October 16th • 3h 12m
Shownotes
Every new episode of No Agenda is accompanied by a comprehensive list of shownotes curated by Adam while preparing for the show. Clips played by the hosts during the show can also be found here.
Big Tech AI and the Socials
Sam Altman Erotica Statement on X
We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.
Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.
In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).
In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.
ICE
Gen Z
GenZ can'r read cursive either
ITM Gents:
Oldish
Gen Z here - thought you might find this interesting. I know you are
already aware that many in the younger generation were never taught
penmanship and cannot for the life of them write in cursive. Given
that, it only falls to reason that - get this! - many of them are also
unable to read cursive! Add it to your running list!
I
work in a law office where property deeds and land titles have to be
researched for loan closings, some lenders requiring title searches
going back for 50-60 years. Many of those older deeds are longhand or,
at the very least, the ledger index books that have to be searched to
find the deeds are written in cursive. All of the title researchers
here are my age or older and have no idea who they are going to be able
to train to take their place when they retire. They have tried training
younger people to do the job and while they understand the concept,
they get lost at a point because they cannot read cursive and they give
up.
That
begs the question - do you suppose that because they were not taught in
grammar school how to write AND read cursive they lack the ability to
learn that fine motor skill as adults? Have they passed the point of
being able to master it? Inquiring minds want to know! Thoughts?
Thank you for your courage!
Dame Ronda
VIDEO is EVIL
Knight on Video vs Audio
first, i’m not bothered by your and john’s irritation with video "podcasts,” and respect your take as The Creator. but as a perspective, most of us are visual learners. i can’t even listen to audiobooks because my attention wanders after a few minutes and i have to rewind, whereas even if it’s just two dorks sitting across a desk from each other the visual component keeps me engaged. i listen to almost every NA episode three times, and the only rogan episode I’ve watched more than once are the jordan peterson episodes (idea-dense). i learn and remember better with the insipid video element.
sir hoopensocker
Everything Is Television - Derek Thompson
In Amusing Ourselves to Death1, Neil Postman wrote that “each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility.” Television speaks to us in a particular dialect, Postman argued. When everything turns into television, every form of communication starts to adopt television’s values: immediacy, emotion, spectacle, brevity. In the glow of a local news program, or an outraged news feed, the viewer bathes in a vat of their own cortisol. When everything is urgent, nothing is truly important. Politics becomes theater. Science becomes storytelling. News becomes performance. The result, Postman warned, is a society that forgets how to think in paragraphs, and learns instead to think in scenes.
Everything is now Television
You learn a lot about a company when its back is against the wall. This summer, we learned something important about Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. In an antitrust case with the Federal Trade Commission, Meta filed a legal brief on August 6, in which it made a startling claim. Meta cannot possibly be a social media _monopoly_, Meta said, because it is not really a social media _company_.
Only a small share of time spent on its social-networking platforms is truly “social” networking—that is, time spent checking in with friends and family. More than 80 percent of time spent on Facebook and more than 90 percent of time spent on Instagram is spent watching videos, the company reported. Most of that time is spent watching content from creators whom the user does not know. From the [FTC filing](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18735353/627/federal-trade-commission-v-meta-platforms-inc/):
> Today, only a fraction of time spent on Meta’s services—7% on Instagram, 17% on Facebook—involves consuming content from online “friends” (“friend sharing”). A majority of time spent on both apps is watching videos, increasingly short-form videos that are “unconnected”—i.e., not from a friend or followed account—and recommended by AI-powered algorithms Meta developed as a direct competitive response to TikTok’s rise, which stalled Meta’s growth.
