Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

There was the opendoor ipo, there was Jason Calacanis "sharpening the knives" ahead of the Twitter acquisition, there was what David Sacks did to Zenefits, and there's more. People are going to keep trusting these guys, simply because they have a hard-on for charismatic people with a lot of money, an extremely short memory, and refusal to believe that they will be the next ones to be scammed.

It's frustratingly impressive how grifters are able to maintain a grift even after it's made evident that they are grifting...

One of the effects of a successful grift is that contrary facts don’t matter — in fact contrary facts just reinforce the grift by strengthening the us against them dynamic.

David Sacks*

I find these guys are pretty insightful when discussing tech and VC news. The politics talk is awful. Chamath is a lightweight who doesn't know anything about how our government works but speaks confidently -- I remember one time he was talking about how raising the debt ceiling will allow the President to spend more money. Sacks is a partisan hack who will spin everything as a positive for Trump and MAGA politics. That's after he was a hack for Desantis.

I find that I listen to them mainly for the tech and VC discussion as you said. The politics conversations are very drowning and I am gladly looking forward to not having to hear as much of this given the election is over.

Chamath is a fraud. He dumped an unbelievable number of SPACs retail that imploded.[0] The fact that he's part of the All-In crew speaks volumes.

[0]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chamath-palihapitiya-crumblin...

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

"In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

> these guys are pretty insightful when discussing tech and VC news

They seem insightful. They’re generally behind the curve and remind of Stratfor.

If anything, All In is better connected on politics. But that may be my Gell-Mann amnesia at play because I know the finance side of tech very well, and they’re not only frequently but paradoxically consistently wrong on it in ways that one sees institutional-versus-retail flows profit off.

thanks, fixed!

I didn't know about any of these incidents, but I could never listen to the podcast because they all sounded like a bunch of douchebags to me.

Maybe sometimes there's an evolutionary advantage in prejudice?

It's fascinating that Michael Crichton would have a quote like that when he's been guilty of falling into the same trap himself. It really shows how difficult it is for the human mind to have perspective on itself.

Likewise for VC/tech. I started listening for those topics and in those days that used to be almost entire show then they slowly started pivot to politics & social commentary which I dont care much for (from them). they are a bunch of centi/billionaire and should stick to that lane but I feel now they have become the podcast arm of RW. I have to say I find myself skipping lots of portions now, its almost not worth it but I still do it to catch up on the dog-whistle to other closeted republican tech/VC/leadership but then WSJ does that better than them.

some observations, IDK if others have noticed: - chamath always speaks last as if he is some kind of village elder, I think it allows him to present a better pov than he actually has - sacks is good at logic/debating and It seems they use that to push a RW pov without sounding like they are endorsing it by presenting a weak/half baked opposition to it.

overall I find hard to take them seriously outside of core tech/VC stuff. the science guy is okay but meh.

Do you think that of the four of them, Friedberg has a best grasp of the finance side of things? I would think he would be since he was apparently formerly involved in IB, PE, then corp dev when he was younger.

Sounds like it is. When somebody is confidently wrong in an area you're familiar with, and confidently speaking about areas you're not, isn't that an instant epistemic red flag?

I have an imprecise and somewhat tongue in cheek measure of a leader’s quality that suggests it is inversely proportional to the frequency with which they appear in the news. I seem to remember from his last term that Trump is at least a daily fixture even within the British media. I think I’m just going to spend even less time consuming mainstream media.

David *Sucks

We are all blind to ourselves.

I feel like I should get that tattooed on my hand, next to one saying, "It's not about you."

they perform insightfullness

Interestingly, I agreed with the idea that they are better when discussing tech and VC (after all that's their day job). Do you have any examples of where they have been significantly off on tech finance?

People have short memories, but the last time Trump was in office you had to hear about him all the time. (Of course the real concerning trend is that every recent R administration ends in an economic collapse.)

The fact that it's named after Murray Gell-Man, a Nobel prize winning physicist should tell you something. Intelligence doesn't save you from it.

> sacks is good at logic/debating and It seems they use that to push a RW pov without sounding like they are endorsing it by presenting a weak/half baked opposition to it.

This is a really great point I completely hadn’t considered.

100%. I read the article and the moment author mentioned Chamath, I realized it must be some bs he peddled. It is surprising to me how many HN readers in this thread don't know how big a scammer Chamath is.

"Every accusation is a confession", in other words