Motivated Reasoning in the Biden Campaign, Silicon Valley, and Beyond

what a clusterfuck. Let's let's talk a little bit about that.

Number Two, Joe Biden over the weekend was diagnosed with I believe stage for prostate cancer. Correct, yes, correct, That has spread to his bones. It's a pretty advanced stage. So our condolences to Biden's family. But this is not entirely non germane to the topic at hand. Right. Third, the audio transcript of one of the earlier warning signs for Biden was he was under investigation by a special counsel named Robert her last year for document actually two

years ago, I guess right. For document retention practice is the thing that no president seems to be very careful about these days. Her issued her reports. I'm not going to charge him because he's quote an elderly man with a poor memory, and what's the right he's gonna go over to the witness stand and forget half the shit anyway. Right, So, of course all of the Biden people and all the

apparently nonpartisan media flipped out about this when it happened. However, the Biden White House refused to release the audio or the video of these interviews, right, making up some bullshit excuse that only stupid people bought. But there are lot of stupid people in election years, right. And so now the audio's out, and like Biden's stuttering and stammering, it's not any different than you would expecting that they were afraid of it being being released. But still that shines

more of a lens on the story. But Marie, can I give you the kind of hard questions so I don't have to answer it? First? How did you feel when you heard about the cancer news?

and we've talked on this pod a lot. It doesn't really matter kind of what someone's political leanings are to be able to point to some things like you know, what's happened to usaid, to scientific funding, to research, to innovation, you know, tariffs, as we've talked about many, many times, to all of these facets of American life, First Amendment protections,

all of these things. And you know, that's I don't want to say squarely on Biden's shoulders, but a lot of that is on Biden's shoulders for you know, refusing to do what he said he would do. Right, if you remember Nate, you probably actually remember this quote more accurately than I do. But what was his what was his way of phrasing it when he was elected the

first time? Right? I think he said that he was going to be a bridge, right, something like that, that he was someone who was going to be a bridge to kind of protect against Trump and bring America forward. And then you know, a bridge ends, right, A bridge goes from bank to bank, and then you get off and you're on the other side. And at some point he decided that no, he wasn't really going to be a bridge. He was also he was also going to be the road on the other side, and he was

the correct person to continue to continue on forward. And you know, here here's where we are. So I feel, you know, the two things are not related, somewhat related. I don't even know. I feel awful, right, Like, no one deserves an aggressive form of cancer. I wish I wish him quick, speedy recovery. I hope that they can treat it, you know, I hope that he has a comfortable old age. But I'm not in a very pro biden frame of mind in general.

you know, I asked chet GPT the three model. People have different opinions on how appropriate is for medical diagnosis. But it's trying to summarize a bunch of research on the Internet and in journals and things like that, and it's said, yeah, there's a high probability that at the cancer is this advanced that it would have been detectable a year or so earlier. It's like an eighty or ninety percent chance. Right. So there's reporting I'm going to

have not read original sin. There's reporting in fight about how you know, Biden's kind of avoiding the doctor quite a bit once his health becomes an issue. We just kind of just want to give people rope for this thing. And it's like, okay, so that's not great, right. You would think that after the debate you would say, Okay, I got everything checked out and a couple of problems,

but here's a complete report. And instead he's kind of like pulling it Trump where he has these personal doctors that frankly aren't very fucking credible, right, or that the diagnosis had been made before and they you want to disclose it. I don't.

to know. It's a very very human response. And but if you're kind of a president, then you have a responsibility to make sure that, Okay, I'm functioning well, I'm firing on all cylinders. There's nothing actually wrong because I have, you know, the weight of the country on my shoulders.

So if he's avoiding the doctor, that's damning. However, if he goes and he knows that he has this cancer diagnosis and he hides it, that's also damning, right because if you have stage four cancer, get the fuck out of the race, right, Like that is something that is you know, it's awful, and like you should you should in no way be running for the presidency. I mean you should be at home focusing on your health, recovering.

If he had received that diagnosis during his presidency, frankly, he should have resigned right then and there, passed over the presidency to Kamala Harris and said, you know, I'm dealing with stage four cancer. I'm you know, I'm really sorry. I'm doing what's best for the country. So either way, whether he was avoiding the doctors or whether he knew and I have no idea, right, Obviously, neither one is

a very good look for him as the president. And if we also just zoom out, like Nate, imagine that he had gotten reelected, right, and right now we're in We're in term two of the Biden presidency, and this news comes out this weekend, you know, four months in, and then everyone who says, you know, Biden is who was too old? Everyone's like, what are we even doing? Like how did we get here?

I mean, I wouldn't vote for Trump, but like I'm even further away from ever thinking it was appropriate to cast a vote for somebody who I mean again, in reporting these books suggests that people around him were worried about his ability to perform in a crisis, Right, you know, if you have a red phone moment and then his people like, well, is there aren't really any nothing disastrous happened. Well, I don't know, right.

don't know. I mean, you know, when he was like taking these special council meetings, was like, right at the same time that October seventh happens, was like off the phone with BBE and into these meetings. It's like, okay, Well, if you're kind of like not able to like coherently remember names, and dates, and like what if there is a cute point of strategy that the United States wants to articulate or point of leverage. Right, it's just a

really huge scandal. It's a huge scandal. And you know, in some ways, I guess Democrats are lucky, e they're not suffering from it more, you know, I mean, I don't know with a long term effect. I mean, I think Biden at some point we'll just kind of go away, right, But like, but like it's it's news worth talking about even in May of the year after the election, because you know, it's one of the biggest dafts. I mean,

that's not the way to put it. One of the biggest knowable errors, stubborn errors of judgment, repeated errors of judgment by Biden and the people around him, and by the media frankly who kind of had the I mean, they're doing a good job now, right, but they all the Democrats who were mad at me or Ezra clin of people who were like pointing out that, yeah, probably not a good idea to have a guy who's going to

be president till I was eighty six. And oh, by the way, he's clearly not fighting Ronald cylinders right now after the debate, Right, I mean I've done hundreds of public appearances, Right, I've had I've had shit where I was super tired or sick or hungover. I've never had a performance remotely as bad as Biden's debate, Right, And if I did, then I hope someone w'd be like, you got to get medical attention, you know what I mean?

because this could happen to either party. And I think that people do need to be empowered to say something and not shut up, because I think that's psychologically speaking, there are multiple forces here. I mean, first, from like

the Biden camp. Internally, you do have kind of this cycle of motivated reasoning, which basically, you know, is confirmation bias on steroids, so you know, if you already have a point of you, right, you tend to look at evidence with that point of view in mind, and so everything that confirms your point of view, you're like, yeah, see, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Everything that disconfirms it,

you're like, oh no, well this is bullshit. You know, for these reasons, and you don't wait them correctly, right, you don't. Actually you think that you're doing an objective analysis, but it's a motivated analysis, motivated by your own biases and your own agenda. And so I think that you know, I've talked before about followers of Trump kind of being under this way of a con artist like mentality, right where you kind of once you buy into this, you're just kind of part of that and you can't see

things to the contrary. I actually think that that's true to some extent of what was happening to the Biden camp as well, that you kind of buy into kind of the reality that no, Biden, you know this this is fine, right, that this is fine. Dog that I have behind me during our day things, that this is fine. That everything to the contrary we dismiss and everything and every moment of clarity where Biden has like a good interview right or half an hour where he's sharp, You're like, see,

he's totally fine, everything is fine. And so you have that on the one hand, and on the other hand, you have the pressure, right, the pressure from different external forces and internal forces to show cohesion, to kind of be loyal to the party. And people often don't understand.

And I think that this is important to understand, both in the past and currently what's happening in the Republican Party, that sometimes being loyal to the party means speaking out right and saying, hey, this is not okay, this is actually undermining our party. Right in the long term, what is happening with the party is hurting the party. That

that can be the act of loyalty. But instead people just like cowto and shut up and meekly say yes, we will follow the party line, and that can actually be devastating.

Biden was obviously being like shielded a lot. I went through his entire schedule for four years, and there were eight instances in twenty thirteen and another eight in twenty twenty four, so sixteen total in the final two years where he does not have any public appearances for four days or more in our own and some of those Okay, I guess the presence in title to a vacation, but like you know, I mean his schedule becomes very sporadic

and erratic. But also I mean Democrats are selecting for people who go along with the program, right, I mean this is like, you know, this is part of the personality type of what I called the village in my book, right, which is it's risk averse do gooder types, and so

round nosing is a big part of the game. And Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, who ran Harris's campaign and ran Biden's campaigns, to the reporting these books is like, yeah, she is somebody where if you have bad news or to sending point of view, then don't tell it to Jen right. And how she mind worked Kamala Harris into making herself Kamala Harris's campaign chief too, I mean that was just you know, I'm much more set the Kamala Harrison I am to Joe Biden. But that decision was ill advised,

I would say. And that's also the implicit thing too, is like, so the Biden people thought that, Okay, well

Harris can't win. Well, you're the ones who fucking picked her as your vice president, right, I mean the low esteem in which the Biden people held Kamala Harris, right, you know, first of all, you know, you have a vice president and whatever you think of her as a cane, And I mean, she definitely is a knowledgeable person who attorney general, senator, definitely traditional qualifications right in the largest state in the country, and so she probably should have

been president. I would have felt safer in a crisis with Kamala Harris. And then you know, I'll be honest, I would feel safer with Donald Trump picking up the red phone and Joe Biden, Like it's not even close, Like I don't think he hasn't gotten I'm not saying I perfect Trump overall. I certainly wouldn't it, right, but like I you know, I mean at least he has his wits about him such as they are right, but anyway,

but yeah, the lowest team. And then if you read fight, a lot of it is like, well, the Biden people don't want Harris exactly, and the dissenters of dicract parties like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi also don't want Harris. They want kind of this open primary, but she kind of emerges as this compromised option in part because the Biden people are like, you don't want me, Well fuck you, You're getting her, right. I'm not exaggerating by much. Like

there's that attitude. So yeah, just this morass of stuff that like and you know, and then I you know, I actually got some quich backrooms people about. Like I wrote an article last week saying, okay, enough with the media victory lap here, right, I mean, maybe we should have Like there's all this reporting. I understand when you're reporting a book that sometimes people tell you things on the condition of it's going to come out in a year, right, I mean, for on the edge. I had some of that.

People say, well, i'll talk to you on the record because I won't be published for a few years, and I trust you to do a fair job, whereas I couldn't just go turn around and write like a newsletter post about that or something. Right, But still, I mean, you know, I love the US was lucky, I think, to avoid an acute crisis.

the record, I have not read either book. I've read some excerpts from both of them, but some of the some of the information there is pretty damning in the sense of not recognizing George Clooney, which by the way, is huge, right, Like let's just let's just say that George George Clooney's face, Nate, So, I don't know if you know this, but he so there are psych studies on brain damage kind of different types of neural damage and kind of cognitive function loss, and George Clooney is

one of the faces that's used to kind of look at that he is so recognizable and such an iconic celebrity that his face is actually one of the like classic study materials where you assess cognitive function because sometimes people like I might not recognize you even though i've known you, but I'll recognize George Clooney, right, And sometimes I won't quite recognize, but I'll be like, oh, you know, so he is one of those faces that's used so to me, like it was an added like oh my god, right,

not recognizing him when you actually know him and he's actually a friend, like that is not something that you dismiss, right, that is something that if you're a doctor. I was going to say, if you're a but you don't need to be a psychiatrist. If you're anyone, you have to be like, Okay, you know something is actually wrong and you need to assess this and we need to figure out what the hell happened. It's much worse than thinking you just spoke to Metronde even though he's not been

the president of France for quite some time. Right, So in some in some ways like that's that's a oh

shit moment, like what are we even doing here? And there's so many of those that I just saw in the excerts, and obviously excerts are chosen for the juicy bits, but it does seem like there was kind of a consensus to protect the president, and that's the wrong incentive structure, right, The incentive should be to protect the country and to make sure that the country is on a good path, not to protect a man.

had to be shown. So what happened is until nineteen seventy two, basically parties their candidates and the proverbial smoke Philip brooms, Right, So if the Democratic Party were getting together in privately, say you know what, we've all heard these stories about Joe Biden, and so now it's going to be Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro or maybe Harris would have a good chance, et cetera. Right, like, and it's some kind of we went up with this in between

where like there wasn't really a primary. I don't know, it's yeah, you know, I just think, you know, any inner circle Biden person just has direct moral responsibility for the election outcome, you know.

bloody grift pun intended because the results were bogus. The blood work was absolutely fraudulent, and people were misdiagnosed. It was just an absolute disaster. Holmes is currently in prison serving a sentence for her role in Parahose, but she's still posts for a photo for The New York Times with her partner Billy Evans, who has a new startup called Hamanthus, which is a flower known as the blood lily. Ha ha ha, because do you know what the startup is going to do. It is going to size how

we test blood for diseases? Does that does that concern you at all?

as aged out. You know, fts itself was a legitimate and quite well regarded platform for exchanging crypto assets, right, Like that part of the business was the legitimate whatever you think of crypto right, and then SBF was siphoning money to make a whole bunch of like trades on the side that were customer deposits, right whereas therhnos it's like it was all a ruse you know, they actually recruited a lot of people who like weren't traditional Silicon

Valley vcs, but were very well in network. They're like, oh, this is a future of medicine, and and here's you know, let me put this carefully, right, I think there was a lot of excitement over a woman founder. She knew dignitaries, and she had a great rolodex, right, and like she read a lot of buzz and got a different investment profile than a typical early stage startup might where maybe there was less scrutiny, but I don't know.

which is also absolutely crucial. So you know, the model obviously is, you know, we invest in tons of stuff and most of it's going to fail, but if you aren't, going to be kind of are stars with completely outsized returns, right, And that's how kind of the VC world works, and they love stories, and they love compelling narratives, compelling people.

You know something, They love con artists basically because the best storytellers in the world are con artists who paint you a beautiful picture of blue skies and what's possible and why this is going to be the idea that

changes everything. They want to believe in that because their incentive structure is such that they, you know, if one of those is actually true and not a con artists beautiful right, like, there's my there's my outsized return that's going to pay for everything and make me look like an absolute genius. And the problem is oftentimes, you know, it's it's hard to it's hard to tell, you know, where where the line is between a compelling story with a real idea compelling story with a not real idea.

In this case, as you point out, Nate, it's very clear, very early on that there were major, major holes in Elizabeth Holmes's story, but because of kind of a lot of the glamour associated with it motivated reasoning. Right, this is what we're we were talking about when we were talking about Biden. It's easy to overlook it if your incentives are to believe, and we've talked about a lot of those holes. You know the fact that she dropped out.

Her former advisor said this is you know, the saying good. A lot of prominent scientists were like, this is bullshit. You know, a lot of the data just never released. A lot of these things were huge with flags. People started resigning very early on over the lack of scientific data, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And yet like what if, right, like that what if is huge? Like what if we're the ones who miss out? FOMO is big? And we don't want to be the people who passed on the beatles?

Like you don't want to be that cautionary tale, and so you just want to kind of go go along with it. And that creates this culture where grifters thrive. And I'm I mean, I would bet a lot of money that there are other cons that have been funded by vcs in Silicon Valley right now that we don't know about yet, and that we might never know about because they might just kind of peter out, They might not ever ever be kind of as as headlining as

Elizabeth Holmes. But the fact now that her partner is doing you know he's saying, you know what, the appetite for this is strong enough that I am going to do this again.

signaling value. Right. But the general point is absolutely correct. I mean when I you know, I just reported it in the book, right, So I was invited to like an in recent Horwitz conference and it came off the record very quickly, right, But before they told the skull off the record. The guy they had on stage was Adam Newman, who is the founder of we Work. Very

charismatic guy, you've ever interacted with him? Right, But also there were all types of problems with we Work where it's valuation crater, and he was accused of like smoking weed on international jets and things like that. Right, and they were proud to say we're investing in his new startup, right because they're like, we want high variants if you're good enough to build kind of the like we work wasn't like fake in the way that Faranos was right.

If you're right, if you're able to build a company like whatever, it was sixty billion dollars evaluation on the right to the ground, Well it's still close to than most people come. Right, So your high variants and high upside, and so we want that skill set. And I guess that's kind of the same idea here. I mean, you know, I don't know. I mean, if SBF or Elizabeth Holmes wanted to invest a new startup, they probably get some funding.

Basically their investors lost all their money and there were spectacular failures, and they still get money, right, they still are able to raise fun Number two they're able to raise fund number three because at some point they had a good track record, and these are you know, oftentimes Nate. As we know, there's variance, and so that initial track

record might have been an absolute fluke. You know that in poker, right, you have some poker players who just have stellar starf and it's not because they're brilliant players. It's because they got ridiculously lucky. But in poker, it's actually much easier to see that, to see through the noise,

and eventually, you know, those players go bust. But in the world of stock markets, sometimes you know, it's easier to take it's noisier, right, so it's harder to be like, oh, this was just someone who was a luck box, not someone who's a good investor. And so if you're initially a luck box, then you get money over and over and over, even if you just keep blowing it up.

And think about how many poker players, by the way, even in a world that's less noisy, go bust multiple times and yet still find people to lend them money. And so I think that we do see this sort of thinking in that world over and over and over, and so I think absolutely once you know Elizabeth Holmes eleven years are up. If she wants to do company number two, some people will invest in her, even though there are probably a lot of people you should invest

in before you invest in her. And in the meantime, you know, I have a hard time. I know nothing about Billy Evans other than you know what he's doing right now and that he's Elizabeth Holmes's partner. And to me, that's you know, I hate judging someone who I've never met, but that's pretty damning. Like do we think, like, is there is there a universe where he's a true believer? I don't think so. Yeah.

why are you investing in someone like that? I totally agree with you date and yeah, and while you know, we with someone like Billy Evans who does have a track record, like might be a good guy, like we might, we might look at him and be like, oh, you know, everything, everything is great, but it just why if you're if you're an entrepreneur and like your partner is Elizabeth Holmes, and you know, like you know how that shit went down, and you know, the science was not there by the

way for being able to test you know, one single drop of blood like that was there was no science behind it. It was just not possible to do what you wanted to do and to say that, oh no, well now you know, now we have the science behind trying to do the exact same machine. Basically, like man, oh man, is he going to be able to raise the fifty million dollars that he wants initially and he says he'll need seventy, you know, to really kind of

bring it to scientific fruition. I really, I honestly hope not, because it's gonna, like my estimation is already pretty low of that world, it's going to fall even further if there are people who are willing to give him fifty to seventy million dollars.

Year as a freshman. Great player kid from from Maine, which does not produce a lot of basketball prospects, but you know, thought of it as the next potential superstar. People quickly became suspicious part because, yeah, people underestimate that one percent is not that low, right, It's like a

one hour in poker. But they had made an inexplicable trade earlier this year where Luka Dacic maybe the top my opinion, maybe about the fifth best player in the NBA, SOE might have a little higher putting five or six or something like that. Right was traded for Anthony Davis, who prompably got hurt, and one first round pick and a media for player named Max Christy. Right, and so like, if you had done an auction around the league, we would have gotten like literally twice as much of a return,

maybe more than that. Right they sold for like forty cents on the dollar. However, conveniently, you now have Luca, one of the league's glamour players, playing with Lebron James in Los Angeles for the Lakers, one of the league's glamour franchises. Right, Probably the Lakers are the premiere. You know, if you want a team to be really good, probably Lakers Knicks in that order if you're if you're the NBA,

So why would they do this? Well, if it turns out they're also getting the first overall pick and Cooper flag, that's a pretty fair trade ad and Cooper flag for Luca, who's about to have to be contract extension looks pretty good, and so that's triggered some conspiracy theories. It's not the first time, right, you know Lebron James grew up in Akron, Ohio. Hmmm. Convenient Commediately the Cleveland Cavaliers win the draft lottery that year,

for example, which other ones are alleged. You know, other things were like when teams, you know, when the New Orleans Pelicans, which were then like owned by the NBA, like trade away also Anthony Davis, they got the first Pickension Williamson. So whenever, whenever, there's a big prospect. You know,

it seems to end up in a convenient place. But I'd say I'd say a few things about that, right, Like number one, a lot of people would have to be on this conspiracy, Right, they draw the ping pong balls in front of the sealed room full of people in the media. Zachlow, formerly a grant Land and ESPN now of the Ringer, I believe, was among them. You can go listen to his account on his show, right, and like so you know, it's pretty transparent. They have

as complicated codes. It's like not just one ping pong ball, but you draw four and each code lines up with a set of teams that are are picked. Right, So that have to you know, enlist Ernst and Young. I believe the heccounting firm they work with to like rig the actual mechanics of the ping pong ball, right, and that would be a lot and a lot of peop would have knowledge of this and would feel chafed about

it potentially. I mean, who knows. People, You know, people kept titelcht about the Biden thing for a long period of time. But like I'm also not sure that like if you're the league necessarily would want Cooper Flag and Dallas's posts. I mean maybe, I don't know, it is a pretty big market, right maybe, I know, well what Nate.

I wasn't born yet, but it was. It was a huge scandal in nineteen eighty Pennsylvania lottery scandal, the Triple six fix. They actually were able to rig the lottery and they had specially weighted balls so that a special limited number of combinations were more likely to be drawn. And so yeah, obviously you need someone on the inside

in the in the balls. But this was done. You know, this was done also on television, Like it was very very controlled environment and yet like it's still possible to introduce weighted balls into machines that make certain number of combinations more likely to happen. And that's not the only time that that's happened. That was just like a very

prominent example of that happening. And so I hate, I don't want to honor conspiracy theorists, but I do just want to point out that it is possible due to rig lottery ball machines.

are mostly joking, and I think I'm mostly joking. I would say not like there is there are big incentives for like the league to to align talent to places where they think the franchise that deserves it, right, But like I mean, it's you know, I don't know there would be you know, there would be a sentenced to do it. Yeah, they should maybe say, yeah, we determined these are the actual picks for the league, right.

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