“eLiEzEr iS jUsT tRyInG tO mAkE mOnEy” Actually, donors already put up $$$ specifically to prevent financial pressures reducing his ability to update his views correctly.

154. In Kyme, an official of some sort is having a funeral. A stranger approaches those conducting the obsequies and asks, ‘Who’s the dead guy?’ One of the Kymaeans turns and points: The one lying over there in the coffin.’

Agency > Intelligence I had this intuitively wrong for decades, I think due to a pervasive cultural veneration of intelligence, various entertainment/media, obsession with IQ etc. Agency is significantly more powerful and significantly more scarce. Are you hiring for agency? Are we educating for agency? Are you acting as if you had 10X agency? Grok explanation is ~close: “Agency, as a personality trait, refers to an individual's capacity to take initiative, make decisions, and exert control over their actions and environment. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive—someone with high agency doesn’t just let life happen to them; they shape it. Think of it as a blend of self-efficacy, determination, and a sense of ownership over one’s path. People with strong agency tend to set goals and pursue them with confidence, even in the face of obstacles. They’re the type to say, “I’ll figure it out,” and then actually do it. On the flip side, someone low in agency might feel more like a passenger in their own life, waiting for external forces—like luck, other people, or circumstances—to dictate what happens next. It’s not quite the same as assertiveness or ambition, though it can overlap. Agency is quieter, more internal—it’s the belief that you *can* act, paired with the will to follow through. Psychologists often tie it to concepts like locus of control: high-agency folks lean toward an internal locus, feeling they steer their fate, while low-agency folks might lean external, seeing life as something that happens *to* them.”

since i was like 14

We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right. Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases. In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing). In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.

”Lovable for X” is the new ”Uber for X”

was having a convo last night at dinner about how modern “advice” basically stopped working. mostly because it now decays at the speed of culture which is moving faster than ever. like even wisdom is lagging today. e.g. macro stuff like telling someone “get married,” “build in public,” or “raise vc” without recalibrating for today’s drift is like giving navigation instructions on tectonic plates mid quake. this type of stuff worked when the world moved in slow motion. the ground was stable enough that patterns stayed true long enough to matter. now that ground is liquid. the algorithms shift fast, incentives invert in the blink of an eye, & every day on X / elsewhere the future keeps overwriting the present. wrote a small post on this below.

sure, i think there are meaningful differences from dot com in that the largest most profitable companies in the world are pursuing datacenter buildout, the mood is not as Pollyanna optimistic as the 90s, and the companies have revenues rather than just users

Gold and bitcoin is acting like we’re about to enter into a period of hyperinflation—but no one realizes that AI is deflationary.

One thing I really notice traveling the world now, as opposed to 20 years ago: Not many young people. Tourists or locals. A lot more of the people I see are middle-aged, everywhere. The world is dying, and we haven't even woken up to it yet.

lots of peeps think charisma is about charm, in it’s truest form charisma is about intellectual compression. you take something baroque & thorny, strip it down to its atomic skeleton, then animate it with a human pulse. you make people feel like they’re actually inside the thought, seen & understood, then you lace it with levity, tension, & a deep narrative. at the end the other side should be left thinking “wow, i fucking had it backwards.” tldr: charisma is clarity + resonance + surprise. this video showcases this beautifully.

Lots of people say negative things about the physical appearance of someone when they disagree with them, especially on the internet. I think that's bad. I've met many ugly people with whom I agree.

"in some cases, somewhat humourously, we've seen the agent spend more tokens writing summaries than actually solving the problem" they made claude 4.5 a wordcel😂😭

By age 40, you should have at least three such boxes. By age 50, you should have none.

kinda ironic how this launch basically kneecaps meta’s ai recruiting. in some ways it just means the comp premium goes up. in smart circles there are social penalties for choosing one logo over another, & right now meta sits on the wrong side of that table culturally. it also kinda cements the perception that meta is chasing engagement gimmicks rather than setting the intellectual agenda. so instead of meta ai evoking respect like openai or deepmind, it evokes… content farm.

Our present rhymes with the railroad buildout era in the 1800s. Oligopolizing the means of transportation was the holy grail. By the time it was achieved and the "Long Depression" arrived the most succesful railroad entrepreneurs were known as "Robber Barons". Lesson in that.