The Common Thread of All Technology: Monitoring the Situation, Ep.1

24:32You're just an unethical guy. Yeah. And there's no downside to a diagnosis. That's the thing. You have total optionality on whether you want to take the medication. You have no downside in school. Even a very well-meaning teacher who may, there's almost like an optimism actually in giving these diagnoses because we're saying like, look, we can identify the pathologies in students. We want to help students. We have tools to help them. And so and there's no downside to identifying them, misidentifying them. So let's just generously hand these out. Right. Like I see it. I see nothing but good intention.

25:08Oh, totally. And, you know, I was the same. I was the same. We were talking about this before. I also had an ADHD diagnosis when I forget how old, eight or nine years old, whatever. in retrospect, I think it was totally nonsense, right? Like, I mean, whatever. Not for everybody necessarily, but in my case, I think it was nonsense. And it was just that my behavior was not kind of fitting within what they believed was the proper mold and they wanted to help fix me, right? Yeah. That's like how they thought of it. I hated Ritalin. I tried Concerita, Ritalin, Dexedrine, or, you know, I mean, all this stuff, Vyvanse.

25:47I tried them all, hated them all. Turns out that just a little bit of like guilt and discipline was what you really, what you honestly needed. Yeah, in my case, at least. But I see, but more specifically connecting to that, and to some degree the autism, although I'm not as, you know, I don't have as much personal experience with that. One of the issues is the diagnostic criteria can shift, right? As people want to identify these cases, see very little downside in identifying them, they may broaden in an effort to precisify the diagnostic criteria. They may broaden it. And I've heard that as a plausible explanation among ADHD and autism cases, part of explaining the rise.

26:35It can be rising or it can just be that you're moving down the curve of diminishing marginal precision and identifying more and more and more cases with the hope that you can, with very little cost, treat the issue. And so that alone can explain what appears to be an increase in prevalence. Yeah, they sort of told me I'd ADHD because I wouldn't focus in school and just did whatever I wanted. But that's because I just hated school. I could actually focus on things I was super interested in. And I think it's an interesting segue to Alpha School, which is getting a lot of attention right now. And I know, Eddie, in just having a newborn, you're thinking about future schooling.

27:15And obviously, Catherine, you've thought quite a bit about it. Alpha School is interesting because one of their main KPIs is do kids love school? And my school was, I don't know about you guys, but mine was like a prison. Like I didn't have any inspiring teachers in elementary school or middle school. It was so boring. And so it's exciting to see kind of different models. And I have, you know, parent friends who are starting to homeschool their kids and just think about this kind of alternative. Eddie, how have you been thinking about it? I mean, I feel like there's three branches now, right? There's three possible ways.

27:46There's the traditional school system. And by that, I mean both public and private schools, right? I just mean like conventional school system. There's this somewhat growing alternative school system. I think Alpha School is a really cool example that I'd love to learn a lot more about. I saw this fantastic interview on Nex a couple weeks ago about it. And then the third is like something that I've heard people talk about, but maybe doesn't exist yet. Maybe that actually just gets into merging into branch two, which is like the AI tutor world, right? Where like every kid gets a Socrates, right?

28:13Like that's that, that, that like that line. I think they're all so, so interesting. But what has really leapt out to me about like the Alpha School and even the Socrates option is it turns out there's with all this great development in software, we can put an infinite treadmill in front of kids about things that they can learn. right at a low cost, infinite treadmill where they can just train and learn whatever they want to arbitrary depth and designing something that is rigorous enough and gives them strong enough feedback and kind of encourages them to really maximize that. That seems like the educational challenge of the 21st century to me.

28:53You couldn't do that before, right? You couldn't do that 30 years ago when you had to put them in a space with like specific teachers who have specific strengths and have to get specific, you know, expensive books and stuff. Now it's just like an unbounded road ahead. I'm very, very excited about the prospect of being able to give kind of arbitrary depth to whatever interesting, challenging topic is available to my son. And what's interesting about our children versus how we grew up is that arbitrary depth couldn't be nurtured when we were kids around random things, right? Like you would have to go to the public library and see if there's a book on septic tank installation, which my son was into about six months ago, like deeply into septic tanks.

29:34Now he's into garbage disposals. There is no book in the public library that has that on garbage disposals and how they work. Absolutely not, of course not. But there are hundreds of YouTube videos, right? Like on how to install your own garbage disposal, how does it work, like diagrams, like all the things that he's interested in as a kid who's obsessed with garbage disposals. That's so cool. So in some ways, it's like our kids' play comes before they go to school and their play is so hyper-specialized and their entertainment is so hyper-specialized. And if you're like a very hands-on parent and your kid's like, I want to learn about septic tanks.

30:09Like you help them learn about that in a way that like parents before, like unless you knew a lot about septic tanks or had a friend in that business, how are you going to educate your kid on how that works? And some people may react to say like, what's the point of your kid learning about septic tanks, right? Or like garbage disposal, right? And the thing is, it's so obvious to me that if you really learn a lot about how a garbage disposal works, like you really like get into the, like you see one cut in half and a diagram and you see the pipes and you kind of learn about, like there's so many proximate or adjacent things to that that end up generalizing.

30:43Yeah. I promise you that a kid who becomes an expert in it, just how a garbage disposal works, a little kid, they're so primed to learn about like other mechanical systems, other hydraulic systems, like the manufacturer of like bespoke appliances. Like there's so many cool things next to that. I just think of when I was a kid and I was learning those types of things as much as I could, and which is not nearly as much as you could now. And you end up just reapplying, reapplying that knowledge. Like the compounding nature of knowledge is maybe its most interesting part. If you can really allow a kid to lean as deep as possible into that thing, just go as deep as you conceivably can.

31:23And I think the benefits are unbelievable. So I'm excited to find how to do that for my kid. You know, I don't know yet. I'm really excited about Alpha School and weird stuff like that. I do wonder, though, like maybe to put the other spin on it, how much of that is a selection effect, right? Like the incredible results of Alpha School, I actually believe them completely. Like I totally believe these positive results. I just wonder to what extent those results are crazy-ass parents who did a ton of work and have like infinite resources at their disposal to jam them into this obscure school. Like these are obviously not normal families that are doing it, right?

31:57So I want to ensure, I mean, I'll exploit every tool at my disposal, obviously for my kid, but I'm also thinking about like, you know, what are the kinds of things that we can learn and apply to all kids? Totally, totally. And the other thing that's really interesting is like, you know, I am not, I'm very sympathetic to the homeschooling movement. I'm not a homeschooler for obvious reasons, but you can like do a lot of the homeschool stuff on the weekend and one of the things that I've become much more sympathetic to now that I have you know kids who are exhibiting their own passions and sort of own personalities like there is probably something good about being a slightly weird kid in a school you know like I remember that experience of being like kind of bored or slightly weird and being in a normal school around normal people and that was like a very good thing.

32:46Like I look back and I'm like, that was probably very good for me. And it's probably very good for, for like, you know, there's, there's one school of thought, which is you have a, a bright kid or a weird kid or someone who's really interested in something and you put them in alpha school and like, let them go down the rabbit hole, which again, I think that's awesome. But then there's the other thing, like boredom is actually good. Like a lot of our life is pretty boring. Like it is important to learn how to work in big systems. Like it is important to kind of realize that like not everyone's going to like entertain your weird rabbit hole.

33:14And so there is something about like getting that lesson early and having that sort of, I'm bored, I hate school, I'm going to figure out how to make it interesting for me that like could be very valuable for kids as well. So I'm always like on the fence. Like I feel like you can kind of dabble in different things and like, you know, on the weekends, teach one thing, during the week, teach another. And the outcomes are probably going to be the same no matter what. But it's good that there's choice, right? Like there's, it's good that there's a lot of choice now so the parents can, who know their kid can be like, oh, like clearly my kid's going to thrive in a individualized, personalized environment.

33:48Or actually I have this kid who like is, you know, the ham of the group and like loves being in school and like put them in school. It'll be great. Yeah. Yeah. I think a hybrid is interesting. There's certainly a lot to be learned for navigating social hierarchies and, you know, all these different types of people. I'd, I'd, I'd, I'd say maybe there's, in my case, maybe diminishing returns after learning those skills. You learned those skills, Eric. You did. Yeah, exactly. One thing that's interesting about Alpha School that I'll say is they customized the lesson plans based on what the kid is interested in.

34:21So as a kid, I was obsessed with basketball. And I didn't like school. I remember writing a note to my math teacher being like, what's the point of math? Like, help me understand why I need to learn math because this just doesn't seem like relevant to my life. And they just didn't give a compelling answer. but you could imagine a world where it's like okay you love basketball you want to be a GM of this team like figure out the salary cap or like figure out like what players based on other players based on statistical you know analysis like there's just so many ways they could have made it super relevant to my interest 100 % I love that alright Eddie I want to hear how fatherhood has been I always feel like the first few months of you know becoming a new mom or dad You have like all these like weird insights that are partially driven by sleep deprivation and then partially driven by this new important experience that happened in your life.

35:10So I'd love to hear the high level takeaways as they're fresh. Yeah, that's a great question. So much has crossed my mind. It is it is it is crazy. I mean, I would say the most the thing that has struck me, I'm only a month in. Right. So like, am I a father? I don't even know if I'm a father. Right. Like I like this little guy who's around. but like am I at that? Like I'm not, I'm no different, right? So I'll say that, but I am struck by how obvious it is, how totally helpless they are, right? They are like functionally blind, deaf, like they're like a little ball of like nothing, right? It's ridiculous.

35:47It really, it really struck, this is such a dorky thing to have observed, so I almost regret, but the, it's just, it's so obvious how human intelligence is the reason why they are allowed to be so pathetic when they're born, right? Because we're so capable of extremely specialized caregiving that they would never have survived without it. So like their helplessness is kind of the mirror of our capability. And we should like take that. We should like really lean into that. Like that is what human beings are to some degree specialized for. I feel that so intensely. I also feel like incredible empathy for people who don't have like who don't have maternity or paternity leave or don't have resources to put it because my God, if I had to like, I took a couple weeks off and my wife is on maternity leave still.

36:43It's great. Without that, it would be incredibly difficult. And it makes it very obvious to me how why in some sense, like fertility is declining because the opportunity cost of this suffering is massive, right? It's a massive cost. Now, it's totally worth it. I know the hackneyed thing you hear from parents like all the time, like, it's horrible. Also, it's great. Do it. That's like the thing you always hear. I heard the same thing. I'm going to repeat exactly that same thing. But it highlights for me that the more opportunity you have and the more things that you could be doing, which is just obviously the case in light of progress, like general technological progress, the more you're kind of giving up when you do it.

37:26And I think people find that choice in advance very daunting and very scary. Now, I would encourage them to take the leap, but I understand why it's daunting when you hear all these stories. That's very fresh in my mind. Totally. Totally. And that's one of the, I always point to like the, you know, the rise of cheap airfare and sort of international travel also becoming sort of like a widespread middle-class phenomena, right? Like it's not like you have to be, you know, like when we were growing up, if you knew someone who went to Europe, you were like, seriously? Like how? How did you do that, right?

37:59Like it was a very luxurious, elite thing to do. And I think, you know, when you look at sort of the sort of that is like a, you know, if you're fortunate enough to go to university, like, you know, you can travel abroad anywhere, right? Like universities, like, you know, make that, like, make that a possibility where it's like life has become so much more interesting, as you said, opportunity costs across a wide degree of sets, um, where the, you, you are having to think through, okay, like you might have the most interesting life. You might get to go to brunch, right? I don't get to go to brunch anymore, but you might get to go to brunch.

38:31And like, that might be an enjoyable thing you do every Saturday. So like that, that is, that is definitely, I think, a huge part of it. Um, the other thing that I'll point out, like my experience of, I'm fortunate enough to have my mother live with us, but she has been a godsend in holding these babies as they cry for those of us who, you know, who are working and that sort of thing. And it's like, there used to be sort of a familial unit that took care. I mean, like, it's very, it's only been like the last, you know, like the nuclear - That is so apparent to me. That is so apparent to me. Yes.

39:04Yeah. And especially if you don't have it. You're like, how do two people do this? It's like, well, it used to be a tribe. And then like only until the nuclear family post-war did we really move to suburbs and separate sort of multi-generational family units from each other, where then you have, you know, one mother doing this all alone, which of course was the big complaint was loneliness in the 50s and 60s of these housewives, right? Like even though they didn't work, it was just extreme loneliness that had never really existed because you were constantly surrounded by siblings, family, multi-generations, and that sort of thing.

39:34So there is something about that aspect, too, where if you're at a city, it's almost impossible to have that experience of having a multi-generational family. There are so many trivial questions that come to mind, right, when you have a baby, right, like, especially the first one. So many, like, is this normal? Is this weird? How do I fix this problem? That comes up so much. It's so obvious to me how many of those questions, which once you kind of get the answer, it's easy, kind of, you figure it out pretty fast. But so many of those things would be obvious if you're growing up around a family where there's a lot of children already and a lot of people who had been caretakers of children.

40:09And you would just have absorbed it either through osmosis or through a benign observation by mom or dad or grandma or grandpa, right? They just would have said like, oh, yeah, we just do this thing. And it would just be nothing. Whereas now, like, yeah, I'm sure you have many parents like through totally understandable neuroses worry about the most trivial thing and like go to the doctor and it becomes this like entire rigmarole right whereas we forget like that little thing that was lost the the the the benefit of just the family around many there's many little things that lost it's interesting because there's sort of a left wing and a right wing critique of the nuclear family these days and the right wing critique or from the right I think similar to what we just said of like, hey, it used to be you had much more support and we sort of lost that support and we need that support.

40:57And from the left, it's kind of like, it's the opposite. It's like, don't you dare assume that people need two parents at home to, you know, to raise a kid. Or don't you dare assume that not everybody's gay or bisexual or polyamorous. Or like, don't assume that this is the default. And so it leads to just, you know, the nuclear family being critiqued from all sides for almost opposite reasons. Yeah. Yeah. I think there is, I would hope there's large scale agreement that people need help. That if you see someone in your life who is having a baby, help them. They need help. No matter who it comes from or what form.

41:38It is definitely not something to be done alone in a vacuum. Whether it's friends, whether it's family, or kind of any form. So I want to segue to another topic I wanted to talk about. you know, we, and it's related to the Charlie Kirk assassination. And we released an episode that Catherine did on Barry Weiss's podcast, Honestly, which was a beautiful sort of, you know, commentary on the assassination and Charlie's martyrdom. And we had the funeral the other day, which is one of the most moving things I've ever seen. And we were talking offline and you talked a little bit about how to sort of the reactions to the assassination as it sort of played out on the internet sort of demonstrated a bit of a gap between sort of Zoomer culture, internet culture, and sort of, you know, the rest of the population.

42:24Why don't you sort of share that reflection? Well, something that really stuck out to me was how I think there's a pervasive, well, there was a belief maybe that as the internet became mainstream, internet culture would become mainstream. And that in some sense, like culture and internet, the line between so-called internet culture and mainstream culture would dissolve, right, because of its mainstreaming. And there's a lot of truth to that, right? A lot of people are kind of parts of the normal mimetic and cultural milieu is internet based. But I was really struck by how what I considered, because I'm kind of like, I mean, I'm like a normie here in these kinds of settings, Eric, like on a podcast, I'm a little bit, I'm a specialized, but whatever.

43:13But like in real life, You know, in real life, I have like a discord of a bunch of my friends for like I've been running for like eight years and I play video games and, you know, my brother's on the Internet. Yeah. No, no, it's crazy.

43:31It's uncanny. That's true. But, you know, there's like this whole universe that I've been in and like most of my friends are in. And even like crypto culture, like part of why my crypto network in the Bay Area started like very online and whatever. But I was struck by how when they shared a lot of the memes and references that this shooter was engaging in and sort of the kind of culture he was in. It was a culture I'm very familiar with. Just like Discord, gamer, online, Zoomer culture. Like there's many concentric circles. I'm not so much in furry culture, you know, but like it's adjacent to cultures that I'm in.

44:11So all the reference, even like the Helldivers 500K G-bomb, like aero sequence is like something my friends and I know, right? Like it was obvious to me. And when I saw a lot of people on my Facebook, like people, I hardly check my Facebook, my big, big blue Facebook. I saw so many people speculating about the meaning of these things, right? And they were so off. They were just unbelievably off. it was like they were scrutinizing like an alien culture. And it really struck me that although there have been elements of internet culture that have mainstreamed, we have managed to create isolated pockets that will just permanently remain separated.

44:50And it's like, let me try to put a really fine point in this one thing is because the internet is so open by default, anyone can make an account anywhere. I think there's this assumption that it's all accessible, right? And therefore should permeate, right? but we have managed to create new gradients, new selection methods to create isolated little corners of the internet, like gamer culture. You can't learn those things unless you play games, right? Like you have to play a bunch of video games and know a bunch of people play video games to be a part of that. We've still, despite things being more connected than ever, there are still these distant branches and rabbit holes.

45:28And it just got me really thinking about like the diversity of online culture and what leads to the proliferation of many diverse online cultures and their mutual unintelligibility. I love that you brought this up, Eddie, because I had a conversation with my best friend, Normie, throwing that out. I am a creature of the internet, clearly, but I was having a conversation with her at one point last week, and I explicitly remember saying to her, your Insta is not my ex. Like we're in totally different worlds. Like what she was saying from her takes on things on Instagram last week was wildly different than what I had seen on X, right?

46:12And I think there's something about, I actually think X is sort of a unifying platform from all of the different pockets that you talked about because if you're a power user of X, a lot of the early data that was coming out on anything, I mean, not just Charlie Kirk's assassination, but on anything. Things get to X early. People really do the investigative work early. Last week I was saying, you know, it probably, like, I don't know if the FBI or if intelligence agencies actually have people. I mean, there's that whole meme of, like, you know, the show that was just taken off the air because maybe for a variety of reasons.

46:47But that whole meme of, like, people looking at the internet and saying, like, what's going on here? What are these kids talking about, right? But there is probably some truth to the fact that it's so siloed from what just real-world law enforcement or real-world government officials, the worlds they live in, that the information gets to them late. There's an information lapse. You really want to know what's going on, on anything, whether it's a tragic event or even the election. Right. Like I think, you know, I talked to a lot of people about the election 2024. And I said, like, you know, the meme X is not real life.

47:24Like, no, no, X was the only place if you were spending time on X. Yeah, exactly what was going to happen. I feel really strongly. I check I check so many sources. I mean, Reddit for many years. I even check Blue Sky occasionally, Instagram, Facebook. Like I'm all, you know, and I will honestly I can say with total conviction that although there's, of course, a lot of like misinformation on X as there would be on any rich and complex and highly engaged system. As is there misinformation in your PTA group, right? Like with PTA, there's misinformation all the time. If you want to find like the ground truth and you do the legwork and you kind of like follow the right people and you kind of go through and really like look for it, the answer is probably on X in a way that is unlike other places.

48:09And I really struggle with that. I wonder whether that's like a cultural thing. Like it has to do with the type of people on it, right? It's its roots as a journalistic, you know, outlet and so on. Or is it something technological, right? Does it have to do with the fact that it's an open graph, quote tweets and sort of like correcting people is a part of the norm in a way that is just totally not on Facebook or on Instagram. You know, they even lack that technical capability, right? Is it the NSO? In other words, is it like the product features that lead to this sort of dialogical conflict that often ends up with the truth?

48:43Or is it just the people? I don't know, really, but it's an interesting thing. There is something about, I think it also could be generational. And I haven't really thought through this fully, but I said something on X like a couple weeks ago that resonated with people, which was that I feel like there's this elder millennial cohort that is really, really good at translating across the entire living existence of humanity right now, right? Like we remember what the world was like before the internet, You know, and that's like 1980s and 1986. Like we have deep memories of landlines, of like car phones, right?

49:18Like we remember the 80s, but we also remember the 90s, right? Like there's something about like we remember the shifts, but we're also like, we're not digital natives, but we grew up with the internet. And so we understand the pace of change. And there's something about, like, I look at, like, you know, AOC is kind of part of, maybe she's a little on the cusp of this cohort, but, like, J.D. Vance is on this cohort. You know, a lot of sort of our political leadership, I think, is going to come from this cohort that remembers, but, like, also is very fluent. Like, I'd say, like, we have the first poster in chief and the vice president, right?

49:51So it's like there's something about X that maybe captures a generation that's like really good at amalgamating across different platforms, right? Like you spend a lot of time on Discord. Like, you know, there are a lot of people who also spend time on Facebook and Insta who are on X, right? So they're able to like, so there's something about it being like a truly not like just the global town square, but like it's a translation layer. And then the other thing that I often tell people because they're like, people will say horrible things back to you after you post. Does it bother you? And I'm like, no, it's actually great because it gives you a theory of mind for people you otherwise would not have a theory of mind for.

50:27And I think there's something about sort of the pseudo-anonymous accounts on X that actually do a really good job of giving you a full picture. I agree so strongly with that. I agree so strongly. In fact, that exactly has been my big argument for why it matters that you're engaging with real people on certain networks, not on all networks. Like on TikTok, for example, I don't think it matters whether the content was specific, if it's just for entertainment, was specifically produced totally by a machine. Like it could be literally produced by TikTok itself through a data center. And like it wouldn't matter because it's for entertainment alone.

50:59But because of the dialogical components of X, how you're really trying to develop like a sense of what people think and you're getting pushback and the add-ons are fighting you. it's actually kind of important that they're people in a way that doesn't, you know, it's not exactly like a poll. You know, no one would pretend that your comment section is a scientific poll, right? But you are getting, you're completing, you're filling out your theory of how others may view or interpret such a thing. And it matters that they're people. Different social networks, I think it will matter whether they're largely human or not.

51:36But anyway, yeah, totally agree with that. And this is my argument too, why more people should post. Because it becomes a personal thing if it's like your idea and then Anons are engaging with you, right? Like it's like, it becomes, it like resonates more where you're like, oh, I hadn't really thought about how that would be insulting to this group or I hadn't really thought about how, you know, half the country would perceive this thing that I thought was innocuous. So like there is something there too, where it's like you learn a ton, you get the feedback loop if you're posting. Whereas if you're just looking at other people's, which is also fun, you're lurking, but it doesn't resonate the same way with your kind of core and kind of allow it to evolve.

52:11Every tweet is a focus group on some idea in a way. And I remember this funny anecdote where Yan LeCun got so frustrated at X that he started posting on LinkedIn. He would respond to people on LinkedIn and someone quote tweeted him and it was like, come to X and fight me like a man, you coward. This is where the actual arena is. Who's the arena? Yeah. One thing that's interesting more broadly is, you know, the internet has become, even just since COVID, more fragmented and more sort of intellectually diverse. Like, you know, I remember, you know, Mike Solano was complaining, or was sort of, you know, observing sort of activism on Instagram around BLM.

52:51And he's like, Instagram is the butt app. Why are you bringing, you know, in Twitter, the word app. Like, if you have ideas, go here. What is the point of Instagram? But just around BLM, around Ukraine, remember, you know, sort of when Mark had the current thing, discourse, there was a lot of, sort of legible unification, like dissent was on the group chat. Dissent was private. And it didn't seem to be this like public place for dissent in the same way that, you know, things like October 7th, things like the Charlie Kirk assassination, these are current things, but in a much more diverse, like the response to it is not unified across the board.

53:25And I wonder, yeah, is that a response to just social media fragmenting in a different way? Whereas like Blue Sky is seen as way more, you know, legitimate than Gab ever was or sort of, you know, parlor or something. Or if it's just these issues are, you know, something the vibe shift is, I don't know, to Eddie's question, if it's technological or if it's actual. Yeah, well, I don't think, I mean, although there, I mean, I don't think what makes blue sky, blue sky is technological, really. I think that has a lot to do with, like, it's interesting. I always thought that like the at protocol, the underlying like protocol was interesting.

54:02It was interesting. The effort was to be a more decentralized, open sort of censorship resistant network. I think what makes Blue Sky Blue Sky today has to do with the people who sort of seeded it in its early days, right? And then later the people who kind of exodus to it in reaction to like different, you know, things on X and so on. And it's interesting how important that is, right? The seeding culture ends up leading to the downstream culture. It's sort of a, you know, it's a, yeah. One just quick comment. One of the Curtis Art Yorvin ideas, he would say, hey, Jeff Bezos can take over the Washington Post.

54:38The Washington Post is not going to change. You can take over the New York Times. It's not going to change. You can take over X. It's not going to change. And I think the last few years have disproved him in a number of ways, that idea in a number of ways. But Elon taking over X actually did change the whole sort of makeup of the platform. And so it just requires an owner who's willing to do what it takes. Yeah. You can also make a document as a former Postie that Jeff Bezos taking over the Washington Post and infusing it with limitless capital actually did change the Washington Post. Sure. Like it changed it in the opposite direction of where people would have thought, right?

55:10But it's like if you have a struggling, like part of the reason they left the Washington Post was because it was about to go into bankruptcy. And if you have a business that's actually, you know, forced to rethink its views based on competitive dynamics and where the market wants it to go, if, you know, if one of the richest people in the world buys it and infuses it with cash and doesn't have a strong opinion of where it's going, like you could make the argument that part of the reason why the Washington Post, you know, why it took so long for it to sort of, I would argue, now normalizing, right?

55:37Like normalizing to where its readership was when I was there, which is still left of center, but not nearly what it was. And, you know, democracy dies in darkness. There's an argument that the actual, like, infusion of cash was actually the thing that radicalized, that I think most people don't talk about when they talk about sort of these media properties and sort of the growth of them. Yeah, this is kind of an incomplete thought and related to what Catherine's saying, But is that every network, when it's developed, has sort of selection pressures for the participants in those networks, right?

56:10Like if it's a highly politically polarized group, then to get a lot of engagement, you need to kind of play to that gradient, right? Because there's those type of people around it. Certainly, unlimited money that has come with a few strings attached allows things to develop one way. On the other hand, as Elon did, scrapping 80 % of the staff and, you know, ripping out a lot of the prior discourse guiding apparatus, which he allegedly did, that certainly changes things. But perhaps even more importantly for, in Elon's case, there was this shift where certain people felt more comfortable returning, certain people wanted to exit.

56:50And so then the makeup of the graph changing led to different types of behavior because you're catering to a slightly evolving audience, right? The ways that the graphs evolve is maybe very complex. So I don't think that it's simply that like they can't be changed or are trivial to change. I think it's kind of the type of influence is important in determining how they can change. Totally. Yeah. Can I go back to something you said about the group chat? Please. Like, I've slightly mourned the death of the group chat. Yeah. As a person who looks back fondly on those years and the friends we made, I mean, it's probably how some people view summer camp, was the group chat era.

57:37It is definitely a good thing that the group chats are no longer siloed, are no longer necessary. Like, you know, I do think a lot of the real interesting conversations have moved to X, and that is a good thing. But there's also something about, I don't know, there was something special about that moment that I think all of us will always miss. There's peacetime social networks and wartime social networks. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Unclear which time we're in right now. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, I'm not sure. One other comment I want to make is, you know, you were talking about the Washington Post finally normalizing.

58:12It's been interesting how sort of the media class, the political class has become so much more extreme, than the class it reports to represent. And I think that's another sort of, it's going back to Eddie's point about the opportunity costs as it relates to parenting. There's also the opportunity costs as it relates to, the opportunity costs of going into media or going into politics has just become so much higher that in order for people to want to do that, they have to be irrational. They have to have some irrationality, which is usually a form of, sometimes it's a form of principle and nobility, but other times it's a form of sort of, you know, chronic status seeking via some sort of activism, not to be too cynical.

58:54But Eddie, thank you for being our first guest. We're excited to continue the series. My pleasure. Thanks so much, Eddie.

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