Ben Reinhardt

Sometimes I wonder if the thing that makes startups possibly the most dynamic modern institution is just because it's the one place in today's world where it's normalized for young/undercredentialed people to be in charge of organizations and significant resources.

(Re)published a piece on the Spectech Blog about how efficiency warps the types of ideas that get support, which ones get killed too early, and which ideas people choose to pursue in the first place.

blog.spec.tech/p/efficiency...

Every once and a while, we're allowed to have nice things ...

Some open questions on the financial history of technology A quest for those with the skill and daring...

For the historians out there --

There are some hardcore, dig-into-the-undigitized-archives-and-try-to-piece-things-together-from-account-books history research projects about the financial history of technology that nobody is tackling:

blog.spec.tech/p/some-open-...

Checks out: arguably, venture capital has its roots in funding whaling expeditions ...

For some reason I get a lot of joy out of the flight path from Helsinki to Tokyo

A lot of new thoughts about:
- State capacity
- Scale dependence for governments
- The difference between governments and people of a state
- American LARPing

That are probably too politically-charged and out of my lane for the internet.

Ok! Time to stop procrastinating.

You’ve done harder things than applying to AI Brains. Knock it out this weekend.

Applications close Monday June 16th!

😭

Don't forget!

AI Brains Q&A session today at 1p ET.

You bring questions, we'll bring answers.

I’m noticing that there’s a funny motte-and-bailey attribute of most disciplines that I think are BS:

If done really really well, they’re super insightful and valuable; it’s just that the vast majority of ideas are garbage and practitioners are charlatans.

This is today at 8p ET!

Q+A session about the impending AI cohort of the Brains Research Accelerator.

We'll talk about anything: how it works, who should apply, our theory of change, etc.

This is the kind of not-incremental metascientific experiment I want to see more of!

Oo oo I can ruin it here too 😜

Testing gentle ways of reminding people in group chats to clean tracking information off of links

I've always been a bit annoyed by the advice that goes "What would you do if you had a year to live? Why aren't you doing that now?"

Obv there are some things you shouldn't delay, but there are some things that take more than a year no matter how much effort you slam into them.

If you have questions, we have answers!

We are doing two Q+A sessions about AI Brains in the coming weeks:

1. June 3 at 8p ET: lu.ma/eli2c08p
2. June 9 at 1p ET: lu.ma/vxx85ug5

Some proposals to replace metascience:

Epistotechnics
Technogenesisics
Epistodynamics

I finally had a chance to search for "wirecutter wirecutter"

Whenever I run into two opposing but plausible pieces of wisdom like this, it's a flag that there's some missing confounder.

I don't know what it is in this case yet.

It's funny that there are two complete opposite arguments for where to locate an ambitious thing:

"It should be where the good people want to be, otherwise you won't get good people"

"It should be in the middle of nowhere because then only the really committed people will join"

Oh yeah that's right I can actually link to things on Bluesky 🤦‍♂️

😭

Context;

A while back, there was a splashy paper claiming that a real company was using AI to drastically improve its materials business. Many actual scientists were skeptical.

Although curmudgeonly, the actual scientists who do takedowns of hype-y things have a great record

I think the Heinlein quote holds — scientists saying “that is impossible” is often wrong.

But “this actually existing work is not as exciting as you think it is” is often right.

a cartoon of harry potter and his friends with the words bother in red ALT: a cartoon of harry potter and his friends with the words bother in red

Sometimes I'm tempted to just send this gif in follow-up emails instead of the nice polite "Hey just wanted to make sure this didn't get lost in your inbox..."

Has anybody ever used a CRM that actually sparks Joy?

AI Brains Application Apply to be a 2025 Brains Fellow! Brains is an accelerator that helps talented scientists and technologists execute on ambitious research visions that are beyond the scope of individual academic lab...

You should apply! (And encourage your friends to):
form.typeform.com/to/wqxbF1jY?...
Applications close on June 16th.

​​If you or someone you know:

1. Has hands-on XP building modern AI software or hardware

2. Has ideas for ambitious AI programs beyond the scope of a single company or lab

3. Wants to start a program to execute on that idea (or take an existing thing to the next level)...

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