Congrats on the big win! 👏👏👏 Love your podcast and win-win philosophies! I am throwing in my 2 cents in where the money should be spent to combat this issue and I propose considering investing it in a solution rather than focusing on fighting the problem. I would encourage you to look to invest in a sustainable food startup or a regenerative farmer or initiative that demonstrates how farming SHOULD be done or the future you want to see and give them a better chance to get off the ground. ✨✨ (and ideally you could find that win-win… a startup looking to do things differently that also brings a spotlight to current atrocities by partnering or supporting nonprofits of that nature)
I just read that scientists have determined that pigs are the 5th most intelligent animal on the planet. My experience raising one from 10 days old confirms this. That makes the horrors of modern meat production even more heinous. Coco's idea of ethical meat production is good and it could combine with some sort of media production about pigs with feelings and a purpose. Remember the movie Babe? It probably did more to turn people into vegetarians than any other "investment". Babe 2 - The Great Escape would be an action-packed thriller where a plucky band of wild pigs break into factory farm and liberate their cousins. The marauding herd (after eating the cruel farmers) stampede into the Capital building during a session of Congress and hamstring a few politicians until they're given the legal protections they need. They then annex Florida where they plan an assault on Cuba....In the next movie. Babe 3 - Swine Trek they take over Space X....
Congratulations, Liv!!! What an amazing awesome accomplishment. Well done. One for the ages. I hope your 2025 is even better but that will be hard to beat. You'll certainly have a great bankroll for a lot of poker.
Poker is a strange world. I’ve played north of 800 live tournaments myself, and still have a deep love for the game. I’ve always felt the influx of solvers has helped us old-schoolers, not because they tell us what to do in tough spots, but because they get others to do uncomfortable things they wouldn’t normally do. For that reason I believe solvers have helped those who rely on a gut feel of our opponents comfort level to make the big decisions.
As for the universe rewarding your charitable decision, I think you may be on to something. The single biggest score of my career came immediately after returning home from the funeral of a friend who passed from cancer. Ive never had the deck hit me in the face like it did that weekend. I still wonder if it was donating $$, or my friend watching from above which provided the run-good. Either way, I truly believe the universe gives back what you put out…
Yessss this is the kind of story I was hoping for! It’s so wild when the deck just hits you like that. Great point re: solvers too, although it can go both ways (because it gives bad players confidence to make good plays, and then hide behind a hoody or whatever)
Congrats Liv! So fascinating (the manifestation bit) and so cool you’re applying some of your brain power to the food conundrum. I’d love to read about your thoughts and processes as you decide how best to contribute with the money. I feel this real tension between the energy we put into fight something we don’t want versus the energy we put in to create something new. Regenerative agriculture has to be a win-win in the food space for sure. I am looking forward to hearing what and how you decide! Xo
I had a similar relationship to working in a field. Mine was religion and the woo gets ruined by woo’ing selfishly or for insignificant things like getting a good parking spot and most of all for making our side win and dominate over the rest. When the woo turns out to be full of shit it seems hard to stick around…so I left. But like you something still nags at me that if you did the woo right — for the good of others, then the woo could be real. And I so want the woo to be real. Coz with Moloch pulling us down we need something miraculous to break free from the cycle.
Probably optimize with science but let our human flag fly free with some woo to balance.
I watched your conversation with Lex Fridman in the days before the FT, and observed you on the FT stream with that in mind. (I had first heard of you a couple of days before in Negreanu's vlog).
The thing that struck me most watching, is that you were sitting in the same pose with your hands together and two fingers pointing up in all (or most?) of your crucial all-in situations, right up until the last hand, when you just had your hands together up until to the flop, and you left the pose entirely (which the commentator mentioned) just before the A rolled off the deck. Almost like you felt it coming?
Going back to Lex, I found the conversation equally fascinating and challenging. My cynical, gut reaction (which I try to debate and challenge) is to dismiss stuff about "manifesting" etc, as woo, magical vibes-based thinking, a load of bollocks basically!
My reasoning is that - from a rationalist, ex-hardcore-athesist-but-now-more-open-minded perspective - the randomness in poker emerges from the physical shuffling of a deck of cards, there's no evidence or hypothetical mechanism of action to suggest that it is possible for those outcomes to be affected by a player's thoughts/feelings/intentions, and as far as I can see, that's that really.
I fought really hard against that thinking and tried my best to give everything you said the time of day, and I've thought about it loads while playing over the past few weeks (I'm just a fish playing microstake MTTs for fun).
I think the way I most strongly relate to your ideas is these times where you just have a completely certain, gut feeling about what's coming on the river to either make or ruin your day, and you get that incredibly strong feeling, almost a certainty, that you somehow either had a premonition with absolute certainty, or even that you willed the event into existence by manifesting it.
I have felt these feelings so many times playing poker, and the way I rationalize it is to write it off as a cognitive bias - I only vividly remember the times where I had that strong feeling and it came true, whereas when I have it and it doesn't come true, I ignore it. I'm not totally convinced by my own thinking here, I really really am starting to think it might be considerably more "magical" than I'm giving it credit for, but I'm really struggling to find any basis for it other than "vibes", "feelings", and "Liv said so in a podcast".
I suppose a rationalist trying to steelman the case you make in this blog, would be to argue that playing with your win-win mindset, rather than an external force affecting the random outcomes, simply gave you the headspace to play your best game, and the cards fell well for you because of, well, randomness. Or even if I wanted to be somewhat provocative, that it just had no effect at all, you got lucky in this one trial, and your monke brain has convinced you that the pledge had a huge effect when really it was just a coincidence. (from listening to you speak at length, I'm guessing your position is at least partly agonostic to these possiblities?)
I do have a couple of suggestions for how you could gather more data points outside of your own personal experiences;
1) Stake a bunch of people into the same tourney. Have half agree to donate x% of their winnings to a charity, and see if they outperform the other half (ideally large sample size and multiple trials). Bonus points if there are data points for individual hands that take place between people from the two camps, seeing if they outperformed their equity against each other or anything like this
2) (this is mostly a cheeky joke proposition, but I, a random internet person, would totally do it and gather a bunch of data for you); Stake me $500 and I'll enter 100 $5 tournaments, pledging in advance to donate 50% of any winnings from half of the tournaments to charity, and pledging in advance to donate 100% of the winnings of the other half of the tournaments to my own bankroll. (which tourney is which would be decided in advance, in some verifiable way that can't be fudged). I'd earnestly vibe super hard trying to manifest the outcomes.
I'm poor enough that any wins at that level would be a relatively big deal for my bankroll, and though I know a little bit of poker, I'm enough of a noob that my results are mainly decided by chance. Also, I'm a vegetarian and I've been feeling really guilty about the volume of eggs I've been eating recently, so I guess it could go to a hen sanctuary or something - that all seems to invoke the WinWin on all sides, so it should have a big effect, right?! Let me know ;)
In all seriousness; congrats on the win, thanks for the cool ideas, sorry for the essay, and big up for the pledge! That's such a huge amount of money for anyone to commit to a good cause!
Across cultures and millennia, countless people have recognized what could be described as a medium of communication tied to consciousness—a kind of API into spacetime. To dismiss it as impossible or delusional, as the rationalist paradigm often does, is to imply that billions of people throughout history are profoundly wrong or crazy.
The evidence is not hard to see—it’s woven into human experience—but it’s hard to accept because it challenges the boundaries of Enlightenment materialism. What happens when these processes are no longer dismissed, but integrated into science? What does engineering look like when this hidden system becomes manipulatable through technology?
Congrats on the big win! 👏👏👏 Love your podcast and win-win philosophies! I am throwing in my 2 cents in where the money should be spent to combat this issue and I propose considering investing it in a solution rather than focusing on fighting the problem. I would encourage you to look to invest in a sustainable food startup or a regenerative farmer or initiative that demonstrates how farming SHOULD be done or the future you want to see and give them a better chance to get off the ground. ✨✨ (and ideally you could find that win-win… a startup looking to do things differently that also brings a spotlight to current atrocities by partnering or supporting nonprofits of that nature)
thanks for the suggestion, will look into it!
To your point, an important Supreme Court ruling: https://theconversation.com/supreme-courts-ruling-on-humane-treatment-of-pigs-could-catalyze-a-wave-of-new-animal-welfare-laws-205548
I just read that scientists have determined that pigs are the 5th most intelligent animal on the planet. My experience raising one from 10 days old confirms this. That makes the horrors of modern meat production even more heinous. Coco's idea of ethical meat production is good and it could combine with some sort of media production about pigs with feelings and a purpose. Remember the movie Babe? It probably did more to turn people into vegetarians than any other "investment". Babe 2 - The Great Escape would be an action-packed thriller where a plucky band of wild pigs break into factory farm and liberate their cousins. The marauding herd (after eating the cruel farmers) stampede into the Capital building during a session of Congress and hamstring a few politicians until they're given the legal protections they need. They then annex Florida where they plan an assault on Cuba....In the next movie. Babe 3 - Swine Trek they take over Space X....
Jesus christ, that’s nuts 😁 Congratulations Liv. Well done 👏🏻
And good of you to think of the animals.
You may enjoy the very short book “Consider the Turkey” by Peter Singer.
Congratulations, Liv!!! What an amazing awesome accomplishment. Well done. One for the ages. I hope your 2025 is even better but that will be hard to beat. You'll certainly have a great bankroll for a lot of poker.
Thanks Chris! Probably not too much poker, but yes I'm a lucky girl.
I LOVE this story! Here’s to helping pork lovers eat “Win-win” instead of “Treated like Shit”…imagine how much healthier they will feel ;)
Poker is a strange world. I’ve played north of 800 live tournaments myself, and still have a deep love for the game. I’ve always felt the influx of solvers has helped us old-schoolers, not because they tell us what to do in tough spots, but because they get others to do uncomfortable things they wouldn’t normally do. For that reason I believe solvers have helped those who rely on a gut feel of our opponents comfort level to make the big decisions.
As for the universe rewarding your charitable decision, I think you may be on to something. The single biggest score of my career came immediately after returning home from the funeral of a friend who passed from cancer. Ive never had the deck hit me in the face like it did that weekend. I still wonder if it was donating $$, or my friend watching from above which provided the run-good. Either way, I truly believe the universe gives back what you put out…
Yessss this is the kind of story I was hoping for! It’s so wild when the deck just hits you like that. Great point re: solvers too, although it can go both ways (because it gives bad players confidence to make good plays, and then hide behind a hoody or whatever)
Congrats Liv! So fascinating (the manifestation bit) and so cool you’re applying some of your brain power to the food conundrum. I’d love to read about your thoughts and processes as you decide how best to contribute with the money. I feel this real tension between the energy we put into fight something we don’t want versus the energy we put in to create something new. Regenerative agriculture has to be a win-win in the food space for sure. I am looking forward to hearing what and how you decide! Xo
Thanks for the inspiring post, Liv! You may like to donate to helping invertebrates. I estimate the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP) has been 412 and 173 times as cost-effective as broiler welfare and cage-free corporate campaigns helping chickens (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EbQysXxofbSqkbAiT/cost-effectiveness-of-shrimp-welfare-project-s-humane), and I guess these are usually more cost-effective than helping pigs. So I think donating to SWP would be over 100 times as cost-effective as helping pigs. Relatedly, see Bentham Bulldog's case for helping shrimp (https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-best-charity-isnt-what-you-think).
I had a similar relationship to working in a field. Mine was religion and the woo gets ruined by woo’ing selfishly or for insignificant things like getting a good parking spot and most of all for making our side win and dominate over the rest. When the woo turns out to be full of shit it seems hard to stick around…so I left. But like you something still nags at me that if you did the woo right — for the good of others, then the woo could be real. And I so want the woo to be real. Coz with Moloch pulling us down we need something miraculous to break free from the cycle.
Probably optimize with science but let our human flag fly free with some woo to balance.
Congrats.
I watched your conversation with Lex Fridman in the days before the FT, and observed you on the FT stream with that in mind. (I had first heard of you a couple of days before in Negreanu's vlog).
The thing that struck me most watching, is that you were sitting in the same pose with your hands together and two fingers pointing up in all (or most?) of your crucial all-in situations, right up until the last hand, when you just had your hands together up until to the flop, and you left the pose entirely (which the commentator mentioned) just before the A rolled off the deck. Almost like you felt it coming?
Going back to Lex, I found the conversation equally fascinating and challenging. My cynical, gut reaction (which I try to debate and challenge) is to dismiss stuff about "manifesting" etc, as woo, magical vibes-based thinking, a load of bollocks basically!
My reasoning is that - from a rationalist, ex-hardcore-athesist-but-now-more-open-minded perspective - the randomness in poker emerges from the physical shuffling of a deck of cards, there's no evidence or hypothetical mechanism of action to suggest that it is possible for those outcomes to be affected by a player's thoughts/feelings/intentions, and as far as I can see, that's that really.
I fought really hard against that thinking and tried my best to give everything you said the time of day, and I've thought about it loads while playing over the past few weeks (I'm just a fish playing microstake MTTs for fun).
I think the way I most strongly relate to your ideas is these times where you just have a completely certain, gut feeling about what's coming on the river to either make or ruin your day, and you get that incredibly strong feeling, almost a certainty, that you somehow either had a premonition with absolute certainty, or even that you willed the event into existence by manifesting it.
I have felt these feelings so many times playing poker, and the way I rationalize it is to write it off as a cognitive bias - I only vividly remember the times where I had that strong feeling and it came true, whereas when I have it and it doesn't come true, I ignore it. I'm not totally convinced by my own thinking here, I really really am starting to think it might be considerably more "magical" than I'm giving it credit for, but I'm really struggling to find any basis for it other than "vibes", "feelings", and "Liv said so in a podcast".
I suppose a rationalist trying to steelman the case you make in this blog, would be to argue that playing with your win-win mindset, rather than an external force affecting the random outcomes, simply gave you the headspace to play your best game, and the cards fell well for you because of, well, randomness. Or even if I wanted to be somewhat provocative, that it just had no effect at all, you got lucky in this one trial, and your monke brain has convinced you that the pledge had a huge effect when really it was just a coincidence. (from listening to you speak at length, I'm guessing your position is at least partly agonostic to these possiblities?)
I do have a couple of suggestions for how you could gather more data points outside of your own personal experiences;
1) Stake a bunch of people into the same tourney. Have half agree to donate x% of their winnings to a charity, and see if they outperform the other half (ideally large sample size and multiple trials). Bonus points if there are data points for individual hands that take place between people from the two camps, seeing if they outperformed their equity against each other or anything like this
2) (this is mostly a cheeky joke proposition, but I, a random internet person, would totally do it and gather a bunch of data for you); Stake me $500 and I'll enter 100 $5 tournaments, pledging in advance to donate 50% of any winnings from half of the tournaments to charity, and pledging in advance to donate 100% of the winnings of the other half of the tournaments to my own bankroll. (which tourney is which would be decided in advance, in some verifiable way that can't be fudged). I'd earnestly vibe super hard trying to manifest the outcomes.
I'm poor enough that any wins at that level would be a relatively big deal for my bankroll, and though I know a little bit of poker, I'm enough of a noob that my results are mainly decided by chance. Also, I'm a vegetarian and I've been feeling really guilty about the volume of eggs I've been eating recently, so I guess it could go to a hen sanctuary or something - that all seems to invoke the WinWin on all sides, so it should have a big effect, right?! Let me know ;)
In all seriousness; congrats on the win, thanks for the cool ideas, sorry for the essay, and big up for the pledge! That's such a huge amount of money for anyone to commit to a good cause!
You really are fucking awesome 🙇♀️
not as awesome a Lynn M'fing Gilmartin!!!!!!!!!
Congratulations Liv and thank you for speaking up for the voiceless.
You might enjoy this short story by John Robbins
The Pig Farmer
https://www.johnrobbins.info/the-pig-farmer/
You're awesome!
Across cultures and millennia, countless people have recognized what could be described as a medium of communication tied to consciousness—a kind of API into spacetime. To dismiss it as impossible or delusional, as the rationalist paradigm often does, is to imply that billions of people throughout history are profoundly wrong or crazy.
The evidence is not hard to see—it’s woven into human experience—but it’s hard to accept because it challenges the boundaries of Enlightenment materialism. What happens when these processes are no longer dismissed, but integrated into science? What does engineering look like when this hidden system becomes manipulatable through technology?
Very cool, you're going to help a lot of animals. Respect!