Wisdom

"Could any other president have pulled off the AI revolution? I don't know because you would have to go massively after the regulatory structures in order to even imagine that private companies could build their own power plants on site."

The AI revolution required aggressively dismantling regulations so private companies could build their own power plants on site.

"Even if you're just plugging it in for an electric charge, that little bit of work where you have to get out of your car and the weather might not be ideal, that's probably a big deal. These seem like small changes, but I'll bet it's not small."

Small frictions like getting out of your car to charge in bad weather matter far more than they appear. Minor convenience upgrades can transform an entire product's appeal.

"Do scientists think that the worst other scientists are climate change scientists? Or would you say that the people who can't be good scientists become climate scientists?"

Hard scientists may view climate scientists as the least talented ones who couldn't succeed in more rigorous fields.

"The other possibility is that men are better at evaluating physical risk and seeing through the BS."

Men might assess climate risks as lower not to appear masculine, but because they are better at judging real danger and spotting exaggeration.

"Would you rather give the billion dollars to, oh, let's say Tim Walz in Minnesota or Gavin Newsom in California or somebody like Elon Musk who definitely knows how to deploy capital?"

Billionaires who excel at capital allocation can often create more public value than governments or politicians.

"You don't even need to know anything about the domain. In every case, data is unreliable if it matters."

You don't need any expertise in a field to know its important data is unreliable.

"All numbers and all data that matters is fake. Why would you believe the Doge numbers if you don't believe in any other numbers? I would say it's probably moving in the right direction but it might be an exaggeration how much has been saved so far."

Since all important data tends to be fake, treat reported savings figures with skepticism even if you trust the source, but the overall direction of change is probably real.

"California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness, but they didn't have any system in place to track how they were doing. So they know they spent the money, but they don't know if it made any difference because they didn't track it."

Spending billions on a major problem without any tracking system means you have no idea whether the money achieved anything.

"It makes me think that maybe Trump is not an authoritarian. If you were an authoritarian, would you need to go to the Supreme Court to get permission to say that people born here in some cases are not citizens?"

True authoritarians don't seek the Supreme Court's approval for their policies. The fact that this route is being taken indicates Trump is operating within institutional bounds rather than above them.

"The one thing that Trump does better than just about anybody is that man can spot from a thousand miles away. It could be because he's good at making up his own BS, but wow, is he good at spotting. You can see around corners when it comes to that stuff."

Trump excels at detecting scams and falsehoods from a great distance, possibly because someone skilled at creating BS knows how to recognize it. He can see around corners.

"If somebody's giving you money and then they ask for a little detail about how you're spending it to make sure it's not all being wasted, if you don't give them that information, you're a fraud. There's just no way around it. You're a fraud."

When funders request basic transparency to confirm their money is used properly, refusing to provide it is clear evidence of fraud with no other plausible explanation.

"It's very rare to have an extinction. And when you do have an extinction, they have a specific reason for it. So it's more about whether the species that are living there have a way to run away if things get bad. If they can't run away because they're locked in a lake or they're locked in an island, sooner or later something's going to come for them and they can't get away."

True extinctions are rare and nearly always have a specific cause. The common thread is that the species had no escape route—trapped on an island or in a lake—when a threat arrived.

"Climate models couldn’t possibly be valid for all the reasons that affect any kind of complex model. It just has to do with complex models. They just don’t work."

Complex models are inherently unreliable no matter the subject, which applies directly to climate models.

"The emphasis should change from oh no we’re all going to die from carbon to let’s fix as many problems as we can and get our technology as strong as possible and our economy as strong as possible and that will protect us the most."

Rather than obsessing over carbon and doomsday scenarios, focus on solving real problems while strengthening technology and the economy as the best protection against any threats.

"The way persuasion works is you persuade other people and if you do it well they adopt your language because they like the way you said it."

Effective persuasion spreads when others adopt and reuse your framing because they find the wording compelling.

"You irrationally say, "You can't make me live in any tiny house." Did I mention a tiny house? No, this is not about tiny houses. But what will be your objection to these well-designed cities? Your objection will be, "I'm not going to live in a tiny house.""

People often reject proposals for better-designed cities by irrationally reducing them to 'tiny houses' even when that was never suggested, revealing how objections get anchored to strawman fears.

"On the one hand you're told the science is settled. But on the other hand if you read the IPCC reports they're pointing out for instance that water vapor and clouds are much bigger."

We're told climate science is settled, yet the IPCC's own reports highlight major uncertainties in much larger factors like water vapor and clouds.

"If you took all minors off of social media, they wouldn't be hooked as they got older. It could crash the whole thing."

Social media depends on addicting young users who stay for life; removing minors could break that cycle and undermine the entire business model.

"I suspect that social media is in for a reckoning from AI anyway. I don't know if social media will ever look the way it looks now. It might be even more addictive because of AI but it's a weird time to have that lawsuit because maybe it won't matter at all. Maybe all the social media will just morph so much."

AI is about to transform social media so thoroughly that today's platforms and the lawsuits against them may soon become irrelevant, even if the new versions turn out more addictive.

"I learned immediately is that none of my data and none of my analyses were anything but what my boss wanted to see. There's no science to it. So once you're actually in the work, you can see that it's fake. But then you're too invested because that's your job."

In corporate settings, data and analysis are usually shaped to please the person in charge rather than reflect objective reality. Insiders quickly recognize it's not real science but remain because their job depends on producing the desired results.

"The Turing test was never super useful because you could always fool dumb people, but maybe there's no way you'll ever fool smart people."

The Turing test isn't a strong benchmark for AI intelligence because it can be passed by fooling less discerning people, though it may never succeed in deceiving truly sharp observers.

"I have a rule that if it's a private conversation that the person who released it is responsible for it. The things that we say privately we say them privately because we don't want them anywhere else. And we say them privately because we think the person we're talking to can handle it and might put it in the proper context. But when it gets out in the wild, all the context is lost."

The leaker bears responsibility for exposing a private conversation. We speak freely in private because we trust the listener to understand our intent and keep context; once leaked, that context disappears and the statement gets distorted.

"Acting strong will hurt you in the short run because there's always somebody who's totally offended by the strong actions. You know they always think that everything strong turns into something even worse. But in the long term, I would argue that that is the mark of a change leader."

Strong leadership triggers immediate backlash from offended people who assume it will lead to worse extremes, yet this pattern of declining popularity is exactly what marks an effective change leader.

"If 90% of published academic studies are false, meaning they can't be replicated, and that includes things about cancer drugs, global warming, gender mutilation, and even vaccines, then science isn't even real. If 90% of it is just made up and you can't tell what's in the 90 and what's in the 10, science is not real and maybe hasn't been real for a long time."

When most published research cannot be replicated and is effectively made up, the whole institution of science loses credibility because we cannot reliably distinguish the small fraction of valid work from the overwhelming junk.