You won’t get rich just working hard, but if you don’t work hard, you won’t get rich.

New podcast with @garrytan, @farbood and Daniel Francis. Live in the Future! 00:00 Guest Intros 02:35 Live in the Future 03:58 Will AI Outsmart us? 07:43 In the Anthropic Breadline 09:59 The Tech Genie Is Out 12:33 We Invested in COVID?! 14:25 Good Writing Is Novelty 18:50 Living Like It’s 2028 24:32 Truth dot ai 30:18 Does China have the Weights? 35:38 Everyone has AI Anxiety 39:32 Have Your Agent Talk to My Agent 42:01 What if Open Source takes the Lead? 44:03 The Sun is Setting on Google 48:00 Ride the AGI 50:46 Will There be Startups? 54:05 Defending Taiwan 1:00:05 The California Empire 1:01:26 If the U.S. Falls 1:03:11 Universal Basic Robot 1:06:01 Humans as AI Handlers

If you don’t want this moment, then you will never be happy.

On Scott Adams. A man finds, to his astonishment, that he exists. After the elation of childhood wears off, he asks, who am I, why am I here, how does this work? These are hard questions, so after a brief struggle, he selects a readymade answer and goes about the motions of life. Scott Adams was not such a man. He was a live player, ever curious, intent on figuring out this simulation that he found himself in. From first principles, Scott unraveled, understood, and ultimately controlled his own reality. He hacked himself with affirmations, others with persuasion, the world with simultaneous sips. He explained people as moist robots, two movies happening on one screen, his world as Gods’ debris. He carved a personal mission to “be useful,” and made us all better writers, public speakers, and persuaders. He preached the footwear theory of motivation, the Adams Law of slow-moving disasters, the skill stack, systems over goals, and of course, the Dilbert Principle. Besides cartooning, philosophizing, and teaching, Scott rose to the occasion and displayed, “the one virtue that cannot be faked” - courage. Scott had the courage to speak honestly as he saw it - about Trump, about his nation, and about his time, even though it cost him friends, audience, money, and his ticket to polite society. Scott had true courage, the kind that makes you unpopular, the kind that is always and everywhere in short supply, At the end, as any hacker of reality, Scott covered all of his bases - he left as a Buddhist, a Christian, and a player in the Simulation. Scott, we didn’t get enough time with you, but you were a mentor and a marvel. You were useful and you were courageous. You were incompressible and indivisible. One of a kind, and generous with your drawing, writing, and speaking. Unlike your squealing critics in the chattering class, you will be read generations from now. On this earth there are many long-lived hells but no lasting heaven. Each heaven must be created and nurtured, ex-nihilo, from mind and from mud. Scott, you created a small heaven for us all, and to a larger heaven you go. A man finds, to his astonishment, that he no longer exists. He asks why, what it was for, and how will the new reality work? When the rest of us get there, we’ll find Scott, ever useful, ready to explain, having figured it all out. Notes: • First line paraphrasing Schopenhauer. • Courage quote via Taleb.

The fundamental human disease is separation, and its symptom is loneliness.