Readings:

Exploration of how AI could improve human well-being across health, neuroscience, poverty, governance, and meaning in the next 5-10 years, arguing that with careful development and global cooperation, AI can usher in an era of unprecedented progress.

Analysis of the stablecoin landscape, examining diverse viewpoints from policymakers and academics. Stablecoins are a transformative financial technology with significant implications for the dollar, global payments, and individual liberty.

Stablecoins offer small businesses lower transaction costs, faster access to funds, and more predictable cash flow by enabling real-time domestic and cross-border payments while reducing reliance on expensive intermediaries.

Prediction markets, like Polymarket, are not just for betting on elections—they’re tools for gathering information by aligning incentives. This idea, called “info finance,” uses markets to extract useful predictions and insights, with applications in governance, science, and public goods funding, and it’s now practical thanks to blockchain and AI.

The most intresting thing I'm thinking about here: Unlike traditional game AIs with straightforward victory conditions, modern AI agents often have ambiguous success metrics, but combining real-world economic incentives (e.g., increasing a crypto wallet’s balance) with the ability to visually interact with interfaces via an API moves closer toward more tangible and practical win conditions. Web3 companies will begin with the end (-user experience), instead of letting the infrastructure determine the UX. As Nassim Taleb observed, “Over-engineering breeds fragility. Simplicity scales.”

How distributed systems reliable communicate with malicious actors using cryptographic signatures. [Technical]

Still reading

I was born poor and miserable. I’m now pretty well-off, and I’m very happy. I worked at those. I’ve learned a few things, and some principles. I try to lay them out in a timeless manner, where you can figure it out for yourself. Because at the end of the day, I can’t quite teach anything. I can only inspire you and maybe give you a few hooks so you can remember.

Scaling laws, AI Safety Levels, AGI timeline, meaning of life, programming advice for non-technical people.

Scaling large language models can lead to AGI, debating data limitations, generalization, and synthetic data/self-play: 70% likelihood of transformative AI by 2040 if scaling succeeds.

Pretty political podcast on Trump, Crypto, DOGE, and startups.

Companies are constantly calculating the lifetime value of a customer. We can increase the L. The longer someone lives, the greater your LTV will be, no matter what.

Lots of smart people go into VC, investment banking, and product driven by 1) status 2) lack of conviction from endless optionality.

Developing good taste requires intentional engagement, balancing instinct and aspiration, to resist the flattening effect of algorithmic curation and cultivate deeper meaning and joy in a world of overabundant, passive consumption. Reminds me of the PG article on good taste.

“Today, however, capital seeks to exploit our sociality in all spheres of work. When we all become ‘human capital’ we not only have a job, or perform a job. We are the job.”

Looking for a better understanding of the tech, business, and startup worlds? A primer on the history and future of the internet? A crisp explanation of the crypto and blockchain movements, and why they matter?

How companies use demand curves and proxies for willingness-to-pay to maximize revenue—sometimes in ways that defy logic.

Bundling flattens demand curves, allowing sellers to maximize revenue while benefiting buyers with lower prices and more surplus, making it a win-win strategy for taste-based goods like media.

Marc Andreessen champions technology as humanity's greatest tool for progress, abundance, and freedom, rallying against stagnation, bureaucracy, and pessimism.

Vinod Khosla envisions AI as humanity’s ultimate tool for abundance, reshaping work, creativity, and governance while emphasizing the need to outpace China.