Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.
Speaker 2: I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3: And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 2: Today on the show, Nate, we're going to start by
Speaker 2: talking about brackets. I don't sound very excited because I'm
Speaker 2: not doing well, but we'll do a full catch up
Speaker 2: there and talk also a little bit about free speech,
Speaker 2: what's going on right now in college campuses, and then
Speaker 2: go into twenty three and meters and whether it's a
Speaker 2: good idea to send your ganic and data to a
Speaker 2: private company. Tough one, tough one, Hey, tough one. And
Speaker 2: then finally, let's talk about how we value our time.
Speaker 2: So you know, how do you make decisions that trade
Speaker 2: off time against other things? How do you actually think
Speaker 2: about that? Let's get into it with some march madness, Nate,
Speaker 2: I have watched more basketball in the last week than
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: I have or something.
Speaker 2: No, I've actually watched multiple games. I've watched multiple games
Speaker 2: because I was first rooting for Tennessee. You know, I
Speaker 2: was anti sweating Florida. There were so many games that
Speaker 2: just did not go way. I have quite a chat
Speaker 2: going with Monty who if people were not listening to
Speaker 2: our show. A few weeks ago, Monty McNair helped me
Speaker 2: with my brackets, and on Saturday I texted him and said,
Speaker 2: I'm anti sweating Florida hard, to which he said, we've
Speaker 2: made you a college basketball junkie, given how often I
Speaker 2: am texting him now, And I said no, I just
Speaker 2: I said, ha ha ha, We've got to beat Nate
Speaker 2: and he said, for sure, this would help, and then
Speaker 2: Florida made a comeback.
Speaker 3: So you need are you drawing?
Speaker 1: No? I need Duke to win.
Speaker 2: Oh, if Duke wins, I win, I'm not drawing dead.
Speaker 3: I think I fucked up the whole game theory because
Speaker 3: I should have just picked Dukes if I was going
Speaker 3: to be ahead, and I out psyched myself. So yeah, anyway, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm already pretty anti Duke, justin general in life and
Speaker 3: also in some of my real sports tie way, you
Speaker 3: want a little you went a little tidbit into like
Speaker 3: the sports betting, the sports betting.
Speaker 1: Life, right, Yeah, it's dark always so far.
Speaker 3: I bet Let me see here, I have bet one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty units on the NCAA tournament. Both the
Speaker 3: men and the women were equal opportunity here, and I'm
Speaker 3: ahead by zero point six. Oh wow, this is yeah,
Speaker 3: this is how it often goes where but you're ahead,
Speaker 3: which is better than ninety eight percent of people. I
Speaker 3: would imagine we would really like it if Houston wins.
Speaker 3: We would like it if Florida went, both for our
Speaker 3: bracket and for my old bets. I mean, like, if
Speaker 3: this South Carolina win and win, so that happens, we
Speaker 3: end up underwater probably.
Speaker 2: Well, I would like Duke to win. I am now
Speaker 2: one hundred percent on Duke. I you know, it's so funny.
Speaker 2: This is, as I told Monty, this is why I
Speaker 2: do not watch sports normally. It is wild because Florida
Speaker 2: so nate because you have Florida winning. I was anti
Speaker 2: sweating them right because they were behind in that game
Speaker 2: and it looked like they might lose, which would be
Speaker 2: great because I need Florida to not win along with
Speaker 2: Duke winning. And I just had to say, this is
Speaker 2: why I don't watch sports, to which you said it's
Speaker 2: an emotional roller coaster, which it really is, but we
Speaker 2: are still alive, and it does They'll make it a
Speaker 2: lot more fun to be sweating anti sweating. It's kind
Speaker 2: of like poker, right when I know the people playing.
Speaker 2: It's always fun when I like people to root for,
Speaker 2: and it's also really really fun when I dislike someone
Speaker 2: and I'm.
Speaker 1: Just actively.
Speaker 2: I do not answer that on a public podcast that
Speaker 2: is being listened to by tens of thousands of people.
Speaker 3: Maybe a gender and a nationality that doesn't really narrow
Speaker 3: it less, like Slovenian or something.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the people. I can't give you a nationality,
Speaker 2: but my mail.
Speaker 1: Okay, thanks, thanks mail. Oh okay.
Speaker 2: One of the people I most dislike is male and
Speaker 2: uh oh fuck no that that that's gonna that's gonna error.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be mean. I I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be mean, but I think some
Speaker 2: of these people, oh male an American. Here we go,
Speaker 2: I know one of the people.
Speaker 3: I'm you're not allowed to give an answer.
Speaker 1: There you go, but it's true to you.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, But.
Speaker 2: It's always it's always very fun to anti sweat as well.
Speaker 2: That's that's mean of me, isn't it.
Speaker 3: No, That's how we get our pleasure in life. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's why people, this is why humans are human beings. Right.
Speaker 3: We fight for honor, we fight to the death, you know,
Speaker 3: and the people in charge of country also seem to
Speaker 3: be fueled by grievance. I don't know if we want
Speaker 3: to talk about politics or net.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think the one thing that
Speaker 2: I would like to talk about, just briefly, because I
Speaker 2: think it's really important, is what's happening right now with
Speaker 2: you know, free speech in this country and with how
Speaker 2: college's universities are reacting to pressure from Trump. Not just universities,
Speaker 2: by the way, this is happening everywhere law firms. You know,
Speaker 2: there's just this big muzzling where where people are just
Speaker 2: caving left and right. But one of the things that,
Speaker 2: you know, it's very personal to me because first, my
Speaker 2: graduate alma mater, Columbia University, just completely cave to Trump,
Speaker 2: making me, frankly, just very upset that I went there,
Speaker 2: like kind of embarrassed that I have a Columbia degree
Speaker 2: by how it handled this whole thing. And now there
Speaker 2: was a threat made against my undergraduate alma mater, Harvard,
Speaker 2: to withdraw nine billion dollars worth of funding, and we
Speaker 2: got this lovely email from the Harvard president and other
Speaker 2: people basically saying all of the ways that they're going
Speaker 2: to give in to the Trump demands before he's even
Speaker 2: made anything so that the funding is not cut. And
Speaker 2: the Crimson, by the way, the Harvard Crimson, which is
Speaker 2: the Harvard student newspaper, ran an editorial by students last
Speaker 2: week which was like, you can't cave in, right, you
Speaker 2: need to stand up for academic integrity, for free speech.
Speaker 2: And now the Harvard administration's like, yeah, you know, we're
Speaker 2: just going to quietly and meekly do this thing. And
Speaker 2: to me, if you're looking at this kind of through
Speaker 2: a game theory lens, right, everyone is showing themselves to
Speaker 2: be completely risk intolerant, like knits to the twentieth twenty
Speaker 2: millionth degree that they are just saying, we're going to
Speaker 2: cover our asses. We're not going to speak out in solidarity,
Speaker 2: we're not going to do anything. We just want to
Speaker 2: protect ourselves right now. And that's incredibly shortsighted, I think,
Speaker 2: because this is not a single iteration game. This is
Speaker 2: going to be a repeat game. And if you give
Speaker 2: in right now, you know, what are you doing right?
Speaker 2: What is happening to your ability to take risks in
Speaker 2: the future, to research, to just everything. And I'm looking
Speaker 2: at this and I'm saying, you guys, like, you really
Speaker 2: need to speak up and stand up to this. Harvard
Speaker 2: can afford to, right. I realize that billions are a lot,
Speaker 2: but Harvard has the second largest endowment.
Speaker 3: In the world two billion dollars three billions sorry ms
Speaker 3: billion here there.
Speaker 2: This is, I mean, this is what it's there for,
Speaker 2: right to protect academic freedom and the future of the
Speaker 2: research and the work that you do. So if Harvard
Speaker 2: is caving, if Columbia is caving, there's just no future
Speaker 2: for the rest of it. And we have to remember
Speaker 2: that this is where some of our most important research, ideas,
Speaker 2: just everything come from. And it's just it's also we
Speaker 2: don't even have to talk about how, you know, hypocritical.
Speaker 2: It is that Trump was saying that he was going
Speaker 2: to be supporting free speech and now this is happening.
Speaker 2: But I think we can could have predicted that. But anyway,
Speaker 2: I think it's a very scary response because this is
Speaker 2: you know, shutting up, being quiet, being meek, not taking
Speaker 2: risks at this point, not speaking out is how we
Speaker 2: go down a very dark path. And I think that
Speaker 2: people will be rewarded for taking risks right now, but
Speaker 2: they don't think of it that way. Right It's a
Speaker 2: cover my ass immediately type of reaction, which, yeah, which
Speaker 2: I think is the wrong way of looking at it.
Speaker 3: You know, I forgot to pack the world's tiny oft
Speaker 3: file in in my luggage. But like I, out of
Speaker 3: all things Trump is doing, going after the Ivy League
Speaker 3: universes is one of the things I'm most sympathetic too,
Speaker 3: and where we probably have an audience that over your
Speaker 3: next is. But I think for years these universes and
Speaker 3: there are exceptions. I would think that my elemmentar Eativers
Speaker 3: of Chicago is one of them. But like these universes
Speaker 3: have lit a culture of free speech in road, they
Speaker 3: have let their at it's become politicized, I think, in
Speaker 3: one direction towards a certain type of lectning behavior, and
Speaker 3: they after this though they were immune from public backlash,
Speaker 3: and believe me, Harvard is more immune from it than
Speaker 3: state schools, for example. But I think there's a reason
Speaker 3: why Trump is going after these schools and not the
Speaker 3: University of Texas, the University of Maryland or things like that.
Speaker 3: So I look, I mean, I think they should tap
Speaker 3: any endowment and tell Trump to to fuck off, Like
Speaker 3: what's it? What's it for?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: But I don't know, I don't want to say that,
Speaker 3: like I am questioning the utility of like do Ivy
Speaker 3: League schools make America better? I'm not sure about that.
Speaker 2: Actually, well, I think that I think that they do
Speaker 2: in the sense of, you know, the research that they
Speaker 2: the research conduct is but but where else, like that's
Speaker 2: you know, where the cutting edge research is happening, not
Speaker 2: just Ivy leagues obviously, but in the universities. It's happening
Speaker 2: in those laboratories. It's happening in those graduate departments. That's
Speaker 2: where all of the scientific innovation is happening. Those ideas
Speaker 2: are not coming from the private sector like that's economics
Speaker 2: one oh one, right, that they will not fund them
Speaker 2: until the research is at a certain stage then they
Speaker 2: will fund them. But that research, those idea explorations that.
Speaker 3: Happens within that happens.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm talking about I'm talking about other like basic science,
Speaker 2: not tech, that all happens in academia. So so I
Speaker 2: think that the value here is absolutely enormous. And I
Speaker 2: actually hate so obviously I'm Jewish, very sensitive to anti
Speaker 2: Semitism stuff, but I hate that he's using that as
Speaker 2: kind of to make people be like, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we're combating anti semitism. It's not that bad. No, like
Speaker 2: this has nothing to do with anti semitism, because he
Speaker 2: has plenty of very anti Semitic policies.
Speaker 1: He's using that.
Speaker 2: As a cover to basically assert his will and say that,
Speaker 2: you know that I can dictate what universities can and
Speaker 2: can't do. Academia is not perfect, far from perfect. We've
Speaker 2: talked about this before. It needs to be reformed. But
Speaker 2: Paul Weiss, like, what the fuck?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: You have this happening, This muzzling people, just backing down
Speaker 2: and not saying anything, happening everywhere you know, law firms,
Speaker 2: and it's just to me, that's that's a very scary
Speaker 2: precedent to set. I just read that the former head
Speaker 2: of Doctors Without Borders had her presentation. I think it
Speaker 2: was at NYU canceled for being anti government because she
Speaker 2: was going to be talking about USAID cuts. Like that's
Speaker 2: fucked up, right, Like that that kind of thing is
Speaker 2: is totally fucked up, and people are scared. And the
Speaker 2: moment that you're the most scared is when you actually
Speaker 2: should start taking these risks and protesting because it's only
Speaker 2: going to get worse. And you know, let's just look
Speaker 2: at the big picture as opposed to like the nitty
Speaker 2: gritty and say that this is not good. The fact
Speaker 2: that Columbia kept capitulated is not good, setting a horrible precedent,
Speaker 2: and I think it makes it even more important for
Speaker 2: places like Harvard to say fuck you, and the fact
Speaker 2: that they haven't is not good.
Speaker 3: I'm not as sure that it's only going to get worse.
Speaker 3: Trump is probably going to keep getting more unpopular, particularly
Speaker 3: if the economy suffers due to I mean, we're like, oh,
Speaker 3: we won the election on inflation, so let's make cars
Speaker 3: more extensive like that seems like a pretty stupid idea,
Speaker 3: Maria from a risk management standpoint, and.
Speaker 1: Okay, paying higher prices night Americans will be.
Speaker 3: Okay, investors are longer buy it. Like GM stock was
Speaker 3: off quite a bit more than some of the four manufacturers.
Speaker 3: Tesla's stock was off quite a bit. But you know,
Speaker 3: I think Trump has been smart in the tactical sense
Speaker 3: of trying to pack a lot in at the start.
Speaker 3: When they adamare political capital, they're probably going to lose
Speaker 3: political capital over time, and when they're resistance, I mean
Speaker 3: that both kind of figurably and literally is kind of
Speaker 3: like confused and it's combobulated. Look, there are lovers in
Speaker 3: the system. The courts can fight back, people can protest.
Speaker 3: We have a decentralized system of government in which states
Speaker 3: and localities have a lot of power. Potentially their midterm
Speaker 3: elections coming up. There are special elections increening one or
Speaker 3: to today in Florida, re seats that the jup will
Speaker 3: probably hold, but much closer than you would typically expect it.
Speaker 3: If there's a huge surprise, then you know, and then
Speaker 3: within the realm of remote possibility, I suppose. And by
Speaker 3: the way, Democrats having well, I mean, look the racing
Speaker 3: it's kind of more competitive, probably was in upstate New York,
Speaker 3: but I mean stathetic. Harvard, right, by the way, is
Speaker 3: no longer being nominated to the UN because Trump is
Speaker 3: afraid of nominating a someone who in a district he
Speaker 3: won by twenty one points because it might cut their
Speaker 3: majority too much. Right, so you know, so there is
Speaker 3: resistance elon Musk, you see, even more in popular than Trump.
Speaker 3: The point is not lost though that like when you
Speaker 3: create a precedent that you can cave and you saw,
Speaker 3: by the way, this happened with with like Canada and
Speaker 3: Mexico to some degree on tariffs. At first, the conservatives
Speaker 3: in Canada were like, Okay, well, I just give you
Speaker 3: this little tribune, right and then and their voters got
Speaker 3: furious at them, right.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Also, some of the Harvard donors would be like, fuck you, Harvard.
Speaker 3: I'm not if you could pitch like Trump, then I'm
Speaker 3: not doing any of you anymore. So You're gonna cost you
Speaker 3: money either way. And they have fifty two million dollars
Speaker 3: to burn, billion dollars to burn, and so you know, again,
Speaker 3: I'm not that I'm not that sympathetic, but I think
Speaker 3: probably probably the worst hight paying job in the country
Speaker 3: would be president of a major research IVY League university
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we know that the Columbia president has resigned again,
Speaker 2: and yeah, this this is definitely an unprecedented kind of
Speaker 2: assault on a lot in a lot of in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Let's see how it goes. Nate.
Speaker 2: I hope that your optimism is warranted. I'm much more pessimistic.
Speaker 2: I think it is going to get worse before it
Speaker 2: gets better. If it gets better.
Speaker 3: I'm not actually optimistic. I don't think about the picture
Speaker 3: of the country. I mean, you know, look, Trump does
Speaker 3: things and then the courts react. But I do think
Speaker 3: you have to recognize though, that to some extent they
Speaker 3: are signing from a position of weakness, right, They're not.
Speaker 3: I mean, although even here let me qualify that a bit.
Speaker 3: It is also true that like these I of the universes,
Speaker 3: like I said, are unsympathetic targets, right, And the reason
Speaker 3: why they kind of frame it around anti Semitism is
Speaker 3: because that's an issue that like does capture some of
Speaker 3: the center. But George, people were pissed off about the
Speaker 3: congressional hearings in twenty twenty three, for example, the three
Speaker 3: university presence and so like, so they're kind of like
Speaker 3: tactically smart about like, oh, acting their targets a little bit.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tactically I mean, it's obviously one hundred percent disingenuous,
Speaker 2: but very tactically smart way for Trump forgetting what he wants,
Speaker 2: which is this kind of culture where everyone is scared
Speaker 2: to say anything, and that's why he's doing it and
Speaker 2: framing it the way he is. It's actually like it's
Speaker 2: a very savvy way of doing it. Which is why
Speaker 2: it's very scary.
Speaker 3: The last thing I'll say is that like history will
Speaker 3: remember this, I don't need to dramatize this as the same
Speaker 3: as like the most important pivot point in American history.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, like a lot of people have done
Speaker 3: a lot of really cringey things in the first what
Speaker 3: is it now, two and a half months of Trump, Right,
Speaker 3: all the CEOs who met the need at the inauguration,
Speaker 3: and all the people who are you know, but the networks,
Speaker 3: even the liberals are now back to watching the news
Speaker 3: who fired all their liberal correspondents, right, But like that
Speaker 3: stuff will not age well if Trump goes down as
Speaker 3: an unsuccessful president or worse dot right And again, I
Speaker 3: think you can see the trajectory already toward him becoming
Speaker 3: more unpopular. If you didn't fuck up the economy, it
Speaker 3: might be a whole different ballgame. If you want to
Speaker 3: be like a fucking dictator, then ruining the economy is
Speaker 3: about the stupidest thing you can do in terms of
Speaker 3: maintaining public support.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 2: So I hope, I hope it all falls down around him,
Speaker 2: and I hope you're right that the Sarah will be
Speaker 2: remembered as that as opposed to the start of the
Speaker 2: end offination democracy. If we're being dramatic, I hope we
Speaker 2: don't get that far.
Speaker 1: There's a there's.
Speaker 3: A gray zone, now there are any democracy already has
Speaker 3: been weekend a little bit right, get a little bit weaker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Let's let's hope the gray zone resolves.
Speaker 2: In a good way and not in the dictatorial way.
Speaker 2: Let's take a little break and talk about something that
Speaker 2: is also newsy but very different. Let's talk about twenty
Speaker 2: three and me. Have you ever given your genetic data
Speaker 2: to a website?
Speaker 3: No, and I don't think.
Speaker 2: I don't think I would neither have I. I am
Speaker 2: one of those people who forever I told everyone in
Speaker 2: my family was like, do not ever upload your genetic
Speaker 2: information to twenty three and meters, to ancestry dot com,
Speaker 2: to any of those, do not give your genetic data
Speaker 2: to any private corporation because of a lot of things.
Speaker 2: First of all, you know obviously data security. Second of all,
Speaker 2: you are not protected. You know, this is not health
Speaker 2: services that hit backed does not protect you whatsoever. And
Speaker 2: it's just it's just dumb. And also you can't see
Speaker 2: the future. We were just talking about being in a
Speaker 2: gray zone politically right now, like, who is your data
Speaker 2: going to be sold to? Potentially? How will it be used?
Speaker 2: How will you potentially be discriminated against in the future
Speaker 2: once we know that ooh, this combination of genes equals
Speaker 2: this in terms of your risk for this disease. And
Speaker 2: so now insurance companies you know, are are going to
Speaker 2: have access to that. You don't know any of this anyway.
Speaker 2: I have never given my genetic information, and I think
Speaker 2: that the risks for individuals at weigh any potential benefits
Speaker 2: of being able to say, oh, look, Nate, you and
Speaker 2: I are twentieth cousins once removed.
Speaker 1: How cool is that?
Speaker 3: Well, people can do that for that reason, for the
Speaker 3: for the what's it called genealogy? Is that? What the
Speaker 3: what do the Mormons do?
Speaker 2: A lot of Oh I don't yeah, genealogy, Yeah, genealogy, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: Ancestry dot com is all about so twenty three and
Speaker 2: meter is all about health data. Ancestry dot com is
Speaker 2: all about genealogy. Either way, you have to give your
Speaker 2: genetic information too to do this, and I think people
Speaker 2: did it as kind of a novelty thing curiosity, Right,
Speaker 2: you want to find out stuff. But I think that
Speaker 2: those motivations are not sufficient because of the risks that
Speaker 2: a company it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you could also do genetics reading for
Speaker 3: certain disease.
Speaker 2: I mean they used to be so twenty three and
Speaker 2: meters over promised and under delivered on that front because
Speaker 2: genetics can we just like pause this and go back
Speaker 2: out for a second and say, genetics is really complicated, right,
Speaker 2: and there are very very few genetic conditions where it's
Speaker 2: like this gene maps to this risk. Yes, there are
Speaker 2: a few of them, but it's tiny, tiny, tiny, And
Speaker 2: at first twenty three and me was trying to cover
Speaker 2: everything and be like, oh, well there was one paper
Speaker 2: about this and that, and so you can have false positive,
Speaker 2: false negatives, like just stuff that there wasn't enough data for.
Speaker 2: And then the type of testing they were doing is
Speaker 2: not at the level that you would get if you actually,
Speaker 2: you know, are in a doctor's office health you know
Speaker 2: situation where you're getting screened for all of these things correctly.
Speaker 2: And so there was a lot of uncertainty involved. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of actually ethical gray zones, even if you're
Speaker 2: doing it in a doctor's office, with screening for things
Speaker 2: that are actually pretty black and white, like the BRCA
Speaker 2: gene and breast cancer. Right, there's a lot of kind
Speaker 2: of controversy around well, you know, how do you how
Speaker 2: do you communicate it? You know, do you tell people
Speaker 2: what can they do? What if they didn't want to
Speaker 2: screen for it but you found out and there are
Speaker 2: people you train doctors, and okay, how do you communicate
Speaker 2: this risk?
Speaker 1: What do you say?
Speaker 2: You know, how do you give this life changing information
Speaker 2: to someone twenty three and me? Like, there's none of that, right,
Speaker 2: You just like get your results back and you're like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, Like, oh my god, what am I supposed
Speaker 2: to do with that? So there it was ethically fraud
Speaker 2: even on that front. And I would not have used
Speaker 2: it to find out my you know, genetic risk of something.
Speaker 2: I would have gone to a doctor to get those tests.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what I've seen friends who've done it. It's quite vague, right,
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, you have an elevator risk of this
Speaker 3: area or that area. Right, if you have elevated risk
Speaker 3: of some condition in effects one and a hundred thousand people,
Speaker 3: then you're probably harming yourself more with the extra stress
Speaker 3: of that then, and you're learning altered about your chances.
Speaker 3: I just don't trust anybody with giving away information. I
Speaker 3: kind of assume it'll be leaked at some point.
Speaker 2: If absolutely, if it gets there, should happens, and your
Speaker 2: information is not secure. And I actually I hate, you know,
Speaker 2: all biometrics, Like I hate that at this point, like
Speaker 2: in the airports, you have to smile into the camera
Speaker 2: and it always yeah I do. It's very easy, but
Speaker 2: it's it is much faster, right, But we're giving up
Speaker 2: so much privacy for convenience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, travel is right. Yeah, travel is a right, not
Speaker 3: a privilege. My partner of this character, it's like kind
Speaker 3: of Mary Joe Quimby from the Simpsons, like or a Channy,
Speaker 3: but like only campaigns and like frequent flyer complaints. We
Speaker 3: will have a bit of sky lounge.
Speaker 2: I think, I think, I think you've got to You've
Speaker 2: got to hit on yours. No, it is, so that's
Speaker 2: the thing. I do it because it's much faster, and
Speaker 2: there's always a thing. So I was gonna say, there's
Speaker 2: always a thing that says, oh you can opt out, right,
Speaker 2: you don't have to do the biometric thing.
Speaker 1: We delete the data right.
Speaker 2: Away, and I was like, oh, but it's going to
Speaker 2: take If I say I want to opt out, it's
Speaker 2: going to take me like twenty minutes to get through
Speaker 2: security because then they're going to pull me aside and
Speaker 2: do all this stuff.
Speaker 1: So I don't opt out. I just do that.
Speaker 2: But I still don't love it, because you know, you're
Speaker 2: giving all of your facial data, biometric data. I don't
Speaker 2: want it, you know, as far as I can tell, Like,
Speaker 2: I'd rather just not give as much data as I
Speaker 2: can to the government, to private corporations. But genetic data
Speaker 2: is something that like that is something that you can
Speaker 2: really control. It doesn't make travel easier. So I think
Speaker 2: that the like the risk reward trade offs there are
Speaker 2: just soberblown and now people are finally coming to their
Speaker 2: senses and they're like, oh shit, it's going bankrupt. Like
Speaker 2: here's how you delete your data? Really, is my data
Speaker 2: only stored in one place? Is it really all going
Speaker 2: to be? Like there are a lot of questions here,
Speaker 2: Like I wouldn't be so sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the California age called for customers to delete their
Speaker 3: twenty three aeters data, So probably good idea, you know that.
Speaker 3: I think I think maybe I'm not as much of
Speaker 3: a privacy and consent I think the improved efficiency and
Speaker 3: airport security screening. And by the way, also if you
Speaker 3: traveled internationally, it's much faster now most entries to get
Speaker 3: out of there when you're when you're going through customs
Speaker 3: and so forth. I know, I think that might be
Speaker 3: a category where I think it's it's worth the trade off.
Speaker 3: I like, I really about guiling your time in a minute.
Speaker 2: Right yeah, And like I said, Nate, I actually like
Speaker 2: I I have made that trade off when traveling as well.
Speaker 2: All of these things are trade offs, and you do
Speaker 2: need to realize that they're all. You know, there is
Speaker 2: always going to be a privacy concern and there's always
Speaker 2: going to be a concern with how your data is stored,
Speaker 2: how it's used, with all of these things, and you
Speaker 2: just need to think about it.
Speaker 3: I did have a trainer one time who found out
Speaker 3: that he had some degree of Middle Eastern in ancestry,
Speaker 3: which he didn't know about. So that was interesting. That
Speaker 3: changed the self conception I think a little bit. So
Speaker 3: I was in wit guy.
Speaker 2: From Well and I mean a lot of times people
Speaker 2: you know who do give their genetic information do find
Speaker 2: out things right like there is I understand why people
Speaker 2: are curious, especially like there are people who can't find
Speaker 2: you who don't know who their parents are. Well, sometimes
Speaker 2: people think they know who their parents are and find
Speaker 2: out should that they really didn't want to find out, right,
Speaker 2: Like a lot of family secrets coming out. I get
Speaker 2: the impulse, but you always, to me, like, you just
Speaker 2: always need to think through what the next steps are.
Speaker 2: And right now we're seeing that, right, and we're seeing
Speaker 2: that just play out in real time. Do you think so,
Speaker 2: I've like imagine trying to delete your data from Facebook, right,
Speaker 2: Like I know people who tried over and over and
Speaker 2: it's just impossible, right, Like those those photos like that
Speaker 2: that shouldn't get deleted. So now like deleting your data
Speaker 2: from twenty three on me, Like, I don't think that
Speaker 2: data is getting deleted in the way that you think.
Speaker 2: I do think that more and more, as we're moving
Speaker 2: to our technological future, certain things like you know, facial recognition,
Speaker 2: they're so ubiquitous that it's really like it's almost basically
Speaker 2: impossible to opt out, right, Like I think that we're
Speaker 2: probably nearing that point with some of these things, but
Speaker 2: not with all of them, And so the little bits
Speaker 2: of privacy that we still can protect I think we
Speaker 2: should well.
Speaker 3: And AI AFFECTSMOS too, in part because like basically they
Speaker 3: just kind of the AI models have a corpus of
Speaker 3: data and they just silk up all the data trained
Speaker 3: on it for a while and then have model ways
Speaker 3: to produce outputs. Right, It's kind of hard once you
Speaker 3: train the model, it's very hard to go back and say, oh,
Speaker 3: we weren't supposed to use Maria's DNA sequence right for
Speaker 3: this new genomic AI that we have right untrained, Well,
Speaker 3: we're gonna We're gonna untrained, and then we'll come back
Speaker 3: in a year and waste billions of dollars in I mean,
Speaker 3: it doesn't really work. And I think we're probably in
Speaker 3: a world where there's going to need to be more surveillance,
Speaker 3: which I'm not happy about, but I think that's direction
Speaker 3: that we're headed in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do think that, uh, this is where we're going.
Speaker 2: There's a really good book about this, by the way,
Speaker 2: so Cash Hell's book Your Face Belongs to Us, which
Speaker 2: is a really interesting and it's a book about facial
Speaker 2: recognition and privacy concerns. She's a reporter with The New
Speaker 2: York Times. She's also a poker player night, So I'm
Speaker 2: very glad Nate that you have Also, you also do
Speaker 2: not need to pull your data, your unpullable data from
Speaker 2: twenty three and me, and I hope you know, for
Speaker 2: everyone's sake that this resolves in a nicer way than
Speaker 2: it could, because I'm not at all optimistic that this
Speaker 2: data isn't going to be sold to companies that are
Speaker 2: going to use it, not in the way that you
Speaker 2: intended when you initially sent those little samples of saliva
Speaker 2: to twenty three and me. On that note, Nate, let's
Speaker 2: take a break, and I hope that you and all
Speaker 2: of our listeners use that break productively, because time is valuable.
Speaker 3: A little, a little force pery of it.
Speaker 2: You know, Well, Okay, I did my best. This is
Speaker 2: a question that doesn't come up nearly enough, but I
Speaker 2: think it's really really important, which is, how do you
Speaker 2: actually place a value right on your time? I made
Speaker 2: a I made a bad joke, Nate, you you called
Speaker 2: it forced. I feel very heard about using our break
Speaker 2: productively because time is money, and we I mean, time
Speaker 2: is money is such a cliche, but it's a cliche
Speaker 2: for a reason. That's actually the case. Right every single
Speaker 2: time that we do something, we're making trade offs. We're
Speaker 2: not doing something else. And this is the whole point
Speaker 2: of getting paid. It's your time. You're literally trading off
Speaker 2: time that you would rather be doing something else usually,
Speaker 2: or time that you're getting paid to do something. And
Speaker 2: so this is a calculus that I think we're always making,
Speaker 2: but we're not always explicitly aware that we're making it.
Speaker 2: But I think we could make much better decisions if
Speaker 2: we were explicitly aware and actually could kind of game
Speaker 2: theorize it a little bit and try to figure out, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: you know how much.
Speaker 1: Do I value my time? Is this worth it? Is
Speaker 1: that worth it?
Speaker 2: Obviously you don't want to go through your entire life
Speaker 2: thinking that way, but I think that for big decisions,
Speaker 2: for those types of trade offs, it is an interesting
Speaker 2: way of looking at it, is that how do you
Speaker 2: actually go about this night? Do you consciously think you
Speaker 2: know what is the value of my time?
Speaker 1: Good question, And let.
Speaker 3: Me acknowledge upfront that this is like a little bit
Speaker 3: I'm not big on, like the privilege trip. Tell me
Speaker 3: I acknowledge though, this is like a little bit of
Speaker 3: maybe a kind of a privilegy conversation where if you're
Speaker 3: somebody who has the opportunity to like to make money,
Speaker 3: or have more than one opportunity you can pursue, right,
Speaker 3: and you have kind of more capacity to take on
Speaker 3: additional work or valuable things to trade off with. Right.
Speaker 3: In my case, for example, I'm considering whether to accept
Speaker 3: consulting work, right, because there you're actually like kind of
Speaker 3: like setting a rate that you're paid on an hourly basis, right,
Speaker 3: Or sometimes I mean, no huge secret if you're if
Speaker 3: you're an author who sells books like Marie, or I'll
Speaker 3: get opportunities to do speaking gigs where you travel. I'm
Speaker 3: out here in California for one, for example, right now,
Speaker 3: and they pay you to talk, and maybe the talk
Speaker 3: isn't that much time, but then you have two old
Speaker 3: days you burn on travel, for example. So I think
Speaker 3: you have to like think about these things fairly explicitly.
Speaker 3: That's especially through like when you're I mean I'm essentially
Speaker 3: a freelancer, right, or maybe a small business owner where
Speaker 3: I write posts for Silver Bulletin newsletter. The more posts
Speaker 3: you write, the more opportunities there are people to subscribe.
Speaker 3: And so I probably have some calculation of like what
Speaker 3: is the opportunity cost. Right, If I'm traveling on a
Speaker 3: plane and the Wi Fi goes out, that's one less
Speaker 3: post that I write. How much money would have for
Speaker 3: sicken from that post. I mean, you know, I think
Speaker 3: sometimes it's good to be honest with yourself about that
Speaker 3: kind of thing. I also think that, like there's things
Speaker 3: you want to treat as constraints. Right, So I'm going
Speaker 3: to play I don't know, let's say, four or five
Speaker 3: weeks of the World Series of Poker this summer, maybe
Speaker 3: two thirds half to two thirds of the schedules about
Speaker 3: what I settled into, right, That is clearly a bad
Speaker 3: trade off from like an opportunity cost standpoint. Right, I'm
Speaker 3: probably plus ev in most of the events that I play,
Speaker 3: but if that leads to several fewer newsletter posts or
Speaker 3: consulting opportunities, the trade af's pretty high. It was like
Speaker 3: much easier where I worked for a giant, baseless corporation,
Speaker 3: and like I was kind of like paying a fixed
Speaker 3: salary and kind of working on the company dine basically,
Speaker 3: So you know, I mean, it really kind of came
Speaker 3: to light last year when like I was playing in
Speaker 3: some roughly low buying event at the wind and then
Speaker 3: Trump is charged with all these convicted I should say,
Speaker 3: of all these felonies, and I have to write a
Speaker 3: post about that, and I kind of like deliberately kind
Speaker 3: of punted because I'm like, okay, literally, the value of
Speaker 3: my stack here is like worthless than being really quick
Speaker 3: on this news. But you know, or likewise, like I
Speaker 3: was this past weekend at the New Orleans Book Festival,
Speaker 3: which is a great event attracting lots of brand name
Speaker 3: and obscure like authorial talent. Right this, by the way,
Speaker 3: is free. It's on the campus at Too Lane, and
Speaker 3: so it's kind of in the in the spirit of
Speaker 3: like Edinburgh Fringefest or something where they want to like
Speaker 3: take this kind of medium sized community and have this
Speaker 3: festival once. A ye, I didn't get paid for that,
Speaker 3: but like it's kind of like sometimes the caution either
Speaker 3: be zero or a lot and yeah, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I actually agree with that. And by the way,
Speaker 2: to your first point, I think that's a really really
Speaker 2: important point where time is money is very relevant in
Speaker 2: the sense that this is something that we're privileged to
Speaker 2: be able to think about it this way. And I've
Speaker 2: actually written about this about time scarcity being like the
Speaker 2: one of the huge constraints on poverty, right, And Cindilmula
Speaker 2: Nathan at the University of Chicago has done a ton
Speaker 2: of research into this about how time poverty is a thing, right,
Speaker 2: and that if you're actually if you're poor, like this
Speaker 2: is one of the biggest, one of the biggest barriers
Speaker 2: to kind of getting out of poverty because all of
Speaker 2: these things we take for granted, like, oh, I have
Speaker 2: time to think through this decision. You know, the cognitive
Speaker 2: overload of not not having that flexibility is actually huge, right,
Speaker 2: because you're just living paycheck to paycheck. You don't have childcare, right,
Speaker 2: you're not sleeping enough. All of these different things are
Speaker 2: adding to the cognitive load, and you can't make choices
Speaker 2: the way that you know you can afford to make
Speaker 2: choices if you're living at a higher subsistence level. So
Speaker 2: if people are interested in that research, highly recommend some
Speaker 2: deals work, and that's something that we should we should
Speaker 2: definitely not take for granted. But I agree with you that,
Speaker 2: you know, when I think about big things like speaking engagements,
Speaker 2: like what I'm going to take on, I usually think
Speaker 2: about like what is the total time, right, It's never
Speaker 2: just like an hour talk, Right, it's how long does
Speaker 2: it take me to travel there? What else is it disrupting?
Speaker 2: Like how long do I prepare? Like all all of
Speaker 2: these different things add up, and you do need to
Speaker 2: try to make that trade off. And sometimes I'll do
Speaker 2: things for free if it's for a cause an organization,
Speaker 2: like something that's important like book festivals. Right, I think
Speaker 2: that that's an important value to the community, and so
Speaker 2: you will just do that. And sometimes I will actually
Speaker 2: take a lot less for something just because it's fun
Speaker 2: to do, Like I will sometimes take writing assignments because
Speaker 2: I want to write about this and like I actually
Speaker 2: think that this is interesting, and like I will take
Speaker 2: less than I would normally take because I enjoy it, right,
Speaker 2: and there's going to be there's going to be something
Speaker 2: else there for me. So it's not just money, right,
Speaker 2: it's how much am.
Speaker 1: I enjoying it?
Speaker 2: Like what else? What else is there? What are their
Speaker 2: trade offs are there? So that the calculus, just like
Speaker 2: with all expected value calculations. I think one of the
Speaker 2: reasons that you're still playing the World series, even though
Speaker 2: technically speaking, is probably negative ev on some levels, because
Speaker 2: you enjoy it, right, you get some intrinsic enjoyment out
Speaker 2: of playing this, out of the competition, you know, out
Speaker 2: of potentially winning. And the way that I also think
Speaker 2: about it is well, it's actually huge for my brand
Speaker 2: if I end up doing really well, right, like winning
Speaker 2: a bracelet, that ev of that is insane and so
Speaker 2: that you know, will help me book future speaking engagements
Speaker 2: and Celtic work at all of this because it helps
Speaker 2: my profile. And so they are all of these different
Speaker 2: nuanced levels of calculations that go on, and so something
Speaker 2: is not It might not be as straightforward as oh,
Speaker 2: an hour speth doing this is not an hour spent
Speaker 2: doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I would push back on that slightly, only
Speaker 3: in the sense that if you kind of calculate, like
Speaker 3: what are your odds of winning? You already have bracelet?
Speaker 3: By the way, what are you but not wondering? I
Speaker 3: guess the summer worlds here, like, what are the odds
Speaker 3: of winning one? If you play two thirds of the schedule?
Speaker 3: I mean in probably fairly low, right, And so you
Speaker 3: can kind of what I kind of say is like,
Speaker 3: people you have to the point of life, are not
Speaker 3: the only point of life? Right?
Speaker 1: Well, what's the meaning of life? Night I'm right that
Speaker 1: we're all listening.
Speaker 3: To be a good person, to contribute intellectually into it,
Speaker 3: but to also enjoy yourself, right, And if like the
Speaker 3: doing poker is one of the things you most enjoy,
Speaker 3: and the World series pokenturmins can be a grind, right,
Speaker 3: but when you make those final tables and day threes,
Speaker 3: it's one of the most fun things ever. It kind
Speaker 3: of also, I think is good for experience and character
Speaker 3: building to play under high pressure, to kind of simulating.
Speaker 3: So it's real hig pressure because the money GE's pretty
Speaker 3: big if you actually are deep in a World series event.
Speaker 3: So it's like, kind of, what's the point if, like
Speaker 3: I'm not making time for the things that I enjoy, Right,
Speaker 3: what's the whole point of like working so hard like
Speaker 3: last year during election? If I if I, if I
Speaker 3: can't sometimes relax a little bit, you know, I mean
Speaker 3: the value of that is I you know, I'm now
Speaker 3: yet more aware of kind of the privilegedness of this conversation.
Speaker 3: But like, at the same time, I think people allow
Speaker 3: themselves at all places in the income ladder to be
Speaker 3: bogged down in jobs that aren't getting them anywhere in particular,
Speaker 3: And it's not just an immediate time cost, but the
Speaker 3: optionality cost. I think, you know, in general, people ought
Speaker 3: to think more abouttionality. We're can I put myself in
Speaker 3: a place where I'll have more options? That's related to
Speaker 3: the idea of opportunity cost. But yeah, but it's it's
Speaker 3: like splitting tens in black check. If you already make twenty,
Speaker 3: you're like, oh, I can get even more of this
Speaker 3: fi Splitting No. Twenty is already a hard totally get.
Speaker 3: So it's like it's a fish move to split tens
Speaker 3: in blackjack. But yeah, I don't, I don't know. I
Speaker 3: I actually kind of carve out a lot of time
Speaker 3: for for non productive work, and kind of what happens
Speaker 3: sometimes I wind up backing into doing productive work. Anyway.
Speaker 3: You come home from aren't you going to shirt the
Speaker 3: web a bit? And then all you're like writing a
Speaker 3: post or collecting some data for a spreadsheet.
Speaker 1: Et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, actually that that dovetails very nicely with what
Speaker 2: I was just about to say, which is that for
Speaker 2: people like us Nate who write you know, who are
Speaker 2: journalists who actually you know, are constantly thinking about about
Speaker 2: about writing about what we're working on. I find that
Speaker 2: a lot of times that I'm being quote unquote unproductive
Speaker 2: is when I end up coming up with ideas, coming
Speaker 2: up with connections, reading something because you know, I'm just
Speaker 2: like I'm tired, and so I end up you know,
Speaker 2: watching a show or or reading reading something that I
Speaker 2: wouldn't otherwise read because it's not strictly speaking for work,
Speaker 2: and that ends up inspiring something and it ends up
Speaker 2: being productive work. And so I actually, you know, I
Speaker 2: think that sometimes you just don't know where things are
Speaker 2: going to lead, and you do need to just give
Speaker 2: yourself that freedom, and sometimes that ends up being very
Speaker 2: productive time because otherwise, I think burnout takes a huge toll.
Speaker 2: And I've burned out before, like I've given myself a
Speaker 2: nervous breakdown before like that. It's not fun and it
Speaker 2: actually it really cuts down on your productivity and your
Speaker 2: ability to do things. So I think if you have
Speaker 2: the privilege to kind of step back, I think that
Speaker 2: that's a really good thing to do.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely right, And sometimes I think, you know, the
Speaker 3: last thing i'd say or maybe I'll moveless is now.
Speaker 3: Then you do get in situations where you have a
Speaker 3: much more explicit ev calculation, you know, I need to
Speaker 3: pay for this flight that's more expensive because otherwise it'll
Speaker 3: fuck up my calendar for the next two days. Right.
Speaker 3: You know, sometimes people that want to take either the
Speaker 3: early morning flight or the or the or the PM
Speaker 3: flight back in California, for example, it's like, well, you
Speaker 3: know what, if I wake up for the six am flight,
Speaker 3: it's going to fuck up my sleep schedule. Right if
Speaker 3: I take the PM flight, it's going to fuck up
Speaker 3: the next day. So I want to pay this extra
Speaker 3: three hundred and five hundred bucks because like that's definitely
Speaker 3: worth expditional hours of productivity. So like, don't be don't
Speaker 3: be a cheap skate when you are and where of
Speaker 3: these kind of narrowly solvable problems, you know, when when
Speaker 3: there's a direct trade off from from losing productive time.
Speaker 2: I think about it the exact same way. And I
Speaker 2: have absolutely taken the most expensive flight because it is
Speaker 2: the one that's going to actually put me in the
Speaker 2: best frame of mind to do what I need to do.
Speaker 3: So there's at least it's the most expensive too. I mean,
Speaker 3: they know what they know what they're doing, is the Yeah.
Speaker 2: The reason it's the most expensive is because it's the
Speaker 2: most gonvenient flight. But yeah, I think I think that
Speaker 2: those types of things are very important because at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, don't be a cheap skate about
Speaker 2: your time.
Speaker 1: Is actually a.
Speaker 2: Very good way to end this, right, don't be nitty
Speaker 2: about that, because as we know, Nate, you do not
Speaker 2: like knits.
Speaker 3: No, and it often comes from a feeling of guilt.
Speaker 3: I think right that, like, yeah, if you are successful,
Speaker 3: but you're not really you know, you're not really helping
Speaker 3: anybody by just you know, laterally less productive than you
Speaker 3: could be.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, So don't do that. And I think all
Speaker 2: these calculations are different for everyone, but do think about it,
Speaker 2: because I think this is something that's important to think
Speaker 2: about and important to realize that, you know what, some
Speaker 2: cliches are there for a reason. Time actually is money.
Speaker 2: Figure out how you value your time. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to oh, am I gonna do it? Nate, Am I
Speaker 2: gonna end with how are you going to live your
Speaker 2: one wild and beautiful?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: No, we're not gonna We're not gonna do the cliche
Speaker 2: poetry ending to this.
Speaker 1: We'll just say see.
Speaker 2: You next week, and we hope that you use your
Speaker 2: time productively and start off by listening to our Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 3: That is the actually the best pop please of your time?
Speaker 1: Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3: That's all for this week. Premium subscribers can seeker bund
Speaker 3: for our answer to one of your burning listener questions
Speaker 3: after the credits. This week, it's from Easton Lewis on
Speaker 3: how to manage funny incentives in prediction markets. If you're
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Speaker 3: network of shows. Risky Business is hosted by me Nate.
Speaker 2: Silver and me Maria Kanakova. The show is a co
Speaker 2: production of Pushkin Industries and iHeart Media. This episode was
Speaker 2: produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang.
Speaker 2: Sally Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is
Speaker 2: Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.
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