're going to fall behind this kid that does if your grade's worse if you're in college you're literally suffering because of the curve right yeah there's a curve and then also like you hear the stories of like people graduating it's a tough time now to find if you get bad grades you're where you're going to graduate and not so you're like almost incentivized hard to cheat because the thing can write better than you on a lot of things right so now it's like this race to the bottom where everyone is cheating at all time it's getting exponential and now they're going into job interviews and they're cheating in those like they're they're having the ai auto listen to the job question and then just reading the i mean it's getting it's getting it's breaking the whole system it's breaking like every way of measuring human ability and talent and that structure that existed before and i don't have the answer but like that is a downside of it that's coming really quickly yes well i think this is a longer term strong positive yes yeah okay that's my i'm not going to pretend like no ai is straight up destroying our current education system like straight up and i think there's a world where we can go okay long term this like things like this alpha school could be really positive i i i have an education from one of the best computer science schools in the country and a computer science degree from it and i think that education quality was pretty bad overall and i am not heartbroken if the fairly shitty way of having us learn and test our learning knowledge which had almost no correspondence to who went on to actually be successful and make an impact in the world i'm not that heartbroken if that system fails i'm not that heartbroken if doctor if professor brian harvey can't fucking grade our scheme projects as well anymore i don't give a shit getting shade 12 years later yeah well no he's got this famous he's got this famous video about not cheating and he's right morally like obviously morally i'm not i'm not supportive of cheating or anything but but it's it the current structure is fucked for sure and i think what i hope and think is and will happen is that we can we can push it towards these really tailored experiences but it's not i don't like the the the paradigm of like all the kids go to high school and then they take the sat and that number is how smart you are it's like that shit is going to end yeah that's going to end it's going to be you are specialized in certain things and you can pursue those things with a lot of like individual focus yeah i think this actually comes back to the first episode when we're talking about ai in a way because but this is hitting education i would say sooner or more heavily way than the way it's hitting no job it's like a like freight train like it's the same issue when we were talking about how well what is the consequences of like ai on the future of the way we work right and the big consequence is like well ai is going to replace all these jobs but if those people can't move to new jobs because ai is also capable of replacing those jobs then there's this catastrophic effect on the way like society is structured right now.

35:32But this is the same situation. It's like new tool is not like complementary to the way education is currently structured. Or has been done for a decade. I mean, for a long time. But the deconstruction is happening already. So I think the answer, like when I think about how, what I fucking learned in business school is basically - You went to business school? Yeah. Oh, dope. I went to business school and I studied finance and I studied marketing. Bam, what's that? And I, nothing, almost nothing of what I learned is applicable or helpful in my life. Except for, and all of the experience that I gained by being in university was I leveraged a lot of university resources to like start a business and run esports events.

36:17Yeah, doing actual things is the only way to learn. By like running that company. And I don't like regret going to college for those reasons. Like I did learn a lot through those ways. And there were... exceptions in my classes where I learned about stuff that I thought was really interesting. But overall, I didn't take that much away from it. And this tailored education experience - Now it's more expensive. I mean, for kids nowadays, it makes no sense. For the average young person going to college right now, it's like, the price has only gone up. The quality is going down. Everyone's cheating.

36:50The quality of your degree means less because there's so many false positives people are cheating to it's like but i mean like it's it's it's this really tough time to be figuring out what the fuck to do i mean i i don't envy people who are younger people are like 18 right now it's like insane i'm really learning more about it by talking to some of them and it's like i i don't i feel like in 10 years maybe we've figured some of this out and they're having this but i feel like this this window is so bad this window sucks yeah i i again don't want to downplay that yeah and they have parents like telling them we'll just do this or what you know like parents that don't understand how much it's changed i don't know it's just interesting i think this specific use case is really is really cool like i to me if if this is like i think about the language learning example you gave uh like you have been learning japanese that's how ludwig's been studying japanese and in the time that he said he's been using chat gpt it is from my outside perspective as somebody who knows like a little japanese like very little uh from studying it in college is oh wow he's improved a lot in the period of time that he's been using that instead and i think there uh i think there is really cool use cases of it because as somebody who's the you know from that first episode the ai scrutiner if you will i here to scrutinize and like i do think the cheating epidemic right now is terrible.

38:12Like the situation is literally devolving before us. I'm really excited about something like this. Have you heard of the Steve Jobs quote? This is a long time ago. It was like him talking about the future. And he's like, Alexander the Great learned everything he knew from Aristotle. Aristotle was like his private tutor. And he's like, one day we'll be able to put all of Aristotle's teachings into a computer and create a digital Aristotle that can be anyone's tutor. And I thought that was really, i mean first of all it's incredible foresight for 84 when he said it or whatever but like there is something to that of a kid having the compounding knowledge of the world privately for whatever like in whatever you're interested if it's japanese or whatever like that's i mean there that is cool i i do see that being a positive thing once it can get figured out once society adapts to it in a way but yes um that's what i said in the first episode new technology it's destructive at first and then you start getting the gains and we are currently in the destruction phase and it's going to be hard and scary and terrible and i again to repeat myself i am not saying the terrible stuff isn't happening or won't happen but i just want and hope that people can also acknowledge how much good there is down the road and then hopefully we try to maximize that minimize downside that's yeah but it's fucked right now for sure it's just i mean if you're 18 or you're like no it's bad high school and covid and now you're dealing with cheating yeah it's bad you're just getting fucked i'm trying to reach for like what might be like what what are more negatives or like what is the potential argument to this use case specifically and if i would maybe if i was a teacher i would be seeing this and be one maybe a little insecure about my job and be like am i is this the process of me like getting replaced what place do i have in this system now uh do you know just ai does a teacher turn from a person that stands in front of a classroom and teaches like a group of 30 40 kids into somebody that's basically like an ai manager and maybe an emotional support or someone who can handle the description they have is pretty decent so it's at alpha school teachers shift from traditional roles like grading and writing lesson plans to supporting students emotional and motivational needs and teaching life skills just like yeah i I mean, that's a, you know, very optimistic description.

40:24But in theory, like, yeah. And those are the most impactful teachers that I had is not the ones who wrote really good lesson plans. It's one that we like really tailored to me. It spoke to you. Yeah. Yeah. I will say it's, I think it's really important for there to still be like guidance and structure from the school. And that, because when I was in high school, I had this class I was a part of that was, you could get into instead of English. And it was called, this is at a public school too. It was called Rise. I forget what it stood for. But the idea was you had the autonomy within that class to kind of decide whatever you wanted to work on.

40:59And the dramatically, I would say, good examples of how that time was used was one girl that graduated a few years before me, worked really hard, opened like a coffee business using the time that she was in that class. and then she got into like an Ivy League school. And there was other examples of people in that class becoming really successful. I think I struggled a bit more in that environment. Like even though I was a really successful student at that age, I fucked off. Like I spent like half of that. Yeah, that's what I would have done. I spent half of that year, first year down, like finding YouTube music and learning how to like, I basically spent a bunch of time learning how to pirate music at school because I couldn't do it at the kindergarten.

41:41That's alpha right there. That's alpha. Uh, it's not to say that that like program didn't have any use, but I feel like that's like, that was supposed to be this opportunity for me to grow and succeed in a direction that I, uh, that I couldn't in a normal class. And I think that opportunity is really important, but I could have used a little more guidance. Yeah, a little more structure, a little more guidance, especially for some kids. That makes sense. Who else could use structure and guidance? This show? This show. Let's move on to - Drama! Guys, it's been - Drama, drama, drama. Almost 43 minutes.

42:14I'm sorry, tech bros. We are now moving on to Tesla. Let's talk about Tesla. It's time for Doug Doug to call out Mark Rober. Yeah, you need to do it. First of all, we need an enemy for this podcast. All good podcasts have enemies. Okay. It's interesting timing. Because last week, we talked a whole lot about Tesla versus Waymo, which is basically the difference between cameras in a car versus cameras and LiDAR in a car. LiDAR being lasers that shoots around, and it can like see what's going on irrespective of whether there's light in the camera or there's fog or whatever else so what two days later i think mark rober giant science youtuber if you don't know uh very family friendly makes this video where he compares tesla to another company luminar who makes lidar so basically just does a bunch of tests of this exact thing of a car tesla crazy yeah timing's crazy uh of a car that just does cameras versus a car that has this lidar system built in and so he puts out this video and somewhat predictably the tesla fails several of these things and the lidar system succeeds at all of them for example if there's like super bright lights in the car i forget exactly which ones tesla failed it failed like half but like super bright lights or rain that is falling from a bunch of hoses that completely obscures the vision right and then the last one is he went through a fake cartoon painted wall so he's like and if you if If you're looking at the video, you can see it.

43:38He drives through a wall that is painted to look like the background. This is not something that happens in real life. But the point of this is like there is a physical object on the road and the laser LiDAR system absolutely can detect it, but the cameras can't because the cameras, it just looks like the road is continuing, right? So he did this test and it's very fun and dramatic. I thought it was interesting, the response to some of this. So this was one of the most prominent criticisms I saw. I don't know who Sawyer Merritt is, although in his bio it says investor of Tesla. So I think he's slightly biased.

44:10Sure. But there's, you know, the timing of this was so interesting. And he posts this video. Mark Rober posts this video. And then on Monday, Tesla stock drops. And Luminar stock, who makes the LIDAR that he showed off, increased 25%. Oh, my God. It's a 10 million view video. It's a big. By two days later, it peaked at a 50 % increase. Let's see. Mark Rober, why don't you post your Robinhood account? Yeah. So Mark Rober said he followed up and he had to be due to criticism. He was like, we did not receive money from Luminar. But Luminar stock goes way up. What Luminar does, they don't make cars, but they make the LiDAR system that they're trying to sell to cars.

44:48So they're trying to make like a standalone LiDAR system. So this guy, Sorry Merit, comes in and is voicing some of the big criticisms against this video, Mark Rober does. The first up is that he doesn't actually use Tesla's full self-driving technology. He uses autopilot. So autopilot is like every Tesla car basically has this and it's like a highway driver assist. It just like keeps you in the lanes and whatnot. And it is supposed to break and stop you from hitting things, but it's not full self-driving. There is, as of the last like five years, there's full self-driving SFD that Teslas have.

45:19And that's the new thing that is meant to be self-driving. So right out the bat, it's kind of strange. He just straight up didn't use Tesla's advanced system at all. He used the old one from five years ago that is not meant for things like this. um there's also inconsistencies in the video so he like posts this clip on youtube due to criticism of him driving through the wall with the tesla the tesla just smashes through it but he activates the the autopilot mode like three seconds before going to the wall like really late and that that impacts it whereas with the lidar car they activate it way down the runway and there's like tons of time for the car to realize there's a wall there uh not only that he shows he post this raw footage and says like this is the raw footage that's how you know i didn't fake this but then in the video there's a different clip where he activates these the autopilot earlier in the runway at a different time so basically they they did multiple takes and then spliced them together in the youtube video which is just kind of strange and weird and there's other things people you know being like why was there a child that you ran over afterwards it was obviously the answer to that is it's dramatic and fun i was gonna say the number five was dumb to include because it's like, it's just kind of funny to keep it there.

46:29Yeah, it's for the YouTube video. He's a good YouTuber. Yeah. So it's, I mean, really, I think the point is like he, I think Mark Rober's an extremely talented guy. And I don't think this was well-intentioned, but it is, I think, objectively misleading. The video is titled, Can You Trick a Self-Driving Car? Or Can You Fool a Self-Driving Car? And then does not use Tesla's full self-driving capabilities. And then basically stacks the odds against it and doesn't give a whole lot of clarity around like, hey we're doing a bunch of tests and we are giving tesla as many disadvantages as possible disclaimer again i don't love tesla and elon musk god damn but i am i am at least voicing some criticism and so you know this i would i would go so far as to say most of the people criticizing this are clearly angry tesla investors who want to believe the kool-aid uh you know i'm not convinced this is some big scandal or whatever but it was kind of weird and interesting how much of a market impact this video for mark rober had as well as the fact that objectively he's he gave a lot of disadvantages to Tesla.

47:28It's a little weird. So that, that was a little bit of my thought was you, you as a YouTuber making this video might not have been paid by the other company might not necessarily want Tesla to be the party to fail. But if both cars just handle both situations equally fine and you don't put any effort into it past that you've made a pretty boring YouTube video. Right. And I think from an entertainer's perspective, I can understand why he might have made these decisions if the criticisms are accurate. Right. And it kind of starts to walk this line of like, how much duty do you as like an entertainer, but also like a science YouTuber that I think commands a lot of respect within the space?

48:15Yes. He's a NASA engineer or was a NASA engineer. I'm going to do my best to defend Mark Rober here, but I do agree that I think the most damning criticism to me is that you should have used full self-driving. Right, right. That's by far the biggest. That's by far the most annoying. He literally used the outdated system that is not meant to be self-driving and made that his comparison in a video called Can You Full Self-Driving Car? You want to test the latest in grace. And I have a Volkswagen that came out a few years ago, and I have this system that keeps me in the lanes and stops me from hitting cards.

48:49You know what I mean? Like, but I wouldn't expect it to succeed in this situation. So I think that's, yeah. So here's the core thing is like, first of all, what his results line up with is essentially equivalent to what you said in your breakdown of LiDAR versus cameras and their different capabilities and different strengths. Yes. Including fog and bright lights. Yes. And so it is reasonable that if this test were to rerun again, even with FSD, this could still be a problem with LiDAR versus cameras. Like it needs to be tested again. Most likely the results would be the same. Yeah. But the fact that he disadvantaged Tesla unnecessarily, it's just like, why did you do that?

49:23Like now there is so much criticism because genuinely it's not fair. Yeah. And then the only other thing I want to mention is a lot of people are pointing out, like if you see right here, see the rainbow road goes on? Yeah. He turns it on late for sure, but it's on, turns off. And that is because people are postulating, and this is, I read a good article on this, is that Teslas have been shown in multiple instances to automatically turn off before an accident to muddy the waters around whether autopilot was engaged during accidents. Dude, it's like when Disney takes the bodies out of the park before they're declared dead.

50:03Oh, that's good. I don't know if they... This is rumored. This is rumored. Because if you pause this footage, when Mark Rober drives through the wall, it's just Mark Rober driving. Yeah. Autopilot's off. so fucking checkmate. That's what I'm saying. I know. That works. That has been shown like there was a Tesla that drove into a it was a white truck and it thought it was the Horizon or it was a blue truck that thought it was Horizon. It drove into it and the person died but they said autopilot was off at the time. You're laughing a lot at this guy's death by the way. It's really funny. I'm not touching you.

50:34No, if I was a truck driver I would not paint my truck to look like a Horizon like some fucking lunatic. It's a bad idea. I agree. I wouldn't bait people into killing themselves in my truck. it's probably not the smartest trucker move but this guy dies and every time this happens they kind of muddy the water like autopilot wasn't engaged at the moment of crash but it was engaged you know seconds before and it like if it's too late to break and it's but it still connects a collision it does turn off and they say it's for the reason of like let's give back to the humans they have last chance but it feels very muddy the water so while i agree with you i really do i was kind of disappointed because like i feel like mark rober had a real chance to like have a open shut slam dunk yeah on lidar and instead because of these errors it like it muddies the water so no one can but i i i also think like this points out this footage is pointing out what a lot of court cases have already shown which is like this is a real thing that tesla was getting investigated before before doge wiped out a lot of the investigative oh areas that were looking into this so that's just coincidence that's just coincidence oh allegations um so i don't know i I'm ambivalent on it.

51:42I wish they would do. I mean, he's getting so much pushback. Maybe he will do a follow-up or do some kind of like more strenuous test. It's interesting. Yeah, it's super interesting. I would love to like know more detail. There's a whole other topic which I don't know enough about, which is the legal side of full self-driving, which is if a Waymo hits and kills a person, who is at fault? Like what happens? Like do we just put the car in jail or is it the engineers? or is it like what happens man so that's that's a whole crazy video recommended after your talk last week i guess i was just looking more into it and it's like uh a waymo that's getting pulled over by a cop a cop on foot plank a cop on foot in his full uniform is like stop the way most stops and then like a little driverless pizza delivery bot is like rolling by and the guy gets distracted and then the waymo just fucking out of there and it's like how do you what he doesn't know what to do he's like an old cop he has no idea how to deal with all these robots around him just moving on their own it's just the world's getting so crazy things are changing so fast though it's uh it's interesting that's so funny anyway what do you think will happen i don't i don't know what mark rober does next i don't even know if he's upset about it the video's doing great i feel like mark rober criticism the problem is that even if the pushback is really big it's kind of like when mr beast gets flack it's you're you're pretty insulated like at the core of it even if a million people are shitting on you right you drop the next video to like 10 million plus people that have no idea this drama even exists right and that's that's like mr beast is like a great thing that's not no i don't think it's i there's a lack of accountability in that but mr beast is kind of like run to that level right where it's like even if the internet there's a huge pocket of the internet that's up as out of them it's like a hundred million people still watch the next like yacht video right right whatever because they just don't even know that this is a controversy in the first place and this is i mean all things considered this is pretty niche yeah this is not a huge deal but it isn't interesting as this conversation goes on with cars and whether we should have lidar in them or if tesla can pull off this thing and tesla is saying right now that they're going to launch cyber cabs in june of this year like that's in three months and there's 25?

53:59This year. So supposedly in three months in Texas, they're going to be launching cars that don't have a driver in them, which is from what we are aware of way too soon. And so this is an ongoing discussion. I think it's going to happen and be very relevant over the next couple of years is like, what exactly are our standards as Americans or humans who are near cars to like how good it has to be? You know, it's like, it's going to be so interesting. But one more thing I want to say because you i mean you put me on all this is that you know you made the story that tesla decided early on that lidar was too expensive yes and when they made that decision and again too expensive and also technically not the best solution sure like cameras just focusing on that right right it's it's both which is important to recognize but yes but when they said that my understanding is that lidar was like as expensive as up to fifteen thousand dollars of additional shit you got to put on the car yes yes and now at the time of luminar and all this the cost is going down to like 500 to a grand.

54:56Like it's dropped dramatically. It's that cheap? Yes. It's gotten way cheaper. It used to be tens of thousands and now it's hundreds is the estimates. Wait. And so in the future, you can imagine it getting insanely, you know, if that continues, we get it down to... Even if it was at that price, like if that's the price that it takes to add on to a system to be that safe, then how is that? Well, think of the shareholders. He's making a good point. Wait, as a business major, I'm actually switching right back to Doug. Yeah. Yeah, I mean... On my side. But it feels like a needless cost.

55:56cut when it's getting this cheap. plus one stats in your car. Like it becomes much more complex. So I just want to, yeah. So I just want to, I want to reiterate that. Like even if LiDAR costs... Doug is my AI tutor trying to make it like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is good. Maybe I didn't understand this. And then I wanted to stick LiDAR on like my Honda Civic. And no, it drives itself now. I just paid the 500 bucks. As far as I can tell, if LiDAR costs$1, Elon would not put them in Tesla's because he thinks the better approach to actually achieving full self-driving is to have a simpler vision-based approach that you just get that way.

56:32Again, he says it's a software problem, not a hardware problem. That's it. That's the thinking. That's the thinking. One more thing, anti-LIDAR thing I want to say. This is my most pro-Elon argument yet, is I read that one downside of LIDAR is that if everybody has LIDAR, they interfere with each other. So if every car in the row is using LIDAR, the amount of laser, I mean, that sounds so boomer, I don't know. The amount of lasers out there might interrupt the data collection or cause a problem. Again, I don't know if this is true, but my understanding is that LiDAR could be conflicting if there was like everyone doing it at all times.

57:05Again, we'd have to look more into this, but that could be a problem down the road where we go, oh, LiDAR's great, and then there's causes its own issues. But then all the cars are crashing all the time. Kind of cool, though, like Fast and the Furious. Do you think we could ship all of the LiDAR lasers using a fleet from the Jones Act? Oh, my God. Which was created after World War I to help preserve shipping lanes in the United States. I didn't know we were dealing with a professional here. That's the thing about the Jones Act, Doug. We wouldn't. We'd choose not to do it because of the Jones Act.

57:37What is the coincidence? I don't know what you guys are talking about. I like us not getting into this so we can have something that me and you know. Yeah, like a little secret. Referencing around it. Like, oh, the Jones Act. Oh, the Jones Act. Classic Jones Act. You put on earmuffs. I don't think you deserve this. Teach me about the Jones Act, AI tutor. Teach me. Your AI tutor is loading his Jones Act. Well, I thought this would be interesting to talk about because I've heard about this law coming up in a bunch of videos explaining shipping logistics in, like, different parts of the U.S. So I watched a video about, like, oh, how Hawaii handles their, like, shipping between islands or from the mainland.

58:20and then a video about basically the decline of Puerto Rico and how the Jones Act affects Puerto Rico. And then I was like, oh, this is really interesting. And I think at a time when tariffs especially, but I would say protectionism in general is a big talking point of the Trump administration, fans of Trump, like the idea that we're isolating as Americans and becoming better independently and we don't need to rely on this global economic system anymore, things like that. So the Jones Act started in 1920. It was put in place in 1920 in the wake of World War I. Okay. The Jones Act is a law that requires any water-based shipping, so even on a river, to be done by a ship that was built in the U.S., owned by a U.S.

59:12company, and crewed only by Americans. U.S.A. U.S.A. Very, very pro-USA law. And the idea was in the wake of World War I. Sorry, any ship that's delivering to America. Or what do you mean? Any ship. So any ship that is delivering goods between American ports. Okay. Yeah, I was like, because China wouldn't send a ship here. Okay, sorry. Any American. America to America. So the way this law, an example of how this law affects things now is, say there's a Chinese shipping company, right? Yeah. And they have a boat that they built in Korea. And that boat picks some stuff up in Long Beach. And it is not allowed to pick up stuff in Long Beach and then bring it to Seattle.

59:58That's illegal. Nowhere else in America. Nowhere else in America. Can they make a round trip to Cuba and stop there and then? Okay. So that's the weird thing is, yes, technically, if they interrupt the trip by going somewhere else first, they can then go. They do that probably all the time? No, but they don't. Because there's not a ton of use cases where that is super effective. There's a similar law that applies to passenger boats, and they do do that. That's why all the ferries that go from Washington to Alaska stop in Vancouver. All of them. They have to. So they have to ping pong between countries.

1:00:34Because they're not on Jones Act compliant ships. That's so funny. So basically the idea was if we put this protectionist law into place, the U.S. will always have a thriving maritime shipping industry that is not only good for America on the whole, but is good for military and security reasons. So when we get into a big naval war, we have a shipping fleet to deploy. But what they didn't plan for is that - And there were no downsides. And there were no downsides. And that is our thriving American shipping industry. the problem we've arrived at is they didn't expect global shipping to like blow up as much as it as much as it did in the future after the fact and uh the i love his cute little notebook they make fun of him on the yard so much for the notebook yeah because they never seen him like this so they watch this show and they're like he's got his little notebook usually he's talking about piss and shit and farting the yard just becomes like uh mystery science theater they're just watching our show making fun of Aiden the whole time that's all they do uh they but ships started getting built in other places outside of the U.S.

1:01:49because it was way more cost effective to do that yeah I mean are you can I say it's that yeah 55 percent of all ship building globally is done in China yeah dude get that get this in as of 2018 and this was the trajectory was still going up 91 % of shipbuilding happens in China, Korea, and Japan. So the entire shipyard industry, ship manufacturing industry in the US, it just doesn't exist anymore. All of these companies went out of business and they don't have enough Jones Act compliant clients to keep a business open. There's enough demand from that. So it was funny because when I was reading through this, there was like the paper that I was reading was from 2020.

1:02:33and it was talking about how few shipyards are left in the U.S. that even make these types of ships anymore. And it was like, and one of the few remaining ones is about to close. It's called like the Philly, the Philly shipyard. So I looked up the shipyard, the name of that shipyard now, the Hanwha Philly shipyard. A true American institution. In 2024, it had been - Don't talk shit about Philly, the Eagles, or Hanwha shipping. It had been bought by a South Korean company. Oh, sorry. Yeah. A South Korean company. So isn't it, that's, it was really funny to like, oh, that happened. It got bought out.

1:03:13And the consequences of this, in short, are that we have a really limited supply of compliant boats that are even able to fulfill this purpose anymore. They're more expensive to use. So for any goods that like Hawaii has to get, for example, or coastal states in general, the price of goods shipped on those things is like really, really expensive because there's only a couple companies that even do this type of shipping. So there's a way lower supply. These are they're way less efficient. Right. And they charge way more because they basically have monopolies. Yeah, there's no competition. And this grand shipyard industry that was meant to produce, like having this giant fleet and all these companies protected, actually has crumbled and fallen apart.

1:04:02And the people that suffer the most are, a really explicit example is Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and devastated Puerto Rico a couple years ago, right? And they were turning around ships for the Jones Act? Yeah, and that was a big thing. is they couldn't get emergency supplies because the Jones Act affects those ships. And they were requesting to lift the law for a period. And Trump eventually caved and lifted it for a week. But he said, basically, the companies that benefit from this really don't want us to do this. And during Hurricane Katrina, they did the same thing. It's like, this law is so harmful that during disasters, they literally temporarily remove it.

1:04:44Right, otherwise a few companies will surcharge. But even like day to day, like things like fuel supplies are either way more expensive or less accessible. Or these places turn to maybe foreign countries instead because they can offer those goods at a way lower price. So you're losing like the economic benefit from that. And then also anything that you would ship over water that might be cheaper normally gets pushed into like other transportation industries in the U.S. that are like further burden. Like the supply of shipping space in the U.S. brought to you by like things like trucks, trains, etc.

1:05:18Oh, trucks or whatever. I see, yeah. Is stretched thinner because the boats aren't really an option. So I see two options. Mm-hmm. One is we as a podcast advocate for the repeal of the Jones Act, which would be pretty cool of us. We do like a really powerful. Yeah. Or two, we start an American-owned shipping company. Ooh. Take advantage of this monopoly situation. That's what our Patreon tier is. You get to ride on our boat. You get to be the crew on the boat. As long as you're an American citizen, you have to pretend to be. We'll give you an American flag shirt. They pay us to work on the boat.

1:05:48They pay us to work on the boat. So we can undercut the current monopoly. This is big. Why didn't any of the boat companies think about this? Like, think about this. Think about our plan. Right. Why didn't they make a podcast? If the boat companies had just opened to Patreon and asked people to work for them. They could have made some real money. But the reason that I was thinking about this a lot and why I thought it was interesting is because while the benefactors of this would be the remaining people that get to work on a ship in the U.S. and keep your job. Because honestly, if foreign companies were competing, the remaining shipping jobs that exist here, albeit very few, wouldn't exist at all because they'd be getting out-competed by who actually staff ships now, which is like Filipino and Indian workers who are much cheaper to pay.

1:06:38Right. And the boats cost way less. And the boats cost way less to make. Like half or a third of the price or something to make a boat in China or Korea. For better quality. Yes. It's like we just have old, shitty, expensive boats that you then have to use to move something from Puerto Rico to Florida. Yeah, we have to. And the new, an example of like an industry that existed, basically existed way smaller scale back then is like natural gas. They get moved around on big tanker boats. american tanker boats do not exist there are none they they it literally doesn't exist so a place like puerto rico that might be able to get like natural gas which we produce i don't know if you know this we've been drilling i do know that we've been drilling we're kind of a natural gas goats a lot of w's for america you can send american gas to puerto rico at like a really cheap rate but because this law exists uh that you can't do that uh and then they so they a lot of that excess gas would get sold to like other countries and then puerto rico's buy their gas from other countries um dude there's so much of that happening there's so much of like we put uh like a restriction on buying russian oil or something and then russian oil just goes to india and then goes from india to you know like if europe restricts it they just go to india and then sell it to europe the circumvention of tariffs is so interesting like vietnam is like thriving because it is not china but you can just put something from china to vietnam slap a sticker on it yeah like there's all this ways of getting around tariffs and protectionism and uh it's okay so okay with all this being said i think we can agree this rule's not working but i personally think that america having some sort of shipbuilding industry is valuable especially in a world where you know they're at tensions with china having all of it there is kind of bookie in that world so do you have any thoughts of like what you would do to could you solve this problem for everyone?

1:08:33Yeah, if I could just solve this quickly right now, that's like a huge geopolitical issue. Well, that's the thing, right? It's like this law actually has nothing to do. It didn't protect that at all. It didn't protect it. It didn't work. And so we're in a worse spot. Yeah, this makes no sense. Compared to even back then. I don't really have the answer. Like you'd have to like - I thought he would. Why do I listen to the show? If we're not going to solve the shipbuilding crisis in America, then why are they tuning in, Aiden? The only thing I can think of is you would have to. The solution is right on the Patreon.

1:09:07Trump, if you're watching, the solution is on the Patreon. You have to do tier three. We'll tell one person on our boat. One lucky tier three subscriber who works on the boat. And we'll whisper it to them as we send them off into open water. I think I would love to hear a better approach or answer. the only thing I can think of is stuff similar to like the chips act, right? Like you have to subsidize and like basically invest and spend a bunch of money to make, making a ship in the U S cheap enough to make it competitive. That's the only thing you can do from what I know. Yeah. And my understanding is arguably it's like, so this is what we're doing instead of the government subsidizing a shipping industry is we force Americans to pay more to get their stuff shipped.

1:09:53And particularly like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, alaska just have to pay way more for all their shit because it has to be it has to be shipped on these boats that are old and expensive and there's not many of them and so the the biggest advocates to repealing the jones act are puerto rico hawaii alaska anybody who doesn't live in the contiguous united states because you just have to pay way more so arguably instead of our government subsidizing our shipping fleet it's puerto ricans like subsidizing our shipping fleet and just paying these three states right give the money to small dying shipping right right like it is it is ridiculous which are like price gouging and yeah when you put it that way it's kind of like we have hawaii is like a very important state that everybody loves and then we're just like yeah but we're gonna make it super expensive for you guys to get anything it's like it's wild uh i i yeah i would lean more towards just straight up government subsidies because it just i i just don't think it makes sense and i know free markets have downside but like in this case i would rather our shipyards have to compete and we have a smaller amount that are actually good rather than what we have which is a bunch of expensive slow shitty fleets and then everybody's paying more for stuff I just don't see how this benefits there's a funny story about Hawaiian farmers choosing to air in cows to the mainland instead of using boats because of this law that's like a farm side card three cows in first class.

1:11:21That's what the Wright brothers were imagining. They're like, finally, Hawaiians can get their cows easily to California. Yeah, it's not like it's all roses on the other side of this. It's like, okay, well, what happens when you let like full competition take place? It's like, you know, there's a bunch of scrutiny of the quality of work conditions on boats and the low wages you get to pay these people from the Philippines and India that often staff these boats. Like, it's not like the other side is like filled with filled with good it's just that there's a bunch of people in the u.s uh particularly in those places that suffer because of this decision yeah and the only people that benefit are the people who have the monopolies on the remaining shipping left and like the people who have jobs at those shipping companies and at the individual level i'm sure they would like to keep their jobs it's kind of um why don't we we didn't talk about this on an episode but we did talk about this together was the like the efficiency of ports in the u.s versus like the efficiency oh we did that was our first conversations we were like thinking about this doing this podcast yeah yeah and it's a you know that there there was a big it was when we were at the dinner like where we were talking about like what we wanted the show to be and i thought that conversation is very similar it's like obviously people want to keep their jobs and do not want to suffer in the wake of a decision that would like like repeal this law right but how many people are suffering on the other end because this law exists other side for sure i think it's like i i don't know the number i believe it's like either a hundred thousand between a hundred thousand and like a couple hundred thousand people are employed with by the jones act shipping stuff so it's like you lose that and that's not insignificant yeah that's a lot of people but then you know again the the other side of the coin is there are millions and millions and millions of people in the united states and various areas who are paying way more basically so that those people have jobs and it's like is that dude the other the other thing that i would be more stoked about repealing the jones act if trump was not burning all of the bridges with japan and korea who are the only ones who could make our ships if we go to war with china you know it's like i generally i'm all about free market but then when you also burn the bridges to the rest of the market that is like you have to be able to make it yourself right like you can't do both.

1:13:38That's one thing I've read about a little bit, which is bigger conversation, but if we go to war, as far as my understanding, America is completely porked right now. We can't build ships. We can't build most of our stuff. All the raw materials comes from other countries. We just would not be able to build things. I don't know if that helps or hurts that if we repeal the Jones Act and then there's more competition. I don't know, man. It's a little dire. I think regardless, hopefully there's no war with China. Regardless of that, I think this Jones is not doing what it was intended to do, which is protect American shipbuilding.

1:14:09I'm actually pro. You're trying to get it over with? It's the villain seat. You always are talking shit on my man Xi. He's the go. No, we're buds. Have you seen my Discord profile picture right now? Have you seen this? You changed your profile to a communist flag with Xi Jinping. Somebody drew me hanging up with Xi Jinping with the yard and Chinese flag waving below us. And F-35s flying above us. I know what's happening. He's a sleeper agent from China here to destroy our shipbuilding industry with this fake propaganda about good ships. The law is so bad. It's all written in Chinese. It's all written in Chinese.

1:14:52It's so sick. I open up my next notepad. It's all Mandarin. It comes in with your little white book trying to spread your lies to the youth. But yeah, I just thought One thing it was making me think of as a final note, and I would love to hear if people in the audience have more thoughts about this too, is this something that had, I think, obviously good intentions fell apart because of other factors outside of the law that it could not control. And then the complete purpose of the law was totally diverted. So I do wonder if there's, when you look at protectionist legislation in the future, What are the little loopholes and potential consequences of that?

1:15:37So, I don't know. It was interesting. Doug, you had some drama. You had two dramas. We can end this on some juicy-ass drama. Let me hear this drama. Okay. I don't know what this topic is. I have got juicy drama in the world. Dun-dun. Of HR SaaS companies. This is not juicy drama. This is juicy. This is juicy. Guys, buckle in. HR software as a service. Right. Like, Adobe subscription? No, like they help with payroll. Yeah, it's like you get payroll. He's actually got me hooked. Okay, all right. He's actually got me hooked. I have to browse that shit. Aiden's going to know about all the HR drama, and you're not, dude.

1:16:16Yes, sir. I'm not going to talk about it. Sign me up. What did Gusto do this time? Okay. All right. This is all real. I'm not exaggerating. Okay, there's a bunch of HR companies. You got Workday, right? Everybody loves Workday. I mean, they all hate it. They hate it. Any major company has some sort of HR software. It helps with like employees and contracting and payroll and all this other stuff, right? All this like not very fun stuff, but there's a huge business. The two of the newer players are Rippling and Deal. Deal spelled D-E-E-L. So Deal. So these two, they're actually, they're both grown really rapidly.

1:16:54They kind of specialize a little bit in one thing versus the other. But for the most part, it's like, here's all the HR tools you need for your business. they're evaluated most recently this is like two years ago at 12 billion and 13 billion they're like neck and neck okay and they're like ultra competitive okay okay um and so you might think yeah who cares that's not very interesting they start beefing okay they start to like pretty aggressively pursue each other's customers right because they go for businesses you know and so they're like they go nike is i think with deal so rippling goes it's like hey we're we should come over to rippling we have a better business all this stuff and so at some point recently deal and I have it up here.

1:17:29Oh, we'll accept all the cookies. Deal, one of the two services, they post something called Deal versus Rippling. This is on their website? This is on their website. That's correct. This is kind of wrong. It's like if you went to Coke's website and it was just Coke versus Pepsi. Then pouring a Pepsi in the trash. Yeah, that'd be eight. Guys, trust me, this is the least dramatic it gets. Okay, okay, okay. So this is the start. Deal, the HR company post Deal versus Rippling and they're like, we have all these entities, integrations payment methods get started here's the company's deal is rated higher than rippling in 74 of the shared markets it's just this straight up hey here's a comparison we're great this is so funny it's like the comparing product graph it's a comparing of like their two subscriptions except it's their company checking every box and rippling failing over and over and over it's like automate it operations x no they can't like a mark rober video though right All right.

1:18:24So DL throws out a punch, right? And so Rippling strikes back. How do you think Rippling would reply? You might think they'll make their own page. No, no, no. What Rippling did is they introduce a snake game. And so they make an actual game of snake where you move around and you have to get little items, right? And they say, don't buy snake oil. DL claims to be a one-stop solution for your global payroll needs, but their customers pay the price. game to find out the difference. And then as you play this snake game, I don't know if I can play it on this iPad here, but it shows a claim. Oh, I can't.

1:18:59It shows a claim from deal. And then when you go and you get it, it shows you the actual thing that they said. Deals, marketing, claim. Pay anyone anywhere in minutes. Reality could take days to run global payroll. That's brutal. As you play the snake game, each one unlocks a letter for the word mislead.

1:19:19At one point, Somebody from Rippling post a screenshot. One of the executives from Deal played the game and sent in feedback, which is suck a dick with a big dick ASCII art. So they're not full on beefing. They were always competitors on the market. Now they're just full on making these insane things. This is the Kendrick versus Drake of payroll services. Except they're both guys wearing a Patagonia vest. So it's getting pretty intense, right? And you're like, all right, this is funny. And then on Monday, two days ago, the CEO of Rippling releases a tweet, and he says, today, Rippling sued Deal.

1:19:59What? Our lawsuit alleges that Deal cultivated a spy at Rippling and orchestrated a long-running trade secret theft. Okay, so let me break down what exactly goes on in this very detailed lawsuit where they break down what happened. They, turns out, at Rippling, use Slack, and they have logs for everything somebody does on Slack, including which channels they search for and look at. And they find out that there's a, they think, a spy and a new employee who keeps searching in Slack for deal stuff. So he joins Rippling and he just starts searching in every single channel for anything related to deal and any customers that deal has.

1:20:39And searching for like customers that Rippling is trying to get from deal. So he could leave the info back and they can stop it. And so they're like, we think we have a spy. This employee has nothing to do with this job, but he keeps looking into what Deal is doing. Okay, so they're like, we want to see if this guy is actually a spy. And so they honeypot him, and they make a fake Slack channel called D. It's like D. Defectors. Yeah, D. Defectors. They make a new Slack channel that didn't exist, and they send a letter to Deal's chairman, CFO, and general counsel that says, hey guys just so you know deal us at rippling we have a new slack channel where we talk about all the stuff we have on you and if you ever mess with us again we're going to release all of it literally just honeypot make this up right within four hours the alleged spy is now searching for this new channel which was made specifically for this so the honeypot works this guy who is maybe a spy immediately starts searching for this new channel that has not existed a day before it is all made up okay it gets better they go to the high court of ireland and they get a court order that they're going to go take his phone they show up to his desk with a court examiner like a court appointed person who is legally authorized to detain this guy and he runs into the bathroom and locks the door and tries to flush the phone down the toilet dude so the guy is banging on the door saying you are violating court orders you have to come out right now he refuses to respond after a while he finally comes out and you can see here the quote he says if you take another step you're violating court order again and he says i'm willing to take that risk and then he flees the presses crazy so the spy got away and he took his phone with him so they didn't get the phone they even in the lawsuit they're like we looked through our plumbing system and did not find a phone so they went and looked for it okay so so this is in this is insane i told you the most dramatic thing and the response from deal is crazy right this is hr companies and so deal's response so far this is two days ago said weeks after okay so so they they try to go back on the offensive and this is basically the end but weeks after rippling is accused of violating sanctions laws in Russia and seeding falsehoods about deal.

1:23:08Rippling is trying to shift the narrative away. We deny all legal wrongdoing and legal wrongdoing. And so they're like, oh yeah, Rippling. Well, you guys are selling to the Russians. And then it follows up in one of the articles. However, deal itself has also been accused of violating sanctions against Russia, according to a lawsuit filed in Florida earlier this year. So both of them are accused of violating sanctions in Russia, which they're using to distract from the spy, which has been stealing trade secrets from Rippling. It is insane. It is 50 times funnier than it's HR software as a service.

1:23:40It's the most boring industry with the most scandalous shit going on. That's fucking awesome. Shouldn't have made fun of Gusto before this. They're doing fine. They've got Hitman. They're doing fine. Who do you think blew up Nord Stream? Deal, bro. The deal's fine. Probably to cover up a different thing. I can't wait to follow up. What's the, is the spy going to get arrested? Is he on the lam? Like, is he running? If you're a deal and you hire a spy, this guy is the goat. This guy really didn't crack under pressure. I know. He tried to flush his toilet and then ran away and said, I'm willing to go to jail for this.

1:24:22That's wild. Yeah. I was thinking it was like, clearly your job at the HR company is not worth all this. It just can't be. Right. How much is deal paying him? It's like you're not fighting for, like, the security of your countrymen. There's no... There's real-life spies who've cracked these. Exactly. There's no, like, nationalism or security at stake or something. It's for payroll. Men used to go to war. Now they fight for HR companies, right? We need something to galvanize our youth because they're just going to do this instead. They're going to scroll on their phones, and they're going to go be a spy for deal.

1:24:59The funniest thing about this to me is that they sent this letter, this honeypot letter to Deals. Dude, the honeypot is brilliant. That's smart. The honeypot's insane. They sent this to only the top people at Deals. So one of the top people at a$12 billion HR company is personally orchestrating a spy in their competitor and telling them, hey, we just got info about the D-Defectors channel. Get us the info. You think the yard will figure out who our spy is in their discord? What? No, nothing. I just hope they don't murder and kill our spy because they figured it out. It would be like a huge. Okay.

1:25:42Is it realized? I'm going to get you and I are going to get a letter. The yard has found some incriminating evidence against lemonade stands. How did you find this story? Yeah. What did you hear about this? Is Twitter? man this is wild that's why it's the everything app man you can go to Mars from watching basketball you can learn about lawsuits it's really covering all the bases right now do you guys I figured it might be nice to close out on a couple we wanted to follow up on a couple topics from the previous videos yeah let's do it check out the comments I think it's worth saying I think all of us have spent a lot of time reading some of these great comments people put in the last two episodes yeah yeah we've been responding and singing in there and uh it's been great i think we super appreciate it the that was like number one thing we were looking for for this for the show is like well thought out interesting perspectives and thoughts you'll have it on this one i'm sure that's cool i think from the first episode because we even touched on it again in this one was the the you know people dealing with the consequences of going through the education system during covid and a lot of people i think that was probably the thing we got the most personal like responses and anecdotes about it.

1:26:53And I would say the pervasive sentiment was basically negative. People talking about their experience and a lot of people saying things like this. The conversation on socializing post COVID really resonated with me because I was a junior in high school in 2020 and can definitely attest that it altered my abilities and desires to socialize. I was already really introverted. And instead of trying to fight against the isolation, I basically took advantage of it as a way to get used to not needing peers around me. I know now that this is probably a mistake and I'm paying the price in my social life for it now that I'm in college.

1:27:30I don't know anyone who also went through the hyper isolationist route as I did, but I'm sure they're out there. And from reading the comments, I think that experience was very, very similar between people. A lot of people kind of maybe not even necessarily having the worst time during COVID, but then coming out of it and then trying to get back to normal and then realizing that everything is ironically the isolationists there might be the most amount of them yeah yeah it's the most there's ever been but I really appreciate it because we got a lot of like personal stories that I read through related to that topic and a lot of stories really similar to that one the one thing I wanted to follow up about from the last episode was on when we were talking about you know self driving cars and the potential of like robo taxis and also the idealistic structure of cities with trains and things like that a few people came out and said uh that we're just a bunch of city guys we and we don't get it and our public transport utopia and the fact that we like trains like all i think we're generally in favor of like oh trains are nice to have in cities and a good way to get around seem to think that we don't think cars should exist in rural america and uh that was actually a surprising amount of comments.

1:28:47I wanted to clarify something because I thought it was a good demonstration of what I call good faith versus bad faith arguments. Oh, shit. Okay, all right. I didn't know where you were going. Okay, yeah, yeah. I'm buckling in. But I think it's a really simple example of like, I think people jumped to the conclusion that because I want like more trains and less cars in cities. Oh, it's the Waffles Pancakes thing? Have you heard that? No. If you say I like pancakes, someone on Twitter will say we fucking have against waffles. Exactly. What do you hate about waffles? Exactly. This is what bad faith is, is when you are listening to us explain a topic or like talk about something and we miss an aspect of the conversation, like something doesn't get touched on.

1:29:25And you assume that because it wasn't touched on that we disagree with it, that we inherently have the opposition opinion to you. Well, just to clarify, I do want to take your car away. If you live in a rural part of America, I would like you to ride a horse because that's my image of like a cool rural area. You should have horses in rural America. I think you should, if I get something wrong, give us the benefit of the doubt. Assume I'm right. Assume that you have it wrong. Right. Just some basic common decency. Just believe Doug. Just believe Doug. You've got a microphone. Believe all Doug's.

1:29:59Yeah, if there's a microphone. Yeah, I have more subscribers than you. And there's a reason. That's why I listen to you. There's a reason. Right, right. That's true. Okay? There was also, obviously, a lot of people. there was a the comments weren't as frequent as i thought but the people we were making fun of that we're going to be like doug such a tesla chill like there was a couple people like that and i was like it was always like a flag of like you didn't make it to the part of the one you tuned out at the beginning of the episode dude but two two you just ignored the part the the bombshell you saved where you're like and i sold all my tesla stock today because i don't believe this i guess i said this on my stream and i said this in the comments i responded to some people that of this when you're taking the position of like trying to find some defense of what tesla's doing it's the harder one for the audience that we're gonna attract and have right yeah it's harder to do it's very easy to be the guy that's like hey tesla sucks you know it's like yeah yeah it is actually easier to condemn the guy who did the nazis it actually is easier and we don't even know what it was yeah yeah that's true that's true and it makes for a much better podcast to have people having differing opinions and you know what my heart goes out to all the people in chat who I like.

1:31:09I think we should strive to have a couple like uninformed loud people. That brings light to the comment section. I actually thought a good litmus test for this is if you've made it this far in the episode and you have a comment you want to make, put two asterisks just at the end of your comment, whatever it is, and it's just a sign that you heard this part of the episode. I just want to see. You're trying to do the deal thing. I just want to see. You're trying to honeypot the comments. No, no, no. I just want to see. I just want to see. This one time, I won't ask for it again, but that conversation came up a lot, and I thought I'd clarify is like, I think, I don't know if I've ever met anybody in my entire life that has said, let's get rid of all the cars in like rural America and suburbia.

1:31:55Like legitimately has that opinion. No, I don't know either. And I was like, so why would that be ours? uh and you know the idealistic form of these things i think is like okay well you have a really good public transportation system that lets people basically choose to have a car or not if they really want right because i think the way cities are structured now like in la choice in la you basically have no choice in practice like it's not literally a tax but it is a tax on every person because you have no choice you have to pay for your car pay for your maintenance pay for your insurance and those are expenses that i i guess freedom i don't know the freedom of choice is giving you like it's it's not really a choice at all right and the idea is like providing city infrastructure that frees up people from that uh people from that from that decision um and on that note i'd like you to leave your angriest comment you can as we wrap up episode three three hashtags before it if it's if you got this far in the in the video but secret three hashtags right yeah People who just clicked out and made their comment right after I said that.

1:32:59If you're a three-hashtagger, you can go reply to the two asteriskers and you can be like, you aren't committed at all. You're weak. If you're a three-hashtagger, first dibs on the Jones Act boats. You just get the spot. Come out. All right. Oh, is that the last one? I think so. That's pretty much it. To close it out, I did actually bring Atriok a lemon this time. He will eat the entire thing. You were going to eat this this whole time. I've been telling my stream that you're going to eat it in one bite. No, but you've been saying off camera that it's going to be you. I also bit the styrofoam one.

1:33:26I'll split it with you. All right. Thanks so much for watching. It was a great episode. See you next time. Oh, it's just, Oh no, it just can't be pleasant. I don't want it. Get your app. I'm okay. Not hungry. That's gross, Doug. Are your eyes watering? Good episode. Good episode, boys.