Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova and I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 2: We're going to kick the show off with a lighthearted topic,
Speaker 2: what is the chance that artificial intelligence will destroy every
Speaker 2: last human being and all animals speaking us on Earth?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nate, that is a very very lighthearted area of discussion.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to it. Then we're going to move
Speaker 1: on to the presidential debates and how important they are
Speaker 1: and what they mean for the elections.
Speaker 2: And then for our serious segment, the World Serious Poker
Speaker 2: begins next week in Las Vegas. We're both going to
Speaker 2: be there. I already got my wired transfer to whatever
Speaker 2: new payment provider the world series uses, So we'll do
Speaker 2: a preview of the series on today's show.
Speaker 1: All right, Nate. So you know, I did not think
Speaker 1: that twenty four was going to be the year that
Speaker 1: I would be talking about Scarlett Johansson in reference to
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence and open Ai. But here we are because
Speaker 1: open Ai, which is one of the biggest companies in
Speaker 1: AI research and the fourth behind chat GPT, just unveiled
Speaker 1: the new voice of their newest AI assistant, and that
Speaker 1: voice sounds eerily like Scarlet Johansson, which I guess is
Speaker 1: not surprising since there was this movie Her where Scarlet
Speaker 1: played this AI assistant who becomes very very human like
Speaker 1: and engenders very human like emotions in her co stars. Right,
Speaker 1: and then we see this announcement from Sam Altman, who
Speaker 1: is the founder of Open Ai, about their new voice
Speaker 1: called Sky, and I want to go back to the
Speaker 1: name of the voice in a second when we talk
Speaker 1: about the more substantive issues in open AI, but he
Speaker 1: references her when he tweets about it, and the voice
Speaker 1: sounds early like Scarlett, and she issues a statement that says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you know that is not me. I did not agree
Speaker 1: with this, and we're getting some lawyers involved. And then
Speaker 1: the voice is very quickly taken down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he had tried to make a proper deal
Speaker 2: with her. She had said nah, cold feet. And then
Speaker 2: they come out anyway with this product that sounds a
Speaker 2: lot like her. So it's I mean, look, this comes
Speaker 2: up in my book a little bit, which I'm always pitching,
Speaker 2: I guess on the show, But I think Silicon Valley
Speaker 2: does not understand politics very well. Right, you have this
Speaker 2: very popular actress people left, right and center. Literally my
Speaker 2: Twitter feed, we're pretty upset for how brazen Sam Altman
Speaker 2: and openay look about this, and that matters. I mean,
Speaker 2: Congress has a lot of power to regulate AI. There
Speaker 2: is actually a broad bipartisan support for more a regulation.
Speaker 2: Theydy the AI might be dangerous in different ways, maybe
Speaker 2: not quite in the way that the people will talk
Speaker 2: about in a moment. The doomers think about it, but
Speaker 2: people think it I'll take their jobs, and people think
Speaker 2: it will make misinformation worse, all types of problems algrethmc bias.
Speaker 2: So people have to be people have to be careful.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I kind of hate politics too, but
Speaker 2: unfortunately they have a lot of regulatory powers. You have
Speaker 2: to you have to put up with some of that
Speaker 2: stupidity and not egging on by doing something twice as
Speaker 2: stupid yourself.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely right, and Nate, I am going to show
Speaker 1: the world how much you're already rubbing off on me.
Speaker 1: In terms of using a sports analogy, this is akin
Speaker 1: to what we would call an unforced error, right, like
Speaker 1: this did not have to happen, And this is in
Speaker 1: a week where open ai desperately, desperately needs some positive publicity,
Speaker 1: because what we really want to be talking about isn't
Speaker 1: Scarlett Johansson, as gorgeous as she is and as amazing
Speaker 1: as her voice is and as much as we love her.
Speaker 1: But the other really really big news from open AI
Speaker 1: this week, which is that one of their co founders
Speaker 1: and chief scientist Ilia Sutskib has resigned. And he is
Speaker 1: not the only one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not going to pretend I know all these names.
Speaker 2: It's not like their NBA players or how to pronounce them,
Speaker 2: but yeah, unlike a Leopold Aschenbrenner, Pabel Isma Lov, all
Speaker 2: these people that, again I don't know personally, but like
Speaker 2: credible people think are safety oriented open air researchers, and
Speaker 2: a half dozen of them have left in the past
Speaker 2: half year or so. It's a pretty bad sign for
Speaker 2: a company that's marketing itself as once having been a
Speaker 2: nonprofit that was concerned with doing AI the right way.
Speaker 2: Is that people in that coalition are are now leaving
Speaker 2: in some significant number.
Speaker 1: So the reason that people, including the two of us,
Speaker 1: are so incredibly worried about this or thinking about this
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out should we be worried about
Speaker 1: this is because this was the super Alignment team. This
Speaker 1: was the team responsible for making sure that AI doesn't
Speaker 1: destroy the world. And by the way, I'm just going
Speaker 1: to harken back to our Scarlett Johansson discussion for one second.
Speaker 1: They called the sky and like, were they trying to
Speaker 1: refer to Skynet as well? Like, were they just trying
Speaker 1: to put a terminator in the reference right in there,
Speaker 1: saying like, hey guys, we're unleashing something that might destroy
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: So I think there's a detached irony. Like, look, I
Speaker 2: think Sam Altman's Twitter feed is kind of funny, right,
Speaker 2: And it's kind of funny, and he's combative and he battles.
Speaker 2: He's a poster which if you're like me, who the
Speaker 2: fuck cares? If you're running open AI, then maybe you
Speaker 2: have to be a little bit more buttoned down. And
Speaker 2: they're kind of aloof right. San Francisco and the Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley have always been kind of detached from the rest
Speaker 2: of the country. They're all very smart, all very rich.
Speaker 2: They're also very you know, male for the most part,
Speaker 2: They're probably in a bubble in certain ways. And I
Speaker 2: don't know, like I said before, I might think Congress
Speaker 2: is stupid. I kind of sympathized more with the Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley side and the argument in many ways than the
Speaker 2: DC side. I think they're more innovative. I think technology
Speaker 2: has been good for society. We're all, but like I
Speaker 2: think there is a lot of arrogance there that might
Speaker 2: not end well. You look at what Congress did to Napster,
Speaker 2: for example, or other businesses that we're seen as having
Speaker 2: gotten out of line. And there is a pretty broad
Speaker 2: bipartisan sense of weariness about AI for different reasons. Democrats
Speaker 2: might be concerned about algorithmic bias. Both parties might be
Speaker 2: concerned about jobs being taken over. But the political climate
Speaker 2: on this could shift quite quickly, and that would be
Speaker 2: very bad for Sam Maltman's business.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this concept known as P doom.
Speaker 1: So do you want to just first to say, like,
Speaker 1: what is P doom?
Speaker 2: I pronounce it more like pay doom because looking myself,
Speaker 2: like you look like a urinary tract problem or something.
Speaker 1: All right, P doom.
Speaker 2: So pay doom is a shorthand for probability of doom,
Speaker 2: which is a shorthand for what's the chance that AI
Speaker 2: destroys civilization or substantially impair civilization, which is actually like
Speaker 2: a pretty big distinction. People have different definitions. Eliezer Yudkowski,
Speaker 2: one of the most prominent doomers, meaning people who are
Speaker 2: very worried about AI risk, defines it literally is all
Speaker 2: human beings and animal species perishing, right, every single living being.
Speaker 2: He has said in a Time magazine article last year.
Speaker 2: I think so he's being very literal. Someone like Ajaia Kotra,
Speaker 2: who is an AI researcher, uses some more inclusive definitions.
Speaker 2: I mean things where humanity loses agency if, for example,
Speaker 2: we are no longer really in charge, maybe our lives
Speaker 2: are okay, or some very rich people in Silicon Valley
Speaker 2: have some agency. But if we kind of hand over
Speaker 2: the keys to machines and it becomes kind of dystopian,
Speaker 2: and that could qualify as p doom as well. That's
Speaker 2: a big distinction. And people also have very wide ranges,
Speaker 2: which when they cite this chance you can get people
Speaker 2: who think it's you know, ninety nine percent in this
Speaker 2: coming from Eliezer Yukowski. The consensus, and again if you
Speaker 2: kind of put aside the fact that the different definitions
Speaker 2: of it is probably in the range of five to
Speaker 2: ten percent. If you survey AI experts, AI researchers give
Speaker 2: them different definitions, they kind of gravitate toward that five
Speaker 2: to ten percent range. Some people in the safety community
Speaker 2: are higher, maybe more the range of ten or twenty percent.
Speaker 2: And by the way, let's not be too abstract here.
Speaker 2: If it's true that there is like a ten percent
Speaker 2: chance or even frankly a two percent chance of humanity
Speaker 2: going extinct from AI in the next one hundred years,
Speaker 2: this is a tremendously important problem. Yeah, so figuring out
Speaker 2: how reliable those estimates are is an important challenge that
Speaker 2: the show will tackle from time to time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just took round it even more. Let
Speaker 1: me kind of talk you through a problem that has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with AI that I had to deal
Speaker 1: with quite recently, where you kind of start realizing what
Speaker 1: it means, what five percent means, right, what ten percent
Speaker 1: actually means? So I had a leak in the shower, right,
Speaker 1: you know, like that just completely really annoying, like drip
Speaker 1: drip drip from the show our head, and so you know,
Speaker 1: you look it up online, you try to figure out,
Speaker 1: like what's going on? How do we fix this? And
Speaker 1: turns out that you know, this is a gasket problem,
Speaker 1: and according to YouTube, it's super easy to do it yourself, right,
Speaker 1: you just you know, you take it off, you replace it,
Speaker 1: put it back on, and voila, everything's done. So this
Speaker 1: happened in a big apartment building and I had to
Speaker 1: reach out to the management and be like, hey, how
Speaker 1: do I turn off the water in my apartment? Because
Speaker 1: that's step one, right, you turn off the water flow.
Speaker 1: And so they ended up sending someone and she was like,
Speaker 1: are you insane? You do realize that you could end
Speaker 1: up flooding the apartment below and if you do that,
Speaker 1: you're going to be liable for all of those repairs,
Speaker 1: which could go into the tens of thousands of dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, like normal people walking around aren't going to
Speaker 1: give me a percentage and be like, you know, Maria,
Speaker 1: your p flood is approximately fifteen percent here, But she
Speaker 1: made it seem like it was certainly great than five percent,
Speaker 1: and maybe you know, greater than ten percent, especially because
Speaker 1: the building has very hard water. And so there's isn't.
Speaker 2: A real thing that sounds like some bullshit.
Speaker 1: It is a real thing. Date, It's a very real thing.
Speaker 1: As a female who washes my hair all the time.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, as someone who doesn't have nearly
Speaker 1: as much hair as I do. Sorry, Nate, but that's
Speaker 1: just Them's the facts. God, that hard water is a
Speaker 1: very very real thing and has a very different effect
Speaker 1: on your face, on your hair, on everything, and apparently
Speaker 1: on the level of corrosion when fixing a shower on
Speaker 1: your pea flood. And so here I am trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, okay, well what do I do, like, how
Speaker 1: do I actually decide this? I ended up asking my dad,
Speaker 1: because you know, daddy knows best, and he had a
Speaker 1: very good way of thinking about it. He said, do
Speaker 1: it if there's no visible sign of corrosion and it's
Speaker 1: super easy to take it out, don't do it otherwise.
Speaker 1: And so I, you know, opened it and there was
Speaker 1: tons of corrosion. It was very clear that I could
Speaker 1: not take it out easily. Hired a plumber, got it done.
Speaker 1: But it made me realize that those tiny chances, when
Speaker 1: there's a huge risk involved that can actually translate to
Speaker 1: a lot of money, you have to take that seriously.
Speaker 1: And obviously this is so ridiculously silly, right me destroying
Speaker 1: someone's bathroom below mind versus humanity going extinct. But it
Speaker 1: just illustrates that even if you said, you know, the
Speaker 1: p doom is five percent, and that's not just five
Speaker 1: to ten percent, but five percent or two percent, that
Speaker 1: is absolutely astronomical when the actual cost is the end
Speaker 1: of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In fact, I'm not even sure that it makes
Speaker 2: sense to think of it an expected value terms, because
Speaker 2: expected value is the average or some number of outcomes.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I made a bet on a soccer match the other
Speaker 2: day that you know, I had to win one out
Speaker 2: of six times to be profitable. It did not win,
Speaker 2: but in the long run you would make money from
Speaker 2: that ben Right. If you destroy civilization, however, you don't
Speaker 2: have at no longer, I don't have a view over.
Speaker 1: This is a very very important point. Yes, if I
Speaker 1: destroyed the downstairs apartment, I will be able to pay
Speaker 1: for it. So this is a risk that I can
Speaker 1: think about. If I destroy the world, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be able to make it all better with a
Speaker 1: band aid.
Speaker 2: And what's very weird about the politics of all of
Speaker 2: this is that the people who are most worried about
Speaker 2: p doom tend to be the people who are building
Speaker 2: the AI systems. Which to me people try to like
Speaker 2: over complicate this and say, well, maybe they have some
Speaker 2: marketing and go like, that's fucking stupid. They're worried about
Speaker 2: it because a it's made progress much faster than people anticipated,
Speaker 2: at least recently. I mean, I think very few researchers
Speaker 2: would have thought that large language models like CHATCHYPT can
Speaker 2: accomplish as much as they do right now. Or they can,
Speaker 2: you know, answer any question with a degree ranging from
Speaker 2: somewhat competent bullshitter to actually very good on many questions.
Speaker 2: They can like solve some mathematical equations, they could do
Speaker 2: some programming, they can draw shitty art, they can make
Speaker 2: mediocre music, right. But like, these are all things that
Speaker 2: would have surprised most experts if you'd ask them five
Speaker 2: years ago. The other thing that worries experts is that
Speaker 2: we don't really know how all of us works. You
Speaker 2: kind of feed a giant, you populate a giant matrix
Speaker 2: of what are called tokens, which are words which are
Speaker 2: kind of compressed into vector space. I'm deliberately using some terminology,
Speaker 2: but like the inner workings of these transformer models are
Speaker 2: not entirely understood. To be fair the inner workings of
Speaker 2: the human brain are not very well understood either. But
Speaker 2: to have a very powerful technology that purports to do
Speaker 2: superhuman things within a span of five or ten or
Speaker 2: twenty years and which we don't understand very well seems
Speaker 2: like kind of self evidently a risk we ought to
Speaker 2: be concerned about. That's kind of like the short Steelman
Speaker 2: version of why it's not ridiculous to be worried about
Speaker 2: about ped doom.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think that an even shorter version is
Speaker 1: something that you said right at the beginning, which is
Speaker 1: that the people who are designing it, that's the same
Speaker 1: subset as the people who are most worried about it,
Speaker 1: and whose p dooms tend to be very high. That
Speaker 1: tells us something, Right, if everyone who was actually working
Speaker 1: in AI said nah, this is fine, like it's all good,
Speaker 1: and we were hearing this from pundits and from politicians
Speaker 1: and from you know, people on the other end of it,
Speaker 1: then we'd say, oh, you know, maybe we should discredit
Speaker 1: some of this. But it's coming from the people who
Speaker 1: are actually doing the designing, who are actually doing the building,
Speaker 1: And so that makes me, as someone who doesn't know
Speaker 1: anything about these black box workings worried, especially because we
Speaker 1: know that other processes that have had black box components
Speaker 1: have gone off the rails and have gone wrong and
Speaker 1: have glitched in the past. I mean, we've had this
Speaker 1: with trading algorithms, right, Like this shit happens all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, there are an abundance of scenarios, including that
Speaker 2: people are over confident about AI capabilities and therefore hand
Speaker 2: control of key systems over to AIS and they fuck up. Right,
Speaker 2: I don't see the concerns that kind of DC has
Speaker 2: about AI and the one Silicon Valley does that's necessarily
Speaker 2: mutually exclusive. They could both. You know, there are various
Speaker 2: categories of mild, medium, and terrible things, but there's also
Speaker 2: like a lot of upside in general. I don't know
Speaker 2: if there's some way to quantify this, but the best
Speaker 2: majority of technologies move humanity forward in different ways. Like,
Speaker 2: you know, the human condition is much much, much much
Speaker 2: better than it was centuries ago because of modern technology.
Speaker 2: People who don't know that are basically totally misinformed. And
Speaker 2: like I we'd bet that half of people, even I
Speaker 2: mean our listeners might know, but like the average voter
Speaker 2: probably doesn't know very much about kind of economic history
Speaker 2: and things like that. Technology has been a force for
Speaker 2: good mostly, but we haven't dealt with that many technologies
Speaker 2: that were predicted to have the power to like destroy civilization.
Speaker 2: And by the way, nuclear weapons, you can say, well,
Speaker 2: you know, nuclear weapons have gone okay so far, well
Speaker 2: only since nineteen forty five. If there's like a one
Speaker 2: percent chance risk every year of nuclear weapons been used
Speaker 2: in common, which, by the way, happened in nineteen forty
Speaker 2: five Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You know, seventy eighty years of
Speaker 2: data are not enough to nullify a one in one
Speaker 2: hundred chance.
Speaker 1: So, Nate, I remember someone when I was kind of
Speaker 1: reading about all of the open AI stuff, something that
Speaker 1: really jumped out at me was a CEO who described
Speaker 1: Sam Altman's approach to open AI regulation and open AI
Speaker 1: in general as ready fire aim And that to me
Speaker 1: is a little bit backwards. It doesn't mean we can't fire,
Speaker 1: but we should probably be aiming. And the people who left,
Speaker 1: the people who've resigned the most high profile departures, those
Speaker 1: were our aim people. So Nate, I think we should
Speaker 1: be revisiting our p DO estimates in the coming weeks
Speaker 1: and the coming months to see what happens. I think
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit more pessimistic than you are, and
Speaker 1: I think probably these departures have made both of us
Speaker 1: slightly more pessimistic than we were before. And I would
Speaker 1: just absolutely love to be proven wrong here. This is
Speaker 1: one area where I hope that ourp dooms are all
Speaker 1: way too high. And you know, we can revisit this
Speaker 1: in fifty years and say, ha haha, remember when we
Speaker 1: were all so scared.
Speaker 2: So nate.
Speaker 1: As you know, we are in an election year and
Speaker 1: there were actually some big news for this early on,
Speaker 1: and they had to do with the debates, the presidential debates.
Speaker 1: This has been something on everyone's minds, and it seems
Speaker 1: like Biden and Trump have mostly agreed for their debate
Speaker 1: terms for their first debate, which has now been pushed
Speaker 1: up from the fall to June twenty seventh on CNN.
Speaker 1: So that is like that's in a month, right, that
Speaker 1: is coming up right around the corner, and then there's
Speaker 1: going to be another debate in September. And this is
Speaker 1: big news for a few reasons. So I'd love you
Speaker 1: to talk us through why this is important and why
Speaker 1: we should you know, actually care about this news, about
Speaker 1: the presidential debates.
Speaker 2: So the reason you should care is that we are
Speaker 2: how to put this nicely, You.
Speaker 1: Don't have to put it nicely, Nate. I know we're
Speaker 1: among friends here.
Speaker 2: I think this benefits. This maneuver by Biden, which I'll
Speaker 2: explain in a moment, benefits from people who understand incentives
Speaker 2: and strategy and kind of revealed preference versus stated preference,
Speaker 2: all those fancy terminologies, fancy terms I should say. So
Speaker 2: last week, Biden does a tape segment on Morning Joe.
Speaker 2: By the way, I can't even like actually go live
Speaker 2: on the show. You know, if you think you could
Speaker 2: debate anywhere anytime, you could do a live interview, but
Speaker 2: leave that alone for a second. Does a tape little
Speaker 2: segment saying I challenge you Donald to not one, but
Speaker 2: two debates. Half an hour later, his campaign puts out
Speaker 2: a memo which does confirm that he has challenged Trump
Speaker 2: to two debates, and also says in the third paragraph,
Speaker 2: by the way, we are actually pulling out of the
Speaker 2: Commission on Presidential Debates the three debates that they had
Speaker 2: planned for later this year. And look, the CPD has problems.
Speaker 2: I mean Trump ragged them all the time. In twenty
Speaker 2: and twenty. He also didn't do any GOP primary debates.
Speaker 2: But basically Biden traded three debates after Labor Day for
Speaker 2: one debate after Labor Day and then one on CNN,
Speaker 2: a cable network that will happen in the middle of
Speaker 2: June that probably everyone will forget about by the time
Speaker 2: the conventions happened in July and August, and certainly by
Speaker 2: the time we get to the stretch round of the campaign.
Speaker 2: So what Biden is actually doing here is reducing his
Speaker 2: exposure to debates, which is interesting for various And by
Speaker 2: the way, if you have doubt about that, Biden says too,
Speaker 2: Trump agrees to two, they say how about two more,
Speaker 2: and then Biden's campaign chairwoman says no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: That would create chaos. When they just create a chaos
Speaker 2: that morning by blowing up the schedule. It's an interesting
Speaker 2: kind of game theory problem because on the one hand,
Speaker 2: the debates are zero, one candidate gains more than the
Speaker 2: other almost by definition. On the other hand, if you
Speaker 2: duck the debates, that might be seen as worse than
Speaker 2: even a bad outcome of the debate. So it's kind
Speaker 2: of like the opposite of prisoners subletment, where you have
Speaker 2: an incentive not to cooperate. Here, you have an intetive
Speaker 2: to reach an agreement. You want to look too difficult
Speaker 2: or diffident. But usually when you're the candidate who's behind
Speaker 2: in the race, as Biden is in the swing states
Speaker 2: in the large majority of polls, you want more uncertainty
Speaker 2: and more variance, meaning that you want to take more risks.
Speaker 2: You should want more debates because they add volatility the election,
Speaker 2: and instead Biden wants fewer. That to me is a
Speaker 2: really really, really really bad sign for his campaign. It
Speaker 2: indicates his campaign either is delusional and doesn't believe the polls,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of reporting that they don't or
Speaker 2: that they think their candidate is unlikely to commit himself
Speaker 2: well in spontaneous public interactions because he's eighty one years old,
Speaker 2: he has always stammered a lot, but you know, seems
Speaker 2: like audibly and visibly worse now. That is a bearish
Speaker 2: sign that you're constraining your stategic options, your chances to
Speaker 2: come back because you're worried about how well your guy
Speaker 2: will perform. That's a pretty fucking bad sign. And I
Speaker 2: don't know, you know, you want to make me to
Speaker 2: make the subtext text Maria here, sure, let's do it.
Speaker 2: Democrats might be better off replacing Joe Biden on the ticket.
Speaker 2: I say might, because that's a very very very very
Speaker 2: very very very risky strategy. You would have to draft
Speaker 2: a candidate who was not planning on running for president.
Speaker 2: There is no one Democrat that unifies the field. Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris is roughly as unpopular as Biden. If she were
Speaker 2: the nominee, you would have a huge fight at the
Speaker 2: nomination process. You could have someone who's quite far left
Speaker 2: with the nomination in general, simprist candidates to bear it
Speaker 2: from another segment, but like, if you were really as
Speaker 2: concerned about defeating Donald Trump as Democrats claim they are,
Speaker 2: then you should be doing everything in your power to
Speaker 2: maximize a chance that you win.
Speaker 1: All Right, Nate, I'm gonna stop you there for a second.
Speaker 1: Did you just say that the Democrats should consider replacing
Speaker 1: Biden as the candidate?
Speaker 2: They should certainly consider it.
Speaker 1: And wait, let's be very precise about this. How seriously
Speaker 1: should they consider it? And what is the percentage chance
Speaker 1: that you are giving to these different outcomes? Like why
Speaker 1: are we considering this?
Speaker 2: Because that is.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is just like a very very buld assertion.
Speaker 1: Less than a year before the election.
Speaker 2: Biden is trailing in the polls right now. His big
Speaker 2: problems don't seem to be soluble, one of which is
Speaker 2: the fact that he is eighty one years old and
Speaker 2: often looks and acts like it. His approval rating is
Speaker 2: thirty eight thirty nine percent, generally well below the number
Speaker 2: where you get reelected. I mean, the fact that Trump
Speaker 2: is his opponent. Trump is also very unpopular is what
Speaker 2: keeps Biden in the race competitively. People thought, well, the
Speaker 2: economy will improve and then Biden's numbers will pick up.
Speaker 2: They haven't really. People thought, well, Trump will go on trial,
Speaker 2: the numbers will improve, Well, they haven't really. Well, the
Speaker 2: kind of narrative will improvably, less focus on his age
Speaker 2: will Actually, it doesn't matter kind of what the New
Speaker 2: York Times says about Biden's age. Most voters aren't really
Speaker 2: in the New York Times. So like, let's say we
Speaker 2: get to August, and let's say Biden has a mediucre debate.
Speaker 2: By the way, if he is a terrible, terrible debate.
Speaker 2: One reason I think this play is smart is because
Speaker 2: if Biden totally shits the bed in June, totally seems incompetent,
Speaker 2: then you can kind of pull this emergency lever.
Speaker 1: Let me just ask you a technical question, right, like,
Speaker 1: let's assume that, Okay, Biden performs poorly in the debates,
Speaker 1: the debates matter enough that this really swings public opinion,
Speaker 1: It swings the opinion of the parties, and they do
Speaker 1: end up wanting to replace him as candidates. Can they
Speaker 1: do this in August at the DNC.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been being a little bit sloppy with my language.
Speaker 2: They means that they would have to persuade Biden to
Speaker 2: do it, because Biden right now has a majority, a large,
Speaker 2: overwhelming majority of pledged delegates. If Biden says I'm not
Speaker 2: a candid nomination, those pledge delects become free agents. They
Speaker 2: can vote for whoever they want. Pretty much, I think
Speaker 2: would be loyaled to Biden, by the way, because he
Speaker 2: did decide who the people are, so he would have
Speaker 2: a pole to dictate maybe who who the future nominee
Speaker 2: would be. Their placement would be. But when I say they,
Speaker 2: I mean I mean Biden, and that they are people
Speaker 2: who were pressuring Biden publicly and privately to say, Joe,
Speaker 2: you're gonna elect Trump unless you stand down and let
Speaker 2: us take a puncher's chance at somebody else. And again,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure it's the best play. I'm just saying
Speaker 2: you have to have that mentality keeping up in mind
Speaker 2: toward it.
Speaker 1: Okay, but what we're talking about a decision like this,
Speaker 1: which is so monumental, you do need to weigh the
Speaker 1: risks on every side. Right, so we can say, Okay,
Speaker 1: Biden does have these issues as a candidate. I think
Speaker 1: everyone acknowledges that. You know, I'm voting for Biden. I
Speaker 1: acknowledge he has issues. Obviously, so does Trump. Obviously. I
Speaker 1: don't think we should be having an election where we're
Speaker 1: dealing between these these two candidates, but here we are.
Speaker 1: So I think, though, you need to weigh the risk
Speaker 1: of that versus pulling him out and introducing an entirely
Speaker 1: new candidate in say August or September, when the election
Speaker 1: is in November. So how do we actually wait that?
Speaker 1: How do you actually try to create that game tree
Speaker 1: where you figure out which of these you know, if
Speaker 1: I'm playing poker, which of these is the least bad option?
Speaker 1: Because to me, it is not clear that yanking Biden
Speaker 1: out is going to be the least bad option. It
Speaker 1: might actually end up being much worse. But we don't
Speaker 1: know right these are things that are in the future.
Speaker 1: We don't know who the replacement candidate would be. There
Speaker 1: are so many unknowns in this particular equation, and that
Speaker 1: makes it incredibly incredibly difficult to calculate any sort of
Speaker 1: probability with any sort of confidence.
Speaker 2: So one thing I'd say, we will have more information
Speaker 2: in August when the Democratic National Convention is held. We
Speaker 2: may know the outcome of the first of Trump's criminal trials,
Speaker 2: We'll have more information about Biden's first debate about the economy.
Speaker 2: It is a very, very big risk. I don't think
Speaker 2: I should do anything now. I think they should play
Speaker 2: their hand with a mind toward having this option down
Speaker 2: the road in August. If the make goes badly, if
Speaker 2: things that are supposed to be good for Biden, like
Speaker 2: the economy improves, and the numbers are still stagnant or
Speaker 2: they get worse, then I think you have to like
Speaker 2: have that option available now. What I would do is
Speaker 2: backchannel talk to Gretchen Whitmer and Raphael Warnock and people
Speaker 2: like that. Gavin Newsome, who I'm not a huge fan of,
Speaker 2: but like certainly seems like ready to fill the position
Speaker 2: if you were asked to, you know, I might back
Speaker 2: channel very very very very very carefully that, like, we
Speaker 2: need a couple of backup options in case something I knew,
Speaker 2: some bullshit pretense, in case there is a health emergency
Speaker 2: or something. Right, maybe just in case, right, maybe get
Speaker 2: your kind of nomination speech ready.
Speaker 1: So from that perspective, it seems like it's actually a
Speaker 1: very strategically sound decision for Biden to move the first
Speaker 1: debate to June.
Speaker 2: Let me get so, look, I think they tactically played
Speaker 2: it very well, in part because they actually reduced the
Speaker 2: num of their debates, which they apparently wanted to do,
Speaker 2: and kind of were credited for being the protagonist and
Speaker 2: pushing footward the debates. Right, That was like, very very
Speaker 2: very clever tactically. If you have a shitty hand to play, right,
Speaker 2: they pull off a good bluff with like seven deuce
Speaker 2: off suit. Maybe it's a little unfair, maybe they're playing
Speaker 2: like jack seven off suit or something like that. Right,
Speaker 2: not your favorite hand. You got a little bit of
Speaker 2: equity jack six off suits somewhere in their nine to
Speaker 2: four suited. You know you've seen worse hands, but like
Speaker 2: they pull off a very good tactical bluff in reducing
Speaker 2: their exposure. The fact that they want to reduce their
Speaker 2: exposure when they're losing, when their candidate won the debates
Speaker 2: four years ago, gives credence to the argument, along with
Speaker 2: the lack of media availabilities that Biden does. Where you
Speaker 2: might have a hostile setting or a spontaneous setting that
Speaker 2: they know their candidate is too old. They know it
Speaker 2: does not come across well to voters in those settings.
Speaker 2: They want to minimize that risk. And when a campaign,
Speaker 2: through turnout and through ads and everything else, that may
Speaker 2: be playing their hand the best they can, but maybe
Speaker 2: you have to fold and play a better hand.
Speaker 1: So, Nate, this is a really really important week for
Speaker 1: both of us because it is our last week of
Speaker 1: sanity for the rest of the summer. Because do you
Speaker 1: know what starts next week on May twenty.
Speaker 2: Eighth, uh meteorological summer that's not until June, but Closeky
Speaker 2: It's It's the Factor World de facto Summer Summer Vacation,
Speaker 2: Summer Camp, the World Series of Poker.
Speaker 1: Summer Camp YEP summer camp for poker players. The World
Speaker 1: Series of Poker, which is like, I mean, it's called
Speaker 1: the World Series of Poker for a reason, but it's
Speaker 1: a big deal, Like this is the single biggest poker
Speaker 1: event of the year. I mean, it's something that people
Speaker 1: plan for, prepare for forever, and for some people it's
Speaker 1: their life's dream to come to Vegas and play in
Speaker 1: the World Series of Poker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nowhere else where for seven weeks if you
Speaker 2: want it. There is such an abundance of poker, not
Speaker 2: just tournaments at the World Series, but there are eight
Speaker 2: different poker rooms around town that host their own tournament series.
Speaker 2: There are cash games, there are friends to hang out with,
Speaker 2: degenerate bets to make to your heart's content.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is very true, And the two of us
Speaker 1: are both heading out there next week on Monday, so
Speaker 1: that we can both play the same first event, which
Speaker 1: is the opening event of the World Series of Poker,
Speaker 1: the five thousand dollars Players Championship.
Speaker 2: That's new, right that you should have some stupid little
Speaker 2: now get real money for the first event. I like
Speaker 2: that resolutely.
Speaker 1: And it's a freeze out, so for people who don't
Speaker 1: play poker, The World Series is a series of poker
Speaker 1: tournaments that probably has right now the greatest proportion of
Speaker 1: freeze out events, which means you only get to enter
Speaker 1: or one time, and if you bust, you're done. That's it.
Speaker 1: And that's becoming increasingly rare, and I think that that
Speaker 1: makes it really.
Speaker 2: Special, absolutely, and that changes the whole strategy, both in
Speaker 2: terms of your mindset and your opponent's mindset. So one
Speaker 2: thing I think people don't realize. I actually have a
Speaker 2: uh blog post up newsletter at Silver Bulletin with twenty
Speaker 2: one tips for playing the real series of poker.
Speaker 1: Ooh.
Speaker 2: One of the most important tips is don't be afraid
Speaker 2: to bluff, which sounds obvious, right. If you're like a
Speaker 2: professional poker player, you don't need that tip by help, right,
Speaker 2: But if you're like, you know, some amateur and you're like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of the World Series and like it's a
Speaker 2: big deal for me, and also all these players are bad,
Speaker 2: so like win without bluffing, No, dude, you have to
Speaker 2: bluff in part because people are terrified and people will fold,
Speaker 2: and bluffing is an essential part of poker, but especially
Speaker 2: in those like freeze out tournaments. If you are what
Speaker 2: we would call a weekend warrior who a few times
Speaker 2: a year gets to play in a local card room
Speaker 2: in Philly or something and then makes your be week
Speaker 2: long trip out to the World Series and plays two
Speaker 2: or three or four freeze out events. You are absolutely
Speaker 2: terrified to lose, right, and you'll show it with every
Speaker 2: action that you take. I mean, people are utterly transparent
Speaker 2: and predictable about kind of letting you know how much
Speaker 2: they care about maximizing the amount of money they win
Speaker 2: versus maximizing how long they get to play for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And also, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for that great advertisement for my last book,
Speaker 1: The Biggest Bluff, so bluff bluff, bluff, bluff bluff a lot.
Speaker 1: I think that's great advice. And I will also say
Speaker 1: for those weekend warriors for professional players, the one big
Speaker 1: tip I would have is have fun right Like this
Speaker 1: is summer camp. It's a really unique experience. I remember
Speaker 1: my first time walking into the World Series of Poker
Speaker 1: and it was just it took my breath away, the
Speaker 1: just sheer energy and how exciting it was and how
Speaker 1: democratic it was because anyone can enter, right if you
Speaker 1: have the money like you can pay that buy and
Speaker 1: you can play and you have a chance to win.
Speaker 1: And that's not true of any other sport. So take
Speaker 1: advantage of that.
Speaker 2: Two years ago I played against Naymar, who is the
Speaker 2: extraordinary Brazilian soccer player. I play against the boxer Ryan
Speaker 2: Garcia in the main event last year. I seem to
Speaker 2: get Phil Helmu at my Table's a fair bit, right,
Speaker 2: and who knows you might even get like a Maria
Speaker 2: or a Nate. Remember we are.
Speaker 1: Never bluffing, No, never, never, always fold not in our vocabulary.
Speaker 2: Yes, we would never bluff a risky business listener.
Speaker 1: This is true. This is absolutely true. So yes, we'll
Speaker 1: be sharing tips like that one, and we'll be sharing
Speaker 1: our journey along the way. And I want to propose
Speaker 1: something to get us in the spirit. I think we
Speaker 1: should have a bit.
Speaker 2: Can I eight one hundred big Max in twenty four hours?
Speaker 1: No, well, I don't think I can. I don't think
Speaker 1: I can do that bet. I might as well just
Speaker 1: pay you out. Now, let's see which one of us
Speaker 1: gets unluckier during the World Series.
Speaker 2: So you want to be unluckier?
Speaker 1: Yeah, in this case, if you want to win the bet,
Speaker 1: you want to be unluckier. You want to be the
Speaker 1: person who runs worse, who is on the wrong side
Speaker 1: of variants the most.
Speaker 2: I love that. I'd love to actually quantify that. So
Speaker 2: so we have, I think discussed privately a method for
Speaker 2: doing this right, because there are, by the way, many
Speaker 2: forms of luck and poker that are hard to quantify.
Speaker 2: If you get cooler, meaning I get pocket kings and
Speaker 2: Marie gets aces, if she wins, she had the better hand,
Speaker 2: it's not a bad beat per se, but like it's
Speaker 2: pretty unlucky for me. But one way where you can objectively,
Speaker 2: unquestionably quantify luck is when you go all in. There
Speaker 2: are more cards left to come, might be before the plot,
Speaker 2: might be before the river, et cetera. And you see
Speaker 2: if you get a run out that makes you the
Speaker 2: best hand or not. Right, If I am all in
Speaker 2: with ace king against pocket queens, I have whatever at
Speaker 2: six fortyence of winning depending on the suits of the cards.
Speaker 2: You can track that we can kind of compare our
Speaker 2: realized value against our expected value, and whoever does worse
Speaker 2: gets money gets paid off by the person. Is that
Speaker 2: how it works.
Speaker 1: So basically, what we're trying to bet on is who
Speaker 1: runs better and who runs worse in all In situations
Speaker 1: where there are no more decisions, where all your money,
Speaker 1: you know, all your chips are in the middle, what
Speaker 1: we need to figure out is do only all ins
Speaker 1: before the flop count? Does it count if we're all
Speaker 1: in on the flop, right? Does it count if we're
Speaker 1: all in on the turn?
Speaker 2: Any any all in before the river?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And by the way, if you're not a poker fit,
Speaker 2: you know, if you go on on the river all
Speaker 2: the cards are revealed, there's no luck. There may be
Speaker 2: luck and you happen to run in like a good
Speaker 2: opponent's hand, right, but there there's no more turn to
Speaker 2: the turn of the deck too, all right.
Speaker 1: So every single time the two of us are all in,
Speaker 1: we are going to record the exact hands that we
Speaker 1: have that our opponents have, if it's against one or
Speaker 1: if it's against two, and then we're going to run
Speaker 1: all of those equities. So we'll be able to ca
Speaker 1: at exactly what the percentages are, and then we'll see
Speaker 1: if we won, we'll see if we lost, and we'll
Speaker 1: be able to have an objective measure of which one
Speaker 1: of us was luckier and which one of us was unluckier.
Speaker 1: So in this particular case, the person who wins the
Speaker 1: bet and wins the money is going to be the
Speaker 1: person who got unluckier. Right, I think that's fair.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like insurance. Right, we're hedgin. How much
Speaker 2: do you want to bet?
Speaker 1: Well, Nate, you suggested a very devilish sum when we
Speaker 1: talked about this before the show, six hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: six dollars and.
Speaker 2: Sixty six cents. Marie, I don't forget those sixty six cents.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, six hundred and sixty six dollars and sixty six cents.
Speaker 1: Let's do it, all right, it's a bet and one
Speaker 1: I might add that I hope you win.
Speaker 2: No, I insist I hope you win, because almost certainly
Speaker 2: the person who wins at six sixty six dot sixty
Speaker 2: six will have lost far more than that and expected
Speaker 2: value loss. Right, it'd much rather. I mean, it might
Speaker 2: be literally worth tens of thousands of dollars Maria in
Speaker 2: terms of how well, maybe probably more than that, frankly, right,
Speaker 2: I mean you're gonna be playing the whole series. I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm coming and going. It's a fucking election year, right,
Speaker 2: I'll play as much as I can probably three weeks total,
Speaker 2: but you're playing the whole thing. You're gonna have like literally.
Speaker 1: Mostly mostly I'm taking a few weeks off, but yes,
Speaker 1: but I'll be there for a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: But I think that this is going to be fun
Speaker 1: for people to pay attention to and to follow along.
Speaker 1: But I actually also think that this is an important
Speaker 1: prop but for a different reason, because it I think
Speaker 1: it's a really really important calibration of your decision making process.
Speaker 1: So what I always like to tell people, whether they're
Speaker 1: poker players or not, is that you know, poker is
Speaker 1: a skill game, right, but there's an element of luck.
Speaker 1: And I think that's true of almost everything in life.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of situations where you know decision
Speaker 1: making skill, but then you have to get lucky as well.
Speaker 1: And so what this is going to help us do
Speaker 1: is actually put something precise on the luck element. Right,
Speaker 1: how often did we make the right decision because at
Speaker 1: that moment of the all in, were we ahead, were
Speaker 1: we behind? How solid is our decision making process versus
Speaker 1: the cards? What we don't control, right, the outcome the
Speaker 1: deck and the order of the deck. That's the luck factor.
Speaker 1: And we're actually going to be trying to put a
Speaker 1: number on that, and I think that that's such an
Speaker 1: important exercise in decision making in general, to try to
Speaker 1: evaluate whether you're making good decisions and running badly or
Speaker 1: whether you're just making shitty decisions.
Speaker 2: Because it's very possible to feel as though you're getting
Speaker 2: beat up by the luck of the cards, right, because
Speaker 2: you tend to remember those times. So one thing, by
Speaker 2: the way, is that, by definition, when you lose a
Speaker 2: poker tournament, it almost always happens in some frustrating way.
Speaker 2: Either you take a bad beat, or you take a
Speaker 2: cooler or you make what you thought was a plus
Speaker 2: EV bluff and it doesn't work out, or you call
Speaker 2: off and the opponent wasn't bluffing. So because tournaments on
Speaker 2: most always end in failure except for the one in
Speaker 2: whatever five hundred time that you win a five hundred
Speaker 2: person tournament, it's easy to like not account for the
Speaker 2: good luck that you had too, and that can impair
Speaker 2: your self awareness about how you might be playing.
Speaker 1: Frankly, absolutely, one of the most edifying things that I've
Speaker 1: ever done, and I do this during multiple events, is
Speaker 1: write down every single hand of a tournament. And I
Speaker 1: did this for the tournament that I ended up winning
Speaker 1: that kind of launched my poker career in a way,
Speaker 1: and that was the PCA National Championship. I wrote down
Speaker 1: all of the hands and it was really really important
Speaker 1: to me to look back and see how many times
Speaker 1: I just got so lucky, because it's so easy to
Speaker 1: forget that. You know, the moment where I got pocket
Speaker 1: seven's in against aces, right, I should have been out
Speaker 1: of the tournament and instead I ended up having a
Speaker 1: straight and I ended up doubling. So there are moments
Speaker 1: like that, and it's I think that in life in general,
Speaker 1: it's so easy to just freak at those moments, but
Speaker 1: it's so important to remember them.
Speaker 2: By the way, we talked last week about focus during
Speaker 2: poker tournaments, this is a little hack. If you feel
Speaker 2: like there is a day when you would like more focus,
Speaker 2: then forcing yourself to write down every hand you play
Speaker 2: will require you to concentrate more. You can't do it
Speaker 2: every time. It does take a lot of work. But
Speaker 2: like if there's a little bit sleepy, tire, jet lagged, hungover,
Speaker 2: et cetera, then that's a tip that I use. I
Speaker 2: pull out now and then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's a great tip night, and it will
Speaker 1: just be it will be helpful to you to become
Speaker 1: a better poker player. I encourage people to do this
Speaker 1: even when they're not playing poker, when they're making decisions
Speaker 1: in an unrelated area. When people are like, oh, how
Speaker 1: do improve my decision agame? Like, you should actually write
Speaker 1: down your entire thought process during the decisions, what you're waiting,
Speaker 1: you know, how you're doing it, how you're thinking about it,
Speaker 1: so that you have an objective record going back, because
Speaker 1: otherwise self serving bias, you know, is very strong.
Speaker 2: I am considering what type of pizza to get for lunch, Marie,
Speaker 2: I'm going to write down the thought process. Right, we'll
Speaker 2: be like a Grandma Square or like Pepperoni or Suprema,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, Nate, you're going to go for Detroit style, right,
Speaker 1: given your.
Speaker 2: Meal out, Decroit style is kind of fake. I mean,
Speaker 2: it does exist in Detroit, but the real pizza of
Speaker 2: Michigan is Domino's and Little Cauzers, of which I prefer
Speaker 2: the latter.
Speaker 1: All right, And on that note, Nate, I wish you
Speaker 1: luck next week, and I wish me luck as well,
Speaker 1: and I hope we both do really well and for
Speaker 1: people who want to follow along are you are you
Speaker 1: going to be posting updates? Are you going to be
Speaker 1: posting any action? Can people buy a steak in what
Speaker 1: you're doing?
Speaker 2: Or now I haven't historically sold action, maybe I will
Speaker 2: all I can figure it out, just for just for fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I actually decided partly for risky business audience.
Speaker 1: But in general I've posted action for a few events
Speaker 1: on the two biggest poker staking sites, which is poker
Speaker 1: steak dot com and steak kicks dot com. And most
Speaker 1: of those events are listed at no markup, which means
Speaker 1: you get it at face value. They're small pieces, you know,
Speaker 1: But I think it's a fun way for people to
Speaker 1: be able to follow along and nate if you do
Speaker 1: that too, maybe we'll do some sort of risky business
Speaker 1: action package.
Speaker 2: Just to be clear what you mean by this, Maria,
Speaker 2: this means that people are basically buying a piece of
Speaker 2: equity in you. If they buy one percent of your
Speaker 2: action and you cash de terment for one hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: they therefore get one thousand dollars for example.
Speaker 1: This is correct. This is correct, And I'm not listing
Speaker 1: every single event that I'm playing, but I have a
Speaker 1: few I think five or six on there, and then
Speaker 1: you are invested in my wins, and unfortunately you're also
Speaker 1: invested in my losses, but your downside is capped. Unlike mine,
Speaker 1: I've got unlimited ownside. One last thing, Nate, before we
Speaker 1: say goodbye to our listeners, I would just like to
Speaker 1: say thank you to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors
Speaker 1: Authority for listening, for tuning in to last week's episode
Speaker 1: of Risky Business and taking the gender pay gap in
Speaker 1: professional basketball seriously, because it turns out that the other
Speaker 1: day they announced a deal to provide one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in annual sponsorship to every single ACES player for
Speaker 1: this season and for twenty twenty five. Now, of course
Speaker 1: they're now going to be investigated by the WNBA, but
Speaker 1: let's say kudos for a very innovative way and a
Speaker 1: very Las Vegas way of handling the gender pigapp.
Speaker 2: In Las Vegas, everything has a price, including gender equity.
Speaker 1: Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova and me
Speaker 1: Nate Silver. The show is a co production of Pushkin
Speaker 1: Industries in iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2: If you like the show, please rate and review us
Speaker 2: who other people can find us more easily and if
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