The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 19 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Urban: Elon Musk will make Twitter successful within five years
“If, again, you put me in a time machine five years from now, my gut is I come out and it, yes, the answer is yes. Just because this guy does things well and sometimes it takes a while, right? And there's going to be a lot of experimentation. It's going to be a…”
Urban: AI could automate his writing job within two years
“12 months ago I had any inkling that AI might steal my job within, like two years. Didn't, I would have guessed, like, 20. So that's, I mean, and that's one of a hundred different things that I've been shocked about with AI in the last few months like everyone…”
Urban ignored crypto because it lacked proven future significance
“People wanted me to write about crypto, and I was kind of just like, ah, I don't know. This is, it's like this hasn't proven yet to be a huge part of the future, and if not, then it just seems so boring to write about.”
Urban: A large email list reduces the need for posting consistency
“A big email list makes it less important to have consistency. I still think it's better than not. I think that you know, it's not ideal the way I do things, but I'm very inconsistent now. I'll disappear for a while, and then I'll come out with something big, a…”
Urban: New creators should master one core medium before expanding
“I don't think that, that, that a new creator needs to be worrying about, oh, I only doing like writing and drawing right now. I need to also be doing TikTok. So we need to start doing video to make sure we have stuff on TikTok. I don't think I think they shoul…”
Urban: AI will solve climate and lifespan challenges by the 2050s
“I think that AI, if things go well, I think we're going to have so many answers. In the near future. I think we're going to solve so many problems that seem really hard to us right now. I think 20, you know, these problems won't be a match for 20 fifties human…”
Urban: The world in 2080 will be amazing, not a dystopia
“So deep down, I still kind of feel like if I went into a time machine and got out in 2080, I'd be entering an amazing world, not a horrible dystopia. But I don't know, I couldn't really defend that argument.”
Urban: AI will accelerate the fracture of shared societal reality
“We already see, of course, the fracture of the shared reality because of tribal narrow cast media, you know, each telling their own story and social media, creating bubbles of reality. And I think AI can just accelerate these trends.”
Urban: Lack of external structure lets instant gratification dictate decisions
“And then if you don't have any of those external structured things, then you end up in a you can end up with the monkey kind of running your whole life suddenly. So now it's like, you're actually like the monkey is making the decisions, which is actually worse…”
Urban: Long-form writing monetizes downstream through paid speaking engagements
“It's like it's like taking content that if I write this AI post, it actually doesn't make much money because it's just on a blog. If I now go do a bunch of talks on AI, to me, that's like, that's the way that, that the, all the work I did for that AI post actu…”
Urban: Wait But Why will remain a two-person team
“Six years ago, we hired Alicia who's the manager of lots of things which is just like the second in command at Wait But Why and does a little of everything. And that's about it. I was just like, I don't want a big team.”
Urban: Deep research beyond intermediate understanding yields diminishing returns
“There's a diminishing return on like excitement as you keep putting those years in. So for me, it's like, I want to get from like a two or three, you know, to a six. Five or six, something like that, where it's like, oh, okay, I understand this way more deeply…”
Urban: 'Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy' reached 14M readers
“Fourteen million people read that in a week.”
Urban: AI danger stems from super-potency, not malicious intent
“AI is probably gonna be dangerous not because It's going to be evil Terminator robots, but because it's going to be super powerful with unintended consequences”
Urban: Wait But Why speaking revenue can exceed Patreon and merch
“Patreon, trying to, it's hard to remember the exact percentages, but like, Patreon, you know, is bigger than merch, partially because we just haven't made that much new merch recently but there's always, you know, there's always patrons, new patrons and speaki…”
Tim Urban plans to launch a new podcast in 2023
“I am starting a podcast later you know, this year probably”
Urban: Wait But Why's SpaceX post inspired readers to join the company
“That post, like, inspired some young people to go work at SpaceX and work in that industry, so I'm very happy about that”