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 7,517 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 46 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
Brockman: Elon, Sam, Ilya, and I Agreed OpenAI Needed For-Profit Structure
“Elon, Sam, Ilya, and I all agreed. That the only path forward for OpenAI, the only path to achieve the mission, was to create a for-profit entity associated with OpenAI of some form. And so we were committed to that direction, and that is something that we kne…”
Wolfe: Tesla got away with accounting fraud on warranty reserves
“And so, for me with Tesla, I think that they got away with accounting fraud. On warranty reserves and a whole bunch of other things. I think there was a lot of prestidigitation and magic of look over here while we're doing this. And today it doesn't matter bec…”
Brockman: OpenAI board gave zero explanation when firing Altman and removing Brockman
“I was told that the board has decided That Sam would be removed, and effectively the message that I got was the same messaging that was in the public post, and I asked if I could have any more information. I was told no, not right now, and I pressed on that ma…”
Poilievre: Mark Carney holds 90% of assets in US, dodges Canadian taxes
“Here's Mark Carney, the guy who moved his corporate headquarters to the US, who has 90% of his assets in the US who You know, he, Carney dodges his taxes in Canada by putting his, putting them in the Caribbean.”
Hastings: Dave Chappelle is not anti-trans
“Which I don't believe that Dave is anti-trans, but he definitely takes on some of the issues”
School Psychology Staff Function Exactly Like Corporate DEI Departments
“Because the psych staffs are like the DEI staffs of an organ, of a corporation. That's what the psych staff now is at a school. They effectively run the schools. They pass judgment on everything. They control what a teacher can assign. What kind of test a teac…”
Johnson: Suicidal ideation in severe depression is a rational and reasonable response
“When people feel suicidal, I am deeply empathetic. It is rational to want to kill oneself. It's reasonable.”
Adam Robinson claims he knows more about financial markets than anyone living
“I, Adam, know more about financial markets than any other living person.”
Sinclair: Research shows cellular epigenetic aging damage can be reversed
“And what we've discovered is that there are ways to, well, we discovered one of the main causes of scratches, that's broken chromosomes, which happens all the time in our bodies. Extreme cell damage also does that if we crush nerves. But we've also figured out…”
Sinclair: Team May Reverse Aging in Humans Within 18 Months
“In Canada, we have a non-human primate study for safety to see how that goes, and within the next 18 months, if all goes well, we will be reversing aging in a human, if all goes well.”
Srinivasan: Centralized Science Post-WWII Became Equivalent to a State Religion
“The bad that came out of it is you built this centralized funnel as opposed to lots of folks with independent power centers and funding sources, figuring out stuff from their own. Instead, you had like a single Thing, which was like official science and offici…”
Balaji: Corporate journalists act as hit men for old money targeting tech
“You know the names of all the tech people, because media corporations are at war with tech companies, and the owners of media corporations are It's not that they get good coverage. They get no coverage. They're just like blotted out, you know, all of this rhet…”
Balaji Srinivasan: Western governments will lose battle against decentralized network elite
“And I think that Western governments will lose. It's going to be super nasty and super gnarly, but on balance, they will lose because their ideology is not one that attracts the very top talent.”
Srinivasan: Bitcoin Is on Track to Become the 'Government of Governments'
“Bitcoin, the reason I say Bitcoin specifically is it's, you know, it's on track. We will see if it can actually get there. Cause it's got various kinds of issues, you know, privacy and other kinds of things that, you know, but It's on track to be the governmen…”
Srinivasan: Child labor laws triggered a long campaign of societal infantilization
“Reasonably, all these child labor laws were passed that essentially began this long campaign of infantilization. And now it's something where you're like on your parents' health insurance till age”
Parrish: Snowden's leak of exploitation techniques cost people lives
“You can just reveal the details of the programs, but the actual techniques that he revealed, the software techniques, the exploitation techniques that, I mean, that, that definitely cost people lives that had a huge impact on people working there.”
McLean: Elon Musk has repeatedly lied to secure funding for his vision
“That's certainly true of Elon Musk. Wherever you believe he sits in that spectrum, when you look at his history, he's for sure lied at many points in time in order to keep funding his dream.”
Calacanis: Tim Cook should not be CEO of Apple anymore
“If a company is storing a bunch of capital and paying you a dividend, that signals to us that you are not a bold and ambitious founder, and this is one of the big problems I have with Apple and Tim Cook, which, who I don't think should be CEO of that company a…”
Robinson: The concept of 'intrinsic value' in fundamental analysis is a fraud
“Intrinsic value is a fraud, and I can demonstrate that. It's a fraud for several reasons. First, I'm using air quotes. What he really meant by intrinsic value is true value. But he knows if he used the phrase true value of something, that people would say, hey…”
Robinson: Boys outperform on tests because their unpreparedness breeds psychological resilience
“And boys who tend to be unprepared, more unprepared than girls do better on standardized tests, precisely because when they run into difficulty, they expect it to.”
Nutrition Science Is Not a Functioning Scientific Discipline
“I don't believe nutrition science is a functioning science. That it lacks many of the characteristics that a functioning science has to have, particularly the sort of critical, rigorous back and forth between scientists where they're attacking each other's ide…”
Jacobs: QXO will reach $50 billion by capturing 6% of distribution market
“I want to build a company that's called fifty billion dollars. I can do that. If there's an eight hundred billion dollar size, I can take six percent of that through acquisition and through organic growth. I can get to fifty billion dollars.”
Jacobs: Most Fortune 500 board meetings are scripted wastes of time
“Most Fortune, 500 company Board members, board meetings, are kind of, they're very scripted, and they sometimes even rehearsed, and there's a careful It's a story that's being told by management, and it's done by PowerPoint, it's done by rehearsed presentation…”
Jacobs only hires 'raw capitalists' who are absolutely motivated by money
“I want my company, people who are absolutely motivated by money, who are raw capitalists, who are people who want to make money for themselves and their families, and that we can figure out a way that by being part of our company, they can help us make money f…”
Nejatian: Non-founder-led companies become hosts for professional consulting leeches
“Where the founders are no longer there, there's no large shareholder that cares a lot about the company. So over time, many of these companies essentially become hosts for professional leeches whose job it is to suck the company dry while making management loo…”
Nejatian: A culture of 'suicidal empathy' is killing top tech companies
“There is a level of suicidal empathy that people have developed that is just deadly. It is killing our best companies because people are assuming that everyone is thin-skinned, and they're assuming that people are offended by facts.”
Nejatian: Remote work generally fails, with Shopify being a rare exception
“First of all, I don't think remote works. Generally, it only works for Shopify, and that's because we built more software to make remote work than anyone reasonably thought we could. And I think the jury has fully come back on this topic, that companies that a…”
Nejatian: A/B testing primarily serves as a safety blanket for tech management
“What, for most tech companies, AB tests have done have been the safety blanket for management.”
Gurley: Leading AI players are begging for regulation to protect an oligopoly
“I think the thing, you know, that could cut against that, if the regulation gets extremely difficult and mundane and expensive, that could actually lead to more oligopoly. And I think some of the players know that and are begging for regulation.”
Gurley: China's open-source AI ecosystem can innovate faster than the US
“Because it's more intense, everyone's chosen to go open source, and that creates a system that, in my mind, is capable of innovating far faster Then the competitive system we have here.”
Gurley rejects Washington and Silicon Valley's vilification of China
“Having spent a ton of time in China over the past 20 years, it's hard for me to adopt this mindset of vilification that's heavy amongst many in Washington and now many in Silicon Valley.”
Gurley: Traditional IPO process is insanely unfair to companies
“I think it is insanely unfair to the companies the way they're forced to go through this process where The bankers pick the price and pick the shareholders. There's just no need to do that.”
Gurley: Bank regulatory capture blocks instant payment systems in US
“And precisely because of regulatory capture, the banks have kept our government from doing that. They've, the government wanted to, they have something called FedNow, but there's massive pushback in the finance committee in Washington, so it never happens.”
Gurley: Proxy advisory firms operate an opaque 'heist'
“They score you, but they score you with a black box. They don't tell you how they score you. Right. And guess how you can learn more. You hire them. So they get paid on both sides, and it's just, it's more of a heist, I think, than anything else.”
Gurley: Elon Musk's Tesla compensation package is the right model
“The Tesla case is a great example that, that package, that type of package that they did for Elon, I've said this, you know, publicly, I would agree to that type of package for every company I've ever worked with, and most CEOs wouldn't take it. It basically s…”
Gurley: Passive index funds should not vote corporate proxies
“One thing that would be really great is if they just wouldn't vote because then the people that are active shareholders would have More of a say in what happens with these companies, but there's, they own such a large percentage.”
Pincus: Founders should abandon the MVP trap for rapid top-of-funnel testing
“Too many teams Waste time getting to a minimum viable product that they can put out in the market, and we don't have time anymore for that. We need a failure machine at the top of the funnel. We need to get to a minimum idea state that gets vibe coded.”
Pincus: Zynga had a $400M handshake deal to acquire Supercell
“And I had a handshake with Ilka, the founder and CEO, to buy the company for four hundred million in cash.”
Pincus: Leaders owe it to top performers to fire ineffective employees
“I think that you owe it to, in that moral contract to your good employees, to fire the weak people. And they're not bad people. They may be really smart. They are not effective in your organization. They are not taking hills.”
Weinberg: Harvey abandoned a $700M acquisition after securing $500M equity
“The idea was basically we were gonna buy this company that ended up, it was 10 times bigger than us, people-wise and about the same, like, we were gonna, trying to buy the company For the same, a little bit higher valuation than we are valued at. We tried to b…”
Brockman: Predicting Einstein's Next Words Requires Intelligence Equal to Einstein
“On the one hand, just predicting what comes next sounds like a pedestrian task, but if you really can predict the next word out of Einstein's mouth, you are at least as smart as Einstein.”
Brockman: OpenAI models recently resolved an open quantum physics problem
“If you look at math and physics, we now are solving open math problems. We're solving Open physics problems and actually have resolved this particular physics problem recently in quantum physics in the opposite way that the community expected.”
Brockman: OpenAI hides chain of thought to preserve faithfulness and prevent distillation
“So there's two reasons. One is to think about distillation, but the second, in some ways more important, is that we had this insight when we first developed the reasoning paradigm that it gives us a interpretability mechanism we had not been anticipating, beca…”
Brockman: OpenAI competitors are struggling with compute availability
“I mean, I think our competitors are not having a good time on compute, let me put it that way.”
Brockman: Claims that OpenAI data centers consume massive water are misinformation
“Like a good example is data centers and water usage. Like that, that's something that people talk about a lot, but actually our data centers use incredibly little water, right? That's actually misinformation that they use a lot.”
Liemandt: 200-Student School Achieves More Perfect Scores Than 100K-Student District
“And so we get more hundreds on state standardized tests in a building of 200 people than a school district of a 100,000.”
Liemandt: Paper shows 50% of UCSD freshmen cannot answer fifth-grade questions
“I think UC San Diego, one of the top schools, universities in our country, right? Just published a paper that, like, 50% of their freshmen can't answer fifth grade questions.”
Liemandt: Traditional classroom lecturing wastes 90% of students' time
“We waste 90% of their time. Like, we know that teacher in front of the classroom is the least effective way to teach. You know, you can argue whether it's five percent retention, but literally we're wasting 90% of the kids' time because we're teaching them in …”