People Talking | A Web3 Podcast That's Not About Web3 Alex Mexicotte

They say that game developers know more about human nature than psychologists, but gamers themselves are a close second if we can look at why we enjoy certain games over others.

My guest this week is Sam Simmons, Co-Founder at Mintpass: a collecting experience that makes your travels a part of your digital identity. Previously he spent 9 years rising up to become the President at PokerGo, a world-leader in poker television. But his resume started where a lot of web3 builders start: MMOs. 

In this episode we hear about stories from Sam’s years spent around the highest level players in poker, reverse engineering WoW and other MMOs and why they’re so addictive, and gut check the difference between fandom and community (sneak peak: most web3 “communities” are more like fan bases). 

People listening: I hope you enjoy this long overdue episode.
Making the best decisions with the information you have. Not outcomes based.Thinking in Bets - Annie Duke “Resulting”Variance and volume in poker win out: https://www.888poker.com/magazine/strategy/understanding-poker-variance-will-help-you-cope-downswings Quote: Game developers know more about psychology than psychologists.Gamification done right: Attainable but challengingHaving different ways to do things wellYu Kai Chou - Actionable Gamification: https://www.amazon.com/Actionable-Gamification-Beyond-Points-Leaderboards-ebook/dp/B00WAOGY4U 8 things that drive us to do what we doHigher purpose - Narrative around why you should do somethingWhite hat vs black hat - Some tactics make you feel good, others bad.Thinking in Bets - Annie Duke:https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-Decisions/dp/0735216355https://www.quantifiedstrategies.com/annie-duke-thinking-in-bets/#:~:text=We%20judge%20the%20quality%20of,book%20called%20Thinking%20In%20Bets. Every hand revealed - Gus Hansen: https://www.amazon.com/Every-Hand-Revealed-Gus-Hansen/dp/0818407271 Zero to One - Peter Thiel: https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296 Stoicism - Ryan Holiday - Daily Stoic: https://ryanholiday.net/ The Messy Middle - Scott Belsky: https://www.amazon.com/Messy-Middle-Finding-Through-Hardest/dp/0735218072 Atomic Habits - James Clear: https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299 Every action you take each day is a vote for the person you want to be.

Ever heard of social contract theory? If not, you have almost certainly heard the quote “...the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” That’s from our favorite optimist Thomas Hobbes, the father of modern social contract theory. Followed by other prominent figures like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this trifecta formed a lot of modern humanity’s opinions on human nature. And when you’re working in a field that is fundamentally using technology to create better coordination structures, human nature is kind of a prerequisite.
Jon Hillis is co-founder of Creator Cabins, which provides coliving neighborhoods in nature for creators and remote workers. He’s become known as a resident expert on social contract theory in web3 and you can see his applications of that theory in the way he and his community design their neighborhoods.
We cover everything from stories of working through the chaos of COVID to new theories of human nature. It’s a doozy. Hope you have as much fun listening as we did talking. 
Enjoy!
Jon’s twitter: https://twitter.com/JonathanHillis Jon’s Mirror: https://jon.mirror.xyz/ A Brief History of Decentralized Cities: https://jon.mirror.xyz/Kf1tgUOcav-33CZNheL5_griDe5URu3KnQDD6qf52v0 The Blockchain Leviathan: https://jon.mirror.xyz/Ur0cBdyFxoOWEyzx_ZVc8hBwTMDLprXYdXNQxKE2v14 Social Contract Theory overview with synopsis from major thinkers: https://iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/ The Dawn of Everything: https://www.amazon.com/Dawn-Everything-New-History-Humanity/dp/0374157359 Jane Jacobs - Catal Huyuk:https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2427.12138 Nebelivka site: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-urban-megasites-may-reshape-history-first-cities Uruk - Standardization of measurements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Mesopotamian_units_of_measurement Teotihuacan - Mexico: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan Houdenosawni - Iriquoi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois Seeing like a State: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/20186 

Ever heard of GPT? Obviously. But this episode isn’t covering the basics. 
Francesco Bisardi has been in small web3 and AI circles since 2017 working for Vite Labs, Nonfiction, TechCrunch and most recently at Bitgo. He’s been coding since he was 9 and brings that background to his work in growth hacking and influences the way he approaches his interests in AI. 
In this episode we discuss a lot of similarities he sees between the early AI and web3 communities, alpha on how to practically use AI today for business and pleasure, alpha on high-signal people to follow in AI, and how AI is somehow even faster paced than the most recent web3 bull market. 
Oh, and he is also an Italian National powerlifting champion. NBD. This is a well-rounded guy, the type of guest I love to have on the show. 
Enjoy!
Francesco’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Francesco_Bis AutoGPT - Copy the stable version, not the master - https://github.com/Significant-Gravitas/Auto-GPT Godmode - https://godmode.space/?ref=futuretools.io AgentGPT - https://agentgpt.reworkd.ai/ Aitrepreneur - https://www.youtube.com/@AitrepreneurThere’s an AI for That - https://theresanaiforthat.com/ Format your own data to train an AI model: https://kanaries.net/home Guidance for keeping up: Follow certain people and projects on Github and see what people are talking about.

Hey People Listening, did you get your first foray into social media learning CSS and HTML to personalize your Myspace page? Do you doom scroll Twitter? Do you wonder about the elements of social media and which are good and bad?
This week I have Lou Kerner on the show, who is both a social media and web3 veteran, to dig into social networks and community. Starting with his early days of helping run Bolt, an early social network started in 1996, he walks us through his love of community and how the new tools in web3 can help us create digital-native communities.
Enjoy!
Lou Kerner’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/loukerner CryptoOracle Twitter: https://twitter.com/CryptoOracleDAO Bolt Social Platform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolt_(website) Charles Eisenstein Sacred Economics: https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Economics-Money-Society-Transition/dp/1583943978 

Jim Chang (0xJim) is known on Twitter for his DeFi wizardry, incubating projects through Aave’s experimental arm, and hilarious but dense research on things like interoperability and rollups as a service. But in this episode we dive into 2 of his loves: Backpacking and Fashion. What relation do these things have to web3? What relation do they have to each other (hint: convertible pants)?
A sneak peak at what we cover in this episode:
How does backpacking prepare you for product launches?Why should you backpack even though you’ll be exhausted and sleep like shit?How is the Steve Jobs style of fashion like atheism?What is Gorpcore and why do so many adopters of this fashion trend like tiny coffees?We had a lot of good laughs in this one. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Jim’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/0xJim Kara Korum Highway: https://www.google.com/search?q=karakoram+highway&biw=2048&bih=1042&tbm=isch&sxsrf=APwXEdeOGYChpNLasXdxIhWuySpkHaiSpA:1680211013160&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjP6djkyYT-AhUjIX0KHdyxCq4Q0pQJegQIBhAE Zhangjiajie: https://www.google.com/search?q=zhangjiajie&sxsrf=APwXEdcYjqEnJktsWzpNZK_YOhVwjS1A-g:1680211548202&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjsm-njy4T-AhWwCTQIHfbDA7oQ0pQJegQIBBAC&biw=2048&bih=1042&dpr=1.25 Gorp core: https://www.grailed.com/drycleanonly/what-is-gorpcore Kraig Adams - Hiking Blogger, silent hiking videos: https://www.youtube.com/@kraigadams/featured 

David Goldberg is the co-founder of Macro which is a web3 security company that does smart contract audits with customers like Synthetix, MakerDAO, Frax, Connext and more. They also are building products for web3 security. Before he dove into web3, he was a software engineer at Salesforce for a few years and founded a few startups. He has synthesized his experience in startups down into guidelines for creating breakthrough ideas which we’ll dive into today.
For founders, identifying potential inflection points - major shifts in the world that open up new markets - is the holy grail problem to solve when generating new business ideas. Join us on this deep dive on identifying different types of inflection points and articulating ideas to take advantage of those shifts. 
Main Topic: How To Generate Breakthrough Ideas starts at 22:50
David’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/idavidgoldberg 0xMacro - Smart Contract Auditing: https://0xmacro.com/ John Cleese - Creativity Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g How to build a breakthrough: https://medium.com/@m2jr/how-to-build-a-breakthrough-3071b6415b06