Welcome to Cloudlandia Ep166: The Great Yesterdays
The way you structure your time shapes everything else, including who else can reach you, and when.
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we get into two parallel time experiments that Dan and Dean are running, Dan's 70-day practice of using each day to "create a great yesterday," and Dean's intermittent phone fasting that divides the day into clear, protected zones. Dan traces the origin of his approach to a story from Leora Weinstein, who shifted his focus entirely from the uncertain future to building a reliable past, one day at a time. The result? His most productive December and January on record, and a measurable shift away from last-minute scrambling.
They also explore how abundance, whether it's 14 kinds of corn flakes or an infinite choice of tasks, can paralyze decision-making rather than free it. The conversation moves through Dan's "Upping Your Game" tool (an evolution of the A/B/C model), AI bots taking on their creators' personalities, the surprising legal and real estate ripple effects of data centers, and a listener book recommendation about the history of money. Dan makes the case that the real cure for future anxiety isn't better planning, it's higher consciousness in the present.
There's something almost game-like about committing to a better past each morning, and both Dan and Dean are finding that the scoreboard doesn't lie. This one's worth your time.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean Jackson:
Welcome to Cloud Landia, Mr. Sullivan. Hello there. There he is. From the West Coast.
Dan Sullivan:
Yes, I am straight
Dean Jackson:
To Cloud Landia. Cloud Landia is accessible from all points.
Dan Sullivan:
Yes, yes. But where you're sending from does make a difference. So I had a question for you.
Dean Jackson:
Tell me
Dan Sullivan:
From your experience, because you've had both, what's worse, 23 degrees Fahrenheit in Orlando, or minus 10 degrees in Toronto?
Dean Jackson:
Well, I will tell you this, that it came to the point last week that I actually had to wear pants one day. And so yeah, there's that, which I don't prefer, but today is a beautiful, we're right back now up to, let's see, it's 71 and sunny, probably similar to what you have right this moment.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, we're probably there. Yeah, the door is open. I'm looking out at, it's a nice place. I don't know if you've ever been here. Which one? La Jolla. Estancia.
Dean Jackson:
Yes. I've been to Estancia. Yeah, it's very
Dan Sullivan:
Nice. Nice place. Yeah. Yeah. We gotten in here just about this time yesterday, just a casual afternoon. Went to a really nice place, Maxima, who was with you last week? Maxima. And we went to an old hotel called the Empress Hotel.
Dean Jackson:
I know where that is.
Dan Sullivan:
Really nice restaurant.
Dean Jackson:
Oh, that's great.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, it's good.
Dean Jackson:
So the crowd is gathering.
Dan Sullivan:
I don't know if any of the clients are in yet. Our team just came in. I was sitting in the lobby. Lobby. And so half our team. Yes,
Dean Jackson:
Please. When is the actual, so you are in La Jolla, California for the Free Zone Summit, and that is on Tuesday is the actual day?
Dan Sullivan:
Well, it really starts
Dean Jackson:
Monday night.
Dan Sullivan:
Well, it starts Monday afternoon because Mike Kix is going to put on an AI from three to five o'clock. And then,
Dean Jackson:
Oh, there you go.
Dan Sullivan:
Then the Pacific
Dean Jackson:
Starts right in his backyard.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Pretty well. Pretty well. And he's going to use one of our tools for part of his presentation. We have, I don't know if you remember an old tool. It was called the A BC model, and the A represented activities that you find really irritating. You hate them.
Dan Sullivan:
Yes.
Dan Sullivan:
And B represents okay activities that you don't hate them, you don't love them, you're just doing them more or less as a matter of habit. But it takes up your time and attention, and then they see as fascinating and motivating. And then you apportion what amount of time do you think you're spending on A and also B, and also C right now, and then a year from now, where would you want your time allocation? But I changed it, upgraded it, and it's called Upping Your Game. And then you brainstorm for each of the three categories, and then you talk about the top three changes you're going to make with a top three for B and top three with C. And then Mike's going to show how that relates to ai, where AI is the who. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. So
Dean Jackson:
I like that. I mean, yeah, that's great. I always had to mix in my mind, we're used to A being the good thing and C being the less than thing. So I had to always flip that in my mind that the C is actually the good thing in this model, but the sentiment of it I love, and it's similar. It's like you could overlay the unique ability, unique ability, and the things you you're excellent at and the things you're,
Dan Sullivan:
And in some ways, that's almost the essence of coach. And so it's been a couple, it's simple, but not necessarily easy.
Dean Jackson:
That's the truth. That is the truth.
Dan Sullivan:
Simple. But not necessarily could be easy, but not necessarily.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, it's easy. Yeah. It's nice when you look at it just to be crystal clear, right? That fits with your, I've been using your model of is there any way for me to get this result without doing anything? That would be the A plus for me of these. Right? And then, yeah, what's the least amount
Dan Sullivan:
That I, that's a model that's a little closer to where I am right now, that the a c model, I think the A, b, C model is about 15 years old. And the question, the three questions, I think is about two years. So one of them is repair of the past. The other one is it's sort of I'm not going to do anything in the future. Right, right, right. Yeah. I'm going to expand and grow and jump without me doing anything at all.
Dean Jackson:
That's even better with your mind. With your mind, yes. Prompting.
But I think that's the magic of that is knowing what you want, knowing that this is what I want, but is there any way for me to get it without doing anything? I think that's fantastic. So Max was here in Orlando at Celebration last week. We had a breakthrough blueprint, and we actually, we had about a half size group. We lost people that were stranded in North Carolina, the freeze in New Jersey, the deep freeze or whatever. One of they showed me it was a hundred car pile up in Charlotte, a hundred car pile up. I mean, you could see that's like the ice. Everybody's sliding into each other. That's kind of crazy. I don't prefer it. Every time that kind of stuff happens, it makes me more resolute in my snow free millennium
Dan Sullivan:
Commitment.
Dean Jackson:
I'm quite enjoying that. That's the right way to do it.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Well, I think people are really built differently, but I so love the change of seasons that I wouldn't be tempted like La Jolla here. I mean, there isn't much here that would give you the kind of resistance that you would actually develop character.
Dean Jackson:
Well, the only thing Dan would be the traffic. The traffic trying to get out of La Jolla at any time in rush hour. But other than that, you don't have to leave La Jolla or get into it. It's perfection. Yeah,
Dan Sullivan:
I, I don't feel any of Newton's third law here, third law for every action, there's an opposite and equal. I'm just not getting the equal reaction here. It's just all easy. I mean, how can you develop character when everything's
Dean Jackson:
Just, well, you have to develop. What you have to do is develop the character in order to get to be there. That's the real thing. Somebody said that San Diego, especially LA and the coastal areas have gotten unreachable for average Americans or the things, and it's like my first thought was, well try harder. I mean, that's not, LA Jolla doesn't owe anybody anything to be affordable. Why
Dan Sullivan:
Now would you count $40 for bagel and Lve? Exactly. Choice. That was my choice. This morning. I said, I'd like to have the bagel and locks,
Dan Sullivan:
And
Dan Sullivan:
They said, well, it's a buffet. You can put together your own bagel and locks. But what if I just want the bagel and locks?
Dan Sullivan:
Doesn't matter
Dan Sullivan:
How much is, well, first of all, how much is the buffet? It's $40. And I says, well, what if I just want the bagel and Lux? It's 40.
Dean Jackson:
Right, exactly.
Dan Sullivan:
And it's not even bagel, it's actually Bagel Crisps. So they've taken a bagel and they've cut it into 10 pieces and crisp it.
Dean Jackson:
Okay.
Dan Sullivan:
But it's actually quite good. It's actually
Dean Jackson:
Good Melba toast in a way.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. It's like Melba toast, but it's bagel. It's got a nice taste to it. So I had five of them. I had five of them
Dean Jackson:
Get your money's worth.
Dan Sullivan:
I wasn't heavy on the locks. I had a big let or whatever they call 'em, a crisp. I had one of those. And then you put on the cream cheese and you put on the tomato, and then you put on a healthy, healthy portion of lox. So I wouldn't have eaten that much if I just had a bagel, but since I got five of the fins, I just decided to load up on the cargo.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, there you go. I've been telling you, but you know what I was looking at, there's a reason that people who could live anywhere in America choose to live in San Diego. It's the very best weather that's available if you're looking for a place that's room temperature all year.
Dan Sullivan:
Mike Kig has gotten above that because he lives down on the pen. Pen. I just can't put up with those cool mornings in San Diego. Oh,
Dean Jackson:
That's so funny. I kept thinking that I might have to get a place down south to get out of here, but we're back in the normal now. But it's, it's been a couple of weeks since we last recorded, and I've been really locked in on the intermittent phone fasting and the inevitability of that is a win. So I mean, those times have just become, everything is falling into a place on that. I mean, it's by starting an hour, kind of an hour before bed and then going all the way till noon. It's just such nice margins. It gives me time to be just in my own world and hindered by the siren call of the dopamine box. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Well, first of all, I just feel that if you change your time structure, you change many other things when you change your time structure. But the other thing is you're also changing other people's habits too, because they want to phone you and get you, and you've taken 14 hours off the dial and they can't get to you directly. I mean, they can leave a message or something like that, but a lot of people, they won't phone you if they can't get you right away.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. But it's very little of the times 10:00 PM till 10:00 AM basically, you've got lots of leeway there that nobody's really expecting that they're going to reach you at that time. But the mornings, sometimes people want to have to reach you, but I've never found that it takes me more than 10 minutes to catch up when I take my phone out. I may have, I would say on average three or four texts, maybe seven at the most, and then a bunch of emails, but really only three or four that are personally meant for you or need some attention, and that's it. So the trade off has been amazing. Just the freedom of that. I sleep better, feel more. I feel like it's almost like playing a zone. I've really got, it's almost like four quarters in the thing of the 10:00 PM till noon. I count that as the first zone because I've really found that that's the start of the day, I think is how I end the day before. And then zone two is from noon to six where any of the time commitments or other people that I'm talking to
All happen in that on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and it's six o'clock till 10 o'clock when the phone goes away, that's all me or whatever. That's my reading and thinking and watching Netflix or whatever I want to do. But it's such a nice rhythm. I've been looking back, I think I've shared with you periodically. I look back at my collection of journals and I'll just randomly pull something and it's amazing how consistently true to that kind of desired rhythm, that is my real preference.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Well,
Dan Sullivan:
I was just reflecting on, I've been on a time experiment too, using today to create a great, yesterday
Dean Jackson:
I have questions,
Dan Sullivan:
And this is day 70 that I've done that and it's had a real impact on me. It's very interesting. It's actually going to be a book. It's going to be not this quarter's book, but it'll be next quarter's book. Because I find that when I describe what I'm doing, people are really interested in it. And I've had some people adopt it immediately and they report back and say, this makes a big difference. And so just to fill in those who don't know what I'm talking about, it actually comes from Leora Weinstein. And Leora was talking about sort of a parents' conference where on the last night of the conference, people were talking about how devoted they were and committed to making sure their children had a great future, and Leore took a different approach. And he said, well, I really don't know much about the future. It's pretty unpredictable, and I really don't know what my children are going to do with their future. So I just focus on making sure that my children have a great past. And that thought really hit me at the time. So it was almost a year and a half before I did anything with that thought. And I said, I'm just going to work on having great yesterdays. So when I get up in the morning, my whole job that day is to utilize, is to be as conscious and to be as productive as I can. So that tomorrow morning, this is a great yesterday,
Dan Sullivan:
And
Dan Sullivan:
I've done, so I'm working on my 71st. Great. Yesterday, and it truly has been, when I look back to the beginning of December when I started this, December was by far the most productive December I've ever had. January was the most productive I ever had. And already in February, I can see this is going to be the best February if I can continue what I'm doing. But one thing I've noticed, because I do have a DD and I've not been a DD for 70 days now.
Dean Jackson:
Wow. I mean, that's awesome. And you've been off your vitamin a regimen too for some time. Yeah, quite a long time. I'm very curious because since we talked about it last time, I've had the questions and I was curious about the way that you record it because you were saying something that you were saying no of something not. Yeah. So can you describe that
Dan Sullivan:
To me again? Yeah. So yeah, I'm just looking at my place where I record the activities. I'm just looking at it right now. First thing in the morning, I get up and I take a pill that I've got a, what's called, what is it called? It's something that's a tremor, but it's in my right arm and there's a pill I take called propranolol.
Dan Sullivan:
Tremor be
Dan Sullivan:
Gone. Yeah, tremor be gone. I take it and then for about four or five hours, but if I don't, my fingers are a little jangly, and I've had it checked out. I know there's some word, and I checked. I haven't checked out every year, and there's no increase in it. And it's got a name,
Dean Jackson:
Something tremor. I know there's a word for it, it I've heard that too. Word for it. Word.
Dan Sullivan:
And if I take the medication, I don't have it. So if I'm appearing in public or that I take it about an hour beforehand and everything's good. So I take that. And then I have a thing called the hustle drops. Do you know what hustle drops are?
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, the peppermint.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Well, it's a mint mix. It's a mint mix. They got six different mints. It's called hustle drops. And I just take, you got a little thing that squeezes and it goes up.
Dan Sullivan:
Yep. The dropper.
Dan Sullivan:
Yep, the dropper. And I just give it a full dropper, and then I'm awake, I'm really awake.
And then at home, when I go around right now, if I was back in Toronto, the first thing I get out of bed, I go downstairs, we have four gas fireplaces and in the main house, and I turn one on in the bedroom. Then there's one in the dining room, one in the living room, and one in the basement. And we're going to be up and down over the next couple hours. So I turn those on, turn all the lights, and I make sure the temperature, I put it up to 70, and then I go back and I get back into bed. So that's my morning routine. And then we get up and we have, it's a very interesting thing. It's from Dr. Good now. He lives in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and he's got a thing called prodrome, P-R-O-D-R-O-M-E, prodrome. And they're tablets. They're not a prescription tablet. It's not a, but what it does is that it increases brain clarity. So you take them at night before you go to bed and you take them for thing in the morning. So I do that, but I'm just giving you, these are very, very small things
Dan Sullivan:
That
Dan Sullivan:
I'm talking about, but what I notice is every day when I do it, I'm more and more conscious that I'm doing them. So my consciousness of every everyday's activities has grown very significantly over the last. And my feeling is the more conscious you are of the present, the less you're bothered by the future.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, that's true. Because it's all there is,
Dan Sullivan:
And it doesn't matter what you're conscious of, what I've discovered in the last 70 days, it doesn't matter. Well, that's an important activity. People will say, well, I am conscious of the really important activities, but I don't spend any time to the, it doesn't matter what you're conscious about. Consciousness in itself is a reward.
Dean Jackson:
Yes. Yeah. And that's the thing that the focus on creating a better past is that brings it into, there's a certain finality about that. What I've found is that whatever I am doing right now is what's going on. The permanent record.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah,
Dean Jackson:
It's real. Yeah, exactly.
Dan Sullivan:
It's actually real. You actually did it. Yeah. But there is a buildup. I noticed there's a momentum that it seems week by week I'm getting more done with more concentrated conscious experience. So it's got a really nice feel to it. And the other thing is I have a schedule. I'm a very well scheduled man, but I'm not the scheduler. Somebody else is the scheduler. And so today I take a look at everything that's going to happen between now and next Saturday, and then throughout the week, I'm trying to, whatever it is that's required on Thursday, I'll have it done on Tuesday, where before I'm waiting until the last minute to, because
Dan Sullivan:
Me
Dan Sullivan:
Too. Yeah. So I've noticed that I'm getting things done more ahead of time, and I mean, it doesn't feel I've been a lifetime last minute guy getting things done, done too. And that's changed. That's changed over the last 70 days because I get credit for doing it. I mean, if I do it on Tuesday, to a certain extent, it feels good to be ahead of the deadline anyway. I'm just playing with it. I think before I go, well, I'm going to write a book on it. I've got enough, I'll do it. But I'm not sure how I would bring it into the workshop except by talking about it. I don't think there's anything to it except just remind yourself first thing in the morning that you're, today is about creating a great yesterday.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. I mean, I think that's an amazing thing. I pulled out from our Joy of procrastination days. I was just sitting down about 15 minutes before we were scheduled to do our podcast, and I realized, okay, I'm heading over to a celebration and I need to pack. Packing is one of those things. That's the last minute think. But I realized, okay, I played the little game. I came back out, Hey, I've got a 10 minute unit here that I could make a in the packing.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. That was because it's local. I mean, I'm just right down the street, which is different than going on the thing, but it still has to get, you still have to pack up the stuff. So that 10 minute, going back to the 10 minute Jacksonian units that I used that, and there's an interesting urgency to it when you are positioning it before, there's no room for daily daling because I've, you and I are going to do our podcast, and so I had just enough time to do that and then get back and sit and get centered. Yeah. So I love those. It's fun how you get to, I want to say gamify it in a way, right? That's really what we're doing is we're,
Dan Sullivan:
Both of us are gaming. We're turning it into a game and no use playing the game if it's not fun.
Dean Jackson:
Right. That's exactly right. And here we are. I look at that. I look back, today's journal selections were from 2009, and it was fun to look back and see the same thing. Always trying to lay out the rhythm. And here I am 17 years later, and it's the same. I still have the same desire, and I imagine 22 years from now, that's going to be the same thing. Do you find anything different about the way you're approaching or gamifying time as an 82 almost year old than what you were doing at 60?
Dan Sullivan:
Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
What would be the difference, do you think?
Dan Sullivan:
Well, first of all, I wasn't talking to Dean Jackson every one, every two weeks back then, and yeah, just a lot of things. I hadn't written all the books, I had created all the tools, and that's actually all happened in my seventies. Probably the most productive, regular activities that I'm doing right now all happened after I was 70.
Dean Jackson:
That's encouraging. That's kind of an interesting thing to realize that when you're up against a fixed platform, I mean, that time itself, as we've talked about it, is moving at the speed of reality constantly, and that's not going to change. That. There's always going to be the sun rising and setting and 24 hours in a day and seven days in a week. That's a fixed framework, and you can use those any way you want.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. What's your relationship with reality?
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, exactly. That's the thing though, is I think what I discovered is that I think planning for the future and reflecting on the past and all of those things are really, it's not reality. The only reality is what you're putting on the permanent record. That's the thing. Your intentions aren't recorded unless you're journaling. You can journal your intentions and desires and wishes and thoughts and stuff, but that's not getting in the ledger. It's below the surface. You're not putting your mark. That's a good way of thinking about it, is that time happens front of stage is what gets put on the permanent record in a way. Right?
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. I think that there's a lot of gap and gain, lot of gap and gain quality to what we're talking about, because generally, before I started this new time experiment, let's say we go to a month earlier, I started this right around the 1st of December, so the 1st of October, I was still operating the way I had operated for my whole life and feeling a real time pressure, feeling a real time pressure. Now that I'm not doing it anymore, I can notice the difference of how thinking about the future, actually, I'm really not thinking too much about the future. What I noticed is I said, if I'm real conscious today, the future will kind of take care of itself.
Dan Sullivan:
And
Dan Sullivan:
It suggests to me that the reason why the future seems so uncertain and maybe even a cause for anxiety with a lot of people is that they're, they're actually not getting much consciousness out of the present.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I see that that's where that's a lot of, I find that for me, especially if I look back that a lot of the times and a lot of the time that I have allocated for focusing is has been that I'm there and I'm ready to focus, but I don't know what I'm going to focus on. So therefore, I spend that time figuring out what I want to focus on. And so I'm really trying to identify what is it that I really want to put on the permanent record today? Because you only get that chance. You only have the, once this time is gone, it's like the record is written. And so I think that's kind of a fun, it adds the gaming, it's almost like it makes your approach to life like being a contestant in Supermarket Sweep. You can sweep up all the stuff and put it your basket, but when the clock stops, you get what was in the basket.
Dan Sullivan:
What I was curious about, Dan, the person who checks out with the highest grocery bill is the winner. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. It was really interesting. The reason I'm telling you this story is that it played, it was central to a conversation I was having with Mark Young. I had a podcast with Mark on Tuesday, and there was a story, I think it might've been the New York Times, the magazine, the New York Times Sunday magazine, and it was about twin sisters who were born in East Germany, and they were identical twins, identical twins. And when they were about 18, one of them said, I heard that they're going to create a wall and they're going to close us down and we're going to get trapped here. The other sisters said, well, how would that make any difference? How would that actually, because it was already communist controlled already. And the one sister said, you got to come. We got to be in West Berlin in the next couple of days because they're going to put a wall and we won't be able to get out of East Berlin. And they went back and forth, but the one sister just decided to go, and the other one stayed behind, and then they didn't see other, see each other again for what was 60, 62, I think. So it was like 62 to 90 that they didn't see each other.
Dean Jackson:
Unbelievable.
Dan Sullivan:
And meanwhile, the sister who had gone to West Berlin had kept going, and she ended up in Iowa. She was in Iowa, she was in Iowa. And so finally she went back. As soon as the wall went down, she went back and she visited with her sister, and she says, now you've got to come to Iowa. So that's the setup of the story. And then the story of the sister arriving in Iowa and being picked up at the airport, she says, we're just going to stop and do some shopping on the way home.
Dean Jackson:
Oh, man.
Dan Sullivan:
It's one of those supermarkets that when they built it, they had to take into account the curvature of the earth. Yeah,
Dan Sullivan:
Right.
Dan Sullivan:
Exactly.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. 16 rows each of them a quarter mile long. Yeah, right. But not the biggest supermarket in the world, just the local big one. So she says, well, is there anything I can do? She says, yeah, go down to aisle 14, and if you turn on your left, you'll see corn bikes. Right. I'll meet you right back here at such and such a time. And the time comes up, and the East German sister isn't back yet. And so she goes down and she's standing in front of the cereal. She was on the cereal aisle, and she said, there are 14 kinds of corn flakes. She said, how do you ever choose? How do you ever choose? And she says, well, you just take away. She said, I haven't tried all 14. I've tried three or four, and I like this one. But she says, well, how do you make the decision that you like?
Dean Jackson:
Unbelievable. Right?
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. And she went back to East Germany and she never came back.
Dean Jackson:
Oh my
Dan Sullivan:
Goodness.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Just when you're surrounded with total abundance, how do you get specific?
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, that's true. Right. I think that's something about that I face in time decisions like that is with full autonomy on what to choose to work on or whatever. There's over choice. So many interesting and fun things you could, with
Dan Sullivan:
Corns, you just add sugar and they all taste the same.
Dean Jackson:
Exactly. I heard a comedian talking about that in the north, there's a supermarket chain called MAs, and he said he was in a MAs so big, they built a Walmart in the mayors, and he talked about that, being able to see the curvature of the earth
Dan Sullivan:
Within it. Yeah. So funny. You can actually see the horizon. Two thirds of the way down the aisle.
Dean Jackson:
I had, I was playing tennis. I had a doubles partner from Sweden, and he was in the same boat looking at all of the different choices of everything at the supermarkets. So funny, he called them cereals, though. That was always the fun thing. They didn't understand plural without an S. So it was all with cereals. So funny.
Dan Sullivan:
But this shows you that I suspect the future is going to be more choice. In other words, as we go along, I don't think they're going to be making less, fewer things. I think they're going to be making more things. And your engagement with any one of them is going to take time, and it's going to take time.
Dean Jackson:
You may as well. That's the thing. I look at all the things that are coming now with ai. Now they have, I don't know whether you've heard about Claude Bot. Yeah, I have. I have. Okay. So the funniest thing,
Dan Sullivan:
Choose your capability.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. Wild, right, that vision. Do you know Vish? Ani? Yeah. Yeah. So V was sharing that he built a Claude bot, gave her a name and very much like Charlotte, and she's been teaching him Spanish and in a Spanish voice and all these things, but he gave her a Twitter account and set up this whole outlets for her. And apparently now there's a notebook or something where it's like a social network for
Dan Sullivan:
Bot social network for the bots. Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, exactly. And she chose not to join in because she didn't like the way some of the bots were talking about their owners.
Dan Sullivan:
She
Dean Jackson:
Didn't think it was a productive environment. And I thought, oh my goodness. It's such a, wow. This is wild.
Dan Sullivan:
It's an interesting theme that your bot will take on your personality. And so if the person who creates the bot really doesn't like people, I bet, I bet their chatbot doesn't really like people.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, it's really, that's true. There was
Dan Sullivan:
Actually Michael Conley, who's one of my favorite detective story, homicide detective. Story writer, and it all takes place in Los Angeles, which I can believe that almost anything bad that can happen in the world can happen in Los Angeles at all times. Yeah, at all times. Yes. Yeah, go ahead.
Dean Jackson:
No, I was going to say just as to support what you were saying there, as with John Carlton, and we were at Neil Strauss's house overlooking the city, and John Carlton, just in a moment of clarity, it was at night all the lights and we're seeing the whole city before us. And he goes, isn't it something that anything one human can do to another human is happening right now in front of us?
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's just got abundant possibilities for detective murder plots. Murders. That's what I'm saying. Anyway, think about that. This story, this is his last one, Michael Conley and his most recent one, it's not his last one, but it's his most recent one. So a teenage girl is killed by her. He was angry and he's arrested and he's in for first degree murder. Her mother of the girl sues an AI company because the boy who is the murderer had a chatbot who encouraged him to murder the girl. So this is the basic pot, but it goes even further than that. It goes past the chatbot, back to the programmer who was an incel who hated women, and he encouraged the boy that it's just you and me, just you and me. The we're the partnership here, and she's threatening, she's rejecting you, and so you have to take whatever steps and they're going to blow this guy high and the AI company S for 60 million, not to have it go in court. But it really is interesting because it brings up that you can talk all Yvonne about ai, ai, ai it. I mean, you can put 50 layers of AI between yourself and the world, but I have to tell you, if it gets serious enough, it'll be tracked back through all those AI programs. Human, yeah. Have
Dean Jackson:
You ever programmed it?
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, I noticed, but I found it interesting because there's two things that I'll predict about ai. One of them, in the end, the lawyers will make a lot of money.
Dean Jackson:
Oh, man. Yeah. It's just waiting for this to happen.
Dan Sullivan:
I mean, if it touches on all kinds of human knowledge and human behavior, there's going to be crime there. There's going to be crime, there's going to be conflict and everything like that. I'm sure there's really forward thinking law firms now that are getting all set up for AI law.
Dean Jackson:
I think you're right. Bot law, there was a, yeah, protection for bot law.
Dan Sullivan:
Oh, the other one, the real estate agents, they'll make a lot of money too.
Dean Jackson:
Oh man. Yeah. Well,
Dan Sullivan:
Think about where a new data center is going in. I mean, any place and these big data centers. I think the moment you have a data center, you have a new local economy because there's going to be all sorts of professions that we don't even know about that are connected to data centers. They're going to have to have a place to live. There's going to be shopping. There's going to be shopping around them.
Dean Jackson:
I noticed since we last talked, Elon announced that they are stopping production of the Model X and the Model S cars in order to free up resources for optimist robots. So they're going to stop making the x. I just picked up my new model X last on Friday, Thursday. Thursday. I felt a little like the guy.
Dan Sullivan:
It's a collector site. It's instantly a collector site.
Dean Jackson:
Now it's the last year. That's exactly right. The last model.
Dan Sullivan:
This is the first 1951 Mickey Mantle card that came in.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah,
Dan Sullivan:
Exactly.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. No, you have the last of the Xs.
Dean Jackson:
That's exactly right. But I felt there's a meme that shows a guy at the Christmas tree with a red plaid shirt on opening up a present of the identical red plaid shirt, and the meme says, exchanging my iPhone 14 for iPhone 15, or upgrading my iPhone. It's the exact same. I feel like it's funny, although I did go with lunar silver this time instead of white, but it's always nice. It's got that new car smell, but so I have now 78 miles on the odometer dam. I've been going crazy.
Dan Sullivan:
Well, yeah, we still have our 17, so ours is
Dean Jackson:
Thousand 17. It looks wonderful. I mean, there's the thing, right?
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. And ours we're just approaching 8,000 miles. Wow. That's
Dean Jackson:
Crazy. That's wild. Even that's only been going to the cottage then. Must be
Dan Sullivan:
Right? The cottage. Yeah. Babs made one trip to Michigan, which was, it was probably 500 miles to get there. Way up in the northwest corner of Michigan from Toronto. It's about 500 miles. And because it's an older Tesla and we might get 220 miles because the battery does decline, and she got nervous, so she had to recharge twice, going and twice coming back. Coming back. That's funny. Actually, I was frying from Los Angeles. I had been a genius. So it happened when genius, not genius. A 360 happened last year, and she was in London, Ontario charging up, and I was flying over London, Ontario, and I found her. Oh, that's funny. I found her. I said, I'm right above you and I'm going to get home before you are. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Well, this will be your first summer in the new cottage, right?
Dan Sullivan:
The new cottage, yeah.
Dean Jackson:
All done.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Oh yeah. It was all done in September when we closed down. Because you really don't go up after Labor Day. It gets kind of, if it was sunny after Labor Day, you'd go, but there's sort of like a permanent cloud cover that's in middle of September and everybody's gone. There's on an aisle and there's 16 cottages, and I think there might be one person who's permanent, one person, but everybody's gone. It's desolate. It's sort of desolate.
Dean Jackson:
Well,
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
I got an email. We got fan mail here. Dan, let me read for you here. This comes from Spiros Fats from Somewhere. It's a foreign zip code plus six one country code. So I don't know where that is, but that sounds Greek maybe or
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, Greek. Spanish.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. So you said, I've been listening to some older Cloud Landia podcasts from late last year. Can I please ask you to pass on some information to Dan, which I think he will be really interested in. I listened to this podcast episode and the economist author talks about money being a basis for human relationship and why capitalist societies have prospered and progressed so much. Very much in line with Dan's thinking. His name is David McWilliams. He's actually an Irish economist and author. He's written a book called The History of Money, A Story of Humanity. I've just placed an order for it myself, but I'm sure you and Dan will be interested.
Dan Sullivan:
Well, I'll do it myself when I get off the call.
Dean Jackson:
I'm always interested in that money. Me too.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, McWilliams, right? Mc the author's name. McWilliams,
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. Oh, there it is. So much appreciated. You're a longtime listener and friend that you don't realize you already have in Melbourne, Australia. That's where he's,
Dan Sullivan:
Oh,
Dean Jackson:
There we go. So that's good. That sounds like a book that's right up my alley. I like things like that.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Well, yeah. I have these arguments about cryptocurrency and people said, well, cryptocurrency is going to replace the dollar. And I said, well, how do you know that? How do you know that? And he says, well, look how much it's worth. How do you know it's much worth? How do you know what I said? Which one do you measure the other one by?
Dean Jackson:
Right, exactly. Isn't that funny? I love unintended. I don't know what the right word is for that, but it's very similar. I just had a memory show up on Facebook that one of my favorite things to do is to screen capture ads that come through my newsfeed declaring that email is dead. So email dead texting is this, and when you click on it, the first line on the form is What's your best email? Address it just without a hint of The only thing they want is your email address.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, that's right. Very good. I talked to different people about this and I said, here, I said, let's just talk about the thousand person test. I say, you got a thousand people and you give 'em a choice. You have in dollars, $20 bills, $50 bills, whatever, but it's worth $10,000. You have a pile, the money is sitting right there. And then on the other side, your second choice is any other currency or thing in the world, and you have a choice of taking them away with you right away. You can take the $10,000 or you can take the equivalent in another pile and which one would you take? And I said, what do you think? Out of a thousand, how many would take the other pile?
Dean Jackson:
It's funny, isn't it? There was, I mean just even a more absurd is they were doing these things like at a mall or man on the street, giving people a choice of a big Hershey chocolate bar or a 10 ounce bar of silver. You could pick one. How many people took the Hershey bar? Nobody wanted the silver bar because they didn't have anything to do with it, and they had no idea, of course, what silver was worth. But then the funny thing was they moved
Dan Sullivan:
Not much of a taste. No,
Dean Jackson:
Exactly. But the funny thing is they relocated to right outside of a pawn shop that buys silver and gold. Even to make it like that, all you have to do is walk four paces and you can trade that in for whatever the thing was. It's almost a thousand dollars. Yeah, so funny.
Dan Sullivan:
It indicates where some people's brain is located
Dean Jackson:
In their belly. I know what to do with that chocolate. Yeah,
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. That is so funny. You need to see a bit into the future to take the silver. Yes,
Dean Jackson:
Exactly.
Dan Sullivan:
You have to see at least the next two steps that you're going to. Yeah, but that whole thing, and why is it the dollar? Because there has to be a something and it just happens to be the dollar.
Dean Jackson:
We're everything in terms of dollars. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Up until about 18, middle of the 18 hundreds, it was the peso. The peso was the universal currency.
Dean Jackson:
Is that right? I didn't realize that.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. For about 250 years, 300, almost 300 years, the peso was the most dominant currency on the planet because the Spanish and South America had some of the biggest silver mines. One in
Dean Jackson:
Lima, Peru make all the coins.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, they could make the coins, so it became the dominant currency. But then they got badly beaten up during the Napoleonic War, so the country was just devastated. They were on the downhill. They were really on the downhill for a long time, but there was so much currency and that people use pesos. Anyway, anyway, this was marvelous. This is marvelous, and our two time experiments are running parallel to each other right
Dean Jackson:
Now. Yeah, this is great. So I will continue the good work, as will you, we'll reconvene? Yes,
Dan Sullivan:
Next Sunday. Next Sunday we'll be on. Yep. Great.
Dean Jackson:
Alright, Dan, have a great time at Free Zone and I will talk to you next week.
Dan Sullivan:
Okay, thank you.
Dean Jackson:
Thanks. Bye
Dan Sullivan:
Bye. Bye.