Patri Friedman 🌆
@patrissimo
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Alleviating global poverty with startup cities @PronomosVC ; previously founded @Seasteading @Ephemerisle
Austin, TX
Joined October 2008
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Here's a longer take of why I'm against e/acc, since I was not that clear & many commenters got it wrong:
I'm an OG transhumanist singularitarian, broadly in favor of rapid tech progress as the best way to relieve suffering, upgrade civilization & protect our species
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The argument against the One Ring is not "it can't do good things". It's that no one being should have all that power.
The argument against censorship isn't "all ideas add to the marketplace". It's that no institution can be trusted to gatekeep the noosphere.
@micsolana
One argument is that some people are too easily persuaded by bad faith actors in the marketplace of ideas, and those actors have an easier time than ever of being believed.
And because that persuasion leads to all sorts of social maladies, censoring those actors is appropriate.
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"Code is Law", as
@lessig
famously said. But for a decade now, people like myself,
@balajis
,
@paulmromer
and Tom Bell have been pointing out that Law is Code too: laws are lists of procedural instructions executed by judges and arbitrators as the CPUs.
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We should have an electoral system where you secretly nominate community leaders, and then we all vote & force the "winner" to serve as President whether they want to or not.
That way you get someone well-respected who has *not* been selected for narcissism & megalomania.
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This seems plausible to me, and I don't think it's just irrational pride for my ingroup. The
@nytimes
is vastly weaker than in the past, and SSCs readers include many of the biggest names in tech. The blowback could destroy much of the NYTs remaining brand equity.
Wondering if the doxxing of Scott Alexander will be NYT’s Thiel is gay moment
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Update on making an angel investment in a combination of
#Ethereum
/USD: My US bank held the USD wire in secondary review & locked my account, tx ultimately took 2 days, 10 min on phone, and $25 fee vs. ETH from
@coinbase
cleared in 3.5 minutes for ~36c.
Actual utility of cryptocurrency for monetary transfer confirmed: today I used
#ETH
to pay for a startup investment. It was way better than a wire: faster & not closed for the day at 3pm pst. (Haven't compared tx costs).
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On the plastics issue - my intuition is that environmental disruption of our hormones is the largest factor behind the massive growth of trans/LGB*.
The left says it’s about freedom to be yourself, the right about woke madness, but what if it’s primarily biological?
I
E180: scarlett johansson vs openai, nvidia's trillion-dollar problem, the "vibecession," plastic in our balls
(0:00) bestie intros: recapping "general ai hospital"
(2:46) scarlett johansson vs.
@openai
(14:37) openai's novel off-boarding agreements, ex-employee equity problem,
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Disagree with my frens all day - we have a menagerie of wild ideas and live for respectful debate.
But mockery & condescension are out of bounds, and I don't respect those unwilling or unable to defend their ideas in a clean fight.
I hope to see you make different choices 🙏❤️
@patrissimo
that's a lot of words to say "Beff dunks on my frens so I don't like him"
I will dunk on xrisk until morale improves.
In the meantime, nice try conflating us with Landians.
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What could we try to build today that would be a worthy successor to this?
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"Legal Systems Very Different from Ours", my dad's latest book, is now out in paperback (Kindle soon). Based on a decade of research, it respectfully examines 13 different legal systems, then looks for common patterns:
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A psychological benefit of conspiracy theories is they often transform complex, systemic problems into “I’m being harmed by an evil person or group.”, a much more natural and comfortable place to be than “Damn the unforeseen effects of these new incentives!”
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A man who's superhero identity is "Capitan Ancap", who rants against leftism w/ the black-and-white passion of an Objectivist, who vows to demolish
@BancoCentral_AR
& has a cloned dog named "Milton" after my gramps, is going to be President of Argentina.
We just might be ok.
In a recent campaign ad, Javier Milei appears receiving the clothes of Capitan Ancap, his superhero counterpart, and destroying the argentine Central Bank with Thor's Hammer.
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Wow, this Startup Society dashboard is such a slick offering from
@balajis
as part of The Network State. It lists 20+ societies with one-click to their website, twitter, discord, and society application:
How do we get the first network state with diplomatic recognition? We’ll need a pipeline of hundreds, perhaps thousands of startup societies.
Fortunately, there are already 20+ such societies today. So we set up a little dashboard to track them:
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If it's wrong for a charity to accept money from a scumbag, and use it to help people...
Why doesn't our government return the tax payments of people convicted of terrible crimes? Aren't we, otherwise, all being tainted by evil in the same way as the charities?
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Excited for this new series on the Cypherpunks, featuring my dad and many friends.
When hundreds of billions of value have been created, it’s easy for a movement to forget its roots. But those roots are important to remember because the big vision is what led to that value.
@reason
@wikileaks
@laurashin
@AaronvanW
@edyson
@marksammiller
@TheTedNelson
@NickSzabo4
@zooko
@bramcohen
@DeanTribble
@epopt
@adam3us
@patrissimo
@hmichellerose
@PeterMcCormack
And here's a trailer for the series.
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1/ On the danger of "Puzzles".
A puzzle is an activity which takes brains but not effort, like Sudoku, crosswords, Hearthstone/MtG, bridge, chess, or brain teasers. They are dangerous because they feel like whole brain exercise, but aren't.
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The US govt spent $4,500 billion last year.
@JeffBezos
accumulated the most individual wealth, at $10B/year. And they're blaming rich people for not paying for climate change? Are you f**king kidding me? If it's that important, cut a program do it, wtf else is public budget for?
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The numbers are now very clear. In the next 3-5 weeks, the US must either:
a) Do massive China-style quarantines.
b) Manufacture ventilators & O2 concentrators for millions of "Home ICUs"
c) Test 10x more than today, doubling weekly.
Otherwise, > 2% will die.
By this estimate, by about May 8th, all open hospital beds in the US will be filled. (This says nothing, of course, about whether these beds are suitable for isolation of patients with a highly infectious virus.) 9/n
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If you liked "Elephant in the Brain" by
@robinhanson
&
@KevinSimler
you'll like "Luxury Beliefs" - the idea that, with physical goods cheap, the upper class now signal their uniqueness with false/damaging beliefs that people w/ less privilege can't afford to hold.
These and other findings, along with my own observations, inspired me to write about what I refer to as
#luxurybeliefs
"In the past, upper-class Americans displayed their social status with luxury goods. Today, they do it with luxury beliefs."
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Normally it's easy to ignore the news & live my life without the perpetual stress of the daily panic topics.
Not so with Cov19. I'm infected by worry at the global slow-motion train wreck. It's breached my fear boundary.
I'm not used to this. What do I do?
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Here’s a way to think about the illusion that low effort can produce great results. It applies to any power law field, whether actors, entrepreneurs or meditators.
Suppose there are 300 incredibly successful ppl in a field - 100 who put in high effort, 100 medium, 100 low.
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I tried to explain to my 14yo how depressing the laws of thermodynamics are because the universe is absolutely doomed to end in grey nothingness by 3rd law.
He pointed out that the creation of the universe may be an exception, so maybe we can win by making new universes!
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One more trade and I’ll be rich = one more drink and I’ll relax = one more lay and I’ll feel sexy = one viral tweet and I’ll be popular =one more hour staring into this candle and I’ll be enlightened.
Same treadmill, different belt.
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The “ratchet” effect of democracy, where things like spending, departments, positions, laws can be easily expanded, but are systemically more difficult to remove. Like a ratchet gear, it moves only in one direction.
(Also note these all have very similar population dynamics.)
Social spending as a percentage of GDP has increased in basically every country that we have data for over time.
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Outstanding crypto-skeptic interview by cypherpunks founder Tim May. A *must-read* if you value a 30-year perspective over the weekly crypto hype. Fairly BTC maximalist, and even connects Satoshi's paper to ancap theory. Quotes below:
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1/ I doubt I'm the first to say this, but:
#HODL
is a cartel, one which (approriately) is simultaneously pedestrian and innovative in the same ways as
#cryptocurrency
itself.
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I think a lot of internet advice comes from the wrong place in the experience hierarchy, and that's especially bad because advice has a power law distribution. Here is a draft hierarchy.
1) I heard about this cool idea.
2) I read for a few minutes about this cool idea...
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5/ Making one, however, without centralization or counterparty risk, is...non-trivial. But deeply fascinating if you're into monetarism & cryptoeconomics! Looking forward to continued community speculation on the topic.
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Internet-native digital currency...huh, that's a pretty good idea! This Friedman fellow was onto something.
(Pausing for a photo at the
#bitcoin
history wall at
#sfblockchainweek
)
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"The terrible truth the virus revealed is that the US & UK are not even countries. They are free-trade zones. Our govts are bureaucratic anarchies with ceremonial elected monarchs. Pitting them against a ruthless virus is sending Don Quixote to Vietnam."
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Most Westerners know how China became far more capitalist in the last few decades, while saving face by labeling free-market reforms as being in the true spirit of Mao. In reality, they moved to a mixed system, without changing the label.
What if the same is true of the West?
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1/ Yesterday was my farewell lunch at Google after 10 years (2004-2008 & 2013-2019). The first stint was my first full-time job, it was amazing to see growth from 5k to 50k employees, and I learned a lot about tech & culture.
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Since jhana is a hot new thing in my teeny-tiny corner of the world, thanks to
@jhanatech
& ppl like
@nickcammarata
, reminder that I have a resources doc (with a brief intro to wtf is jhana):
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1/ As a potential victim of anti-Semitism, I am supposedly being supported by those who use violence to suppress Nazis who may harbor me ill-will for my ethnicity.
But they scare the hell out of me, because truly, they are on the Nazis side.
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I want teenagers walking by parks, looking appreciatively, and saying "Wow, there's wood, clay, running water, you could totally do a Stone to Bronze leap with that. I saw SidMeierIRL do it in 6 days live on Twitch last week".
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Ok, so at Bitcoin Miami the
@urbit
guys got me set up with a planet. So now I can hang with you next gen cypherpunks.
My True Name planet is ~bitrel-natrel. Please invite me to your shadowy conspiracies to disrupt Big Tech and decentralize the Internet.
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9/ Final thought: BTC's governance issues stem, at least partially, from the disappearance of the founder. But in truly Zen fashion, this is one area where Satoshi's inaction is perfect leadership. His only contribution is to be hodler-in-chief. But it's an important one.
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To reduce tribalism, it's critical to praise the outgroup for good work, so: I love this Vox piece! Great follow on to
@pmarca
's CTA.
Ezra digs into the systemic barriers to becoming a nation of builders, with an apolitical, mechanism-focused analysis. Hurrah!
America’s inability to build is destroying our future. On that,
@pmarca
is right.
But fixing it requires repairing broken institutions. It means breaking the “vetocracy.” And that’s a slow, frustrating task that builders tend to ignore.
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The hate comments on the simple idea of studying progress in order to do better are sad! Whether it's a country or a group of friends, when you see people openly ridiculing self-improvement, that culture is doomed. Find a healthy subgroup and put up the razor wire!
Progress is amazing, influenceable, and understudied.
@tylercowen
and I decided to make the case for Progress Studies: .
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This arrived from
@EricJorgenson
with perfect timing as I prepare for
@balajis
' (sold-out) Network State Conference next week:
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Cultural knowledge (evolved rules for operating in an environment) depreciates as the environment changes. Today's world changes so fast that our cultural infrastructure has been depreciated to almost zero, which causes many social ills.
"Rapid change means we can’t just listen to parents or sages. Nor can we just follow every new fad: most are pre-failure experiments and many were crafted to benefit others at our expense, memetic boarders who must repelled lest they sink our mental ship."
#MySecretWritingProject
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If depression is partly a self-reinforcing prediction of failure, that results in an energy-conserving state, could it be treated with video games calibrated for flowing success?
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Exciting news from Nevada! I predict for the US in the 2020s that FedGov will continue to decay & fail; but competitive pressure will cause a subset of states, counties, and cities to become citizen-focused and compete for refugees from CA & other failing states.
Start your own company
Start your own community
Start your own currency
Start your own city
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America was the world's best country for most of its lifetime. Now, it is openly mocked as incompetent by its greatest rival.
This decade is our last chance to reform American culture & institutions around a positive vision of progress, or become just another fallen empire.
The most powerful country on earth is the least prepared for the coronavirus attack!
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Extraordinary outcomes require extraordinary effort, skill, or luck. Effort is the dial you can best turn.
Find a goal so inspiring, so suited to your talents, or so perfect for your life context that you can make an extraordinary effort relative to the field. Then go after it!
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The evolution of libertarianism, according to
@tylercowen
: “Imagine a series of autonomous, competing cities, replacing the old nation-states...built on crypto institutions..more like start-ups than the large 20th century governments”
🤔 me likey
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"We’ve replaced true ambition with egalitarian goals, free of risks, secure and comfortable. We crush true originality and individualism because it may lead to unbridled success and happiness...We are the Nietzschean nightmare of the Last Men." -
@rivatez
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