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In this age of endless expertise, it's easy to be fooled into thinking someone is a true authority until you hear them speak on a topic you know well. There's a certain thrill in getting a glimpse behind the curtain, seeing the man (or woman) behind the rhetoric. While I tell myself that 40% of what they say is just made up or misinterpreted, I can't help but keep listening, captivated by the illusion of insight. Even when we know better, the siren song of perceived wisdom is hard to resist. At the end of the day, true expertise is rarer than we'd like to admit - but the fantasy is always enticing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Wow, I didn't know this effect had a name. I've experienced it so many times.

I've also seen how politicians lie and tell half truths about stuff, where I know the full story like them.

It was in the article...

Shows that it's not safe to assume that a random Besserwisser on HN has read the article. In my defence I did skim through it though.

The one that I always remember is how they shilled for Solana immediately before it crashed hard. (I have never had any position in any crypto)

I feel like their show has an implicit subtext where you’re expected to understand when they are lying. You get to feel smart by recognizing when they’re just talking their book.

The tricky question is whether there is any value in the podcast besides understanding their book.

I think you’re exactly right, it’s a show for insiders to know what these 4 people think so the next time they directly or indirectly encounter them they are known quantities. Its masked as news & informative media but its principally brand marketing for these 4 people and their funds & companies.

When the pandemic started, I really enjoyed the podcast. They seemed to have some good insights, and I found them funny. It was a vibe that I sorely missed being home alone.

If one them sees this, I hope they take it kindly. The podcast has gone downhill drastically. The level of discourse has dropped considerably. They make all sorts of claims with very little evidence.

Recently they have all agreed that voter ID laws "just make sense." But they don't even bring up any of the unpleasant history around IDs.

When DeSantis was running, they didn't ever talk about him flying immigrant around as a horrible political stunt.

They've been leaning closer and closer to anti vax stances.

I still listen.. but I'll probably stop soon. It's becoming a bro podcast.

David Friedberg has the best mind for evidence, and he speaks less and less.

I actually was of the impression that David Friedberg got a decent amount of speaking time in the last few episodes, especially in that recent one that he moderated, which I enjoyed since he's the most level headed, least partisan and most evidence based as you said of the bunch.

Even he’s on the Trump train now.

He mentioned on the livestream yesterday that he didn't vote for either and just wrote in a name.

The voter id laws conversation is an excellent example of one where they seemed to be largely off the mark. Jason tried to bring up some of the concerns at first, was immediately shot down by the co-hosts, and they never revisted the legitimate debates against voter ID laws.

This perspective is coming from someone who largely agrees with their ultimate conclusion that we should have Voter ID laws, but there were legitimate counter-points that got missed which should be addressed before implementing voter-id laws.

In a recent episode they went off for quite a while about selling off UHF and VHF frequencies which was also a pretty clueless claim. Sacks thinks they should auction them more frequently and allow startups to buy them for new technologies. I sort of get what he is saying, but how does that change anything? You are just trading one problem for another. You have all the same ownership problems we currently have but you are using it for something with arguably less public good, which is used strictly for profit. How would selling off the frequencies to Microsoft, Apple, and Google (since let's be honest they would have the most money to buy into these experimental land grabs, not some small startup) be any different than ABC, NBC, and CBS owning the airwaves? Yet somehow the group just kind of followed along with this groupthink concept like tech bros.

I do think that they have a bit of a responsibility to fact check and do some due diligence on these types of topics, because as OP's article points out, there are a huge majority of their listeners who will blindly trust anything this panel says as gospel and truth. Many people idolize them since they have made a lot of money and are successful businessmen that they don't make mistakes. Granted that is a larger debate on how society is too trusting of their heroes or leaders, but it is still the current situation nonetheless.

I used to listen to the podcast diligently. I now listen to between 1/3 - 1/2 of the episodes. Basically if I have extra time or the topics are of particular interest to me. But I will no longer make time for the podcast like I used to, I only use it to fill time I might otherwise have if I am caught up on other podcasts.

IMO Chamath and Jason are probably the best of the group. With Chamath being the most informed. I have to give Jason credit because he seems to be the one most willing to bring up counter-arguments. Without Jason this podcast would just devolve into utter nonsense. Sacks' rants about conspiracy theories used to be entertaining, and I love to hear opposing opinions on things to better expand my awareness, but they are so constant and extreme now, that they are just annoying at this point. Friedberg is mostly a background character IMO which is a shame since he tends to be the most centralist and evidence-based of the group. But as is normal in this world, those level-headed opinions get drowned out by the loud people shouting conspiracies and anger fueled rants.

The group clearly has potential as we have seen them hitting the potential. But they are pretty confident with their position as the number one podcast in the world (no idea if that is true or not, but that's their claim) and they seem to be flying pretty close to the sun as a result. It might be going to their heads.

If they see this I would recommend they hire a research team to fact check them throughout the episode or to inject opposing opinions on things. They can afford it and if they are the top podcast in the world than one could argue that they have an ethical obligation to do so. Also limit Sacks' talking. Sometimes I feel like he talks for 1/2 the episode and that's usually when the podcast goes off the rails.

Best of luck to them either way. I don't really care. There is a lot of great content out there that I can listen to besides them (and I have already started shifting towards). But I enjoyed them enough at their peak that if they can bring it back I'd be happy too.

I think that voter ID laws are probably fine. I'm in a state that has them, and I suspect that I would feel weird if the requirement were repealed.

I don't know if IDs are free in all states, but if they are, I would be more inclined to support it as a requirement for voting.

I also would want to get an objective handle on how the IDs are treated. I have had friends get questioned because "Their signature didn't match the ID." I can see how that would quickly get perverted.

How do you feel about their revisionism around Jan 6?

> I think that voter ID laws are probably fine. I'm in a state that has them, and I suspect that I would feel weird if the requirement were repealed.

> I don't know if IDs are free in all states, but if they are, I would be more inclined to support it as a requirement for voting.

The IDs being free is good, but not sufficient. The ID issuing organization also must be funded sufficiently to provide comprehensive access to ID-related services to all citizens, regardless of disability, population density, cost of provision, etc.

And you can be absolutely certain it won’t be, because the reason for Voter ID laws is to disenfranchise people that the people making the laws don’t want to vote.

Are we sure the effect will be what we assume? Don’t democrats skew more educated and higher income at this point

Yes, because it’s not “Democrats” that the far right wants to prevent from voting, it’s anyone poor or from an ethnic minority, who often happen not to have as much access to a DMV or other facility in which they can obtain an ID.

Elsewhere in the thread is mentioned the predominantly-Black county that has a DMV only open one day a month. Why do you think that is?

What you have to realize is that many of these podcasts and forums and so on are marketing tools. Any honesty or insight is either accidental or incidental. I mean even HN is the marketing arm for YC.

In recent years we've seen where the loyalties lie for the likes of Sacks and Calacanis. You see this as various SV movers have fallen in line politically in a way that alienates the majority of the workers that created their wealth.

Go back 10-20 years and there was a lot of delusion in the tech space that companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix or whoever that are somehow "different" to Corporate America. Since the pandemic, I think all of these companies have gone fully mask off.

You, as a tech worker, as a nuisance to these people. You cost money. They are doing their utmost to suppress your wages and create fear and uncertainty through permanent, rolling layoffs. It's a constant effort to get you to do more work for less money.

The likes of Calacanis, Sacks, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Pichai and so on are united in one thing: solidarity with the billionaire class. So maybe All-In is entertaining but you should never forget it has an agenda to serve the billionaire class.

Crazy no one talks about how the argument against voter ID is that IDs cost money, $90 in Washington. This essentially becomes a Voting Tax.

In most countries that have them, they are free. Taxes already paid for them. Yes, even replacements

Voter ID laws do, in fact, just make sense.

Voter ID laws don't make sense if you benefit from voter fraud. I have a hard time steel manning the anti-Voter ID stance. Especially considering that an ID is needed for most aspects of modern living. Don't believe me? Just ask someone who does not have an ID living in the Las Vegas tunnels. Life is extremely difficult without an ID. These people are stuck in a Catch-22 where they could get housing with an ID but need an address to get an ID.

---

Edit: I tried to be civil, but people here are clearly ideological & want to commit voter fraud to empower themselves at the expense of everyone else. It's obvious. Go ahead & downvote. You cannot escape the fact that we know the truth behind your empty rhetoric. You might as well give it up because it only makes you look bad.

Let's be honest here. For all of the highfalutin rhetoric of curiousity on this site, there are many ideologues who wish to narrow the discourse. To ignore reality. Y'all are doing great! Keep it up! Go ahead & bash the "All In Podcast", Trump, Republicans, the American People, or whoever inconveniences your plans at this moment. Please keep on doing what you are doing. You do you! America voted resoundingly against you. They don't like your agendas. Neither does most of the world's population. Now go buzz off into the dustbin of history.

"I tried to be civil, but people didn't like what I had to say. Rather than asking why they disagree, I'm going to assume they're evil criminals."

Why ask downvoters why they downvoted me? It is a cowardly way of suppressing discussion. If someone wanted to provide a legitimate reason to why voter ID should not be used, they would have done so. I cannot think of any legitimate reason other than maintaining power over a phony democracy using voter fraud. The disadvantage of this technique is an overwhelming popular mandate, like we saw in this election is impervious to plausible deniability.

Do you have any legitimate reason for the anti-voter id position?

Recently they have all agreed that voter ID laws "just make sense." But they don't even bring up any of the unpleasant history around IDs.

This year is the 80th anniversary of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, do they really need to go through the history of IDs? We need to rebuild confidence in the integrity of elections, Voter ID, which most democratic countries require, seems like an incredibly modest step.

The states that historically had the worst race issues all have voter id anyway, it is the Northeast and West coast that are refusing.

> We need to rebuild confidence in the integrity of elections, Voter ID, which most democratic countries require, seems like an incredibly modest step.

People didn't lose confidence in the integrity of elections because our elections lack integrity, they lost confidence because they were told in a way that resonates with them that our elections lack integrity.

Voter ID would just be security theater in that it's an onerous rule that does nothing to help any actual problem aside from making things look better to some people.

I'm having a hard time understanding your comment. I'm not American, but can someone explain why it wouldn't make sense to lose confidence in elections when gerrymandering and the electoral college skew the results so much? Sure, votes are technically counted, but if the system is set up so that those votes don't really impact the outcome the way you'd expect, isn't that a pretty valid reason to feel disillusioned?

The GP isn't making a statement about how voters feel disillusioned in the electoral process in general. They are making a statement about how one of the two political parties has spent 4 years telling their supporters that the 2020 election was stolen because of rampant voter fraud.

It doesn't even matter if you agree with the claims that were made about voter fraud, I can't think of any good faith argument by literally anyone on the political compass that it didn't cause people to lose faith in electoral process.

You have an excellent point that I didn't take into account when I left my comment. Personally I don't mind the electoral college too much but the gerrymandering that goes on in the U.S. is epic.

Against that we have people saying we need Voter ID? Is there any more better time to use the "arranging deck chairs on the Titanic" analogy, except for perhaps on an actual sinking ship?

Those are definitely reasonable reasons to lose confidence in elections and feel disillusioned, but voter ID laws won't help you there (which was GP's point).

There is no magic here. Ballots have no identifiers attached to them. Fraudulent ballots are indistinguishable from real ballots. Envelopes do have identifiers attached to them but are separated from ballots. It is not always necessary to submit envelopes with ballots, and batch integrity is not necessarily maintained or useful based on batch size. False registration and/or false voting can produce fake ballots. Ballot-level fraud resolution diminishes to zero, by design, in the existing system in order to preserve a degree of voter anonymity. Without registration or voting resolution, there is a very limited check on fraud, including high likelihood of surplus of in-circulation empty ballots. please explain your position in this context.

I wish people would've responded to you instead of down-voting you.

I've heard those arguments, but the thing is there are several cases around the country right now where ballot-level fraud _was_ caught[1].

Without doing any research I'll say that while it's easier to generate a bogus ballot than it is to generate a bogus hundred dollar bill, it just doesn't scale to the point where it's useful. It's a pain in the ass to get your hands on enough ballots, fill them out, and deliver them to a drop box or whatever. You can't just pull up with a wagon full of ballots and drop them off.

How much is it worth to somebody to flip a county? Which county do you flip? How many ballots will you need to flip it? What's the risk/reward ratio like?

[1] https://www.cpr.org/2024/11/06/mesa-county-mail-ballots-frau...

2024 - 1964 = 60

'its old so we can assume everyone shares the same information and perspective' is a bad way to do decision making and argumentation full stop. Topic and perspective independent.

One of the things I used to see pushed back on, but it seems to have gone by the way side recently, is not citing the original source but rather citing the someone saying something about the source. Its increasingly pervasive in all types of research adn contributes to a giant and slow moving slide of meaning creep.

The OP mentions that reviewing the history would inform the discussion. You dismissed being informed and simply provided a truism - specifically accepted a truism common from oen side. If the issue is confidence in integrity, but there never was an integrity issue, then fixing an integrity issue is neither possible nor a solution to the confidence problem.

Again, I see this everywhere - from polite conversation to academic discourse adn it troubles me about the larger state of knowledge and knowing in the world.

> The OP mentions that reviewing the history would inform the discussion. You dismissed being informed and simply provided a truism - specifically accepted a truism common from oen side.

I'm sorry, but saying "review the history," without specifically referring to things that happened in history and why they are relevant today, is absolutely worthless and a copout. If you have a reason why voters can't use ID today, say it, this "educate yourself" crap is a weaselly way to get out of defending your position while looking down your nose at the same time.

You can't work without ID. Surely that's worse than not being able to vote, not being able to eat?

> Voter ID, which most democratic countries require, seems like an incredibly modest step.

As always, you should ask "what purpose does this serve?" Do we need voter ID laws? Well, is there a widespread voter fraud problem? No [1].

When you declare something to be "common sense", you betray either a lack of knowledge of why something is the way it is, you know why it's like that but you're willing to lie about it to push an agenda or you have a position of privilege where something doesn't affect you so you just don't care.

So if voter fraud isn't a widespread problem, you should then ask who is pushing for this and why? Also, why are things the way they are?

A big part is that as many as 7% of Americans don't have the documents required to prove their birth or citizenship [2]. So Voter ID laws disenfranchise a right (voting) to millions of people.

Voter ID is really about voter suppression. Why? Because you need ID to register and vote. If you don't have it, you lose that right. If you think those people are more likely to vote against your interests, you do what you can do make sure they can't vote.

As a real example, Alabama has Voter ID laws but in certain counties that have a large black population, the DMV (where you would have to go to get a valid ID) was only open one day a month [3].

That's entirely intentional. Make it difficult to get an ID then it's less likely you'll vote.

[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-c...

[2]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/mill...

[3]: https://www.governing.com/archive/drivers-license-offices-wi...

You’re going to lose people at the first point. You don’t believe there is fraud. But others do (or believe there could be in the future)

There was the opendoor ipo, there was Jason Calacanis "sharpening the knives" ahead of the Twitter acquisition, there was what David Sacks did to Zenefits, and there's more. People are going to keep trusting these guys, simply because they have a hard-on for charismatic people with a lot of money, an extremely short memory, and refusal to believe that they will be the next ones to be scammed.

I find these guys are pretty insightful when discussing tech and VC news. The politics talk is awful. Chamath is a lightweight who doesn't know anything about how our government works but speaks confidently -- I remember one time he was talking about how raising the debt ceiling will allow the President to spend more money. Sacks is a partisan hack who will spin everything as a positive for Trump and MAGA politics. That's after he was a hack for Desantis.

Chamath is a fraud. He dumped an unbelievable number of SPACs retail that imploded.[0] The fact that he's part of the All-In crew speaks volumes.

[0]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chamath-palihapitiya-crumblin...

100%. I read the article and the moment author mentioned Chamath, I realized it must be some bs he peddled. It is surprising to me how many HN readers in this thread don't know how big a scammer Chamath is.

> these guys are pretty insightful when discussing tech and VC news

They seem insightful. They’re generally behind the curve and remind of Stratfor.

If anything, All In is better connected on politics. But that may be my Gell-Mann amnesia at play because I know the finance side of tech very well, and they’re not only frequently but paradoxically consistently wrong on it in ways that one sees institutional-versus-retail flows profit off.

Sounds like it is. When somebody is confidently wrong in an area you're familiar with, and confidently speaking about areas you're not, isn't that an instant epistemic red flag?

Do you think that of the four of them, Friedberg has a best grasp of the finance side of things? I would think he would be since he was apparently formerly involved in IB, PE, then corp dev when he was younger.

Interestingly, I agreed with the idea that they are better when discussing tech and VC (after all that's their day job). Do you have any examples of where they have been significantly off on tech finance?

they perform insightfullness

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

"In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

It's fascinating that Michael Crichton would have a quote like that when he's been guilty of falling into the same trap himself. It really shows how difficult it is for the human mind to have perspective on itself.

We are all blind to ourselves.

I feel like I should get that tattooed on my hand, next to one saying, "It's not about you."

The fact that it's named after Murray Gell-Man, a Nobel prize winning physicist should tell you something. Intelligence doesn't save you from it.

I find that I listen to them mainly for the tech and VC discussion as you said. The politics conversations are very drowning and I am gladly looking forward to not having to hear as much of this given the election is over.

I have an imprecise and somewhat tongue in cheek measure of a leader’s quality that suggests it is inversely proportional to the frequency with which they appear in the news. I seem to remember from his last term that Trump is at least a daily fixture even within the British media. I think I’m just going to spend even less time consuming mainstream media.

People have short memories, but the last time Trump was in office you had to hear about him all the time. (Of course the real concerning trend is that every recent R administration ends in an economic collapse.)

Likewise for VC/tech. I started listening for those topics and in those days that used to be almost entire show then they slowly started pivot to politics & social commentary which I dont care much for (from them). they are a bunch of centi/billionaire and should stick to that lane but I feel now they have become the podcast arm of RW. I have to say I find myself skipping lots of portions now, its almost not worth it but I still do it to catch up on the dog-whistle to other closeted republican tech/VC/leadership but then WSJ does that better than them.

some observations, IDK if others have noticed: - chamath always speaks last as if he is some kind of village elder, I think it allows him to present a better pov than he actually has - sacks is good at logic/debating and It seems they use that to push a RW pov without sounding like they are endorsing it by presenting a weak/half baked opposition to it.

overall I find hard to take them seriously outside of core tech/VC stuff. the science guy is okay but meh.

> sacks is good at logic/debating and It seems they use that to push a RW pov without sounding like they are endorsing it by presenting a weak/half baked opposition to it.

This is a really great point I completely hadn’t considered.

I didn't know about any of these incidents, but I could never listen to the podcast because they all sounded like a bunch of douchebags to me.

Maybe sometimes there's an evolutionary advantage in prejudice?

David Sacks*

thanks, fixed!

David *Sucks

It's frustratingly impressive how grifters are able to maintain a grift even after it's made evident that they are grifting...

One of the effects of a successful grift is that contrary facts don’t matter — in fact contrary facts just reinforce the grift by strengthening the us against them dynamic.

The irony of people like this misinterpreting government data as they orchestrate and cheer on a change in government.

In this past Friday's episode, Saks made some pretty terrifying statements about the FCC selling the VHF/UHF Frequencies.

He seemed wildly unclear about how leasing that space by the FCC has worked until now and pitched it as a "fixing the woke media" solution.

Can you elaborate on why the FCC openly auctioning VHF / UHF frequencies is terrifying ?

He's not wrong?

About as ironic as Linux devs recognizing Windows to be a crock of shit and providing a viable alternative.

Yes, Linux has bugs.

What government data did they misinterpret?

They correctly stated that the job numbers always get revised down not up.

They also correctly stated that the GDP growth in the last quarter was largely driven by government spend, and if you take out the private sector, there was little growth.

> They also correctly stated that the GDP growth in the last quarter was largely driven by government spend, and if you take out the private sector, there was little growth.

The entire article is pointing out quite clearly that this, in fact, not correct.

> They correctly stated that the job numbers always get revised down not up.

This is also demonstrably false with like 5 minutes of research. This is all a matter of public record https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesnaicsrev.htm

But if you already believe it the facts can still support it even if they are wrong. They feel right.

I’m glad this author wrote this up. The guys in All-In really need to be called out for all their bs.

Here’s episode 191 Aug 9, 2024 where Chamath is talking about a Google breakup possibility:

“The big O outcome though is more if you go back to the Ma Bell kind of thing where the company gets broken up. I think that the odds of that are extremely unlikely. I think the big O outcome is probably something that you can pretty safely take off the table.”

And here’s episode 199 Oct 11, 2024 where the host rewrites history:

“We have an update on the DOJ's antitrust suit with Google. It looks like they're going for the break up as Chamath predicted”

What??

I think Chamath is guilty of this to a degree that far exceeds the others. Chamath regularly states misconceptions about economic data as if he's a macro econ subject matter expert. I think Friedberg should get some credit for often calling him out on what Chamath is confidently mouthing off about. In a recent episode, I think Friedberg just started laughing after he realized breaking through to Chamath would be impossible.

All-In is one of the few podcasts I listen to where I don’t exactly like the hosts and disagree with a high percentage of what they say. But I find them interesting, and their recent shilling for Trump gave me a bit more of a nuanced insight into what they see as Trump’s strengths.

I take everything they say with a huge grain of salt. It is incredible how confidently they talk about certain topics where it’s clear even to an uneducated listener that they only have a surface level understanding.

Their flip-flopping on AI - from it being the best thing ever to being completely overhyped and underperforming - and then back again - has been amusing.

I enjoy their insights on slightly less hyperbolic topics like SaaS business models and other more mundane things. There can be some genuine nuggets of wisdom there.

Jason sometimes pushes back on the political stuff and attempts to be a voice of reason (relatively speaking - though I’m revealing my bias there) and that can sometimes prompt some actual interesting debate. I probably wouldn’t be able to bear listening at all without him on it.

Mainly though I think it can be good to listen to people you don’t agree with every so often.

> Their flip-flopping on AI - from it being the best thing ever to being completely overhyped and underperforming - and then back again - has been amusing.

One could tell they had no idea what they were discussing on many occasions, specifically on AI.

Jason and Chamath said AI prompted them to start "coding" again while entertaining the notion that AI will eventually replace all programmers in a matter of months. One day, AI will help the best to become "10 X" engineers. Another day, AI is a dud.

Friedberg said multiple times that everybody would create their Hollywood movie thanks to AI when there is little to no indication people would ever do this, leaving aside the production capability of LLMs to do so.

He has no problem with large language models trained on copyright data but didn't even consider the ethical implications, conflating how humans and machines learn, which is rather simplistic for such an intelligent person to say. He then retro-pedaled in a later episode, not on that specific point exactly, but when he realized he would prefer his businesses and investments to keep their proprietary licenses and hard-earned know-how.

Agreed - I find it useful to get unfiltered insight into how ultra high net worth people think about the world and view/approach things and what sources they use to form opinions.

I also find it useful to compare/calibrate how much about finance that's not VC specific (i.e. macro economics, interest rates, commodities, etc.) I know relative to ultra high net worth people.

It does require active listening to spot the subtle/not subtle bias, errors in logic etc.

They make me feel like becoming super rich is achievable — even they could do it!

There's even government infrastructure for it in most states and countries! They're called lotteries.

It is! Just let yourself be evil and get your MBA

The part i find most fascinating is that when JCal does push back, the YouTube comments are so disproportionately telling him his opinion is wrong (in a venomous way), he is ruining the podcast, Sacks is running circles around him, etc.

That's the best description of the All-In Podcast I've read.

It's often infuriating to listen to someone being confidently wrong, but occasionally there are some good insights.

> I think it can be good to listen to people you don’t agree with every so often

I 100% agree. However I don't think it's valuable to get information from people who misrepresent data like All-In. In fact it can be counterproductive to listen to people who are misinforming you. If I can't trust my sources then it hurts more than it helps. This goes the other way too - you should fact check the people who are on your side. In my experience though, when I try sampling new content from people who are biased towards Trump, it's easy to find hypocrisies and misinformation.

What other podcasts are worth listening to?

I really enjoy knowledgefight. Although I’m not sure I can continue listening after this week.

If you make investment decisions based on podcast called all-in then yes you should not watch it. It is a entertainment/ news podcast, treat it as such.

No, it's actually a bad idea to expose your brain to pathologically dishonest people.

They make mistake and they also come out and apologize or call it out when they are wrong. No one is 100% correct all the time. You have never made mistake or said something wrong when having discussion with your friends ? They are not running this as a educational channel , its a podcast where 4 friends chit chat.

Apparently the biggest mistake they made is to criticize Trump for Jan 6. It's ok, they apologized for that.

Ha. Imagine believing this. Yeah, please let me know when Chamath corrects the record on the topic in question.

These guys are charlatans. These lying idiots have absolutely no shame in misleading you, and you are falling for it.

“Oh, it’s just entertainment. Oh, it’s just opinion. Oh, you shouldn’t take them seriously.”

No. Absolutely not. I refuse to give them a pass. We have to stop normalizing this behavior. Ethics matter. Character matters. The truth matters.

Lol good for you! Don’t watch it. Be the moral police, see how that works out. This is the reason moderates are pushed into right side.

You are aware that all morality and ethical codes in a free society are enforced by people saying, "hey pal, that seems mighty improper," right? Don't be a crybaby.

"If you keep telling people it's bad to lie, I'm going to change my political views! *harumph*" is an impressive self-own.

[dead]

Listening to five minutes of a random episode did the trick for me, personally.

Note all the comments in this thread about how bad the show is and how they don't trust it... but gee golly it sure is good and you should check it out!

Infotainment is entertainment after all. All In podcast, President talks about people eating pets, they are just same type of garbage.

It's probably best not to trust _any_ podcast until you do a bit of investigation. That way you won't run into the "learning not to trust" problem and you can write a "why I trust the X podcast" article.

That said - this was a great breakdown - thanks to the author!

real question is what is friedberg doing hanging out with these frauds

I have bad news for you.

Probably also a fraud but just a bit less blatant. A subtle, gentleman's grifter.

This is how baseless rumors start. You're speculating without a hint of evidence.

Point taken, you're right, and I'm just having a laugh. But he does surround himself with grifters. In any case, I think he'll be fine.

He seems legit to me.

Please don't beat me up too much on this.

Even if their faulty assumption was true, wouldn't that just be a Keynesian approach to solving a recession? I though Keynes approach was that the government should step in a spend more to prevent a recession, essentially equalling what is lost in the free market.

Fully admit could be totally wrong on this. Just curious.

Government spending is how a Keynesian combats a recession. For perspective, though, look at this chart of government spending as a % of GDP. It has never gotten even close to 85% of GDP (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=8fX). Chamath claimed it was 85% of GDP growth, which is a different calculation, but looking at [this data](https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2024-10/gdp3q24-adv....) from the past couple of years you can see that the claim is still incorrect.

Are we in a recession? I don't think so. There was (still is) a possibility of a recession, due to elevated interest rates, but the way fiscal policy works, through Congress's appropriations, it is hopelessly lagging behind monetary policy (the Fed).

This is for Q3 of this year, for which the government is saying we're not in a recession.

The problem with Keynesian economics is that no one wants to turn off the money printer when the times are good.

> The problem with Keynesian economics is that no one wants to turn off the money printer when the times are good.

That's what central bank independence is for. Raising interest rates is effectively the same thing.

Besides that it has been turned off for three years:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS

But the US population is getting increasingly older so there will be increasing pressure on welfare for them.

Thank you so much for this analysis, even as a person with layman's grasp on economics you made the deception in host's apparent off the cuff assertion very obvious. I think a big part of the problem that we have in America (and the rest of the world) right now is that it takes these charismatic individuals (All-in, Joe Rogan, etc.) 10 seconds to confidently make these false claims based on personal bias and vibes. Then it takes 10 minutes (or more) by someone with a background in the underlying maths looking at the issue in-depth to rebut. The information landscape is heavily weighted towards these grifters, and I am not sure how we can fix that.

If you haven't ever read about and came to this thought independently I'd say Brandolini's law[0] is an interesting one for you to read about.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

Thanks! I will have a read. Looks very interesting.

> The information landscape is heavily weighted towards these grifters, and I am not sure how we can fix that.

We can start with not alienating the millions of people who enjoy listening to Joe Rogan and like him as a person.

What do you even mean by grifter and how is Joe Rogan a grifter? We can go back and forth on here until you are shown to have a very shallow understanding of Joe Rogan and the history of his podcast and yet feel comfortable in calling him a grifter - a derogatory and inflammatory term that is completely unnecessary in a fact based conversation.

Assuming you are wrong in calling him a grifter - what gave you the utmost confidence to do so and is that not the exact problem you decry Joe Rogan and these other 'grifters' of being guilty of? Of just saying shit based on personal bias and 'vibes'?

Anyhoo :)

Joe Rogan has a platform because he will allow any idiot on his show and just babble about whatever it is they want to talk about. He's not a journalist, he's a 3 hour ad placement masquerading as a podcast. Lex Friedman is even worse because he gives the impression that he's an intellectual but he plays the same game. At least you know going in that Rogan behaves like a meathead.

Well he doesn't know how to divide. If private sector does 2% and government does 1% then government is 50% not 33%. Similarly he displays the level of government spending, not the change. If government is 30% of GDP, then automatically its 30% of GDP growth no matter what. And again 30% is really 50% of the private sector. Now if the government grows from 30% to 35% like it shows on that chart, in addition to few quarters of 50%, thats how you get to government being 100% of the growth. Just use $, the % is clearly too hard for HN. Economy was 100. Government 30, private sector 70. Economy grew to 105, government 35, private sector 70. So 100% of the growth was government. I hope the author reads this comment, HN is being a weird echo chamber. Bayesian probability people, what is the chance that All In is actually wrong based on a random blog post.

One really good source I’ve found is Steve Ballmer’s* USA Facts and YouTube videos Just The Facts

https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-federal-go...

*What he did to open source while CEO at Microsoft is atrocious - but he’s putting his money to some good content and I’m all for that

I was by a few right leaning friends that All-In presented neutral perspectives to political issues but after having tried a few different episodes, I felt that they were pretty biased for Trump. I heard several things which I knew were true but Sacks dismissed them or simply ignored them and continued with his circumlocution on the topic.

"But I know that I won’t be tuning in for the next episode of All-In to find out. I will not fall prey to Gell-Mann Amnesia."

Not sure if the author - Michael Bateman - will ever see this but if he does - just a thought - it could be an interesting and fertile genre/substack niche to do follow analysis of their claims/discussions in more detail regularly as a counterpoint to their podcast.

I found his analysis compelling and it could be popular among HNers.

Not shocking.

Incidentally: Chamath plays a fair amount of high stakes poker recreationally, including on various streams and/or filmed poker content. I forget if it was on twitter or a Reddit AMA or what, but he once gave a blurb about what he had learned playing the game for some time, and he said something to the effect of "Poker is a fundamentally defensive game", which is an absurd statement. There is no strategic bias towards offense or defense in poker, there is only EV maximization, which you would think a VC would be able to wrap their head around, but he has managed to fundamentally misunderstand the game.

Leading off the article with Yglesias shows the guy has little idea what he’s proposing to discuss. Imports can reduce GDP because the import is imported and not domestically produced. The formula identifies specifically: that which is consumed domestically but not produced domestically is not part of domestic production. There is no inconsistency here at all with revised trade policy increasing GDP. It should be totally obvious and intuitive that if the same good is consumed domestically, producing it domestically rather than importing it will increase GDP, all other externalities and second-order impacts aside.

Yglesias is just repeating arguments that have been mode over and over by people who do in fact know what they are talking about (Noah Smith makes the argument well here https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/imports-do-not-subtract-from-g...)

The moon base example I think makes the argument very clearly. If you have an economy which produces nothing then it has a GDP of 0. If the increase imports for whatever reason, their GDP is still 0, which means that imports doesn't subtract from GDP, otherwise their GDP would be negative which is nonsensical.

But all this is sort of beside the point because arguments from accounting identities are almost always nonsense.

>The moon base example I think makes the argument very clearly. If you have an economy which produces nothing then it has a GDP of 0. If the increase imports for whatever reason, their GDP is still 0, which means that imports doesn't subtract from GDP, otherwise their GDP would be negative which is nonsensical.

It's technically true that imports don't decrease GDP, but that's only true if there's no substitution effects. But for most goods substitution effect does exist, and therefore we should expect a GDP drop from imports.

Imports don't /reduce/ GDP. They don't affect GDP because they are not produced domestically. What you're proposing is import substitution (tariffs), which is bad because

1. domestically imported goods can have imported inputs.

2. reduced competition from the external good means the internal ones will be worse.

> It should be totally obvious and intuitive that if the same good is consumed domestically, producing it domestically rather than importing it will increase GDP, all other externalities and second-order impacts aside.

There's no situation where those can be put aside, and since GDP is an artificial formula you shouldn't Goodhart it like that.

Yglesias has no business commenting on macro finance. He just as good at being confidently incorrect as Chamath. An entertaining example of this was his confidently incorrect tirade about basis points.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/13/matt-yglesias-got-confused-a...

All In is pure entertainment and if you think it constitutes investment advice, you're the problem.

One of those guys needs to be fined for the pump & dump scheme (with SPCE: Virgin Galactic), and the other one should be investigated if he was receiving money from the Russian government or influence agents.

Misinterpreting data is easy. To be clear -- I think the All In podcast is frequently flagrantly wrong, but basically all podcasts that try to foretell events are.

Chamath mistaking 0.85 absolute as 0.85 relative is fairly easy to do.

Even the critique's interpretation is very shallow -- things like second order effects, like the fiscal multiplier contribution, aren't considered. But macro is an art more than a science, and what people interpret as 'true' depends immensely on their assumptions about how the world actually works.

> Chamath mistaking 0.85 absolute as 0.85 relative is fairly easy to do.

I would disagree. If you're actually looking at the data, then anyone with a high school education should know that you don't take percentages of percentages like this. I still think it's ignorance more than malice, but I can't trust someone who would make a simple mistake like this to prove a point. I need my sources of information to at least be unbiased in how they view facts of data.

You can represent those facts differently. For example, he might think that 30% of growth being tied to government spending is high and I can follow his reasoning based on that. However if he claims that the actual figure is 85% then the starting point itself is incorrect.

The order of magnitude of his mistake makes it damning. Especially considering he began his commentary by noting that "the data can be confusing"

Sure - it's an easy mistake to make if you are dealing with data that don't mean anything to you. But anyone with even a tiny bit of experience reading macroeconomic data should be able to tell that something is very off with that number and question it before parrotting it in a podcast.

I have news for you. Don't trust anyone with data. Mistakes are made. Biases are confirmed. Reproducibility & criteria for falsifiability are not proven. Unknown unknowns exist. There are different ways of categorizing & counting things. Abstraction is a lie (the map is not the territory).

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off by one errors...

I watched their election result livestream last night. They had some notable guests, like Donald Trump Jr. and Steve Bannon. Bannon was excited about the prospect of deporting 15 million people. Jason seemed shocked, as if this wasn't what he's been supporting all along. Does he not realize that he's in bed with fascists? Or he's just a fascist too?

They hinted at knowing who will be the secretary of state and treasury secretary, like it was somebody in their circle. Seemed like Elon Musk will be Trump's righthand man, the way they were acting. They were hyper-fixated on DEI and "woke" in politics. They think the government should be run like a CEO, obviously influenced by Moldbug ideas. Sure, they might be very skilled at becoming rich, but these are not the people we want in government.

Anybody who is going to be shocked at what happens as far as aggressive policies aimed at women, minorities, immigrants, the elderly, and the lower income brackets really has no excuse. They haven't been shy in stating their intentions. You can say you made a choice to support it, but don't hide and say you didn't know.

100%. In 2016 it was fair to be shocked that he meant what he said literally rather than figuratively in a crass manner of getting elected. I think everyone expected he would cut to the middle once elected, as he was a New York democrat for his whole life. But in 2024 we now know that when he says something he means it.

I will firmly admit, that in the 2015 primaries I thought he was the lesser of 2 evils between him and Ted Cruz. I will absolutely state that I was foolish and wrong. That's not happening again.

They won't be shocked, it's literally what they wanted and why people voted the way they did. You can't just blame corruption or something anymore. It's what people want.

I think lots of voters want "let's deport all illegal immigrants!"

I think they would be shocked if they understood what kind of operation it would take to deport 15 million and what the side effects would be. For comparison, the entire (huge) prison population is 1.9 million.

I think some terrible things will happen to immigrants (and people suspected of being immigrants), but this scale doesn't seem possible and will be fought against by powerful interests (businesses employing them, etc).

Maybe they should just do what Canada does and have really high civil/criminal penalties for employing illegal immigrants (so no job, they just go back because no work)? The problem is that a lot of farmers, hotel owners, and people who work construction projects vote Republican also, so it seems like that will never happen in the US.

I could image a gradual shift to something like that. But if 15 million workers can't work suddenly, there aren't people to do those jobs. Those people also buy groceries, pay rent, etc.

Ya, but being more honest about immigration is better in the long term. Well, I say that, but that's what Canada did and people (not just conservatives) are still angry. Instead of blaming illegal immigrants, however, they just blame legal ones.

I think Canada had a poorly determined policy which the country couldn't handle the incredible surge of immigrants - especially those who came from south asia through the diploma mill college route and added limited value to the country. Also in Canada the more people come the worse the socialized services if it isn't properly managed (which it hasn't been).

Yes, they definitely over extended on legal immigration, although it should turn into a net positive maybe a decade later assuming they cut back on it now.

Latinos broke for Trump in unprecedented numbers, especially men.

Wonder how they will feel being constantly asked for papers lest they be thought of as undocumented and discriminated against.

And that is the saddest part of all.

I remember seeing their interview with Trump over the summer. They came away convinced that Trump would offer a green card to every foreign grad student in the US. I remember how much trouble the Trump immigration policy caused for foreign students in his previous term. It's very hard for me to believe that Trump will do a complete 180 on that, and I couldn't understand why the All-In guys seemed to just eat it up uncritically.

I remember that one. His campaign immediately walked that promise back hard:

> Asked for comment, the Trump campaign said in a statement that only after "the most aggressive vetting process in U.S. history" would "the most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to America" be able to stay.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-foreign-college-...

Of course, no one was surprised by the reversal.

Now they're fascist? I don't think you know what the definition of fascism is...

(sounds like you're repeating a talking point of the left of calling everyone on the right a fascist..)

no, if it walks like a duck...

> They hinted at knowing who will be the secretary of state and treasury secretary, like it was somebody in their circle. Seemed like Elon Musk will be Trump's righthand man, the way they were acting.

I agree. It was a livestream last night and there were a couple slight slip ups that you could notice such as this, and Chamath being drunk causing his wife to take his wine glass away from him.

> Seemed like Elon Musk will be Trump's righthand man

That seems like what Musk is angling for. I wonder what Trump will do. He could easily backstab people who helped get him elected if he feels they are too famous and taking some of his spotlight (Musk, RFK Jr). I suppose more likely, he just gives them everything they want and goes golfing.

Trump is not skilled at becoming rich. He is skilled at losing money and getting bailed out by his rich father over and over. If you're rich enough, you can be a total loser and it doesn't matter.

I'm not talking about Trump. This is about the podcast hosts.

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If you understand that these people are professional politicians in the realm of tech - it will all fall into place.

They will believe and say whatever accrues power to them. That's their nature.

What would change if they take the podcast more seriously and hire fact checkers for every segment that they do? Would that make it all a-okay? Shrugs

To me, the fact that they don't feel the need to be accurate is telling. I don't want anyone helping someone that acts in bad faith to do it better.

The better bad faith actors get at persuasion, the worse it is for everyone else. Look at Obama.