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 23 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
Lonsdale: Illumina acquiring Grail would have saved thousands of lives monthly
“I don't know if you saw the Illumina grill one. I wasn't personally involved in that financially, but I have friends on both sides and you probably, you know, grill is a blood test that detects cancer and Illumina was going to scale it up. And the models are t…”
Uber would be worth $600 billion today without leadership disruption, says Michael
“Six hundred million? Five X. Yeah, six hundred billion. We would have been Instacart. We would have had a payment system because we'd have so much share of wallet. There was so much more we would have done.”
Sprowls: Without DeSantis, Florida would have handled pandemic like California
“Had he not been governor of Florida, and even if we had a Republican legislature as a backstop, you know, we would have been much more like New York or California during the pandemic than Florida.”
Carvalho: American courts would be one-sided without the Federalist Society
“So if you think about what the Federalist Society had to do, imagine a world, America, without what the Federalist Society was able to do. We wouldn't know, we wouldn't have courts that would be very one-sided. Very, very one-sided.”
Levi: Anyone Expressing Sympathy for Charlie Kirk at Emmys Would Be Lambasted
“There are people that feel very badly for Charlie and for his family and for this country for that matter because of what happened. But they know, based on the programming, based on the media spin and everything, that if they were to get up on that stage and s…”
Ross: Trump administration would have achieved more by moving faster initially
“If we had acted a little more rashly, a little faster, not made sure that we truly understood how it worked and just To go a little more adventurous, we would have accomplished a lot more, because that would be another year of reforms, another year of tax roll…”
Aboyeji: I would build Flutterwave on USDC if I started it today
“So I'm like, look, if I was building this thing today, I'll just build USDC and be like, yeah, do whatever you like on the ground.”
Craft: Russian aggression would never have gone this far under Trump
“I think that, that Biden has not shown strength as the president that I served. We would have never been gone this far.”
Klausner: The National Cancer Institute could not have created GRAIL
“And he asked me explicitly, could you have done that if you were still running the National Cancer Institute? And I believe the answer is no. It's extremely hard to aggregate all of those resources and to create the type of completely mission-driven venture.”
Ridley: A personal computer pioneer would have emerged without Steve Jobs
“If Steve jobs hadn't existed, there would still have been a hero of the personal computer.”
Levi: Might Have Voted for Harris Ticket if RFK Jr. Was Running Mate
“If Bobby would have been on the Kamala ticket, Which never would have happened, but hypothetically, if he would have been on the Kamala ticket, there might have been a chance that I could have voted on that ticket because Bobby more than anything needed to get…”
Andreessen: Nixon's nuclear plan would have accelerated electric cars by 30-40 years
“It would, by the way, it would have gotten us to electric cars, you know, probably 3040 years faster. And would have completely separated us from strategic involvement in the, in, in the Middle East for energy.”
Lonsdale: A $500k tech job at 21 would have prevented him founding Palantir
“It would have been tough if someone offered me half a million dollars a year when I was 21. I probably wouldn't have gone to start Palantir, I have to be honest.”
Lonsdale: Regulations make US healthcare three times as expensive
“It's the same thing in healthcare in America, all the incumbents, right? All the regulations. And so you can't adapt and the healthcare is like three times as expensive or something as it would be.”
Lonsdale: 1934 regulations legally block banks from adopting distributed technology
“All of our banks are in straitjackets that were created for them in 1934 to prevent them from innovating in ways that they naturally would have. Like, all of our banks would be using much more advanced technology. You and I would not be putting money in banks …”
Gimenez: Eliminating Startup Upside Would Entrench Incumbent Pharma
“If we didn't give people upside to translate these things, there would not be a system to actually sort of commercialize these things in a sort of fast turnaround biotech ecosystem. We would be dependent, it's not like that, that innovation would go away, but …”
Lonsdale: Charles Koch's empire required his father's $21 million starting revenue
“Because Charles' father had, there's about twenty-one million revenue when Charles took over the business, and I believe he grew it about 10,000 times, and if, but if he had to start from zero, He might be at maybe a 100th of where, 100th of where he was today…”
Sprowls: Stepping back from the space program killed American innovation
“I think one of the worst things that America ever did was step back from the space program. I think it killed innovation in a way that we would have, you know, accelerated considerably more how we continued it.”
Lonsdale: X.com and Confinity would have failed without their PayPal merger
“Elon Musk, you know, had X.com and Peter Thiel had Confinity and they merged to become PayPal and both of them were probably going to die otherwise. That was the only way they could survive was to merge.”
Bevirt: Joby would have finished certification faster without FAA framework shifts
“We would have gotten to the finish line a lot faster if that curve ball hadn't come along.”
Gerstner: A 30-year Invest America account would yield $250K by age 29
“If we had started this, 30 years ago, a 29 year old today would have over 250,000 dollars in their Invest America account.”
Caliri: Lack of billing codes delayed AI diagnostic deployment for years
“There was no code for AI to perform a diabetic retinopathy screen. And so even though we had the technology for years, we couldn't get paid for it. It was silly. And this is something we could have deployed across the country by now. And, you know, instead we …”
Zu Fürstenberg: Pitching 20-year data visions would have made early founders look crazy
“Had Zuckerberg or Larry Page, had these guys gone out initially and said, you know, we are going to create data as a currency, and this is actually what Google is going to become. 20 years from now, people would have called them crazy, right? So what they did …”