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Unqualified Advice

Unqualified Advice

著者： Sean Filipow and Daniel Hatke
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A Podcast for a More Reasonable Tomorrow2024 出世 就職活動 経済学
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  • Analysts of the Vibe

    Analysts of the Vibe
    2026/10/19
    Dear Show Notes Readers, It's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers! Fall has finally arrived in Houston, and Sean has taken the opportunity to accumulate a frankly unreasonable number of pumpkins and decorative gourds. Dan has returned from Telluride, where the fall colors were spectacular and the first snow has already fallen. All is right with the world. Or is it? This week, we're attempting to answer that question by doing what we do best: applying an entirely unnecessary level of analysis to the general mood of humanity. Sean has been experimenting with OpenAI's new persistent AI agents, including his latest digital assistant, Number Two. After spending months trying to cobble together something similar using Notion, Codex, and various AI tools, he's discovering the joys of watching a multibillion-dollar technology company casually release the thing he was trying to build. But when does AI stop being an entertaining toy and start becoming something genuinely useful? Dan makes the case that the biggest opportunity might not be building elaborate applications or autonomous coding agents. It might simply be dealing with the hundreds of emails, subscription renewals, calendar invitations, and administrative headaches that modern life throws at us. From there, we get into AI vendor lock-in, why Google should probably be better at email, and whether the future of communication is just a bunch of AI agents talking to one another while humans go about their lives. Then we turn our attention to the economy. Kyla Scanlon has introduced us to the wonderfully appropriate term shrugflation: that feeling when prices keep rising, the world keeps getting more expensive, and everyone collectively shrugs because what else are you going to do? We discuss inflation expectations, the limitations of the Federal Reserve, energy costs, the AI infrastructure boom, and the strange ways economic psychology can become economic reality. Which brings us to the central question of the episode: What exactly are the vibes? We're not entirely sure. Sean's assessment is that the economy is neither particularly good nor particularly bad. It's a complicated mixture of conflicting signals, irrational exuberance, anxiety, and uncertainty. In other words, the vibe is MEH. And wouldn't you know it? Our very own Unqualified Advice Vibe Index agrees. We also discuss Rory Sutherland and the importance of psychology, whether a flying car that's actually falling gracefully counts as flying, Apple's latest hardware, and the increasingly complicated relationship between AI and personal privacy. Are we approaching another fundamental shift in computing, comparable to the transition from local machines to the cloud? Probably. Should we be concerned about handing our personal information to increasingly capable AI agents? Absolutely. Should that stop us from experimenting, learning, and building things? We don't think so. Resistance may be futile, but understanding what you're getting into is still a pretty good idea. Until next time, go build something. — Sean & Dan A Podcast for a More Reasonable Tomorrow. Tools & Platforms Mentioned ChatGPT dots (OpenAI's always-on personal agent)CodexMeta MuseGemini and Google's Gemini 4 "Argon"OpenClaw, Hermes, Grok Bot (Dan's agent lineage)NotionGmailThe Vibe Index (our sentiment page) Companies Discussed OpenAI, Meta, Google, Waymo, Anthropic, Apple, Tesla, SpaceX, Amazon (AWS), Oracle, Ivanhoe Mines, The Wall Street Journal, the Federal Reserve, the CIA, My First Million, Ogilvy, the Financial Times Links & References The Unqualified Advice Vibe Index — Our own attempt to quantify the collective mood using six market signals. At recording time, it stood at 58/100: thoroughly MEH. It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers — Colin Nissan — McSweeney's Internet Tendency. A seasonal masterpiece and required reading for anyone who appreciates the finer points of autumn decorating.Kyla Scanlon — Economic commentary exploring the relationship between economic fundamentals, consumer psychology, and the collective mood. Rory Sutherland — Dan discusses Sutherland's appearance on My First Million and his fascinating approach to behavioral economics and psychology.Kyla Scanlon: The Shrugflation Triangle Decrypt: everything OpenAI announced at DevDay 2026, including dots Forbes: why Russian sanctions relief would do little for US fuel prices Washington Examiner: Warsh raises rates and says the Fed will "stay in our lane" DCD: Oracle trucks in gas to power its Utah and Texas data centers Khaleej Times: the Tesla Roadster demo at SpaceX's McGregor site The Next Web: iPhone Duo preorders sell out, shipping slips to JanuaryDan's Substack, the Prometheus Dispatch Unqualified Fact-Check 🔍 We said some things. Here's how we did. 🟢 = Nailed it | 🟡 = Close enough | 🔴 = Whiffed it 🟡 Dots, the global agent Sean described dots as an always-on agent you can call on the phone, linked to his machines, ...
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    44 分
  • Agency All the Way Down

    Agency All the Way Down
    2026/10/05
    Programming Note: Off next week for fall break. We'll miss you! What happens when AI makes building an idea almost free? This week we introduce two projects born directly out of last week's podcast: Sean's Vibe Index, an attempt to quantify market and social sentiment from volatility, credit, meme stocks, prediction markets and Reddit; and Catsup Bot, our deeply unqualified experiment in buying the laggard of the Magnificent Seven. But the bots lead somewhere bigger. If AI can dramatically reduce the effort required to act on an idea, does it make us smarter? Or do we just stop thinking? We talk about agency, cognitive abundance, the surprisingly small share of households paying for AI, the changing value of white-collar management, what an undergraduate education should actually teach, signs of consumer stress, household leverage, and a future where AI agents may disrupt the advertising-driven internet by shopping for us. Plus: the Degeneracy Ratio, reinventing the associate's degree, whether "meh" is bullish, and why sometimes you need to touch grass and make a pizza. Find the Vibe Index and Ketchup Bot under Numbers at unqualifiedadvicepodcast.com. Cheers, Sean & Dan Tools & Platforms Mentioned The Vibe Index (our new page on the site)The Ketchup Bot (our paper-trading Mag 7 bot)Bright Data (Reddit scraping API)Reddit: r/wallstreetbets, r/stocks, r/investingPolymarket, Kalshi (prediction markets)FRED (St. Louis Fed economic data)ChatGPT, Muse, Grok Bot, Instinct (personal AI agents)The X API Companies Discussed Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI, Instinct, Reddit, X, Bright Data, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Jane Street, ARK Invest, Polymarket, Kalshi, Robinhood, Coinbase, GameStop, AMC, Palantir, Tesla, SpaceX, the Magnificent 7, LVMH, DoorDash, Instacart, Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, Sonos, Bose, The Wall Street Journal, Stratechery, 3Fourteen Research, O'Shaughnessy Ventures Links & References The Vibe Index: our new market-sentiment pageThe Ketchup Bot: the paper-traded most-hated Mag 7Sheel Mohnot on X: the original "most hated" Mag 7 trading botRobert Shiller's online data (the CAPE dataset)a16z on X: "98% of US households aren't paying for AI yet"BLS: The Employment Situation, September 2026New York Fed: Household Debt and Credit Report, Q2 2026FRED: household debt service payments as a percent of disposable incomeTechCrunch: viral AI agent Instinct raises a $1B Series C at a $10B valuationO'Shaughnessy Ventures: The Great Reshuffle beginsDan's Substack, the Prometheus Dispatch Unqualified Fact-Check 🔍 We said some things. Here's how we did. 🟢 = Nailed it | 🟡 = Close enough | 🔴 = Whiffed it 🟢 The Vibe Index says meh Sean said that as of October 1st, Friday, the index sat at "meh." The site reads 56, squarely in Meh, as of October 1. October 1 was a Thursday, but the vibes don't care what day it is. 🟡 A 2.1% credit spread Sean called the gap between HYG (junk bonds) and IEF (Treasuries) "a two point one percent spread." It's actually how far HYG has beaten IEF over the past quarter, a relative return rather than a yield spread. Sean first called it elevated, then corrected himself to "actually pretty good," and the correction is right: it sits at the 68th percentile of the last three years. 🟡 Shiller CAPE at 41 Sean said the Shiller P/E was "around 41" yesterday, that it reached "42, 43" in 2000, and that it's historically "in the twenties." The current read is right: 41.4 at Friday's close. The dot-com peak was a bit higher, at 44.2 in December 1999. The long-run average is about 17, so the twenties only describe recent decades. Shiller does publish his data, but as a monthly series, not "every day." The daily figures come from sites that recompute it. Robert Shiller of Yale ✓. 🟢 Anthropic is about to IPO Sean said Anthropic is "about to IPO." Anthropic confidentially filed a draft S-1 on June 1, 2026, and recent reporting has the float landing in October or November at a valuation of $2 trillion or more. About to, indeed. 🟢 What the vibes said next Sean rattled off the index's track record. Doomscrolling happened on only 6 days and the market was up a month later 100% of the time. Meh was up 76% of the time, by about 2.5%. Memes All the Way Down lasted about 20 days and was up about half the time. Nervous was up 54%. The S&P is "typically up 69%." Every number matches the site (Meh averaged +2.2% with a +2.7% median). The 69% matches the base rate inside the index's own window, which is a little higher than the long-run norm. 🟡 Bright Data, five bucks a month Sean said Bright Data gave him 5,000 free Reddit calls a month and that "five bucks a month" would buy a lot more. The free tier is real: 5,000 requests a month, no card required. There's no $5 plan, though. Past the free tier it's pay-as-you-go at $1.50 per thousand requests, so five bucks buys you about 3,300 more calls. 🟢 The Ketchup Bot is up 200 bucks Sean said the bot ranks the Mag 7 on 3-, 6- and ...
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    53 分
  • Where Are the Humans?

    Where Are the Humans?
    2026/09/28
    Dear show notes readers, This week we accidentally spend most of an hour asking the same question in several completely different ways: Where are the humans? We start with personal AI agents and what happens when they begin doing more of our searching, shopping, comparing, emailing, and general internet busywork for us. Agents don't care about advertisements. Humans do. So if more of the utilitarian internet gets handed over to machines, where does human attention actually go — and which companies are positioned to monetize it? That leads us through Amazon vs. Walmart, Google vs. Meta, the economics of third-party sellers, YouTube advertising, and Dan making a sufficiently convincing case about Meta that Sean reluctantly changes his mind in real time. From there, we get increasingly agentic. Dan has been experimenting with TinCan, an open-source project that lets his various AI tools talk to one another, bringing us another step closer to the strange future where you don't manage individual AI applications so much as sit above an entire synthetic executive team and tell everyone what needs to happen. Then Sean shows up with a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Galápagos. Obviously. Sean has been spending an unreasonable amount of time turning his Tomes and Tunes record collection into a walkable 3D record store. There is no business model. There is no obvious problem being solved. It may, in fact, be completely pointless. Dan thinks asking why he's doing it is the wrong question. Just do things. That leads us to Vonnegut's blue-footed boobies, their bizarre courtship dance, and a surprisingly difficult question about AI and creativity: when does something stop being made by AI and start being made with AI? Maybe the distinction isn't quality. Maybe it's intent. An AI-generated bus advertisement doesn't need a soul. It has a job. But art is different. Art can be exploratory, purposeless, weird, and valuable precisely because somebody wanted to make the thing. We argue about AI watermarking, ballpoint pens that can suddenly write their own sentences, and whether today's obsession with separating "human" creation from "AI" creation can survive once the tools become ubiquitous. Or, as Dan puts it: eventually it becomes water. Finally, Sean unveils the first version of Sean's Manufacturing Index, an attempt to track whether the physical buildout happening across the American economy is beginning to show up in manufacturing labor markets. Manufacturing employment hasn't exploded, but manufacturing wage growth is currently running ahead of broader wage growth. Sean thinks labor churn, tariff-driven manufacturing-network changes, data centers, power infrastructure, switchgear, cooling systems, and other physical investment may be setting up an interesting labor-market inflection point. Which brings us, strangely enough, back to the original question. If AI makes certain kinds of digital labor abundant while the physical economy needs more electricians, technicians, builders, engineers, operators, and manufacturing workers... Where are the humans? We close by deciding that markets are memes all the way down, contemplating a Vibe Index, discovering an absurdly simple Mag 7 trading strategy, and wisely deciding to take the rest of that conversation off air. Probably for the best. — Sean & Dan Books Discussed Galápagos by Kurt VonnegutUnknown Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager Shows/Films Discussed The Mighty BooshCitizen Kane (and our pitch for a Christopher Nolan remake about Zuckerberg) Tools & Platforms Mentioned Muse (Meta's personal agent)TinCan / Agent Tincan (Matt Van Horn's open-source agent relay)Claude, ChatGPT / Codex, Gemini, GrokOpenClaw, Hermes (open personal-agent frameworks)Alexa (Amazon's shopping assistant)Sean's Manufacturing Index (our new SMI page)Sean's Tomes and Tunes (the 3D record store) Companies Discussed Meta, Google/Alphabet, YouTube, Amazon, AWS, Walmart, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Oracle, Nike, Celsius, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Miller Lite, Dove, Deckers, Skechers, Weber, June, Aalo Atomics, Jane Street, Colossus Links & References Sean's Tomes and Tunes: the 3D record storeSean's Manufacturing Index: the new SMI pageGeekWire: Amazon blocks Meta's Muse AI assistant in a new standoff over agentic shoppingBenzinga: Muse adds shopping with Walmart, Sephora and Best Buy (Meta Connect, Sep 23)Colossus: "Mark," Jeremy Stern's profile of Mark ZuckerbergStratechery: Ben Thompson interviews Colossus EIC Jeremy Stern about the profileAgent Tincan: let your AI agents ask each other for helpSheel Mohnot on X: the "most hated" Mag 7 trading botMarketplace Pulse: Amazon is regaining first-party unit shareDan's Substack, the Prometheus Dispatch Unqualified Fact-Check 🔍 We said some things. Here's how we did. 🟢 = Nailed it | 🟡 = Close enough | 🔴 = Whiffed it 🟢 Meta released Muse Dan said Facebook just released Muse, its closed, just-works personal agent. It launched September 8 and hit #1 on ...
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    55 分
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