James Cham

I clearly need to make an excuse to visit DC.

I’ve never heard of this book but fascinating!

Wow. That was quite a piece!

What you think the likely consequences are depends on whether you expect to see a pooling or separating equilibrium.

Now there is a very strong torment nexus-vibe here but feel like a few friends of mine are basically proto-Manfred Macx’s. Time to re-read Accelerando!

“pronoiac meme-broker”, “automated their legal processes and are spawning subsidiaries”, “silicon rust belt victims”

Solving unaccountability machine puzzles feels like it would be good for everyone!

Another @dsquareddigest.bsky.social style unaccountability machine style problem. I know there are many problems in the world but I wish we spent more time thinking in these terms... rein.pk/over-regulat...

This is a good time to let everybody else know that I've got a mailbag column coming up in a few days...

If you've got a question, fire away here.

49ers, Warriors, Giants, everything.

First slot guaranteed to BlueSky questions.

Was reminded by a friend that air traffic controllers are working without pay right now.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto:

First pitcher to win 3 games in a single World Series since 2001 Randy Johnson

First pitcher with 3 road wins in a single WS

4th P to win G6+7 in a WS, joining ‘01 Johnson, 1946 Harry Brecheen, 1925 Ray Kremer — FIRST to do it on road

The Good Samaritan, by Joseph Highmore, 1744, 📸 by @patricksmith04

I worry that Kahneman was right about AI 7 years ago:

“Yann LeCun said yesterday that humans would always prefer emotional contact with other humans. That strikes me as probably wrong. It is extremely easy to develop stimuli to which people will respond emotionally.”

Std Dev | ----------------------------------------- +1 | Best in group | 84.1344746% | 1 in 6 +2 | Best in big classroom | 97.7249868% | 1 in 43 +3 | Best in high school | 99.8650102% | 1 in 740 +4 | Best in town | 99.9968329% | 1 in 31,574 +5 | Best in city | 99.9999713% | 1 in 3,488,555 +6 | Best in a billion | 99.9999999% 1 in 1,013,594,634

Smuggling this over from a @jamescham.bsky.social post over in The Bad Place:

Rather than using 1-10 ratings to describe things, here's a handy chart for describing things using standard deviations (assuming a normal distribution).

everything is a diffusion of knowledge problem! here's a nice reference to @dsquareddigest.bsky.social from one of the best ai investors -- tomtunguz.com/the-accounta...

It happened!

Did anyone suggest flight? Lots of examples of overblown or outright fraudulent claims of human powered flight before it actually succeeded.

I love every frame from Spider-Verse but this is particularly great.

Thanks @delong.social for summarizing this chat with Dan Wang. Everyone should subscribe to Brad's newsletter! braddelong.substack.com/p/on-dan-wan...

It's a great book

YouTube video by Track Star* Testing A$AP Rocky and Spike Lee's Music Knowledge | Track Star* Versus

I know that everything is terrible but this A$AP Rocky vs Spike Lee episode is so much fun--
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8w4...

vibe coding says more about demand than supply. the pent up demand has always been sitting there!

Breakneck (Book Debut): Dan Wang & Noah Smith on China’s Tech Ambitions · Zoom · Luma Join us for a virtual conversation between Dan Wang and Noah Smith on China’s audacious push to engineer the future. In this discussion moderated by James…

Please consider joining a virtual chat with Dan about his new book and telling a friend! Here’s the invite: lu.ma/gk9j5v06

More about the book (Very Important People have said great things and it is very readable): danwang.co/breakneck/

I’m in the middle of reading an advance copy of Dan Wang’s book Breakneck. It is very good and he’s convinced me that I don’t think about China enough. I think it is important enough that I’m hosting a virtual chat before the book comes out in hopes that it breaks through the zeitgeist.

A disconcerting number of high status people upended their worldviews because other people did not affirm that status in the way they thought appropriate.
And social media accelerated this because for high status people it is often the experience of people telling you that you are wrong.

Excellent!

Oh you are in Chicago! I'm going to get him to reach out. Former University of Chicago professor.

I mean I get the point of The Materialists and loved a lot of it. But at the same time, it isn’t that hard to choose Captain America over Reed Richards.

One day Eric Jonas is going to be a client of yours...

This is so beautiful!

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Take a look around, and if you’re building something bold, let’s talk.

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