The Times When Paranoia Fueled Technological Advancement

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All right, this is Dalton plus Michael, and today we're going to talk about conspiracy theories. I have to be honest, and this might be kind of true, or it might not be. Dalton is the right person to talk to about conspiracy theories. This is going to be an interesting conversation.

All right, so here's the frame that we want to take. I will be making the point that at the extreme, conspiracy theories were responsible for a lot of the most important innovations over the last 50 to 75 years. I'm going to use the term conspiracy theories, and Dalton, yeah, you have a slightly different angle. I think my take is paranoid thinking is different than conspiracy theories because there's a kernel of truth there versus a true conspiracy theory. There's really not much there versus a kernel of realness behind it.

So this is a—we have a difference of opinions. We have a difference of opinion. Maybe we're arguing semantics. I think the best conspiracy theories can have—there needs to be a little something to grab a hold on to. So we were kind of going through some of the biggest innovations, right? So we'll start with the Internet and space, and we would both agree that, like, fear of the Russians, yeah, big drivers.

You can research this; you can Google this. But basically, the original version of the Internet, I believe, was called ARPANET, was funded by DARPA, which is a defense thing. The idea was if we got bombed or cities were blown up by nuclear bombs, the Internet would still work because it could route around any city that was blown up. And that was the original funding for ARPANET.

Yeah, yeah, got the Internet. Everyone understands why we have rockets. They are great deliverers of nuclear weapons. So what's interesting about this one in my mind is that I'm sure there were people who either believed or who strongly advocated the idea that the Russians were going to nuke us any day. Like any day you wake up is a day you could get nuked.

And I feel as though that level of conspiracy theory paranoia was used to kind of motivate these industries into happening. Yep, regardless of how—like if we were to do the math in hindsight, what the real odds were of getting nuked any individual day, there's probably a thousand YouTube videos about that topic. I don't know. We don't—well, and they're going to probably be in the related after this video. Don't go down the rabbit hole.

Yeah, all right. Next one, crypto. This is a big one where, you know, you can't trust the government and you can't trust money. Yeah, I mean when the original Bitcoin white paper came out and the stuff that Satoshi was talking about, it was very directly a reaction to the bank bailouts in 2008, the financial crisis. Yeah, and I think there was already an existing thought, but the idea that the Federal Reserve would just dilute the USD until it's worthless and we'd have hyperinflation and all this other bad stuff would happen.

And cryptocurrency is the solution to the government's destroying humanity or whatever, and in my mind the conspiracy theory there was just like you could wake up tomorrow and your money in the bank is worthless. Yep, and yeah, like banks are—you know the financial system is done. Yeah, and you're going to look like an idiot for holding USD, right?

And I think that once again we can look back and basically say the odds of that happening on any day were actually pretty low. But this pretty incredible thing was invented, you know, which is useful. Which is useful. Yeah, and it's still probably going to be even more useful in the future.

Another fun one, you know, clean energy, clear energy, electric vehicles. You know, there is a group of people out there that believe like the Earth will die in 100 years if we don't solve this energy problem. Yes, and they are extreme advocates. And what's interesting about this is that they're extremely good at advocating inside of government as well. Like government funds a lot of this stuff. The industry is also very good at advocating for this, and so another example of like, hey, we're afraid of the Earth dying, here's an industry.

Let's not look too closely at the inputs of this industry, but industry was created, yep, creates a lot of value. Last one's AI. Here's the fun one. What's the—yeah, what's the underpinning here? You know, we were around in Silicon Valley and during a lot of this boom, and so we've had many in-person conversations on this with, yes, people. And the argument is AGI, which maybe we can think of this as some sort of AI God, super intelligence, way smarter than humans will be created, and it is likely going to be created controlled exclusively by Google.

And the idea was, yeah, we didn't want that to happen. We could have a dystopian future where AI God is controlled by a private company, and instead there need to be like a nonprofit or some sort of like good for the world thing that would create AI God, yes, and use it for good, yes, and not for evil.

Which you just got to love that analogy. It's like I'm going to use God for good. Well, yeah, breaks a little. You want Google to own God or do you want someone else? Feel like God owns God. Isn't that like how that works usually? I—that's an interesting—it’s an interesting debate, Michael.

But, but investors prefer a company. You know, some of you watching this might say, yeah, no, that's exactly right. Do some of you be like, oh, he's exaggerating. AI God? Like what? No, no, really, guys; like this is what—this is actually people really believe that we're going to get an AI God, and they might be right.

And this is what's funny about all these things Michael's been discussing is I actually take them more seriously than him. I think every one of these where it's helpful for me—for the first three already ha—well, I guess no, the first one already happened. Do you fear the nuke every day from Russia? I guess you don't fear the nuke every day, huh?

I don't know. I don't know what I—you are more paranoid than I think I am. That's fair. I just think there's a tail risk. It's not zero, man. There's not a zero percent chance there is like an accident or, like, I think the world's a better place with a balance of paranoia and, yes.

And so I—I think I take all of those seriously, fair to some extent. To some extent, yeah, including the AI God one, which is like, hey, if you go read all the stuff about this, maybe—well, I think the funny thing is is that the extreme version of the AI God is similar to the other three, which is like not only is this going to happen, it's like semi-imminent.

Yes, and we're going to wake up one day, and if you don't prepare, like, that's—that's what all these things kind of have in common, is there's like a prepper aspect, which is like, hey, here's the secret you need to know about it, and you need to prepare so that when the moment happens—moment zero happens—you’re positioned to like, you know, be uploaded in this the good spaceship.

You're on the—you're on the list of nice, not naughty list. Now, why are we bringing this up? I think that one thing is that I don't think that I was surprised that conspiracy theories have become more prominent in politics, and that's certainly been the case over the last 10 years. But—but that's also just penetrating the tech world, and I think that balance is important.

And, you know, we tried to think about what's a good analogy here that we could use, and I like the one we came up with, which is basically like how can you tell whether you are making bomb shelters or whether you are making rockets? Yeah, because like some people made a lot of money selling bomb shelters in the 50s. Yes, that was a business, and a lot of people have them.

Yes, and some people helped invent the precursors to the landing reusable rockets that's going to make a space industry that can benefit humanity. Yes, and you know, both people had productive energy and those energies were directed into completely different areas.

How can you tell? Like what advice would you give a founder to make sure that they're on the right side of that balance? Just to be aware of what grift is and what it isn't. In all these examples, grifters attach themselves to all of these things and use it as a way to get rich from schmucks, basically. Convince people, oh, I have this new secret thing and grifted it because it's a popular thing, and you can prey on paranoid people.

People that are inclined to believe in conspiracy theories are usually pretty easy to convince of other stuff. I was thinking about this. One sign of a grifter is how fast you can monetize. Grifters can always monetize way faster. Like you start making rockets, you don't get SpaceX in a year.

Another thing that came up in the conversation before was this idea of sometimes one conspiracy theory or paranoia can be the gateway drug to all. Yes, you know, it's like now I'm a—I don't—there is no truth. I can't believe anything. Very hard to be productive when you're in this.

It's an unfortunate side effect of the Internet is sometimes people end up going down rabbit holes where you start off watching the History Channel about, you know, the JFK conspiracy, and then like you're completely fried after spending time on foreign YouTube. Just grabs. You're just like done. You can't function. You can't talk to people anymore. What is real? You're done.

And so I think some folks, just the way their brains work or their natural disposition of this type of thinking, yes. Again, we saw this—we certainly saw this with crypto. We're seeing this with AI, where people literally can't function as members of society anymore. Yes, because they're so convinced that like this thing is about to happen, and they go into full prepper mode.

Yeah, and sort of want to become separatists from society because they're so convinced that this thing is going to happen. Well, I'd argue sometimes they go so far as just like even being destructive or non-helpful because it doesn't matter, right? It's like if you think nothing matters, you think there's no consequences, why not be a troll? Why not own everything like it doesn't matter?

So say conspiracy theories paranoia are useful, maybe in moderation. Yeah, well, the way it can be useful is to bootstrap a movement. Yes, yes. And what all these things have in common that we're listing—and there's other examples too—is it did energize a certain subset of people on the Internet or elsewhere to be really into something.

And I would say a common trait amongst the people who benefited from these movements were they weren't the most radical H. They weren't the dyed-in-the-wool all the way on the extreme believer. Yeah, they were paranoid. I think if you look at something like Bitcoin, probably the people that benefited the most were people that were nerds that were paying attention to uset posts.

And when it launched, they just like mined Bitcoin or they bought some Bitcoin. They and they otherwise kept a relatively normal life and just kind of sat on it. Reason for a long time. See, by the way, that was probably the move. Yeah, and hedging that the US dollar is going to go to zero. Why not take that?

It's like sell the car, sell the wife, sell the kids basically. They're like, oh, this is an interesting thing. I'm going to buy some of this and just not think about it, and I'm going to ignore it. The people that were really into this were probably the ones who sold.

Yeah, so being like curious about things and taking upside bets I think is a good idea. Being skeptical but not reorienting your entire life and having it occupy all thoughts and making it hard to have relationships or hold down a job because you believe in these things might not be the best idea. Yeah, and I think the last that I want to leave people with is that conspiracy theories drive clicks.

And so what's sad and unfortunate is sometimes when you leave things in media without any controls or any kind of principles, they can go down the kind of Alex Jones road, and they can get to a dark place because it drives clicks.

Yeah, so be careful in your media consumption. Well, because like sometimes people are saying this stuff because they believe it; sometimes they're saying it because they know it looks good on a YouTube thumbnail. Yeah, they can sell you pills.

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Awesome, great chat, Dalton. All right, that—that was a joke by the—there are no pills, no brain pills. But someone please buy that domain! All right, thank you. [Music]