Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 2: And I'm Nate Silver today on the program.
Speaker 3: Since the last time you heard this show, one of
Speaker 3: the two hosts of Receive Business has won a world
Speaker 3: series of pook or Bracelet. We will soon disclose who
Speaker 3: that is in connect an interview with him or her.
Speaker 1: I love the suspense building night and looking forward to
Speaker 1: the interview with him or her. After that, we're going
Speaker 1: to ship gears and talk about the Nobel Prizes, specifically
Speaker 1: the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded a last week,
Speaker 1: and pe Doom and the probability of nuclear destruction and
Speaker 1: what has happened with that over the years, and.
Speaker 2: Then some politics. So exciting poker developments.
Speaker 3: This weekend, I was down in uh New Orleans for
Speaker 3: a friend's birthday, play a little bit at the Haras there,
Speaker 3: which has a very aggressive policy of making sure there
Speaker 3: are lots of drink servers.
Speaker 2: So the games are good and loose.
Speaker 3: One three game and I won two hundred and one dollars,
Speaker 3: and even more excited found that it was a twenty
Speaker 3: five dollars ship by forgotten to cash in, so really
Speaker 3: really to twenty six. So I think it would be
Speaker 3: hard to top that for poker accomplishment since the last show, right.
Speaker 2: Maria, I think it would be.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's pretty impressive and congratulations. It always
Speaker 1: feels so good to find that extra chip.
Speaker 3: It's like sound, it's like almost better than yeah, it's
Speaker 3: almost better than actually having the cash.
Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, for sure, for sure, because you
Speaker 1: forget you have it. I love the poker stories, by
Speaker 1: the way, as a tangent of djens, because they're always djens,
Speaker 1: like poker players who are not djens. These stores don't
Speaker 1: happen to them when they're like, oh, you know, I
Speaker 1: was emptying out an old sweatshirt and I found, you know,
Speaker 1: two five K chips or like a day or this
Speaker 1: or that, and they totally forget. They're like, oh, in
Speaker 1: this old backpack, like at a twenty five K chip,
Speaker 1: like it's awesome. So so those stories always tend to
Speaker 1: crack me up, but they do happen. Then it happened
Speaker 1: more frequently than you would think.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, I woke up on Monday a little bit later
Speaker 3: than usual due to the New Orleans weekend, and I
Speaker 3: saw a note from you posted at what time?
Speaker 2: Was this like three or four in the morning or something.
Speaker 1: It was three in the morning Pacific time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, Maria, tell me what that note said.
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly what the wording was, but something
Speaker 1: along the lines of like, holy shit, I won my
Speaker 1: first World Series of Poker bracelet.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Maria, I'm so proud of you, and
Speaker 3: the audience of the show is proud of you too.
Speaker 2: So tell me, tell me everything. Tell me. Did the
Speaker 2: tournament actually end at three am?
Speaker 1: Yeah? The tournament ended at like at like two fifes
Speaker 1: day something something along those lines. So it was an
Speaker 1: incredibly long tournament. I mean, it was ten and a
Speaker 1: half hours. But those those hours tend to be much
Speaker 1: more difficult for players like me who are getting on
Speaker 1: in year's night, because we're playing so late into the night. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it's unlike in a live World Series of
Speaker 1: Poker event, where like you're playing over multiple days. Like here,
Speaker 1: it's just concentrated. And you know, I happen to be
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas right now, which is where I was
Speaker 1: playing this event. But for the poor people on the
Speaker 1: East Coast, it's even worse. Right, they ended at six am,
Speaker 1: So tell me more.
Speaker 3: About this is a bracelet event obviously, what is it
Speaker 3: eighty eight or something?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the Crazy eight eight eight eight event and
Speaker 1: it was part of so as of last year, the
Speaker 1: World Series of Poker has done a fall series where
Speaker 1: they have I don't actually know how many events twenty
Speaker 1: something like that were they were they award online bracelets,
Speaker 1: which is you know, a different thing because some people
Speaker 1: think that online bracelets shouldn't count, but they do count
Speaker 1: for now. So I'm going to account mine because.
Speaker 2: I want what did you do when you won?
Speaker 1: Oh? My I was very, very tired, and everyone I
Speaker 1: know was asleep, so I oh, except for my parents.
Speaker 1: So my parents are currently on vacation in France. So
Speaker 1: I texted my parents and told them that I want
Speaker 1: a bracelet because they were the only people I knew
Speaker 1: who were awake plus sleep. Anyway, what your husband was asleep?
Speaker 1: He was asleep, yes, but I did wake him up
Speaker 1: to tell him you should Yeah, yes, and uh I
Speaker 1: obviously I also texted Eric's sidell since you know he
Speaker 1: this is as I'm not going to say as much
Speaker 1: as victory, but like, I wouldn't be here if it
Speaker 1: weren't for his mentorship and coaching and training throughout the
Speaker 1: year and support. So he was asleep. But he by
Speaker 1: the time he texted me back, I was asleep because
Speaker 1: you know, I went to bed quite light.
Speaker 2: Did you adopt an a particular strategy for this event?
Speaker 2: I mean, do you?
Speaker 3: I mean know, the vibes are a little bit different
Speaker 3: than on Yeah, he's online. I haven't played that many.
Speaker 3: I've never even cashed one night online actually.
Speaker 1: With the World So this is the first. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the first time I've played in an online bracelet series.
Speaker 1: Actually that's not true. I played during COVID. So do
Speaker 1: you remember during COVID when the World Series Live was canceled,
Speaker 1: they ended up doing a bracelet series that summer during
Speaker 1: the World Series instead, And we rented an airbnb in
Speaker 1: New Jersey and spent a few weeks in New Jersey
Speaker 1: and I played online there and did not do well.
Speaker 1: But so this is this is a second online series
Speaker 1: that I've played, and I got to Vegas a few
Speaker 1: days ago this weekend and have been able to play
Speaker 1: a few events, and it's definitely you know, it's definitely
Speaker 1: different because I'm a lot I'm someone who specializes in
Speaker 1: live tournaments, so it's hard for me. It's much harder
Speaker 1: for me to play online because I don't see faces,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't see a lot of the kind
Speaker 1: of physical things that I would normally use. That's it
Speaker 1: I actually started. You know, I learned poker by playing online.
Speaker 1: I would go to New Jersey every single day and
Speaker 1: play on Poker Stars. I know that. Yeah, so because
Speaker 1: online poker is not legal in New York but is
Speaker 1: legal in New Jersey, I would. I would cross the river,
Speaker 1: i would take the Path train, and I would sit
Speaker 1: in a cafe and I'd play online on Poker Stars.
Speaker 1: And the reason I did that, even though I always
Speaker 1: knew that I had that I wanted to play live,
Speaker 1: was everyone I was working with, namely you know, Eric
Speaker 1: Sidell and Phil Galfond. At the time, they were saying,
Speaker 1: you know, you need to get hands in, right, you
Speaker 1: need to get practice in. You need to you need
Speaker 1: to get repetition and figure out what these spots feel like.
Speaker 1: And the only way to do that is by playing online.
Speaker 1: So it's not like, you know, I start it live
Speaker 1: and I've never played online. That was where my initial
Speaker 1: training came from. But I still actually think that for me,
Speaker 1: online poker is much tougher and my I mean, my
Speaker 1: strategy was just to try to play as as well
Speaker 1: as I possibly could, and I ended up in for
Speaker 1: the max number of rebuys, which obviously is not ideal.
Speaker 1: You could rebuy three times and I had, I had,
Speaker 1: I ran pocket Jacks into pocket Kings twice for my
Speaker 1: for two of the bust outs, and my final hand
Speaker 1: of the tournament, actually in Poetic Justice, was pocket Jack's.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so you know, obviously I don't love max rebuying,
Speaker 1: but I was ready to do that, and I think
Speaker 1: sometimes you need to, you know, when you know, the
Speaker 1: rebuys are there for a reason, you know, you're playing
Speaker 1: a rebuy event, and so I just wanted to play
Speaker 1: my best game and uh, really make sure that I
Speaker 1: was playing well and not punting. So a few days ago,
Speaker 1: the first online Bracelet event I played was the thirty
Speaker 1: two hundred six max and I came in eighth, and
Speaker 1: that was so close, and I was actually, you know,
Speaker 1: talking to someone afterwards, and I was like, oh man,
Speaker 1: that's probably the closest I'll ever come to winning a
Speaker 1: Bracelet seventh player. So I and then a few days later,
Speaker 1: I came even closer, so that felt very nice.
Speaker 3: So this fourth bullet, was it relatively smooth that you
Speaker 3: wrack up a big stack early or uh no, so.
Speaker 1: Some of it was smooth, but I actually so you
Speaker 1: can review all of your hands, which I did prior
Speaker 1: to this conversation. You know, I had gotten I got
Speaker 1: short a few times, and then there were actually a
Speaker 1: few pivotal hands that really helped propel me to the win.
Speaker 1: I was middle of the pack for most of the tournament,
Speaker 1: and I was actually quite low. In the last bullet.
Speaker 1: I thought that I was going to bust because I
Speaker 1: got very unlucky in one hand and was down to
Speaker 1: some ten big blinds for a chunk of time, and
Speaker 1: then was able to work it back up, grind it
Speaker 1: back up, and build up a stack. And then there
Speaker 1: were a few hands that I thought were quite interesting.
Speaker 1: I think one of the most important hands in the
Speaker 1: tournament was when we were down to two tables. So
Speaker 1: at this point we were already all in the money,
Speaker 1: and the pay jumps by the way, So because I
Speaker 1: was in for four bullets, I needed to get better
Speaker 1: than tenth to break even. Because it's a very it's
Speaker 1: a very flat payout structure, and we were I think
Speaker 1: there were fifteen of us left at the time, and
Speaker 1: I was kind of middle of the road, you know,
Speaker 1: I was I had twenty something big blinds. So I
Speaker 1: ended up we were eight handed at the table, and
Speaker 1: I was in the hijack. For people who don't know poker,
Speaker 1: you know, that's kind of middle middleish position. And I
Speaker 1: was dealt King ten of Spades, which is which is
Speaker 1: a pretty good hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're pretty excited, pretty excited.
Speaker 1: Pretty excited. So I raised men raised, you know, two
Speaker 1: big blinds, and then the player who was on the button,
Speaker 1: who was the biggest stack at the table, so almost
Speaker 1: twice what I had.
Speaker 2: And don't don't know who this is.
Speaker 1: No, his his name was Sabuku. So his screen name
Speaker 1: is Ritualistic Suicide by Disembelment. So so that's fun.
Speaker 2: And you're in the hijack. A lot of violent terminology.
Speaker 1: Here, absolutely, I'm in the hijack, and and he is
Speaker 1: on the button and he decides to three bet me
Speaker 1: and he makes it six bitlines. And you know, this
Speaker 1: is already an interesting spot, right because I'm short enough
Speaker 1: that I could fold, but I have a really playable
Speaker 1: hand right, a hand that does really well post flop,
Speaker 1: and and you know it's not it's not a huge
Speaker 1: three bet anyway. It could go either. It can actually
Speaker 1: go anyway. Right, I can if I think he's full
Speaker 1: of shit, I can just shove because I have a
Speaker 1: nice reshove stack. I can fold, there's no shame in
Speaker 1: folding King ten. Or I can call. And I haven't
Speaker 1: run this hand through any sim yet, so I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if what I did was correct or not. But
Speaker 1: I called, and the flop. So at this point, right,
Speaker 1: what is our pot? At this point, our pot is
Speaker 1: fifteen yard blots, yeah, something like that. And the PLoP
Speaker 1: comes seven eight nine, one spade, two clubs, and we
Speaker 1: have King ten of spades yep. So we have an
Speaker 1: open ended straight draw right, seven eight nine ten, and
Speaker 1: we have a back door flush straw. Right, So we're drawing.
Speaker 1: We're drawing to a lot of nutty or second nutty
Speaker 1: type hands, but we don't have anything. We still have
Speaker 1: King high. So I check, which I would do with
Speaker 1: basically all of my hands in this situation when I'm
Speaker 1: out of position, and he checks back, which is interesting, right,
Speaker 1: because it tells me something about the strength of his hand. Right. Also,
Speaker 1: if he has really strong hands, he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: check back that board because it's an incredibly draw heavy board. Right.
Speaker 1: If you have pocket aces, you do not want me
Speaker 1: to see another card, right, You do not want me
Speaker 1: to hit my straight. You do not want me to
Speaker 1: hit my flush like they're you really do not want
Speaker 1: me to get a free card. Right, So he checks
Speaker 1: back and the turn is a queen of clubs. So
Speaker 1: now jack ten has made us straight. And let's remember
Speaker 1: I have a ten in my hand, right, so I
Speaker 1: block the nuts or the second obviously, meaning for lunch
Speaker 1: has come in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, meaning it's hard now harder for him to have
Speaker 3: combinatorically the best possible hand because you have.
Speaker 1: And that's actually not true because he could still have clubs, right,
Speaker 1: he could have one club in his hand. I don't
Speaker 1: think he checks back clubs on the on the flop,
Speaker 1: but he could have a hand with one club. That
Speaker 1: could be that could be drawing very live. But I
Speaker 1: don't think he has two clubs in his hand. And
Speaker 1: I am blocking the straight the not straight. But so
Speaker 1: the queen is actually like not not a great card
Speaker 1: for him when he checks when he checks back, the flop,
Speaker 1: and so I decide to lead. So here I do
Speaker 1: decide to lead, which I would actually do with a
Speaker 1: lot of my flushes, because I have a lot of
Speaker 1: flushes here, right, and and I do have straights here,
Speaker 1: and I don't want and with the ten like I
Speaker 1: could very well have jack ten. Now you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want any more clubs to roll off. So I bet,
Speaker 1: and I bet pretty small. And the reason I bet small,
Speaker 1: by the way, was if you think of the stack sizes,
Speaker 1: I will have a pot size bet left if he
Speaker 1: calls on the river. And so that's a really good
Speaker 1: ratio because I'll be able to shove for full pot
Speaker 1: and I can, by the way, still improve.
Speaker 3: He has some hands that just are gonna give up
Speaker 3: pretty easily there, you know, ace jack without a flushtraw
Speaker 3: or something like that or I don't know if that.
Speaker 1: Podcast For that small Yeah, for that small size, I
Speaker 1: can get a lot of hands that are doing better
Speaker 1: than me right to fold, which is great. And if
Speaker 1: he has a club, right, if he has the ace
Speaker 1: of clubs in his hands, if he has the King
Speaker 1: of club in his hands, he's never folding even to
Speaker 1: a huge bed, right. So so I think that I'm
Speaker 1: not accomplishing that much if I get bigger. And also
Speaker 1: his hands that aren't very happy. I don't think he's
Speaker 1: ever raising me with red aces right or red kings
Speaker 1: because that board is just not a great board for
Speaker 1: him to do that. So he calls and the river
Speaker 1: comes a queen of spades, so pairs of boord So now.
Speaker 2: Seven eight nine queen queen.
Speaker 1: Yep, three clubs, two spades, and so at this point
Speaker 1: I have king high, right, Yeah, I don't have much,
Speaker 1: and the pot is huge, and there's no way if
Speaker 1: I check, he's going to be checking back all of
Speaker 1: his a's highs, like he's going to be so happy
Speaker 1: to check that thing down. But if I bet, you know,
Speaker 1: he might hero call with some pairs. You know, now
Speaker 1: that the queen has paired, he might hero call some hands.
Speaker 1: But if I shove, if I go all in for
Speaker 1: the pot, that's a huge you know, that's a huge
Speaker 1: percentage of his stack too. And if he calls and
Speaker 1: is wrong, that's lights out for his stack. And he's
Speaker 1: the chip leader of the table. He's not the chip
Speaker 1: leader of the tournament, but he's the chip leader of
Speaker 1: the table, and that's a great position to be in.
Speaker 3: So I shove.
Speaker 1: Because you know, after kind of thinking through my options,
Speaker 1: I figured that I can, I can safely do that,
Speaker 1: and I can represent a lot of strong hands that
Speaker 1: he does not have. And by the way, when the
Speaker 1: Queen of Spades and the Queen of Clubs are both
Speaker 1: on the board, it's much less likely that he actually
Speaker 1: hasn't Ace Queen or kin queen because the suited varieties
Speaker 1: are are not there anymore for the ones that have
Speaker 1: backdoor draws.
Speaker 2: If he asked kid Queen, he might even fold it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, So I shoved and the guy so in retrospect,
Speaker 1: shoving into a guy whose screen name is Japanese Ritualistics
Speaker 1: suicide by disemvelopment might not have been my finest people
Speaker 1: reading moment. But so he goes into the tank and
Speaker 1: he starts running down his time bank, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh fuck when they do that, right when they run
Speaker 1: down the time bank like they're calling.
Speaker 2: And then finally we have experience.
Speaker 3: I find like people people like to fold to me
Speaker 3: where they like to fold to you, though I feel
Speaker 3: like and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's probably true. Yeah, but he didn't know who
Speaker 1: I was. So eventually he folds and with that hand,
Speaker 1: I actually get the chip leader of the table and
Speaker 1: that was huge for me. Right, I'm still not chip
Speaker 1: leader of the tournament because all the chips are on
Speaker 1: the other table, but but I now have the blade
Speaker 1: because this bluff was able to get through. And by
Speaker 1: the way, had he called, I would have been out
Speaker 1: right because all of his pairs, even if he had
Speaker 1: pocket deuces, they beat me.
Speaker 2: His highs beat me.
Speaker 1: Basically, I am losing to everything that we get there with.
Speaker 1: And a few hands later, so at this point I
Speaker 1: become the table chip. Later then I lose a few hands.
Speaker 1: So the person to my direct right, so he's the
Speaker 1: small blind when I'm the big blind now covers me
Speaker 1: by a little bit, and a few hands later it
Speaker 1: folds to us and he raises the small blind and
Speaker 1: he raises big. He raises to four x, and I
Speaker 1: happened to have Queen's in the big blind, and I
Speaker 1: just and I at this point, I have thirty five
Speaker 1: big blind something like that, thirty six, and I just
Speaker 1: shove because you know, it puts max pressure on and
Speaker 1: I don't mind just taking down that pot. And he
Speaker 1: calls and he has nine, and that's very unfortunate. For
Speaker 1: him blind versus blind, right, we both have legitimate hands,
Speaker 1: and I hold, and that puts me into i think
Speaker 1: third in chips in the in the tournament, and after that,
Speaker 1: I you know, I went back and forth, but I
Speaker 1: had a big stack and I did not have any
Speaker 1: major losses and was able to eventually, yeah, win the tournament.
Speaker 1: But I think that that was kind of that was
Speaker 1: a that bluff. The fact that bluff went through was crucial.
Speaker 1: And then having that Queen's hand after, you know, a
Speaker 1: few hands later, I think was really important. So one
Speaker 1: of those hands was skilled right the bluff, and the
Speaker 1: other hand was pure luck because you know, it's it
Speaker 1: was lucky for me that he had a legitimate hand
Speaker 1: and that that legitimate hand wasn't kings or races.
Speaker 2: I like nines.
Speaker 1: I like nice too. I like nines too.
Speaker 2: Have you processed it yet? I haven't.
Speaker 1: I was very tired yesterday and I haven't really had
Speaker 1: a chance to let it sink in. But you know,
Speaker 1: it feels really nice. I think it's a big accomplishment
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to be proud of it. God
Speaker 1: damn it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't prove anyway. We're really proud of you, Maria.
Speaker 3: The whole show is dunk in the audience. So congrats, thank.
Speaker 1: You, thank you. I'm playing another event today, Oh jeez.
Speaker 3: Okay, see that's kind of low key, Djen. I feel
Speaker 3: like to like be like people do that, to be
Speaker 3: like I just want a million dollars. I'm gonna jump
Speaker 3: in this eight hundred dollars tournament if I want to
Speaker 3: fuck embrace it.
Speaker 2: Taking a few days off tell you.
Speaker 1: That, Well, well, I'll be taking a few days off
Speaker 1: after this because I'm leaving the lovely state of Nevada
Speaker 1: and going to Miami. So so I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be able to play poker there.
Speaker 2: There is poker Miami, I'll have you know.
Speaker 1: There is poker in Miami. But I will not be
Speaker 1: playing poker in Miami.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, congrets for me, and let's talk about nuclear war.
Speaker 1: Yeah, after the break, nuclear war and other fun things.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So we are recording this on Tuesday, October fifteenth, and
Speaker 1: this is the week after all of the Nobel Prizes
Speaker 1: were awarded, and the one I want to talk about today, Nate, was,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the biggest Nobel prizes that is
Speaker 1: often could have awarded to make some sort of a statement.
Speaker 1: And this is the Nobel Peace Prize, and this year
Speaker 1: it went to an organization called Nihon Hidankyo, which is
Speaker 1: an organization that was found in nineteen fifty six by
Speaker 1: survivors of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So
Speaker 1: these are the Hibakusha that's the Japanese word for survivors,
Speaker 1: and so ever since it's been founded, they've been working
Speaker 1: towards a world basically where nuclear deterns, a strong nuclear disarmament,
Speaker 1: and they've been trying to kind of enforce this nuclear
Speaker 1: taboo right that you cannot use nuclear weapons. And so
Speaker 1: it means something that after all this time, that they
Speaker 1: were awarded the Nobel Prize this year, And so I
Speaker 1: want to first I'd love to hear your reaction. Then
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about, you know, why now and
Speaker 1: why it's so important now that you know, these survivors
Speaker 1: are in their eighties and there aren't very many of
Speaker 1: them left, why it's so important that a group like
Speaker 1: this actually be honored and what they're fighting for kind
Speaker 1: of be brought to the public consciousness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was an interesting set of Nobel Prizes in general.
Speaker 3: There were some ai related words too.
Speaker 2: Look, I think you kind of.
Speaker 3: Answered the question, which is that you're losing the generational
Speaker 3: memory the only time that nuclear weapons were used in combat,
Speaker 3: which is by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Speaker 2: And you know.
Speaker 3: People at the time van Neuman, who was one of
Speaker 3: the kind of founders of game theory and worked on
Speaker 3: a Manhattan project, they all kind of assume we're all
Speaker 3: going to die in like twenty or thirty years. You know,
Speaker 3: a nuclear attack would be very bad. The bombs have
Speaker 3: only gotten more powerful. You know, what was it where
Speaker 3: during the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union were,
Speaker 3: you know, developing tens of thousands of these. In fact,
Speaker 3: some people like von Neumann kind of half seriously proposed
Speaker 3: a preemptive strike on the USSR to prevent them from
Speaker 3: having the bomb. You know, other people wanted to share
Speaker 3: the technology more widely, but it seemed like a very
Speaker 3: dangerous thing. And if you had asked somebody what are
Speaker 3: the odds this would be the last nuclear usage for
Speaker 3: the next seventy nine years, I'm not sure what odds
Speaker 3: it would have given you. Right in the Cuban missile crisis,
Speaker 3: Kennedy thought that we had between one and three and
Speaker 3: one and two, so thirty three to fifty percent chance
Speaker 3: of that conflict turning nuclear.
Speaker 2: There have been accidents before. I mean, the whole concept
Speaker 2: is a little.
Speaker 3: Bit screwy, right, well, because like, if you're unwilling to
Speaker 3: use weapons, then they don't create a current, right, But
Speaker 3: if you are willing to use them, then that's a
Speaker 3: real risk, and then the risk of accidents. You know,
Speaker 3: Thomas Shelling talked about the threat that leaves something to chance.
Speaker 1: To chance yet and by the way, Thomas Shelling also
Speaker 1: won a Nobel Prize for that work. So since we're
Speaker 1: talking about Nobel prizes, let's let's call that out yep.
Speaker 3: So yeah, look, you know there is a lot of
Speaker 3: discussion now, including on the show in a couple of
Speaker 3: segments on P doom, probability of doom, really bad shit happening,
Speaker 3: everyone blowing up because of runaway misalign artificial intelligence. You know,
Speaker 3: nuclear war risk was the original P doom in the
Speaker 3: sense that it was the first technology that had the
Speaker 3: potential to wipe out all of civilization potentially a threshold
Speaker 3: moment that the world kind of can't undo anymore. And
Speaker 3: I wonder I people have gotten a little bit complacent
Speaker 3: about the risk. The number of nuclear states is proliferating.
Speaker 3: You know, North Korea, you know, I know who officially
Speaker 3: says they have what, but you know, North Korea has
Speaker 3: the bomb. Now, maybe not the best bombs, but you know,
Speaker 3: probably got a couple of bombs, but he bomb. Iran
Speaker 3: has been trying to develop nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Speaker 3: That's a hot bit obviously of problems right now. And
Speaker 3: Israel has this practice of strategic ambiguity, so if you
Speaker 3: ask them, they'll say, ah, nuclear weapons, we never heard
Speaker 3: of them. But clearly part of their deterrence is based
Speaker 3: on the ultimate threat that they might have. And Ukraine, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, one fortunate thing about the theater
Speaker 3: of conflict in Ukraine is that if you were to
Speaker 3: have a nuclear weapon detonated, their dirty bomb or whatever,
Speaker 3: it would potentially blow if trailing winds are east into Russia,
Speaker 3: it would create fallout contamination over Russia. So it's a
Speaker 3: little bit suicidal to do that potentially. Yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 3: this shit's serious.
Speaker 1: It is serious. And by the way, kind of the
Speaker 1: fallowout risk to Russia, we saw that happen during Chernobyl, right,
Speaker 1: like it depends on what the wind conditions are. But
Speaker 1: that was not a nuclear bomb. That was just a
Speaker 1: that was just an accident, and that is absolutely a
Speaker 1: very real thing. Yeah, this shit is really really serious.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that one of the really
Speaker 1: important things that the Noble Committee tried to do was
Speaker 1: kind of try to re up this historic memory that's
Speaker 1: dying out, because people who are survivors of World War
Speaker 1: Two in general, you know, are dying, right. We're living
Speaker 1: with kind of the the end of that generation. And
Speaker 1: you see, and I think that this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is a trend all over the world. It's not
Speaker 1: just kind of nuclear threat. But you see people who
Speaker 1: are like, oh, well, maybe the Holocaust never even happened, right,
Speaker 1: like the Holocaust denihilism. People are like, oh, prove it, right,
Speaker 1: prove that this happened. Oh it wasn't so bad. Like
Speaker 1: people forgetting like what an absolute horror this was. And
Speaker 1: now you have Vladimir Putin the threatening saying, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: like I want to make this nuclear threat real. And
Speaker 1: what people don't, you know, tend to like gloss over
Speaker 1: and Thomas Shelling's work is that, you know, in his
Speaker 1: very famous example of the game of chicken, right, where
Speaker 1: you have two cars going head to head right, and
Speaker 1: you have to be the second. You have to not
Speaker 1: swerve right, you want the other guy to swerve. That's
Speaker 1: the only way that you win. He says that, you know,
Speaker 1: the way that you win is you rip out your
Speaker 1: steering wheel and you throw it out the window. Because
Speaker 1: that's a credible commitment. Now they know, right, you can't
Speaker 1: swerve like there's not so they have to. But what
Speaker 1: happens if both people do that at the exact same
Speaker 1: time and throw their steering wheels out the window? They die?
Speaker 3: Right, And it's a lot of Doctor Strangelove too, yeah,
Speaker 3: which is, according to some experts, a parody of Vnoyman.
Speaker 2: But so yeah.
Speaker 3: What they wanted was a machine that would automatically retaliate
Speaker 3: if it detected an attack. Because even if you therefore
Speaker 3: incapacitate the state, this is the one out to mutual
Speaker 3: assured destruction.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: If you can destroy all their facilities before they have
Speaker 3: answer retally, before they can decide, then.
Speaker 2: You can do a first strike.
Speaker 3: Right. This is partly why there are so many different
Speaker 3: nuclear triad, air, sea, space, et cetera. You want to
Speaker 3: make it impossible to do it incapacitation strike. So yeah,
Speaker 3: the doomsday machine would have launched back automatically, and so
Speaker 3: you know, look, I mean the one thing I'll say
Speaker 3: is like it's another example of where game theory kind
Speaker 3: of has worked pretty well in the real world. I
Speaker 3: think there's also a lot of there's also a lot
Speaker 3: of back channeling. I think with this stuff, it's a
Speaker 3: very coordinated dance about like what exactly are you saying,
Speaker 3: which maybe it should make you feel better, is that, like,
Speaker 3: you know, there are the red.
Speaker 2: Phone, so to speak.
Speaker 3: I don't know if there's literally a red phone anymore, right,
Speaker 3: but like all these things exist for a reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I do want to you know, there was
Speaker 1: something else that you said, which I think is important,
Speaker 1: and I'll so kind of the other element of the
Speaker 1: Doctor strangel Of thing is that accidents happen, right, and
Speaker 1: if you don't have a human on the other side.
Speaker 1: And this actually this is where also that p doomes
Speaker 1: of nuclear war and AI kind of are dovetailing, right,
Speaker 1: and one feeds into the other as you kind of
Speaker 1: seed control automation decisions, et cetera. I want to just
Speaker 1: shout out Stanislav Petrov, who was a lieutenant colonel in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Air Defense and he basically single handedly prevented
Speaker 1: nuclear war in nineteen eighty three when there was a
Speaker 1: false signal that the US was attacking the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: and his decision, he decided, you know, he couldn't reach anyone,
Speaker 1: so like, it's plausible that there could have been some
Speaker 1: sort of retaliatory strike, and he decided that this was
Speaker 1: a mistake, that this was there was not actually a strike,
Speaker 1: and he made the decision to cancel the launch and
Speaker 1: to not launch nuclear weapons. Now he was right, right,
Speaker 1: it was actually a glitch. There was no nuclear attack
Speaker 1: against the Soviet Union. But now imagine that it was
Speaker 1: someone else, right, and imagine that there was someone who
Speaker 1: didn't kind of have the guts to make that sort
Speaker 1: of decision, or imagine that it was an AI And we,
Speaker 1: you know, we we're living in a very different world,
Speaker 1: or not living in any world, because then Soviet Union
Speaker 1: actually physically launches nuclear weapons. Obviously, then the United States
Speaker 1: retaliate's and you know, I don't think even uh yeah,
Speaker 1: cluster fuck scenes a little bit two week of a
Speaker 1: phrase for that, But we're not living in a very
Speaker 1: happy place, and I think that it's really important to
Speaker 1: remember moments like that as well, as we think about
Speaker 1: p doom, as we think about nuclear determs, as we
Speaker 1: think about the taboo on using nuclear weapons. These are
Speaker 1: all really important questions, and the world is forgetting and
Speaker 1: not just forgetting, but saying, oh fuck it. You know,
Speaker 1: there are lots of things going on right now that
Speaker 1: make it a pretty dangerous moment. So so I think
Speaker 1: that it's really crucial to have these conversations and to
Speaker 1: try to employ game theory so that we don't all
Speaker 1: you kill kill each other.
Speaker 2: Do you think Trump would increase or decrease a chance
Speaker 2: of a nuclear conflict.
Speaker 1: I think that's a I'm not sure. I think that
Speaker 1: he would probably. It's funny because I think back to Khrushchev, right,
Speaker 1: We've talked about the Cuban missile crisis, and I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that Kennedy thought that the risk
Speaker 1: of nuclear war was so high was because Khrushchev was
Speaker 1: fucking insane, like people he could he didn't you know,
Speaker 1: people didn't know what might happen, and that was but
Speaker 1: that was always kind of part of it. Wasn't just him,
Speaker 1: right all of the Soviet leaders. They tried to cultivate
Speaker 1: that insanity on purpose, because if I'm crazy and you
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm capable of, then you have to
Speaker 1: tread carefully. And I think Trump is crazy in that sense, right,
Speaker 1: you don't know what he's capable of. I think he's
Speaker 1: much more capable of using nuclear weapons than Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: would be, or basically than anyone else. But I don't
Speaker 1: know if having him in power would deter other countries
Speaker 1: because they're scared of him. So I think on the
Speaker 1: margin it would probably my pedom would probably go up.
Speaker 1: So do you have a do you have a point
Speaker 1: of view?
Speaker 3: I think he might lower it slightly, interesting because I
Speaker 3: think he he does create a little bit more of
Speaker 3: a deterrent potentially. I don't think he's I don't think
Speaker 3: he's warmongering, actually, right, I think he's crazy in lots
Speaker 3: of ways. I don't think that's the way in which
Speaker 3: she used crazy, And yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just don't know that we know the ways
Speaker 1: in which he is crazy. And he's you know, and
Speaker 1: he's getting on in years, and I think that there
Speaker 1: is you know, and he's ranting. I think there is
Speaker 1: some kind of threat to personality change that comes with
Speaker 1: dimension and age and all of these things. So I
Speaker 1: just don't know. Right This is not something where I
Speaker 1: can give you a clear cut answer, as I've said,
Speaker 1: but I think it's interesting to consider, and I think
Speaker 1: that in general, the threat of nuclear war has probably
Speaker 1: gone up in much more in the last few years
Speaker 1: that it has in a very long time.
Speaker 3: Speaking of Trump, you want to talk a little bit
Speaker 3: of politics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do that after the break. Name all right,
Speaker 1: last time we spoke last week, Nate, you said that
Speaker 1: there really hadn't been many quality polls that had come out.
Speaker 1: This was kind of the first. That was the first
Speaker 1: week after the vice presidential debate, which you know what
Speaker 1: vice presidential debate. I think at this point everyone forgot
Speaker 1: that that even happened. But there have been some more
Speaker 1: higher quality polls that have come out in the intrum.
Speaker 1: So so let's let's talk through it, and let's talk
Speaker 1: through kind of the current state of the election.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're taping this FI on Tuesday, October fifteenth.
Speaker 3: I have not run the model update for the day.
Speaker 3: I'm going to do that as soon as we get
Speaker 3: a break Harris as a last night's model run. Yes,
Speaker 3: the afternoons fifty chance of winning Trump at forty eight
Speaker 3: point seven up to one hundred, because there's an zero
Speaker 3: point three percent chance of a tie. I wonder with
Speaker 3: every update if Harris is going to dip under fifty percent, Like,
Speaker 3: not that it really matter. It's not that forty nine
Speaker 3: versus fifty one or magically that different. But you know,
Speaker 3: you've seen you've had a slightly good week of polling
Speaker 3: for for Trump, right where this two point lead that
Speaker 3: Harris had and kind of Michigan, pennsylvani Wisconsin's kind of
Speaker 3: turned into like a one point lead or a five
Speaker 3: tenths of a point lead, and that's just not a
Speaker 3: very safe position. But like all seven of the closest
Speaker 3: states remain within a point, and you know, and sub level,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what more there is to be sad
Speaker 3: apart from like it seems like we're locked into like
Speaker 3: a very close election where you won't know, we won't
Speaker 3: know much in the morning, we may not know much
Speaker 3: in the evening. I mean, look, there is a chance
Speaker 3: that the polls are all off in the same direction,
Speaker 3: so uncertain is not quite the same thing as guaranteeing
Speaker 3: a close election.
Speaker 2: But it you know, I mean, keep listening to podcast
Speaker 2: folks and.
Speaker 3: Reading the newsletter, but like, like, how much more are
Speaker 3: you learning from the polls at this point?
Speaker 2: All they're really saying is.
Speaker 3: Just it's just the average of the past two elections anyway, right,
Speaker 3: So I'm not sure we're learning all that much.
Speaker 1: I have a question for you know, so relatively good
Speaker 1: week of calling for Trump, Harris still ahead in your model,
Speaker 1: why does polymarket currently have Trump at fifty eight percent
Speaker 1: to Harris's forty one percent. That's a huge Like, that's
Speaker 1: a huge difference. What's going on?
Speaker 3: So what you had last week was some whale activity?
Speaker 3: You know, what makes a gambling world work? Are whales?
Speaker 3: Whales are rich people who are degenerates, often bad at
Speaker 3: their chosen craft, don't. I mean the term whales a
Speaker 3: little bit ambiguous, Like in crypto at refers to someone
Speaker 3: who who was potentially a smart, very wealthy trader, but
Speaker 3: generally the connotation is that you're a degenerate gambler who
Speaker 3: makes a lot of money for the casinos or for
Speaker 3: the house. So Elon Musk last week began tweeting about Polymarket,
Speaker 3: where I should run people that I paid advisor and
Speaker 3: that moved the numbers without any real underlying justification from
Speaker 3: the polling data that day. And you can tell because
Speaker 3: there are a couple of things that were unusual. One
Speaker 3: was that you didn't actually see any shift in the
Speaker 3: popular vote contract. It was just the electoral college, the
Speaker 3: higher profile one. But a smart trader would be looking
Speaker 3: if there's a shift toward Trump, that would manifest itself
Speaker 3: in all the markets, and not just the electoral College
Speaker 3: overall market. But it's a lot of activity from a
Speaker 3: relatively small number of traders. Now, since then, our model
Speaker 3: and other models, more actually our model than others, have
Speaker 3: shifted a bit toward Trump. Right, So it's like fifty
Speaker 3: one percent. I mean it had been as high as
Speaker 3: fifty eight percent for Harris in September twenty seventh. So
Speaker 3: Trump has gained a little bit. But there's also this
Speaker 3: like disproportionate amount of nervous panic among Democrats. They kind
Speaker 3: of feel like Kamala Harris has lost the plot, and
Speaker 3: Democrats are perpetually worried anyway, although maybe they should be, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, like you know, look, if it's fifty to fifty,
Speaker 3: then you know, a coin flip for very high stakes
Speaker 3: is more than non degenerate gamblers usually want to undertake
Speaker 3: risk wise, and there's.
Speaker 2: No safe path for either candidate anymore.
Speaker 3: There's not going to be any security unless there's some
Speaker 3: really surprising development, and we're running out of time for
Speaker 3: that to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, it's clear that the Democrats are
Speaker 1: really taking this seriously. You have former President Barack Obama
Speaker 1: campaigning for Kamalla Harrison Pennsylvania. Maybe they're now maybe maybe
Speaker 1: they're no regretting the decision to not have Shiro on
Speaker 1: the ticket because because they're Yeah, we've already we've we've
Speaker 1: talked about this ad nauseum. But you know, they're trying,
Speaker 1: they're trying to do everything they can, like Obama is
Speaker 1: one of their big guns, and we can you know,
Speaker 1: this is another segment, but we can talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about like whether you know his messaging is effective,
Speaker 1: like what's happening. But I think there is some panic there.
Speaker 1: There's some panic that she's losing the black vote, and like.
Speaker 3: All of these things, losing doing less well. So the
Speaker 3: New York Times pool, Trump is yes, fifteen percent of
Speaker 3: the Black vote, fairly undecided's among black voters, but doing
Speaker 3: less well the Democrat typically does.
Speaker 1: Yes, that was that was very poorly stated on my
Speaker 1: on my side, yes, not losing the black vote, but
Speaker 1: doing relatively less well. And in states like Pennsylvania, every
Speaker 1: single point matters, right, Like we have talked about this
Speaker 1: over and over, like this is a close election. Everything matters,
Speaker 1: Undecided voters matter, and yeah, people are clearly taking it seriously.
Speaker 1: And you know, on the one hand, you have Elon
Speaker 1: Musk jumping up and down on stage. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: you have Barack Obama.
Speaker 3: Good, I know, man, I know, he's got a little
Speaker 3: high off of fumes.
Speaker 2: Their good old Eelane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like don't you understand that politics kind of cringe,
Speaker 3: you know anyway, But like I think people tend to
Speaker 3: read these things like, oh, Kamala Harris is going on,
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan, she must be desperate. It's like, well, she
Speaker 3: probably should have been doing more of this all a
Speaker 3: long right kind of yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and the All In podcast right after Trump
Speaker 1: went on, like she should have absolutely gone on, Like
Speaker 1: there are big media appearances that like she should have
Speaker 1: absolutely done earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, people read this as only must be desperate.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, I don't know. I mean, you're supposed
Speaker 3: to do campaigning, right, Uh, that's a normal thing that
Speaker 3: you do. I think they had a period where they
Speaker 3: just thought they'd ride the Charlie XCX rat summer Magic
Speaker 3: vibes carpet ride straight to the White House.
Speaker 2: And that's not how it usually it works.
Speaker 3: I mean, she's at an electoral college disadvantage and and
Speaker 3: you know, Trump throws a lot of shit out there.
Speaker 3: You know, you've had much more outspoken support for Trump
Speaker 3: among certain groups of voters. The vibes are different. I
Speaker 3: think if you read kind of some of the backstory
Speaker 3: of the part of Silicon Valley, it's not all Silicon Valley.
Speaker 3: It's probably isn't most right, but you know, part of
Speaker 3: what people have been trying to do in Silicon Valley
Speaker 3: is to say it's okay to openly support Trump and
Speaker 3: that will create a permission structure for others to support
Speaker 3: him too. And so, you know, Twitter is a very
Speaker 3: different platform than it was four years ago.
Speaker 2: The mood is different.
Speaker 3: I think, ironically, the fact that people seem like a
Speaker 3: little bit less pissed off as they were in twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: maybe democrats like actually want apocalyptic thinking where people are like, okay,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I you know, look, I think one feminal
Speaker 3: problem democrats have is it's hard to say that every
Speaker 3: election is the most important election of all time without
Speaker 3: voters starting to wonder if you just always say that.
Speaker 1: Yep. And on that note, let's see, let's see what
Speaker 1: happens next week, because this is one of the most
Speaker 1: important elections of all time, as we've talked about you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about pe Doo, and we've talked about you know,
Speaker 1: this is going to matter for a lot of different things.
Speaker 1: And yeah, let's just see what the updates show next week.
Speaker 1: And Elon Musk, please please stop making us watch you
Speaker 1: jump up and down on stages. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: That's a personal plea from one of the co hosts
Speaker 1: of Risky Business.
Speaker 2: Risky Business is hosted by me Nate Silver and.
Speaker 1: Me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3: The show was a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our associate producer
Speaker 3: is Gabriel Hunter Cheen. Our engineer is Sarah Bruger. Our
Speaker 3: executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
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