Episode 175 - Predictions Panel on Decentralization, Language Models, and Post-COVID
This year's prediction panel features discussions on Decentralization, Language Models, Life After Covid, New York City, Social Media Embracing Fake News, and more.
Recorded in Rollinsford, New Hampshire.
Related Episodes
Episode 174 with Jeremy Kaufman on LBRY and Odysee
Episode 134 on the GPT-3 Language Model
Episode 113 in the previous prediction panel held under the stay-at-home era
Episode 38 with the first predictions panel in 2018
Transcript
Max Sklar: You're listening to The Local Maximum, Episode 175.
Time to expand your perspective. Welcome to The Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar.
Max: Welcome, everyone. Welcome. You have reached another Local Maximum. Today is another exciting day here in The Local Maximum, we are going to have our predictions panel. Our predictions panel is, I believe the same exact predictions panel from last time, if not mistaken, or maybe two years ago. But here's what we did. Okay. For those of you who don't know what this is, every year–actually every year and a quarter, but let's say every year–we go through and we make a bunch of predictions about, it started off as technology, but sometimes, we talk about social issues. Sometimes, we talk about other developments on what we think are going to happen over the next few years. Since we've been doing it for six years, we've got a lot of content to go back to and review to see how we did. Sometimes, we didn't do too well. I know I didn't do too well in a few. We'll talk about those in a minute.
Let's introduce our contestant. Our first contestant, we know very well, for those you listening to The Local Maximum. Aaron, welcome to the show.
Aaron Bell: Good to be here as always.
Max: Of course, contestant number two. You've been on two predictions panels, haven't you so far, Crystal?
Crystal Astrachan: Hi, Max. Thanks for having me.
Max: All right. Of course, we are in Rollinsford, New Hampshire. We have a live audience here. Let's hear some clapping. As you can tell, there are a ton of people in here. So, okay. I asked you guys here, we just spent all morning coming up with a bunch of predictions, and we had, we came up with several different topics that we had this year. A lot of times we've been covering consumer applications over the last few years because I built apps and I worked for a consumer application company, Foursquare. We would often talk about what's the next thing with AR, and virtual reality, and the AirPods, and the smartwatch, and apps.
We've done that so much that I decided to put that a little bit on the back burner this year. The topics this year were, first of all, decentralization of everything, decentralization of truth, decentralization of knowledge, that's a topic. Is it gonna happen or it's not gonna happen? That's a topic that we've been talking a lot about on the podcast certainly over the last year. COVID: what changes will that trigger over the upcoming years, maybe even decades? We have some questions about what kind of financial upheavals will we see, what role will crypto play? Talks a little bit about AI and language models, and then we had a space for miscellaneous because people always want to say things that aren't on there. First of all, let's talk about some of the predictions that we've made in the past and what we've learned about them.
First of all, a couple ones of mine that really didn't pan out. I can't believe I wrote this. I thought Trump was gonna win. I didn't think he was gonna win the first time. Once again, I'm always wrong on politics. Let's hear it for that.
Aaron: Are you always wrong on politics, or are you just always wrong on Trump?
Max: Maybe. Actually, you know what? Let's put it down as that: always wrong on Trump. Also, last year’s prediction was what? March of 2020. That was right at the beginning of the pandemic. We were, basically, we couldn't be together. I had hoped for a hand-sanitizer-moisturizer combo, and that just never came to be. Alright, let's talk about some of the ones that you did, and then I'll talk about one of mine that hit because I always– I had a good hit. Mine was a five-year prediction, from five years ago. Let's start with Crystal. Why don't we start with you? Talk about what things you said in the past and where we are with them?
Crystal: Sure. I just chose one thing from 2018. In 2018, I mentioned that we really need better internet on our subways. We need internet in the car. We have internet in the station. We do not have internet in the cars.
Max: This is a New York City-centric one.
Crystal: Right.
Max: Right. I wouldn't have mentioned that if I stayed in New York.
Crystal: No, it's New York City-centric. Yes, it is. But it's not just internet for the sake of internet. I think we can also we can monetize this. We can use this for good. How do we monetize–
Max: Good, as in money good?
Crystal: Well, good for, good for New York City, good for New York City subway system, good for the community. Imagining an internet sponsor could be one main sponsor or many sponsors. The sponsor pays for the internet on the subway and gets us connected. In return, that sponsor could show us an ad when we connect to the internet: something that's not too intrusive, something that's helpful to us, we get a discount on a service, simple and clean. In addition, we'll also be served maybe other sponsors, sponsor offers, depending on how long we're connected and what content we're consuming. Also, we would see–
Max: I should point this out to the people listening, you work in the ad–
Crystal: I work in the ad industry. Keep a note on that–
Max: Crystal knows this stuff well, she's not just pulling–
Crystal: I work in the advertising industry. I've been working there for well over a decade. What we can also do is when our commuters are connected to the internet on their phones, we can send targeted advertising in the subway to them based on their interest and their preferences. Of course, there are many people on the subway, so you're not going to meet everyone's needs. Let's say if 25% of the riders have something in common or tend to have something in common on that leg of the commute, then an advertiser could serve an ad to them. Let's say if most of them are interested in online grocery shopping, then you can have a targeted offer for online grocery shopping. It's really simplistic, but you get the point there. That ad revenue will benefit obviously, the advertising company, but also we'd reinvest that into the subway system.
Max: In a perfect world.
Crystal: Yes, but that will be part of the deal, going into this. We have Wi-Fi, you have special offers, and be very transparent with the public that a percentage of the ad revenue would go back into the subway system to have a safer, cleaner, better experience on the subway for all commuters.
Max: Is this something you said a few years ago?
Crystal: Yeah, in 2018 for 2023.
Max: What is preventing this from happening? What do you think are the dominoes that have to fall for this to happen?
Crystal: Right. This prediction in 2018 is for the pre-pandemic, obviously. I think that set us back for a number of years, I originally was thinking we can get here by 2023. I think we've been set back a few years, of course. What we need to happen is a really strong partnership between a corporate sponsor and the state of New York because the state of New York is operating the subways. Obviously the city as well.
Max: Yeah. You need to have some people there who are a little bit more motivated than maybe they are.
Crystal: Right. We'd have to, I think the ownership of this would have to come from the sponsor.
Max: Yeah.
Crystal: To then pitch the benefits to the city.
Max: Right.
Crystal: Earn the trust of the city in the state to pursue this.
Max: Yeah. All right. It’s interesting. Let's go to you, Aaron. What were some of the past predictions that you made that you found interesting? Crystal went over a new application of technology that we might see. What have you got for us?
Aaron: Talking about technologies, there was one I made two and a half years ago.
Max: Okay.
Aaron: I thought, by now, we would have Amazon delivery drones deployed in at least five major cities. To my knowledge, that one has not panned out.
Max: Oh, man.
Aaron: I know there's development being made in that space. But like with most things involving autonomy, it's dragging behind the advertised benchmark.
Max: Yeah. I remember they came out with this video in 2012, maybe, 2013. They were like, “Amazon drones everywhere. We're gonna have it all in three years!” Bezos come out. But unfortunately, a lot of tech CEOs are like that, even ones that are considered successful. Virgin Galactic is always like, “We're gonna send a– We're gonna start space tourism by the year 2010,” they would say in 2005. Or, “We’ll do it by the end of the year.” How many years have I heard that for? Yeah. Maybe Amazon just doesn't need it. It's cool, but maybe they don't need it. I don't know Crystal if you have anything to add about that. Okay, we're just not even gonna go there.
Aaron: We have two more that are–
Max: That scares me a little bit.
Aaron: –Corona-related that came out of our session from a year and a quarter ago.
Max: Okay.
Aaron: One which was a hard miss. I said that the Corona boom was going to be confirmed as a thing in at the nine to 12 months after the lockdowns.
Max: Right, lots of new babies.
Aaron: Apparently, that statistically did not happen. I missed the mark on that.
Max: Why do you think that is?
Aaron: Apparently, being locked inside with the same person slash people for prolonged periods. I just misjudged the effects. I think it may have ruined more relationships than it helped them. Then the flip side of that one that I think I did get right was I said that by this point the economy, and by that I meant the Dow Jones Industrial Average would have fully recovered its losses because I think when we had our last meeting, we were– I don't know if we were at the full bottom of the drop there, but there have been some pretty precipitous dives in the market there. That's all been earned back, and then some, although I caveated it with the assertion that we would still be in a recession, which, I guess, if you ask an economist, they say you can't tell if you're in a recession until five quarters later or something. But I think I would say the Dow has recovered, but I think the man on the street would not agree that the economy has recovered from their perspective. So...
Max: It's– Yeah. It's a fraught topic because there's so many different ways of looking at it. We talk about the economy and we're like, “Okay, this whole thing got–”
Aaron: What is economy?
Max: Yeah, what is the economy?
Aaron: Not a question we're gonna answer right now.
Max: No, yeah. Okay. Let's start this. What is the economy? No, but I feel like this whole thing is being kept afloat by, what, trillions of dollars being flooded into the economy. What's the long-term effect of that? What's even the medium short-term effect of that? Very hard to say. Other than I don't think prices are dropping precipitously anytime soon. Okay, so let me talk about two– Unless you guys have something else to cover. Let me talk about two predictions from the past that popped out to me.
One of them was not made by any of us at this table but may have been made by someone in this room, who often gives very pessimistic views of human nature if I might say so. Is that– Oh, yeah, he knows it's true. So he wrote that, this is two and a half years ago, he wrote that, because a lot of these companies were talking about fake news. Twitter was saying, “We're gonna fight fake news.” Facebook, “We're gonna fight fake news. We're gonna use AI. We're gonna get rid of fake news. Fake news will be a thing of the past.”
He wrote– I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but he wrote something like, “These companies will stop trying to prevent fake news. They will go all-in on fake news, and use it to hook us on their platforms even more.” That could have been a joke, but oh my God. I was like, “This exactly happened, especially over the last year.” It's like– We've had so many manufactured stories and so many stories that had been declared as fake news and just disappeared down the rabbit hole, that it's like, “Whoa, these can no longer claim to be objective organizations. They're now just basically, dare I say, ‘propaganda outlets.’” What do you guys think about that one?
Aaron: It's definitely at that point where it's difficult to discern satire from biting reality.
Max: Yeah. That's– Isn't there a law about that?
Aaron: Yeah, I'm trying to remember what it is.
Max: Is that Poe's law.
Aaron: Yes. Thank okay. That’s the one.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: It's not Godwin's law.
Max: What's Godwin's law? Is that one was about Hitler? Okay. Yeah. Alright. Alright. We've got another one that I made. This is five years ago. You know what? This might be– Well, I think it's a little bit positive. But we still have a ways to go. But I wrote five years ago in the spring of 2016, and I think that was actually the one we did in Boston or Somerville that year, it predates the podcast, of course. I wrote that crypto-based social networks, by the spring of 2021, which is where we are, I wrote: “Crypto-based social networks help people in authoritarian countries get around censorship.” Now, I thought that was very interesting that I spoke to Jeremy Kaufman the other day, who works on LBRY Odysee, the decentralized video platform that runs on blockchain. He said that, yes, people are using this in China, and so far have not been they haven't been cracked down on anything. He told me about how the technology will make it very difficult for the Chinese government to crack down on it, although I'm sure they will try.
Aaron: Yeah, I didn't think of LBRY as a social network, but there's certainly an aspect of it that can slot into that role, it sounds like.
Max: Right. Look. It looks like some of these alternative social networks, which aren't necessarily, which are still centralized like Clubhouse or whatever. What happens is that people will come into Clubhouse. People in China are using Clubhouse. People in all sorts of countries using Clubhouse. They're talking about things they're not supposed to be talking about and then it gets cracked down on but, in the meantime, they have a platform. It's almost like these countries are going to have to play whack-a-mole for quite a while. Or maybe for all eternity.
Aaron: It would be nice to not have a constant battle trying to stay out in front of that.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: Find a stable equilibrium, but we shall see.
Max: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that brings us to some of the predictions for the future. I mean, one of them is the idea of decentralization, which I talked about. We're always talking about when is the future going to become completely decentralized, so we don't have to rely on a single actor or a middleman. Oftentimes, those middlemen, those centralized services are so damn efficient that you can't get rid of them. People, and also it's so ingrained in our society and the economic configuration that we have.
How long have I heard just popped into my head people saying, “Well, the future, we're going to have a decentralized power grid?” Well, that– I guess they're, theoretically, you could build one, but it's not going to happen anytime soon. I wouldn't be like, “No,” 10 years, “No,” 20 years, “Nope, definitely not.” I think that decentralization takes so much longer than people realize. Sometimes people tend to make these predictions, what, two and a half years, five years in the future. It's just not going to happen the way people think. Although there's a little bit of good news with some of this blockchain stuff coming down the line. Crystal, what predictions do you have for the future that fit under any– Or what did you pick?
Crystal: Well, I don't have any for decentralization.
Max: Oh, yeah. We're just going to any of them.
Crystal: For the topic of COVID’s long-lasting effects.
Max: Yeah.
Crystal: I have two, and they're again, both about New York City.
Max: Yeah. Go for it. We all want to hear about this.
Crystal: Great. First–
Max: Man, I was back there a few weeks ago. Some of my friends told me like, “Oh, it's back the way it was.” It definitely was not back the way it was, I can tell you.
Crystal: Better... Yeah, I definitely think there were some positives. Not everything was good. But one thing that I think most people enjoy is that we have more open streets. Restaurants are able to spread out onto the sidewalks and onto the streets. I really enjoy that. I just think it makes the city come to life more. I do think possibly on a smaller scale, but definitely will continue with outdoor dining on next year, and hopefully for years to come. Maybe that will also be the start of opening more streets permanently, similar to what we did in Times Square, and having entire neighborhoods that are pedestrian-only or there’s going to be in portions of them.
Max: I can see the appeal of it. I know some people who are not as happy with it.
Crystal: If you're a driver, right? If you have a car.
Max: Yeah, yeah. The driver. I have a member of my family who shall remain unnamed, who drives around, getting really annoyed by all these houses that have popped up in the street. But, you know.
Crystal: Right. Oh, outdoor dining structures are–
Max: Yeah, well, that was a problem when I moved out. Because I moved in to somewhere temporarily. I moved out when I moved to New Hampshire. It was like, they're like, “Well, where can we stop the truck?” I'm like, “You could stop where I moved in.” Oh, no, they built something there, to house outdoor seating. “Well, you can go next to it.” Oh, no, there's a big pile of garbage. “Okay. You go next to that.” There's a big snowbank. I think they cut a little path between the snowbank and the garbage and moved all my furniture through that little path. I think— That's the part of the city that I don't miss. It was like–
Aaron: That story sounds like a metaphor for New York, that you were cutting a path between a snowbank and a pile of garbage.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: Escape.
Max: Oh, yeah. You have to keep shovelling the pile of garbage because it keeps on falling down and getting into your path.
Crystal: Right. Because the garbage trucks aren't coming by.
Max: Yeah, I know. Any other predictions for New York, post-COVID?
Crystal: Well, this is going to be dependent upon the next mayor and how that mayor deals with crime. Unlike the rest of the country, real estate prices have dropped in the city.
Max: Yeah.
Crystal: There are a lot of bargains right now. How long is that going to take to come back, thinking possibly in about five years? If we get crime under control, then we should– I think we can see those prices coming back to pre-pandemic levels.
Max: Okay. Well, I certainly hope so because I'm gonna want to visit. Well, I mean, I guess the real estate prices don't matter to me when I come visit, but I want to see people having a good time. I want to see the social life come back.
Crystal: Right, right.
Max: I want to see the businesses come back. There are some people who say honestly, like, “Hey. We're in a new technological era where people can work from home, so less people are going to be there.”
But there's so much– A part of me says, “There's so many people already there. There's so many centuries of development there; so much centuries of development there and so much infrastructure, whether it's physical infrastructure or just social-cultural infrastructure, that there's got to be some way to renew that city as it's done many times in the past.
Aaron: I have two questions on that, as the one person on the panel who has not lived in New York City.
Max: That gives you a special knowledge the rest of us don't have.
Aaron: How long– You said this was a five-year prediction.
Crystal: Right.
Aaron: How long is the mayor's term in New York? Is that a four-year term?
Max: Yes.
Aaron: Okay. I invite both of you to make a prediction. I don't think this was on the board, on who the next mayor of New York is gonna be.
Max: Oh, no.
Aaron: Feel free to refuse. But–
Max: Well, okay. I mean, so the–
Aaron: I don't want backstory. Snap prediction.
Max: Oh, my God.
Crystal: I can tell you who I possibly want.
Max: I don't think, I think it might be, I'm just gonna throw out Eric Adams.
Crystal: I was actually gonna say. I want him to be mayor. I think he's the best choice. I don't know if I can predict that.
Aaron: Yeah, I've heard the name. But as a non-New Yorker, the only one that has national recognition is Andrew Yang right now. But—
Crystal: Right.
Max: One of the really interesting things about that election is it's going to be ranked choice, which is not necessarily the formula I would use for ranked choice, but still ranked choice. It's so going to be interesting for people going into the ballot box saying how they rank. I have several people, former coworkers, perhaps who are on Twitter, and I know, they're going to tweet their rankings. I know, whatever they tweet, it's probably the opposite that someone should vote.
I think it will actually force people to think a little bit harder about their vote. It will, I'm curious to see what kind of discussions are going to have around that where people are like, “Oh,” rather than trashing the other person's candidate, “Well, they're okay. But I would put them at the second place because my first place is so and so.” I'm interested to see how that election dynamic plays out differently from what it did in the past where they’re all just–
Aaron: A number of states have instituted ranked choice voting in the last election cycle or two. Seeing the outcomes of that–
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: –in the coming cycle is gonna be very interesting.
Max: But this is a big one. This is New York. This is not Maine.
Aaron: Maine made some delicious sandwiches today.
Max: We were just there, right?
Aaron: Let’s not rag on them too hard.
Max: Yeah. Alright. I hear you. Gave me a nosebleed. But–
Crystal: I need to study that ranking system. Can you give someone like a negative ranking?
Max: No, no. It's only– Yeah, it's only in relation to the other one. You just say like, “This guy is below that guy is below that guy.” They all figure it out from there. I'm not gonna go into the whole mathematics of it. But it is quite interesting. Alright, so. Yeah, and who knows what kind of social dynamics will play out in this election in New York City coming up? Because how many people have left? Is the electorate going to be significantly different? I know I've argued about this with other people. I'm not, I think it might be somewhat different. It might be hard to predict what's going to happen.
Aaron: I don't know if we had any specific predictions about that up on the board. But, the continuing trend will be the re-sorting of America, which to some extent, was accelerated by COVID. Or perhaps rejiggered a little bit.
Max: Yeah, yeah. Another thing we've talked about a lot is the rise of cryptocurrency, which if you take the story, and rewind back to 2010, it's the amazing story of the decade. We've had some disagreements about whether Bitcoin will remain on top. We've had– I predicted, by this year, that predict that Bitcoin will remain on top. I think I predicted that two and a half years ago, and that turned out to be true. But I think– Some people think that, “Hey, something else is going to catch up with it.” Honestly, I'll believe it when I see it.
I like Ethereum, too. I just don't think that the dynamic of Bitcoin one, Ethereum two will change. But I recognize their arguments otherwise. But I think the idea that it's going to disrupt the financial system is... I'm bullish on that. Being 7% of the market cap of gold or something? I don't know what the number is. I heard 7%. I think I heard 2%. But whatever it is, that's pretty amazing coming from zero in 10 years. Okay, so what else do we have? I wrote a few things about language models. Did you guys have anything else you want to talk about before I talk about that?
Aaron: Yeah, let me throw out one on the decentralization front.
Max: Okay, great.
Aaron: This is more on the news and information side.
Max: Yeah.
Aaron: But we've seen in the last year an explosion in the Substack platform.
Max: Right.
Aaron: I predicted that in two and a half years’ time, Substack will be continuing to expand along its current trajectory and that the revenue for writers to that platform will exceed the revenue of the New York Times. I think– Substack is just an example. But that this decentralization, in terms of going more to individual content creators, rather than consolidated content outlets. People not going to network news or a particular newspaper, and more going towards to a particular writer, or a writer, a group of writers who cover a very specific niche is going to make up a larger and larger portion of our news consumption, or at least of the news production in the marketplace.
Max: It's interesting that some people– I've heard it put this way: that people who would never subscribe to a magazine or newspaper will pay the same amount to a single person. But that's pretty basic because I think the idea is credibility falls on the individual now versus on the institution. Because, maybe, people are a little bit less trustful of institutions.
Aaron: Yeah. This wasn't explicitly in my prediction there. But I'm optimistic that this will be a venue to facilitate more long-form reporting and move away from the clickbait headline and tweets and sound bites and that. Sure, there's still going to be a fair amount of the controversy-for-clicks approach because they want to attract an audience, but it will give them the freedom to not just be churning out headlines that they'll be able to do long reads on stuff.
Max: Well, I–
Aaron: Because people are bought into it, they'll actually consume that rather than just looking at the headline, and then sharing that, never having read the article.
Max: Yeah, I really hope so. Because that would be better for society. Who would have thought that this new platform called email would be the wave of the future? Pretty exciting stuff. Alright. Crystal, you have anything on that?
Crystal: No.
Max: Oh, okay. We always have to have one of those questions. Alright, so I put– We always talk a lot about AI and machine learning on the show. I always have lots to say about it. But the one that I wanted to catch up on this time around is the use of language models because language models, which we've talked about, almost at the beginning of this podcast.
I think you and I discussed this in Episode 4 when I built a language model for the English language. I used to tell like, crack some codes pretty easily. We also talked about GPT-3, OpenAI, Google, how some of these large organizations are building these gigantic neural nets, basically, to try to model language, to have a machine write articles, write emails, basically. It's turned out that there's been– That the technological progress has bumped into some of the social trends. He talks about that with Google, where I think what Google is going to try to do is they're going to try to use these language models, basically, police our language. They're going to be warning us not to send that email because it's not politically correct. We don't use that term anymore.
I just think we're gonna start seeing those. Well, not me. I won't see it because I'm always politically correct. But the rest of you– The rest of you will see these messages coming up saying, “Oh, you can't use that term.” It's considered wrong. I actually think they're going... It's like, they're gonna be saying they're doing AI but they're not doing AI. They're just taking their social theories and plugging it in on top of AI and saying, “This is how you have to use language in the future.”
Aaron: Well, if they were to do it through the venue of autocorrect on your phone, would we even know that that's what they're doing until it was too late?
Max: Do it without telling us, huh?
Aaron: Exactly. How many times have autocorrect change something in a text message and you haven't noticed until it's been sent?
Max: Oh, yeah, well. There's this funny autocorrect... Whenever I'm in a bad mood, I just go to these funny autocorrects and I'm all of a sudden in a better mood. They're gonna really find–
Crystal: You're saying to use it to detect your tone and your emotional response to it. So–
Max: Yeah, no. There’s– I've seen there's real research on that where people are– Well, I've seen someone who can detect from tweets or texts can detect certain types of mental disorders, certain types of things like that. I'm sure it could be like, “Sounds like you're upset. Are you sure you want to send that email?” which could be nice.
Aaron: There's a browser plugin that I've used in the past. I think it's called Grammarly that it will– It's a spellcheck and grammar check, but it will also go in and it analyzes the mood and how formal or informal it is. If it knows that this is a business email, it'll say, “You should maybe be more assertive about this part. Don't be so wishy-washy”, or “Do you really want to say that quite that way?” It doesn't change it for you, but it provides some subtle prompts, which can sometimes be useful and sometimes be a little unsettling.
Max: I think that's really helpful. But what I'm always concerned, because I have autocorrect. You have autocorrect on Gmail and all these things. It's like, “Are all these emails gonna start sounding the same like they're written by the same person?” That concerns me. I don't want all the email that I sent to you in the email you sent to me being, sound like they're in one voice.
Aaron: I think we may have talked about that when we were talking about GPT–3 in a previous episode.
Max: Yeah, yeah. Alright. Then we have the miscellaneous category. I don't know if there's anything from that. A lot of people want to talk about space because space is cool. But I don't know if I have very much to say about it. Are you guys good?
Aaron: I've got two related ones on that.
Max: Alright. Yeah, go for it.
Aaron: Like you said, space is cool. I’ll be quick about these. At 10 years out, I've got boots on the moon. I'm not saying whether they're going to be American boots, or Chinese boots, or North Korean boots, but nobody knows.
Max: Okay.
Aaron: But I say within 10 years, though, there'll be humans back on the moon. That within 20 years, there'll be a permanent moon base.
Max: Wow.
Aaron: Whether it will be continuously occupied by humans—
Max: Now, what makes you–
Aaron: —is less certain.
Max: What makes you think this? Because it's been a while.
Aaron: Yeah. Well, I'm tangentially involved in the effort.
Max: Oh, so you're gonna do it. It's gonna be your fault. Alright. I think we met, we covered so much topics. These predictions panels are always really hard because we cover so much topics that we only know a little bit about each one, versus the deep dives that we usually do. But I feel like we get such good feedback from these things. There's such good exercises that I enjoy doing them every year. Any last thoughts from either of you before we call today? Crystal?
Crystal: No, thank you. This has been a great experience. I'm always happy to be here. Thanks.
Max: Awesome. Aaron?
Aaron: I'm excited to hear back from listeners. Tell us what we got wrong. Why we're crazy to make these predictions or if there's something we missed that we should have been thinking about. Because the more input, the better we can form our view of the future.
Max: Okay, live audience please clap. I think that–
Aaron: Push moment.
Max: Yes, the push moment. Alright. Have a great week, everyone.
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