Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note that will be off for
Speaker 1: the holidays next week. Have a wonderful new year and
Speaker 1: we will see you in January. Welcome back to Risky Business,
Speaker 1: a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova and.
Speaker 2: I'm Nate Silver. Today we'll talk about a man who
Speaker 2: allegedly made a very poor decision to murder a healthcare CEO.
Speaker 2: That is, of course, Luigi Vangionese.
Speaker 1: And after that we're going to talk about blue Sky
Speaker 1: social media echo chambers and how that all ties into
Speaker 1: the types of phenomenon that we're witnessing like Luigi Maggione.
Speaker 1: And after that we are going to talk about chess
Speaker 1: and choking under pressure and the importance of mental game.
Speaker 1: Let's get into.
Speaker 2: Maria. I want you to have the first word on
Speaker 2: Luigi because I want to kind of try to get
Speaker 2: in his I know we're not supposed to do this right,
Speaker 2: but like you're the psychologist, I want to kind of
Speaker 2: get your basic take on kind of what kind of
Speaker 2: headspace that he was in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a lot of people have been supportive of him,
Speaker 1: and I've said, you know, it's it's incredibly understandable. The
Speaker 1: guys in pain, and so he does something about it.
Speaker 1: And I have a few things to say to that.
Speaker 1: First of all, like, we don't actually know what the
Speaker 1: causes are, right, We do know he had back surgery.
Speaker 1: We know it was covered by insurance, by the way,
Speaker 1: so he did not have insurance problems in that sense.
Speaker 1: And back pain is awful. Back pain is horrible. But
Speaker 1: how many people in the world suffer from back pain
Speaker 1: and some debilitating back pain? And some people can't even
Speaker 1: have the surgery because it's not covered for them. And
Speaker 1: some people live in countries where the surgery isn't even available,
Speaker 1: or in countries where surgery is awful and the surgery
Speaker 1: would be botched, maybe in even greater pain after that.
Speaker 1: And out of those people, how many then decide, you
Speaker 1: know what, I Am going to go and kill the
Speaker 1: CEO of a healthcare company. That is not a normal reaction.
Speaker 1: I think that. I think that psychologically speaking, like there's
Speaker 1: something deeply fucked up about that being your response. And
Speaker 1: there's also something deeply fucked up about a society that
Speaker 1: looks at it and says, yeah, I get it, that's
Speaker 1: really cool. And you know, those types of violent tendencies
Speaker 1: have happened in the past, and there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of scholarship on how you know we're getting better, right,
Speaker 1: Stephen Pinker wrote a big book about it better, Angels
Speaker 1: of Our Nature, about how violence has gone down over
Speaker 1: the years, over the centuries in society, and how you
Speaker 1: know we have society and rule and governments for a reason, right,
Speaker 1: we have the legal system. And yes, sometimes you feel
Speaker 1: like everything's against you. But the correct quote unquote correct response,
Speaker 1: the moral response, the psychologically normal response, isn't to say,
Speaker 1: let me get you know, a ghost gun with a
Speaker 1: silencer and go and kill someone in cold blood allegedly.
Speaker 1: And and I think that that you know that that
Speaker 1: is in the psychological literature we call that profoundly fucked up.
Speaker 1: That is not that is not a normal response. And
Speaker 1: so I think, obviously he has major issues, and you
Speaker 1: know that's that's a problem. And there are lots of
Speaker 1: people who have major psychological issues. But the other psychological
Speaker 1: problem is in society lionizing this and glorifying it. And
Speaker 1: by the way, let me just like caveat this by saying,
Speaker 1: I believe in universal healthcare. I think that they are
Speaker 1: horrible problems with the healthcare system in the United States.
Speaker 1: I think no one should be denied coverage, you know,
Speaker 1: I think this should be a fundamental human right. So like,
Speaker 1: let's just put that aside. But the answer to that
Speaker 1: isn't you know, let's go out and shoot people. And
Speaker 1: the first thing I thought about, and I'm not the
Speaker 1: only one, is like the French Revolution, right, and when
Speaker 1: people were like, yeah, justifiable, let's go behead some people.
Speaker 1: You know what happened to those executioners who did the beheadings.
Speaker 1: They got beheaded, right. They also died after in the
Speaker 1: in the counter revolution, the Thermadorian reaction. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of historical precedent that says that this
Speaker 1: ain't you know, yeah, sure society might change eventually, but
Speaker 1: this ain't the way to go about it. And there
Speaker 1: are I think we've advanced past that, and I hope
Speaker 1: we keep advancing past that rather than regressing. And I
Speaker 1: see a lot of signs of regression right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you look at the number of deaths and
Speaker 2: armed conflict around the world, it kind of bottomed out
Speaker 2: in the early two thousands and that has since risen.
Speaker 2: There's actually a lot of people dying in Ukraine, for example,
Speaker 2: there are interstate and interrustate conflicts in Africa. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think people are not necessarily internally all
Speaker 2: that much more civilized than they than they ever were.
Speaker 2: And you know, the fact that you can have this
Speaker 2: bountiful life in different ways, and the fact that you
Speaker 2: have like a legal system, and the fact that you
Speaker 2: have kind of diplomatic ways of resolving conflicts like the
Speaker 2: courts or whatever else, or a negotiation of some kind
Speaker 2: like that goes a long way, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is clearly a guy who is quite smart. He
Speaker 2: was valedictorian of his high school class. He went to
Speaker 2: University of Penn. He read pretty widely. Clearly a guy
Speaker 2: who is capable of profound rationalization for extremely violent behavior.
Speaker 2: I mean, the timeline he gave only makes a certain
Speaker 2: amount of sense right where where he actually was like
Speaker 2: texting friends that Hey, actually the surgery worked out pretty
Speaker 2: well and I'm back to being able to do some
Speaker 2: of the things used to be able to do. I mean,
Speaker 2: people have inferred that, you know, he's at the age
Speaker 2: what's he twenty six, twenty seven, he's at the age
Speaker 2: where if you have signs of schizophrenia. Yeah, then that
Speaker 2: tends to be an inflection point for schizophrenia. He had
Speaker 2: also experimented with psychedelic drugs, which which I have no
Speaker 2: problem with people doing, but tends to be a bad
Speaker 2: idea for people with schizophrenia.
Speaker 1: Yes, we know that they're a trigger. By the way,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of research on this. So if you
Speaker 1: have a tendency towards schizophrenia, and you know, if you
Speaker 1: have that genetic predisposition, psychedelics and there are other drugs,
Speaker 1: but psychedelics are especially a trigger for it. So that's
Speaker 1: something that can actually precipitate the psychotic rank. Please continue it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I also don't think the critique of the
Speaker 2: healthcare system is particularly good, right, I mean, the problem
Speaker 2: is that so the US spends a lot more on
Speaker 2: healthcare relative to the quality of outcomes we have than
Speaker 2: other westernized, industrialized countries. You know, the reasons for those
Speaker 2: are much debated. Part of it has to do with
Speaker 2: a lot of kind of profit built in for pharmaceutical
Speaker 2: companies that develop actually very effective drugs like we saw
Speaker 2: in Covid or whatnot. But you know, for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: it tends to be subsidized by American taxpayers a little
Speaker 2: bit more some it's because of incentives, right, if you're
Speaker 2: not kind of paying out of pocket for things, and
Speaker 2: you might consume more care than you want. And some
Speaker 2: very small number of people consume a very high percentage
Speaker 2: of resources in the healthcare system, some of whom are
Speaker 2: in really bad shape and deserve it, but some of
Speaker 2: them just kind of are, you know, consuming healthcare goods.
Speaker 2: It's like a luxury good and things like that. And so,
Speaker 2: you know, it is the job of insurers to like
Speaker 2: track down fraudulent payments or track down procedures that they
Speaker 2: be medically unnecessary. But like if you don't, if your
Speaker 2: critque is the cost of health care, then you shouldn't
Speaker 2: be complaining necessarily about the insurance companies that have a
Speaker 2: relatively modest profit margin. Here, I'm a neoliberal capitalist. I
Speaker 2: suppose I do think the healthcare system is fucked up.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that I think, you know, socialized medicine
Speaker 2: is a good idea. I think it wouldn't be politically viable,
Speaker 2: among other things. But I you know, this is not
Speaker 2: like a very mature I would say, critique of what
Speaker 2: the causes of the pain points in the healthcare system are,
Speaker 2: I would say despite being a smart eye overall, and
Speaker 2: that probably fits a pattern. By the way, Also, a
Speaker 2: guy who like is a little bit in kind of
Speaker 2: what we call the gray tribe people who he's reading
Speaker 2: some of these kind of like centrist rationalist newslayers, probably
Speaker 2: subscribed to a lot of substacks. For example, maybe listen
Speaker 2: to this show if you're listening in jail, Hello, Luigi,
Speaker 2: we vibe on the program. Probably not, I think, probably
Speaker 2: a bad idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think so. I'm you know, I draw
Speaker 1: the line at giving a platform to age.
Speaker 2: A legend you never know, you never know.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, no, I mean I think I think
Speaker 1: we both agree healthcare system profoundly fucked up. It's not
Speaker 1: just the insurance companies, it's the hospitals. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things that are wrong. But I
Speaker 1: will also say that when people have really serious problems
Speaker 1: I've had you know, I've had friends and my parents
Speaker 1: have had friends. You know, older health issues, cancer, you know,
Speaker 1: brain tumors, all sorts of things go wrong in Canada
Speaker 1: and in Europe. Do you know where they come to
Speaker 1: the United States to get the set, to get the surgery,
Speaker 1: because that's where you can get that standard of your
Speaker 1: care and you can't get it. Sure, they're experts everywhere,
Speaker 1: but in general, you know, the quality the expertise is here.
Speaker 1: And that's also here for a reason. I, like I said,
Speaker 1: I firmly believe in universal health care, socialized medicine. Probably
Speaker 1: not quite the way to go. I have no idea
Speaker 1: how to solve this, right. This is why I am
Speaker 1: not the CEO of a healthcare company or in charge
Speaker 1: of health care. This is not my area of expertise.
Speaker 1: But what I what is my area of expertise as
Speaker 1: a psychological element of this, and it's really you know,
Speaker 1: I think the human brain has this tendency and I
Speaker 1: think we see this in Luigi to just simplify, right,
Speaker 1: black and white heroes, villains, bad good, this person must go.
Speaker 1: There's just this tendency to simplification and avoidance of nuance,
Speaker 1: like Shades of Gray eight people's strong point a lot
Speaker 1: of times, and I think that's getting much worse, and
Speaker 1: especially in the social media world, you know, where kind
Speaker 1: of all of these things are being amplified, where people
Speaker 1: get into their little silos, into their little bubbles, and
Speaker 1: they see these things reflected that simplification that like black
Speaker 1: and white thinking, that hero villain thinking is getting overblown.
Speaker 1: I'd like to see people start studying this. Right now,
Speaker 1: I'm no longer in academia, but I'd really like to
Speaker 1: see some work done on kind of the rise of
Speaker 1: this type of simplistic thinking and simplistic outlooks on the
Speaker 1: world as it relates to social media.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's very widespread. There was some poll
Speaker 2: that came out that found that only eighteen percent of
Speaker 2: people approve of Luigi Mangioni, and like seventy percent disapprove.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised that eighteen percent people have an opinion about
Speaker 2: him or know who he is. Right, he could sound
Speaker 2: like some Italian movie star from the forties or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Right, So, just to clarify what I was thinking, I
Speaker 1: was what I was talking about was actually Luigi himself
Speaker 1: and the reason he thought this was a good idea,
Speaker 1: that his view of the world is this kind of
Speaker 1: black and white view. And I think that, but as yes,
Speaker 1: it also applies to the people who support him. I
Speaker 1: think that, Yeah, it is a widespread, kind of a
Speaker 1: widespread fallacy, and our brains do work that way, and
Speaker 1: we have to constantly fight against it, and the things
Speaker 1: that actually help buttress against that are things that are
Speaker 1: disappearing from the world, like critical thinking skills and reading
Speaker 1: literature and you know, things that things that actually kind
Speaker 1: of force you to slow down and to think and
Speaker 1: to reflect. And instead we're i think, living in a
Speaker 1: world where we're reacting and thinking very quickly and not
Speaker 1: reading deeply and consuming you know, very simplistic media a
Speaker 1: lot of the times, and that is I think that's
Speaker 1: not a good that's not a good background.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's weird is like it was. It's not like
Speaker 2: one of these like zodiac killer types where he plots
Speaker 2: us out for years. I don't think right, Like he
Speaker 2: wrote a manifesto that was like not very not the
Speaker 2: best manifesto. I give it.
Speaker 1: I rate your manifestos.
Speaker 2: But he's like, yeah, I haven't really finished thinking about this,
Speaker 2: but you know whatever, there's not time. It's like, okay,
Speaker 2: come on, man, okay, we're I'm going to talk about
Speaker 2: blueskind of moment. I'm interested in the phenomenon of like
Speaker 2: the certain segment I guess you call it of the left.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure why it's even necessarily left exactly. I
Speaker 2: think it's just kind of like I think it's everything
Speaker 2: crazy attention demanding people for sure.
Speaker 1: Well you also I think I don't know if I've
Speaker 1: said this on the show before, but I've definitely talked
Speaker 1: to you about it. Which is my view that as
Speaker 1: you get to that, you know, the political spectrum isn't
Speaker 1: a line, it's a circle, right and ship to the
Speaker 1: extremes of the of the right and the left, they meet,
Speaker 1: right and those like total extremists are are actually basically
Speaker 1: the same thing. It just it just comes full circle.
Speaker 1: That's yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean there are the demands. There's like
Speaker 2: how much trust do you have in the system? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's been weird. You've seen like democratic politicians ranging from
Speaker 2: U AOC to Elizabeth Warren to Chris Murphy, who's this
Speaker 2: very like whitebread senator from Connecticut who's now trying to
Speaker 2: be like the cool dad. You know, he's lame. He's
Speaker 2: like trying to run for the president of twenty twenty eight, right,
Speaker 2: and he's like from the ultimate neoliberal insurance broker state.
Speaker 1: You don't like the dad vibe. Walls now.
Speaker 2: Went to Williams College, you know, which it's not the
Speaker 2: populist hotbed exactly, Whereas Bernie Sanders, who is a much
Speaker 2: better politician than all of the three people I mentioned
Speaker 2: together multiplied by fifty. I mean, Bernie Sanders has a competent.
Speaker 2: I mean, Aosc's a pretty good politician. I take that back.
Speaker 2: I think Elizabeth WARN's a borderline terrible politician and Chris
Speaker 2: Murphy is worse. Aos' is a pretty smart politician. So
Speaker 2: that was suppressing to see. But like, but Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 2: who like has built this coalition and you know, got
Speaker 2: a lot of things, gotten minimum wage increases in a
Speaker 2: lot of places, came not within a hair's breath, but
Speaker 2: very respectably against Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen. I mean,
Speaker 2: like you know, he was like, yeah, this is not
Speaker 2: the way into into people's hearts on this issue, right,
Speaker 2: And like also, like, if you want to talk more
Speaker 2: about healthcare, by the way, just to give you some context, right,
Speaker 2: this is a real issue. The United States, according to
Speaker 2: the Peter J. Peterson Foundation, spends seven hundred and forty
Speaker 2: teen dollar per year on healthcare compared to and fifty
Speaker 2: dollars of the other wealthy countries.
Speaker 1: This is per person, right, per capity.
Speaker 2: Yes, so twice as much. Ish about one thousand dollars
Speaker 2: of that is in administrative costs, which is not all
Speaker 2: of it or most of it, but compares toon averager
Speaker 2: two hundred and thirteen dollars and these other wealthy countries Australia,
Speaker 2: can Belgium and so forth. So there's a real issue here.
Speaker 2: But you don't have to like just start talking more
Speaker 2: about healthcare. You don't have to say we're talking more
Speaker 2: about healthcare because it's fucking lunatic who allegedly killed somebody, right,
Speaker 2: just talk more about healthcare, and like, don't like rationalize
Speaker 2: it in your little bubble. And it's just I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's just very weird to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's I think that's exactly right. And
Speaker 1: I think on that note, shall we take a break
Speaker 1: and then talk about social media and caris guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So over the last few months since October, blue Sky
Speaker 1: has gained almost two and a half million users, and
Speaker 1: Twitter or X as it's now known, has lost basically
Speaker 1: the same amount two point seven million. So we're seeing
Speaker 1: kind of Twitter x is still ten times bigger than
Speaker 1: blue Sky, but we are seeing something that looks like
Speaker 1: it might be a trend. Before we get into it, Nate,
Speaker 1: do you have a blue Sky account?
Speaker 2: I do, but I never use it, and I don't
Speaker 2: know what kind of fucking psychedelics you drugs you'd have
Speaker 2: to give me to want to spend a moment on
Speaker 2: blue Sky.
Speaker 1: So I knew you had a blue Sky account. I
Speaker 1: thought it was you because I found you with zero posts.
Speaker 1: But I have a blue Sky account. I still have
Speaker 1: my Twitter account, but I made a blue Sky account
Speaker 1: back when it was very early invite only, so sick brag. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, but I've had one for a
Speaker 1: while and I've had periods of activity and dormancy, right,
Speaker 1: so I was active at the beginning then, like I
Speaker 1: was like, screw this. You know, it's too many social
Speaker 1: media platforms. You've got Twitter, You've got Masta don do
Speaker 1: you remember Masta Don?
Speaker 2: You've got I've play loyled Twitter, you know, you've.
Speaker 1: Got You've got blue Sky. You know, there are all
Speaker 1: these things, and I'm like, you know, fuck this, Like
Speaker 1: I can't, I can't maintain all of these different accounts.
Speaker 1: But I actually re kind of recommitted to blue Sky
Speaker 1: probably about oh, I don't know how many months ago, three,
Speaker 1: four or five months ago, because Twitter was getting for me.
Speaker 1: So your experience is probably different because as someone with
Speaker 1: over a million followers, you were you got the you know,
Speaker 1: check blue check mark, and your your Twitter experience is
Speaker 1: a premium one. Mine is not. I refuse to pay
Speaker 1: for a blue check mark. And so my Twitter just
Speaker 1: became so unusable in terms of spam, in terms of
Speaker 1: just like horrific content that I get, boughts, all sorts
Speaker 1: of things, ads that I really don't want to see,
Speaker 1: and Blue Sky became kind of a much cleaner way
Speaker 1: of sharing. That's it. I didn't leave Twitter because I
Speaker 1: actually think that that would have been a mistake. And
Speaker 1: I think that it's a very bad idea to kind
Speaker 1: of leave the party when you disagree with things that
Speaker 1: are going on, because then you missed the discourse, right,
Speaker 1: You missed the conversation. You have no idea what's going on.
Speaker 1: And the worst thing you can do at that point
Speaker 1: is like go off into your bubble in protests, because
Speaker 1: that's not going to make anything better.
Speaker 2: I'd much rather hang around the Twitter party than the
Speaker 2: Blue Sky party. And by the way, I have been like,
Speaker 2: you haven't tried the Blue Sky harass as much as
Speaker 2: almost any person on Twitter. I'm just a little windy
Speaker 2: baby about it, you know what I mean. But like,
Speaker 2: in terms of like having people say awful things to me,
Speaker 2: it happens to me all the time on Twitter. Maybe
Speaker 2: a little bit less than it did in previous ethics,
Speaker 2: a little bit less than it did in an election year,
Speaker 2: but like you know, and I dish it out too,
Speaker 2: to be fair, But yeah, I've been a trending topic
Speaker 2: more times than I account for. I cancount for like
Speaker 2: totally innocuous things, right, But I would still rather have
Speaker 2: Twitter in als decrepit form. And there's lots of conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories and and you know, the four you algorithm will
Speaker 2: do kind of anything to get your engagement. You know,
Speaker 2: you get lots It doesn't apparently know what I'm gay.
Speaker 2: I get like lots of like smutty female stuff, right
Speaker 2: and things like that, And like it hasn't quite figured
Speaker 2: me out exactly. And I'm probably kind of gradually using
Speaker 2: Twitter like less similars now, and then I'll have days
Speaker 2: where I forget to check Twitter first thing in the morning,
Speaker 2: even though it's kind of part of my routine, to
Speaker 2: be honest.
Speaker 1: But like, well, let me.
Speaker 2: Back up a little bit right Twitter. I mean I
Speaker 2: first had a Twitter account in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: and this is kind of like before everybody is quite
Speaker 2: so online as they are now, and so so you
Speaker 2: kind of have like the founders are kind of tech
Speaker 2: nerds in a different way, or like news nerds, people
Speaker 2: who are working in the journals and ministry in some
Speaker 2: ways and trying to find new platforms. And when you
Speaker 2: have that, then you know, one nice thing about that
Speaker 2: is that nerds tend to be I don't know, there's
Speaker 2: a camaraderie with other nerds, right. If you're a tech geek,
Speaker 2: then you can like, you know, tolerate certain things. They
Speaker 2: tend to be pretty center left, although not necessarily that
Speaker 2: political quote unquote. Around twenty fifteen you begin to see
Speaker 2: you know, a lot more media organizations actually before that
Speaker 2: really right, and then you kind of had and you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know where you could like pinpoint the reasons
Speaker 2: for this, but you had a certain type of very pedantic, progressive,
Speaker 2: skuldly left wing commentator become very prominent on Twitter. It's like,
Speaker 2: I call them knits, but they're worse because anyway, it's
Speaker 2: my least favorite type of people in the world. And
Speaker 2: they're all at Blue Sky and they all are in
Speaker 2: a circle jerk with one another, and like, I just
Speaker 2: can't imagine, like you would have to pay me millions
Speaker 2: of dollars per year to be like an active Blue
Speaker 2: Sky community member. Now, look, if if we got to
Speaker 2: a point.
Speaker 1: Let's say, you really feel it, tell us how you really.
Speaker 2: By the way, Blue Sky's numbers are not really rising anymore.
Speaker 2: The number of daily likes, this is according to bsky
Speaker 2: dot jazzco dot dev backslash stats, actually peaked on November eighteenth.
Speaker 2: It looks like and has now. The number of daily
Speaker 2: likes has fallen by about thirty percent since the peak.
Speaker 2: The number of daily posters fallen by about the same amount.
Speaker 2: The number of daily followers fallen even more than that. Right,
Speaker 2: and so so I think you actually have a self
Speaker 2: limiting bubble here, right. Clearly, it's a compelling product to
Speaker 2: a certain type. Actually to more than one group.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There are these kind of like fringy more left wing people.
Speaker 2: I would say that's one group. There's also kind of
Speaker 2: like the resistance liberals. But you kind of combine the
Speaker 2: crazy left people with the like goody two shoes like
Speaker 2: resistance folks who I also have no real problem with,
Speaker 2: but you know they're too I don't know, they're too
Speaker 2: square for me and too cringe and like in like
Speaker 2: two straight laced right, it's like it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's again, it's the worst party in the world. And
Speaker 2: I think I think that it actually has a pretty
Speaker 2: limited audience. I think that audience will love it, but
Speaker 2: I think it I think founder effects are profound. Founder
Speaker 2: effects mean that when a certain like species into an ecosystem,
Speaker 2: or a certain population enters a you know, physical ecosystem
Speaker 2: that they have, like there's a lot of path dependency
Speaker 2: and kind of who then joins or is or feels
Speaker 2: like a strange from the system. And and and I think,
Speaker 2: you know, people like Matt Iglesias, who was kind of
Speaker 2: a friend of the newsletter. I don't know, a friend
Speaker 2: of the podcast, but like he was someone who tried
Speaker 2: to go on Blue Sky and acting good faith and
Speaker 2: like and that's probably somewhat like me and being some
Speaker 2: center left and also can give and take a little bit,
Speaker 2: was like kind of hounded off it and like treat
Speaker 2: it really really poorly, and like if you can't like
Speaker 2: tolerate like Matt Iglasius. You see the left of seventy
Speaker 2: five percent of the country, right, then your platform has
Speaker 2: a limited reach, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I will you know, push back on part
Speaker 1: of that in the sense that, like my blue Sky
Speaker 1: experience is totally different, right, Like I curated it the
Speaker 1: way that I curate my Twitter feed, which is like
Speaker 1: a lot of people who make me laugh and are funny,
Speaker 1: a lot of writers I admire, right, And it's actually,
Speaker 1: you know, I've tried to steer clear. There's some political
Speaker 1: stuff on there, but mostly you know, and some news
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And it's just a much cleaner
Speaker 1: feed for me now than what Twitter has become. I
Speaker 1: don't get death threats. I don't get rape threats. You know,
Speaker 1: people people do say.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're you're like.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, I'm just saying my experience. So I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that there are lots of different ways to
Speaker 1: carry a blue sky. Where I will, well, I will
Speaker 1: agree with you, is that I think that this kind
Speaker 1: of just black and white knee jerk reaction like this
Speaker 1: person is here, like let's hound them off, like that
Speaker 1: is bad, right.
Speaker 2: That is just it's also violent people who are seen
Speaker 2: as being too conservative on trans rights. There like are
Speaker 2: literally receiving literally receiving death threats right very out in
Speaker 2: the open, and there's not much effort.
Speaker 1: To that's that's the opposite.
Speaker 2: And the fact that like that's tolerated on Blue Sky,
Speaker 2: whereas like Mattic Glacis is hounded off. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: really fucked up, right, I don't want to support that platform.
Speaker 2: I literally think Twitter is is better. I literally think
Speaker 2: Twitter is at least a little bit more bipartisan, and like,
Speaker 2: you know, I you don't have this hypocritical endorsement of
Speaker 2: violence on Blue Sky that I don't think people should
Speaker 2: spend their time there now.
Speaker 1: I think that the endorsement of virons is absolutely wrong.
Speaker 1: And like I said, you know, that's the thing I'm
Speaker 1: agreeing with you on. I think that you should. You know,
Speaker 1: people need to be more open minded, more tolerant, and
Speaker 1: more able to see nuanced. This as a thread throughout
Speaker 1: this episode, I guess of Risky Business that you know,
Speaker 1: the world ain't black and white. People like, there are
Speaker 1: good things and bad things, and you can disagree respectfully, right,
Speaker 1: You can have conversations, you can engage with people, you
Speaker 1: can actually have debates about a lot of topics, and
Speaker 1: it's not if you say this or if you think that,
Speaker 1: then you're a horrible human being and I'm done with you.
Speaker 1: And here's this person's address, let's go and get them
Speaker 1: right like that that is just that is not okay
Speaker 1: behavior and that kind of extremism. That's what we were
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, in our last segment about Luigi.
Speaker 1: That is rising. And I think that what Twitter has,
Speaker 1: I that Twitter has that as well. That is not
Speaker 1: unique to to Blue Sky. What Twitter has of that,
Speaker 1: what Blue Sky is showing and amplifying there, like that
Speaker 1: is a very very bad way of looking at the world,
Speaker 1: and I think we're seeing it more and more and
Speaker 1: we need to have you know, I don't know how
Speaker 1: we draw back as as a society and say okay,
Speaker 1: you know enough, right, like let's let's just maybe civilized
Speaker 1: discost maybe somewhere.
Speaker 2: Like social media platforms are like the great filter. There's
Speaker 2: all this theory about the Fermi paradox and like why
Speaker 2: don't we see extraterrestrial life? And they are like literally
Speaker 2: dozens of possible answers to it. But like, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe the Twitter type social media platforms, especially when they
Speaker 2: get algorithmatized to spark engagement by any means necessary, Like
Speaker 2: maybe those are just really bad that right, Yeah, and
Speaker 2: maybe Twitter was actually the exception to be like relatively
Speaker 2: good for a period. I mean it still is more
Speaker 2: by parts. If you look at the data on like
Speaker 2: Democrats for Republicans on Twitter, it is relatively balanced. Now,
Speaker 2: I personally think that Elon with the for you algorithm,
Speaker 2: I think quits a pretty heavy finger on the scale
Speaker 2: for conservative viewpoints. And my subjective view was a very
Speaker 2: long time user. Is that like there's a little thumb
Speaker 2: on the scale for certain stuff, including Elon fucking posting
Speaker 2: so much himself, right, maybe the most important thumb on
Speaker 2: the scale.
Speaker 1: I'm one of those people who constantly says, like don't
Speaker 1: show like ignore, this is not for me, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't work when it comes to Elon, and when it
Speaker 1: comes to when it comes to those things, it just
Speaker 1: it just completely does not work apparently.
Speaker 2: Where it's like if tweet is from Elon, wait by
Speaker 2: like one thousand x Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think you made a really important point
Speaker 1: that maybe like social media platforms like Twitter, like Blue Sky,
Speaker 1: like all of these sorts of platforms are not good
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, right, Like, maybe that
Speaker 1: is not good for critical thinking, that's not good for
Speaker 1: deep thinking, it's not good for fostering the kind of
Speaker 1: society where we want to live. And by the way,
Speaker 1: you know, in other news, like we've seen Australia, right
Speaker 1: just banned social media for people under sixteen? Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But you know there are countries that I just try
Speaker 1: to go like complete, Okay, whoa, this is not this
Speaker 1: is not good. I think that might be a little
Speaker 1: too extreme, but I do think we're seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of signs that like maybe this just doesn't good, whether
Speaker 1: it's Twitter or blue Sky or or any of these platforms,
Speaker 1: that they're just not bringing out the best in people.
Speaker 1: They're not bringing out the best in conversation, they're not
Speaker 1: bringing out the best in the ways that our brains
Speaker 1: can work, right, They're not challenging us the way that
Speaker 1: they should be challenging us, and instead they're kind of
Speaker 1: catering to the lowest common denominator, which is not good. Right,
Speaker 1: That is not kind of catering to the lowest common
Speaker 1: denominator is never never a good phenomenon.
Speaker 2: In summary, Twitter sucks and Blue Sky sucks a little
Speaker 2: bit more.
Speaker 1: It makes opinion, I would say they both suck. Twitter
Speaker 1: sucks a little bit more. So we will we will
Speaker 1: disagree on that, and we both agree that the types
Speaker 1: of platforms and the types of thinking fostered by that
Speaker 1: approach to social media is not good and sucks, and
Speaker 1: we need something better. Let's take a break, and then
Speaker 1: let's talk about some chess. Are you a chess fan Nate.
Speaker 2: Frame that I know, I kind of I'm like adjacent
Speaker 2: to a lot of chess fans, right, so I absorbed
Speaker 2: some of it through kind of like like Darryl Moory
Speaker 2: who he spoke with, yeah in the previous episodes, a
Speaker 2: big chess fan, so you get something through him and
Speaker 2: people read on the internet. But I you know, I'm
Speaker 2: a casual follower.
Speaker 1: I'd say, yeah, so were you? Were you aware though,
Speaker 1: even as a casual follower of the World Championship defense
Speaker 1: that happened last week a.
Speaker 2: Little bit and then from reading your sub stack, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, so for people for people who didn't see it,
Speaker 1: The World Chess Champion, former World Chess Champion Deng lu
Speaker 1: Zen was defending his championship title last week, and he
Speaker 1: made a blunder. So they were tied, and they were
Speaker 1: playing in a match that seemed like it would also
Speaker 1: be a tie, and then he blundered, and he made
Speaker 1: a blunder that was so bad that every chess expert
Speaker 1: you know, you can read about this in every person
Speaker 1: I spoke to. I spoke with Jennifer Shahade, who is
Speaker 1: a former women's chess champion of the United States twice
Speaker 1: and the only woman I believe to have ever won
Speaker 1: the Junior Chess Championship Open in the United States woman grandmaster,
Speaker 1: and she said, like people, it was just like horrific, right, like,
Speaker 1: you do not make that kind of a mistake at
Speaker 1: that level, even at much lower levels. It was so
Speaker 1: bad that she went overrote with her son, who is
Speaker 1: who is little and who was learning learning how to
Speaker 1: play chess. And so he blundered and an eighteen year
Speaker 1: old Gukesh Domaraju was able to claim the World Championship title,
Speaker 1: becoming the youngest ever world chess champion. Yeah, Gary Kasparoff
Speaker 1: used to hold that title. He was twenty two, and
Speaker 1: so this was a huge, huge moment and I am
Speaker 1: interested in it, and this is what I wrote about it.
Speaker 1: Not because you know, this is a show about chess strategy,
Speaker 1: but because of like the psychology behind it, right, Like
Speaker 1: we've we've been there, and I'm sure I know I've
Speaker 1: been there in poker, right like you sometimes like you
Speaker 1: just have a brain fart. And sometimes a brain fart
Speaker 1: isn't just a brain fart, right, Like, it can be
Speaker 1: a brain fart that's like a blunder of epic proportions. Now,
Speaker 1: you and I have never played on that kind of
Speaker 1: a global stage where we're you know, defending our world
Speaker 1: championship title. But you see this all the time in
Speaker 1: high performance athletes, whether it's mental games or whether it's
Speaker 1: actually physical games, where someone who's really really good just
Speaker 1: chokes right and just has this kind of moment where
Speaker 1: like what just happened, right, like a holy shit moment?
Speaker 1: And I, you know, every when I see that, like
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated in, you know, the psychology behind that, the
Speaker 1: psychology of why kind of high high performance people can
Speaker 1: actually you know, experience moments like that. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've seen that much. I've seen that often in sports
Speaker 1: like actual sports. I don't follow actual sports as closely
Speaker 1: as you do, but in mind sports, you know, I
Speaker 1: wrote about a brain fart that I had that was
Speaker 1: that was a little bit less less extreme, but that
Speaker 1: you know, changed the outcome of the napt the Poker
Speaker 1: Stars event that I just went deep in. So these
Speaker 1: things matter. And you know, when you're in high pressure situations,
Speaker 1: mental game and your ability to perform is incredibly important.
Speaker 1: But even the best people who have strong mental game
Speaker 1: sometimes screw up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot about this in my book On
Speaker 2: the Edge the ARTI for seeing everything from Penguin Press
Speaker 2: and but about performance under pressure and actually the physiological
Speaker 2: changes that you experience under pressure, because it's not just mental, right, No, No,
Speaker 2: there's Evolutionarily our bodies understand when we're in high stake situations,
Speaker 2: whether they're physical or mental or somewhere in between. You
Speaker 2: not fake, and you don't necessarily want to fake because
Speaker 2: actually your body is more alert and getting more information. Right,
Speaker 2: if you're playing a the final table of a ten
Speaker 2: thousand dollars poker tournament, as Marie and I hope to do, right,
Speaker 2: you are going to react differently than when you're playing
Speaker 2: your one dollar two dollars home game on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and you.
Speaker 2: Sell yourself and you counted your brain, but you're on
Speaker 2: a different operating system where you your heart rate would
Speaker 2: be a lot higher.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You know, some people become more intuitive, which can be
Speaker 2: a good thing or a bad thing, but like it
Speaker 2: becomes you know, you can be in the zone where
Speaker 2: you're like just kind of feel like I'm seeing things
Speaker 2: that's happened to me a handful of times, right, or
Speaker 2: you can choke. So when you run deep in a
Speaker 2: poker tournament, like really deep. So I played in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, I both made like day five of the
Speaker 2: Millionaire Maker and day six of the main Event, right,
Speaker 2: And so you see what happens in these big soft tournaments.
Speaker 2: The Main Event, by the way, is like one of
Speaker 2: the softest poker tournaments. And in the world, lots of
Speaker 2: kind of rich yolo guys come and show up, right,
Speaker 2: lots of people who qualify in some way, and like,
Speaker 2: so this is a population of predominantly amateurs, right, and
Speaker 2: they just lose their shit when the pressure is on. Right.
Speaker 2: Some of them probably have like it's a self sabotage
Speaker 2: complex or like survivorship guilt. Some of them are just tired.
Speaker 2: They've been playing poker for you know, a six year
Speaker 2: old guy who's not used to playing poker all day.
Speaker 2: Now it plays high stressed poker for four days in
Speaker 2: a row, for twelve hours with all these younger kids
Speaker 2: and like, and then maybe they lose a big pot
Speaker 2: and they freak out and they and they tilt, and
Speaker 2: you see people shaking to the point where you know
Speaker 2: it almost looks like they have some type of medical
Speaker 2: condition because but but because your body is having a profound,
Speaker 2: like physiological response to stress, and then it goes away
Speaker 2: the minute hit the hands over. Okay, So if you
Speaker 2: do not eventually adapt to that in poker, then you
Speaker 2: probably don't get very far. So you filter in fromtional
Speaker 2: setting people who like who are either tolerant other type
Speaker 2: of stress or even enjoy it, the sickos of Michael
Speaker 2: Jordan's of the world who enjoy the stress.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Jason Kuhn, another very good fucker player quotuck to the book,
Speaker 2: grew up in this very rough upbringing in West Virginia
Speaker 2: and had like an abusive father and things like that.
Speaker 2: And he's like, yeah, for me, it's like that's natural, right,
Speaker 2: Like high stress, I feel kind of more comfortable in
Speaker 2: a fucked up way under high stress. So yeah, impressional sports.
Speaker 2: It's rare to see someone who will survive through the
Speaker 2: gauntlet of high school and college and whatever else. You know.
Speaker 2: Ben Simmons, the former Philadelphia seventy six er, is kind
Speaker 2: of an exception. He's known as a choke artist and Parkers.
Speaker 2: He's so naturally talented that he could kind of overcome that, right,
Speaker 2: But like usually you kind of feelter that out. But
Speaker 2: it's like not a natural thing to be, like to
Speaker 2: have the eyes of the world kind of literally upon you.
Speaker 2: This is all live stream, right, and like, you know,
Speaker 2: the most high pressure moment of his life. And so
Speaker 2: I'm very I'm very very empathetic. But chess is kind
Speaker 2: of you know, it's not quite like poker, and that
Speaker 2: like an amateur I could go play in a much
Speaker 2: tougher tournament than I'm qualified for in poker, I still
Speaker 2: have a chance of winning. Right, if I entered a
Speaker 2: Chess World Championship, I guarantee you, I guarantee you I
Speaker 2: get checkmated within ten moves every single time. Right, There's
Speaker 2: not a lot of luck in chess, so the cream
Speaker 2: rises to the top. But still still, you know, and
Speaker 2: then it can be things like if you're a little tired.
Speaker 2: I used to try to like do things like be
Speaker 2: a hero. I want to play a poker tournament, and like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'll just skip lunch. I you know how if you
Speaker 2: make too many calories yesterday, so I'll skip lunch and
Speaker 2: wait till the dinner break and like and you know,
Speaker 2: you play enough, and you kind of see that when
Speaker 2: you're physically tired, when you have other stresses in your life,
Speaker 2: when you're hungry, then you play you worse, right, and
Speaker 2: it kind of comes out in ways that aren't necessarily conscious,
Speaker 2: but like rather like you know, you just kind of
Speaker 2: punt a hand. You're like, you know, actually there's problem
Speaker 2: on body telling me that, Like this post's probably pretty different,
Speaker 2: and I really need to get some fucking dinner, right.
Speaker 2: And you've done that enough where you kind of learn
Speaker 2: how your body and your mind are are not so
Speaker 2: easy to separate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And I think that it's impossible, like
Speaker 1: you cannot underestimate the effects of fatigue. And this is
Speaker 1: what I mean. Dangla Jen was incredibly tired, right, this
Speaker 1: is not He didn't blunder in the first game. He
Speaker 1: had a beautiful first game like this is we're fourteen
Speaker 1: games in here, and you know that that really and
Speaker 1: it was I think four hours into the match, right, So,
Speaker 1: like you you've been thinking at that high level for
Speaker 1: a very long time. And something that I think that
Speaker 1: a lot of poker players can probably relate to is
Speaker 1: sometimes like when you've been working so hard for so long,
Speaker 1: like you just want to simplify, right, Like you just
Speaker 1: want it to be over. Like in poker, there's like
Speaker 1: the tendency to go all in. Right, You're like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to play post flop, like I don't want
Speaker 1: to like have that complex decision making like he four
Speaker 1: bet me, like fuck it, I'm all in, or lucky
Speaker 1: three bet me, like fucking I'm all in for sixty
Speaker 1: big blinds, right like whoa who whoa, whoa whoa. But
Speaker 1: I've done that. Sometimes sometimes you're just like I don't
Speaker 1: want to think through the complexities. Please simplify this for me.
Speaker 1: And this is something that like I said, I'm not
Speaker 1: a chess expert. When I talked to Jen and she
Speaker 1: said that she's going to be writing about this on
Speaker 1: her substack. She actually thinks that this is a good
Speaker 1: kind of strategically this is part of what happened in
Speaker 1: this particular case where he was trying to simplify the
Speaker 1: end game. He was trying to kind of get it
Speaker 1: to a stalemate more quickly, and he made a mistake
Speaker 1: while he was doing that. So as opposed to kind
Speaker 1: of just playing it out, he just wanted he just
Speaker 1: wanted it to be over. And I think that's a
Speaker 1: very very human that's a very human tendency and that's
Speaker 1: something that you know, we should be aware of. But
Speaker 1: I will end by saying, like he has remarkable self awareness, right,
Speaker 1: Like he is someone who I think will take this
Speaker 1: opportunity and learn from it, or at least I hope so,
Speaker 1: because he you know, he dared to come back after
Speaker 1: depression after losing dozens of games in a row, and
Speaker 1: you know, he did not perform while after becoming the
Speaker 1: world champion. Clearly that stress got to him and he's back.
Speaker 1: So I think that that's kind of the other part
Speaker 1: of mental game where everyone's going to choke at some point,
Speaker 1: Like we're all going to have that moment where like
Speaker 1: we fuck up, and how you react to that I
Speaker 1: think is kind of the is the true kind of
Speaker 1: the true test, right do you say Okay, you know
Speaker 1: I fucked up, and then how do I avoid it
Speaker 1: next time? Or do you just lose your shit completely?
Speaker 1: On that note, Nate, let's go and play day two
Speaker 1: of the Win Championship main event.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we both made it. I have a decent stack. Maria,
Speaker 2: I texted you, how you doing what Sunday? She's like, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's going good. I'm like, yo, how many chips do
Speaker 2: you have?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I knew that you had a lot of chips. I
Speaker 2: knew you had a lot of chips when you were
Speaker 2: too say how many chips you had?
Speaker 1: All?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: On that note, let's both hope for a smooth sailing
Speaker 1: day two. We are not yet in the money. By
Speaker 1: the time you all hear this on Thursday, we will
Speaker 1: know how we did. But right now, you know it's
Speaker 1: an open question. And so here's to some run good
Speaker 1: and good luck for the day. Let us know what
Speaker 1: you think of the show. Reach out to us at
Speaker 1: Risky Business at Pushkin dot FM. Risky Business is hosted
Speaker 1: by me Maria Kannikova.
Speaker 2: And byby Nate Silver.
Speaker 1: The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
Speaker 1: is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2: If you like the show, please rate and review us
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