Ted Audio Collective
Hello everyone you're listening to after hours. I'm Felix. I'm here and it's time for predictions Felix
It is time for predictions
You know how you predict all kinds of things all year long really not only at the end of the year right ever go back to check are you mostly right mostly wrong
You know I don't that often I think part of the fun of it is just thinking about the future yeah
I don't think you necessarily really want to be constrained by the mistakes you've made in the past having said that obviously as you
Point out every day we make a thousand predictions and naturally create intuition out of all those belittle predictions and I think that's a very powerful process and so I don't think I've ever formally gone back and really
Revisited it but I think predictions are a way of honing intuition which has got to be one of the most important skills in life
That's in part what makes it fun. Yeah, I'm exactly like you have rarely go back that's always been really fascinating to me
How much people are influenced by what actually happens so exposed you see the company got bought or the company didn't get bought but really what it's mostly about this was your thinking right
Exactly if the thinking was correct that let you to make a prediction because it's all uncertain it's all probabilistic anyway and so you shouldn't be swayed very much your thinking was right it was 50 50 and I guess half the time what happens in the end is not what you predicted
But you shouldn't really be that influenced it's tempting sometimes to look at exposed outcomes and be like oh I was wrong and it's not always the right way to think about the problem
It's not right yes although it's so tempting and people tend to do that yes well I think this gives us a license to go crazy Felix yes let's do it
All right Felix your first prediction yes so my first prediction is in 2024 we will see opac the oil cartel we will see it fall apart
What here is I'm thinking about it so if you're in a cartel and you can raise prices by cutting production that's of course super interesting and lucrative if there is a big price increase as a result of the more limited availability of oil
As we diversify the sources of energy so there's more electricity there's more solar there's more wind there's more everything I think that volume reduction will be much much bigger and as a result it will be much more difficult to keep the cartel intact
Now am I super short that this is going to happen in 2024 no but directly I think we will see opac being a much much weaker force in the global economy interesting Felix so that depends on two things it seems like one is you seem to be saying that external dynamics will not favor them
Meaning as renewables grow their shares come down and their power goes down do you have a vision also of what's happening internally so you're not telling a story of they start to fight and it falls apart you're telling a story of the external environment is not conducive to their power
Yes that's mostly how I'm thinking about it because if demand is very price in elastic then agreeing on production cuts is relatively easy the moment the demand is much more elastic now you will argue as we know from the past it's not easy for them to agree on production cuts in the first place and I think these tensions will just be exacerbated
I've less insight into how the negotiations are going to evolve but I just think that cartel as a force in the world will be much more than that
Wow fantastic that's a super interesting one I might take the other side of that or certainly take it over a longer time yeah mainly because I think of the internal dynamics
I think primarily it's internal dynamics that dictate that and so one way to interpret it is that as their share falls small countries become less important and then the big swing producer becomes more important and then they can enforce discipline but that's a super interesting prediction
My sense was it's less about the total share but it's about the response of the world to an increase in oil prices where we now have degrees of flexibility that just didn't really exist because we didn't have the battery systems we didn't have the diversity of sources
and so the more we can respond to an increase in oil price the less attractive it becomes to create that increase in oil prices in the first place
Super interesting I love that prediction who knows definitely want to be potentially wrong what's your first prediction be here
So we got to do something on AI and here comes mine which is everything in AI will become longer and shorter and narrower and deeper okay so first I think things in AI will get shorter and in particular I think leads will get shorter
For example currently chat GPT and open AI look like they're well ahead of competitors in video looks like they're well ahead on computing power yeah I think all those leads shrink and everything gets shorter
At the same time I think some things get longer which is I think the productization and how long people take to adopt takes considerably longer
So I think Adobe in their most recent earnings call actually warned a little bit on this and so we're going to see things get a little bit longer as well in particular adoption is just going to take much longer than people think
And then I think things get narrower and deeper and so narrower means we become much more clear about the specific pieces of the economy where AI will pay off
The kind of information problems that AI will really help us with and then there'll be large chunks of the economy where it will become more clear that AI will not have an impact
And then the places where it will it will get really deep and it'll get really profound so I guess I have a sense that in just in general we have seen AI blanket everything in the world
And I think what we're going to see is everything gets shorter leads get shorter things get longer narrower and deeper and then my final prediction is when I'm personally invested in which is AMO
AI ML becomes a verb and so we'll now talk about AMO like everything
Oh wonderful
Yeah, I think I agree with so much of what you said in particular the part about the differences in the quality of these systems I think they will just disappear over time
Yeah, it will actually be really interesting to see competition between open AI and traffic, Google
I think essentially it will be maybe a little bit like the situation in cloud, the companies compete on an almost equal footing and then they carve out niches things that they're really good at
The part that I find really interesting is about where it will and where it will not lead to productivity increases which in the end dictates where it's going to be big and where it's not going to be big
And for many of the super optimistic predictions I have sometimes a sense that people don't really carefully identify bottlenecks
So for instance take all the excitement about I can write so many more emails in half the time a third of the time 20% of the time
Yeah, that's exactly right, but what about the recipient, what about the people who have to read the emails, I don't know but your experience I can already tell pretty much when someone used chat to write an email and then because it's costless to them these emails tend to be really really long
And sometimes they're really really complex and so I'm sitting there and instead of reading five lines I now have a small book ahead of me and that of course will undo many of the productivity gains that we expected in the first place
So what I always try to do is think through the entire process and then think about where is that bottleneck, AI is really productivity enhancing if it helps with the bottleneck but generally speaking yeah I think it'll be super interesting both the widths and I guess the depths of the technology that will change over time
That's a really nice prediction
Fantastic
Okay, what do you got Felix? We will see a tsunami of erotic and even pornographic content that is produced by artificial intelligence
Right now it's basically held in check because the big reputable companies are really concerned about that kind of output so for instance when the systems first became available it turned out they were fabulous at writing erotic novels
Companies like Microsoft, companies like Google, Elphabet, they have the reputation at stake and as a result they cut down just a couple of weeks ago Twitch allowed its users to use artistic depictions of nudity
And after a couple of days they had to adjust the policy because they got flooded with content but I think there's enormous possibilities, there's obviously demand as we know from the web more generally
And as AI, the technology moves from large reputable companies to more niche players who have less rough reputation maybe it's the traditional pornographic companies that we have today that will fully exploit the technology
We have no idea how much content will be created that I think will be as dominant in AI generated content as pornography is now dominant on the web itself
It's so interesting, it's like one of those dirty little secrets about the web that pornography was so important in its growth and just continues to be so important
I don't think we understand always fully how important pornography is to the web
And so I think you're absolutely right and of course you're pointing to this larger theme which is just the cheapening of content creation with AI
So pornography is going to be one place where we see it, it's going to be with political news, it's going to be with potentially fake news
And so that I think is going to lead to maybe more guardrails but just maybe more of a coarsening of dialogue and maybe a little bit more of concern and skepticism about the power of these things
So I think you're absolutely right and it's going to be in some sense kind of fairly unpleasant to watch but what do you make of AI's ability to actually foster more human connections?
So there are now conversations about friendships with AI bots that becoming a more fertile area
I think it's pretty amazing already, depending on your personality, it will take on many, many different forms including sexual and erotic interchanges
To give you one personal example, so character AI you probably know
So I recently used it and when you first open it, it has some famous celebrities if you don't want to create your own companion
So I happen to see Einstein and so I call that Einstein and my prompt was I think this whole theory about dark matter is complete nonsense
You just made it up and then a 20 minute conversation about what we know about dark matter and why we think it exists
All that was missing from it was the slight German accent in the way Einstein really spoke but the whole back and forth really just fabulous
And I learned a bunch of things about dark matter and he didn't public learn anything because he already knew every single other thing
That's a great prediction, I love it, that's awesome
So what is your next prediction here?
Here's this proverb, the longest mile is the last mile home, and I think that's roughly true and I think we're going to see that in the economy
So this is a prediction about the macro, monetary policy, fiscal policy outlook
I think the last mile of course is getting from 3% inflation in the US to 2% inflation
And I think that last mile is going to be a long mile and have lots of zigzans, eggs and actually be more complicated than people understand it to be
So if that's right then we don't get to 2% that fast and we get there and then we go back, we kind of stay closer to 3
So there'll be a big debate about whether 3 is the right number as opposed to 2 being the right number
I think the Federal Reserve will find itself subject to political pressure in a way that it may never have before
Because during a very complex election year, central banks around the world, but in particular the Federal Reserve, we'll find themselves in the crosshairs of politicians
They will feel even more pressure to become politicized in a way that they have never seen before
And then the final piece of that story is we had this remarkable event in October where Bond yields blew out up to 4%
And I think that is not a red herring, I think that is the canary in the coal mine
We're going to see those concerns reassert themselves and I think broadly what monetary policy was in the last 15 years
Which is kind of the dominant thing in the world that is going to be replaced by fiscal policy
And the next 15 years are about fiscal policy in the way that monetary policy was dominant for the last 15 years
Yeah, interesting. Can I ask you about the first part of your prediction?
So say if you go from 4% to 2%, that's really hard. What is it that is substantively different from say going from 6% to 4% or 8% to 6%
That's a good question. I don't think it's about the difference between 6 and 5 and 3 and 2
I think it's more that 2, which we lived with for so long, is kind of unsupportable going forward
Which is that was undergirded by lots of goods deflation, especially from China
So I don't think it's about what is this 1% of your point difference? But if you have wage growth for the reasons we talked about in the last episode
And you have pressure on that margin, it's just very difficult to get all the way back down
So set another way, the fact that we lived for so long at 2 might just have been an artifact of very odd circumstances
I think we may need to just re-normalize around a different number and that debate will I think become very political
And this is a great debate to have because as you pointed out there's nothing magical about 2
In fact, one of the most important reasons why we like low inflation numbers is because unexpected inflation has really big consequences
As long as we're in steady state and the number is 2 or 3 or 4
But our expectations match up with reality
I don't really think there's anything that's special about a number like 2
It's just that as inflation goes up, it typically becomes much more volatile
And as inflation bounces back and forth, then our expectations are not in line with what happens
Which always leads to big redistributions that we want to avoid
Exactly
You could make many other arguments, so for instance, we know it's very hard to cut nominal wages
If you have a little bit of inflation, there's a lot of flexibility
Yeah, I totally agree with everything you said
The contrasting force is political, which is I think inflation has proven to be much more politically costly than anybody anticipated
Now of course that was very high inflation relative to the levels we're talking about
But I think there is going to be this pushback about how costly inflation really is
Because people are angry about it and they seem to be persistently angry about it
So I think you're right, in a normal world we'd have a conversation about whether 2 or 3 makes sense
But I think there is also going to be this pushback oddly on the politics of it which is, gosh, is it more costly than we thought it was
This kind of idea that we're returning back to the world that we had before of 2%, very quickly I think is going to turn out to be wrong
And that will be an interesting part of 2024
Super interesting
Okay, Felix, rock on
My prediction is that one of the big streaming companies, so Disney, Netflix, will buy electronic arts
The electronic game maker
Think about it, what happens in streaming?
So one discovery is that if you add a tier that is advertising supported, that can be financially very lucrative
And in fact, if you look at revenue per subscriber, it's probably even better than having fairly high subscription prices
So I see Disney+, I see Netflix, the basis of their model is an ad supported tier
And then the next trick that we talked about once, because I find it so irritating is that instead of giving us entire shows and entire seasons
Right
They now drip, drip, drip, give us little pieces
So think about what that means
We have a business model that is essentially ad supported and we force you to consume in little chunks
Oh my god, they are reinventing television
Exactly what we had with network television
And so then the question is okay, so from television history is okay
But it's not super exciting where will growth come from? And I think growth will come from games
Activision, blizzard, Microsoft, as so often these days is a little ahead of the pack
But I think streaming will make use of these opportunities as well
And electronic arts is probably one of the companies that is really attractive to acquire
And Felix, I think the whole streaming world is fascinating
I'm curious what the motivation is
Would a streamer want to buy them for ongoing gaming content creation or is it about the library?
What are we getting if you buy electronic arts? Are you getting an engine for new games or are you getting properties?
That's a really interesting question in part, I think an engine for new games that alone is attractive
The most successful gaming franchises they have long lives, surprisingly long lives
And so even buying that revenue stream, I'm blessed it's priced really dearly, is attractive
But then also maybe most important, the dividing lines between different types of content get really blurry
So you take gaming content and maybe you make a documentary out of it or maybe you have a short episode
Where some character from a game world can appear
Right
So a little bit like the blurring lines between sports and more traditional entertainment
I think the same is happening to the gaming and the more traditional video world
That makes this really attractive
The thing I like about this prediction is not just about gaming
It's a broader story about using content and distributing content as opposed to creating content
So I've been struck by these decisions about letting suits get onto Netflix and how powerful that has been
Historically content creation has been the dominant way to go in the last 15 years
And I actually think people will scale that back and want to just monetize existing content
And I think gaming is one version of that, so I think the interesting thing about gaming is the properties
And then how you monetize it
So in my sense of the world we're going to end up saying, well how can I just take existing content and monetize that
As opposed to constantly asking the question of how do you produce new content?
Interesting
Do you think these limits that we now see with the overviews of the Marvel Universe in horrible stories
Some are related to one here or another
And maybe the officials can follow the storylines but probably 90% of humanity couldn't care less
Do you think as we push to reuse content or as we push to reuse popular characters
That in the end the audience just gets tired of it
Your ability to do wonderful content based on the same ingredients is just limited
I think that's got to be true but I think it's also true that new content is just not proving economically rewarding enough
Because of the fragmentation, it's this tension, you're absolutely right, audiences want that
But it's not clear that it's going to pay off and we just happen to live through time when we were willing to do this remarkable level of content creation
For relatively small audiences and that just may be done
Yeah, mildly depressing because I need more British cop shows
Yes, that's right
Your next prediction me here, I don't know if it's a prediction or just maybe the most interesting story to watch in 2024 is going to be Argentina
Oh
It is absolutely fascinating what is going on there
As you I'm sure no Felix Javier Miele has been elected, it's the new president of Argentina
To say he's a remarkable character is just a country understatement
Yes, but the reason it's important for the world is Argentina is a serious economy
If what he is trying to do in Argentina has any kind of an effect that is salutary
I think it becomes a model for a lot of people and so what he's talking about is just remarkable regulatory reform
And stripping of crazy amounts of regulations
He's talked about dollarization of an economy that's a pretty large economy
And so if he's even moderately successful it's going to become a playbook of sorts
Alternatively, if he isn't I think it's going to be a real tough moment for the economic populism
And one version of the economic populism that has taken hold around the world
So I think he's going to end up doing pretty radical things
Not as radical as he's promised because he'll get slowed down in various ways
But it is going to be a really remarkable story to watch
Either because I think he's going to fail significantly or he's going to have some positive benefits
I do not know how optimistic I should be
And not only because it's Argentina, the track record isn't exactly encouraging
But also because he lacks legislative support
So many have to reforms that he talks about
He would need that dollarization is so difficult to even think about for an economy
Whose business cycles are so fundamentally different from the US business cycles
Absolutely
And we spoke about it in the context of Greece
When we thought, oh, you know, if Greece had its own currency
What would the economy look like?
What would there be a degree of flexibility that would actually help manage the crisis
Now that the worst is over for Greece and Greece is now growing very quickly
It's one of the fastest growing economies in Europe
It makes you rethink that kind of discipline that comes from being less on your own, more constrained
Maybe after all, that's not such a bad thing
The dollarization alone is completely, completely fascinating to think about
Also just symbolically speaking, a clear break with the fairness past
Yes
It's probably something that is really valuable for Argentina
Yeah
And I think the other piece of it, which is just the level of frustration in Argentina is so great
Because the economic performance has been so difficult, if you look back at a longer chart of GDP per capita in Argentina over the last 100 years
It's really quite striking and depressing
Argentina was a very wealthy country 100 years ago
And it is a story that is really one of the great economic misfortunes of the last 100 years
And so then people are so desperate for such radical changes
And one has to appreciate that desperation
It's easy to say, oh my god, it's all kooky and crazy
But it's not because it's founded in deep, deep desperation
Seeing how that plays out I think is going to be really fascinating
I'm not sure whether it be optimistic or not, Felix, but it is going to be something where we learn about some big ideas that matter for economies like Turkey
Developing countries all around the world in Africa and Latin America and I think those lessons will get learned in the next 12 to 24 months
Yeah, oh my god, I so wish your optimism with play out
I, of course, hope for the best for Argentina, but I just think as an object lesson it's going to turn out to be
Let's put it this way, lots of dissertations are going to get rid of
One measure of output
Yeah, exactly one measure of output is going to be going up
Alright, Felix, what do you got?
So my prediction is in 2024 we will increasingly come to see plastic as the new asbestos
I think we have taken plastic just completely for granted at any day in your life
How many interactions you have with plastic products?
Yeah
And often you don't really think about it and often it is just incredibly useful
It's just about perfect
And now, like in asbestos, two things have happened, one is it's a product that is related to oil
And we're trying to make the economy less carbon intensive, so I think that's one headwind
That alone would probably not be that effective
But I think the conversation is about microplastics, you know, in every human body
Essentially you find lots and lots of plastic because we're inhaling it, it's in the water, it's in the air, it's everywhere
Yeah
I think that is essentially how asbestos came to be seen what it is to be seen
Because it had this dramatic impact on human health
And I think we're well on our way towards seeing plastic as something that yes
And it's completely crucial for so many things we do, but also deeply, deeply problematic in a way that I don't think historically we've really appreciated
Wow
That's a big one Felix, I gotta think about this one
The asbestos story, I don't know enough about it as I probably should, but you're right, it was kind of sudden and it was related to concerns about its safety
That I think that really made it in some sense go away in a fast way and in a very public way
With plastics, there are definitely concerns and they've been percolating up for a little bit of while
I wonder if it requires a larger moment, something to happen where people say, oh my god
Because the convenience issues and the cost efficiency is so amazing with plastics that it has to be some kind of a seismic moment where I think people wake up
Yeah
How do we think about the replacements and the substitutes or do we think about just reductions in use?
All of the above
Think about plastic straws, the image what happens with plastic straws when they're in the water and they get eaten by fish
I think those images, I think, were absolutely crucial in convincing us
So first, the plastic straws get replaced by paper-based products
And then they're just awful basically, the touch is just not right
And then all of a sudden we think, really is it absolutely necessary to drink out of a glass with the help of a straw?
Maybe not, maybe we can do away with the straw altogether
I think those are the two kinds of responses that you will see
So you see them plastic bags now, we just substitute paper
And then you start thinking about, well, actually could I bring bags to the supermarket instead of picking up paper bags every time?
Of course, plastic because it's everywhere
And it's used across such a broad range of products
Think automobiles, think basically anything you can think of, there's plastic involved
I think the substitution patterns will look very different
But the story that will drive it is this realization how much we breathe it in, how much we eat it
It reminds me a little bit when you look at organic products
We made the most progress, I think, in organic food
And it's always this idea that, oh, it's something that's in me
Or it's something that I'm feeding my kids
That then becomes a very powerful motivator
And I think with plastics probably similar, where you're thinking
The moment it touches your body, the moment you ingest it in some fashion
I think that's sort of a game changer in the sense that we care about it in a way that we haven't really cared about it historically
But I agree with you, the substitution process, much, much more difficult than with asbestos
Where we used to think of asbestos as just this amazing building material
Right
We forget now how even very late companies made acquisition of other companies that had asbestos legacies
Not really thinking about the long term consequences
And plastic is sort of at this moment where you can think about it
And it's completely innocent and who cares
And I think you will come to regret it
That's great
Me here, what do you have?
Well, the last decade has seen this remarkable rise in quantitative trading and algorithmic trading
And I think in part we're ready for something to shake that world
And I'm not sure what will shake that world, but I think it is likely to be some kind of a scandal and maybe regulatory crackdown
So these quant funds are remarkable players in financial markets today
And their growth has kind of happened without us really knowing fully how to think about them
I'm not speaking entirely of just index funds, things like Vanguard and BlackRock, which have already seen a little bit of pushback
But I'm really talking about quantitative systematic trading funds
And we referenced this Felix in our last episode when we talked a little bit about how market movements appear to be
Out of line with things that are going on in the economy
And I think there's conceivably a regulatory crackdown and maybe a market manipulation scandal that will plague that world
And will cause people to ask questions that have not been asked during the last 15 years
So in particular, what kind of asset prices are contributing to their returns?
Which kinds of assets?
And what are they doing and what are those strategies?
And so once regulators get interested in those questions
I think that world will have to kind of become much more public and much more mainstream
And in that process, I think we may learn things that people may feel not so great about
And so I'm not exactly sure how that shakes out Felix as you can tell from my vagueness
But my sense is that that world is ripe for some combination of a scandal or regulatory crackdown
That changes the rules of the game in interesting ways
Is your sense that there are particular asset classes that are problematic or is it that training practices and the extent to which they exploit momentum
That then leads us to asking questions about where the momentum comes from in the first place?
It's that piece Felix, exactly.
You said it better than I did, which is I think there's going to be a sense of what is going on with momentum in markets
And who's driving that momentum?
And then are we seeing more violence in markets than we need to?
Because in fact, these are self-reinforcing, self-feeding phenomenon and the detachment from fundamentals in certain asset classes
And of course we've seen this before, the old version of this was market manipulation scandals in the silver market
Where you had like the hundred brothers doing things
I'm just wondering if there's something like that that is going to end up playing out
I know that's a very vague idea, but I have a feeling that something like that can happen, especially given what's been going on in the last 12 or 18 months
One reason I find this prediction so interesting is because it will also lead to a conversation about how the trading is related to real economic activity
And I think that's the triggering thing, which I think we end up asking those questions, which we should be asking
And frankly, that world has grown up without asking those questions
I think we're ripe to see something there Felix
Yeah, wow, okay, excellent, it'll be an exciting 2020 for us
Exactly, exactly, and what do you have Felix?
I have a slightly gloomy R1, I think the quality of search results, so Google search or Bing or any one of these will deteriorate rapidly
Even more so, you mean?
Even more so than today
So today, frankly, it's basically the business model that pollutes the search results
So the 15,000 sponsored links that are vaguely unrelated to what you're really looking for
So that you have to now go on page 5 to really figure out what you want
So I think that's not going to disappear
But I think it will be incredibly difficult for Google and everyone in the search business to distinguish between AI-generated content
That then includes every hallucination of AI that you can imagine
And the content that is verified high quality
This is such a lucrative market
Search is just so incredibly profitable. Think about all the industries that spring up around search engine optimization
That is going to have an exact equivalent in how can I produce AI content that is really hard to detect for Google
That is really hard to detect for Microsoft
Because that's like search engine optimization
You end up in the results and that is of course where the big money is
As a result, if you want to see a silver lining in this, I think we will rely to a much greater extent on trusted brands
I would not be surprised if say the use of Wikipedia would explode
Because it's a source that is less polluted. Normally people are skeptical about what AI means for search
But they're thinking that AI chatbots will replace search
But I think that's actually not quite right. I think what will happen is search itself will be such a miserable experience as a result of AI
That you'll go directly to the New York Times or you'll go directly to the Wall Street Journal
Wow, that's a radical prediction. I love this prediction. Let me push back a little which is
It seems like it becomes a cat and mouse game between Google and all these people trying to trick Google
Yes
And if that's the cat and mouse game, isn't Google going to win? Aren't they going to be able to figure it out?
If it is this cat and mouse game, do we really think that these more bit players can outfox Google, given how valuable the search business is to them?
Yeah
Why can't they always stay one step ahead?
So think about practically speaking how that might happen
So you have a piece of content that lives on the web already
And now we're thinking how we distinguish something that has been generated by AI from something that wasn't AI generated in the first place which might just be wrong information
You could exclude particular sources
So you could say anything on Reddit
Reddit is probably going to be completely overwhelmed by bots
And as a result, anything on Reddit I don't trust. That makes search worse because guess what? There's a lot of really fabulous content on Reddit that should be included
You could do things like if the grammar is not quite right. We know that all of these chapots are really beautiful like grammar
I now get email from people who English is not their first language and they're writing me these really beautiful emails which obviously come from some chapot
So then what will people do? They will introduce mistakes in their AI generated content
So in search engine optimization it's just been incredibly incredibly hard to beat the optimizers at their game
That's interesting
No real reason to believe that that should be different in AI
And so it is just this remarkable cheapening of the technology to create this stuff
It's a persistent problem but now the cost of producing that bad content have gone so low that the battle shifts in some tectonic way
That's interesting
97% of the web will be bot generated
And so then search really becomes a search for the needle in the haystack
Okay, that's not something to look forward to
Yes, hold on to your New York Times subscription I think is one piece of advice
There you go
I'm fresh out of predictions for 2024. How about you, Mayor? Do you have one or two for us?
I just have three little weird product kinds of recommendations or thoughts about what will be important
So I'll give you all three super fast
One, I think energy drinks are going to really struggle
There have been now more and more health concerns that have been raised
So for example, Panera has run into this with their lemonade and they've stuck by it interestingly
And I think they get replaced by prebiotic drinks
So this is my beverage market prediction which is energy drinks finally have their comeuppance
And prebiotic drinks which are basically drinks with fiber embedded in them
Kind of take them
Number two, I think the Apple Vision Pro is going to be amazing
Oh
It's going to be more amazing than people realize
Forecasts are for something like maybe a hundred thousand or maybe four hundred thousand units in the first year
And I have a feeling it's going to just be like more than a million
Yeah, now that doesn't really move the needle for Apple in any meaningful way
And I don't think it becomes a product like the iPhone or anything else
If you've seen the video the way they integrate the real world and that world
It's really something else and so I think that's going to be better than you think
Wow
I see someone spend thousands of dollars on a new asset
You're right, it's going to be around a four thousand dollar price tag
And I think that market is larger than we understand it to be
And it's going to be far better than Meta's efforts
It's going to be far better than a lot of people's efforts
So that'll be interesting and then the final one is Percy Jackson
New Disney content is going to go gangbusters
And is going to lead to like a whole revival of Disney
So yeah, there you go, three crazy product predictions
Wow
Can I ask you about the Apple prediction?
I can completely see why it's so novel, it's so good
Yeah
Lots of people will want one, the bigger question I think is
You see people use it daily
Yeah
You know how that novel saying that is amazing and then
Really, you want to wear something like that every day for long hours?
Well, so how about this?
Obviously gaming is a big part of this, which I'm not going to talk about
But let's just think about consuming content on an iPad
So I will watch a TV show or a movie on an iPad
Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to be doing that in a couple of years
I actually think I could be using the Apple Vision Pro to be consuming content in that way
And it'll be a better visual experience
Yeah
And I'll have integrated with the real world in a kind of interesting way
And I think it replaces that form of content consumption
And that is a large market
Yeah
By the way, I'm not making predictions about that
I just think in the short run it's going to be a banging product
And it's going to be way better than the competition
And then ultimately it's about am I willing to switch to that way to consume content
Pure like sit back kind of consume content, not lean forward content consumption
And I think it can be
So that I think is going to be fun to watch
It's interesting
I do think comfort will decide its fate
Exactly
You know, I've been wearing glasses forever
My glasses are not uncomfortable in any real way
But do I like moments when I don't have to wear my glasses?
Yes, absolutely
So somehow the comfort level needs to be quite amazing for it to make it into an everyday product
In particular, the moment when you want to relax and watch a show
Well, that's the interesting part
I don't think there's a world where we're all walking around with this stuff on
At least not now
But that can happen maybe
I think it's a little bit more about do I consume a little bit of content for an hour or two at night?
Yeah
And is that an interesting way to do it?
And I think it may well be
Yeah
It's been a while since I've done the Apple fanboy thing
So there you go
Okay, Felix, recommendations, what do you have for us this week?
One of the trends I paid a little bit of attention to is the quality of data visualization
And it's been around as a topic for quite some time now
But I have to say wherever you look, mainstream media
I follow a subreddit called Data is Beautiful
People have just become so good at telling sometimes complex stories
With the help of beautiful and simple data visualization
I wanted to recommend one particular graph that I really loved it appeared in the economist
And it asks the question, how rich are countries really?
If we had a ranking of the richest country, what would it look like?
And what the graph does is it takes three steps
It starts just with GDP per capita
And then it asks, well, but actually prices of products and services are not the same
What if we adjust for Switzerland being super expensive and other economies less so
And then the last step is an adjustment for how many hours do people actually work to produce that kind of income
Right
And it's one of these things where just seeing these very simple and obvious ideas
How big a difference they make is just absolutely fabulous
So the US, for instance, starts out ranked 7th on the list of GDP per capita
It slips by a rank once you take prices into account
And then it ends up being 11th once you take into account that Americans work long hours
One of the most dramatic changes is if you look at Belgium
No one thinks of Belgium as a superstar economy
So they start out 18th on GDP per capita
There are 15th once you take prices into account
And then once you take into account how much they work
They end up being the sixth richest economy
So it's all captured in this really simple elegant graph that connects the different steps
People who do data visualization, if you have a chance to look at it on visual capitalists, on Reddit, on any of these forms
I think it's such a joy you learned so much and it's often just incredibly beautiful to look at at the same time
That is a great recommendation. I agree data visualization is such a wonderful field
I remember like being obsessed with tough tea like way back west
The FT actually has gotten really good at this and one of the things they've done which I really love is the regional differences within countries
So if you look within the US and you look at the poorest parts of those countries
They look a lot like developing countries all around the world
Looking under the hood is so powerful just like what your example does which is really fantastic
That sounds great
What do you have for us in here?
So I have just started this book but I have just already fallen in love with it. It is a book by Carlo Rovelli
Who is a physicist who writes books for the lay audience about physics
But his latest book is about Anoxymondr which is a mouthful and somebody I had never heard of before
Who is a Greek thinker and really Rovelli argues kind of the original scientific thinker
And so Anoxymondr turns out to be this incredible character who arguably is the father of the scientific method
Is somebody who thought about evolution quite deeply early
Who thought about laws
And I had never heard his name before
Yeah, I haven't either yeah
And Rovelli writes so beautifully and in a world that sometimes is lacking reason
It is wonderful to like read about somebody who thinks so seriously about the origins of science
So it's Carlo Rovelli and the book is called Anoxymondr and the birth of science
And it's really fantastic
Fabulous
So this is it for tonight and this is it for 2023
We wanted to thank all our listeners for listening in, for thinking with us about the world
The changes in business, the changes in culture and then of course a very very big thank you to our audio engineer Peter Lennane
Who is responsible for the wonderful sounds that you get to hear on the After Hours podcast
This is it, After Hours from the Ted Audio Collective
