back to indexRyan Schiller: Librex and the Free Exchange of Ideas on College Campuses | Lex Fridman Podcast #172
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The following is a conversation with Ryan Schiller, creator of Librex, an anonymous discussion
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feed for college communities starting at first with Yale, then the Ivy Leagues, and now adding
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Stanford and MIT. Their mission is to give students a place to explore ideas and issues
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in a positive way, but with much more personal and intellectual freedom than has defined college
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campuses in recent history. I think this is a very difficult but worthy project. Quick thank you
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to our sponsors. All form, magic spoon, better help, and brave. Click their links to support this
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podcast. As a side note, let me say that Ryan is a young entrepreneur and genuine human being
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who quickly won me over. He's inspiring in many ways, both in the struggle he had to overcome in
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his personal life, but also in the fact that he did not know how to code, but saw a problem in this
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world in his community that he cared about. And for that, he learned to code and built the solution
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in the best way he knew how. That's an important reminder for us humans. Let us not only complain
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about the problems in the world. Let us fix them. I also have to say that there's passion in Ryan's
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eyes for really wanting to make a difference in the world. His story, his effort gives me hope
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for the future. There is hate in this world, but I believe there's much more love. And I believe
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it's possible to build online platforms that connect us through our common humanity as we explore
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difficult, personal, even painful ideas together. This is the Lex Friedman podcast. And here is
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my conversation with Ryan Schiller. Let's start with the basics. What is Librex? What are its
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founding story and founding principles? And looking to the future, what do you hope to achieve with
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Librex? Sure, let me break that down. So what is Librex? Librex is an anonymous discussion feed
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for college campuses. It's a place where people can have important and unfettered discussions and
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open discourse about topics they care about, ideas that matter. And they can do all of that
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completely anonymously with verified members of their college community. And we exist both on
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each Ivy League campus and we have an inter Ivy community. And actually this week we just opened
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to MIT and Stanford. So now we have... No, really? MIT? Yes. So we have MIT and Stanford
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Communities and I expect you to sign up for your MIT account and start posting. What are... For
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people who are not familiar like me, actually, which are the Ivy Leagues? Sure. So we started at
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Yale, which is my... I don't know, can you call it alma mater? Because I haven't technically graduated.
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Yeah. What's that called when you're actually still there? My university. Yeah, I guess home.
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Call it home. That's my home. Educational home. Started my educational home of Yale. And then
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we moved to... And we could get into the story of this eventually if you'd like. And then we went
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to Dartmouth and then quarantine hit. We opened to the rest of the Ivy League and now we have...
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And the Ivy League for those who don't know is Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia,
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Cornell, Brown and Penn. I got it all in one breath. What's the youngest Ivy League, Penn?
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No, Columbia. I can't say that on camera. We'll edit it in post. I don't know. I'll just say each
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of all eight of them and then you can just like get it in like Penn, Harvard. There's actually
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a really nice software that people should check out like a service. It's using machine learning
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really nicely for podcast editing where you can... It learns the voice of the speaker and it can
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change the words you said. It's like some deep fake stuff. It's deep fake, but for positive
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applications. It's very interesting. It's like the only deep fake positive application I see.
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I have a friend who's obsessed with deep fakes. What's great about I think deep fakes is that
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it's going to do the opposite of sort of what's happening with our culture where everyone will
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have plausible deniability. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the hope for me is there's so many fake
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things out there that we're going to actually be much more skeptical and think and take in
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multiple sources and actually like reason, like use common sense and use my deep thinking to
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understand like what is true and what is not. Because we used to have like traditional sources
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like the New York Times and all these kinds of publications that had a reputation. There are
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these institutions and they're the source of truth. When you no longer can trust anything as a source
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of truth, you start to think on your own and it gets part of the individual. That goes,
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that takes us way back to like where I came from the Soviet Union where you can't really trust
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any one source of news. You have to think on your own. You have to talk to your friends.
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Tremendous amount of intellectual autonomy. Don't you think? Think about the societal consequences.
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Absolutely. I mean, we see so much decentralization in all aspects of our digital lives now, but
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this is like the decentralization of thought. You could say it's sadly, or I don't think it's
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sad, is decentralization of truth where like truth is a clustering thing. We have these like
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this point cloud of people just swimming around like billions of them and they all have certain
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ideas and what's thought of as truth is almost like a clustering algorithm when you just get a
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bunch of people that believe the same thing, that's truth. But there's also another truth
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and there may be like multiple truths and it's almost would be like a battle of truths. Maybe
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even the idea of truth will like lessen its power in society that there is such a thing as a truth
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because like the downside of saying something is true is it owns the downside of what people like
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religious people call scientism, which is like once science has declared something is true,
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you can't no longer question it. But the reality is science is a moving mechanism. You're constantly
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questioning and maybe truth should be renamed as a process, not a final destination. The whole
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point is to keep questioning, keep questioning, keep discovering. Kind of like we're going backwards
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in time. So like back when people were sort of finding their identities and we were less
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globalized, right? Like people would get together and they'd get together around common value system,
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common morals and a common place and those would be sort of these clusters of their truth, right?
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And so we have all these different civilizations and societies across the world that created
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their own truths. We talk about the Jews and the Talmud and Torah. We look at Buddhist texts,
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we can look at all sorts of different truths and how many of them get at the same things,
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but many of them have different ideas or different articulations.
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Yeah, Harari and Sapiens rewinds that even farther back until like gay men times. That's
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the thing that made us human special is who can develop these clusters of ideas, hold them in
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their minds through stories, pass them on to each other and they grows and grows. And finally,
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we have Bitcoin, which money is another belief system that has power only because we believe in
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it. And is that truth? I don't know, but it has power and it's carried in the minds of millions
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and thereby has power. But back to Librex. So what's the founding story? What's the
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founding principles of Librex? Sure. So I was on campus as a freshman and I was talking to my friends.
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Many of them felt like it was hard to raise your hand in class to ask a question. They really felt
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like even outside the classroom, it was hard to be vulnerable. And the thing you have to understand
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about Yale is it's not that big a place. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows you
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basically. And people come to these schools, first of all, they're home for people and they want
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to be themselves. They want to feel like they can be authentic. They want to make real friendships.
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And second of all, it's a place where people go for intellectual vitality to explore important
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ideas and to grow as thinkers. And fortunately, due to the culture, my friends expressed that
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it was very difficult to do that and I felt it too. And then I couldn't talk to my professors and
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I remember I talked to one specific global affairs professor and I was taking his class and
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his area of expertise was in the Middle Eastern conflict. And I went to him and I said, Professor,
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we've, we're almost finished this class. And we haven't even gotten to sort of the reason I
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originally wanted to take the class was to hear about your perspective on the Middle Eastern
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conflict. Because something I'd learned at Yale, and this is maybe a sort of a tangent, but I'll
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flush it out a bit. Something I've learned at Yale is that you can learn all sorts of things
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from a textbook. And what you kind of go to Yale to do is to get like the opinions of the experts
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that go beyond the textbook and to have those more in depth conversations. And so that's sort of the
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added value of going to a place like Yale and taking a course there as opposed to just reading a
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textbook. But also interact with that opinion. Exactly. To interact with that, with that opinion,
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to hear it, to respond to it, to push back on it and to have that with some great minds. And there
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really are great minds at Yale. Don't get me wrong, it's a place, it's still a place of
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tremendous brilliance. So I'm talking to this professor, right? And I'm like, I haven't heard
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your area of expertise. And I'm like, are we going to get to it? What's the deal? And this is
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during office hours, mind you. So we're one on one. It says, Ryan, to be honest, I used to teach
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this area every single year. In fact, I would do a section on it, which is like a small seminar,
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like breakaway from the class where he would talk to the students in small groups and explain his
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perspective, his research and have a real debate about it, like around a harkness table. And he
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said, I used to do this. And then about two years ago, a student reported me to the school. And I
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realized my job was at risk. And I realized the best course of action was basically just not
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to broach the topic. And so now I just don't even mention it. And he's like, you can say whatever
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you want, but I'm not, I'm not going to be a part of it. And it's a real shame. It's a real loss to
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all of the students who I think came to the school to learn from these brilliant professors.
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In that context of these world experts, the problem seems to be that reporting mechanism
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where there's a disproportionate power to a complaint of a young student, a complaint that an
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idea is painful, or an idea is disrespectful to, you know, or ideas creating an unsafe space.
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And the conclusion of that, I mean, I'm not sure what to do with that, because it's a single
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reporting, maybe a couple, but that has more power than the idea itself. And that's strange. I don't
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know how to fix that in the administration, except to fire everybody. So like this is to push back
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against this storyline that academia is somehow fundamentally broken. I think we have to separate
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a lot of things out. Like one is you have to look at faculty and you have to look at administration.
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And like at MIT, for example, the administration does tries to do well, but they're the ones that
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often lack courage. They're often the ones who are the source of the problem. When people criticize
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academia, and I'll just speak to myself, you know, I'm willing to take heed for this, is
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they really are criticizing the administration, not the faculty, because the faculty oftentimes
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are the most brilliant. The bolder thinkers that you think, whenever you talk about, we need like
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the truth to be spoken. The faculty are often the ones who are in the possession of the deepest
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truths in their mind. And in that sense, and they also have the capacity to truly educate in the way
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that you're saying. And so it's not broken, like fundamentally, but there's stuff that like needs,
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that's not working that well, it needs to be fixed. You kind of took my words. That's what I
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thought you were going to ask me if I think the Ivy League is broken. That's totally, that's exactly
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it. So you don't think, yeah. So on the question, do you think the Ivy League is broken? Like what,
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how do you think about it? The academia in general, I suppose, but Ivy League,
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still I think it represents some of the best qualities of academia.
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You know, what more is there to say there? I think the Ivy League is producing tremendous
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thinkers to this day. I think the culture has a lot that can be improved. But I have a lot of faith
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in the people who are in these institutions. I think, like you said, the administration,
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and I have to be a little careful because, you know, I've been in some of these committees
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and I've talked to the administration about these sorts of things. I think they have a lot of
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stakeholders and unfortunately it makes it difficult for them to always serve these brilliant
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faculty and the students in the way that they would probably like to. Yeah. Okay. So this is me
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speaking, right? The administration, I know the people and they're oftentimes the faculty
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holding positions in these committees, right? Yes. But it's in the role of, quote unquote,
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service. They're trying to do well. They're trying to do good. But I think you could say
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it's the mechanism is not working. But I could also say my personal opinion is they lack courage
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and, one, courage and, two, grace when they walk through the fire. So courage is stepping into the
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fire and grace when you walk through the fire is like maintaining that like, as opposed to being
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rude and insensitive to the lived, quote unquote, experience of others or like, you know, just not
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eloquent at all. Like as you step in and take the courageous step of talking and saying the
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difficult thing, doing it well, like doing it skillfully. So both of those are important,
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the courage and the skill to communicate difficult ideas. And they often lack them because they
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weren't trained for it, I think. So you can blame the mechanisms that don't, that allow 19, 20 year
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old students to have more power than the entire faculty. Or you could just say that the faculty
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need to step up and grow some guts and skill of graceful communication. And really administration.
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Well, yeah. And the administration, that's right. That's the administration. Because the faculty
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are sometimes some of the most brave, outspoken people. Yes. Within the bounds of their career.
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Yeah. So that takes a, that's like the founding kind of spark of a fire that led you to then say,
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okay, so how can I help? Yeah. And I explored a lot. I explored a lot of options. I wrote many
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articles to my friends, talked to them, and I realized it sort of needed to be a cultural change,
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sort of need to be bottom up grassroots. Something I knew the energy was there because
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you just look at the most recent institutional assessment from Yale. This was basically the
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number one thing that students, faculty and alumni all pointed to, to the administration was
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cultivating more conversations on campus and more difficult conversations on campus.
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So the people on campus know it. And you look at the Gallup poll, 61% of students are
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on Ivy League campuses afraid to speak their minds because of the campus culture.
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The campus culture is causing a sort of freezing effect on discourse.
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Can you pause on that again? So what percentage of students feel afraid to speak their mind?
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61% nationally. And then you're talking about, you know, places, nothing like the Ivy League,
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where I'd say I'd imagine it would be even worse because of just the way that these communities
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kind of come about and the sorts of people who are attracted or are invited to these sorts of
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communities. That's nationwide that college students, and it's going up that college students
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are afraid to say what they believe because of their campus climate. So it's a majority.
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It's not, it's not a conservative thing. It's not a liberal thing. It's a group thing. We're all
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feeling it. The majority of us are feeling it. And basically just it doesn't even, you don't even
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necessarily need to have anything to say. You just have a fear. That's right. So when you're like
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teaching, you know, metaphors, a really powerful thing to explain, you know, and there's just a
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caution that you feel that's just horrible for humor. Now comedians have the freedom to just
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talk shit, which is why I really appreciate somebody who's been a friend recently, Tim Dillon,
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who has, who gives zero, pardon my French, fucks about anything, which is very liberating,
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very important person to just tear down the powerful. But, you know, inside the academia,
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as an educator, as a teacher, as a professor, you don't have the same freedom. So that fear is felt,
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I guess, by a majority of students. It's, and you were getting at something there too, which is that
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if you're afraid to speak metaphorically, if you're afraid to speak imprecisely,
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it can be very difficult to actually think at all and to think to the extremities of what you're
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capable of, because these are the, these are the mechanisms we use when we don't have quite the
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precise mathematical language to quite pinpoint what we're talking about yet. This is the beginning,
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this is the creative step that leads to new knowledge. And so that really scares me is that
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if I'm not allowed to sort of excavate these things, these ideas with people in the sort of messy,
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sloppy way that we do as humans when we're first being creative, are we, how are we going to be
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able to continue to innovate? Are we going to continue to be able to learn? That's what really
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starts to scare me. So you've explored a bunch of different ideas, you've heard a bunch of different
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stuff. How did Librax come about? It basically came to me that it had to be kind of a grassroots
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movement and it had to be something that changed culturally. And it had to be relatively personal,
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people meeting people, people finding out that, no, I'm not the only one on campus
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who feels this way. I feel alone. And there are a lot of other people who feel alone. I believe
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this thing, and it's not as unpopular as I thought, you know, basically creating heterodoxy of thought
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and it's creating that moment where you realize that your politics are personal and that your
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politics are shared by a lot of people on campus. And so I just started coding it. I didn't have
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much coding experience, but I went head first in and figured how hard could it be, you know?
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I mean, this is really fascinating. So I talked to a lot of software engineers, AI people. Obviously,
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that's where my passion, my interests are. My focus has been throughout my life. The fascinating
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thing about your story, I think it should be truly inspiring to people that want to change the world
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is that you don't have a background in programming. You don't have even maybe a technical background.
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So you saw a problem, you explored different ideas, and then you just decided you're going to learn
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how to build an app, like without a technical background. Like you didn't try to, that's so bold.
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That is so beautiful, man. Can you take me through the journey of deciding to do that, of like
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learning to program without a programming background and building the app like detailed? Like what do
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you actually, like how do you start? Sure. I mean, you want to buy a Mac, and you had to buy a Mac.
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I'm just going to go step by step, right? I'll be as dumb as possible, because it was truly,
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you know, like leading by your feet. So you need a computer for this? Oh, yeah. I had a PC at the
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time, and I was Android at the time. And I realized, you know, I realized it should be like an
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iOS app. And so, you know, that was a decision. But, you know, I knew kids these days, they're
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always on their phone. And, you know, I wanted you to be able to say a passing thought, you know,
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in class, make a passing, like you're walking around and you have a thought and you can express it,
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or you're in the dining hall and you have your phone out, you can express it. So it was clear to me,
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it should be an iOS app. By the way, Android is great. Definitely check out. We also are now available
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on Android, but we'll get there for the Android users from MIT, Stanford, or the Ivy League. So,
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back to how it happened. So I realized I needed a Mac. So went out and got a Mac. And I realized
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I needed an iPhone for testing eventually. Got an iPhone. So those were the real robots to start
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with. From there, I mean, there's almost too much information out there about programming. The
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question is, like, where do you start and what's going to be useful to you? And I, my first thought
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was I should look at some Yale classes, but it became very clear very quickly that that was not
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the right place to start. That would probably be the right place to start if I wanted to get a job
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at Amazon. But my goal was slightly different. And I definitely had it in mind that what I was
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trying to make was I'm trying to prove out an idea. I'm not trying to make a finished product.
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I'm just trying to get to the first step. Because I figured if I keep getting to the next step,
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at least I won't die now, you know? Like, at least things will move forward. I'll learn new
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things. Maybe I'll meet new people. I'll show a degree of seriousness about what I'm doing.
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And things will come together. And that is, as you'll see, what ends up happening.
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So I start with Swift, right? And I find this video from the Stanford professor that had like
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a million views that was like how to make basically Swift apps like perfect. And you just like,
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so you got this Mac and you went like go to Google.com and you type in load Xcode.
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And then code. Yeah. And then I type in on YouTube, like Stanford, iOS, Swift, enter
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first YouTube video has a million views. I'm like, it has to be good at Stanford has a million views.
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I got lucky. I mean, that turned out to be a very good video.
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And it's basically like introductory course to Swift.
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Yeah, I mean, you say introductory, I think most of the people in that class
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probably had a much better background than I did.
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The software developers probably. Yeah, computer scientists.
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And it was slow for me. I don't think I realized it fully at the time,
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just how far behind I was from the rest of the class, because I was like, wow,
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seems like people are picking this up really quickly. So it took a little longer and, you know,
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a lot of time on Stack Overflow, but eventually I made a truly minimal viable product, the most
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minimal. Like we're talking, you know, put text on screen, add text to screen, comment on top of
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text, you know, make a post, make a response. And anyone with a Yale email can do this.
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And you plug it into a certain cloud server and you verify people's accounts.
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And you're off. You have to figure out how to, like the whole idea of like having an account.
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So there's a permanence, like you can create an account with an email.
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Verify it. Verify it. Okay. So that, that's not, you know.
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And that's literally how I thought about, right? Like, so what do I need to do?
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And I'm like, well, first thing I need is a login page.
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Yeah. And I'm like, how to make a login page in Swift?
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I mean, it's that easy. If someone, this has been done before, of course.
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And then the first page that pops up was probably a pretty damn good page.
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It wasn't that bad. It wasn't perfect, but like, maybe it got me 80% of the way there.
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And then I came into some bugs and then, you know, I asked Stack Overflow a few questions.
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And then I got a little further and then I found some more bugs. And then I'm like,
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maybe this isn't the right way to do it. Maybe I should do it this way.
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And yeah, I'm sure my code isn't great, but the goal isn't to make great code.
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The goal wasn't to make scalable code. It was to understand,
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and is this something my friends will use? Like, what is the reaction going to be if I
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put it in their hands? And am I capable of making this thing?
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That's awesome. And so you're focusing on the experience, like actually just really driving
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towards that first step, figuring out the first step and really driving towards it.
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Of course, you have to also figure out, like, the concept of like storage, like database.
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You know something funny?
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I just made the database structure with no knowledge of databases whatsoever.
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And I start showing it to my friends who have an experience in CS, and they're like,
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use the heap. That's so interesting. You're like, why did you decide to store it in this way?
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I'm like, bro, I don't even know what a heap is.
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I just did it because it works. Like, I'm trying to make calls and stuff. And they're like,
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yeah, they're like, the hierarchy is really like, I'm like, what?
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Well, there's a deep, profound lesson in there that I don't know how much you've interacted
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with computer science people since, but they tend to optimize and have these kind of discussions
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and what results is over optimization. It's like worrying, is this really the right way to do it?
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And then you go, as opposed to doing the first thing on Stack Overflow, you go down this like
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rabbit hole of what's the actual proper way to do it. And then you're like, you wake up five years
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later working on Amazon because you've never finished the login page. Like, it's kind of hilarious,
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but that's a really deep lesson. Like, just get it done. And there's like, what's a heap, bro?
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Is the right, that should be a t shirt. That's really the right approach to building something
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that ultimately creates an experience and then you iterate eventually. That's how the great,
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some of the greatest software products in this world have been built, is you create it quickly
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and then just iterate. What was, by the way, in your mind, the thing that you're chasing as a
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prototype? Like, what was the first step that it feels like something is working? Like,
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is it you interacting with another friend? Yeah, I think the first step was like,
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it's one thing to tell someone about an idea, but it's another thing to put in their hands and kind
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of see like, the way their eyes kind of look. And when I'd go, I'd walk around cross campus,
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which is part of Yale, and I'd literally just go up to people and run up to them and be like,
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try this, try this, you got to try this. This is pre quarantine, by the way, of course, this would
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never be the same post quarantine, but like, you got to try this, you got to try this. Like,
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what is it? And I'd be like, and I explain, it's like an anonymous discussion feed for our Yale
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campus. And you see their gears turning. And they just, some people would be like, not interested.
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I'm like, fine, not your target demographic, I get it, you'll come eventually. But some people,
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like, you could see it, they got it, they're like, yes. And that's when I was like, okay, okay,
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there is, and you don't need, I mean, you don't need 50% of people to like it. You need what,
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5%, 10% to love it, and then they'll tell 5%, 10%. Yeah, worn a mouth, yeah. And you're good.
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Of course, the first version was very, very crappy, but seeing people trying despite all the
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crappiness wasn't, it was sort of enough to be the first step. And, you know, since, since then,
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all of my codes been stripped out. I now have friends who basically have told me, don't bother
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with the coding part, you do, you do the rest, you just make sure that we can code because they
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want to code of great. I mean, I'm not an engineer. Yeah, I never intended to be an engineer. And
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there's a lot to do that's not engineering. Yes. But the point was just to validate the idea,
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so to speak. When was the moment that you felt like we've created something special? Maybe a
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moment where you're proud of that this is, this is, this has the potential to actually be the very
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implementation of the idea that I initially had. There's so many, there's so many little
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moments. It's like, and I bet there'll still be moments in the, in the future that make,
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that make it hard to like, totally say like. Yeah, we should say this is, this is still very
link |
early days of Librex. Yeah, it's literally only, it's only been a year since we've had like,
link |
actual like a lot of people on the app. Yeah, about a year. Oh, wow. Okay. I mean, there's some
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crazy moments I could talk about sort of going to Dartmouth because it's one thing to like get
link |
some traction at your school. Yeah. People know you and you know, it's, it's your school, you know.
link |
It's another thing to go to another school and where no one knows you and sign up 90% of the
link |
campus overnight. Wow. So tell me that story. You're invading another territory. It was literally
link |
like that. Did you buy it like a Dartmouth sweatshirt? Purposefully, I didn't want to fraud anyone,
link |
but I was purposefully nondescript in my clothing. Yeah. No yell stuff, no Dartmouth stuff.
link |
Just blend in. I'll get, I'll go back there. So what happened was this was like March of last year.
link |
So almost, almost a year ago today. And I really wanted to see if we could go from sort of one
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campus to two campuses. So I didn't know anyone at Dartmouth campus, but I kind of
link |
had some cold emails, some warm ish emails. And I went to people and I was like, basically,
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can I sleep on your floor for two days during finals period? I had a lot of people who said,
link |
this is crazy. Like no one's going to, no one wants to download an app during finals period,
link |
a social app during the finals period. But I emailed a few people and I was like,
link |
you know, can I sleep on your floor? And one of them was crazy enough to say, sure,
link |
come to my, come to my door. I have a nice floor. And he ended up today. He's still
link |
really close. He's a really close friend. But anyway, I take a train knowing nothing about
link |
this guy besides his first and last name. And I arrive and Dartmouth is really, really remote,
link |
way more remote than you think to the point where I'm like, he's like, he warned me. He's a really
link |
hospitable guy. He warned me like, it's going to be hard to get to campus from the train station,
link |
because it's really remote. And I'm like, I'm sure it's fine. I'll just get an Uber.
link |
There are no Ubers and handovers. What do you think this is? New Hampshire. So
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Connecticut, I mean, Yale is pretty remote as well. No. Yeah, Yale is, well, I mean,
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Yale's in New Haven, which is a real city. It has Ubers. It has food. It has culture. It has a
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nightclub even. Yeah. Like we're talking about a real city. Like it's not New York. It's not
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Philadelphia where I'm from, but it's a city. New Hampshire is something very different.
link |
Yeah. Beautiful campus, I'm sure. Beautiful. Oh my gosh. I could tell,
link |
I could talk so much about, I was blown away by Dartmouth. I started wondering like why I didn't
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apply legitimately between the people and the culture. It was, it was a beautiful vacation.
link |
So I arrived there, no Uber, but eventually I call this guy who's like the only guy who can
link |
get you to Dartmouth and takes a couple hours, but we get there. I sleep on this guy's floor.
link |
I wake up. I ask him if there's any printing. He's like, oh, Dartmouth happens to have free
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printing in the copy room. I print out like 2,000 posters until the guy in the copy room
link |
literally goes to me. He's like, kid, I don't know what you're doing, but you need to get out of here.
link |
I'm going, I'm going. I found the limits. I know. Yeah. I found the limit. And I think a lot of
link |
startups is about finding the limits. That's a little piece of advice. Um, socially. Yeah.
link |
He's like, you got to get out of here. And I, um, I then go to every single dorm door.
link |
I put a poster under every single dorm door advertising the app with a QR code. Yeah.
link |
I walk around campus saying hi to everyone and talking about the app. I go from table to table
link |
in the cafeteria, introduce myself, say hi, and tell them to download the app. It's exhausting.
link |
There's so many steps, so many crotch down to slip the poster into the dorm door. My legs were
link |
burning. Um, but by the end of it, 24 hours later, I'm sitting on a, I'm sitting in a
link |
bus and I'm just pressing the refresh button on the account creation panel. It's like going up by
link |
hundreds. And I'm like, oh my gosh, there's something. Word of mouth is working in a sense.
link |
I mean, it's certainly your like initial seed is, is powerful. Just a piece. Yeah. But then the
link |
word of mouth is what carries it forward. And what was the explanation you gave to the app?
link |
It's an anonymity, a fundamental part of it, like saying this is a chance
link |
for you to speak your mind about your experiences on campus.
link |
Yeah. I think people get it. You don't need to, what I've realized is you don't need to tell people
link |
why to try it. They know. Yeah. It's a hunger for this. Exactly. Yeah. So I, all I do is I'm very
link |
factual. I said, and this is where I kind of ended up coining the kind of the line that I now used
link |
to say it because I said it so many times and that was 24 hours. I just said it's an anonymous
link |
discussion feed for Dartmouth. And they're like, yes. Like they've been waiting for it. You know,
link |
some people are more skeptical, but a lot of people were like, great, I'm excited to try this.
link |
I'm excited to meet people and connect. And I mean, the way Dartmouth is taken to is incredible.
link |
Everything from professors writing poems during finals period to be like, good luck in finals
link |
period, you're going to rise like a phoenix or whatever to like, yeah, it's crazy to, I heard
link |
about two women meeting on Librex and starting a finance club at Dartmouth to significant others
link |
meeting. There was an article recently written up at Yale as well about two queer women who
link |
met on Librex and started a relationship, which was pretty, it was pretty interesting to see people
link |
throwing parties pre COVID. Yeah, it was just amazing to see how when you allow people to be
link |
vulnerable and social, they connect, they people have this natural desire to connect.
link |
Yeah, when you have whatever natural desire to have a voice, and then when that voice
link |
is paired with freedom, then you could truly express yourself and there's something
link |
liberating about that. And in that sense, you're like, you're connecting as your true self,
link |
whatever that is. What are the most powerful conversations you've seen on the app? You mentioned
link |
like people connecting. The hard part about that is the sorting, you know, figuring out which one,
link |
which one am I going to put at the top? Mental sorting out, just something to stand out to you.
link |
Sorry, I don't mean to do like the top 10 conversations ever of all time, ever on the app.
link |
I just mean like stuff that you remember that stands out to you. I remember this one really
link |
amazing comment from this, he was a Mexican international student who spoke out and this
link |
post was super edgy, but yet it got hundreds and hundreds of upvotes within the Yale community.
link |
It was a Yale community specific post and we should point out that there's a school specific
link |
community now and there's an all IV community. So this was specifically in the Yale community.
link |
And this was a little while ago, but it stuck with me. This Mexican international student
link |
comes to Yale and he starts talking about his experience in the La Casa, which is the Mexican
link |
Latin X as they would say, cultural center at Yale and how he doesn't feel welcome there because
link |
he's Roman Catholic basically and international and how he doesn't feel like he fits with their
link |
agenda. And as a result, this place that's supposed to be home for him, he feels outcasted
link |
and feels more alone than he does anywhere else on campus. That's powerful. That was powerful to me.
link |
Yeah. It's hearing someone, someone who should be feeling supported by this culture say,
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actually, this is not doing anything for me. Like this is not helping me. Yeah. This is
link |
not where I feel at home. So what do you make of anonymity? Because it seems to be a fundamental
link |
aspect of the power of the app, right? But at the same time, anonymity on the internet,
link |
so it protects us, right? It gives us freedom to have a voice, but it can also bring out the
link |
dark sides of human nature like trolls or people who want to be malicious want to hurt others
link |
purely for the joy of hurting others, being cruel for fun and going to the dark places.
link |
So like what do you make of anonymity as a fundamental feature of social interaction,
link |
like the pros and the cons? Yeah, just to break that down a bit, I would say a lot of those same
link |
things about a place like Twitter where people are very unanonymous. Having said that, of course,
link |
there's a different sort of capacity people have when they're anonymous, right? In all different
link |
sorts of ways. So what do I make of anonymity? I think it can be incredibly liberating and allow
link |
people to be incredibly vulnerable and to connect in different ways, both on politics. And there
link |
was a lot to talk about this year regarding politics and personally being vulnerable,
link |
talking about relationships and mental health. I think it allows people to have a community
link |
that's not performative. And of course, there's this other side where people can sometimes break
link |
rules or say things that they wouldn't otherwise say that people don't always agree with or that
link |
people might find repugnant. And to an extent, these can facilitate great conversations.
link |
And on the other hand, we have to have moderation in place and we have to have community guidelines
link |
to make sure that the anonymity doesn't overwhelm the purpose, which is that anonymity,
link |
first of all, anonymity is a tool in Librex. It was not the purpose of Librex. It is a way that
link |
we get towards these authentic conversations given our campus climate. And second of all,
link |
I would say it's a spectrum. It's not just, it's not just Librex is anonymous, right?
link |
Because Librex isn't totally anonymous. Everyone's a verified Ivy League student.
link |
You know exactly what school everyone goes to. You only have one account per person at Yale,
link |
meaning if, meaning that, I mean, what that amounts to is people have more of an ownership in the
link |
community and people know that they're connected and they have a common vernacular. So the anonymity
link |
is a scale and it's a tool. But you can also trust, I mean, this is the difference between Reddit's
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anonymity where you can easily create multiple accounts. When you have only one account per
link |
person, or at least it's very difficult to create multiple accounts, then you can trust
link |
that the anonymous person you're talking to is a human being. Not a bot. I try to be completely
link |
unanonymous now in my public interactions. I try to be as real in every way possible,
link |
like zero gap between private me and public me. Why exactly did you, it seems like this is an
link |
intentional mission. What made you want to sort of bridge that gap between the private sphere and
link |
public sphere? Because that's unique. I know a lot of intellectuals who would make a
link |
different decision. Yeah, interesting. I had a discussion with Naval about this,
link |
actually, with a few others that have a very clear distinction between public and private.
link |
Something I'm struggling with, by the way, personally, I'm thinking about.
link |
One on the very basic surface level is if you carry with yourself lies, small lies or big lies,
link |
it's extra mental effort to remember what you're supposed to say and not supposed to say.
link |
That's on a very surface level of like, it's just easier to live life when you have the
link |
smaller the gap between the private you and the public you. The second is, I think for me,
link |
from an engineering perspective, if I'm dishonest with others, I will too quickly become dishonest
link |
with myself. And in so doing, I will not truly be able to think deeply about the world and come up
link |
and build revolutionary ideas. There's something about honesty that feels like it's that first
link |
principles thinking that's almost like overused as a term, but it feels like that requires radical
link |
honesty, not radical asshole and richness, but radical honesty with yourself, with yourself.
link |
And it feels like it's difficult to be radically honest with yourself when you're being dishonest
link |
with the public. And also, I have a nice feature, honestly, that in this current social context,
link |
so we can talk about race and gender, and what are the other topics that are touchy?
link |
Ethnicity and nationality. All those things. I mean, like family structure.
link |
Maybe I'm ineliquent in the way I speak about them, but I honestly, when I look in the mirror,
link |
like, I'm not deeply hateful of a particular race, or even just hateful particular race.
link |
I'm sure I'm biased and I've tried to like think about those biases and so on. And also,
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I don't have any creepy shit in my closet about living. It seems like everybody,
link |
it seems like a lot of people got like did a lot of creepy stuff in their life.
link |
And I just feel like that's really nice and deliberating. And especially now, you know,
link |
it's funny because I've gotten a bit of a platform. And I think it all started when I went,
link |
there's a famous comedian, female comedian, Whitney Cummings. And, you know, I've gotten a lot of
link |
amazing women writing me throughout. But when I went on Whitney, it was like the number of DMs I
link |
get on Instagram from women, it's just ridiculous. And I think that was a really important moment
link |
for me is like, I speak and I feel, you know, I really value love long term monogamy with like
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one person. And it's like, I could see where a lot of guys would now continue that message
link |
in public and in private, just start sleeping around. And so like, that's an important statement
link |
for me mentally is like, nope. Straight and narrow, just go straight and not out of fear,
link |
but out of like principle and just like, live life honestly. And I just, I feel like that's
link |
truly liberating as a human being. Forget public, all that, because then I feel like I'm on sturdy
link |
ground. When I say difficult things. And at the same time, sorry, I'm ranting on this, I apologize.
link |
I'm interested personally. So keep going. I honestly believe in the internet
link |
and people on the internet, that when they hear me speak, they can see if I'm full of
link |
shit and not like, I won't be able to fake it. Like they'll see it through. Yeah. So
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I feel like if you're not lying about stuff, you have the freedom to truly be yourself and
link |
the internet will figure it out. Like we'll figure who you are.
link |
And people have a natural tendency to be able to just tell bullshit and it makes
link |
sense from an evolutionary standpoint, right? Exactly. Like why, why wouldn't, why, like
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of all the things that we could evolve to be good at, being able to detect honesty seems like one
link |
that would be particularly valuable, especially in the sorts of societies we developed into.
link |
And then also from a selfish perspective, like a success perspective, I think there's a lot of
link |
folks that have inspired me, like Elon is one of them that shows that there's a hunger for
link |
genuineness. Like you can build a business as a CEO and be genuine and like real and do stupid
link |
shit every once in a while, as long as it's coming from the same place of who you truly are.
link |
Like Elon's inspiration with that. And then there's a lot of other people I admire that
link |
are counter inspirations in the sense like they're very formal. They hold back a lot of themselves.
link |
And it's like, I know how brilliant those people are. And I think they're not being
link |
as effective of leaders, public faces of companies as they could be. I mean, to be honest, like
link |
not to throw shade, but I will is like Mark Zuckerberg is an example of that.
link |
Jack Dorsey is also a bit of an example of that. I like Jack a lot. I've talked to him a lot. I
link |
will talk to him more. I think he's a much more amazing person than he conveys through his public
link |
presentation. I think a lot of that has to do with PR and marketing people having an effect.
link |
Listen, it's difficult. I think it's really difficult. It's probably many of the same
link |
difficulties you will face as the pressures. But it's hard to know what to do. But I think
link |
as much as possible as an individual, you should try to be honest in the face
link |
of the world and the company that wants you to be more polished. And that being more polished
link |
turns you into a politician. And politician eventually turns into being dishonest.
link |
Dishonest with the world and dishonest with yourself.
link |
Something I noticed, which was of the people you mentioned, those things have had ramifications
link |
in terms of letting things go too far, get out of hand. And you wonder like, it's an aspect of
link |
lying, right? You say one lie goes to another lie. You push it down. It doesn't matter. You can
link |
talk and figure it out later. You can figure it out later pretty soon. You've dug a pretty big
link |
hole. And I think if we look at Twitter and we look at Facebook, I think it goes without saying
link |
what sorts of holes have been dug because of, perhaps because of a lack of honesty that goes
link |
all the way up to the leaders. So yeah, there's two problems within the company. It doesn't make
link |
you as effective of a leader, I think. That's one. And two, for social media companies,
link |
I think people need to trust like, it doesn't have to be the CEO, but it has to be like,
link |
this is how humans work. We want to look to somebody where like, I trust you. If you're
link |
going to use a social media platform, I think you have to trust the set of individuals working
link |
at the top of that social network. 100%. Something I realized really quickly,
link |
one of the lessons throughout the startup was that people don't totally connect to products as much
link |
as they connect to people. And I mean, I don't know how much you spent on Librex. You've only
link |
been here the last couple weeks, like last week, but I mean, I love the product. And one of the
link |
aspects of me loving the product is that I was super active and I've been super active throughout
link |
the entire time. And the amount of support I've received has made that very easy to do
link |
from the community and the fact that I could, I mean, so I came to Boston for this interview,
link |
right? I came to Boston. I got off the train. It was around 5.30pm. I checked Librex. Someone
link |
is writing, hey, I'm in Boston. Does anyone want to get dinner? 30 minutes later, I'm
link |
getting dinner with them. That's amazing. And I mean, it's incredible. First of all,
link |
as an entrepreneur, the amount of stuff I learn from these people and when they
link |
reiterate and I hear that they got the message through the product, I mean, that's incredibly
link |
validating. But also, I mean, I think it's just important to be able to put a face to a brand
link |
and especially a brand that's built on trust. Because fundamentally, the users are trusting us
link |
with some really important discussions and some really, and a movement to some degree,
link |
it's a community and a movement. I'll tell you actually why I didn't use the app very much so
link |
far is there's something really powerful about the way it's constructed, which I felt like a bit
link |
of an outsider because I don't know the communities. It felt like it's a really strong community
link |
around each of these places. And so I felt like it made me really wish there was an MIT one.
link |
And so there's both discussions about the deep community issues within Columbia or Yale or so
link |
on at Dartmouth. And there's also the broader community of the Ivy Leagues that people are
link |
discussing. But I could see that actually expanding more and more and more. But which is a powerful
link |
coupling, which is the feeling of like the little village of this little community we're building
link |
together, but also the broader issues as you can do both discussions. One thing that was important
link |
to me is talking about social media as a concept, right? I think the way people socialize is very
link |
much context dependent. So we're talking about people understanding each other through language,
link |
through English. And these languages are constructed in a very nuanced way, in a very
link |
sort of temperamental way, right? And you kind of need a similar context to be able to have
link |
productive conversations. So to me, it's really important that these groups, they share something
link |
in common, a really big lived experience, the Ivy League or their school community. And they have
link |
a similar vocabulary, they have a similar background, they know what's happening in their
link |
community. And so having social media that is community connected to me was fundamental. Like
link |
you talked about anonymity. To me, community is the thing that when I think about Librex,
link |
I think what makes it different. It's the fact that everyone knows what's going on,
link |
everyone comes from a similar context, and people can socialize in a way where they're,
link |
they understand each other because they're been through used or lived experience, they've been
link |
through so many of the same lived experiences. One like clarification, is there an easy way
link |
if you choose to then connect in meat space, in physical space? So the, I guess the sort of magic
link |
of it. And I was talking to a bunch of Harvard Librexers who I met off the app while I was in
link |
Boston. And every time they told me this is my favorite part of the app, this is what I love
link |
about the app. We have this matching system, which is an anonymous direct message that you can send
link |
to any poster. So like I was talking to this guy who, he was really into coin collection.
link |
And he met other people who were really into coin collection through a post and what they,
link |
he would make a post about coin collection. And then someone would come to him and they'd be like,
link |
and they could direct message him anonymously. And it would just show them that his, it would
link |
just show him their school. And then they could just text chat totally anonymously direct message
link |
if he accepted the anonymous request. Do they see the usernames, right? There are no usernames on
link |
Librex. It's all just schools names. So he made this post about coin collection. And he got a
link |
direct message. Yeah, I guess so, right? No user name. I was just looking at the text. Yeah.
link |
That's interesting. That's right. And I can tell you, I can go into why. That's really interesting.
link |
Yeah, I can go into truly is anonymous. It's, well, I mean, but it's not exactly. It's a very
link |
different kind of anonymous. And the reason, the reason that we made that decision is because
link |
we wanted people to connect to ideas. We want people to connect to things in the moment. We don't
link |
want people to go, Oh, I know this guy. He said this other thing. And we didn't want people to
link |
feel like they were at risk of being doxxed. So it's just, these are small communities, right?
link |
We talked about this. Everyone knows someone who knows you. And in 2021, it would not take much to
link |
be able to figure out who someone might be just through a couple of posts. So it's both safety
link |
and about the ideas in terms of not adding usernames. Anyway, we have this anonymous direct
link |
message system where you can direct message the original poster of any post, the OP, if you're
link |
a redditor of any post. And you, that, that makes it really easy to meet up because once you guys
link |
are one on one, you can exchange a number, you can exchange a Snapchat, you can exchange an email
link |
probably not very often, but you could. And then that's how people meet up, matching.
link |
And then a lot of people connect in this way. Let me just take a small step into the technical.
link |
I read somewhere, I don't know if it's true that one of the reasons you were rejected from YC,
link |
Y Combinator in the final rounds is because one of the principles is to refuse to sell user data.
link |
Can you speak to that? What's, why do you think it's important not to sell user data and sort of,
link |
which draws a clear contrast between other, basically any other service on the internet?
link |
I mean, to be honest, it's quite simple. I mean, we talk about this platform, people are talking
link |
about their most intimate secrets, their political opinions, you know, what, how, how are they feeling
link |
about what's going on in their city, you know, during the summer? How, how are they feeling about
link |
the political cycle and also their mental health, their relationships?
link |
These are some of the most intimate thoughts that people were having. Point blank, I don't think it was
link |
ethical to pawn them off for a profit. I didn't think it was moral. I don't think I could sleep
link |
at night if that was what I was doing is turning these people's most intimate beliefs and secrets
link |
into a currency that I bought and sold. There's something very off about that.
link |
Yeah. I tend to believe that there is some room, so like, like Facebook would just take that data
link |
and sell it, right? But there's some room in transparency and giving people the choice on
link |
which parts they can, I wouldn't even see it as sell, but like share with advertisers.
link |
Are you going to give them a profit?
link |
So right, you have to monetize, you have to create an entire system, you have to rethink this whole
link |
thing, right? But as long as you give people control and are transparent and make it easy,
link |
like, I think it's really difficult to delete a Facebook account or like delete all your data.
link |
I've tried. It's very difficult.
link |
So like, just make it easy and trust in that if you create a great product, people are not
link |
going to do it. And if they do it, then they're not actually a deep loving member of the community.
link |
What's that? So we very quickly realized that user privacy was something that
link |
was not only a core value, but was something that users really cared about.
link |
And we added this functionality. It's just a button that says, forget me.
link |
You press it, like two clicks. It's not that hard. We just remove your email from the database.
link |
Yeah, you're good. Beautiful. I think Facebook should have that.
link |
I honestly, so call me crazy, but maybe you can actually speak to this, but I don't think Facebook,
link |
well, now they would. But if they did it earlier, they would lose that much money.
link |
If they allow like transparently tell people, you could just delete everything. They also
link |
explain that like, in ways that's going to potentially like lessen your experience in
link |
the short term, like explain that. But then there shouldn't be like multiple clicks of a button
link |
that don't make any sense. I'm trying to hold back from ranting about Instagram. Because let me
link |
just say it real quick, because I've been locked out of Instagram for a month. And there's a whole
link |
group inside Facebook that are like supporters of like Lex, help Lex. Freelax? Freelax. I wasn't
link |
blocked. It was just like a bug in the system. Somebody was hammering the API with my account.
link |
And so they kept thinking I'm a bot. Anyway, it's a bug. It happens to a lot of people.
link |
But like, first of all, I appreciate the love from all the amazing engineers and Instagram and
link |
Facebook. Well, those folks, the entire mechanism though is somehow broken. I mean, I put that on
link |
the leadership, but it's also difficult to operate a large company once it scales, all those kinds
link |
of things. But it should not be that difficult to do some basic, basic things that you want to do,
link |
which is in the case of Facebook, that's verify your identity to the app. And also in the case
link |
of Facebook, in the case of Librex, like disappear. If you choose, there's downsides to disappearing,
link |
but it should not be a difficult process. And yeah, I think people are waking up to that.
link |
I think there's a lot of room for an app like Librex with its foundational ideas to redefine
link |
what social media should look like. And like you said, I think beautifully, anonymity is not the
link |
core value. It's just the tool you use. And who knows, maybe anonymity will not always be the
link |
tool you use. Like if you give people the choice, who knows what this evolves from the login page
link |
you initially created. The key thing is the founding principles. And again, who knows if you
link |
give people a really nice way to monetize their data, maybe they'll no longer be a thing that
link |
you say do not sell user data. Yeah, all those kinds of things. But the basic principles should be
link |
there. And also a good, simple interface design goes a really long way, like simplicity and
link |
elegance, which Librex currently is. Clubhouse is a lot better, by the way. I don't mean to go too
link |
deep into the history, but the... It was bad. I didn't look at the early pictures. Oh, thank goodness.
link |
I read somewhere that it was like a white screen, like with black... The up and down vote buttons
link |
were like these big, these big freaking boxes. And I don't know, I could go on, but it was my
link |
genius design skills. I almost failed art class when I was in first grade. And I think
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I still have similar skills to my first grade self. But it's gotten a lot better. And thanks
link |
to a lot of my friends who have sort of chipped in here and there. Oh, I love the idea of a button
link |
that just like, forget me. I don't know, that's really moving, actually. That's actually all
link |
people want. Is they want, I think... Okay, I'll speak to my experience. I will give so much more
link |
if I could just disappear if I needed to. And I trusted the community. I trusted the founders
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and the principals. That's really powerful, man. The trust and ease of escape. Yeah.
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You've also kind of mentioned moderation, which is really interesting. So with this anonymity
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and this community, I don't know if you've heard of the internet, but there's trolls on the internet.
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So I've heard. And even if they go to Yale and Dartmouth, there's still people that probably
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enjoy the sort of being the guerrilla warfare contra revolutionary and just like creating chaos
link |
in a place of love. So how do you prevent chaos from and hatred breaking out in Librex?
link |
So the way I think about it is we have these principles. They're pretty simple and they're
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pretty easy to enforce. And then beyond the principles, we have a set of moderators,
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moderate from every single Ivy League school, a team of diverse moderators who enforce these
link |
principles, but not only enforce the principles, but kind of clue us in to what's happening in
link |
their community and how the real life context of their community translates to the Librex context
link |
of their community. And beyond that, we have conversation with them about the standards
link |
of the community. And we're constantly talking about what needs to be further elucidated and what
link |
needs to be tweaked. And we're in constant communication with the community. Now, if you
link |
want me to get into the principles that underlie Librex's moderation policy.
link |
Yeah, please. Maybe you can explain that there's moderators. What does that mean?
link |
How are they chosen? And what are the principles under which they operate?
link |
Sure. So how are the moderators chosen? The moderators are all volunteers. They're Librexers
link |
who reach out to me and respond to the opportunity to become a moderator. And the way they're chosen
link |
is basically we want to make sure that they're in tune with their community. We want to make sure
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they come from diverse backgrounds. And we want to make sure that they sort of understand what
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the community is about. And then we ask them some questions about how they would deal with
link |
certain scenarios, ones that we've had in the past and we feel strongly about. And then also ones
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that are a little more murky, where we want to see that they're sort of thinking about these
link |
things in a critical way. And from there, we choose a set and they have the power to
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take down posts. Of course, everything at the end of the day pens my review, but they can take
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them down and we can reinstate them if it's a problem. But they can take down posts and they
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can advocate for different moderation standards and different moderation policies.
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So for now, you're the Linus Torvald of this community. And so meaning like you're able to,
link |
like people are actually able to like email you or like text me, text you, contact you and get a
link |
response. Like you respond to basically everybody. And then you're like really, you know, you're
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living that live on people's floor life currently. That's not necessarily, this is the early days,
link |
folks. I knew Ryan before he was a billionaire and he was cool. And then he was in a mansion
link |
making meats on his barbecue. No, okay. But you know, how does it scale? Like what,
link |
I suppose how does it scale is the question. I mean, with Linus, I don't know if you're familiar
link |
with the Linux open source community, but he still stayed at the top for a while. It was really
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important like leadership there was really important to drive that large scale, really
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productive open source community. What do you see your role as Librex grows? And in general,
link |
what are the mechanisms of scaling here for moderation?
link |
Do I see it open discourses fundamental to the purpose of the app? Right. So as the,
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I guess you could say founder, CEO, what have you, part of my purpose has to be to
link |
enforce the vision, right? And part of the vision is open discourse. And that does come down in part
link |
to reasonable moderation and community guide reasonable moderation. So I imagine that will
link |
always be something that I'm intimately involved with to some degree. Now the degree to which,
link |
the way in which that manifests, I imagine will have to change, right? And hopefully I'll be able to,
link |
just like you can hire a CTO, hopefully I'll be able to be integrated in hiring people who are,
link |
who understand the way that we are sort of operating and the reasonable standards
link |
of moderation. And there can be a sort of hierarchical structure. But I think when you have a
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product whose key purpose is to allow people to have these difficult conversations on campus that
link |
need to be had, I can never, I can never fully, I don't think I can fully ever abdicate that
link |
responsibility. I think that would be like, I mean, that would be like Bezos abdicating eCommerce,
link |
right? Like that is, that's part of the job. Yeah. Of course you can run companies in different
link |
ways. I think the, because he might have abdicated quite a bit of the details there.
link |
It's hard for me to say because the Amazon does so many things. I think the probably the better
link |
example is like Elon Woodrock as he's still at the core of the engineering. He's at the core
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of the engineering. There's some fundamental questions of what he probably does way too much
link |
of the engineering. Like he's like the lowest level detail. But you're saying like the core
link |
things that are, that make the app work is, is the moderation of difficult conversations.
link |
And by the way, I'm 21 years old. Let's, let's remind us everyone of that. If this thing
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does scale and if this thing continues to be a positive force in a lot of people's lives,
link |
who knows what will happen in the next, what I'll learn. I'm still growing definitely as a leader,
link |
still growing as a thinker, still growing as a person. I don't, I can't pretend that I know
link |
how to run a business that is worth, you know, up to a billion dollars, whatever. Yeah. I can't
link |
pretend I know how to run a business that's, you know, going to have millions and millions of users.
link |
I expect that there are going to be a lot of amazing people who will teach me and a lot of
link |
people who have already kind of stepped into my life and helped me out and taught me things.
link |
And I imagine that I'll learn so much more. I just know that moderation is always going
link |
to be important to me because I don't think Librex is Librex unless we have open discourse
link |
and moderation. Reasonable open light touch moderation is at the heart of creating that,
link |
right? So as a creator of this kind of community in place with anonymity and difficult conversations,
link |
what, what do you think about this touchy three words that people have been tossing around and
link |
politicizing, I would say, but as at the core of the founding of this country, which is the freedom
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of speech? How do you think about the freedom of speech, this particular kind of freedom of
link |
expression? And do you think it's a fundamental human right? How do you define it to yourself
link |
when you, when you're thinking about it? I've, I went on, especially preparing for this conversation
link |
down a rabbit hole of like just how unclear it is philosophically, what is meant by this kind of
link |
freedom. It's not as easy as people think, but it's interesting, pragmatically speaking, to hear
link |
how you think about it in the context of Librex. Yeah, it's a tough one, right? And there's a lot
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there. So I come from the background of being a math major. Maybe it's important to start with that.
link |
Yeah. And I found myself in the middle of this question of freedom of speech. One of the wonderful
link |
things is that the Librex community is filled with PhDs and governance majors who have taught me
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a ton about this sort of thing. And I'm still learning. I'm still growing. I'm still probably
link |
going to modify my perspective to some degree, hopefully. Don't worry. I imagine I'll always
link |
support free discourse. Like learning how to speak about stuff is critical here because it's like,
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I'm learning that this is like a minefield of conversations. Because the moment you say like,
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even saying freedom of speech is a complicated concept, people will be like, oh, we spotted a
link |
communist. Like they'll say there's nothing complicated about freedom. Freedom is freedom,
link |
bro. It is complicated. First of all, if you talk about, there's different definitions of freedom
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of speech. If you want to go constitution, if you want to talk about the United States specifically
link |
and what's legal, it's actually not as exciting and not as beautiful as people think of.
link |
It's complicated. It's complicated. I think there's ideals behind it that we want to see.
link |
What does that actually materialize itself in the digital world where we're trying to communicate
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in ways that allows for difficult conversations and also at the same time doesn't result in the
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silencing of voices, not through like censorship, but through like just assholes being rude. Spam.
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Spam. So it could be just bots. Racism. Racism. Going back to the name of the app,
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Librex. Yes. Libre, free. X was support onto for free exchange and the free exchange of what?
link |
My purpose was to create as many as much inner communication of ideas, be them repugnant or
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otherwise as possible. And of course, to do that within legal bounds and to do that without causing
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anyone to be harassed or doxxed. So to keep things focused on the ideas, not the people. And then
link |
no BS crap stuff. And so to me, the easiest way to moderate around that, because as you said,
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figuring out what is hateful and what is hate speech is really hard, was to say no sweeping
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statements against core identity groups. And that seems to work on the whole pretty well to be
link |
pretty light touch. And hard to do though. It's difficult. Because we like to generalize with
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humans. It's difficult. But what it comes down to is be specific. And when you think about what
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are sweeping statements against core identity groups, oftentimes these are sort of hackneyed
link |
subjects. These are things that have been broached and we've heard them before. They don't really
link |
lead anywhere productive. So it goes under this principle of be specific and the ideas you're
link |
discussing. So even for like positive and humor stuff, you try to avoid generalizations against
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core identity core identity groups. Sorry, what are core identity groups? We're talking,
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you know, race, religion. Okay. Got it. Even positive stuff.
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Against negative. Oh, against. Sorry, against, against. Okay. Very, very, we've learned to be
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very specific. Very few words. But the community gets it, you know? Yeah, they get it. I mean,
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this is the thing. The trouble with rules is as the community grows, they'll figure out ways to
link |
manipulate the rules. Absolutely. It's human nature. It's creativity. Yeah. Something beautiful
link |
about it, of course. Unlike an... From an evolutionary perspective, yes. Yeah, the fact that
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people are so creative and so looking to... And because people are genuinely interested in figuring
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out these things about social media. And so they'll 100% see where's the edge. And I mean,
link |
part of that's maintaining some level of vagueness in your ruleset, which has its own set of questions
link |
and something we could think about. And I'm not implying I have all the answers. But there is
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something really interesting about people being so engaged that they're looking to figure out
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where are those edges and what does that mean? What does that edge mean, you know?
link |
Well, so one of the things I'm kind of thinking about, like from an individual user of Librex
link |
or an individual user of the internet, I think about like that one person that is on Reddit saying
link |
hateful stuff or positive stuff doesn't matter or funny stuff. One of the things I think about
link |
is the trajectory of that individual through life and how social media can help that person
link |
become the best version of themselves. I don't mean from like an Orwellian sense,
link |
like educate them properly or something. I just mean like, we're all, I believe,
link |
we're all fundamentally good. And I also believe we all have the capacity to do,
link |
to create some amazing stuff in this world, whether that's ideas or art or engineering,
link |
all those kinds of things, just to be amazing people. And I kind of think about like,
link |
you know, a lot of social media mechanisms bring out the worst in us. And I try to think like,
link |
in the long term, how can, as the social media or how can a website, how kind of tool that you
link |
create can make the best, like you take a trajectory that makes you a better, better,
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and better, and like the best version of yourself. So I think about that because like,
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you know, Twitter can really take you down some dark trajectories. I've seen people just not
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being the best version of themselves. Forget the cancel culture and all that kind of stuff.
link |
It's just like they're not developing intellectually in the way that's going to make
link |
the best version of themselves. I think Reddit, I'm not sure what I think about Reddit yet,
link |
because one positive side is all the shit posting. I read it could be just like a release valve
link |
for some stress in life, and you almost have like a parallel life where you're in meat space,
link |
you might be actually becoming successful and so on and growing and so on. But you just need
link |
some times to be angry at somebody. But I tend to not think that's possible. I think
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if you're shit posting, you're probably not spending your time the best way you could.
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I don't know. I'm torn on that. But do you think about that with Librex of creating a trajectory
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for the Yale, for the Dartmouth, for the students to where they grow intellectually?
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One thing that I think about a lot is how do you incentivize positive content creation?
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How do you incentivize really intellectual content creation? It's something that, frankly,
link |
I think about every single day. And I think there are ways that, I mean, one thing that's great
link |
about humans is that they can be incentivized. And I think there are ways that you can incentivize
link |
people to make the right kind of content if that's your goal.
link |
So you think such mechanisms exist for such incentivization?
link |
I do. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.
link |
You've got concrete ideas in your mind.
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I have about three concrete ideas that I'm very, very optimistic about.
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You don't even need to share them. I understand totally. But the fact that you have them,
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that's really good. Because I feel like sometimes the downfall of the social media
link |
is that there's literally not even a thinking or a discussion about the incentivization of
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positive long term content creation. I mean, Twitter, I really was excited about this when
link |
they said like, when Jack has talked about like creating healthy conversations.
link |
Yeah, he does seem to care. I've listened to him. I mean, he's a very particular way of saying
link |
things. But you get the impression that he's someone who actually cares about these things
link |
within the limits of his power. Yeah. And that's the question, the limits of the power.
link |
Librex is growing not just in the number of communities, but also in the way you're incentivizing
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positive conversations, like coupled with the moderation and so on.
link |
So you think there's a lot of innovation to be had in that area?
link |
There's a tremendous amount. I think when you think about the reasons people post,
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fundamentally, people want to make a positive impact on their community to some degree. Now,
link |
there'll always be bad actors. And part of the benefit of sort of our moderation structure
link |
is that we can limit some of those bad actors, you know, no body counts, no purgating.
link |
At the same time, the more you incentivize a certain type of behavior, the better it's going
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to be. And we don't see it as our role as the platform to force the community in a direction.
link |
And frankly, I don't think it would be good for anyone, the community, or the conversations,
link |
if we force a specific type of conversation. We just need to make the tools to allow people
link |
to be good and to incentivize good behavior. Yeah, I believe that if you will not need to
link |
censor, if you allow people at scale to be good, the good will overpower the assholes.
link |
That's my fundamental belief. I'm very optimistic about that.
link |
But currently, Librex is small in the sense that it's a small set of communities that I believe.
link |
And you mentioned to me offline that by design, you're scaling slowly and carefully.
link |
So how does Librex scale? Is it possible, you know, Facebook also started with a small set of
link |
communities that were schools, and then now grew to be basically the, if not one of the largest
link |
social networks in the world. Do you see Librex as potentially scaling to be beyond even college
link |
campuses, but encompassing the whole world?
link |
It's a long timeline. I'll say this. Let's get back to where Facebook goes wrong, because clearly,
link |
they did a lot right. And we can only speculate about what the objectives were of the founders
link |
of Facebook. I'm sure they've said some things, but it's always interesting to know what the
link |
mythology is versus what the truth is of the matter. So perhaps they've been very successful.
link |
I mean, they've taken over the world to some extent. At the same time, the goals of Librex
link |
are to create these positive communities and these open conversations where people can have
link |
real conversation and connection in their communities in a vulnerable and authentic way.
link |
And so to that end, which I imagine might be different than the goals of a Facebook, for example,
link |
one thing that we want to do is keep things intimate and community based.
link |
So each school is its own community. And perhaps you could have a slightly broader community.
link |
Maybe you could have a, I know the California system is an obvious one,
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packed time might be an obvious one. And we can think about that. But fundamentally, the unit
link |
of community is your school or your school community. So that's one difference that I
link |
think will help us. The other thing is that we're scaling intentionally, meaning that when we expand
link |
to a school, we have moderators in place. We have moderators who understand that school's
link |
environment in a very personal level. And we're growing responsibly. We're growing as we're ready,
link |
both technologically, but also socially. But as we think we have the tools to
link |
preserve the community and to encourage the community to create the sort of content that
link |
we want them to create. And there's a lot of ways to define community. So first of all,
link |
there's geographic community as well. But the way you're kind of defining community with Yale
link |
and Dartmouth is the email, right? That's what gives you, there's a power to the email
link |
in the sense that that's how you can verify, efficiently verify yourself with being a single
link |
individual in the university. In that same way, you can verify your employment at a company,
link |
for example, like Google, Microsoft, Facebook. Do you see or potentially taking on those communities?
link |
That'd be fascinating. Getting like anonymous community conversations inside Google.
link |
100% crossed my mind. To some extent, this is, this is something where
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I understand the college experience. I understand the need. And I've never, I've never worked at
link |
Google. I don't know if they would hire me. Hopefully, maybe as a product manager.
link |
I think if there's a community that needs this product and has that will, which I think,
link |
especially as Librex continues to grow and expand and change and learn. And because that's what we're
link |
doing is we're learning, right? With each community. It's not just about growing. It's about learning
link |
from each of these communities and iterating. I think it's quite likely there are going to be
link |
all sorts of communities that could use this tool to improve their culture, so to speak.
link |
So forgive me. I'm not actually like that knowledgeable about the history of attempts of
link |
building social networks to solve the problem that you're solving. But I was made aware that there
link |
was an app or at least a social network called YikYak that was, had a similar kind of focus.
link |
I think the thing you've spoken about that differs between Librex and YikYak is that YikYak was
link |
defined, am I pronouncing it right even? You're good? I'm good. I met the founder, so I can confirm.
link |
Okay, you can confirm. Cool. That it was constrained to a geographical area versus
link |
like to the actual community. And that somehow had fundamental like actual differences in
link |
social dynamics that resulted. But can you speak to the history of YikYak? Like, how does Librex
link |
differ? What lessons have you learned from that? Oh, and I should say that I guess there was
link |
controversial, I don't know, I didn't look at the details, but I'm guessing there's a bunch of
link |
racism and hate speech and all that kind of stuff that emerged on YikYak. Okay, so that's an example
link |
of like, okay, here's how it goes wrong when you have anonymity on college campuses. So how
link |
does Librex going to do better? Yeah, YikYak had a lot of problems, content problems, but the content
link |
problems go deeper than maybe what the press would reveal. There's a lot to say. And part of it is
link |
parsing exactly what to talk about when it comes to YikYak. And when you talk about startups, I
link |
mean, you know this, you know startups, and you look at the postmortem, it's almost never what
link |
people think it is. And oftentimes, these things are somewhat unknowable. And the degree to which
link |
people seeking confirmation bias, to somebody seeking closure, look to find a singular attribute
link |
that caused the failure. It feels like the little details often make all the difference.
link |
Yes. And I think the details are so little that as humans, we are not capable of parsing even what
link |
they are. But I'll tell you my perspective on it, knowing that I am also a human with biases.
link |
In this particular case, very significant biases. So I started building Librex for its own merits.
link |
At first, I wasn't aware of YikYak, but as I started to talk to people about this platform I
link |
was building, I was made aware of YikYak and I built it from day one with a lot of the issues
link |
YikYak had in mind. So as you said, the one difference between YikYak is the geographical
link |
versus community based aspect. Going along with that, one thing I realized by researching social
link |
media sites is that the majority of the negative content, the content that's
link |
terrible and breaking all the rules is created by really, and the people who are not reformable,
link |
so to speak, the people who are not showing the best part of the human experience.
link |
It's a really small minority, right? I remember I was listening to the founder of
link |
4Cham Moot talk about this, how one guy was able to basically destroy
link |
large swaths of his community. That's part of what makes it exciting for that
link |
minority is how much power they can have. So if you're predisposed to think in this way,
link |
it's exciting that you can walk into, like I mentioned the party before, you have a party of
link |
a lot of positive people and it feels, especially if you don't have much power in this world,
link |
it feels exceptionally empowering to destroy the lives of many. And if you think this way,
link |
it's a problem, but I'm hopeful that you're right that in most cases it's going to be a minority
link |
of people. I think it is, and that's what the research has showed. And one really powerful
link |
thing is that we can really actively control who comes in and out of our community based on the
link |
.edu verification. And we can also control who's not in our community because we have that lever
link |
where each account is associated with a.edu. So that's the first point I would put out,
link |
point out there. Second point is controlled expansion, meaning that we have community moderation.
link |
We have this panel that allows the moderators to see all of the highly downloaded content,
link |
all of the reported content, all the flagged content and look through it and decide what they
link |
like and what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. And we ping every moderator when
link |
there's a report. So things are taken down pretty quickly. And we have our standards. And we have,
link |
I think above all of that, we have a mission. And it's a community based mission. Yikyak was
link |
more of a fun app. And by its own admission, it was a place where people could enjoy themselves
link |
and could sort of yak. Yikyak, chit chat. We have a bigger purpose than that, frankly. And
link |
I think that shows in the people who self select to be on that app, to be on Librex and to be on
link |
Yikyak, respectively. The last thing I'll say is Yikyak was very few characters. It was a Twitter
link |
esk platform. And that doesn't allow for a tremendous amount of nuance. It doesn't allow for a
link |
tremendous amount of conversation. Librex is much more long form. And so the kind of posts that you'll
link |
get on Librex can span pages. They're like, what people are starting to realize is that they can
link |
reach a lot more people at a lot more pertinent of a time, a lot more quickly, by posting their
link |
thoughts on Librex than if they went to their school newspaper. And I think the school newspapers
link |
might be a little worried about that. But more importantly, we're connecting people in this
link |
way where long form communication with nuance that takes into account everything that's happening
link |
in the community temporally is really available at Librex and not really communicable in 240 or
link |
480 or whatever the number of characters the acts were bound to. And I could talk about the history
link |
of Yikyak if you want me to go further. They started, I think they were at 12 schools. And then
link |
spring break it. People told their friends, look at this app, a thousand schools signed up and
link |
we're had active communities. They had a problem on their hands. And then the high schools come
link |
on board. Yeah, I think a lot of the things you said ring true to me, but especially the vision
link |
one, which I do think having a vision in the leadership, having a mission makes all the
link |
difference in the world. That that's both for the engineers that are building, like the team
link |
that's building the app, the moderation and users because they kind of the mission carries itself
link |
through the behavior of the of the people on the social network.
link |
As a small tangent, let me ask you something about
link |
Parler, but it's less about Parler and more about AWS. So AWS removed Parler from his platform,
link |
you know, for whatever reasons, doesn't really matter. But the fact that AWS would do this
link |
was really, really bothered me personally, because I saw AWS as the computing infrastructure.
link |
And I always thought that part could not put a finger on its scale. And I don't know what your
link |
thoughts are like, were you bothered by Parler being removed from AWS? And how does that affect
link |
how you think about the computing infrastructure on which Librex is based?
link |
I was bothered not so much by Parler specifically being taken out of AWS, but more the fact that
link |
something that's like a highway, something that people rely on that people build on top of,
link |
that people assume is going to be somewhat position agnostic,
link |
like a road that people drive on is is becoming ideologically sort of discriminatory.
link |
And of course, mind you, Amazon can do what it wants. It's a private company.
link |
And I support the rights of private companies. I just on an ethical and sort of a deep moral
link |
level, I wonder like, at what point should a company sort of be agnostic in that in that regard
link |
and let developers build on top of their infrastructure? And where does that responsibility
link |
hold? Yes, it makes you hope that there's going to be, from a capitalistic sense,
link |
competitors to AWS will say like, we're not going to put our finger on the scale.
link |
I mean, on the highway is a good sort of example. It's like if a privately owned highway,
link |
exactly, said, we're no longer going to allow, we're only going to allow electric vehicles.
link |
And a bunch of people in this world would be like, yes, because electric is good for the
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environment. And yes, but then you have to consider the slippery slope nature of it,
link |
but also like the negative impact on the lives of many others. And what that means for innovation
link |
and for like competition, again, in the capitalistic sense. So there's some nature,
link |
there's some level to this hierarchy of our existence that we should not allow to manipulate
link |
what's built on top of it. It should be truly infrastructure. And it feels like compute
link |
is storage and compute is the that layer, like it shouldn't be messed with. I haven't seen anybody
link |
really complain about it, like in terms of government. And I'm not even sure government is
link |
the right mechanism to policy and regulation to step in. Because again, they do a messy job
link |
of fixing things. But I do hope there's competitors to AWS to make AWS and step up.
link |
Because I do think, you know, I'm a fan of AWS, except this service, it's a good service until
link |
this until yeah, until they rip out the rug. And the point is, it's not that necessarily
link |
their decision was a bad one with Parler in particular. It's that like the slippery slope
link |
nature of it, but also the it takes the good actors that are creating amazing products and
link |
makes them more fearful. And when you're more fearful, it's the same reason that anonymity
link |
is a tool that you don't create the best thing you could possibly create. When you're fearful,
link |
you don't create. I think we kind of talked about it a little bit. But I wonder if we can kind of
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revisit it a little bit. I talked to a guy named Ronald Sullivan, who's a faculty at Harvard Law
link |
Professor. He was on the legal defense team. He was the lawyer for Harvey Weinstein and Aaron
link |
Hernandez for the double murder case. So he takes on these really difficult cases of unpopular figures,
link |
because he believes like that's the way you test that we believe in the rule of law. But he was
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there's a big protest in Harvard to get him basically censor him and to get him to no longer be
link |
faculty dean, all those kinds of things. And it was by minority of students, but it was a huge
link |
blowback, obviously in the public, but also inside Harvard, like that's not okay. He stands for the
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very principles at the founding of Harvard and at the principles of the founding of this country
link |
and the law and so on. But the basic argument is that it was about safe spaces, that it's
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unsafe to have somebody who is basically supporting Harvey Weinstein. What do you think about this
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whole idea of safe spaces on college campuses? Because it feels like the mission of Librex is
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pushing back against the idea of safe spaces. I think safe spaces are fine when they're within
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people's private lives, within their homes, within their religious organizations. I think the problem
link |
becomes when the institution starts encouraging or backing safe spaces. Because what are people
link |
being safe from? And oftentimes it seems like there's this idea that the harm that's being
link |
attempted to be mitigated is the harm of confronting opinions you disagree with,
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opinions you might find repugnant. And if this is conflated with a need for safety,
link |
then that's where the idea of liberal arts education sort of dies. Of course it's complicated and we
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still want to have safe intellectual environments. But the way that I hear the term safe space used
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today, I think it doesn't really have a place within the intellectual context.
link |
Yeah, it's funny. I mean, this is why Librex is really exciting is it's pushing those
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difficult conversations and I'd love to see ultimately there does seem to be an asymmetry of
link |
power that results in the concept of safe spaces and hate speech being redefined in the slippery
link |
slope kind of way where it means basically anything you want it to mean. And it basically is used to
link |
silence people, to silence people, they're like good, thoughtful experts. Also on that I would say
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it has not just a pragmatic purpose, which is the silencing, but also sort of an ideological
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purpose, which is an illinguistic purpose, which is to conflate words with unsafety and harm and
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violence, which is what you kind of see on a cultural linguistic level is happening all around
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us right now is that this idea that words are harm is very dangerous and slippery concept.
link |
I mean, it's not you don't have to slip that far to see why that's a problem. Once we start
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making words into violence, and we start criminalizing words, we get into some really
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authoritarian territory, things that I think, I mean, myself and my background, I don't know
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how much we have to go into it, but things that my ancestors certainly would be worried about.
link |
Wow. What's your background? I'm a child of Holocaust survivors and program survivors.
link |
So yeah, I mean, me as well, from different directions, I come from the Soviet Union. So
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there's a, well, like in most of us, hate and love runs through our blood from our history.
link |
You mentioned MIT is being added to Librax. Has it already been added? Yes, it was added
link |
today. Today. Okay. So let me ask you, this is exciting because I don't know what your thoughts
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are about this, but I'll tell you from my perspective, if you're in a lot of MIT folks listen
link |
to this, I would love it if you join Librax. It'd be interesting to explore conversations
link |
on several topics inside MIT, but one of the most moving that hasn't been discussed at all,
link |
except in little flourishes here and there is a topic of Jeffrey Epstein. Now,
link |
there's been a huge amount of like impact that the connections of various faculty to Jeffrey
link |
Epstein and the various things that been said had on MIT, but it feels like the difficult
link |
conversation haven't had been had. It's the administration trying to clean up and give a
link |
bunch of BS to try to pretend like, let's just hide this part. Like nothing is broken, nothing to
link |
see here. Here's a bad dude that did some bad things and some faculty that kind of misbehaved
link |
a little bit because they're a little bit clueless. Let's all look the other way. Harvard did this
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much better, by the way. They completely, it's almost like people pretend like Harvard didn't
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have anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein, but I think I'd be curious to hear what those
link |
conversations are because there's conversations on the topic of like, well, obviously sort of
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sexual assault and disrespecting women on any kind of level within academia, but just women in
link |
general. That's an important topic to talk about various, many sets of difficult conversations.
link |
And the other topic is funding for research. Like, what are we okay taking money from and
link |
what are we not okay taking money from? There's a lot of just interesting, difficult conversations
link |
to be had. I've worked with people who refuse to take money from DOD, Department of Defense,
link |
for example, because in some indirect or direct way, you're funding military, industrial complex,
link |
all those kinds of things. I think with Jeffrey Epstein, it's even more stark, this contrast of
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like, well, what is and isn't ethical to take money from? And I just think, forget academia,
link |
I think there's just a lot of interesting deep human discussions to be had, and they haven't been.
link |
And there's been somebody, I don't know if you're familiar with Eric Weinstein,
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who has been outraged by the fact that nobody's talking about Jeffrey Epstein.
link |
Nobody's having these difficult conversations. And Eric himself has had a sort of complicated
link |
journey through academia in the sense that he's a really kind of renegade thinker in many kinds
link |
of ways. I'm not sure if you know who Eric is by any chance. I heard the name. Okay. I actually
link |
checked out Zev. Zev. It was heartening for me to see that I was not the youngest person
link |
on this podcast. You're the second youngest. Second youngest.
link |
That's hilarious. But Eric has, he's kind of a renegade thinker. He's a mathematical physicist
link |
with, I believe, a PhD at Harvard, and he spends some time at MIT and so on. But he speaks to the
link |
fact that sort of there's a culture of conformity and so on. And if you're somebody who's a bit
link |
outside of the box, a bit weird and whatever dimension of weird, that makes you actually kind
link |
of interesting that the system kind of wants to make you an outcast, wants to throw you out.
link |
And so he kind of opposes that whole idea. He's the perfect person to have conversations with
link |
in this kind of Librax kind of context of anonymity. Because I'll tell you the few conversations
link |
that came across, and they were very quickly silenced. And I'm troubled by it. I'm not sure
link |
what to think of it. Is there's a few threads inside MIT, like on a mailing list, discussing
link |
Marvin Minsky. I don't know if you know how that is. He's an AI researcher. He's a seminal figure
link |
in AI before your time. But one of the most important people in the history of artificial
link |
intelligence. And there was a discussion on a thread that involved the interaction between
link |
Marvin Minsky and Jeffrey Epstein. That conversation was quickly shut down. One person was pushed out
link |
of MIT, Richard Stallman, who's one of the key figures because of that, because he wanted some
link |
clarity about the situation. But he also, he spoke, like we mentioned earlier, without grace,
link |
right? But he was quickly punished by the administration because of a few people protesting.
link |
And just that conversation, I guess what bothered me most is it didn't continue.
link |
It didn't expand. There was no complexity. And there was a hunger that was clear behind that
link |
conversation, especially for me. I'd like to understand Marvin Minsky was one of the reasons
link |
I wanted to come to MIT. He's passed away. But he's one of the key figures in the field that I
link |
deeply care about, artificial intelligence. And I thought that his name was dragged
link |
through the mud through that situation and without ever being resolved. And so it's unclear to me
link |
what am I supposed to think about all this? And the only way to come to a conclusion there is to
link |
keep talking. It's like the thing we started this conversation with about truth is conversation.
link |
So in that sense, I'd love if people on Librex, perhaps in other places, but it seems like Librex
link |
is a nice platform to discuss Marvin Minsky, to discuss Jeffrey Epstein, to learn from it,
link |
to grow from it, to see how we can make MIT better. Because I'm still one of the people.
link |
I've always dreamed of being at MIT. And it was a dream come true in many ways. And I still believe
link |
that MIT is one of the most special places in this world, like many other universities.
link |
Universities in general is a truly special man. It hurts my heart when people speak poorly
link |
of academia. I understand what they mean. They're very correct, but there is much more in my opinion
link |
that's beautiful about academia than that's broken. I mean, I don't know if you have something to comment.
link |
It doesn't necessarily need to be about Jeffrey Epstein, but there's these difficult things that
link |
come up that test the academic community, right? That it feels like conversation is the only way
link |
to resolve it. I think people have a natural need for closure. And it's not just, I'm not as plugged
link |
into what academics are talking about as you would be lax, but I even... Kiss these days,
link |
no respect for Minsky. Exactly. I mean, especially in the AI community, I'm not necessarily a programmer.
link |
But what I will say is that people come to Librex and we always see a huge spike in users
link |
whenever there's like a tragedy on campus or something where people need closure.
link |
Recently, there was a suicide just the other day on Yale's campus and people were just coming to
link |
pay respects and to stay rest in peace and speak also about what might have led to an environment
link |
where people are drawn to these terrible results. So just having a conversation is important there,
link |
because it brings closure. People need the space, especially when no one wants to go out and put
link |
their head above, be the longest blade of grass on that one because of the stigma. People need to
link |
be able to speak. Yeah, that fear really bothers me, the fear that silence is people, like were
link |
they self censor? Were they self silence? Well, you've created an amazing place. I'm kind of
link |
interested in your struggle and your journey of creating positive incentives, because it's a problem
link |
in a very different domain that I'm also interested in. So I love robotics. I love human robot
link |
interaction. And so I believe that most people are good and we can bring out the best in human
link |
nature. Social networks is a very tricky space to do that in. So I'm glad you're taking on the problem
link |
and I'm glad you have the mission that you do. I hope you succeed. But you mentioned offline that
link |
you used to be into chess. Tell me about your journey through chess. Sure. I was a very competitive
link |
tournament player growing up till about like 13. I got, for the chess fans, I got through around 2000
link |
USCF. So I was a competitive player, especially my age group. And that actually led me to poker.
link |
I was playing a tournament and what happens is when you're like a very strong 13 year old and
link |
you're playing locally, if you want to match, you're going to end up playing a lot of adults. And I
link |
ended up playing this mid 40s guy who, we played a really strong game. He actually beat me. I still,
link |
I still remember the game and think, oh, I could actually play that move instead of that one.
link |
But after, after the game, we had a postmortem. It was this me, I think I was 13 at the time
link |
in this 40 year old, like hanging over this chessboard and looking over the moves. And
link |
even at that, even at my age, it occurred to me that this guy was absolutely brilliant.
link |
And after, after the postmortem, not only by the way in chess, but just like in the way he
link |
articulates his thoughts as some people are, um, after the postmortem, I went and looked him up
link |
online and I found out that he was a World Series of Poker Champion. And his name is Bill Chen.
link |
And I haven't really kept up with him except one time there was another chess tournament when I was
link |
around 14. And I followed him into an elevator as he was leaving the chess hall, like pretending
link |
that I was going to go up just because I wanted to, I just wanted to talk to him. And I suggested
link |
a sequel or some changes that he could, that I thought he should make for his book. And he was
link |
like, actually, I was thinking of doing the same thing, which was incredibly validating to my 14
link |
year old or 15 year old self. But I really haven't kept up with him. So it's a shout out to him.
link |
But, and then that, he wrote a book called The Mathematics of Poker that I started reading.
link |
And that, first of all, kickstarted my interest in game theory and second of all, in poker.
link |
So it started from chess and then poker. And I started with Bitcoin poker and had a lot of success
link |
with that, met a lot of amazing friends, learned a ton about, I mean, I think about entrepreneurship
link |
as well as taking risks, reasonable risks, positive expected value risks, and also just growing as a
link |
person and mathematician. And what's, did you say Bitcoin poker? Yeah, what's Bitcoin poker?
link |
See if you understand, I was 14 years old, right? So how is a 14 year old with wonderful parents
link |
who care about him and probably don't want him playing poker, going to start playing poker?
link |
Because I wanted, I wanted the challenge. I love the challenge. I love the competition.
link |
And I realized the answer is probably Bitcoin, because the implications of that. And they had,
link |
they had these free roll tournaments, which for those of you who don't know what free rolls are,
link |
there's these promotional tournaments that sites put on where they'll put like a few dollars in.
link |
And then thousands of people sign up and the winners get like a dollar. And I started there
link |
and I worked my way up. And that's amazing. What's your sense about from that time to today
link |
of the growth of the cryptocurrency community? I'm actually having like four or five conversation
link |
with Bitcoin proponents, Bitcoin maximalists. And like all these, I'm just having all these cryptocurrency
link |
conversations currently, because there's so many brilliant, like technically brilliant,
link |
but also financially and philosophically brilliant people in those communities.
link |
It's fascinating with the explosion of impact, like, and also if you look into the future,
link |
the possible revolutionary impact on society in general. But what's your sense about this
link |
whole growth of Bitcoin? I'm definitely less knowledgeable on the currency. Again,
link |
like programming, it was a means to an end. Yes, right. What I will say is that there was this
link |
amazing community that grew out of it. And you'd have people who were willing to stake me or have
link |
me be their horse and they're my backer for having never met me for literally full Bitcoin
link |
tournaments, like full Bitcoin entry fee tournaments. And I get a percentage of the
link |
profits and they get a percentage. And to have that level of community for that degree of money,
link |
I mean, it gives you hope about the potential for humans to act in mutual best interests
link |
with a degree of trust. Yeah, there's a really fascinating strong community there.
link |
But speaking of like bringing out the best of human nature, it's a community that's currently
link |
struggling a little bit in terms of their ability to communicate in a positive inspiring way,
link |
like the Bitcoin folks, and we talk about this a lot. I honestly think they have a lot of love
link |
in their hearts and minds, but they just kind of naturally, because the world has been like
link |
institutions and the centralized powers have been sort of mocking and fighting them for many years
link |
that they've become sort of worn down and cynical. And so they tend to be a little bit more aggressive
link |
and negative on the internet in the way they communicate, especially on Twitter. And it's
link |
just created this whole community of basically being derisive and mocking and trolling and all
link |
this kind of stuff. But people are trying to, as the Bitcoin community grows, as the cryptocurrency
link |
community grows, they're trying to revolutionize that aspect too. So they're trying to find the
link |
positive core and grow in that way. So it's fascinating because I think all of us are trying
link |
to find the positive aspects of ourselves and trying to learn how to communicate in a positive
link |
way online. It's like the internet has been around, social networks haven't been around
link |
along. We're trying to, we're trying to figure this thing out. Let me ask you the ridiculous
link |
question. I don't know if you have an answer, but who is the greatest chess player of all time
link |
in your view? So since you like chess, you talk about it.
link |
How you define it. But if you're talking about raw skill, like if you put everyone across time
link |
into a tournament together, Carlson would win. I don't think that's particularly controversial.
link |
Oh, you mean like with the same exact skill level?
link |
Exactly. Magnus Carlson. And is the object, now if you talk about political importance,
link |
I think Bobby Fisher is a, you know, he's a, he's the only one that people still,
link |
usually go to someone on the street, they know Bobby Fisher because he was, because of what he
link |
represented, right? Who do you think is more famous on the street, Gary Kasparov or Bobby Fisher?
link |
Bobby in America, Bobby Fisher. Do you think so? Yes. That's interesting. I think we're
link |
going to have to put that to the test. Yeah, maybe it's, maybe it's more reflective of the
link |
community that I was a part of, but yeah. Also in the community, you're a part of like
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young minds playing chess. Bobby Fisher was a superstar in terms of like the roots.
link |
Yeah, I think so. Because he's American and, you know, he stood up against the big bad Russians
link |
at the time. And, you know, unfortunately he had a very bad downfall, but, you know, for our
link |
geopolitical situation, he meant a lot. And then if you talk about compared to contemporaries,
link |
actually, I would say Paul Morphe was a bit of a throwback was, he's one of those geniuses that
link |
was just head and shoulders above everyone else. Is there somebody that inspired your own play,
link |
like as a young mind? Yeah, I really like Michael Tall. So like you see you were,
link |
I think he was very aggressive, right? Yeah, very tactical. Yeah. Which is funny because I
link |
found that I was better at like sort of slow methodical play than quick tactics. But I just,
link |
I mean, there's something beautiful about the creativity. And that's something I always latched
link |
on to is being a creative player, being a creative person. I mean, chess doesn't really reward
link |
creativity as much as a lot of other things, especially entrepreneurial pursuits, which I
link |
think is part of the reason why I sort of grew out of it. But I always was attracted to the
link |
creativity that I did see in chess. So let me ask the flips. The other, because you said poker,
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is there somebody that stands out to you as could be the greatest poker player of all time?
link |
Like who do you admire in that? That's a more controversial one because
link |
these chess players are such like, first of all, there's more an objective standard. And
link |
second of all, there's like, they're like almost like cultural figures to me. Whereas
link |
poker players are more like live living, they feel more like, yeah, they feel more accessible.
link |
But they also have like personalities. Yeah, poker have like fill ID, personality,
link |
their vices, they have quirks, they have humor. Like, I guess we've seen videos of them.
link |
Because it's such a recent development. I'll say one person who I admire so much. And like,
link |
if I could like have a dinner list of people that I want to have dinner with, like,
link |
maybe it'll happen now, actually. I would love to have dinner with them.
link |
Phil Galfont, who I don't, most people probably won't know. But on this podcast, but the way,
link |
first of all, he democratized poker learning in like the mathematical nitty gritty, how do you
link |
get good at poker type sense to the entire world. And like an unprecedented way he was,
link |
he gave, he had this gift that he had learned and distilled by working with some of the greatest
link |
poker minds. And he just democratized it through his website. And I learned a ton from him.
link |
And not only that, but you just listen to him think, and it's almost like a philosophical
link |
meditation, the way that he breaks things down and thinks about these different elements and
link |
has such a holistic thought process. It's like watching a genius work. And, you know,
link |
he's also just a nice, fun, sociable guy that like you can, you can imagine being at your
link |
dinner table. Yeah. All that combined. Which is not true for a lot of poker players, right?
link |
A lot of them are dark souls. To say the least, yes. I like, I really like the,
link |
what is it, Canadian, Daniel Negrano. He's also a nice guy. He's also a nice guy, but he's also
link |
somebody who's able to express his thoughts about poker really well, but also in an entertaining
link |
way. He seems to be able to predict cards better than anybody I've ever seen. Like what,
link |
did you watch the challenge? Which challenge? He lost like a million dollars recently to
link |
Doug Polk. He lost a million dollars to Doug Polk heads up online. It's really interesting.
link |
Yeah. It's awesome to watch these guys work. So I know you're 21. 21. 21. So asking you for advice
link |
is a little bit funny, but at the same time, not because you've created a social network.
link |
You've created a startup from nothing as we talked about earlier, like without knowing how to
link |
program, you've programmed. I mean, you've taken this whole journey that a lot of people I think
link |
would be really inspired by. So given that, and given the fact that 20 years from now, you probably
link |
laugh at the advice you're going to give now. Absolutely. I hope so. If I don't laugh at the
link |
advice I give now, something went desperately wrong, right? Yeah. So do you have advice for
link |
people that want to follow in your footsteps and create a startup, whether it's in the software
link |
app domain or whether it's anything else? So I'll speak specifically about social media apps.
link |
Yes. Try to keep it as narrow as possible so I can laugh as little as possible when I'm 41.
link |
Yeah. And what I would say is that if you're a 21, 22 year old who's looking at me and being like,
link |
I want to do something like this, what I would say is you probably know better than just about
link |
anyone. And if you have a feeling in yourself that this is something that I have to do, and this
link |
is something I could imagine myself doing for the next 10 years, because if you're successful,
link |
you are going to have to do it for the next 10 years. And through the ups and the downs,
link |
through the amazing interviews with Lex, and through the not so amazing articles you might have
link |
with other people, right? And you're going to have to ride those highs and lows, and you have
link |
to believe in what you're doing. But if you have that feeling, what I would say is listen to as
link |
few people as possible, because people are experts in domains, but when it comes to what's
link |
hot and what makes sense in a social context, you are the authority as a young person who's
link |
going through these things and living in your sort of milieu. And I mean, I've talked to
link |
at this point, so many experts, so many investors, VCs, you'd be amazed at the advice I've gotten.
link |
Advice I've gotten. So there's like a minefield of bad advice. That's the hardest part, I think,
link |
for young people. And it's the thing when people, like I help, I help Yellies all the time who ask,
link |
like, I never turned down when a founder asked me to have a conversation. I never turn it down.
link |
I'm always there for them. And the number one thing I worry about is that at Yale we're taught
link |
implicitly and explicitly that you listen to the adult in the room, you listen to the person with
link |
the highest, you know, pay grade. And it's devastating because that's how innovation dies.
link |
Yeah, it's intimidating to like, you talk to VC who probably meets worth a billion dollars.
link |
Yeah, billion dollars. And they're going to tell you, you know, all the all the successful startups
link |
they helped fund or even just a successful business owner is going to tell you some advice.
link |
And it's hard psychologically to think that they might be wrong. Yeah. But you're saying
link |
that's the only way you succeed is just listen to yourself because if they knew what they were
link |
doing, they would have built it themselves. And what's especially hard is people go, oh,
link |
of course, you know, I'll listen to the people's I'll listen to their advice, but I'll know why
link |
it's wrong. And then I'll, and I'll do my own thing. And that sounds greatly abstract. But
link |
sometimes you can't always even put your finger on why they're wrong. And I think to have the
link |
conviction to say, you're wrong, and I can't tell you why, but I still think I'm right.
link |
It's a rare thing, especially at like, it's very counterintuitive. And you might even say
link |
it's hubris or arrogant. But I think it's necessary because a lot of these things are,
link |
they're not things that you can really put into words until you see them in action. Like,
link |
a lot of them are kind of happy accidents. Yeah, it's been, it's been tough for me,
link |
like as a, as a person who, like, I'm very empathetic. So when people tell me stuff,
link |
I kind of want to understand them. And it's been a painful process, especially people close to me.
link |
Basically, everything I've done, especially in the recent few years,
link |
a lot of people close to me said not to do. Yeah.
link |
Yeah. And like, my parents too, that's been a hard one. It's, it's to basically acknowledge to
link |
myself that you don't know, like, you, you don't, that everything you're going to say
link |
by way of advice for me is not going to be helpful. Like, I love my parents very much.
link |
But like, they're just like, they don't get it. And, and as you put it beautifully,
link |
it's very difficult to put your finger on exactly why. Because a lot of advice
link |
sounds reasonable. That's the worst kind. Yeah.
link |
If it, if it sounds really good, that just means it's an earworm. Like, that's like a song
link |
that you hear on the radio. And then you're like, you're humming it in the car. And it's like,
link |
it's the same thing. The more, the better it sounds, the more skeptical.
link |
Yeah. Reason is a, is a bad drug. Like, should be very careful. Because like,
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you know, the things that seem impossible, every, every major innovation, every major business
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seems impossible at birth. But even not just the impossible things. I think, you know,
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you look at like love, for example, it's very easy to give advice to sort of point out all the
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ways you can go wrong or marriage, all the divorces that people go through, all the pain of years
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that you go through the divorce, like the system of marriage, the marriage industrial complex,
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all the money that's wasted, all those kinds of things. But that advice is useless when you're
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in love. The point, the point is to just pat the person in the back and say, go get him, kid.
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Like, what is it? Goodwill hunting and went to see about a girl. Oh, yeah. That's a good movie.
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I love that movie. But yeah, that, that's, that took me a long time to figure out. I'm still
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trying to fight through it, but especially when you're young, that's hard. But nothing in life is
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worth accomplishing is easy. So, but I think it's really interesting to make that connection between
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like startup advice and like your parents, because it's the exact same sort of mechanism
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where when you're young, your parents are usually like right, right? And the experts are usually
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right. And you know, if you listen to them and you follow their orders, you're going to go to
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a school like Yale. And at a certain point stops making sense. And I've seen my friends at Yale
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go down paths because they just continued listening to their parents that I know in their heart of
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hearts is not the right path for them. Yeah, you know what? That's how I see the education system.
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The whole point is to guide you to a certain point in your life and everybody's point is different.
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And your task is to at that point, to have a personal revolution and create your own path.
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But no one tells you that nobody tells you that because they're they want you to keep following
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the same path as they they're leading you towards like they're not going to say your whole job is
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to eventually rebel. Yeah, that's how that's how rebellion works. You're not supposed to be told.
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But that is the task they can take you just like you said, and depending who you are, they can
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take you really far. But at a certain point, you have to rebel that could be getting you know,
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that could be in your undergrad, that could be high school. So at any point, one thing that I
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think played a pretty pivotal role and I've never really mentioned this. He might not even know the
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person about to tell you about in sort of me actually going out and making Librex was that
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I was taking this graduate level math class my sophomore year. And I met this I met this PhD
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student who was also in it and had considerable citations and also startup experience. And I
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think he actually ended up being the CTO of a unicorn later on. I've sort of lost touch with
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him, but we're still Facebook friends as it is in the 21st century. So and I was in a class and
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I was telling him I really want to I really want to make this thing, but I have no technical
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background. And he disguised as a computer genius, he worked under Dan Spielman at Yale. So
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he's a good guy, right? And we were doing some math together. We were doing something on discrepancy
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for those who really care about math. So combinatorics. And he just turns to me is like,
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I think you could do it. Like what do you mean? You think I could do is like, I think you could
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do it. I was like, really? But I respected this guy so much. His name was young duck. Shout out
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to young duck. I respect this guy so much that I was like, if young duck says I can do it, and
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young duck is a legit genius. And he knows, he knows me. Because we were in two classes together
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and we spent a lot of time together. If he thinks I can do it, then who am I to say I can't do it?
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Yeah, you know, that's a lesson for mentorship is like,
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oh, he has no idea probably. Well, he might not even remember that interaction, which is funny.
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But the point is that when a crazy young kid comes up to you with a crazy dream,
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you know, every once in a while, you should just pat him in the back and say, I believe in you.
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Like you can do it. If they look up to you, that means your words have power. And if you say,
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no, no, come on, be like reasonable, like, you know, finish your schoolwork kind of thing,
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like that's that's unreasonable to take that leap. Now just finish your education, blah, blah, blah,
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blah, whatever, whatever the reasonable advice is, every once in a while, maybe often as a mentor,
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you should say, you know, go see about a girl in California, or whatever the equivalent is.
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That was my moment. That was my good little hunting moment. It's your good little hunting moment.
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Man, I miss Robin Williams. I was a special guy. People love it when I ask about book recommendations
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in general. Of course, your journey is just beginning, but is there something that jumps
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out to you, technical fiction, philosophical sci fi, coloring books, blog posts you read somewhere
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that had an impact on your life? Video games. Video games that you recommend to all this
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Minecraft manual. Manga. I mean, yeah, video, you can mention video games too. If there's
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something that jumps out to you that just had like an impact. I guess I'll say, I really like the book,
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The War of Art, which is a book about creative resistance and the creative struggle and what
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it means to be creative. And part of what I see in this conversation and what you're doing, Lex, is
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so much of The War of Art's idea is that you just keep writing and writing and writing until you
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get to the new crap. And you just roll with it, right? And that's sort of what happens when you
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have like three hour conversations with people is you can only have so much scripted or societally
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constructed stuff until you get to the real you. And you have to show up. I mean, he's that book,
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that book is kind of painful. It's really painful. And it's not something I would recommend for every
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part of it. But for what it did in my life at the time, it also kind of normalized, I don't know,
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part of my coming of age story is part of it's about realizing that I'm a creative person and
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person who needs to create. That's sort of a God given thing, I think, for a lot of people.
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But it's something that I don't really feel like I can live without. And part of it was
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realizing that even within some of these more rigid structures, it's okay that I don't sort of
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fit in with them. And to hear about the struggles of other creatives was something for my own
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self esteem and my own growing up that was really important to me. So I don't think the book itself
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might be perfect. But for what it did for my life, it was really impactful.
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Yeah, I think exactly the words may not be exactly right by way of advice. But I think
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the journey that a lot of creatives take by reading that book is kind of profound. He also
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has another one called Turning Pro, I think. I mean, he in general espouses like, taking it
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seriously. If you have a creative mind and you want to create something special in this world,
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go do it. Don't show up. And so many people would tell me would encourage me either blatantly or
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through implicit means to basically take the app less seriously. It's a good signal, by the way.
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It's a good signal because my really close friends, the ones who have always supported me,
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they never said that because they got it. They understood that that was my path. And
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they might be skeptical. They might be like, I mean, one of my friends I remember told me,
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I was always taken aback about why you were so certain this would work out. And he's like,
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I finally got it once I saw it popping off. But before that, I just didn't get it. But he still
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supported me. And I think it's a really good signal. And actually, just the fact of going
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through this process has made me socially feel so much more connected. And I've somewhat consolidated
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my social life to some degree, but it's so much more vulnerable connected. And that's part of
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the creative process. I have to thank for that, I think. There's something that's unstoppable
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about the creative mind. It's right there, that fire. And I guess part of the thing that you're
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supposed to do is let that fire burn in whichever direction. And it's gonna hurt. Fire will hurt.
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But on the topic of video games, you mentioned Stanley Parable offline. You said you played
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some video games. Is there a video game that you especially love that you recommend I play, for
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example? Yeah, I'll mention. It's actually freely in keeping with what we've been talking about.
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It's The Beginner's Guide, which is what it was made by the same guy, Davey Rendon, who made
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the Stanley Parable, which I briefly saw you. I just clicked the video and then I went to sleep,
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it was 2am. But I briefly saw you that you were looking at. And it's a game that is better treated
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as art. And I think I won't claim to understand the creator because that would be a cardinal sin
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to me as a creative person. But it gets to the heart of a lot of the things that we've been
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talking about, which is the creative mind. The game can be interpreted in a lot of ways in a
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feminist way. It could be interpreted as the story of friends. It could be interpreted as the story
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of critics versus a creative. The way I like to interpret it, and I don't want to give out a way
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too much, is the story of the creative part of your mind that creates just for the sake of creating,
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meaning the part that creates for no rhyme or reason or clear meaning. It's almost ethereal,
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versus the part that you could call it the editor. You could call it the pragmatist. You could call
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it the necessary force of ego in our lives. We can't totally be egoless, right? But we need
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to be egoless to be creative. And how that sort of internal censure, what role does it play? And
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how do we allow our creative minds to be creative? And yet, how do we still become useful? And it's
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funny that a video game could have this in. It's a fascinating attention, which reminds me about
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the ridiculous question every once in a while asked about meaning and death. This whole ride
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ends. You're at the beginning of the ride, but it could end any day, actually. That's the way
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human life works. You could die today, you could die tomorrow. Do you think about your
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immortality? Do you think about death? Do you meditate on it? And in that context, as the creative,
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but a pragmatist too, as running a startup, what do you think is the meaning of this whole thing?
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Yeah, so on mortality, right? About three years ago, four years ago now, I was excited to go to
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Yale. I was playing six hours of squash a day, which squash is a sport I love so much. And I was
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really getting a lot better. And I was even thinking I could maybe walk onto the Yale team.
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And I woke up one day. I felt really, really sick. I went and I decided not to go squash that day.
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And I know, I wanted to, I almost did. And you'll see how the story turns out. So you'll decide
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if I made the right choice. I decided not to go squash today. And I decided to get my driver's
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license, or I had to get my driver's license, because I wanted to get driver's license before
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I, you know, it's just how young I am before I went off to college, because otherwise I might never
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get it. And I'm going back and I successfully got my driver's license, brush him. And I go back to
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my house and I decided I don't want to drive back because I just feel so sick.
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Like things are spinning. I have the worst headache. I come home, I run back right into my bed
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and feeling really sick to the point where I even like asked my mom, who is the doctor,
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I'm like, should I, should I go to the hospital? And she's like, you can just wait it out. I'm
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sure it'll get better. I like your mom. Yeah. And then, you know, and then at one point I look
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at my arms and they're like covered in this like red splotchy stuff. Yeah. And I'm like, mom, I
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think, and she's like, yeah, we have to go. And so I go there and they're like, you've scarlet fever
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and they're like, there's nothing we can do. You should probably just go back home. So I go back
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home. Six hours later, I wake up in the morning. They'd let me out at like 3am. They let me, I
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come home in the morning and I feel this like a spear through my chest. And I never felt anything
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like it. And I was, it was very disconcerting when you have a, because we're all used to
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different sorts of pain, right? And that was sort of pain I never felt before. I suppose as an
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athlete, you're used to like, you know, pain. So I tell my parents and immediately we hop back
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in the car, we go up to the same hospital I was at six hours ago. And they initially didn't want
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to let me in. And I was like, I have chest pain. They're like, oh, come on. Because they're like,
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you're a healthy guy. Wait your turn. I'm like, no, you don't understand. I have like a pain in my
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chest. And then they let me in. They start doing tests on me. They like put something like in my
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back, which is really scary. It's huge needle. And I'm smiling because it's like one of the ways I
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reduce stress, I guess, or deal with this sort of thing and make light of it. But like, know that,
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you know, it's definitely very scary in the moment. Shocking and scary. And they go and they
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they do a bunch of tests and they determine that a virus like attacked my heart. And I had myocarditis
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and pericarditis. And they said I had maybe 25 to 35% chance at one point of dying. And so
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I'm sitting in my they met me in the hospital. I'm in the bed in my bed for about three weeks.
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And I'm just I'm just standing there. And I had this moment also that I remember very specifically
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where I was in so much pain that like I was crying not out of like emotional standpoint,
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but actually just purely out of the pain itself. Like, I could feel my heart in my chest. And when
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I leaned back, I felt it touch my rib cage and feel horrible. So I couldn't go to sleep and lean
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back. I had to lean forward all throughout the night. Right. And I'm feeling my and I'm feeling
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my chest. I'm feeling this terrible pain in my chest. I'm crying, unstoppable. And I mean,
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also, maybe I should mention that at the time, I was someone who'd like refuse to take in anything
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into my body that wasn't natural. And so a lot of the time I tried to be unmedicated.
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Eventually, I didn't allow them to add a little medication to my body. But there's just so much
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uncertainty and pain. And the first time I had to come to terms with mortality.
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First of all, I think you still should have gone play squash. I mean, come on.
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I mean, yeah, I thought you're I thought you're serious about this.
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You still carry that with you. Sort of
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there is power to realizing the ride can end. Right.
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In very suddenly, very suddenly. Yeah. And painfully. And, you know, it has
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pragmatic application to like what you to trajectories you take to life. Right.
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Something else that is worth noting is that I for the next year couldn't walk to my classes.
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So I get to yell. They put me in a medical single alone. And I have to get shuttled to all my
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classes. I have to ask I had to ask a few professors to even move classes so I could
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actually get there. I can't move my book. I can't lift my book bags. I can't I can't walk upstairs.
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I spent like 12 hours a day in my dorm room, just like staring at the walls. And more so
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and more than that, all this like you I got to watch my body like deteriorate and like the muscle
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like fall off of it because I was I was taking these pills and they're kind of catabolic.
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And for an 18 year old, I mean, I think every 18 year old has feelings about their body.
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Man or woman. And, you know, just seeing this it's like you're watching sort of
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dress death transpire. And you're also very fatigued because your heart's not at
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peak condition. And you're thinking about the future. And a lot of the things you enjoy have
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kind of been stripped away from you. And I took a meditation practice, like started with like
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five minutes a day. At my peak, I was at like 40 minutes a day, kept it up consistently for about
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two years. And I started thinking about like, what do I want to do? And like, what do I care about?
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And to get to your point, I think you're asking like, how does this carry forward, right?
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I think I realized that, you know, there's an end. And I realized that there are things I believe
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and things that I believe that might not be so overtly popular, but that I truly think make
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the world a better place. And in spite of, and basically, if my conditions provided,
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I wanted to make something that I wanted to do something that would make me feel sort of whole
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in that way. Yeah, I mean, that's an amazing journey to take that time and to come out on the
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other end. Now, man, that's amazing. I did not realize like there was a long term struggle.
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I think that's in the end, if you do succeed, we'll have a profound positive impact because
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struggle is ultimately like humbling, but also empowering. So I'm glad to see that. But from
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the perspective of the creator of the other ridiculous question about meaning, do you think
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about this kind of stuff? Is that the meaning of life for you, the meaning of life for us descendants
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of Apes in general? The first thing I'd like to say is that I think part of like, when we talk
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about the meaning of life, the part of it is the fact that we get to struggle with this question
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and we get to do it together for a long time. And we sometimes, I think it's accepting that
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there's no meaning at all. And sometimes I think it's accepting that we're even just parsing the
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phrase and thinking about the meaning of life. I sometimes look, I'm very young. Again, I hope
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that anything I say now is going to be very different in the future because I think life has
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so many meanings that it'll be crazy to see what I think in 20 years about the meaning of life.
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Yeah, rise from the future, cut them some slack. Please do. Perspective, perspective,
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perspective. Having said that, I think part of what brings meaning to my life is things like
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this, where we think about these things with people who are really, really, really on the ball
link |
and we get to connect with these people. That certainly brings meaning to my life, human connection.
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Yeah, this conversation is just another echo of the thing you're trying to create in the digital
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space. That's the same kind of magic. From what I understand about what you're trying to create
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is the same reason I fell in love with the long form podcast thing like as a fan.
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That's why I listen to long form podcasts. Is there something deeply human and genuine
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about the interchange through the voice? But I do think that connection through text can be
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even more powerful. I think about letters. I still write letters to Russia. There's
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something powerful in letters. When you put a lot of yourself in the words you say,
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in the words you write, that's powerful. You can really communicate not just the actual
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semantic meaning of the words, but a lot of who you are through those words and create real
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connections. I hope you succeed there. Listen, Ryan, I think this is an incredible conversation.
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I'm glad that people like you are fighting the good fight for bringing out the best in human
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nature in the digital space. I think that's a battleground where the good will win, love will
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win, and I'm glad you're creating technology that does just that. Thank you so much for wasting
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all your time for coming down. I can't wait to see what you do in the future. Thanks for talking
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today. Thank you for having me. Bam. How many finger guns have you gotten at the end of the
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podcast? Zero. Yeah. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ryan Schiller,
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and thank you to all our sponsors. All form, magic spoon, better help, and brave. Click their
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links to support this podcast. And now, let me leave you with some words from George Washington
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on March 15th, 1783. If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led
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like sheep to the slaughter. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.