SECOND OPINION WITH DR DEW Episode 001: EP001 - And so it begins - AI Slop or Modern Telenovela? Published: 2026-01-03 Runtime: 1:39:50 --- So, this seems like a pretty interesting story. Let's get the AI rundown about this. >> Dr. Dew and everyone watching. >> Fortune reports that 2-year-old Adavia Davis, who left Mississippi State University in 2020, runs a small network of faceless YouTube channels that are largely AI generated and require about 2 hours of daily oversight. Davis told Fortune his channels bring in roughly 4040 $60,000 per month with operating costs around $6,500 monthly. And Fortune says it reviewed screenshots of analytics and AdSense payout records consistent with roughly $700,000 revenue. Just going to say >> the most lucrative channel described is a long form boring history format multi-hour history to sleep to videos and automated workflow using tools like claude for scripts visuals and 11 labs for narration >> different kind of >> per video production costs described as as low as about $60 >> 60. >> In broader context this fits the ongoing AI slop brain rot debate. Capwing's late 2025 research estimated that about 21% of a new user's first 500 shorts were AI generated >> new user noted in 33% were brain rot with the company also estimating large cumulative views subscribers for channels in this category >> analysis >> I wonder what their definition >> numbers show how aggressively automation can arbitrage watchtime economics but the model is inherently policy and advertiser sensitive YouTube's partner program guidance explicitly says repetitive or mass-produced inauthentic content is ineligible for monetization >> really. >> And YouTube also requires disclosure for realistic altered synthetic media in certain cases. >> So capwing >> that is actually kind of interesting. So we're going to explore some uh AI slop. You guys have may have seen I don't really consider it slop. I've actually listened to several of these when you just want something going on in the background and you're like, "Hey, I'll just I'll just listen to short stories." Now I'm an audiobook reader. I do a lot of driving and some of the stories are not bad and with a lot of the prompts that they've been using with cloth things. So I I actually read the the more in-depth article uh that was not available through uh this which I'm not paying extra when I I pay through other portals. You get things like uh Apple News Plus or particle or ground news or all these things and then suddenly you try to go to the website and you get these things. So, as a world, we haven't even figured out pay walls yet. By the way, I'm Dr. D. This is Second Opinion with Dr. Doo. I am a doctor of business administration with a focus in public policy. Uh, I am an expert systems thinking, uh, performance management among other things. Um, have a blue collar background. So, language warning just ahead of time things will slip out. I I'm working on a square jar this year. I'm really uh trying to work on that. Uh but this is very interesting. So when I go to YouTube, I I I read this story and then as I'm going through and my autoplay is going on and I'm getting the you know it things, programming things uh of that nature, I come across this. Now I don't know which of you uh have not seen these stories here. Um, you can just start scrolling through this little We can ignore all the all the comments here. Look, look at these on the right hand side here. What if Black Adam landed in the boys universe? What if Beerus entered the Star Wars galaxy? What if Now granted, these are only certain types of stories. These are sort of like what ifs. So, I just scroll down through here. We're going to see what ifs. What ifs? What ifs. My god, they just don't end. They just don't end. They go on forever. They go on for ever. And it's not the same channel. All these different channels. Some of these are probably real. Okay. Some someone probably spent some actual time on a few of these. But that's AI generated right there. You know, you just look at this. It's just AI generated. AI generated. AI generated. Some And you look at the times. None of these are from like three years ago. Um, so for a lot of the world, um, I'm just kind of putting up right here because you guys don't know a lot about me. I've been using AI since GPT2. I've been using AI since, uh, uh, very late 2020 through 2021. Well, before any of you got access to GPT3.5 on November 30th, 2022, uh, the day that sort of, you know, rocked the world a little bit. Oh, that's animated. How nice. That's a um really sure. Okay, sure. So, what these stories do is um they will take script ideas the same way that I had my bot uh speak to everyone here so we can let's see if I can get this working back to here. I've got this on a little project. Um and just having it put things out in a particular format. Um, but these are doing very long form content. Like very very very very long form content. If you look at the play time uh on things like this. Uh, so pull this up here. Oh god, it's gonna it's Oh god, it's going to maybe we're going to pause. This is >> the morning before. >> Yeah. No, no, no. We don't. We're going to do that a minute. That's an hour. Look at that. That is an hour. Um, these may or may not be AI generated. Depends. I've seen a lot that are. There's a lot of aliens. Uh, I went down a rabbit hole while just listening to stories. I was not thinking. I will There are times I do not think. There are times even someone with PhD does not think. I like to turn my brain off just like everyone else. And I got into these uh space fantasy stories. I wouldn't call them science fiction because there's no science in them at all and they're not really even fantasy. They're just these space stories. Um, humans are asleep and the aliens woke the humans up and oh gosh, what did they learn next? And um, you know, then 45 minutes in, uh, aliens are learning about bagels and coffee. Um, and the entire universe becomes addicted to caffeine because they made the mistake of waking up the hibernating humans. This is what this is. This is what this isn't so much slop. This isn't AI generating this in one go and you're getting a 15-second out of Sora or something like that. That that's slop. That's where you see dogs flying up into tornadoes and grandma's on their front porches telling alligators to get off their lawn. Um and to get out now you get that that's AI slop. Um or you think of the the Pope uh image with the with the uh fluffy white coat. Th those are that's AI slop. These are different. These are amalgamations. And so what they do is they have these scripts and you'll see that that right here there's just this hour and one minute script. What they do is they take a script and this gets generated through something like Claude, a very good writer. So some th those of you who don't like um who don't like the the the chat GPT and you're like, "Oh, it's horrible at writing." They actually do a fairly good job here with the writing. It's not what I would call terrible. Not what I would call good, but it's not what I would call terrible. Um, they take that and then they throw it into something like 11 Labs. 11 Labs is actually a really good tool. Build a lot of things with it. Um, I tend to use 11 Labs Reader. Uh, taking a lot of uh content. I do I'll do you know have a a research uh uh popped out onto a topic through chat GPT. This thing turns out to be anywhere from 25 to an hour and 15 roughly this size uh and just have a narrator for me. What they will do though is they use a some of the slightly more custom models and they'll have a narrator voice. They'll take that big script that they had automated and pushed out through something like a claude and then they've got a script that they run through 11 Labs and they will uh automate doing that and then they will go through and add these images and all they really have to do is something kind of like a a Gemini does when it does story books which is um at certain points let's say um identify you know x number of points within the script where um there there are dramatic scen changes, create an image, make image, make image, make image. They have the images and then all they have to do is they have those images which will then transition as they go through. You know, some may have one or two image, some may have a single image. I've I've seen stories where it will just show a single image and then it will just zoom in on a certain character at a certain point or something to that effect. Or uh it will be multiple images, but it'll just be multiple images of the same scene. like um there will be space orcs sitting around a table and it will show the one and they'll go back to the the other and they'll go back in. And so those might be a little more handcrafted for somebody who's not fully automated this. So they're just kind of putting this on on their own. And then of course as the story notes right here, um they they just pay people. The $6,500 goes to a small team where um you know they have a few editors that just go through, make sure that videos get uploaded, make sure that they they run through, they look okay, there's not any big issues. Um and then they put them out to all these channels. This one is called The Long Watch. Uh a stranger in Middle Earth. Long watch or long watch galaxy if you uh galaxy if multiverse. Some of these may be real. But how are people putting and I would get some channels I was like, "Okay, well these are kind of neat. Somebody's making these little stories." It was kind of enjoyable. I I was amused. I was I'm always amused by the the humans overcome aliens storyline, which most people are as writers such as um Isaac Azimov and Frank Herbert would say. Uh they say, "Why do the humans always win in these books?" And I said, "Well, because uh humans are the ones buying the books. which is a very good point. But if you go through here and I like, okay, was this is actually an interesting story. I don't know. I didn't listen, but I would listen to these and say, "That's an interesting one." I'll subscribe and just I just hit play. I turn my brain off. Um I don't have to look. That's the thing about listening. I don't really have to look at these, but I might if something catches if it's sitting over there. It's kind of like changing art, you know? It's just kind of a thing going on that's kind of going along with the story kind of for the mood, uh for the vibes. And I would listen to them and I would realize that they were putting up a new story. Not like they're putting up a story a week like somebody sits down and they're featuring somebody. It was not a story a week. It's a story every four hours per channel. It's a lot. And you're like, how are they affording to do this? And then you look at the views. This one here got recommended. But if you look this one here, right here, 22,000 views 12 days ago. Okay, you see a few more. What if 6,000 11,000 20,000? We have a lot of these. 900, 200, 58. Like, we'll just click on one of these. 58. Let's see if this is real or not. And we're My god, we're going to have to stop this. This might be real. The reason this will be real, I see chapters. So, I'm going let you guys know how you can tell a little bit about this. I see chapters, which means that is very likely possibly maybe real if they've done chapters. Um, but you just get a lot of this over and over and over. Um, and and every four hours, how are they doing this? Because it's $60 per video. Okay. What if you know uh we go to something like this you know put together maybe somebody wrote it maybe a kid made this who knows this has 20,000 views two weeks but only a thousand subscribers right but if we go into the page and I don't know this could be real but look at this 10 hours ago 2 days ago 6 days ago 7 days ago 8 days ago 9 days ago and these videos are an hour and 42 minutes an hour and 37 minutes an hour and 29 9 minutes. An hour and 59 minutes. What if? What if? What if? What if? Now granted, it could be. Could be someone like me. I'm not saying that these are AI. I don't know. But look at the views. You're like, well, is it even worth it? Those accumulative views that you're seeing going on up here. 5,000 2.6,000. Like, they're not a lot. But you're going to notice as I'm starting this channel, and I've done plenty of a media thing before. I know it's going to take a while before this channel ever takes off, but the images, the time to put to to actually do this as a there's no way a human can do this unless they won the lottery and they just do this 24/7. But there are thousands of these. Like they can't be making that much money. $700,000 a year gross. If we're saying the operating costs are roughly about 10%. We're looking at 75 to 90% profit through AdSense. Why? Because YouTube sucks at finding this. 1,000 subscribers, 25 videos. This channel started one month ago. Has been blasting these out. They probably saw a tutorial on here's how you get a like Thor versus the Borg. Uh Vader versus humans. I mean, look, Master Chief who's writing a 2hour and 21 minute now. Maybe this is a person. I don't know. Let's Let's hear a voice. Let's see. Let's see what we got here. Let's see if this is real. >> A crack formed across the fabric. >> No, that's not real. Silent, impossible, and glowing. That's an open or that sorry that's a that's an 11 Labs voice like it just is you're going to see some inflections but let's go through some of the pictures. Okay, it's got a style. Yeah, it's going to have pictures throughout of make a scene with this, make a scene with this. Probably using the script to say, okay, take this paragraph and and make it look in this style with this picture. And you just pretty pretty quick like all of this could roughly be done in a half an hour. All the the script, the pictures, the the 11 labs, you throw it into uh basic editor that may be automated. That may be the human team getting the 6,500 a month. You throw you throw your elements of slap together. And if you put enough slop together, it's kind of not bad in the background. It's kind of like the AI equivalent of Loi. And you know my the actual damage here is to someone like a channel like Loi Girl than it is to uh writers. Like no one's getting lit. This is not replacing books. This is not replacing human artists. Like but it is replacing storytelling in a way. And it's sort of slopy. What if Godzilla appeared here? And look at all these channels. Just look at the amount of channels. And they're going to be very generic. If you see something looks a little more specific, it's probably a real channel. So, these are some of these are probably real channels, but Multiverse Explorer, like it's yet another Master Chief, Star Trek. If I watch enough of these, my feed will fill up with nothing but Master Chief in the Star Trek universe. And there's enough crap out there that it is possible that I could just I could live in a world where YouTube was nothing but a a Halo Star Trek generator and that's all it would be. There isn't. When I started down the rabbit hole of doing the the humans versus the entire universe where you know they underestimated the humans um every story was the same. Like it is AI. you're not going to get wild plot points. But again, it's just like it's I hate to compare it because there are real at least there used to be and hopefully there still are real authors behind things like um the Kindle Unlimited romance romantic is now I've heard that's now the term is romantic. We have these fantasy romance novels that you know people just read for real gift. Not going to name anybody. That's how they put themselves to sleep is a romantic. So, they will Oh, uh, my little my little emotions going off. Need to silence that on these again. First video jumping back in after several years of not making content. It's going to be a few hiccups, but these are like romanticies for people like me who uh when I when I read a real fantasy novel, uh when I jump into science fiction, um like like I want to I want to Jerry Pernell or I want to read like I want to read it. I want to pay attention. It's good literature. This is crap. Um this is junk food. This is this is lower than junk food. This is this is gas station brand cheese puffs is what this is. Um and just just out of curiosity um you know we could go a little further. Let's go up and see if we could extend this a little further. I don't know if this will cut the audio off. Again I'm trying a few things. So I've got my whisper flow on here and we'll just see. Is this related to the long 60 to 120 minute stories that I often see on YouTube where it will be sort of science fiction and fantasy. We'll throw that in there. Hope that didn't Oh, I guess I'll find out in post uh if this actually threw that off because I'm kind of interested to see if this is one of those where I think this is hilarious to actually watch going on. Um, we're just wanting an answer. Sorry. I turn heavy thinking on high. I'm quite the AI user myself. We So, I'm not dogging AI here. I am a a a a a 200 a month u uh GPT plus I use AI plus I do programming plus I actually build automated workflows with this. Um, and again, I've been using this since 2020. Um, so I'm not dogging AI here. Um, I'm c Looks like let's see here faceless content. Okay, so we're kind of going a little broader here. That term has come uh across to me and hopefully this keeps it short and we'll do a quick read and find out what the answer is. >> Dr. D and everyone watching, yes, it's related in format and incentives. The fortune example was a boring history faceless channel built around very long history to sleep tube videos often hours long assembled with an automated AI pipeline clawed for scripts, visuals, and 11 labs for narration. >> The 60 to 120 minute sci-fi fantasy story videos you're seeing are basically the same background listening fall asleep template just in a different genre. Some are human written and nar. >> Yeah, looks like we have another possible story here. Uh, looks like it's related to AI slot. Boring history videos are flooding. So, we have a 404 media. Kind of interested. Let's see what 404 has to say about this. Oh, they are doing the same thing. Only they did this months ago. You are so behind. So, so far behind uh Fortune. They're Fortune's becoming so listical now. Fortune's sort of turning to I don't know if that had a real author, but uh did it have a real author? Let's see if I had a real author. It says it does. So, looks like it's they they actually did review some things, so I won't give you guys too much crap. Yeah. See these these just AI generated fantasy videos. I'm kind of curious. Boring history for sleep. Yeah, that was his. Yeah. And you can see see some of these. I will say at least here there's some nice formatting that they worked on. These actually don't have horrible views. So, it looks like this person is sort of making more more targeted content where they're trying to sell um their channels. They're trying to actually make some money um actually selling these to a a brand or somebody who might keep the story safe. And if you're a Coca-Cola or a Maxipads or Dawn dish soap, you might want to advertise on this because it's it's always going to be within the guard rails of safe content that people are going to watch. And if they're playing in the background, that means your ad is playing in the background. Makes complete economic sense from both sides. We could complain and say, "Who is this hurting?" Um, it could be hurting what I wouldn't call want to call it edgy content. Um, but it could hurt content that is not so familyfriendly. Um, there are things in the world that are not familyfriendly but are still important. One of those would be the news. Another would be education or uh I I can think of a few other topics where you could not probably get advertisers without being a big name like a a CNN, Time Warner, uh HBO where you can have anything edgy or violent or things that might be um perfectly legitimate, but it's not exactly where Proctor and Gamble want to put uh their messages, whereas they can put them on here. And if you just want to put something brainless on the TV or on the phone or on the tablet or whatever while you're cleaning your house, you're exactly where where they want to be. So yeah, this all makes this all makes sense. This is exactly what we're seeing here. Just over and over and over. We could probably just keep going down the rabbit hole. There's a there's a Godzilla one right there. We'll just Let's Let's see how far down the rabbit hole we can go. Let's see. We gota we got to go to to to number two here. Nope. We're actually running into real content. Looks like we've got some real pages actually. So, what do we learn from this? Um, basically th this is going to spread. Uh, and I hate having something on here then I'm not sure if it's real. Um, so let's go let's go back a few just to get to some definite crap. Um, and make sure this is actually definite crap. Um, 730 subscribers. We've got a username with a number. We got thousand views. Um, and how long have a video got? Let's make sure we got the >> hammered the forced canopy. >> Yeah, we got the Okay. Sorry if you're a real person, but this is the crap. This is the crap we're talking about here. Thi this is what I hate to say it and and so this is um second opinion. So that's the story. We have a couple questions to ask here. We got to let's put the doctrinal hat on and let's talk about does this matter? Um in a way no it absolutely does not. I think moral panic around this like yeah we don't have to this is not the finest art. The other thing that's not the finest art are soap operas. Soap opera storylines are the most predictable thing on planet earth and that's why they work. Why either whether it's uh any countries whether it's American or tel nollas. I mean, if you're a fan of Enrique and Glacia songs, Tela Nollas and their intros are the place you want to be. Um, but they're and they are their own sort of art form, but that doesn't make each episode art, but it doesn't mean that the actors aren't talented, but it doesn't mean they're Shakespeare either. Um, it's it's like a romcom. If we look at movies and we think about like a romcom, there are no romcoms with amazing plots. There just aren't um we could we could think of memorable ones because of a line such as you or or a dramatic romantic not quite comedy like a Jerry Maguire or something like that. Um, but in the genres, um, it's about mass production. They want to get butts in the seats to sell popcorn so that theaters stay open, so people buy more movies, people get DVD collections. Um, there is it's it's it's not slop, but it is sitcomish in the fact that, you know, a lot of the story lines are remade and regurgitated. Um, you know, again, we're not looking for Shakespeare when we're watching WWE wrestling, okay? We want simple story lines. We want a good guy, a bad guy. We want twists, we want turns, we want some backstabbing, and that's about it. Uh, same thing with the soap opera. Same thing with um any of these formats. Uh I I think of reality TV and um many of the subplots that were built out with the early reality TV just get re regurgitated with a big brother or Survivor or um you know back in the day the real world once these plots got established and the producers found out which of them worked they just rehashed them. Um, same with the Jerry Springer or my or any of the daytime TV talk shows. Um, if you could almost guess except for maybe which gift was being given away how an Oprah show went, these were not Shakespeare by any stretch of the imagination. So, when I look at this and I'm sitting here and I'm I'm I'm trying to figure out does this make the world worse or not. I I I don't see it. Listen, I remember the Jerry Springer live. Okay. I also remember things like the sitcoms uh uh was a home improvement with Tim Allen not Shakespeare characters you're supposed to kind of grow up with but even before that like all in the family was not really an evolving it was it was it was why it was sitcom is a situational comedy that created a situation you showed up and there was a little bit of a story line if you followed for years but not in the way you saw with like friends but also the idea of a situational comedy if you know nothing about it, you can sit down, watch, enjoy it, and walk away and never care about the characters. That's that was the point of a sitcom. Um, you didn't have to catch every episode because it was all live. There was no recording. There was no YouTube. So, this all live. If you missed an episode, you missed it forever unless there was like a, you know, hey, re replays of the popular shows on on Sunday or something like that. That's just how it was. I still remember before VCRs. Um, showing my age a little bit here. So, what about this? This is this worse. You know, nobody's gonna compare this to All in the Family, but I can name a thousand shows in a thousand episodes that you will never think about. It's like, oh yeah, there was that show. Yeah, I don't remember that episode. Oh, you don't remember the one where blah blah blah. You know, you you have u I always think of of episodes of different strokes. Different Strokes had some very dark episodes of of oh my god like literal child kidnapping. But do you remember like a regular episode? I mean other than the catchphrases. No. Neither does anyone else. Uh Thre's Company. Great show. Any super memorable Thre's Company episodes that just immediately spring to mind? you think of the characters because they were fun to watch and you knew a little bit about them, but you didn't get you didn't get deep into their backstories. I'm sure they even had them. Some some writer in the back room probably wrote them down, sprinkled them throughout and just hope somebody would actually catch that they were trying to do some real writing uh in there, but it's not to knock their art. They're just entertained people. People wanted to come home and just uh stop thinking, turn their brain off. And that's what this is. This is turning the turn the brain off. So, who is this hurting? Um, it is actually causing a human harm. And I'm not going we're not going into the AI rainforest uh water usage theory because I think science channels do that far better than me. That's not why I'm here and what I'm doing. Uh, we're looking a little deeper and trying to find something that's that's not really talked about. This actually hurts writer ships. And again, I'm not an artist. I'm not a writer. I'm here making a YouTube channel, but I'm not trying to replace uh the next producers of the next Friends or Seinfeld or the Sopranos or any of that. Like that's that's not the level we're at here. Okay. But when you look at this, I just the the only thing that I can think is if you're a writer in a writer room and you want to do the next great sitcom cop, you want to be the next Seinfeld or the next Friends or I mean I it I I could only hope that somebody out there aspires to be the next Gilmore Girls. That's you. this ends your career right here because I can throw this on while everyone else is scrolling on their phones and I'm fine. And also, there are plenty of humans that do this. Okay, that's this is what we're doing here is the replacement for the sitcom edutainment. Um, and I I I just I just like how I just let myself through that door with like, you know, the going back to Vsauce or Veritasium or Kyle Hill or or any of the the the various money shows that are out there that that do great economics and such, those nice edutainments. Those channels are also coming under not attack by just these and they are they're coming under attack people trying to steal their content but they're coming under attack by actual things like boring history which is literally just taking all of the facts of the past having AI spiced up and presenting it and it it's come to find out you know you can make a lot there's the the number of viewers of these videos is in the billions because a lot of people, they may not even log into YouTube. They just they pop in there or they've got their Gmail and they just they just play whatever it's scrolling on their phone while in the bathroom. Uh the the only advantage with YouTube is better advertisers and long form content for people that don't want to have to act. That's the the downside. This exposes the downside of some of these new media companies. What is the downside of Tik Tok? Downside of Tik Tok for the viewer is they have to scroll or they have to sit there and they get a very jarring experience if there's some some sort of automatic scroll whe it's an Instagram or Snap or or Tik Tok. This just plays. You just turn on and that was the great thing about the era of of television and antenna and rabbit ears or even cable when you didn't have a lot of channels. You just turned it on and left it. That's why when you go get your oil changed, look up there and you will see something like an HD TV. Somebody's house will be worked on. They'll be doing a thing. It will be that same content in additum. Why? Because they don't want screaming. They don't want news. They want people to veg out, see something kind of mildly interesting, be like, "Oh, huh. That's that is a nice color of of deck wood. Oh, that's a stain. Oh, that's nice." They don't want anything edgier than that. That's what they want at a jify loop. That's what they want. But that's also what people want at home. They just want a thing that is on that's interesting that just kind of keeps a mild separate. And there's tons of that on YouTube. That is not an AI problem. That's a human problem. Th this is just a new way to do it. But there are now well over a decade's worth of HD TVs to do this for that. Um, and there will be those areas that until robots are making decks, that content will just exist. They won't break out like they used to. Um, the audiences are far more segmentated than they ever were before. Um, and some of us just have the tools or if we want to, we can just make this ourselves. This is not hard. Uh, th this is when when I turn my API on, I can have it turnurning this out with prompt, prompt, prompt, prompt. And I've limited the the answers here. This is very cut down because I didn't that's the whole reason I'm in a little project. I did not want it talking a lot even though I'm using a high thinking mode. Want something very simple that I could actually play for an audience and actually talk about myself. But this is so scriptable and the prices are so cheap. If you're looking at something like a GPT 4.1, pennies an hour, pennies an hour for something that's not bad, stays within some guard rails. Um, you might even have a multiple process where you want certain kinds of storylines and you got a a framework and you have that run through doing outlines and then you have one model working on one and one model working on two and one model working on three. You may have another one that goes back and it just all it's supposed to do is find all the points where there could be some character growth. And then maybe you've got an AM model that all it does is character growth and backstories. And it all it can do is add a couple paragraphs. And so it does that. And then you have some vital formatting and you just you have this little automation that I set these up all the time. You set up your little automation and you hit go and all you have to do is feed enough ideas in. You're like, "Yeah, but how do you come up with all the ideas?" What ideas? This is What if Guts fought in the Middle Earth? I don't know who Guts is. I'm not even This This is What if Odin came into Star Wars really? Th This is a guys, guys. This is a spreadsheet of characters. It's a mix and match. It's just running through every single combination. And you can do each one of these a hundred times over on a hund different channels. And whichever one takes off, well, that's the winner. It doesn't matter because if it costs $60, all it ever has to make is $60. And if you're making this is ever, this is what you call evergreen content. Why? This doesn't age. This will be here. It doesn't matter if it's 2025 or 2085. This video will matter as much. It doesn't matter now. It won't matter less than it will not age. Um it's I always think the when people say it's like ah it aged like fine wine. This is this will this is like unaging Kool-Aid is what this is. It's Kool-Aid. It's fine. It'll do. You know there's no sugar in it but it'll work and it won't change for 20, 30, 40 years. and they've got time. You know, that one person's been doing it since 2020, making different content, scripting things like like Minecraft and things. That's what people used to do. Now, you can do this and make real bank because if you're able to post 150 videos a day, let's say you're just working by yourself. You're doing all these workflows by yourself. You're doing 150 videos a day. You know, let's say they're they say that they're it's costing $60 a day. What's actually costing them is probably the 11 Labs generation because that's the actual point. But if you found some freer voices, you can actually just kind of crank out the same voice, people actually won't pay as much attention. I promise you the whatever money he's spending extra on the better voice is probably not money well spent. Um, now you could go too cheap where it just But as long as this sounds somewhat I Let's Let's listen to this. >> The All Father did not belong in this galaxy yet the >> What other voice do you need? You want to tell fantasy stories? What more do you need than this? >> Force itself reached across the void and pulled him through. >> Not only that, but this was actually done by somebody like the person we saw. You see this? If you've ever watched um lyric videos where somebody will do the do the lyrics of a song because you can't either the the audio is bad or they don't like the video and people just want to do like or remix music. You'll see like the the equalizer going on the screen. See these little effects here. >> He awoke on a world of tombs and forgotten kings. >> We're going to go up and down. We're going to go up and down and we're going to have this little effect. So, they at least threw it in Blender or or Final Cut Pro or something and they, you know, they threw it somewhere to that they could put an effect on and that's all this is. Whichever was cheapest, whatever software they have, that's where all the cost is coming out is they just got to sit here and let their their laptop process this, right? They got to grab their MacBook Pro and process this. And they're doing this for, you know, dozens of videos at a time. That's why they're coming up every four hours. And as many people as know this process and have a laptop and can can throw it up, that that's all this is taking. That's all this is. That's why this AI is different than the regular AI slop. The other AI slop is I need open AI. I need Google to make a big giant video engine to do a thing. And it's like, you know, the they're they're going here. Listen, I'm not trying to recreate a Marvel movie here and have Superman actually fly through the window. I just want words because nobody's actually watching this. Nobody's actually watching TV. They're scrolling on their phone. Same with this. You can actually just have this going while you're doing something else or cleaning or listening or whatever. Or you're bored or you're trying to sleep. You just put this on. If you fall asleep to this 2 hour and 15 monster, okay, two hours and 15 minutes. You You put this monster on. I mean, honestly, if you fell asleep halfway through, you're gonna go back and actually listen to it. That's the difference. If if I you might love something like you might be a Star Trek fan and if you were trying to watch your way through the entire series and you fell asleep during one of them, you might actually go back and watch the the watch what you missed. even if it's an episode you saw before, you you know, maybe you're a completionist or uh you have just it's just what you're going to do and you just love it and you want to catch every moment and and not say you missed any of it. Some people could sleep through Star Wars. I know how that sounds, but some people just don't care. Um and with the prequels, it's arguable that that they may not have to, but you're not going to go back. Nobody is going back to catch the rest of the story. Nobody. Nobody cares. Um, I read history. I read Gibbons, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and I made sure that I never fell asleep. I caught every word because I was going to make it through that book. That was Hell on Earth. Um, very interesting. But uh sometimes it gets into the biblical uh begets. Uh Bob beget Sally. Sally begget Sarah. Sarah begget Joseph. Great for them. Um it does get a little repetitive sometimes. History tends to be repetitive. But this is on that level, but to a a point where you don't feel like you're trying to read an encyclopedia. It's trying to put a lot of sugar on it. This is this is sugar mythology is what this really is. I thought this would be a fun first video to to start with. So, you know, the reason that I sort of went into that video is um it what I'm going to be doing on this channel is not um covering AI or politics or news, but kind of taking another look at things and giving a a little bit of a a different spin on it. Everything in the world is not black and white. And a lot of times when we look at the news or we look at politics or we look at the world, it's black and white, cut and dry. Bad guys, good guys. Uh the left, the right, the center. Um uh this is what the west thinks. This is what the east thinks. This is uh you know, a lot of these things are nuanced. And you don't need to do a terrible deep dive all the way down to understand the nuance. often what you just need is a second opinion. This is the whole idea behind this channel. Um, and I don't take I have I've I I thought about this a lot of the other media projects I done before. And one of the things that really struck me is I'm I'm sort of that living embodiment. I'm very blue collar. My first jobs for um well over a decade into adulthood was as um a blueco collar worker. I did factory. I did quality some CNC work. I've even ran a welding machine, ran drove a forklift. Um, but I was that geek who had a Tandy Color computer and a Commodore 64128 and I was into BBS's and I got into the whole grey hat hacking scene and I was like I was like the young pre-teen reading frack magazine. Um, you know, I was very interested in the 90s on how technology worked and then I was very interested in how security worked and I was very interested. Sorry, my beard is not This is a put together first video and it's just not cooperating with me today. Um, so I sort of got into that and then I uh realized that I was in a world at the time which may be changing now. Um, hopefully not too much, but I was in a world at the time where um, you couldn't get very far without experience or an education. Um, and even though I had the passion and the skills, uh, being in the Midwest, it was very hard to get into something like it without the skills. So, I started working on my education and I just never stopped. Um, and now I am Dr. Dwayne Layman. Um, which, you know, it's it's it's a different world going through academia. It's it's its own learning experience. It's a mountain to be climbed. Um, it really is no different than Everest. Um, anyone can climb Everest. Anyone can be a doctor. It just matters how much you want it and whether or not you're willing to just take step after step even when it hurts. You're willing to do that, you can be one, too. Um, part of the reason that I went down this path and am now doing this program is, um, the world changes depending on what information you have access to and views you have access to. It's a very different view from what people are saying in a factory in the Midwest versus what people are saying in a university on one of the coasts, for instance. Now granted, my doctor comes from the Midwest, so it's not that far removed from each other. Um, but oftent times we we have this idea of a very split ecosystem. And this sort of goes back to this this question of AI slop. We have this question where who do we trust? Do we trust media elites? Do we trust academic elites? Do we trust institutions? We're in a very interesting time in history right now where people are very anti-institutional. Uh they're very anti- anything that sort of smells of a of elitism or people on ivory pedestals. Um and that is something that I think is worth exploring because um I have criticisms for everyone. uh talking to my wife and and and going over some of the ideas for this this new channel and sort of adding it as one of my posttock projects is that uh and while I could not uh uh curse in the dissertation that's it's not a rule here. Um, but I really did did sort of go over this and say, you know, I I hardly ever taken media that I don't have a comment on that either they forgot to add important context or they've taken something and and got it completely wrong. We're actually going to we're going to cover things that actually regular people uh are impacted by or things that they hear sort of, you know, people on that are also on my other end of the the sort of spectrum, the elite end of the spectrum, and what they get wrong. You know, we're going to cover things like why are officials, elite officials with with two and threeletter degrees of more than 10 years of education so horrible at communicating to normal people. U you don't have to be a the the best communicator. I think there's a fear of ever being slightly wrong and taking damage for it. If you're going to be a good communicator, uh it almost requires you to be wrong quite a lot. Um, trust is not built, and this is a this is one of those mistakes is we think trust is built on facts. It is not. If your mother, let's we're going to go a little traditional here. Let's assume that your mother um was the Leave it to Beaver kind of family um wants to invite you over for dinner, probably going to say yes. Okay, it's trust. Is it based on any facts? No, it's just your mother. Um, if you're, you know, you have a friend who invites you over for dinner, h it depends on how close you are. Trust, sure. What if you are a woman and your male boss invite you over to dinner and they are single? Well, you trusted them as a boss. They didn't invite the the office. They invited you, whether you're married or not, but your boss is single. invited you to dinner alone. Trust is not based off facts. Trust is multiaceted. Um, and I think that's one of the mistakes that a lot of uh th those who have the same title as I do. And while I'm just freshly a PhD, I am in my late 40s. So, um, I I don't really take any guff from those people that have been uh sitting in their PhD chairs for for 20 years or more. Uh there are quite a few people out there who who think that that's how the world works and I I don't give a damn. Let me make that very clear here. If you're worried that this is I don't really give a [ __ ] who thinks that they're on top of the hill or on bottom of the hill. What matters is whether or not you're able to navigate the world in a common sense way. um you know where you feel like you're not just standing on sand changing under your feet all the time and right now with the information overload which you know is at least the definition I used to know of with the singularity wasn't about AI it was just about you know a world that was so information overloaded and we're we're almost at what I would call attention zero um used to be the saying back in the day and that if someone else use this phrase and I'm stealing it. Sorry, I don't remember it but back in the day um used to be everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame and I was with you know radio and TV. Um suddenly it was you know it's everyone uh is going viral and then the attention uh economy came along and our attention spans for content get shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and I think we're approaching attention zero. That's a problem. That's why we covered this story on the AI slop. That's why this was the thing. And yes, I have to remember which side of the screen I'm actually on. So, it makes sense when I'm actually pointing something. Again, I'm rusty. I haven't done this in almost 10 years. Not quite 10 years, but almost 10 years I haven't done this. Um, so when we're going over this though, these things matter. like th this story matters as far as how we're navigating like covering that happening on YouTube actually will matter with the upcoming midterms and presidential elections and world peace. Like how the hell does that have anything to do with world peace? One of the things that I got my doctorate in and the thing that I've always specialized in in all my work my work is systems thinking. This is really bothering me. I want to get my beard brush out so much, but I'm not going to stop filming. You know, often times, you know, the saying really is true in in any type of media is um the first step to winning in show business is showing up. So, show up, hair's not right. Uh don't wait for perfection. We're not also going to run through some of these topics without perfection, which means we're come second opinion does not mean final opinion, you know. And that's the other thing, too. I'm not here to not make mistakes. I I I spent two years writing roughly 125page document for publication where every single comma was scrutinized. And there's still probably a mistake. There always will be. I'm not going to sit here and pretend in any remote way that I'm not going to have factual mistakes. There will be. Am I concerned about them? No. I I could pretend that I am like, "Huh? Gee, I I called it I called it GPT4, but we're on GPT5. And oh gosh, I'm have to issue a correction. That's not what normal people do. And on this channel, yes, I I'm coming at you from this view to bring stuff, but I'm trying to bring it down to the the the common level. We're all on the same page. It's not it's not super weird goofy speak. And I'm going to get a little controversial at the end of this right here and kind of tell you what really spawned this. some a bug a bee that's been in my bonnet for about 5 years. Um, the CDC, what is the main problem with the CDC over the past go back to Nixon, right? The problem is is the problem with the CDC is that they speak like doctors and doctors in the traditional sense of um you know not the take two aspirin call me in the morning or the doctors when you see doctors on TV you you like hearing all the medical jargon kind of coming at you and they're in the ER or if you're a fan of the pit you know and and and Wley's you know you kind of get into that but they don't feel like they're on a pedestal. talking down to people. They're just getting in there and saving lives, right? We're fine with that. What we're not fine with is the hedging. And that's some a lot of what I, you know, in academic writing, you have to do that as well. A lot of hedging. It's possible maybe. And, you know, academia right now is pushing people to make more assertive statements, but it's like pulling teeth. And quite frankly, if you can't give a direct answer, just be like, listen, it says this, but I'm I'm going to give it from my gut. If you can't do that, one of my one of my messages, one of the things that frustrated me, and I knew what messaging they were trying to go with, though I I thought they should have they they held back far too long. Far too cautious. Uh far too much someone sitting in a room checking their [ __ ] commas. Um, doctors don't talk like normal people. Half of the problem is not policy. Whether it's your government or doctors or institutions, half the problem isn't policy. Half the problem is they just can't speak like a normal [ __ ] person. Again, I spent time in factories before ever coming into school. Um, and you know, it doesn't mean everybody's dropping the f bombs. Like, I'm not trying to say that. But we we talk like normal ass people. We didn't sit here and ah ah gee where are my pearls so I can clutch them like oh I don't know the evidence is only about 60% accurate. What do we do? That's a problem. And so it's my opinion that the world could use a second opinion. You know the the world as it is is is first opinion. And I think a lot of great people are doing a lot of great work and that includes people working on diseases, people working in the news, people covering foreign wars. People are doing amazing work. Problem is um we have a clash. What we have a clash in is is is is a brine. we have fresh water and saltwater and and we have this clash where, you know, the fresh water is coming down the river, the salt water is coming from the ocean, and we're having a mix here. Um, and it's turning into a sludge of of of kinds. Um, literally and figuratively, you're a fan of reading about academic or administrative sludge, another topic we're probably going to cover. And so what I think is is most helpful is to um cut through that with a second opinion. So somebody who is able to see both sides of that sort of divide and sort of cut a new line um and cover the things that people aren't able to cover on specific topics. And again, this is not a news channel, but what I think we can do is have a little fun. I don't know if this is fun. That actually kind of looks fun. I would rather it be snow because I I don't think I could I could try taking a boogie board down that, but I don't think that's going to going to work for we can have we can still have fun doing it, but understanding the world. Um, the problem is the news does not speak like normal people. And I'm not going to go into some topics. For instance, though, I think we all understand that it was really weird that part of the world, the world of where people are just throwing their two cents out there has one type of thought about a Luigi Manion. But if you listen to the news, the the MSN, CNN, Fox, and you listen to the talking heads on TV, they have a very different view and a and a much more h this is disturbing. Meanwhile, the public, or at least the public that was posting about it, having a wildly different reaction. Um, there's a disconnect going on here. And so, I think some things just deserve a second opinion because I I think one side is afraid of making any mistake. And another side, and this not political, but just in general in this world, not even just the US, but probably in parts of Europe and Asia as well. um not as familiar with South America and Africa but potentially um you just have people who are tired of nothing getting done. You also have people tired of making mistake and holding on to what little bit of legitimate power does remain. And I don't mean like they're grabbing on to power, but if you're a newscaster, you don't want to jeopardize your entire industry or your job just because you feel like throwing out a little bit of an opinion. I don't have that problem. So, we're going to have a second opinion and we're going to try to thoughtfully go through some things. Um, kind of take a lot of the the the [ __ ] out of it. If I was writing, I' I'm nice enough to not write out [ __ ] I actually just put it BS, but we're going to take the [ __ ] out of some topics. Just cover them as they are. Um, and mistakes will be made. That is intentional. Normal people are policing everything they say when they're talking to friends. Um, on the other hand, newscasters, even when they appear friendly, are policing every word coming out of their mouth. That's something we got to change. I think it's something we've got to fix. Um, and not just about this, we're going to hit a lot of light topics. I'm going to I'm going to cover productivity systems is one of the things I want to cover. all these people, they've got their they've got their BJO bullet journal. I I don't want people think it's like some weird sexual uh reference here, but there's, you know, do the bullet journal or the getting things done or the atomic method or this and that. I've read all those books. I've heard all those things and I'm just going to give you all a little secret. It's all just rephrasing project management. Most of the time it's all to do with premortems and postmortems. like they're not lying to you, they're just branding it. So, we're going to cover some of that and I'm I'm going to play the actual videos. I also want to make very clear, I'm never attacking anyone, even this like, hey, you know, respect the game, right? At a minimum, respect the game unless someone's actively trying to harm someone. I'm not going to go after uh anyone doing this. I'm also not going to go after productivity YouTubers. I watch and enjoy a lot of productivity because it's a good reminder, but I also can decode it. And a lot of people, they're like, I'm going to get my life in order. It's the new year. I'm going to get this these things done. So, I'm going to do I'm going to buy a journal and I'm going to do the the 4:00 a.m. walk and I'm also going to do the protein shakes and I'm also going to do the green shakes and I'm also going to I'm going to do creatine and I'm also going to do bullet journal. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. Oh, and I'm going to get the app and I'm going to get to-doist and I'm going to get aauna and I don't Honestly, I don't know some of the smaller productivity apps that are on there. Trello, Notion. Are you a Notion or are you Obsidian or do you are you really uh galaxy brain and you're doing Apple Notes? Um I'm going to break through all that crap. 99.9999% of it is crap and you can take away a few things. That's one of the lessons I have too is it's not you should not listen to everything but you should listen to something. It's okay to invite anyone to speak. It it's also important that you take only what you need and no more it you know the the whole the whole mantra with camping right leave things better than you left them. And if you're going to leave things better than you left them, it also means you you know uh what was the do you remember I don't know if they still make these but in the gas stations I've never I haven't seen them anymore except for in like really old gas stations and I love seeing them. Take a penny, leave a penny. You don't have you don't take all the money when you watch a YouTube or you read a book no matter how good the book is or how famous the author is. There's a really good book uh um How to Get [ __ ] Done, I think it was called. There's also I I love books that cuss. Um, you know, whether it's uh Stop Giving a [ __ ] or Get [ __ ] Done. You're not supposed to like they're great books. They're good authors. They have speaking up. Start with why. Great book. Start with why. It's a great book. Um, if you get two takeaways from it, you want you remember it's like, "Oh, it's a great book." Yeah. What's my why? What's my purpose? You read a whole book to get a good phrase. It's worth it. But are you supposed to go back and make notes and journal? There's a lot of people that believe that. They believe that when you read books, you do all journaling. And if they want to do that, more power to them. If you don't do that and you're thinking, should I do that? Here's my advice to you as someone who has read thousands of dry academic and had to take notes. Don't ever take notes on a book. That's not the purpose of a book. Um, I would actually point you to a Ryan Holiday. We might actually take notes on his own books, but um great stoic lessons. Um and they the Stoics taught that, you know, books are great, but get out there and live. That's where, you know, yeah, have a couple books, but you're not going to be any better by reading more books and uh going over and and reading them like mantras. So, if you're incessantly taking notes on your books such that your notes are also books, you're wasting your time. you're doing a good job feeling like you must be somebody who just loves the art of handwriting. You just want to keep you just want to write like if you're probably your your favorite gift in the world is like a quill quill pen or something like that with a little ink well and fine paper. Okay, you're not actually learning. You just like writing like hey that's the second I'm going to give you a quick short on on that. Do I think journaling is good? I think journaling is excellent. I think what you journal about matters far more than how often or how much you journal. Should you journal every day? I don't know. We have social media. It's not uh 1694. I'm not on boat. I don't need to journal every day. Um I think that's I think the thing that when people say a lot of what I say is responses to people say everyone needs to insert. So I don't have an objection to the act. I have an objection to the everyone needs to. everyone needs to journal every day. No the [ __ ] they don't. They 100% don't. Um professionals can disagree. If you think that that's the way that leads to and I I watch there's a there's a few graduates of Oxford. Um one has a great uh channel where they they talk about liberating, you know, as a doctoral historian. Another one's a doctor doctor an MD. Um maybe that's what it takes to get Oxford. I didn't go to [ __ ] Oxford. I'm still a doctor. Um, it did not require journaling every day. And that's the other part of this, too. It may be for you. Journaling every day might be right for you. It is 100% not right for everyone. Um, for most people, it's not right. Most things aren't for most people. You know, matcha is not for most people. Okay? Everyone's going, this is a thing I saw on media. Everyone's going crazy over matcha. Okay, I spent three weeks in Japan back in high school. I had authentic matcha in a tea house. It wasn't famous. One of my favorite experiences in the world. Did taste it. It was just good tea. It's good frothy green tea. It was wonderful. I I slurped super loud, which was apparently everything that they wanted because we were told to slurp. So, I slurped. Um, wonderful time. Am I going to go out and buy matcha? I love Japan. No. Uh if if something brings me to that part of the world, I'll try to I'll try to get that experience again. But life's not just about sharing experiences. It's about having experiences. It's not just about your Instagram photo of what you're doing. Oh, here's here's my bookcase of journals. I got some books behind me. They're on the bottom shelf. My I I'm I'm putting my degrees up if you can see. Right here is my dissertation, my ropes, and all that good stuff. I I haven't worked on this bike. Um I I climbed the mountain. I didn't I'm not I'm not building a shrine to the to the climbing gear. Um it's about the next thing. It's about where are you going, not just where you've been. It's good to have pictures. It's good to keep things. I have things all over my walls of concerts I went to that were very special to me and my wife. Um bands that were I do a lot of, you know, things that are musical. um things with my son very awesome but don't live in an Instagram world and when you read through things you're seeing someone in an idealized life and the best authors will tell you that all you are seeing are the the idealized life that they have and not the warts and all uh some do a good job of trying to bring that out but the most the more someone moves towards honesty and if you said hey I don't have time to read your your book, what should I know? And they say, well, here here are the 10 lessons. I don't have time for that. Okay, here's two things to take away. They get down to two things. Uh, you know, yeah, you I don't believe there's a priority. It's a book. Books don't have priorities. You should have priorities, not your books. So, in your books, take away at least two things. Um, even if one of those things is never recommend this book. It was crap. Um, but almost any situation, no matter who it is, and I I you read a book by your worst living enemy, you will still find one thing that is at least of value to you, even if it's learning from someone else's mistakes and then never open the book to anyone else. You can do that. Um, that's what we're here to talk about. So, yeah, we're covering quite a swath of things. Yeah, we covered uh let's see, I haven't covered international war quite yet. Um, again, some topics, I'll be honest, some topics people just don't care about. Um, I can talk on them. People aren't going to have a lot of a lot of care about them. We're going to hit topics and things. And I think the real goal of, you know, what what do I foresee happening is that if people follow along, you know, and they they watch one out of 10 videos, one out of a hundred um and after a couple years and they caught a few videos and they just walk away with, you know, that they they looked at things from a different point of view and I want to apply that in my own life. I want to see things in different point of view. Even if you disagree with me, if you walk away from this, you say, you know, I think I need to start forming a second opinion and not just take things as they are. Because that's what a first opinion is. If the world is it presents itself to you, you accept on its face value. Boy, we talked about trust. You'd better have a lot of trust in the world. You'd better trust that world a whole lot. like June Cleaver, you'd better trust her inviting you over for dinner because if you take things at first, oh, sorry, I have a I have a window open and and the big city does have sirens. Um, you take it at face value, you really are just get that's a that's a first opinion. Um, you know, it's a little joke about doctors. Um, but I think a second opinion is something that we we're losing the ability to form. The real danger of AI is not slop and all this and I understand there are jobs and that's a whole that's that is a discussion to be had. Um, but the real danger of AI is not whether it writes you know any of these these uh uh articles and having it do and look up things. This is this is the least of the use that I have right now. Yeah, it's it's it's I could do this or we could sit here going through 10 blue links, okay? It's still a machine. Does AI, not AI. It's still a machine. And don't tell me it's it's it's written by people because uh you probably can't find all but maybe one person out of 20,000 at Google that could understand the search algorithm fully. So, it's it's it's be it's well beyond uh it's humans making those timings, including the content. um we we have a whole discussion to have on news and why most of the people delivering your news don't actually understand the stories that they're writing about and it's not necessarily their fault. So we'll cover that as well and why yeah maybe even these sources down here the fortunes and the guardians and things like that are not 100% trustworthy and not because they're lying to you. They're untrustworthy for a completely different reason that they do not have control over. That's certainly going to be a second opinion. Um, again, I'm not here to attack. I'm here to inform. Um, and we're here to have a little bit of a conversation, but the real danger is giving up judgment. AI can inform you. Uh, trust me, it can. Now, quick take on how we're going to use AI on this channel because I'm sure sure people are going to be wondering. Um, if I find editing tools that make this screen look better, we're going to use them. Okay. Uh, am I going to be replaced by AI? No. Um, are we going to use those the writing from the AI? Yes. Well, you say, "Yeah, well AI hallucinates and things like that." And, you know, even, you know, like on medical advice, I can make mistakes and doctors can catch those. Yeah. But most people can't. And so, when we're covering AI, we're going to go over together. Mistakes will be made. But then again also again I'm reading it as an expert. Um the things I normally ask AI about are filling in the blanks of certain facts that are very easy to look at and confirm as we just did. Uh this is it's not rocket science actually. Uh you don't need a doctorate to be able to understand how to use AI. Um we're not going to do a the tutorial over here. Um but we're not going to what I would consider misusing. or not the content of this is not going to be if you go to the website that I've listed completely written by I told I said mock up a website here's the ideas and then I spent probably six or seven back and forths uh just having it directly editing the website and I'm just like ah go nuts and there's a bunch of fake episodes up there just so I can look at them because I'm not actually active on that site using it yet you can click the links you're not going to play anything so um so am I going to use Am I not putting a human programmer out of business? I am a human programmer. I was doing website hosting before I even transitioned full-time uh to it. I can do PHP, Pearl, Python, CSS. I can work in SQL. I can work in Postgress. No problems. I'm an IT director. That's my main job. So, I'm using AI to program. Am I putting anyone out of business? No. Because I wouldn't hire anybody any anyways. Um, that's the other thing we're going to talk about is this what what it means to certain people. It's like what does it mean to you if you don't you're not up on a subject or you are up on a subject or you're an expert on a subject. What does it mean to you? And so how am I going to going to going to tell people that oh well yeah no people should people some people can't do a website. You're what are you going to pay? You're going to pay a a a GoDaddy or a Squarespace or something like that. you're going to pay someone to template and use their own AI. Um, and you think that's going to a human. Most of it isn't. The the humans are actually like working in the back in the the data center. Uh, they're working on the dashboards. They're working on the portals. They're not working on your website. That's not a thing anymore. Um, art and things like that. I make SVG images mostly. I don't actually use pictures and images on a lot of my stuff. Am I against it? Actually, no. Because at the end of the day, I will still not be hiring anybody ever at all. Like that's not so we got to have some discussions around AI and I think there's so much there that even covering this and like what's your policy? You're using it here. What's your policy? There isn't one. Um I think a lot of people make the mistake of trying to make everything a policy. What I think is a little in short supply is common sense. maybe having some principles and being willing to make some mistakes and also being willing to correct and also being willing to forgive people who make mistakes and are willing to correct them. That's sorely needed in this world today. We're just we are in a bit of a mess when every single thing has to suddenly become a do or die life or death political situation like AI. Um because I'm going to give you guys a little sneak peek. Uh AI data centers are not going to destroy the world. That was already happening. It's not going to speed it up either. We can talk about companies making their promises. Oh, they were going to go to net zero. If you guys actually believe that that there was going to be this world where all of our all the corporations were going to save us from climate change, um that's the other lesson of this. The reason you need a second opinion, the reason you need to be able to think critically and explore um and and stay informed and learn how to build trust with all these things. No one's coming to save us. No one's coming to save you. No one's coming to save me. You know, the first the first person, you know what they say first? If the plane's going down and the oxygen mask drop, put your own mask on first. um could even go a little religious. I don't really get religious, but you know, it's the sort of uh uh take the log out of your own eye kind of thinking. And it's really the fact that we are so splintered that until we're able to to all at least find legitimate ways of communicating and thinking and looking at things um and releasing some of that pressure valve on the the sort of institutional side where they're not allowed to make any mistakes and also releasing some of the the the the needs and desires and and wants and hopes and dreams of common people. If we can't bring those two together, who gives a crap about the AI data centers? I mean, we have nations and populations worldwide going through demographic changes and political upheavalss and and conflict. If we can't even start to agree on our conversations, what's even the conversation about AI data centers really? I mean, I'll be honest. I'm I'm looking forward to finally having an honest conversation about nuclear power. The positives and negatives. Um but we are at a point where we need to actually do something and there is an industry industry willing to do it. Um for because it's it's towards the making money and to those who would say well you know why can't we build the energy without the data centers I I'm going to put some thinking down and just let you guys know we don't live in fantasy land. Um, again, doctor of business administration. I'm the doctor equivalent of an MBA. If you think that this world is going to start up nuclear, a nuclear utopia without a payoff, that will never happen. Even in Stalin, Russia, that was never going to happen. So, we'll talk about why. I think it's a I think it's that's the thing. It's valid questions of why the way things are. And then if we can think of ways around it, that's great. But what we can't do is ignore how the world actually is. I'm a very pragmatic thinker. Um whether I agree with it or not, it's different. I don't have to like a thing to know that it's just that is the way it's going to be. And with the set of variables the way they are, there's only a few ways it can play out. And we could that's something we can talk about. But if um what what isn't going to happen at all on this channel is we're not going to acknowledge fantasy land. Um I will give you a little bit of fantasy land here. For instance, I was talk I was you know bouncing some show ideas uh when I was looking at uh some various titles and things. I was talking to the AI and and and kind of getting these ideas. with he's like, "Oh, yeah. It should be kind of like um uh and I won't name the other because I'm I might actually reference this other person. It's like a mix of this person and Chomsky." And I'm like, "No, the hell it isn't. I've I've had there are some linguists that I like. I don't have a lot of extensive, but there's some linguists on YouTube that I like." And then of course there's linguists that I absolutely can't stand. um a Chomsky not because of Chsky but um people always want to quote this person and they speak on a lot of topics outside of their expertise apparently l some linguist and this is true of all doctorates but specifically for this some doc just because they've they've spoken on things they think that they're an expert in everything and there's a there's a few $20 words for that but basically people will pair off their expertise here and because they'll speak on other things suddenly they're talking about global economics and they don't I'm gonna be honest like a lot of people that are talking on things like that they don't know dick all about local economics they're just talking out of their ass and they're using their degree to get by on it. Um can they sure should we be quoting them? We have Nobel laureates pop out every year and a lot of actual papers to read. The hell would we be listening to somebody that's just going on speaking engagements? Like that's how they make their money. It's just speaking engagements. It's good. doesn't mean you buy all the crap they have to sell. Um, and one of those like for like I I make no bones about it. I think there are some pretty piss poor academics out there and some of them are linguists and some of them are writing about AI. Um, and then we'll turn around and tell everyone, well, I don't have I don't have I have an opinion on AI, but I can't really talk about it because um I'm sort of a purist and so um I don't use AI. Um, we we don't, this is the whole idea. This is anti-thetical to everything we're going to attempt here because there is a point where you can put your nose so far up your own ass that your opinion just starts becoming irrelevant. Um, and it starts turning into an ideology. to treat academics as an ideology to not have the serious debate is very questionable and that's not something in today's world that we can't afford to do that. Um and quite frankly it's unrealistic and I I am talking about the stochastic parents authors. I've I've watched them over several podcasts and I've never felt more contempt for uh academics in my life. um not only the nose up their own asses attitudes, uh but on top of that, it's it's the it's the fantasy land. Um they don't believe this and that that I'm sitting on the economic side of things and the business side of things and the government side of things and the IT side of things and that's where I'm at. And I just know factually they are wrong that this will change the world. And unfortunately, and I know this is probably going to lose me a few viewers, nobody will change that. It will not happen. I've already heard that 2026 might be the year of protest at data centers. That's just going to send you off to prison. Like it's that's and those data centers, like I hate to say this, most data centers carry bank data. Most data centers also carry data that has to do with um financial institutions. Uh uh sorry, has to do with um it is a little late. um but also dealing with um DHS data is dealing with government data is dealing with IRS data. Um a lot of this data gets spread out in different places and I I don't know how many people actually know this. Um I'm used to it because it is the banks the data centers that I've I've worked in and around. They're controlled by Homeland Security. Uh if you show up there and you try to enter that data center, you will you will have maybe the worst last day of your life. Like I'm just you can protest these data centers all you want, but they're connected to national security and it doesn't matter what what who's in power. That is a that is a facility that that can take a full palm print scan and a code and your your driver's license and possibly an iris scan. And I'm not joking. And if you think that you're just going to cut off access there or or or do anything like that's not going to happen. I'm hearing rumors that there are some plans to do that. It will not happen. This is not a Johnny Depp movie where he's in a data center out in the desert and he's going to transform the planet with his magical nano rain or whatever that weird movie was supposed to be. It was it was kind of an okay movie until it just went all weird and and like had the government like going colluding with terrorists. It was just weird. It was so weird. So, I'm just we're going to lay that out here. We will have sensible policies around AI. We we're going to have different discussions around AI. Um but anyone who believes that like you know I I don't not support humans first. Um there is a serious economic change coming. We'd really better plan for it. Um you know, all of our jobs are risk all of them. and I'm very good at AI. That puts me at risk. It puts everyone at risk and we we we need a plan. It doesn't mean we can stop it. Uh in fact, it may might mean leaning into certain aspects of it and limiting other aspects of it. How's it going to affect art? I don't know. All I know is Disney is throwing a hell of a lot of money in that direction. And they don't normally like losing money. Corporations are not normally known for their altruism. Um and so the the other question is you these are companies that have may historically say well how are we affected by strikes and what would it look like if we no longer had to worry about that and we were just a content house like those YouTube channels um they are thinking about that um and the other side of it is people are watching it enough people billions of views a day are watching it they know it's not a human or they don't care that it's not a you. So, we have a lot of things to discuss here. It's not to say that the there are not problems to cover. Uh, but anybody who wants to stick their nose in the air and pretend that um abstinence is the answer, um, like just my personal opinion, not even a second opinion, those people can go to hell because I'll be honest, they're kind of useless. Um, they are the people who come to, you know, they say don't bring a knife to a gunfight. They come unarmed. Um, and they they can feel very self-righteous and they can make people who agree with them feel very self-righteous. Other than that, they're relatively useless in the discussion. Um, they don't have a place. Um and possibly that goes back to the problem that I had with CDC and the problem that I have with a lot of institutionalists is that they failed communications basic ass communications and they don't it it's it's one of the problems that used to be back in back in the old days um which is turning out to be true with some of these researchers are from Berkeley. I like researchers from Berkeley. Okay, don't don't mistake this. I I love researchers from Berkeley, Oxford, but I'm seeing a lot of these um some of these voices coming out of Berkeley have a very snotty ass I'm a I'm a PhD from Berkeley attitude. And from one doctor to another, I don't give a [ __ ] and most people don't either. I don't know what circle you're trying to impress, but if it's the world, you are failing badly. Um it's a it's a I don't know. It's what you might call a hidy toy. And that's not helpful. It wouldn't be helpful for me to take that attitude and say, "Well, you know, as a as a doctor of business, uh here's why you're full of shit." and but put it very nicely and in and all my my things and say I uh this is why boycots of technologies are horrible for the GDP and you're actually going to lead to uh a a destruction of the even the lower classes and the welfare state uh if you would continue to uh regress technology and make that argument. Yeah, but that's not a discussion. That's that's just saying um my authority is better than your authority. Um, and that's [ __ ] Um, and by the way, that's that's also the other thing. It's not going to fly here. Um, most people I know don't actually are not actually that concerned that I'm a doctor. Um, you shouldn't be either. And so, anyone out there who wants to do a degree comparing, um, you know, just put that kind of out in the open as well. I don't care. I don't care where you went to school. I don't care what your degree is. I don't care if your bachelor was sum. I don't care if you graduated with honors. I've got gold ropes behind me too for for my stuff. Nobody cares. That's not what this is about. Um there are those people and I do say that because there are there are people in the academic world that want to do dick measuring and they will talk about their published papers. If you are a tenure or you're a a professor on your tenure track and you need to publish papers, go for it. You rack those numbers up. You get your score, you get that score just as high as you can. Um but there have I've seen academic discussions where people have actually put out things like well I publish 150 papers a year. Uh so I don't know who you think you are. I've actually seen those discussions. Um if you're publishing 150 papers a year either you don't sleep or your papers are [ __ ] Like yeah you're doing a you're you're doing a short paper. You're slapping on your chapters one through three. You're you're just running a chapter 4. You're just grabbing you're grabbing a portion of data chapter four portion of data chapter four portion of data chapter four and and you're boilerplating it like you know it's okay to have a short paper. It's a it's okay to have a five-page paper. It's perfectly valid. Um anyone reading it or citing it other than like if you've got like a group and you're you're you know maybe you're getting cited because you're doing some P hacking. Sorry, that's some inside baseball, but a lot of people that get their numbers up are all or very famous have been found to either be p hacking and also if you're doing quantitative work, 50% of these aren't replicable. Anyways, we have our own problems in academia to deal with. I have my own quant study um which I think was more fair because actually I I I I was I was I definitely disprove my hypothesis. I found a completely separate cause for everything and found out well I think I uncovered some [ __ ] um in performance management. I think I I just uncovered a little layer of [ __ ] Um so I was quite happy with it even though it did not prove my initial hypothesis at all. Um, but that's another thing that exists out there. And I know, you know, I'm putting a little extra into this first video, but I just want to kind of cut people off at the past that if you're going to come here and and and throw um we're going to throw degrees around this not discussion um that zero interest, if you're also going to come with an ideology and say, well, you know, um I am opposed. There are so many bad things with AI that um I just think it's all completely unethical. And there's actually a term for them, AI vegans. Now granted, I don't have a problem with vegans, but it's the ridiculousness of um I will not use this thing. Meanwhile, they might be watching Netflix and searching Google all day long, which uses the same amount of energy. Like your your little bit of AI usage would is nowhere near what it costs to stream um all of your episodes of Euphoria. Okay. So, the it I'm always just amused by the holier than thou. Holier than thou people usually have a bottle of whiskey hidden in the the bottom drawer of their desk. And that is to say, their skeletons are just hidden from sight. So, um this is how what I've kind of done with all my all my web endeavors. And so, I hope to keep this going with here. Um I run very low low [ __ ] zone. So, we're not going to do [ __ ] here. We're not going to take crap here. Um, nobody's going to throw a weight around and we're going to we're going to pull some things apart. And if you're down with that with a doctor who just, you know, I I gave you the the language, right? If you're down with a doctor who just does not give a [ __ ] we're going to cover some things and you're you got to realize I will disagree with you on topics. Are you going to be okay when I take a side on something or explain something that is your sacred cow and I slaughter it? Are you going to be okay then? Because we all at some point have to be. We all get criticism. Um, you know, at some point some student is going to grab my study and rip a part of it to shreds the way that my study kind of rips, you know, little tiny kitty claw into other studies. That's how the world works. We all get disproven eventually. Um, so if you're ready to go down that track and kind of go a little more to this, I'm going to flesh this out a little bit more. We'll get a little more better than than uh uh just what I had here. I didn't actually put any thought into this. I literally read a story. I'm like, "Hey, I know this crap exists. I got a story that's based on this. Let's let's pull up a couple tabs and just roll with this son bitch." Um again, I'm from the Midwest. Uh my southern draw comes and goes. It still does. And I've I've been out here on the East Coast now for I'm starting my 10th year. um 10 10 years out here. Um and I still can't drop the southern draw. But anyways, this has been a a fun first second opinion with Dr. Doo. I hope to catch you guys at some point. Um hopefully, and I know I'm being ambitious here, but I'm someone who's done daily content before. I'm actually going to be uh looking at five days a week. So you before I before I sign off when you do a doctor when you do a mast's you are now busy every weekend like yeah you don't need to give up every weekend with a bachelors you it's like a it's like a you're doing your class especially if you're doing them in person it's like ah you're doing your classes when you when you get a mast's you gave up every weekend because every class every single one is also a group project and so you're just constantly every single weekend when you do a doctorate all waking minutes are gone. um maybe not you know so you sort of do a class portion into your dissertation portion but you are just constantly working and almost everyone has a job like some of the younger people some of these people like like the Oxford crowds you know uh it's adorable they're going into Oxford 20 year olds it's it's try being trib being a a father in your 40s doing your doctorate um it's a very different experience um it's a lot more pressure especially if you have a very active and and pressuring career um on top of kids and sports holidays and all that it becomes very challenging. So, when I was done, I took my break, which was to say the rest of the year uh of 2025. You know, I I wasn't very much the year, but I took the rest of the year off. And I'm hitting 2026 and saying, you know, I'm not going to stop and uh uh sit around like a lot of people. For me, it is literally almost 4:00 a.m. Um, this is sort of my work schedule. I was used to Friday nights. You just grind all night writing. So that's why I kind of moved it to here except for when I would if I would yawn while writing the paper. It never noticed. Um but I didn't want to stop the work ethic. I actually like the work. It was very going through my dissertation was very satisfying. Um it was a long journey to get where I wanted working with my committee because it was something new that the university had not done a lot of. Um, I was I'm one of the few people uh doing a it's a it's it's a a STEM, but business is is is an APA area, bachelor of science area type of thinking, but it's not um you know, it's count chemistry, it's not biology, and yet I had an experimental study, which is not very common in a business degree to have an experimental study. And so it took a while, but I it really mattered to me to actually get it done and get real numbers and get new data that had not been gotten before. Um, and so when I had that work, I think when I find things that that I think are important to me and important in doing, I want to put the work in. And so this is part of what I'm working on since then. This channel is is something I want to put the work into, but be a little more laid-back. Like these aren't going to be super planned out. as you could tell. And not super edited, you know, a lot of it's just showing up. A lot of, you know, I think I think the desire for perfectionism is what kills a lot of YouTube channels. As somebody who's had like I run a small media property that's sort of unrelated to me. Um, but it's probably 40,000 followers. Um, everything takes time. It doesn't have to be perfect. You you got to scratch the itch the right way. And you got to just be if you show up and say, "Hey, we're going to show up. we're gonna have there's gonna be some mistakes and that's okay. People are people are not dumb. They understand that like okay yeah I know I know the ground rules like not coming here for perfection. Get it. Um same thing here. So we're just going to push content. That's all that's that's all this channel is going to be. Just going to push some content. Going to cover some things. Uh probably going to put my foot in my mouth plenty of times. Um, I've already already told at least three people in academia to go to hell and people that are, you know, more wellknown than me, but hey, you know what they say, punch up, not down, right? So, not that I'm punching. Um, I'm not naming anyone. I guess I did name Chsky. I don't know. I did name him. I try not to actually like in all honesty, I try not to actually name people, but then again, I'm not in the Chsky crowd. I don't I don't I don't really I don't know who I even might have pissed off with that. If I pissed you off, well, guess what? Not everybody's a fan of everybody. It's okay, you know. Yeah, I think we're all we're all going to get But that's not normally going to happen here. don't really now if if somehow someone did call me out and things like that. Well, you know, just like my, you know, I always I tell if if I'm going to review a creator, not a criticism of them. It's going after uh an idea and picking it apart. Not even necessarily attacking it. We're just going to pick it and rip it apart and learn more and and and dive deeper into something. But it's never a personal attack or anything. Somebody does a reaction of mine and what's a personal attack? Even even it's an absolute outright assassin job on my character. Have fun. Hope someone [ __ ] cares, you know? And if it blows up, good good for you. Good for you. You've you've you did a thing. That's that's you gota you got to let things just sort of roll sometimes. Like you just can't be all uh I deal with a high enough stress job where people are far more serious than than what goes on on YouTube. So, uh I'm not stressing over anything going on here or what we what we might cover in academia. So, uh also you will learn I can talk forever. Um I'm already I thought I was going to stop at an hour. It's now an hour and 38. Um the longest podcast I've ever done unscripted was I think I did four hours 15 minutes was right about there. I can't remember. I think I actually did a pause in the recording for a quick bathroom break and just came right back and I almost caught myself talking as I was walking away. So, um, if some of these videos run long, ah, bail. I'm not going to put all the super important stuff at the end. If it's important enough to put uh put in at the very end, I'll make sure to throw a note in at the beginning so you guys aren't going to miss anything if you bail early. I, you know, I don't need the likes. I don't need the subscribes. If you enjoy and you want it in your feed, you do that for you. I not here for that. So, um, hope everyone just enjoys and I hope somebody gets something from it. That would be that'd be that'd be fantastic. And one of the great greatest reasons to do anything like this and I highly encourage anyone to do your own YouTube channel even if nobody watches. The greatest way to learn anything is to teach it. That's the best word of wisdom I got here. Probably should put that at the beginning, but yeah, we'll see how the nity goes. Second opinion with Dr. Doo. Hope you guys have a great great day. Goodbye now. --- Transcript by: DeWayne Lehman Reviewed: 2026-01-03