00:20:40 · Ty Morse
[00:20:40] S0: Sam Altman recently came out after someone like threw a Molotov cocktail at his house. And he effectively said, I worry that I've been too, like, non confrontational. And I think that was, like, his one of his biggest weaknesses over the past, you know, twenty years as he's been building his companies. What is the power of being, like, confrontational and being willing to, like, fight?
00:20:59 · Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:20:59] S1: You know the phrase, the enemy of my enemy is my friend? When you fight for someone, you can be so much stronger and more powerful than if you're fighting for yourself. So this is like a hack. But you defending yourself comes off as like self interested. You know, people discount it. But you picking somebody, and it can be somebody with like identical interest to yours, but you advocating for them is so much more powerful. So there company was that I had, and I was a leader in the company. And we had someone who was making the case that tenure shouldn't determine how much you were paid. You shouldn't have to work there longer to get paid more. It should just be straight up on performance. And I also happen to believe that. But if I had said, hey, you know, I know I have no comms experience, but I feel like I should get paid based on my output, it's not as strong as me advocating for her and saying she doesn't need to be here for ten years in order to get paid at the level of someone who's been here for ten years, but isn't performing as well as her. That's not fair. And so you can literally just pick someone else to support, and then put yourselves on the same side, and you can come out so much more forcefully and not have that be discounted. That's one. Two is people see sincerity when you're willing to do something costly. And getting into a fight is pretty costly. I don't recommend doing it all the time because it's training. You fight to win. Don't You just get in a fight and then leave. If you're in the fight, put some effort. You're going be in the fight and it's going to be painful. You're going to take some blows. It's going be damaging maybe. But when people see that you're willing to do that, they believe that your principles are real. And so I think Sam is correct. Maybe maybe that is the case. Like, I don't know psychology, but it sounds like a good analysis.
00:23:00 · Ty Morse
[00:23:00] S0: You talked about the three body problem and deterrence and how Palmer is kind of like the prototypical. I think Elon is another one of these things where if you come after him, he is just going to throw everything that he has at you. So that's very costly for you to come after him. Then over time, less and less people want to do so. Why is deterrence like so important? And what is it?
00:23:20 · Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:23:20] S1: Everything is about incentives. And as you move through the world, you have to shape people's incentives for how to interact with you. And so when you see young women being told or telling each other themselves, like, treat yourself in a way that demands respect for men you go on dates with, or people demanding to be taken seriously by an employer. All of these things are just us trying to shape incentives for how people should interact with us. There is a real incentive, like a default incentive for people on the internet to just take potshots because they get engagement out of it. And it's like the there's a quote about is it politics? It's so vicious because the stakes are so low. It's like the people for whom the stakes are the lowest are the most vicious because they have the more upside. And so the more you gain exposure, the more people are going to take shots at you to try to get the upside. And so you have to be actively reshaping incentives. And this is where we go back to the idea of plan for the long term. It is not about temporary pain avoidance. Do not pursue temporary pain avoidance. It's not a legitimate goal. Set your sight on the finished pizza. And do what it takes to get there. And sometimes it'll look nonsensical to others. And that's okay, you'll just swallow that. Sometimes it'll be painful for you. And that's okay, you'll just deal with it. But at the end of the thing, you'll have your delicious hot pizza the way that you wanted it, as opposed to somebody who gets blocked by basically their own psychology. They get blocked by fear. They get blocked by wanting to please or wanting to fit in. These things are all fake. They're in our heads. But these people who are blocked by the things in their own heads will just stay back at stage one while you're enjoying your pizza.
00:25:19 · Ty Morse
[00:25:19] S0: What do you think the best examples are of people or situations that you've seen where you could tell that there was this temporary pain avoidance that led to some massive blow up?
00:25:28 · Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:25:28] S1: I think Google had this. Google, for a long time, let activists run rampant in the company. And each individual instance was not severe enough to take dramatic action. And so in diplomacy, there's a concept of sausage slicing or salami slicing. And so let's say, I want this piece of territory that you have, and I ask you for it, you would say no. But if I were to encroach a couple inches, and you let me, and then I encroach a couple inches more, or I just start to have my people just kind of walk through there, it's very hard for you to identify one moment in time when it doesn't feel like you're overreacting to something small. And so I can salami slice my way to a bigger piece of salami. This is why The US does like freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea. Because if you don't, then others in the region or China can sort of salami slice their way to Yeah. Regional So it is really important to resist being salami sliced by your own employees above all, but anybody. So in the Google example, there were just these signs. I mean, James Damore was probably one of the larger signs. But daily things of people saying things at work that just have nothing to do with making the best technology. And then eventually, it comes to a head where you have to base major business decisions on having an overwhelmingly ideological monolithic workforce. And now you're in a very, very painful position of do you piss off like 60% of your employees? Or do you handcuff yourself and not participate in government or military programs that where you could actually do a lot of good? Now your decisions are much harder because you avoided the temporary pain of just cutting it off when it would have seemed like you're overreacting. I think the essential lesson is don't be afraid to be seen as if you're massively overreacting. This is something that Elon is quite good at. Again, it looks like chaos to someone who doesn't know what you're doing. That's their default word for it. So if it's like one person does one small thing, and then you react with like overwhelming force, it can look like a massive overreaction. But what you're doing is actually, you're reacting to the 100 things that would have happened. You're not reacting to the one thing. You're reacting to the 100 things that would have happened that now won't.