Danny Crichton
@DannyCrichton
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Riskgaming @Lux_Capital, Fellow @ManhattanInst, former Managing Editor @TechCrunch. Analyzing tech, power, science, disasters, growth and startups.
Manhattan, NY
Joined March 2010
It's a huge day @Lux_Capital – we're officially launching Riskgaming! For a year, we've been developing four scenarios around climate change, national security, China, AI, election security and other topics. Now, we're finally making the first of these scenarios public
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My career to date has been VC -> TC -> VC -> TC. I'm taking up the siren call of the dark side yet again (-> VC), this time at a firm named for light, aka @Lux_Capital, where I will be head of editorial.
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The biggest concern among TechCrunch staffers on this call is whether we will be forced to use Microsoft Teams post-acquisition.
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1) This week, my good friend and brilliant geopolitical professor @crmiller1 published his new book “Chip War” – already short-listed for best business book of the year by FT. We discussed it on the “Securities” podcast today, and here are some surprising highlights:
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If you’re in or near Manhattan, @Lux_Capital is hosting another set of beta tests of our first wargame scenario (which we have dubbed “riskgaming”), focused on national security and climate change. Come join us in Flatiron! DM me as we schedule runthroughs – more details below
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🔊 Space is getting crowded thanks to the low cost of getting payloads into orbit. That's why @GoToImpulse is building next-gen rocket propulsion to cheaply maneuver satellites. @lrocket and I discuss the co's new Helios engine design that debuted today:
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I am saddened that @TechCrunchPlus, where I was founding editor, is being shuttered. Here's a reflection on the past and present of @TechCrunch's economics and business model within the maelstrom of the media hellscape:
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Excited to announce that in addition to my writing and riskgaming scenarios @Lux_Capital, I've joined @ManhattanInst as a Fellow focused on improving America and the world's economic growth and progress on science and technology
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1) Is there a limit to the amount of learning we should do? Is it ever possible to learn too much? The academic research answer appears to be "yes," and that is the subject of this week's "Securities" newsletter and podcast on "Marginal Stupidity" 🧵
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Just finished listening through a draft of our first multi-part “Securities” podcast series and god I want to listen to it again. Get ready for some incisive insights on bias, risk, and decision making from the most eminent scholars and practitioners in the field. Dropping soon!
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🔊We have a new "Securities" podcast today, bringing together two biotech community builders: Nicholas Larus-Stone of Bits in Bio and Michael Retchin of Nucleate. We brought them together in person for the first time! Some highlights and the link: 🧵
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Here's the video intro for our first riskgaming scenario at Lux, Hampton at the Cross-Roads. Thanks to the inimitable @CGates123 for his production work here.
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Thanks to @margauxmaccoll for joining Lux Riskgaming last week and writing up a fantastic Saturday profile for @theinformation. She captures the essence of what makes these games so powerful: the negotiation, the sudden reversals, the new friendships, the learnings
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1) ESG is a farcical mirage, with blurry definitions and a patina of goodness that belie a salient fact: no one knows what an ESG company actually looks like. I talk about all the recent scandals in the industry in this week's "Securities" newsletter 🧵.
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It’s my last official @EquityPod episode as co-host - I’ve hosted 141 episodes by my tracker, and it’s been a blast chatting it up with @Alex and @nmasc_ on everything from Luckin Coffee, to ridiculous VC antics, to every valuation always INCREASING. I guess no more dad jokes :(.
super bittersweet @EquityPod ep
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It was a pleasure meeting with @MikeBloomberg this week to discuss the opportunities and risks of AI and national security.
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Next up in 2021 reflections, the best articles I wrote in 2021. I wrote 194 articles and about 125,000 words last year, which was about half of what I wrote in 2020 (all those editor responsibilities catch up to you). Here were my favorite pieces:
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Biggest lesson from Riskgaming? DC types always start hyper-competitive and then try to cooperate over time to recover lost trust. Startup folks tend to start cooperative, and then get far more competitive over time. Important cultural difference that explains a lot of DC/tech.
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The ∞ wheel of progress continues with the closing of Lux 8, @Lux_Capital's single largest VC fund since inception. At $1.15B in LP commits, the focus remains the same: early, hard sci/tech, with the high possibility of transforming humanity. Read more:
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Now that I’m Covid cleared - fighting off jet lag with a delightfully gorgeous walk along the Seoul City Walls (which I must add have been improved dramatically the past decade)
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Very excited to publish @TechJournalist's EC-1 deep dive into NS1. Internet infrastructure is the absolute foundation to the digital economy, and NS1 is one of the key building blocks to watch as it continues to take more of the market
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Topics in the "Securities" by @Lux_Capital newsletter tomorrow: "The power of nukes / ARM, ICON, and China / Etc." Lots of progress on fission and fusion this past week, and maybe we'll recognize that nuclear power has a critical role to play in the future of our planet's climate.
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Home appliances are absolutely miraculous — completely transforming our quality of life. But they have barely changed in decades, and it's time for that to change. I chat with @sdamico of @ImpulseLabs_ on pushing the industry forward and supply chains:
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New "Securities" podcast dropped today – Josh Wolfe and I debate Malthus, South Korea's newly found penchant for nuclear weapons, and the latest Musk/Twitter shenanigans (and they really are shenanigans). Plus why I think the world is ending.
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1) Are crypto, quantum computing, and lab-grown meat real or vaporware? In this week’s “Securities” newsletter, I dived into the liminal margin between science fiction and science fact in “Vaporware Skepticism”. Some highlights: 🧵
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It's been an absolute blast at @TechCrunch the past 4(!) years, analyzing everything from the U.S./China trade war and the 5G crisis to Luckin Coffee, Palantir, data infra/ML, fintech, DisasterTech, govtech, VC of course, and so much more.
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Every year, I review all the essays and articles I read and pick my favorites. In 2021, I read about 1,600 pieces, and I picked a top 5 as well as 19 honorable mentions. Read the explanations in the post below, and see the links in the thread 🧵
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1) Today, we have a great new "Securities" podcast with NYU's Jonathan Haidt, the co-author of "The Coddling of the American Mind" and the co-founder of the Heterodox Academy. 🧵
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Everyone looking great at the live @EquityPod - @alex, @bayareawriter and @nmasc_ doing amazing
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We're launching a new special series @TechCrunch this weekend called the TechCrunch Global Affairs Series, curated by special series editor @scottabade. We'll be publishing perspectives on the future of technology and international relations
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GPT-4 has been ricocheting around the @Lux_Capital offices the past 24 hours – lots of wows (and lots of creative prompt engineering!). So @graceisford and I did a rapid reaction "Securities" podcast on what we're experimenting with and what we expect Big Tech will do next
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1) We produce more knowledge than ever, but our wisdom has never been more lacking. We produce more research papers than ever, but the speed of new discoveries has never been slower in the modern era. In this week’s “Securities” newsletter: What’s going on? 🧵
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The @EquityPod crew of @alex, @nmasc_, @CGates123, @gracedenhall and now @bayareawriter have been so fun to banter with about ridiculousness, VC numbers, crazy IPO valuations and more. Alex still has not eaten my Stanford sweatshirt despite promising to though so f him.
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My far-smarter-than-me former roommate just nabbed a great seed round – amazing @feross (and my far-smarter-than-me former colleague @zackwhittaker has the scoop):
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I've also posted my first featured piece in @CityJournal today on Washington's sustained attacks on tech progress, including the Section 174 R&D tax crisis, antitrust harming the funding of startups and the SEC's new private-fund adviser rules. Read More:
Excited to announce that in addition to my writing and riskgaming scenarios @Lux_Capital, I've joined @ManhattanInst as a Fellow focused on improving America and the world's economic growth and progress on science and technology
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The future of aviation will be quieter. From delivery drones to air taxis, we need aircraft that takeoff and land closer to us and not at remote airports. Read how @WhisperAero, @ian__villa et al are building to transform flight in Tennessee:
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Story time: I once sat on a couch at TechCrunch NYC and read a book. I was, unofficially, the/a books editor, and one could expect the person regularly reviewing books to … read books.
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10) In fact, as we add more and more complexity to society, there is a point at which complexity begets further complexity with no increase in productivity, essentially leveraging a collective “tax” on everyone to maintain an ever more complicated bureaucracy for no value.
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1) What does security — national, economic, social, health — mean when the planet itself is creating the threats? That was my theme in the last issue of “Securities” and here are some initial thoughts:
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Great piece from @kevinsxu on what to do when a country's most important national resource is what is in its citizens' brains. Who gets to control that resource? What does a non-compete mean in the context of nation-state competition?
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1) I wanted to understand more about what the looming food crisis means for trading houses and end consumers, so I brought two former CEOs of the largest trading houses onto the “Securities” podcast to talk more. Here are some highlights:
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1) We live in a time of tremendous focus on … focus and productivity. But what if wandering — i.e. not focusing — is precisely the best way to focus? That was the thesis of our “Securities” episode with cognitive psychology professor @AnnaLisaCohen1. Some key highlights:
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1) Consensus functions are the kernel at the heart of every social organization, whether a VC fund, a startup, a family or a society. How we build these functions matters a lot, and they are the theme of this week’s “Securities” by @Lux_Capital newsletter:
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Seoul’s scone game has gotten quite good. I’ve also learned that 4 scones and a cake is a bit much
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1) The winter of our discontent has not been made a glorious summer. The chaos and destruction of VC financing has turned into the tranquility of vacation autoresponders. Global macro events are angering many, but can we turn chaos into creativity? 🧵
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1) We posted a delightful podcast episode of “Securities” with @lesliejz talking about her new book “Fertility Rules”. I had absolutely no idea just how complicated fertility and pregnancy have become: 🧵
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We had an amazing "Securities" podcast published this morning with WashU's CIO Scott Wilson – it's dynamite and here's some highlights:
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I didn’t have crust on bread or a tomato until I was 19. Now I just eat raw beef and live octopus -always be evolving :)
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Best Books I Read (2022 Edition) - 5 top choices plus 7 honorable mentions, here we go:.
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1) A pattern I am seeing is what I am dubbing Multiple Valuations Syndrome 🧵.
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We published so many "Securities" podcast episodes this year, but no theme had more traction among our listeners than AI. We just published a wrap-up episode of our 9 favorite segments and learnings, and I am threading them here now 🧵
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13) Read @crmiller1’s book “Chip War” and listen to our whole conversation on the “Securities” podcast:
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My college roommate is so much more productive than me. Congratulations @feross, and anyone interested in open-source software security or code supply chain attacks should check out @SocketSecurity:.
🚀 Huge news! @SocketSecurity has raised $20M Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (@a16z). ⭐️ This funding fuels our mission to make open source safer for everyone!. 🚀🚀🚀 We're also announcing 4 new products this week as part of Socket Launch Week! ✨. 🧵 1/10.
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1) This week’s issue of “Securities”, I wrote about perception, reputations, and truth. The quantified measurement of truth is often impossible, which forces us to find proxies, and that means there is alpha in piercing through reputations to find truth …
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1) When it comes to maintaining the systems of civilization, America remains mired in a destruction-rebuild cycle. Here are some thoughts from the most recent issue of the “Securities” newsletter:
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Who is the most important influencer when it comes to the future of the American economy? According to @wolfejosh, that baton has shifted from Warren Buffett to Xi Jinping, whose economic policies locked in at the NPC this week foreshadow aggressive investment in science and tech
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The U.S. gov is giving one of the most strategically important regions in the world the equivalent of a 2021 Series A VC round. In NYC we’d call this 8 subway escalators.
US to invest $150mn in south-east Asia as Biden steps up economic engagement to counter China
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Thanks @bznotes, now everyone knows I speak in the third person.
This is how Lux operates :-) .Some may have seen @wolfejosh and I disagree on @Tesla. That’s public…but it’s brutally awesome on private Slack Channels etc. We learn from each other.
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One of the most refreshing things about @Lux_Capital is we invest in capabilities, and not markets. Wrote up some thoughts from my perspective thinking about the aphorism of "if you build it, they will come":
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I was told New Haven had pizza and I can say the pizza is pretty damn good (if not an NYC slice).
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Interested in joining an in-person runthrough of @Lux_Capital's newest Riskgaming scenario, focused on doing business in China? Join us this week on Nov. 16th and Nov 17th by signing up on Google Forms here:
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1) This week in the “Securities” newsletter, I explored the complicated state of the world and asked a simple question: How exactly do you summarize the present state of the world? And with each tightening of brevity, what should an analyst or storyteller leave out?
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6) Flexible thinkers ("foxes") are really good at synthesizing information and making correct predictions. BUT, there's a trap: give them too much information or offer them random scenarios, and they flounder with their predictions quite hard:
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As a former beat writer for $NVDA at @TechCrunch, the lesson is that Nvidia (like all chip cos) massively gyrate in valuation due to chips gluts and shortages. I watched $NVDA collapse during the crypto winter even as crypto continued. The same pattern will hold with AI.
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America's labor policy has been "mind over muscles" for decades, with the creative class the last bastion of stable employment. That's changing with generative AI, and the wipeout will upend politics this decade. I talk more in this episode of "Securities" by @Lux_Capital:
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Thanks to @eriktorenberg for interviewing me on his excellent @MediaEmpiresPod podcast show. We talked about TechCrunch’s history and strategy for an hour, and here are my favorite highlights: 🧵 1/
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4) The theme of two books I was reading last week converge around a central thesis: there is a marginal return to information, and it often reaches zero — or even negative — far earlier than we might expect
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How is Miami considered a business hub when it doesn’t even have Precheck?.
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12) The answer is to recognize that additional information is often not *marginally* informative, and instead, we should explore frontiers that have never been investigated. The most value comes from mapping uncharted territory
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1. @GaryMarcus on the weak foundations of truth in AI. “We've always had retail bullshit. Somebody writes a blog post that's just not true. But now these tools allow you to write as many copies and variations on themes as you want, as fast as you want.”
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12) Finally, Chris looks at dozens of characters in the industry for Chip War, and he determined that Morris Chang, TSMC’s founder, is the most interesting character he ran into. “His life is a glimpse on how globalization happened”.
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2) We've got a great pod on LP strategies and dynamics with the chief investment officer at WashU Scott Wilson, who had a 65% gain in Sept, leading the uni to offer need-blind admissions in Oct. He talks all the macro dynamics and his transition from rural Alaska to Wall Street
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This was such an intellectual and diverging conversation on societal infrastructure, open source, the attentional commons, legibility and so much more. So glad @annasofialesiv and @nayafia allowed me to join. Read if you didn’t get to join live:.
A conversation about technological literacy, agency, and our future relationship with our tools with @nayafia and @dannycrichton
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2) In Part One of the episode, we talk about Haidt's recent essay in The Atlantic, which describes his metaphor of the post-Babel world that Americans find themselves in, unable to talk to one another
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So excited that Osmo has finally been revealed to the public. Coupling AI/ML to olfaction can at last bring the last human sense into the digital realm, with massive implications for food, fragrances, social networks, bug repellants and more. This is as bold as you can go
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The best part of NYC's startup ecosystem is the incredible community of support and feedback that helped me develop riskgaming over the past year. Thank you so much to the more than 100+ startup founders and engineers who played and offered feedback
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The scenario takes about 2-2.5 hours for 6 players, and we generally try to serve breakfast/lunch/dinner depending on time. Read more about the Lux Riskgaming Initiative’s mission here:
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Join @Lux_Capital NYC for a special runthrough of our riskgaming scenario "Hampton at the Cross-Roads" on climate change and national security next week on Monday and Tuesday. Sign up here:
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Very excited for Lux's lead check into the $30M founding seed round of Tokyo-based @SakanaAILabs. Japan has some of the best AI talent in the world, and we're looking forward to Sakana's growth into one of the leading AI foundation model developers.
A new Tokyo-based AI startup wants to make AI cheaper by using smaller models
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2) I had on the podcast Chris Mahoney, former CEO of Glencore Agriculture (and now known as Viterra), as well as Soren Schroder, former CEO of Bunge, the “B” of the ABCD of ag trading.
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Also New Haven’s bagel game is amazing. Olmo here - I love that every employee has to sign a “No Bad Bagels” policy. Thought it was performative and then I realized apparently the schtick works.
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We had 55 senior election officials, cybersecurity experts, tech CEOs, and policy folks explore the challenges of deepfakes and AI election security in our January riskgaming scenario "DeepFaked and DeepSixed?"
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The number one question I get from early-stage founders who just raised funding is how to get covered by TechCrunch. It's a milestone on the very, very long road to building the next tech giant. So long as that reputation holds – there is a sustainable business to be had at TC.
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Live Vision Pro product demo from Apple’s newest sales associate at @Lux_Capital, @wolfejosh
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I've learned so much from @bmorrissey's The Rebooting. CRM is the future of media, not the CMS. The future of news media is about deep reader relationships, not broadcast. It's $$$$ from a few, not ¢¢ from the many. Take a read:
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Zooming In: 90% of my life is spent holding a latte while being pointedly aggrieved
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11) How do we square the declining marginal return of knowledge to the fact that it seems we need more knowledge than ever to make any impact in many fields? Why does it seem like everyone needs two PhDs to build a startup or know national security?
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Pandemic risks are intensifying thanks to advanced AI/ML, climate change, and increasingly wide access to samples and lab equipment. But should we be worried about man-made bioweapons? That's what we address in this week's "Securities" by @Lux_Capital episode:
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