December 19, 2024 • 41 mins
Nate and Maria talk about what Luigi Mangione can show us about the danger of black and white thinking, and how platforms like Bluesky and X create bubbles that make matters worse. Then, with the reigning world chess champion dethroned after a surprising choke, they discuss how they deal with high-stakes situations.
Risky Business will be off next week. We’ll be back with a new episode on 1/2/25. Happy New Year!
For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters:
The Leap from Maria Konnikova
Silver Bulletin from Nate Silver
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Just a quick note that will be off for
the holidays next week. Have a wonderful new year and
we will see you in January. Welcome back to Risky Business,
(00:36):
a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova and.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm Nate Silver. Today we'll talk about a man who
allegedly made a very poor decision to murder a healthcare CEO.
That is, of course, Luigi Vangionese.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And after that we're going to talk about blue Sky
social media echo chambers and how that all ties into
the types of phenomenon that we're witnessing like Luigi Maggione.
And after that we are going to talk about chess
and choking under pressure and the importance of mental game.
Let's get into.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Maria. I want you to have the first word on
Luigi because I want to kind of try to get
in his I know we're not supposed to do this right,
but like you're the psychologist, I want to kind of
get your basic take on kind of what kind of
headspace that he was in.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, so a lot of people have been supportive of him,
and I've said, you know, it's it's incredibly understandable. The
guys in pain, and so he does something about it.
And I have a few things to say to that.
First of all, like, we don't actually know what the
(01:53):
causes are, right, We do know he had back surgery.
We know it was covered by insurance, by the way,
so he did not have insurance problems in that sense.
And back pain is awful. Back pain is horrible. But
how many people in the world suffer from back pain
and some debilitating back pain? And some people can't even
have the surgery because it's not covered for them. And
(02:15):
some people live in countries where the surgery isn't even available,
or in countries where surgery is awful and the surgery
would be botched, maybe in even greater pain after that.
And out of those people, how many then decide, you
know what, I Am going to go and kill the
CEO of a healthcare company. That is not a normal reaction.
(02:37):
I think that. I think that psychologically speaking, like there's
something deeply fucked up about that being your response. And
there's also something deeply fucked up about a society that
looks at it and says, yeah, I get it, that's
really cool. And you know, those types of violent tendencies
have happened in the past, and there's been a lot
of scholarship on how you know we're getting better, right,
Stephen Pinker wrote a big book about it better, Angels
(02:59):
of Our Nature, about how violence has gone down over
the years, over the centuries in society, and how you
know we have society and rule and governments for a reason, right,
we have the legal system. And yes, sometimes you feel
like everything's against you. But the correct quote unquote correct response,
(03:20):
the moral response, the psychologically normal response, isn't to say,
let me get you know, a ghost gun with a
silencer and go and kill someone in cold blood allegedly.
And and I think that that you know that that
is in the psychological literature we call that profoundly fucked up.
(03:40):
That is not that is not a normal response. And
so I think, obviously he has major issues, and you
know that's that's a problem. And there are lots of
people who have major psychological issues. But the other psychological
problem is in society lionizing this and glorifying it. And
by the way, let me just like caveat this by saying,
(04:01):
I believe in universal healthcare. I think that they are
horrible problems with the healthcare system in the United States.
I think no one should be denied coverage, you know,
I think this should be a fundamental human right. So like,
let's just put that aside. But the answer to that
isn't you know, let's go out and shoot people. And
the first thing I thought about, and I'm not the
only one, is like the French Revolution, right, and when
(04:23):
people were like, yeah, justifiable, let's go behead some people.
You know what happened to those executioners who did the beheadings.
They got beheaded, right. They also died after in the
in the counter revolution, the Thermadorian reaction. So you know,
there's a lot of historical precedent that says that this
ain't you know, yeah, sure society might change eventually, but
(04:44):
this ain't the way to go about it. And there
are I think we've advanced past that, and I hope
we keep advancing past that rather than regressing. And I
see a lot of signs of regression right now.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, if you look at the number of deaths and
armed conflict around the world, it kind of bottomed out
in the early two thousands and that has since risen.
There's actually a lot of people dying in Ukraine, for example,
there are interstate and interrustate conflicts in Africa. Yeah, I
don't know. I think people are not necessarily internally all
that much more civilized than they than they ever were.
(05:19):
And you know, the fact that you can have this
bountiful life in different ways, and the fact that you
have like a legal system, and the fact that you
have kind of diplomatic ways of resolving conflicts like the
courts or whatever else, or a negotiation of some kind
like that goes a long way, you know. I mean,
this is clearly a guy who is quite smart. He
(05:43):
was valedictorian of his high school class. He went to
University of Penn. He read pretty widely. Clearly a guy
who is capable of profound rationalization for extremely violent behavior.
I mean, the timeline he gave only makes a certain
amount of sense right where where he actually was like
(06:03):
texting friends that Hey, actually the surgery worked out pretty
well and I'm back to being able to do some
of the things used to be able to do. I mean,
people have inferred that, you know, he's at the age
what's he twenty six, twenty seven, he's at the age
where if you have signs of schizophrenia. Yeah, then that
tends to be an inflection point for schizophrenia. He had
(06:23):
also experimented with psychedelic drugs, which which I have no
problem with people doing, but tends to be a bad
idea for people with schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yes, we know that they're a trigger. By the way,
there's a lot of research on this. So if you
have a tendency towards schizophrenia, and you know, if you
have that genetic predisposition, psychedelics and there are other drugs,
but psychedelics are especially a trigger for it. So that's
something that can actually precipitate the psychotic rank. Please continue it.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I mean, I also don't think the critique of the
healthcare system is particularly good, right, I mean, the problem
is that so the US spends a lot more on
healthcare relative to the quality of outcomes we have than
other westernized, industrialized countries. You know, the reasons for those
are much debated. Part of it has to do with
(07:13):
a lot of kind of profit built in for pharmaceutical
companies that develop actually very effective drugs like we saw
in Covid or whatnot. But you know, for whatever reason,
it tends to be subsidized by American taxpayers a little
bit more some it's because of incentives, right, if you're
not kind of paying out of pocket for things, and
you might consume more care than you want. And some
(07:33):
very small number of people consume a very high percentage
of resources in the healthcare system, some of whom are
in really bad shape and deserve it, but some of
them just kind of are, you know, consuming healthcare goods.
It's like a luxury good and things like that. And so,
you know, it is the job of insurers to like
track down fraudulent payments or track down procedures that they
(07:58):
be medically unnecessary. But like if you don't, if your
critque is the cost of health care, then you shouldn't
be complaining necessarily about the insurance companies that have a
relatively modest profit margin. Here, I'm a neoliberal capitalist. I
suppose I do think the healthcare system is fucked up.
(08:19):
I'm not sure that I think, you know, socialized medicine
is a good idea. I think it wouldn't be politically viable,
among other things. But I you know, this is not
like a very mature I would say, critique of what
the causes of the pain points in the healthcare system are,
I would say despite being a smart eye overall, and
(08:39):
that probably fits a pattern. By the way, Also, a
guy who like is a little bit in kind of
what we call the gray tribe people who he's reading
some of these kind of like centrist rationalist newslayers, probably
subscribed to a lot of substacks. For example, maybe listen
to this show if you're listening in jail, Hello, Luigi,
we vibe on the program. Probably not, I think, probably
a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, I don't think so. I'm you know, I draw
the line at giving a platform to age.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
A legend you never know, you never know.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
But but yeah, no, I mean I think I think
we both agree healthcare system profoundly fucked up. It's not
just the insurance companies, it's the hospitals. I mean, there
are a lot of things that are wrong. But I
will also say that when people have really serious problems
I've had you know, I've had friends and my parents
have had friends. You know, older health issues, cancer, you know,
brain tumors, all sorts of things go wrong in Canada
(09:35):
and in Europe. Do you know where they come to
the United States to get the set, to get the surgery,
because that's where you can get that standard of your
care and you can't get it. Sure, they're experts everywhere,
but in general, you know, the quality the expertise is here.
And that's also here for a reason. I, like I said,
I firmly believe in universal health care, socialized medicine. Probably
(09:58):
not quite the way to go. I have no idea
how to solve this, right. This is why I am
not the CEO of a healthcare company or in charge
of health care. This is not my area of expertise.
But what I what is my area of expertise as
a psychological element of this, and it's really you know,
I think the human brain has this tendency and I
think we see this in Luigi to just simplify, right,
(10:20):
black and white heroes, villains, bad good, this person must go.
There's just this tendency to simplification and avoidance of nuance,
like Shades of Gray eight people's strong point a lot
of times, and I think that's getting much worse, and
especially in the social media world, you know, where kind
(10:42):
of all of these things are being amplified, where people
get into their little silos, into their little bubbles, and
they see these things reflected that simplification that like black
and white thinking, that hero villain thinking is getting overblown.
I'd like to see people start studying this. Right now,
I'm no longer in academia, but I'd really like to
see some work done on kind of the rise of
(11:04):
this type of simplistic thinking and simplistic outlooks on the
world as it relates to social media.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
I don't think it's very widespread. There was some poll
that came out that found that only eighteen percent of
people approve of Luigi Mangioni, and like seventy percent disapprove.
I'm surprised that eighteen percent people have an opinion about
him or know who he is. Right, he could sound
like some Italian movie star from the forties or something
like that.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Right, So, just to clarify what I was thinking, I
was what I was talking about was actually Luigi himself
and the reason he thought this was a good idea,
that his view of the world is this kind of
black and white view. And I think that, but as yes,
it also applies to the people who support him. I
think that, Yeah, it is a widespread, kind of a
widespread fallacy, and our brains do work that way, and
(11:54):
we have to constantly fight against it, and the things
that actually help buttress against that are things that are
disappearing from the world, like critical thinking skills and reading
literature and you know, things that things that actually kind
of force you to slow down and to think and
to reflect. And instead we're i think, living in a
world where we're reacting and thinking very quickly and not
(12:16):
reading deeply and consuming you know, very simplistic media a
lot of the times, and that is I think that's
not a good that's not a good background.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, what's weird is like it was. It's not like
one of these like zodiac killer types where he plots
us out for years. I don't think right, Like he
wrote a manifesto that was like not very not the
best manifesto. I give it.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I rate your manifestos.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
But he's like, yeah, I haven't really finished thinking about this,
but you know whatever, there's not time. It's like, okay,
come on, man, okay, we're I'm going to talk about
blueskind of moment. I'm interested in the phenomenon of like
the certain segment I guess you call it of the left.
I'm not sure why it's even necessarily left exactly. I
think it's just kind of like I think it's everything
(13:08):
crazy attention demanding people for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Well you also I think I don't know if I've
said this on the show before, but I've definitely talked
to you about it. Which is my view that as
you get to that, you know, the political spectrum isn't
a line, it's a circle, right and ship to the
extremes of the of the right and the left, they meet,
right and those like total extremists are are actually basically
(13:34):
the same thing. It just it just comes full circle.
That's yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I mean, I mean there are the demands. There's like
how much trust do you have in the system? Right, Yeah,
it's been weird. You've seen like democratic politicians ranging from
U AOC to Elizabeth Warren to Chris Murphy, who's this
very like whitebread senator from Connecticut who's now trying to
be like the cool dad. You know, he's lame. He's
(14:00):
like trying to run for the president of twenty twenty eight, right,
and he's like from the ultimate neoliberal insurance broker state.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
You don't like the dad vibe. Walls now.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Went to Williams College, you know, which it's not the
populist hotbed exactly, Whereas Bernie Sanders, who is a much
better politician than all of the three people I mentioned
together multiplied by fifty. I mean, Bernie Sanders has a competent.
I mean, Aosc's a pretty good politician. I take that back.
I think Elizabeth WARN's a borderline terrible politician and Chris
(14:32):
Murphy is worse. Aos' is a pretty smart politician. So
that was suppressing to see. But like, but Bernie Sanders,
who like has built this coalition and you know, got
a lot of things, gotten minimum wage increases in a
lot of places, came not within a hair's breath, but
very respectably against Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen. I mean,
like you know, he was like, yeah, this is not
(14:53):
the way into into people's hearts on this issue, right,
And like also, like, if you want to talk more
about healthcare, by the way, just to give you some context, right,
this is a real issue. The United States, according to
the Peter J. Peterson Foundation, spends seven hundred and forty
teen dollar per year on healthcare compared to and fifty
(15:13):
dollars of the other wealthy countries.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
This is per person, right, per capity.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yes, so twice as much. Ish about one thousand dollars
of that is in administrative costs, which is not all
of it or most of it, but compares toon averager
two hundred and thirteen dollars and these other wealthy countries Australia,
can Belgium and so forth. So there's a real issue here.
But you don't have to like just start talking more
(15:39):
about healthcare. You don't have to say we're talking more
about healthcare because it's fucking lunatic who allegedly killed somebody, right,
just talk more about healthcare, and like, don't like rationalize
it in your little bubble. And it's just I don't know,
it's just very weird to me.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, I think that's I think that's exactly right. And
I think on that note, shall we take a break
and then talk about social media and caris guy. Yeah,
(16:13):
So over the last few months since October, blue Sky
has gained almost two and a half million users, and
Twitter or X as it's now known, has lost basically
the same amount two point seven million. So we're seeing
kind of Twitter x is still ten times bigger than
blue Sky, but we are seeing something that looks like
(16:34):
it might be a trend. Before we get into it, Nate,
do you have a blue Sky account?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I do, but I never use it, and I don't
know what kind of fucking psychedelics you drugs you'd have
to give me to want to spend a moment on
blue Sky.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
So I knew you had a blue Sky account. I
thought it was you because I found you with zero posts.
But I have a blue Sky account. I still have
my Twitter account, but I made a blue Sky account
back when it was very early invite only, so sick brag. Yeah,
I know, I know, but I've had one for a
while and I've had periods of activity and dormancy, right,
(17:11):
so I was active at the beginning then, like I
was like, screw this. You know, it's too many social
media platforms. You've got Twitter, You've got Masta don do
you remember Masta Don?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
You've got I've play loyled Twitter, you know, you've.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Got You've got blue Sky. You know, there are all
these things, and I'm like, you know, fuck this, Like
I can't, I can't maintain all of these different accounts.
But I actually re kind of recommitted to blue Sky
probably about oh, I don't know how many months ago, three,
four or five months ago, because Twitter was getting for me.
(17:45):
So your experience is probably different because as someone with
over a million followers, you were you got the you know,
check blue check mark, and your your Twitter experience is
a premium one. Mine is not. I refuse to pay
for a blue check mark. And so my Twitter just
became so unusable in terms of spam, in terms of
(18:07):
just like horrific content that I get, boughts, all sorts
of things, ads that I really don't want to see,
and Blue Sky became kind of a much cleaner way
of sharing. That's it. I didn't leave Twitter because I
actually think that that would have been a mistake. And
I think that it's a very bad idea to kind
(18:28):
of leave the party when you disagree with things that
are going on, because then you missed the discourse, right,
You missed the conversation. You have no idea what's going on.
And the worst thing you can do at that point
is like go off into your bubble in protests, because
that's not going to make anything better.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I'd much rather hang around the Twitter party than the
Blue Sky party. And by the way, I have been like,
you haven't tried the Blue Sky harass as much as
almost any person on Twitter. I'm just a little windy
baby about it, you know what I mean. But like,
in terms of like having people say awful things to me,
it happens to me all the time on Twitter. Maybe
(19:06):
a little bit less than it did in previous ethics,
a little bit less than it did in an election year,
but like you know, and I dish it out too,
to be fair, But yeah, I've been a trending topic
more times than I account for. I cancount for like
totally innocuous things, right, But I would still rather have
(19:26):
Twitter in als decrepit form. And there's lots of conspiracy
theories and and you know, the four you algorithm will
do kind of anything to get your engagement. You know,
you get lots It doesn't apparently know what I'm gay.
I get like lots of like smutty female stuff, right
and things like that, And like it hasn't quite figured
me out exactly. And I'm probably kind of gradually using
(19:47):
Twitter like less similars now, and then I'll have days
where I forget to check Twitter first thing in the morning,
even though it's kind of part of my routine, to
be honest.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
But like, well, let me.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Back up a little bit right Twitter. I mean I
first had a Twitter account in two thousand and eight,
and this is kind of like before everybody is quite
so online as they are now, and so so you
kind of have like the founders are kind of tech
nerds in a different way, or like news nerds, people
who are working in the journals and ministry in some
(20:16):
ways and trying to find new platforms. And when you
have that, then you know, one nice thing about that
is that nerds tend to be I don't know, there's
a camaraderie with other nerds, right. If you're a tech geek,
then you can like, you know, tolerate certain things. They
tend to be pretty center left, although not necessarily that
(20:38):
political quote unquote. Around twenty fifteen you begin to see
you know, a lot more media organizations actually before that
really right, and then you kind of had and you know,
I don't know where you could like pinpoint the reasons
for this, but you had a certain type of very pedantic, progressive,
(21:00):
skuldly left wing commentator become very prominent on Twitter. It's like,
I call them knits, but they're worse because anyway, it's
my least favorite type of people in the world. And
they're all at Blue Sky and they all are in
a circle jerk with one another, and like, I just
can't imagine, like you would have to pay me millions
of dollars per year to be like an active Blue
(21:21):
Sky community member. Now, look, if if we got to
a point.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Let's say, you really feel it, tell us how you really.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
By the way, Blue Sky's numbers are not really rising anymore.
The number of daily likes, this is according to bsky
dot jazzco dot dev backslash stats, actually peaked on November eighteenth.
It looks like and has now. The number of daily
likes has fallen by about thirty percent since the peak.
The number of daily posters fallen by about the same amount.
(21:50):
The number of daily followers fallen even more than that. Right,
and so so I think you actually have a self
limiting bubble here, right. Clearly, it's a compelling product to
a certain type. Actually to more than one group.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
There are these kind of like fringy more left wing people.
I would say that's one group. There's also kind of
like the resistance liberals. But you kind of combine the
crazy left people with the like goody two shoes like
resistance folks who I also have no real problem with,
but you know they're too I don't know, they're too
(22:25):
square for me and too cringe and like in like
two straight laced right, it's like it's like, I don't know,
it's again, it's the worst party in the world. And
I think I think that it actually has a pretty
limited audience. I think that audience will love it, but
I think it I think founder effects are profound. Founder
effects mean that when a certain like species into an ecosystem,
or a certain population enters a you know, physical ecosystem
(22:48):
that they have, like there's a lot of path dependency
and kind of who then joins or is or feels
like a strange from the system. And and and I think,
you know, people like Matt Iglesias, who was kind of
a friend of the newsletter. I don't know, a friend
of the podcast, but like he was someone who tried
to go on Blue Sky and acting good faith and
like and that's probably somewhat like me and being some
(23:09):
center left and also can give and take a little bit,
was like kind of hounded off it and like treat
it really really poorly, and like if you can't like
tolerate like Matt Iglasius. You see the left of seventy
five percent of the country, right, then your platform has
a limited reach, I think.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, So I will you know, push back on part
of that in the sense that, like my blue Sky
experience is totally different, right, Like I curated it the
way that I curate my Twitter feed, which is like
a lot of people who make me laugh and are funny,
a lot of writers I admire, right, And it's actually,
you know, I've tried to steer clear. There's some political
(23:47):
stuff on there, but mostly you know, and some news
and stuff like that. And it's just a much cleaner
feed for me now than what Twitter has become. I
don't get death threats. I don't get rape threats. You know,
people people do say.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I mean, if you're you're like.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
I'm just saying, I'm just saying my experience. So I'm
just saying that there are lots of different ways to
carry a blue sky. Where I will, well, I will
agree with you, is that I think that this kind
of just black and white knee jerk reaction like this
person is here, like let's hound them off, like that
is bad, right.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
That is just it's also violent people who are seen
as being too conservative on trans rights. There like are
literally receiving literally receiving death threats right very out in
the open, and there's not much effort.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
To that's that's the opposite.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
And the fact that like that's tolerated on Blue Sky,
whereas like Mattic Glacis is hounded off. I mean, that's
really fucked up, right, I don't want to support that platform.
I literally think Twitter is is better. I literally think
Twitter is at least a little bit more bipartisan, and like,
you know, I you don't have this hypocritical endorsement of
violence on Blue Sky that I don't think people should
spend their time there now.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
I think that the endorsement of virons is absolutely wrong.
And like I said, you know, that's the thing I'm
agreeing with you on. I think that you should. You know,
people need to be more open minded, more tolerant, and
more able to see nuanced. This as a thread throughout
this episode, I guess of Risky Business that you know,
the world ain't black and white. People like, there are
(25:11):
good things and bad things, and you can disagree respectfully, right,
You can have conversations, you can engage with people, you
can actually have debates about a lot of topics, and
it's not if you say this or if you think that,
then you're a horrible human being and I'm done with you.
And here's this person's address, let's go and get them
right like that that is just that is not okay
(25:31):
behavior and that kind of extremism. That's what we were
talking about, you know, in our last segment about Luigi.
That is rising. And I think that what Twitter has,
I that Twitter has that as well. That is not
unique to to Blue Sky. What Twitter has of that,
what Blue Sky is showing and amplifying there, like that
is a very very bad way of looking at the world,
(25:52):
and I think we're seeing it more and more and
we need to have you know, I don't know how
we draw back as as a society and say okay,
you know enough, right, like let's let's just maybe civilized
discost maybe somewhere.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Like social media platforms are like the great filter. There's
all this theory about the Fermi paradox and like why
don't we see extraterrestrial life? And they are like literally
dozens of possible answers to it. But like, you know,
maybe the Twitter type social media platforms, especially when they
get algorithmatized to spark engagement by any means necessary, Like
(26:27):
maybe those are just really bad that right, Yeah, and
maybe Twitter was actually the exception to be like relatively
good for a period. I mean it still is more
by parts. If you look at the data on like
Democrats for Republicans on Twitter, it is relatively balanced. Now,
I personally think that Elon with the for you algorithm,
(26:48):
I think quits a pretty heavy finger on the scale
for conservative viewpoints. And my subjective view was a very
long time user. Is that like there's a little thumb
on the scale for certain stuff, including Elon fucking posting
so much himself, right, maybe the most important thumb on
the scale.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I'm one of those people who constantly says, like don't
show like ignore, this is not for me, and it
doesn't work when it comes to Elon, and when it
comes to when it comes to those things, it just
it just completely does not work apparently.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Where it's like if tweet is from Elon, wait by
like one thousand x Right.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, but I think you made a really important point
that maybe like social media platforms like Twitter, like Blue Sky,
like all of these sorts of platforms are not good
at the end of the day, right, Like, maybe that
is not good for critical thinking, that's not good for
deep thinking, it's not good for fostering the kind of
society where we want to live. And by the way,
you know, in other news, like we've seen Australia, right
(27:47):
just banned social media for people under sixteen? Is that right? Yeah?
But you know there are countries that I just try
to go like complete, Okay, whoa, this is not this
is not good. I think that might be a little
too extreme, but I do think we're seeing a lot
of signs that like maybe this just doesn't good, whether
it's Twitter or blue Sky or or any of these platforms,
that they're just not bringing out the best in people.
(28:08):
They're not bringing out the best in conversation, they're not
bringing out the best in the ways that our brains
can work, right, They're not challenging us the way that
they should be challenging us, and instead they're kind of
catering to the lowest common denominator, which is not good. Right,
That is not kind of catering to the lowest common
denominator is never never a good phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
In summary, Twitter sucks and Blue Sky sucks a little
bit more.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
It makes opinion, I would say they both suck. Twitter
sucks a little bit more. So we will we will
disagree on that, and we both agree that the types
of platforms and the types of thinking fostered by that
approach to social media is not good and sucks, and
we need something better. Let's take a break, and then
let's talk about some chess. Are you a chess fan Nate.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Frame that I know, I kind of I'm like adjacent
to a lot of chess fans, right, so I absorbed
some of it through kind of like like Darryl Moory
who he spoke with, yeah in the previous episodes, a
big chess fan, so you get something through him and
people read on the internet. But I you know, I'm
a casual follower.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I'd say, yeah, so were you? Were you aware though,
even as a casual follower of the World Championship defense
that happened last week a.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Little bit and then from reading your sub stack, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Okay, so for people for people who didn't see it,
The World Chess Champion, former World Chess Champion Deng lu
Zen was defending his championship title last week, and he
made a blunder. So they were tied, and they were
playing in a match that seemed like it would also
(29:59):
be a tie, and then he blundered, and he made
a blunder that was so bad that every chess expert
you know, you can read about this in every person
I spoke to. I spoke with Jennifer Shahade, who is
a former women's chess champion of the United States twice
and the only woman I believe to have ever won
(30:20):
the Junior Chess Championship Open in the United States woman grandmaster,
and she said, like people, it was just like horrific, right, like,
you do not make that kind of a mistake at
that level, even at much lower levels. It was so
bad that she went overrote with her son, who is
who is little and who was learning learning how to
play chess. And so he blundered and an eighteen year
(30:43):
old Gukesh Domaraju was able to claim the World Championship title,
becoming the youngest ever world chess champion. Yeah, Gary Kasparoff
used to hold that title. He was twenty two, and
so this was a huge, huge moment and I am
interested in it, and this is what I wrote about it.
(31:05):
Not because you know, this is a show about chess strategy,
but because of like the psychology behind it, right, Like
we've we've been there, and I'm sure I know I've
been there in poker, right like you sometimes like you
just have a brain fart. And sometimes a brain fart
isn't just a brain fart, right, Like, it can be
a brain fart that's like a blunder of epic proportions. Now,
(31:28):
you and I have never played on that kind of
a global stage where we're you know, defending our world
championship title. But you see this all the time in
high performance athletes, whether it's mental games or whether it's
actually physical games, where someone who's really really good just
chokes right and just has this kind of moment where
like what just happened, right, like a holy shit moment?
(31:52):
And I, you know, every when I see that, like
I'm fascinated in, you know, the psychology behind that, the
psychology of why kind of high high performance people can
actually you know, experience moments like that. And I'm sure
you've seen that much. I've seen that often in sports
like actual sports. I don't follow actual sports as closely
(32:15):
as you do, but in mind sports, you know, I
wrote about a brain fart that I had that was
that was a little bit less less extreme, but that
you know, changed the outcome of the napt the Poker
Stars event that I just went deep in. So these
things matter. And you know, when you're in high pressure situations,
mental game and your ability to perform is incredibly important.
(32:38):
But even the best people who have strong mental game
sometimes screw up.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, there's a lot about this in my book On
the Edge the ARTI for seeing everything from Penguin Press
and but about performance under pressure and actually the physiological
changes that you experience under pressure, because it's not just mental, right, No, No,
there's Evolutionarily our bodies understand when we're in high stake situations,
(33:03):
whether they're physical or mental or somewhere in between. You
not fake, and you don't necessarily want to fake because
actually your body is more alert and getting more information. Right,
if you're playing a the final table of a ten
thousand dollars poker tournament, as Marie and I hope to do, right,
(33:24):
you are going to react differently than when you're playing
your one dollar two dollars home game on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Absolutely, and you.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Sell yourself and you counted your brain, but you're on
a different operating system where you your heart rate would
be a lot higher.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
You know, some people become more intuitive, which can be
a good thing or a bad thing, but like it
becomes you know, you can be in the zone where
you're like just kind of feel like I'm seeing things
that's happened to me a handful of times, right, or
you can choke. So when you run deep in a
poker tournament, like really deep. So I played in twenty
twenty three, I both made like day five of the
(34:00):
Millionaire Maker and day six of the main Event, right,
And so you see what happens in these big soft tournaments.
The Main Event, by the way, is like one of
the softest poker tournaments. And in the world, lots of
kind of rich yolo guys come and show up, right,
lots of people who qualify in some way, and like,
so this is a population of predominantly amateurs, right, and
(34:23):
they just lose their shit when the pressure is on. Right.
Some of them probably have like it's a self sabotage
complex or like survivorship guilt. Some of them are just tired.
They've been playing poker for you know, a six year
old guy who's not used to playing poker all day.
Now it plays high stressed poker for four days in
a row, for twelve hours with all these younger kids
and like, and then maybe they lose a big pot
(34:44):
and they freak out and they and they tilt, and
you see people shaking to the point where you know
it almost looks like they have some type of medical
condition because but but because your body is having a profound,
like physiological response to stress, and then it goes away
the minute hit the hands over. Okay, So if you
(35:04):
do not eventually adapt to that in poker, then you
probably don't get very far. So you filter in fromtional
setting people who like who are either tolerant other type
of stress or even enjoy it, the sickos of Michael
Jordan's of the world who enjoy the stress.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Jason Kuhn, another very good fucker player quotuck to the book,
grew up in this very rough upbringing in West Virginia
and had like an abusive father and things like that.
And he's like, yeah, for me, it's like that's natural, right,
Like high stress, I feel kind of more comfortable in
a fucked up way under high stress. So yeah, impressional sports.
It's rare to see someone who will survive through the
(35:40):
gauntlet of high school and college and whatever else. You know.
Ben Simmons, the former Philadelphia seventy six er, is kind
of an exception. He's known as a choke artist and Parkers.
He's so naturally talented that he could kind of overcome that, right,
But like usually you kind of feelter that out. But
it's like not a natural thing to be, like to
have the eyes of the world kind of literally upon you.
(36:03):
This is all live stream, right, and like, you know,
the most high pressure moment of his life. And so
I'm very I'm very very empathetic. But chess is kind
of you know, it's not quite like poker, and that
like an amateur I could go play in a much
tougher tournament than I'm qualified for in poker, I still
have a chance of winning. Right, if I entered a
Chess World Championship, I guarantee you, I guarantee you I
(36:25):
get checkmated within ten moves every single time. Right, There's
not a lot of luck in chess, so the cream
rises to the top. But still still, you know, and
then it can be things like if you're a little tired.
I used to try to like do things like be
a hero. I want to play a poker tournament, and like, oh,
I'll just skip lunch. I you know how if you
(36:45):
make too many calories yesterday, so I'll skip lunch and
wait till the dinner break and like and you know,
you play enough, and you kind of see that when
you're physically tired, when you have other stresses in your life,
when you're hungry, then you play you worse, right, and
it kind of comes out in ways that aren't necessarily conscious,
but like rather like you know, you just kind of
punt a hand. You're like, you know, actually there's problem
(37:07):
on body telling me that, Like this post's probably pretty different,
and I really need to get some fucking dinner, right.
And you've done that enough where you kind of learn
how your body and your mind are are not so
easy to separate.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And I think that it's impossible, like
you cannot underestimate the effects of fatigue. And this is
what I mean. Dangla Jen was incredibly tired, right, this
is not He didn't blunder in the first game. He
had a beautiful first game like this is we're fourteen
games in here, and you know that that really and
it was I think four hours into the match, right, So,
(37:37):
like you you've been thinking at that high level for
a very long time. And something that I think that
a lot of poker players can probably relate to is
sometimes like when you've been working so hard for so long,
like you just want to simplify, right, Like you just
want it to be over. Like in poker, there's like
the tendency to go all in. Right, You're like, I
don't want to play post flop, like I don't want
(37:57):
to like have that complex decision making like he four
bet me, like fuck it, I'm all in, or lucky
three bet me, like fucking I'm all in for sixty
big blinds, right like whoa who whoa, whoa whoa. But
I've done that. Sometimes sometimes you're just like I don't
want to think through the complexities. Please simplify this for me.
And this is something that like I said, I'm not
(38:18):
a chess expert. When I talked to Jen and she
said that she's going to be writing about this on
her substack. She actually thinks that this is a good
kind of strategically this is part of what happened in
this particular case where he was trying to simplify the
end game. He was trying to kind of get it
to a stalemate more quickly, and he made a mistake
(38:42):
while he was doing that. So as opposed to kind
of just playing it out, he just wanted he just
wanted it to be over. And I think that's a
very very human that's a very human tendency and that's
something that you know, we should be aware of. But
I will end by saying, like he has remarkable self awareness, right,
Like he is someone who I think will take this
(39:03):
opportunity and learn from it, or at least I hope so,
because he you know, he dared to come back after
depression after losing dozens of games in a row, and
you know, he did not perform while after becoming the
world champion. Clearly that stress got to him and he's back.
(39:24):
So I think that that's kind of the other part
of mental game where everyone's going to choke at some point,
Like we're all going to have that moment where like
we fuck up, and how you react to that I
think is kind of the is the true kind of
the true test, right do you say Okay, you know
I fucked up, and then how do I avoid it
next time? Or do you just lose your shit completely?
(39:45):
On that note, Nate, let's go and play day two
of the Win Championship main event.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah, we both made it. I have a decent stack. Maria,
I texted you, how you doing what Sunday? She's like, Oh,
it's going good. I'm like, yo, how many chips do
you have?
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Right?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
I knew that you had a lot of chips. I
knew you had a lot of chips when you were
too say how many chips you had?
Speaker 1 (40:12):
All?
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Right?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
On that note, let's both hope for a smooth sailing
day two. We are not yet in the money. By
the time you all hear this on Thursday, we will
know how we did. But right now, you know it's
an open question. And so here's to some run good
and good luck for the day. Let us know what
(40:36):
you think of the show. Reach out to us at
Risky Business at Pushkin dot FM. Risky Business is hosted
by me Maria Kannikova.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
And byby Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so all the people can find us too. And if
you want to listen to an AD free version, sign
up for Pushkin Plus. For six ten nine a month,
you access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin. Just a quick note that will be off for
the holidays next week. Have a wonderful new year and
we will see you in January. Welcome back to Risky Business,
(00:36):
a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova and.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm Nate Silver. Today we'll talk about a man who
allegedly made a very poor decision to murder a healthcare CEO.
That is, of course, Luigi Vangionese.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And after that we're going to talk about blue Sky
social media echo chambers and how that all ties into
the types of phenomenon that we're witnessing like Luigi Maggione.
And after that we are going to talk about chess
and choking under pressure and the importance of mental game.
Let's get into.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Maria. I want you to have the first word on
Luigi because I want to kind of try to get
in his I know we're not supposed to do this right,
but like you're the psychologist, I want to kind of
get your basic take on kind of what kind of
headspace that he was in.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, so a lot of people have been supportive of him,
and I've said, you know, it's it's incredibly understandable. The
guys in pain, and so he does something about it.
And I have a few things to say to that.
First of all, like, we don't actually know what the
(01:53):
causes are, right, We do know he had back surgery.
We know it was covered by insurance, by the way,
so he did not have insurance problems in that sense.
And back pain is awful. Back pain is horrible. But
how many people in the world suffer from back pain
and some debilitating back pain? And some people can't even
have the surgery because it's not covered for them. And
(02:15):
some people live in countries where the surgery isn't even available,
or in countries where surgery is awful and the surgery
would be botched, maybe in even greater pain after that.
And out of those people, how many then decide, you
know what, I Am going to go and kill the
CEO of a healthcare company. That is not a normal reaction.
(02:37):
I think that. I think that psychologically speaking, like there's
something deeply fucked up about that being your response. And
there's also something deeply fucked up about a society that
looks at it and says, yeah, I get it, that's
really cool. And you know, those types of violent tendencies
have happened in the past, and there's been a lot
of scholarship on how you know we're getting better, right,
Stephen Pinker wrote a big book about it better, Angels
(02:59):
of Our Nature, about how violence has gone down over
the years, over the centuries in society, and how you
know we have society and rule and governments for a reason, right,
we have the legal system. And yes, sometimes you feel
like everything's against you. But the correct quote unquote correct response,
(03:20):
the moral response, the psychologically normal response, isn't to say,
let me get you know, a ghost gun with a
silencer and go and kill someone in cold blood allegedly.
And and I think that that you know that that
is in the psychological literature we call that profoundly fucked up.
(03:40):
That is not that is not a normal response. And
so I think, obviously he has major issues, and you
know that's that's a problem. And there are lots of
people who have major psychological issues. But the other psychological
problem is in society lionizing this and glorifying it. And
by the way, let me just like caveat this by saying,
(04:01):
I believe in universal healthcare. I think that they are
horrible problems with the healthcare system in the United States.
I think no one should be denied coverage, you know,
I think this should be a fundamental human right. So like,
let's just put that aside. But the answer to that
isn't you know, let's go out and shoot people. And
the first thing I thought about, and I'm not the
only one, is like the French Revolution, right, and when
(04:23):
people were like, yeah, justifiable, let's go behead some people.
You know what happened to those executioners who did the beheadings.
They got beheaded, right. They also died after in the
in the counter revolution, the Thermadorian reaction. So you know,
there's a lot of historical precedent that says that this
ain't you know, yeah, sure society might change eventually, but
(04:44):
this ain't the way to go about it. And there
are I think we've advanced past that, and I hope
we keep advancing past that rather than regressing. And I
see a lot of signs of regression right now.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, if you look at the number of deaths and
armed conflict around the world, it kind of bottomed out
in the early two thousands and that has since risen.
There's actually a lot of people dying in Ukraine, for example,
there are interstate and interrustate conflicts in Africa. Yeah, I
don't know. I think people are not necessarily internally all
that much more civilized than they than they ever were.
(05:19):
And you know, the fact that you can have this
bountiful life in different ways, and the fact that you
have like a legal system, and the fact that you
have kind of diplomatic ways of resolving conflicts like the
courts or whatever else, or a negotiation of some kind
like that goes a long way, you know. I mean,
this is clearly a guy who is quite smart. He
(05:43):
was valedictorian of his high school class. He went to
University of Penn. He read pretty widely. Clearly a guy
who is capable of profound rationalization for extremely violent behavior.
I mean, the timeline he gave only makes a certain
amount of sense right where where he actually was like
(06:03):
texting friends that Hey, actually the surgery worked out pretty
well and I'm back to being able to do some
of the things used to be able to do. I mean,
people have inferred that, you know, he's at the age
what's he twenty six, twenty seven, he's at the age
where if you have signs of schizophrenia. Yeah, then that
tends to be an inflection point for schizophrenia. He had
(06:23):
also experimented with psychedelic drugs, which which I have no
problem with people doing, but tends to be a bad
idea for people with schizophrenia.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yes, we know that they're a trigger. By the way,
there's a lot of research on this. So if you
have a tendency towards schizophrenia, and you know, if you
have that genetic predisposition, psychedelics and there are other drugs,
but psychedelics are especially a trigger for it. So that's
something that can actually precipitate the psychotic rank. Please continue it.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I mean, I also don't think the critique of the
healthcare system is particularly good, right, I mean, the problem
is that so the US spends a lot more on
healthcare relative to the quality of outcomes we have than
other westernized, industrialized countries. You know, the reasons for those
are much debated. Part of it has to do with
(07:13):
a lot of kind of profit built in for pharmaceutical
companies that develop actually very effective drugs like we saw
in Covid or whatnot. But you know, for whatever reason,
it tends to be subsidized by American taxpayers a little
bit more some it's because of incentives, right, if you're
not kind of paying out of pocket for things, and
you might consume more care than you want. And some
(07:33):
very small number of people consume a very high percentage
of resources in the healthcare system, some of whom are
in really bad shape and deserve it, but some of
them just kind of are, you know, consuming healthcare goods.
It's like a luxury good and things like that. And so,
you know, it is the job of insurers to like
track down fraudulent payments or track down procedures that they
(07:58):
be medically unnecessary. But like if you don't, if your
critque is the cost of health care, then you shouldn't
be complaining necessarily about the insurance companies that have a
relatively modest profit margin. Here, I'm a neoliberal capitalist. I
suppose I do think the healthcare system is fucked up.
(08:19):
I'm not sure that I think, you know, socialized medicine
is a good idea. I think it wouldn't be politically viable,
among other things. But I you know, this is not
like a very mature I would say, critique of what
the causes of the pain points in the healthcare system are,
I would say despite being a smart eye overall, and
(08:39):
that probably fits a pattern. By the way, Also, a
guy who like is a little bit in kind of
what we call the gray tribe people who he's reading
some of these kind of like centrist rationalist newslayers, probably
subscribed to a lot of substacks. For example, maybe listen
to this show if you're listening in jail, Hello, Luigi,
we vibe on the program. Probably not, I think, probably
a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, I don't think so. I'm you know, I draw
the line at giving a platform to age.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
A legend you never know, you never know.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
But but yeah, no, I mean I think I think
we both agree healthcare system profoundly fucked up. It's not
just the insurance companies, it's the hospitals. I mean, there
are a lot of things that are wrong. But I
will also say that when people have really serious problems
I've had you know, I've had friends and my parents
have had friends. You know, older health issues, cancer, you know,
brain tumors, all sorts of things go wrong in Canada
(09:35):
and in Europe. Do you know where they come to
the United States to get the set, to get the surgery,
because that's where you can get that standard of your
care and you can't get it. Sure, they're experts everywhere,
but in general, you know, the quality the expertise is here.
And that's also here for a reason. I, like I said,
I firmly believe in universal health care, socialized medicine. Probably
(09:58):
not quite the way to go. I have no idea
how to solve this, right. This is why I am
not the CEO of a healthcare company or in charge
of health care. This is not my area of expertise.
But what I what is my area of expertise as
a psychological element of this, and it's really you know,
I think the human brain has this tendency and I
think we see this in Luigi to just simplify, right,
(10:20):
black and white heroes, villains, bad good, this person must go.
There's just this tendency to simplification and avoidance of nuance,
like Shades of Gray eight people's strong point a lot
of times, and I think that's getting much worse, and
especially in the social media world, you know, where kind
(10:42):
of all of these things are being amplified, where people
get into their little silos, into their little bubbles, and
they see these things reflected that simplification that like black
and white thinking, that hero villain thinking is getting overblown.
I'd like to see people start studying this. Right now,
I'm no longer in academia, but I'd really like to
see some work done on kind of the rise of
(11:04):
this type of simplistic thinking and simplistic outlooks on the
world as it relates to social media.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
I don't think it's very widespread. There was some poll
that came out that found that only eighteen percent of
people approve of Luigi Mangioni, and like seventy percent disapprove.
I'm surprised that eighteen percent people have an opinion about
him or know who he is. Right, he could sound
like some Italian movie star from the forties or something
like that.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Right, So, just to clarify what I was thinking, I
was what I was talking about was actually Luigi himself
and the reason he thought this was a good idea,
that his view of the world is this kind of
black and white view. And I think that, but as yes,
it also applies to the people who support him. I
think that, Yeah, it is a widespread, kind of a
widespread fallacy, and our brains do work that way, and
(11:54):
we have to constantly fight against it, and the things
that actually help buttress against that are things that are
disappearing from the world, like critical thinking skills and reading
literature and you know, things that things that actually kind
of force you to slow down and to think and
to reflect. And instead we're i think, living in a
world where we're reacting and thinking very quickly and not
(12:16):
reading deeply and consuming you know, very simplistic media a
lot of the times, and that is I think that's
not a good that's not a good background.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, what's weird is like it was. It's not like
one of these like zodiac killer types where he plots
us out for years. I don't think right, Like he
wrote a manifesto that was like not very not the
best manifesto. I give it.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I rate your manifestos.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
But he's like, yeah, I haven't really finished thinking about this,
but you know whatever, there's not time. It's like, okay,
come on, man, okay, we're I'm going to talk about
blueskind of moment. I'm interested in the phenomenon of like
the certain segment I guess you call it of the left.
I'm not sure why it's even necessarily left exactly. I
think it's just kind of like I think it's everything
(13:08):
crazy attention demanding people for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Well you also I think I don't know if I've
said this on the show before, but I've definitely talked
to you about it. Which is my view that as
you get to that, you know, the political spectrum isn't
a line, it's a circle, right and ship to the
extremes of the of the right and the left, they meet,
right and those like total extremists are are actually basically
(13:34):
the same thing. It just it just comes full circle.
That's yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I mean, I mean there are the demands. There's like
how much trust do you have in the system? Right, Yeah,
it's been weird. You've seen like democratic politicians ranging from
U AOC to Elizabeth Warren to Chris Murphy, who's this
very like whitebread senator from Connecticut who's now trying to
be like the cool dad. You know, he's lame. He's
(14:00):
like trying to run for the president of twenty twenty eight, right,
and he's like from the ultimate neoliberal insurance broker state.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
You don't like the dad vibe. Walls now.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Went to Williams College, you know, which it's not the
populist hotbed exactly, Whereas Bernie Sanders, who is a much
better politician than all of the three people I mentioned
together multiplied by fifty. I mean, Bernie Sanders has a competent.
I mean, Aosc's a pretty good politician. I take that back.
I think Elizabeth WARN's a borderline terrible politician and Chris
(14:32):
Murphy is worse. Aos' is a pretty smart politician. So
that was suppressing to see. But like, but Bernie Sanders,
who like has built this coalition and you know, got
a lot of things, gotten minimum wage increases in a
lot of places, came not within a hair's breath, but
very respectably against Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen. I mean,
like you know, he was like, yeah, this is not
(14:53):
the way into into people's hearts on this issue, right,
And like also, like, if you want to talk more
about healthcare, by the way, just to give you some context, right,
this is a real issue. The United States, according to
the Peter J. Peterson Foundation, spends seven hundred and forty
teen dollar per year on healthcare compared to and fifty
(15:13):
dollars of the other wealthy countries.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
This is per person, right, per capity.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yes, so twice as much. Ish about one thousand dollars
of that is in administrative costs, which is not all
of it or most of it, but compares toon averager
two hundred and thirteen dollars and these other wealthy countries Australia,
can Belgium and so forth. So there's a real issue here.
But you don't have to like just start talking more
(15:39):
about healthcare. You don't have to say we're talking more
about healthcare because it's fucking lunatic who allegedly killed somebody, right,
just talk more about healthcare, and like, don't like rationalize
it in your little bubble. And it's just I don't know,
it's just very weird to me.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, I think that's I think that's exactly right. And
I think on that note, shall we take a break
and then talk about social media and caris guy. Yeah,
(16:13):
So over the last few months since October, blue Sky
has gained almost two and a half million users, and
Twitter or X as it's now known, has lost basically
the same amount two point seven million. So we're seeing
kind of Twitter x is still ten times bigger than
blue Sky, but we are seeing something that looks like
(16:34):
it might be a trend. Before we get into it, Nate,
do you have a blue Sky account?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I do, but I never use it, and I don't
know what kind of fucking psychedelics you drugs you'd have
to give me to want to spend a moment on
blue Sky.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
So I knew you had a blue Sky account. I
thought it was you because I found you with zero posts.
But I have a blue Sky account. I still have
my Twitter account, but I made a blue Sky account
back when it was very early invite only, so sick brag. Yeah,
I know, I know, but I've had one for a
while and I've had periods of activity and dormancy, right,
(17:11):
so I was active at the beginning then, like I
was like, screw this. You know, it's too many social
media platforms. You've got Twitter, You've got Masta don do
you remember Masta Don?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
You've got I've play loyled Twitter, you know, you've.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Got You've got blue Sky. You know, there are all
these things, and I'm like, you know, fuck this, Like
I can't, I can't maintain all of these different accounts.
But I actually re kind of recommitted to blue Sky
probably about oh, I don't know how many months ago, three,
four or five months ago, because Twitter was getting for me.
(17:45):
So your experience is probably different because as someone with
over a million followers, you were you got the you know,
check blue check mark, and your your Twitter experience is
a premium one. Mine is not. I refuse to pay
for a blue check mark. And so my Twitter just
became so unusable in terms of spam, in terms of
(18:07):
just like horrific content that I get, boughts, all sorts
of things, ads that I really don't want to see,
and Blue Sky became kind of a much cleaner way
of sharing. That's it. I didn't leave Twitter because I
actually think that that would have been a mistake. And
I think that it's a very bad idea to kind
(18:28):
of leave the party when you disagree with things that
are going on, because then you missed the discourse, right,
You missed the conversation. You have no idea what's going on.
And the worst thing you can do at that point
is like go off into your bubble in protests, because
that's not going to make anything better.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I'd much rather hang around the Twitter party than the
Blue Sky party. And by the way, I have been like,
you haven't tried the Blue Sky harass as much as
almost any person on Twitter. I'm just a little windy
baby about it, you know what I mean. But like,
in terms of like having people say awful things to me,
it happens to me all the time on Twitter. Maybe
(19:06):
a little bit less than it did in previous ethics,
a little bit less than it did in an election year,
but like you know, and I dish it out too,
to be fair, But yeah, I've been a trending topic
more times than I account for. I cancount for like
totally innocuous things, right, But I would still rather have
(19:26):
Twitter in als decrepit form. And there's lots of conspiracy
theories and and you know, the four you algorithm will
do kind of anything to get your engagement. You know,
you get lots It doesn't apparently know what I'm gay.
I get like lots of like smutty female stuff, right
and things like that, And like it hasn't quite figured
me out exactly. And I'm probably kind of gradually using
(19:47):
Twitter like less similars now, and then I'll have days
where I forget to check Twitter first thing in the morning,
even though it's kind of part of my routine, to
be honest.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
But like, well, let me.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Back up a little bit right Twitter. I mean I
first had a Twitter account in two thousand and eight,
and this is kind of like before everybody is quite
so online as they are now, and so so you
kind of have like the founders are kind of tech
nerds in a different way, or like news nerds, people
who are working in the journals and ministry in some
(20:16):
ways and trying to find new platforms. And when you
have that, then you know, one nice thing about that
is that nerds tend to be I don't know, there's
a camaraderie with other nerds, right. If you're a tech geek,
then you can like, you know, tolerate certain things. They
tend to be pretty center left, although not necessarily that
(20:38):
political quote unquote. Around twenty fifteen you begin to see
you know, a lot more media organizations actually before that
really right, and then you kind of had and you know,
I don't know where you could like pinpoint the reasons
for this, but you had a certain type of very pedantic, progressive,
(21:00):
skuldly left wing commentator become very prominent on Twitter. It's like,
I call them knits, but they're worse because anyway, it's
my least favorite type of people in the world. And
they're all at Blue Sky and they all are in
a circle jerk with one another, and like, I just
can't imagine, like you would have to pay me millions
of dollars per year to be like an active Blue
(21:21):
Sky community member. Now, look, if if we got to
a point.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Let's say, you really feel it, tell us how you really.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
By the way, Blue Sky's numbers are not really rising anymore.
The number of daily likes, this is according to bsky
dot jazzco dot dev backslash stats, actually peaked on November eighteenth.
It looks like and has now. The number of daily
likes has fallen by about thirty percent since the peak.
The number of daily posters fallen by about the same amount.
(21:50):
The number of daily followers fallen even more than that. Right,
and so so I think you actually have a self
limiting bubble here, right. Clearly, it's a compelling product to
a certain type. Actually to more than one group.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
There are these kind of like fringy more left wing people.
I would say that's one group. There's also kind of
like the resistance liberals. But you kind of combine the
crazy left people with the like goody two shoes like
resistance folks who I also have no real problem with,
but you know they're too I don't know, they're too
(22:25):
square for me and too cringe and like in like
two straight laced right, it's like it's like, I don't know,
it's again, it's the worst party in the world. And
I think I think that it actually has a pretty
limited audience. I think that audience will love it, but
I think it I think founder effects are profound. Founder
effects mean that when a certain like species into an ecosystem,
or a certain population enters a you know, physical ecosystem
(22:48):
that they have, like there's a lot of path dependency
and kind of who then joins or is or feels
like a strange from the system. And and and I think,
you know, people like Matt Iglesias, who was kind of
a friend of the newsletter. I don't know, a friend
of the podcast, but like he was someone who tried
to go on Blue Sky and acting good faith and
like and that's probably somewhat like me and being some
(23:09):
center left and also can give and take a little bit,
was like kind of hounded off it and like treat
it really really poorly, and like if you can't like
tolerate like Matt Iglasius. You see the left of seventy
five percent of the country, right, then your platform has
a limited reach, I think.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, So I will you know, push back on part
of that in the sense that, like my blue Sky
experience is totally different, right, Like I curated it the
way that I curate my Twitter feed, which is like
a lot of people who make me laugh and are funny,
a lot of writers I admire, right, And it's actually,
you know, I've tried to steer clear. There's some political
(23:47):
stuff on there, but mostly you know, and some news
and stuff like that. And it's just a much cleaner
feed for me now than what Twitter has become. I
don't get death threats. I don't get rape threats. You know,
people people do say.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I mean, if you're you're like.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
I'm just saying, I'm just saying my experience. So I'm
just saying that there are lots of different ways to
carry a blue sky. Where I will, well, I will
agree with you, is that I think that this kind
of just black and white knee jerk reaction like this
person is here, like let's hound them off, like that
is bad, right.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
That is just it's also violent people who are seen
as being too conservative on trans rights. There like are
literally receiving literally receiving death threats right very out in
the open, and there's not much effort.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
To that's that's the opposite.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
And the fact that like that's tolerated on Blue Sky,
whereas like Mattic Glacis is hounded off. I mean, that's
really fucked up, right, I don't want to support that platform.
I literally think Twitter is is better. I literally think
Twitter is at least a little bit more bipartisan, and like,
you know, I you don't have this hypocritical endorsement of
violence on Blue Sky that I don't think people should
spend their time there now.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
I think that the endorsement of virons is absolutely wrong.
And like I said, you know, that's the thing I'm
agreeing with you on. I think that you should. You know,
people need to be more open minded, more tolerant, and
more able to see nuanced. This as a thread throughout
this episode, I guess of Risky Business that you know,
the world ain't black and white. People like, there are
(25:11):
good things and bad things, and you can disagree respectfully, right,
You can have conversations, you can engage with people, you
can actually have debates about a lot of topics, and
it's not if you say this or if you think that,
then you're a horrible human being and I'm done with you.
And here's this person's address, let's go and get them
right like that that is just that is not okay
(25:31):
behavior and that kind of extremism. That's what we were
talking about, you know, in our last segment about Luigi.
That is rising. And I think that what Twitter has,
I that Twitter has that as well. That is not
unique to to Blue Sky. What Twitter has of that,
what Blue Sky is showing and amplifying there, like that
is a very very bad way of looking at the world,
(25:52):
and I think we're seeing it more and more and
we need to have you know, I don't know how
we draw back as as a society and say okay,
you know enough, right, like let's let's just maybe civilized
discost maybe somewhere.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Like social media platforms are like the great filter. There's
all this theory about the Fermi paradox and like why
don't we see extraterrestrial life? And they are like literally
dozens of possible answers to it. But like, you know,
maybe the Twitter type social media platforms, especially when they
get algorithmatized to spark engagement by any means necessary, Like
(26:27):
maybe those are just really bad that right, Yeah, and
maybe Twitter was actually the exception to be like relatively
good for a period. I mean it still is more
by parts. If you look at the data on like
Democrats for Republicans on Twitter, it is relatively balanced. Now,
I personally think that Elon with the for you algorithm,
(26:48):
I think quits a pretty heavy finger on the scale
for conservative viewpoints. And my subjective view was a very
long time user. Is that like there's a little thumb
on the scale for certain stuff, including Elon fucking posting
so much himself, right, maybe the most important thumb on
the scale.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I'm one of those people who constantly says, like don't
show like ignore, this is not for me, and it
doesn't work when it comes to Elon, and when it
comes to when it comes to those things, it just
it just completely does not work apparently.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Where it's like if tweet is from Elon, wait by
like one thousand x Right.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, but I think you made a really important point
that maybe like social media platforms like Twitter, like Blue Sky,
like all of these sorts of platforms are not good
at the end of the day, right, Like, maybe that
is not good for critical thinking, that's not good for
deep thinking, it's not good for fostering the kind of
society where we want to live. And by the way,
you know, in other news, like we've seen Australia, right
(27:47):
just banned social media for people under sixteen? Is that right? Yeah?
But you know there are countries that I just try
to go like complete, Okay, whoa, this is not this
is not good. I think that might be a little
too extreme, but I do think we're seeing a lot
of signs that like maybe this just doesn't good, whether
it's Twitter or blue Sky or or any of these platforms,
that they're just not bringing out the best in people.
(28:08):
They're not bringing out the best in conversation, they're not
bringing out the best in the ways that our brains
can work, right, They're not challenging us the way that
they should be challenging us, and instead they're kind of
catering to the lowest common denominator, which is not good. Right,
That is not kind of catering to the lowest common
denominator is never never a good phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
In summary, Twitter sucks and Blue Sky sucks a little
bit more.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
It makes opinion, I would say they both suck. Twitter
sucks a little bit more. So we will we will
disagree on that, and we both agree that the types
of platforms and the types of thinking fostered by that
approach to social media is not good and sucks, and
we need something better. Let's take a break, and then
let's talk about some chess. Are you a chess fan Nate.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Frame that I know, I kind of I'm like adjacent
to a lot of chess fans, right, so I absorbed
some of it through kind of like like Darryl Moory
who he spoke with, yeah in the previous episodes, a
big chess fan, so you get something through him and
people read on the internet. But I you know, I'm
a casual follower.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I'd say, yeah, so were you? Were you aware though,
even as a casual follower of the World Championship defense
that happened last week a.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Little bit and then from reading your sub stack, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Okay, so for people for people who didn't see it,
The World Chess Champion, former World Chess Champion Deng lu
Zen was defending his championship title last week, and he
made a blunder. So they were tied, and they were
playing in a match that seemed like it would also
(29:59):
be a tie, and then he blundered, and he made
a blunder that was so bad that every chess expert
you know, you can read about this in every person
I spoke to. I spoke with Jennifer Shahade, who is
a former women's chess champion of the United States twice
and the only woman I believe to have ever won
(30:20):
the Junior Chess Championship Open in the United States woman grandmaster,
and she said, like people, it was just like horrific, right, like,
you do not make that kind of a mistake at
that level, even at much lower levels. It was so
bad that she went overrote with her son, who is
who is little and who was learning learning how to
play chess. And so he blundered and an eighteen year
(30:43):
old Gukesh Domaraju was able to claim the World Championship title,
becoming the youngest ever world chess champion. Yeah, Gary Kasparoff
used to hold that title. He was twenty two, and
so this was a huge, huge moment and I am
interested in it, and this is what I wrote about it.
(31:05):
Not because you know, this is a show about chess strategy,
but because of like the psychology behind it, right, Like
we've we've been there, and I'm sure I know I've
been there in poker, right like you sometimes like you
just have a brain fart. And sometimes a brain fart
isn't just a brain fart, right, Like, it can be
a brain fart that's like a blunder of epic proportions. Now,
(31:28):
you and I have never played on that kind of
a global stage where we're you know, defending our world
championship title. But you see this all the time in
high performance athletes, whether it's mental games or whether it's
actually physical games, where someone who's really really good just
chokes right and just has this kind of moment where
like what just happened, right, like a holy shit moment?
(31:52):
And I, you know, every when I see that, like
I'm fascinated in, you know, the psychology behind that, the
psychology of why kind of high high performance people can
actually you know, experience moments like that. And I'm sure
you've seen that much. I've seen that often in sports
like actual sports. I don't follow actual sports as closely
(32:15):
as you do, but in mind sports, you know, I
wrote about a brain fart that I had that was
that was a little bit less less extreme, but that
you know, changed the outcome of the napt the Poker
Stars event that I just went deep in. So these
things matter. And you know, when you're in high pressure situations,
mental game and your ability to perform is incredibly important.
(32:38):
But even the best people who have strong mental game
sometimes screw up.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, there's a lot about this in my book On
the Edge the ARTI for seeing everything from Penguin Press
and but about performance under pressure and actually the physiological
changes that you experience under pressure, because it's not just mental, right, No, No,
there's Evolutionarily our bodies understand when we're in high stake situations,
(33:03):
whether they're physical or mental or somewhere in between. You
not fake, and you don't necessarily want to fake because
actually your body is more alert and getting more information. Right,
if you're playing a the final table of a ten
thousand dollars poker tournament, as Marie and I hope to do, right,
(33:24):
you are going to react differently than when you're playing
your one dollar two dollars home game on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Absolutely, and you.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Sell yourself and you counted your brain, but you're on
a different operating system where you your heart rate would
be a lot higher.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
You know, some people become more intuitive, which can be
a good thing or a bad thing, but like it
becomes you know, you can be in the zone where
you're like just kind of feel like I'm seeing things
that's happened to me a handful of times, right, or
you can choke. So when you run deep in a
poker tournament, like really deep. So I played in twenty
twenty three, I both made like day five of the
(34:00):
Millionaire Maker and day six of the main Event, right,
And so you see what happens in these big soft tournaments.
The Main Event, by the way, is like one of
the softest poker tournaments. And in the world, lots of
kind of rich yolo guys come and show up, right,
lots of people who qualify in some way, and like,
so this is a population of predominantly amateurs, right, and
(34:23):
they just lose their shit when the pressure is on. Right.
Some of them probably have like it's a self sabotage
complex or like survivorship guilt. Some of them are just tired.
They've been playing poker for you know, a six year
old guy who's not used to playing poker all day.
Now it plays high stressed poker for four days in
a row, for twelve hours with all these younger kids
and like, and then maybe they lose a big pot
(34:44):
and they freak out and they and they tilt, and
you see people shaking to the point where you know
it almost looks like they have some type of medical
condition because but but because your body is having a profound,
like physiological response to stress, and then it goes away
the minute hit the hands over. Okay, So if you
(35:04):
do not eventually adapt to that in poker, then you
probably don't get very far. So you filter in fromtional
setting people who like who are either tolerant other type
of stress or even enjoy it, the sickos of Michael
Jordan's of the world who enjoy the stress.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Jason Kuhn, another very good fucker player quotuck to the book,
grew up in this very rough upbringing in West Virginia
and had like an abusive father and things like that.
And he's like, yeah, for me, it's like that's natural, right,
Like high stress, I feel kind of more comfortable in
a fucked up way under high stress. So yeah, impressional sports.
It's rare to see someone who will survive through the
(35:40):
gauntlet of high school and college and whatever else. You know.
Ben Simmons, the former Philadelphia seventy six er, is kind
of an exception. He's known as a choke artist and Parkers.
He's so naturally talented that he could kind of overcome that, right,
But like usually you kind of feelter that out. But
it's like not a natural thing to be, like to
have the eyes of the world kind of literally upon you.
(36:03):
This is all live stream, right, and like, you know,
the most high pressure moment of his life. And so
I'm very I'm very very empathetic. But chess is kind
of you know, it's not quite like poker, and that
like an amateur I could go play in a much
tougher tournament than I'm qualified for in poker, I still
have a chance of winning. Right, if I entered a
Chess World Championship, I guarantee you, I guarantee you I
(36:25):
get checkmated within ten moves every single time. Right, There's
not a lot of luck in chess, so the cream
rises to the top. But still still, you know, and
then it can be things like if you're a little tired.
I used to try to like do things like be
a hero. I want to play a poker tournament, and like, oh,
I'll just skip lunch. I you know how if you
(36:45):
make too many calories yesterday, so I'll skip lunch and
wait till the dinner break and like and you know,
you play enough, and you kind of see that when
you're physically tired, when you have other stresses in your life,
when you're hungry, then you play you worse, right, and
it kind of comes out in ways that aren't necessarily conscious,
but like rather like you know, you just kind of
punt a hand. You're like, you know, actually there's problem
(37:07):
on body telling me that, Like this post's probably pretty different,
and I really need to get some fucking dinner, right.
And you've done that enough where you kind of learn
how your body and your mind are are not so
easy to separate.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And I think that it's impossible, like
you cannot underestimate the effects of fatigue. And this is
what I mean. Dangla Jen was incredibly tired, right, this
is not He didn't blunder in the first game. He
had a beautiful first game like this is we're fourteen
games in here, and you know that that really and
it was I think four hours into the match, right, So,
(37:37):
like you you've been thinking at that high level for
a very long time. And something that I think that
a lot of poker players can probably relate to is
sometimes like when you've been working so hard for so long,
like you just want to simplify, right, Like you just
want it to be over. Like in poker, there's like
the tendency to go all in. Right, You're like, I
don't want to play post flop, like I don't want
(37:57):
to like have that complex decision making like he four
bet me, like fuck it, I'm all in, or lucky
three bet me, like fucking I'm all in for sixty
big blinds, right like whoa who whoa, whoa whoa. But
I've done that. Sometimes sometimes you're just like I don't
want to think through the complexities. Please simplify this for me.
And this is something that like I said, I'm not
(38:18):
a chess expert. When I talked to Jen and she
said that she's going to be writing about this on
her substack. She actually thinks that this is a good
kind of strategically this is part of what happened in
this particular case where he was trying to simplify the
end game. He was trying to kind of get it
to a stalemate more quickly, and he made a mistake
(38:42):
while he was doing that. So as opposed to kind
of just playing it out, he just wanted he just
wanted it to be over. And I think that's a
very very human that's a very human tendency and that's
something that you know, we should be aware of. But
I will end by saying, like he has remarkable self awareness, right,
Like he is someone who I think will take this
(39:03):
opportunity and learn from it, or at least I hope so,
because he you know, he dared to come back after
depression after losing dozens of games in a row, and
you know, he did not perform while after becoming the
world champion. Clearly that stress got to him and he's back.
(39:24):
So I think that that's kind of the other part
of mental game where everyone's going to choke at some point,
Like we're all going to have that moment where like
we fuck up, and how you react to that I
think is kind of the is the true kind of
the true test, right do you say Okay, you know
I fucked up, and then how do I avoid it
next time? Or do you just lose your shit completely?
(39:45):
On that note, Nate, let's go and play day two
of the Win Championship main event.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah, we both made it. I have a decent stack. Maria,
I texted you, how you doing what Sunday? She's like, Oh,
it's going good. I'm like, yo, how many chips do
you have?
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Right?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
I knew that you had a lot of chips. I
knew you had a lot of chips when you were
too say how many chips you had?
Speaker 1 (40:12):
All?
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Right?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
On that note, let's both hope for a smooth sailing
day two. We are not yet in the money. By
the time you all hear this on Thursday, we will
know how we did. But right now, you know it's
an open question. And so here's to some run good
and good luck for the day. Let us know what
(40:36):
you think of the show. Reach out to us at
Risky Business at Pushkin dot FM. Risky Business is hosted
by me Maria Kannikova.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
And byby Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so all the people can find us too. And if
you want to listen to an AD free version, sign
up for Pushkin Plus. For six ten nine a month,
you access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!