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 7,044 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 96 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
Twitter's conflict-averse board never gave Williams negative feedback before firing him
“Somewhat ironically, the board of Twitter had a lot of conflict aversion. Because they never, never gave me that feedback to my face. I didn't know I was going to be fired at all, because no one ever told me I was doing a bad job. So there was a whole culture …”
Pansino: YouTube's Promote Feature Costs Roughly $10,000 Per Million Views
“And now I think the math that I did, if you, the cheapest I think you can do, cause you can pick region and you can pick but if you want, it's about a thousand bucks for a 100,000 views. So if you want your video to reach a million views, it's about 10,000 dol…”
Legg: AI will surpass human-level AGI to achieve artificial superintelligence
“So that definition of AGI to me is the bar, that's the entry level into AGI, but I do not think that's where it stops. I think you start going into what they call ASI, or artificial superintelligence, and it may be the case in certain dimensions is the scaling…”
Grant: Top Individual Salespeople Actually Tend to Make Worse Sales Managers
“And the better you are at individual sales, the worse you tend to be as a manager. Your teams actually achieve poorer performance.”
Berdichevsky: Silicon should replace graphite across all batteries in 20 years
“So I think there'll, there'll be a place for graphite, but I would say in 20 years, silicon should be able to replace it in every nook and cranny.”
Suppliers ignored Weaver's female team but answered her husband immediately
“Keith called every single person on our collective list, and he got through either immediately when calling, or they called him back by the end of the day. He didn't have to wait 24 hours to get in touch with any of those people that we had been trying to reac…”
Before Uncle Nearest, 100% of American whiskey brands represented white males
“White males represent 30% of this country and a hundred percent Of the whiskeys up until uncle nearest, 100%.”
Harris: Safety controls on open-source AI models can be removed for $100
“I won't go into technical details, but basically for about a hundred dollars, you can retrain all the safety controls off of it.”
Combining AI With Attention Incentives Will Exacerbate Societal Information Crises
“It's the big incentives of the attention economy that have made this problem worse, and then combine that with technology and AI. And we're heading into, you know, a bigger version of that.”
Researchers Took Two Years to Discover GPT-3.5 Could Synthesize Dangerous Chemicals
“It took two years, for example, for researchers to figure out that GPT-III.V, the predecessor to GPT-IV, had research-grade chemistry knowledge, meaning you could ask it questions about, you know, how to synthesize dangerous chemicals, and it would tell you ho…”
Steve Jobs Pounded MacFarlane's Chest, Threatening to Sue Sonos Out of Existence
“He walked right up to me and pounded on my chest and said they were gonna sue us out of existence for having a scroll ring on our remote.”
Carbon removal will become a trillion-dollar industry at $100-$200 per ton
“So, you know, we think that In a medium to long term, the carbon price is likely going to be in the hundred to 200 dollar per ton mark, and at that cost, for five to ten billion tons, we were talking about a trillion dollars worth of carbon removal industry.”
Heirloom's direct air capture is 5,000 to 10,000 times more land-efficient than trees
“So compared to trees, these are actually about Five to 10,000 times more land efficient.”
Masterson: Drunk Elephant did zero paid advertising from launch until 2023
“So I decided not to advertise early on. Yep. Never advertised till last year, actually.”
Altemus: Humans will not return to the Moon until 2030
“And so I think it's twenty-thirty before we see boots on the moon.”
Gilboa: Optometry is the only medical field where doctors sell prescribed products
“Optometry is interesting. It's the only part of human medicine where A doctor can prescribe something to their patient and then sell them that product and make margin on it.”
Blumenthal: AI ocular imaging will eventually diagnose primary health conditions
“And then we can use AIs to make diagnoses eventually and, you know, help better triage. Customers, not just within sort of eye care, but for primary health care and beyond.”
Prenuvo CEO: Vast Majority of Detected Cancers Are Stage One
“And that's why the vast majority of the cancer that we catch is actually stage one or localized to the organ of origin.”
Lacy: No public critics of Prenuvo have experienced its scan firsthand
“And there's no one that's really spoken out against these technologies that actually has experienced it firsthand. In fact, most of those people bring their family members in and then start referring their patients.”
Lacy: Prenuvo scans detect chronic disease 10 to 20 years before symptoms
“I think one of the really fascinating things that we have discovered as we started to image more and more patients is we can see oftentimes at very early stages of chronic disease, 1020 years before you might ever feel symptoms.”
Lacy: Prenuvo Detects Cancer or Aneurysms in 1 in 20 Patients
“We just had cancer aneurysms in maybe one in 20 to one in 25 people, depending on the location.”
Lacy: Scanning every American biennially for cancer would cost ~$60B
“In fact, to just screen for cancer in the U.S. Using the techniques that we use, probably to scan every person in the U.S. Every two years would cost something like sixty billion dollars.”
Dolgov: Autonomous taxis in most major US cities within 10 years
“I definitely agree with the latter, and I would not dismiss the former. 10 years is a, you know, reasonably long time, and, you know, things can happen nonlinearly.”
Finke: Calcium silicate cement will be lower cost at scale
“In the modern economy, we think that will be lower cost at scale.”
Finke: Decarbonized cement will not achieve quick global adoption unless it is Portland cement
“We don't think global adoption will happen if it's not Portland cement. Or at least it won't happen quickly.”
Finke: Brimstone's process can be carbon-negative even using dirty fuels
“The beauty of our process is that actually could be substantially lower carbon or even carbon negative under a wide range of energy sources, including the use of those dirtier fuels.”
Kalin: VC Fred Wilson fired me as Etsy CEO without giving a reason
“And went to their office and met him, and he told me that I was fired, but he didn't tell me why. And he just said, we have to do this.”
Advisors almost universally told Ramadan to oust co-founder Scott Norton
“The advice I mostly got was, number one, this happens to every co-founder set.
[4357] Mark Ramadan: It always happens.
[4358] Mark Ramadan: Co-founders have falling outs or fights.
[4360] Mark Ramadan: And then number two, the only solution is to remove Scott …”
Morris: New Tyson CEO Blocked Freshpet Funding to Force Distressed Takeover
“The last CEO that came in did not get along. And he said, let's get rid of all these other businesses. And they were basically like, well, what do we want to do with Fresh Pet? And he said, I don't care. Don't give them another penny. And because they had the …”
VC Weapon Bans Hurt Biofire Fundraising More Than the NRA
“Fundraising for bio fire was probably more challenging than average. And I
I would actually mostly pin that on, on two main factors, neither of which is, you know, special interest groups or the NRA or anything like that. The two main factors is one, we're bui…”
Ben-Shitrit: Redefine Meat will match Wagyu beef quality within three years
“We believe that in three years from now, we can also provide a Wagyu beef with the same level of marbling, the same level of tenderness and richness of flavor.”
Ben-Shitrit: Redefine Meat will reach profitability in two years
“So it's not 10 years, it's two years from now.”
Ben-Shitrit: Top 20 meat companies will include animal-free producers in a decade
“If you look even 10 years from now, out of the 20 biggest meat companies around the world, One company or two companies for sure will not rely on animals. This I have no doubt.”
Brain-based wearables will replace and consolidate all other wearable devices
“One is that brain-based wearables are going to replace
All the other wearables that you have.
That's step one.
And so all that data and all that value that we're seeing with existing wearables are going to be all consolidated into one device.”
Neurable will launch a silent, thought-controlled device interface by 2025
“So, you know, it's not like a vision video of a hundred years from now. At least V-one is going to be available within the next two years.”
BETA plans to operate commercially in the United States by 2025
“And yes, by 20, 25, they're doing commercial operations here in the U S and then we just basically build them as fast as we can.”
Electric flights cost one-sixth to one-half as much as gas-powered planes
“A six to half the cost of flying gas-powered airplanes, and you're doing it sustainably.”
Szaky: Loop's success would intentionally eliminate TerraCycle's primary recycling division
“And if Loop were to really succeed in a grand way, our first division, which is focused on recycling, would disappear.”
Tang: Smartphones will be viewed as a temporary glitch within 10 years
“And 10 years down the road, I think smartphone is just a glitch.”
Fambro: Aptera yields 11,000 miles of free solar charge yearly in SoCal
“You plug it in like normal if you want, but most people won't ever have to because here in Southern California, you'll probably get about 11,000 miles a year of free charge, so.”
Tetris was the first video game to be widely played by women
“It's completely genderless. You know, it's the first game that was being played by women. Just by that alone, it could, you know, double the sales.”
Khan: 15 to 60 minutes weekly on Khan Academy prevented COVID learning loss
“What we saw in twenty-twenty-one is that the students who put in an average of 15 minutes on Khan Academy a week in a school setting, they actually saw no COVID learning loss, And that students who put in 30 to 60 minutes, they accelerated almost 40% faster th…”
Khan: AI tutoring will help Khan Academy achieve two-sigma learning gains
“Essentially, old Khan Academy or base Khan Academy trying to get to that first standard deviation. And, but now with the AI, we can go to that second standard deviation.”
Khan: Majority of minority-majority US schools lack Algebra II and Physics
“A majority of minority-majority schools, so that's a mouthful, but a majority of minority-majority schools don't offer courses like Algebra II, Physics, Et cetera. Not to even mention things like AP courses or IB courses.”
Khan: Immersive AI 'holodeck' simulations are 3 to 5 years away
“You know, there's a world now where you can talk to historical characters, and we're probably three to five years away where you could share a room with Benjamin Franklin or Julius Caesar or Cleopatra and immerse yourself. It'll, it'll be literally the holodec…”
Urmson: Anyone driving a commercial truck today can still retire as one
“Now, my expectation is that if you're driving a truck today and you would like to retire as a truck driver, you're going to be able to. The shortage is that dire and the opportunity to kind of grow the freight market is, is real. And so I expect that, again, y…”
Aurora expects fully driverless freight operations by late 2024 starting in Texas
“And so, yes, our expectation is by the end of next year, there will be no human. Yeah. And, you know, the way we're going to launch this is initially it'll be on one lane, Which is what you call kind of a trucking route, and that'll be between Dallas and Houst…”