Yes, Adam Smith understood public choice problems!

Reminds me of @bryan_caplan‘s 2x2 Things that.. - Sound good, are good > already done - Sound bad, are bad > stay away from - Sound good, are bad > what governments do > Sound bad, are good > what courageous capitalists do

Big drone cleaning the Starbase launch control room windows for clear views of Starship flight 14 on launch day. 9/26/26

Peter Thiel has an incredibly advanced understanding of psychology:

@KelseyGrammer: "Is America worth defending." At FreedomFest, he talked about his new film, being conservative in Hollywood, and launched "The American Revelation": 251 daily messages telling this country's real history. Watch the full conversation on Capitalists for Capitalism, link in bio.

.@JensenHuang DISMANTLES Geoffrey Hinton’s AI doomerism: “All of his predictions have been WRONG. Enough predictions.” “Don’t think for a second just because you’re an alarmist that you’re doing a social good.”

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon became a media superstar after going public with his AI fears. He insisted that he wasn’t working with any third party organizations. Familiar sources told us a different story: DEY., a PR firm representing many of the most prominent AI safetyists, was booking his interviews. One source, who had direct knowledge, even said DEY. preemptively booked Nate Soares, a prominent AI safety figure, for interviews that directly overlapped with Jacob going public. Jacob working with DEY. is notable for two reasons: first, as mentioned, he previously said he wasn’t working with third parties. Second, we are in the middle of a national conversation about the future of AI that is actively determining how we regulate the most powerful technology in the world, largely thanks to the panic stirred up by Jacob — and it’s in the public’s interest to know who, exactly, is behind it. Scoop from @huntryerson 👇

Here is official trailer, You Can See Everything

Rick Rubin understands what many artists still refuse to accept. Creativity isn't in moving the brush. It's knowing what to paint. AI doesn't change that.

Go to Mars, young man. Explore, build, raise a family.

“i’m engaging with you as a human being”

America’s corporate governance system is broken, and it’s killing public companies. Look no further than Cracker Barrel: Decades of brutal mismanagement have seen one incompetent CEO after another walk away with a massive paycheck while customers and actual shareholders take a beating. Why does this keep happening? Because proxy advisory firms like ISS are corrupt. They blindly rubber-stamp failing boards year after year, protecting the corporate elite while burning shareholder value to the ground. The root of the rot is index funds. There's no question that indexing one's money is a smart financial move for most people. But just because you passively index your investments doesn't mean your corporate votes should be handed over to the managers of your fund so they can play politics. Right now, passive funds hold massive, unchecked voting blocks while having zero skin in the game themselves. It is time for a simple rewrite of the rules: We need to index the votes of index fund investors. Passive index funds should be forced to automatically split their votes to proportionately mirror those of retail and active institutional shareholders — the people actually doing the research, risking their capital, and fighting for performance in the companies they hold shares in. No more rubber-stamping. A change like this will immediately strip corrupt gatekeepers like ISS of their toxic influence. True accountability happens when lazy, overpaid boards actually answer to the stakeholders they represent, rather than screwing them over. Actual, logic-driven governance when your money is passive happens when your vote passively follows the voting decisions of the actual market. We need to stop letting passive capital protect active incompetence. By stripping index funds of their arbitrary voting power and empowering engaged investors, we will finally torch corporate cronyism and usher American capital markets into a golden age of capitalism.

I’m getting the Founder Edition

I'm hosting a dinner next month in Boston for scientists and engineers interested in safely increasing human intelligence. I'm interested in both treating cognitive impairment and helping healthy people improve their cognitive abilities. Could we develop treatments that help people learn faster, reason better, and solve harder problems? I'm especially interested in approaches that could work in adults. There's a lot we don't know, including what's possible and what would be safe. I'd like to bring together people across neuroscience, genetics, drug development, and computational biology/ML to discuss promising research and what it would take to turn it into useful treatments. I'm also interested in backing the right founding team if one comes together. If you're working in this area or have relevant expertise, please apply at the link below. Happy to cover travel if needed. Or if you can't make it to Boston, let us know - I may host one virtually for those who can't attend in person.

We are all VERY wealthy vs 100 years ago, even more so vs 200 years ago. This dynamic will be true twenty years from now vs today. For all of US society, yes. Positive sum thinking can be hard in our culture but it’s not false.

ps we're hiring - jobs.ashbyhq.com/theacademys…

For the kids . . .

Andreessen Horowitz has a message for up-and-coming tech talent: Don’t drop out of school to start a company; come do school with us instead. The venture-capital firm is investing $35 million in an unaccredited two-year alternative to traditional college. on.wsj.com/4rnuxci