Episode 10 of No Limit has Krzysztof pontificating on his recent trip to Las Vegas and the difference between an investing and gambling mindset.

Luke offers insight into the company Wise and the difficulties and solutions of getting paid across international borders. We critique the merits of investing in what you know, that old tried-and-true Peter Lynch framework.

There’s also an appearance by Zen Master Hakuin and his powerful method of asking “Is that so?” We announce Peter Zeihan’s new book about the end of Globalization as an insightful place to see where the world is heading and encourage a 7-investing group read.

Of course, Luke can’t help getting a little poker theory into the conversation and triumphantly announces his hourly rate at the tables— any guesses? Plus, we find more AI toy suggestions for you to explore.

If you’re investing-curious or just getting started on the journey, we’re here to help you learn the basics, so give us a listen and send us your inquires via our discord channel or on Twitter @7flyingplatypus and @7lukehallard—we aim to include our members’ questions and challenges in each episode whenever possible, so step right up and don’t be shy, because investing is a community sport!

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Luke Hallard, Krzysztof Piekarski

Luke Hallard  00:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Limit with Krzysztof and Luke’s 7investing production. It’s you catch me early in the morning. I’ve only just made my coffee and I’ve literally Krzysztof saw me make my bed behind me as I was starting the video. Are you going?

Krzysztof Piekarski  00:14

Yeah, rolling straight out of bed into the podcast rom Luke Adeboye other way to get them

Luke Hallard  00:22

you’re much more productive. You’ve been out for a run in the freezing cold together.

Krzysztof Piekarski  00:26

Yeah, I was up at 6am Did my meditation thing did my run did my walk in the in the cold with my dog bunk. And but I declined the cold shower invitation this morning. My hands were so frozen that I was like, nope. None of that now Amala did some did some reading. And now I’m all geared up and excited to talk to you. I’ve been bottling up so much. Refraining from from word vomiting on you on our internal Slack channel. Because as you know, I lost my Las Vegas virginity. Oh, yes,

Luke Hallard  01:06

of course you did. Yeah,

Krzysztof Piekarski  01:07

this was a gift from my my beloved new wife. First, not my first and beloved New Wave,

Luke Hallard  01:17

like not your Vegas wife that you

Krzysztof Piekarski  01:21

write. And it’s kind of astounding that I had never been to Vegas given, you know, all my proclivities. And I wanted to kind of ramble about it a little bit, because it’s a thing. It’s like, there are things, experiences to be had there. And I want to say that, I would argue that because of my spiritual practice, I’m not wasn’t going to fall into the ditch have fallen for the shiny things, you know, in losing my way in that regard. But I was worried that, you know, the, I don’t know, the fakeness of it would make me queasy. But I think I got over that, like, within the first day. Meaning I kind of saw it for what it is. And you know, I didn’t fall into that ditch. And then as soon as that happened, I had just the best time, you know, figuring out how it works, walking through all the weird tunnels and in some places like the Venetian, you know, looking up at the postmodern replica and how fake it is. And yet, I’m like, Well, if you’re gonna make a more high end, Ma, why not have gondolas in the middle of here, right? Like, why not, you know, like the excess kind of start to charm me. And the whole time as I was walking around, I was thinking about the difference between a Gambler’s mindset and an investor’s mindset in this world money as this classless status thing that just makes the entire Vegas operation go like it doesn’t matter how you have your money, no one asks, right, and there are all these different ways to make it. But it doesn’t represent anything beyond itself.

Luke Hallard  03:02

What are your highlights and lowlights of the of the trip? And did you play any poker?

Krzysztof Piekarski  03:07

Yes, I played, I played in four different poker rooms. And my my beloved wife is a complete noob. And I was trying to school her as much as possible. But she was brave enough to join me at the poker tables, and she mostly held her own, there were some, some blunders were made. But I was really, really, really proud of her first day, oh, man, the way I got Rivard just nearly broke. You know, like that, that it was an all in situation, I had all my chips in with the best hand, which you know, if you know the theory of poker, when when you know, your opponent could see what your cards were, and you know what your opponent’s card cards are, if you would do the same thing, an infinite amount of time, that’s how you know you were correct, if you will change your decision based on knowing with the cards, or you were on the lower end of the bargain. And so anyway, that first day, I got reversed. So in such an heartbreaking fashion, that, you know, it was like that reminder of, of the cruelty of the of the enterprise, but I’m more than made up for it the next three days.

Luke Hallard  04:26

And that is this a good investing lesson there as well, right? You’re, if sometimes, short term luck can make a good decision, you know, have a bad outcome, but doesn’t mean the decision was wrong. Just it was an unlucky outcome that time. You’d still do that same thing. 100 times over.

Krzysztof Piekarski  04:44

Exactly. Yeah, that’s such an important investing lesson. Short term swings could happen for any number of reasons. They’re not in our control. What is in control is can you get back on the horse? Can you stay focused, can you avoid we’re cool. Trust your skill. So get back at it. And yeah, it ended up the poker stuff ended up very well for me by trips. And the other thing I wanted to mention is the shows. Of course, Vegas is known for shows. But you know, until you go, I don’t know, it’s like hearsay and whatnot. But my lady took me to a strip display called car. Yeah, twice, actually, let’s go, did you that stage? Oh, man, that platform that rises and shifts, it was just so astounding. So standing, watching the artists at the peak of their powers, and you know, the joy of humans and what we could create,

Luke Hallard  05:43

just for anyone who hasn’t seen it, like the stage itself set is incredible. It’s like an articulate stage that flips up turns upside down, falls on its side. And then the actors are just kind of rolling with it’s like seeing the matrix in real life almost. It’s pretty insane. And it’s the kind of thing you could never do, kind of anywhere outside Vegas. Really, I suppose. Because you’ve got this thing running for years and years to while investing less than or equal to recover their capex on this enormous feats of infrastructure, which I’m sure they’ve done many times over.

Krzysztof Piekarski  06:13

Yeah, that’s one of the things I left the show with thinking the outside of some of the spectacular acrobats. The stage itself felt like the main character and the ingenuity and like you were saying the capex to build this thing you know, it was just truly astounding. But the other highlight the other highlight I have you to blame for

Luke Hallard  06:40

you went to absence.

Krzysztof Piekarski  06:42

I went to absent and I went in cold because that’s my preferred style. Try to know as little as possible. The only thing I caught a caught the word Rebelde or body, you know, I was like, okay, yeah, right. Right on and then oh, did was it body. I don’t know how many how often they change the shows. But they did not spare anyone’s feelings.

Luke Hallard  07:10

No spoilers, I suppose. But it’s kind of it is kind of sexy. It’s fun. It’s incredible. You know, acrobatics, and incredible skill. And it’s quite an emotional, little, you know, sort of fake thread that runs through the whole thing. But really, you’re seeing lots of very, very, like World Class circus acts kind of, you know, put together on the same very, very intimate, tiny stage.

Krzysztof Piekarski  07:31

Yeah. And in the vulgarity of it was, was refreshing. See, that’s the thing. There’s something about Vegas, last thing I want to say maybe is, Vegas is known as a place that’s fake, right. And that’s what I even said. But there’s something oddly honest, about a place where money is just money. And a show like absent that is entirely around like a no holds bar, say whatever you want and thinking the worst things and articulating them is so refreshing and so much fun. And we just had a hell of a time, Luke. So thank you so much for that recommendation.

Luke Hallard  08:13

As you join it, I think it is up to Street. Yeah, it’s kind of fingers crossed. You didn’t have a sensitive wife. Sounds like she enjoyed it too. Hopefully,

Krzysztof Piekarski  08:20

maybe looking at some people’s faces. Maybe they were like, oh my god, what are we witnessing? Right, live and learn, right? Have you had some Vegas experiences that are memorable, and you know, we’re heading

Luke Hallard  08:34

had an incredible free trip to Vegas once about a decade ago. But avoid for sort of bad reasons. One of my best friends. We were snowboarding in Jackson Hole for a fortnight, and he had pretty bad accident. And we laugh about it. Now he’s fully recovered. But save is quite. It’s quite severe at the time. We just got it’s a it’s a pretty wild mountain and we got a little complacent. In the back country and area. We thought we knew pretty well. And then something went a bit sideways. So he broke 10 ribs and punctured his lung. So he was grounded for a month. So the other guys flew back to England. He was in Australia. I’m in the UK. And so I just hang out with him for a month. And I’m like, Well, what are we going to do? Like he was he was the walking wounded. So we checked out a map and we’re like, well, like his return flight is out of LA. So I’m like, Well, why don’t we road trip to LA or and by the way, Vegas is on that route. Let’s go to Vegas for a month. So. So we did that we called one of our best friends in Hong Kong. And we’re like we’re going to be a Vegas summary fancier and he flew out and joined us. And then we all three of us, kind of crammed into two hotel rooms. Shen’s insurance paid for almost everything. I was his carer so that covered all of his my costs. So we basically paid like a third each. And we had an awesome like month in Vegas and then a couple of weeks on Venice Beach in LA. kind of chilling out going to see some UFC shows, playing a hell of a lot of poker gents, insurance companies dime. That’s pretty cool.

Krzysztof Piekarski  10:04

What’s your favorite poker room,

Luke Hallard  10:06

the area is a nice room. But like this kind of low end room, all along the strip, when you’re playing, you’re sort of almost open to the, the open air. And it’s just kind of a much more drunken Wilder game. And, you know, the money gets thrown around. And it’s a kind of, it’s a much softer game, which is I’ve, my style prospers in kind of a weaker game where people want to have fun. And they want to chat to the half drunk, Brit. And then come to life, it’s going pretty well, entire actually, the I’m definitely on track to cover my ski season costs in the local poker game. So I need to put some more volume in actually my kind of my hourly rate here because I do track one lot of stats, as you probably imagine, hourly rates about $80 an hour. So I just need to put the volume in and I’ll cover my season costs, quit sleeping

Krzysztof Piekarski  10:57

in and get to work, buddy. I love the win. Yeah. And I sent you some future tournaments going on for February, April.

Luke Hallard  11:12

I think I’m here I’m enjoying I’m enjoying the species. And if you want to come down and play in the local game room, a couple of all right. We just talked some investing topics, right? This isn’t the purpose, should we talk about being a customer of the companies you invest in. I was reflecting on this the other day, because I was just interviewed by the chit chat money podcast Breton via a friend of the show. And we were chatting about a company that I’m a customer of called wise, kind of a UK fintech. And I won’t say too much about the company, like go listen to the chit chat money episode, we get into quite a lot of detail about it. But I found this company, because I needed to set up international banking to get paid by seven investing. And it was just far and away the most convenient, cheapest, fastest way of me receiving US dollars, being able to hold those US Dollars or turn them into Sterling if I wanted to, or other currencies, and just essentially have the equivalent of a US bank account. It’s a really, really clever facility and very, very cheap. Like, you’re basically always getting foreign exchange at like the Midway result, there’s no spread, and you pay a really small fee. So I loved it for the business banking, I thought this is great. I got myself like a personal debit card with as well. So I do all my personal bank, like international banking with them to now. And I’m like, this is just an incredible company. So started digging into, like the the UK equivalent of their 10k. And kind of understanding and there’s an investment. And actually, I think, an incredible investment. So again, go listen to my thesis on chit chat money. But it did make me reflect on like the number of companies in my portfolio, where I am a customer of them. And there’s no better way of really understanding like a company’s mission, and how customer friendly it is. Maybe what the drawbacks are, you know, maybe, maybe they’ve got like an incredible back end service. But actually, it’s just a kind of horrible to use. app isn’t is terrible stuff like that, you know, you get like a real kind of gritty feel of what this this organization is like. So kind of highly endorsed that as a way of understanding your own investments. Is there anything in your portfolio where you’re accustomed to? Yeah,

Krzysztof Piekarski  13:28

very much. So this is we’re talking about the Peter Lynch style of investing, I think this is how many beginners start, at least, I recall is one of my entry points into this world where the idea is invest in what you know. And it’s, I think all of the greatest gains in my investing career have come from this principle. And I’ll name the big ones. Apple as an apple fanatic, Tesla, and Chipotle. Three products, love the story, love the loved everything about it, but I was experiencing firsthand. And I think for me, Luke, what makes being an owner investor. So worthwhile is that when the stock price does whatever insane things it does, you can just return to that firsthand experience that allows you I think, to settle into the material reality. It helps ground your perspective like is Tesla. Is this car really? That good? Oh, yes, it is. Yeah,

Luke Hallard  14:41

I agree. Actually a sort of counter anecdote as well. I invested in a company called Stitch Fix many years ago. If you haven’t heard of it, basically, you order kind of clothes and you get like a box that would arrive once a month or once a quarter whatever cadence you wanted, and the AI would put 60 Things in the box view, you keep what you say what you like, and you send back what you don’t like. And then everything kind of learns when you can give like feedback online. And it’s kind of AI supported by humans, like stylists or something. And then the idea is like on your whole wardrobe is managed for you. So I like the idea of it was quite smart, and invested. And then they rolled out in the UK, and I became like a subscriber. And it just didn’t work for me. I had. But the thing that made me realize, actually, the model just didn’t work was like, I got one or two items, I kept a couple of things. I got one of the things where I wanted like a pair of trousers. And there was something about style I didn’t like and I gave really specific feedback, like three boxes in a row. They kept sending me the thing that I was specifically saying, like, don’t send me this sounds like smartwatches doesn’t work. And it’s not learning, even the stylus, the human isn’t getting it. So I close my account, and I sold a stock. And I’m kind of glad I did. I don’t know if it’s anything to do with that. But like the company is bomb CEO left, and it’s down like 90x percent or something. Yeah, you can learn good and bad about a company by being the customer.

Krzysztof Piekarski  16:10

Maybe the extra ingredient I would add is that exposure is not the quality, I’m merely looking for. I’m looking for a kind of passion for the products. If I could find passion in the products that I use. That’s the thing that steers my ship. If there is no passion, that’s fine, because that’s a deeper understanding anyway, but that may or may not work out.

Luke Hallard  16:38

Let’s pick up our next topic. And this is a mysterious one. I’m checking out our monday.com dashboard. And you just got a question is this. So? What’s that about?

Krzysztof Piekarski  16:46

I think I wanted to talk about this loop because I find this. It’s a Zen parable. And I’ll read it, because it’s pretty short. But the way we could apply it as investors is potent, not just in our lives, but investors. So the story goes, the Zen master had Cohen was praised by his neighbors, as one living a beautiful and pure life. Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store live near him, suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child. This made her parents very angry, she would not confess who the man was. But after much harassment at last named Hakuin. In great anger, the parent went to the master is that so was all he would say. After the child was born, it was brought to her coin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him. But he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else he needed. A year later, the girl mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth. The real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fish market, the mother and father of the girl at once went to her Cohen, to ask forgiveness, to apologize at life. And to get the child back who Cohen was willing in yielding the child. All he said was is that self.

Krzysztof Piekarski  18:13

I think the reason I wanted to talk about this is because in the investing world, there’s obviously divergence of opinion. And many times we get into disagreements. And we’re humans, and it’s rarely a simple and straightforward path. Right? The typical reaction is to start defending oneself, right? I mean, anytime you get attacked, critiqued, it’s human nature to start pushing back fighting back. But of course, that creates a vicious cycle. The attacks just keep amplifying. And then I would say objectivity is lost, right? All of a sudden, you’re now at the tax become more personal and vicious. And it’s just a mess, right? In this capacity to lucidly deliberately remain in the state of mind that says, I don’t know, or is. It’s kind of it’s not I don’t think it’s just humility. I don’t think this is the case where you should be meek and merely apologize, right and enough, hold your center. But think of as investors think of how much more we could learn from each other. When when we work with one another. Even in the the presence of a strong counter opinion. Instead of saying, immediately you’re wrong or you’re stupid, we’re this and that you actually force yourself to say is that so? Inviting almost another question or conversation is the main lesson here.

Luke Hallard  19:57

About Hakuna sort of stoicism in accepting a situation? Or is it? Is it more a question? Like you’re saying, is that so as an investing question to try and understand the counterpoint to your own, maybe confirmation bias structure that might be in your own head? Yeah,

Krzysztof Piekarski  20:17

I think it’s a combination of those things look and stoicism here in this case, you know, just not misunderstand that, that view that view by taking in the child by raising the child in the story, it wasn’t like, he wasn’t merely passive, right, I just want to emphasize that he actively did the thing that needed to be done on both ends of the spectrum, right, when he was blamed for something he didn’t actually do. And then later for, you know, relinquishing the child after raising it, it’s, it seems to me more like a quality of mine that is able to in the stoic way, like you were saying, be with discomfort, without itself getting agitated. And I think simultaneously staying open minded to possible alternatives and possible views knowing that things always change, right. So I think when we see people get really stiff and rigid, and maybe start going on the attack, it’s wise to remember as investors, we don’t always know the entire truth going on a counter attack will in the end be detrimental to everyone. To me, this doesn’t feel like just hoity toity moralistic stuff. I’ve seen this time, and time and time again, good smart investors get their egos wounded. And then they, they create fractures, right. And then after that, they’re probably from my point of view, way worse, because because they’re now on the outside.

Luke Hallard  21:57

Wholeheartedly by that. And maybe we just think about that within the seven investing service. Like the power there is the discord, which is still coming together, we’ve got over 1000 members now, you know, most of you, if you’re listening, don’t contribute to the conversation, like get stuck in ask a question. You know, pose a challenge to the advisors. But those of you that there’s good 50 or 60 folk now who are commenting regularly, I get a tremendous amount of value out of you know, being in those conversations, we got some incredibly smart subscribers who had a lot of, of their own knowledge and perspective and challenge. So that’s, that’s valuable.

Krzysztof Piekarski  22:38

extraordinarily valuable.

Luke Hallard  22:42

Not to drift into kind of another adverts, but I wonder if I could just quote from a really nice comment we had on the discord just a day or two ago. One of our members said, it’s a community trying to help each other to learn, educate, arouse curiosities and succeed. As an individual investors, we should be trying to help each other, fill each other’s gaps and act as propellants for one another, anything less, so we’re no better than the leeches in the high towers, we view the world through the prism of a performance Darby. I’ve been here since the beginning of the seven investing surface, it is everything I want need it to be the level of interaction engagement, and input by the advisors is off the charts. Really, pretty heartwarming stuff to see that one of our members. So like, I’m hoping and having a bunch of Morpho feel similarly. I certainly do. To be honest, you know, even being part of the team. It’s incredible. Being able to chat to just people who are so interested in these topics.

Krzysztof Piekarski  23:42

Yeah, I took that heartwarming indeed, I took that and I put it into chat GPT and I said, improve on this, on this, this average and it said impossible. Bar started fry coming out like my computer. So thank you so much for for that inspiring and motivating quote for us to keep doing this work on behalf of so many that seem to find genuine genuine value in our community.

Luke Hallard  24:13

So through a bit of a reader Krzysztof, what’s on your reading list right now.

Krzysztof Piekarski  24:17

So I wanted to let our community know that the next book I’m planning to read specifically for investing purposes, is titled, The end of the world is just the beginning. by Peter, se han, I believe is his name, mapping the collapse of globalization. So I haven’t read it yet. But this one blurb on the back I had in case you’re interested in joining me reading this this month is so makes me feel like this is the thing to read. Peter Zohan is the Nostradamus of the 21st century, using geography as his analytical foundation. He’s able to explain why nations be behave the way they do today and predict with astounding accuracy, how they’ll behave tomorrow. Nowhere will you find a more objective and logical examination of geopolitical currents. A masterful blend of economics, demographics, environmental factors, cultural propellers and real politic Peters books simplified, incredibly complex forces that drive states forward and back. The world is rapidly changing, especially America’s role in it. And Peter navigates this journey with clarity, rigor and wit, if your passion is politics, investing, energy, technology, international relations, or just being smart and interesting at parties, read Peter’s book. And so I always want to be smart and Be not be the dumb guy at the party. So that’s why I’m reading it.

Luke Hallard  26:00

I saw the book on your list, I didn’t realize it was a and so because I subscribed to his podcast just like two weeks ago, after seeing one of his videos, I think I put a link in, in Slack. And if you listen to the song guy, he’s incredible, actually. And if he’s if he’s right, he’s here seems like every day like a five or six minute YouTube and podcast, like if he’s right about the world, we are fucked. It’s really terrifying stuff. But it’s really interesting. And it’s certainly credible, the sort of arguments he puts forward.

Krzysztof Piekarski  26:29

In end, let me push back a little bit on that loop. Even if things go to hell in a handbasket, right? Because that’s a real possibility. It is always possible to make really wise investments. The reason I think a book like this will be truly valuable is if you really understand where the winds are shifting to or away from, that’s where you start sniffing right in these corners that not everyone else can foresee will be the next new thing. And that’s the beauty maybe of the investing game, if you want to call it that. There’s always opportunity humans. It’s what we do, right? We we create things, we build things. And this feels to me without having read it yet. Exactly the kind of work needed to confront confirmation bias. Right? Especially what you said like if we have tremendous amount of fear, right? If any of his his prognostications turned out to be true, and it’s bad, and we have feel good. That’s how we know right? We’re, we’re facing down our own beliefs.

Luke Hallard  27:39

Yeah, I guess I certainly has certainly super helpful to think about where the world might be going on all the different possibilities, you know, there’s no binary thinking in this stuff. It’s probabilities and likelihoods. But if you buy into the Z hands view of where geopolitics is going to take us in the next couple of years, like, selling your china stocks, immediately,

Krzysztof Piekarski  28:03

are you saying you’re gonna read this with me?

Luke Hallard  28:05

I’m gonna, I’m gonna absorb this via the YouTube and the podcast, you know, only reason why is like, I don’t normally pull out books. But here’s my reading list at the moment, right? So this is the poker poker site. That’s work. Like you sent me these two to read. And I’ve like three chapters into the yellow one, how finance works by Mihir Desai. It’s great, really good. I’m learning a ton in this book. But you’ve already cued up expectations, investing by Medusa, and Rapoport, so it’s gonna take me like a month to get through those two. So now I can’t join you on the Z handbook. Two.

Krzysztof Piekarski  28:42

All right. Fair enough. Now those other investing books, yeah, they’re they’re so good. Hopefully,

Luke Hallard  28:48

by help by far right. That’s the toughest read of those three is my poker book, modern poker theory. Bloody hell, this. This is my mind.

Krzysztof Piekarski  28:58

Oh, is it? You know, it’s actually I was looking for today. But it turns out, it’s at the very bottom of my stack. It will require major reconstructive surgery to get it out. But it’s blowing your mind. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I can’t, I can’t imagine that this point like a poker book. I blown my mind. Like what?

Luke Hallard  29:21

Like it’s, it’s blowing my mind in the sense that you’re a bit like many topics, right? You think you understand something? And then you suddenly realize this completely different perspective. And you don’t actually understand this topic at all. I’ve been playing poker for 30 years, and I’ve gone through that epiphany, maybe three or four times where my game has just jumped to the next level. And I suddenly realized, actually, the game isn’t about this thing I thought it was about it’s actually about this other thing. Maybe I’ve done that three or four times. And I haven’t had one of those epiphanies for a good 10 or 15 years. This book has suddenly made me realized, actually, poker is about this other thing. which I was aware of. But I think I might have hit my limit. I don’t think I’m able, I don’t think I have the cognitive capacity if I’m completely honest, to take my game to that next level, which is why I’ll probably always be like an $80 an hour winning poker player, as opposed to an $8,000 an hour winning poker player.

Krzysztof Piekarski  30:19

Yeah. All right, I gotta pull out I gotta pull it out

Luke Hallard  30:22

for quite telling that my biggest wins so far was Three nights ago, very drunk.

Krzysztof Piekarski  30:31

You’re right. I’m sure you were at your max cognitive capacity and employing all that theory. There is one thing that I heard about this book that is a little disconcerting. And I was wondering, was it live? What’s? Yeah, she might have said something that the way I understood it was that this is the actual limit, in terms of figuring it all out, and that players can, with enough word get there. But once you get there, there’s no more. It’s almost like the fear of something he thought was infinite reaching a mechanical endpoint, why she

Luke Hallard  31:09

said, Let me re describe that a little bit, because there is another aspect to it as well, but I think lift talked about when she was interviewed by freeburn. So what this book takes you to is understanding how to play game theory, optimal poker. And so you’re right, that is sort of a limit in the sense that if you’re able to play perfectly in inverted commas, like against any, any other perfect player, you’ll be kind of breakeven, like you, you can’t be exploited. And you’ll never make a mistake. And in the long term, you know, in the short term, anything can happen because of luck. In the long term, you will prosper. And AI is now there. Like, there are bots that play game theory, optimal poker, and this book tries to get you to the point that your intuition can approximate that it’s probably not possible for a human to be able to play perfectly. But there is a level beyond that. Because once you can play like a solid GTO game, game theory optimal game, the level beyond that is then diverging from that to exploit your opponents. So then the psychology does come back into the game, I think. If your opponents are playing in a suboptimal way, then you can play in a counterbalancing suboptimal way that exploits their mistakes. But if they realize that they may adjust to your adjustments, so it becomes like a leveling war again. So there still is this sort of human element of poker. But you’re right there is there is this sort of call out, which we have the theory of, and we have, like ais that can play. But but you could, but I think there’s still room for human ingenuity.

Krzysztof Piekarski  32:51

All right. Yeah. Well, yeah, we’ve got a ways to go, right. I mean, this to master this level takes

Luke Hallard  33:00

never will. Yeah. It’s beyond my capacity. I think I found my I found my game. I’m sticking with it, I think. But I’m still taking some interesting, you know, just reminders about how to play solid poker from this book.

Krzysztof Piekarski  33:15

Cool. All right. Tell me, Luke about the Google AI lawyer getting sued.

Luke Hallard  33:21

Why not Google? Ai lawyers. So there’s a there’s a website called Do Not Pay. You might have heard of it. And it’s like they used to help you find like parking tickets and fines and stuff like that. They’re quite techie. It’s like you east coast, US startup. And it’s all about, you know, fighting the man. But they do have kind of AI in there. And it helps you sort of put together like, you know, your complaint letter or things like that. I’ve used it in the past. It’s pretty cool. Anyway, the founder of do not pay has created a AI lawyer. And so evidently, evidently, this there was really a test case coming up in the next few months, where a chap was going to defend himself, and then had to have like an earpiece, and the AI lawyer would be feeding him legal arguments based on what how the case was progressing, to enable him to fight his own case. So I was just as intrigued that, unfortunately, the the founder has had to shut this program down, because he’s been threatened in multiple states for being sued for practicing law without a license. And oh, maybe snicker a little bit. Because, you know, this is kind of, I suppose, the ultimate example of, you know, people whose jobs are about to be displaced, kind of fighting back, you know, like the taxi drivers fighting back against the Ubers whatever. Now we’ve got the lawyers fighting back against the AI lawyer. So quite interesting. I mean, I personally I do think this is probably going to be the direction of travel for law, along with you know, Most other white collar jobs. Yeah, would you reckon?

Krzysztof Piekarski  35:04

What do I reckon Luke, this is so much on my mind in the education space so I could see exactly how this should be on the mind of lawyers and all white collar workers. And I think that’s maybe why the this AI moment feel so momentous, because in previous eras, we could see why. The labor blue collar, right, why something that’s kind of more mechanized double have that would be replaced. That kind of made sense from the beginning, like human labor have replaced by a mechanical robot, but things that we deemed to be special, or require many, many years of education for those things to now be clearly in the crosshairs. Makes me really take that next leap into into the whole question of work in general, you know, when universal basic income and what with humanity do if jobs were no longer really the point? I mean, this is This is Exhibit A,

Luke Hallard  36:12

I things like this probably are the future of work, right? There may be no practical work for us to do. We’re just out kind of doing dumb stuff to keep ourselves entertained.

Krzysztof Piekarski  36:23

Or if you want to be maybe a little bit more, hoity toity about it. Instead of say, say dumb stuff, we could potentially all be artists of a certain kind, right, meaning aesthetic decisions. Right, where it’s not just kitsch that we’re responsible for left to our own devices, what could we create that could have beauty and value but not necessarily pragmatic value,

Luke Hallard  36:49

mid journey and dolly to write they’re producing some pretty beautiful works of art? winning competitions?

Krzysztof Piekarski  36:55

Yeah. So there’s, I enjoy thinking about a world where work is not the point.

Luke Hallard  37:01

Yeah, like if we, if it’s probably a big statement is this, like, 8 billion of us now, but if we will have the opportunity to do whatever the thing we were passionate about was to explore those passions, and you’re not limited by, you know, availability of money or energy and other constraining factors, then, as long as we’re not out there, kind of enjoying murdering each other. Right, then, you know, maybe that’s utopian. Or maybe it’s how, you know, maybe that’s the pointlessness of existence because suddenly you don’t have to struggle.

Krzysztof Piekarski  37:36

It’s It’s fascinating to think people, several centuries or maybe millennia in front of us we’ll look at at the, you know, this is still the Dark Ages where humans had to work kind of mentality. Anything’s possible. Speaking of AI, quick, quick thing about a fun toy, I found Google is working on its own music generation AI thing. And this one is not publicly available yet. But this one, or this one allows you to spell out using using human words and descriptors what you want your thing to sound like basically chat GPT and the creates a tune, and the ones I listened to are just so good. Check out this descriptor, a fusion of Ray guitar and electronic dance music. If a spacey otherworldly sound induces the experience of being lost in space, and the music will be designed to evoke a sense of wonder and awe while being danceable right, that’s the descriptor and what came out the other end was just so bang in. So hopefully, yeah, it’s a 32nd clip. You could see what what it sounds like.

Luke Hallard  38:54

I’ll just such an identity episode. Yeah, it’s pretty it’s gonna be nice to play with this talk.

Krzysztof Piekarski  38:58

Yeah, wild just wild. I can’t get enough of this stuff in for for our community members know that my eyes and ears continue to really be perked in looking for what the next great investment that might take advantage of this stuff might be but it’s still early early days.

Luke Hallard  39:17

And if you just asked this right, if you if you found your own cool AI tool, then tweet us and let us know. We was looking for fun stuff to play with.

Krzysztof Piekarski  39:26

That’s right. And in we’re both on the Twitter’s Luke is at seven Luke Hallard h a l l a r d, and I am seven flying platypus. So please send us some DMs questions. We’d love to interact with our listeners. Absolutely. Are we ready for the three questions?

Luke Hallard  39:49

We are three conversations game. Just real quick explanation. Again, this is episode 10. Maybe you’re joining in for the first time, but we close out every episode with the three conversations game and I think This week, Krzysztof is gonna pose three conversation topics to me. I’m going to cancel one of them. And then he’s going to pick one of the remaining two. And I have to give him a minute of wisdom on that topic. And we don’t prepare, we got no idea what we’re going to ask each other. So what do you got for me this week? Ready?

Krzysztof Piekarski  40:16

All right, first question, Luke is a softball is your A snowboarder and a motorcycle are correct. If you level up significantly in one of those, but then only get to do that activity, that one activity for the rest of your life, but not the other. What would you choose? Okay, question two. Imagine you’re young Luke, you’re 18. And you got 100k as a kind of grant as a grant. And you could either go to university with that 100k. So tuition paid? Or you could take that 100k and learn whatever you needed using. Let’s call it YouTube university with which let’s include chat GPT, and its cousins. What would you pick? Which road would you pick?

Luke Hallard  41:10

And I’ve got the the residual of the 100k that I saved on not spending on a university education in the second one, presumably?

Krzysztof Piekarski  41:17

Yes, exactly. You you would have up to 100k? And yeah. So yeah. And last question. Think about a situation that was challenging and hard, right. And you gave the answer that you did, how would that situation have been different? If instead of saying the thing you did, you would have said, Is that so? So people that you got yourself into given your, your typical fiery Luke answer? How would things have changed? Had you been a Zen master instead? capable of saying is that so?

Luke Hallard  42:00

Okay, so despite living a full and rich life, I hadn’t been accused of being a father by anybody just yet. I can’t nothing springs to mind as a good is that so scenario to explore? So I guess I will Nix that one. But it’s a good question. I like you looping back to the earlier topic.

Krzysztof Piekarski  42:22

Okay, so I want to hear about your your snowboarding, motorcycling. Tell us more. Yeah. And how you would think about making this decision.

Luke Hallard  42:33

Okay. Like I love both of these sports. And I think I’m probably more passionate about I’m gonna say like skiing and snowboarding is one thing because I now do them both. And they were like a perfect, perfect counterpoint to the injuries like I smashed my elbows. But I couldn’t see the bruise yesterday on the snowboard. So today I can ski and I’ll give that a few days to heal. So what about would I choose those and I’m certainly more passionate about those than motorcycling order choose motorcycling think I might choose to be like a leveled up motorcyclist, only because I kind of fear that climate change is perhaps going to be a road, my ability to do winter sports as well as like an aging body, right. So I’ve now rearranged my life so I can do every ski season, I’m going to be like in a mountain somewhere for the first three months of hopefully every year until I can no longer do this stuff. But maybe it will become more elitist. And like the whole of Europe, the whole season has been pretty screwed this year so far, but that had no snow. So it’d be expensive and more complex. And I probably can’t rally like a bunch of friends to come and join me if it’s just you know, becoming a more a less accessible sport. Whereas motorcycling has a lot of practical utility all year round. And like so we’ve just planned Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia on the bikes for heading out there in April. And I’ve, we’re running into my wife’s birthday. So I’ve invited her out and she’s going to come and spend like a weekend and we’ll be in like a nice part of Croatia for the weekend. But essentially, it’s a motorbike trip. So it’s a nice, it’s a really really nice way of seeing the world. Plus it’s practical like living in an urban city like London. So if I can level up my motorcycling cycling, it’s pretty good. I used to be an instructor fairly competent on two wheels. But it is a dangerous sport, no argument. If I could level up my motorcycling and then maybe just be you know, perhaps as quick but just a little bit safer. Perhaps that’s like the aspect of a leveling up I would take and that has a lot of practical utility I think in my life.

Krzysztof Piekarski  44:50

Wow. Luke Hallard, the world’s tallest man

Krzysztof Piekarski  44:57

when snowboarding mountains Isn’t isn’t satisfying enough off to Croatia. Wow. Cool. Thanks for answering

Luke Hallard  45:07

the question already. But 10 episodes in the back now, dude, we’re the winter double digits.

Krzysztof Piekarski  45:15

Amazing, right? Amazing how time flies. I love doing these it really makes me think in the broadest terms in trying to find out what’s the most interesting stuff to parse through, and you’re such a great partner with whom to get some of these thoughts out there. For our listeners, I want to reiterate that we are so open to questions and future topics and controversies. We don’t want to make this soft, right? We want to make this a really good engaging and fiery worthwhile listen. So if you have any suggestions ping us on the Twitter’s or on the discord. And we’ll take it from there.

Luke Hallard  45:56

It’s good stuff. And you know, one thing I learned today that I hadn’t noticed before, you always sit in a particular position, and I had no idea. There was like a rack of about 100 bottles of books like whiskies and bourbons behind you. I’d never seen that before. Your head was always bumping up. Yeah, it’s interesting. You’re trying to be rude I well read character. But actually, there’s you’re an alcoholic.

Krzysztof Piekarski  46:19

Well, I have a funny thing too, is I haven’t had a drop in 40 days or so. So my willpower is actually quite extraordinary. So but whiskey goes goes in the morning coffee, you know, when the drink and knees are on

Luke Hallard  46:35

the mountain. My backpack has like a granola bar, a hip flask full of Bailey’s. There’s a bit of a soft ball there. And then like the liquid lunch is like a hazy beer. So that’s

Krzysztof Piekarski  46:48

gotta keep it warm in there. All right, Luke, it’s been a delight. Until next time,

Luke Hallard  46:57

Cool beans Krzysztof and if, if you enjoyed today’s episode, do us a favor and share it with a friend. I look forward to seeing you on episode 11 in two weeks time.