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
Gil: Big tech companies could cut headcounts close to 80%
“If you look at what Musk did at Twitter, Where they cut 80% or whatever it was. I wouldn't be surprised if you could do things that are pretty close to that at a lot of the big tech companies.”
Garry Tan: Elon Musk proved Twitter didn't need 80% of its staff
“Elon came in and quickly asked, like, 80 or 90% of the people, and it turns out you didn't need 80 or 90% of the people, so.”
Shah: Publicly broadcasting pride gives others levers for manipulation
“Everything that we are proud of are the Handles that we give to other humans to manipulate us. So every time, everything that I write on Twitter as things that I'm proud of, like people's intros and descriptions are the trigger points put in public.”
Haidt: Academic freedom ended because out-of-context tweets trigger severe public backlash
“For academics, I, you know, we used to be able to be provocative, and in academic seminars and at conferences, we could be provocative. We could raise hypotheses that could even be, you know, upsetting to some people. But that kind of ended in the last few yea…”
Brockman: Twitter screenshots alleging AI bias often omit hidden context
“Sometimes when you see these screenshots on Twitter that they're not always fully honest themselves in terms of where they came from, either because there's some memories that Are behind the scenes that tweak the answer in a certain way or hidden instructions …”
Housel: Twitter has made people better writers through succinctness
“I also think Twitter has made people better writers because the character count limitation has forced people to be like, you have two sentences to tell me your idea. And that's all you get. That's actually, I think that's been a great thing overall for making …”
Srinivasan: Public Health Risk Is Flattened Into Binary Morality Plays
“One of the most tragic aspects of all of this is that probabilistic cost benefit decisions are turned into, you know, morality plays where there's an obvious zero one for everybody of a billion people on Twitter. And that is just not what reality is.”
Rushkoff: Twitter is for socializing, not presidential policy announcements
“That's what Twitter is for. Sorry. That's what Twitter is for. It's not for the president of the United States to communicate policy to the American people. That's not where you do it.”
Kaufman: Trend-focused books are poor investments compared to foundational frameworks
“I just, I remember a book from a couple of years ago of like the rising trend of Twitter. It's like, that's not a good investment in terms of this kind of research. I want to read something like influence, which is how to think about cognitive biases in this, …”
Eyal: Tech distraction is not users' fault, but it is their responsibility
“You didn't invent Facebook. You didn't invent Twitter or Slack or any of these tech companies. You didn't invent that stuff. It's not your fault. But lots of things in life are not your fault, but they are still your responsibility. And so the price of progres…”
Twitter's continuous stream makes it the worst platform for accidental oversharing
“And Twitter is the worst because you have this constant stream of updates. That people are sharing, and sometimes you don't recognize how much you're revealing in those places.”
Housel: Test ideas on Twitter before expanding into blog posts and books
“I think in some ways you test ideas in Twitter and if they work, you can turn those ideas into a blog post. And if the blog post works, you can turn it into a book idea or a book chapter. That's kind of the natural progression for a lot of these things.”
Ackman: Twitter gave a multi-day lead over traditional news during COVID
“And beginning sort of, as I got deeper into coronavirus, I started using Twitter actually as a news feed and found it to be very, very helpful and interesting. You know, almost having the experience of reading the news a couple of days before You read the news…”
Tyler Cowen: Capturing attention is hardest among high-income earners
“Of course, it's much harder to get everyone's attention. Most of all, people who have high incomes because there are so many demands on their time, but there's your email flow, there's Twitter, there's Facebook, there's being texted.”
Cowen: Source evaluation is a vital skill, yet most people do not improve
“If you're going to be a generalist, one of the best things to be a generalist in is evaluating the quality of sources in your Twitter feed, online, everywhere. That is so important, and it's skyrocketing in significance. Most people, they're not getting that m…”
Shah crowdsources decision journaling publicly on Twitter instead of privately
“I crowdsource my decision making journaling and shaming because it reminds me more efficiently. I'm not a structured person. I can barely make a to-do list in life. I can, in fact, the day I make a to-do list, I somehow lose that to-do list because I just can'…”
Twitter and Slack built internal flashcard games to memorize employee names
“At both Twitter and Slack, there were tools that were put into place, internal tools, where it was kind of like a game-like mechanism, where you could see a picture of two employees, and you have to, like, guess, you know, this name is the name of which employ…”
Maples: Floodgate invested early in Zimride (Lyft), Twitter, Twitch, and Okta
“So, for example, we invested in Lyft when it was Zimride back in 2010, and it would be very easy for us to believe we knew more than we knew at the time we made that investment. Same with Twitter, same with Twitch, same with Okta.”
Naval Ravikant uses Twitter as his primary note-taking system for reading insights.
“Actually, my note taking is Twitter. So, what I do is I read and read and read, and if I have some fundamental aha insight or concept, then what I like about Twitter is it forces me to distill that into a 140 characters and then I try and put it out there as a…”
Scott Adams Uses Social Media Critics to Practice Testing Counterarguments
“I literally use them for practice because if somebody makes a certain kind of criticism, I can often count on other people in the future making a similar one. So I see if I can shut it down with a comment. I see if there's some fact that would change the mind.”
Annello: Uninstalling Twitter from mobile devices helps control usage impulses
“I don't have, like, I don't have Twitter, the app installed on my phone, so I don't go through it on my phone. I don't have it on my iPad. The only time I really use Twitter is on my actual, on the computer, and I, so I'm limiting myself to when I'm able to ac…”
Parrish: Cap your Twitter following to a 10-minute daily feed limit
“I follow the number of people on Twitter that I can go through in about 10 minutes, the day's feed.”
Dixon: Curated Twitter feed of 2,000 experts is a primary work tool
“I'm a huge fan of you know, Twitter, for example. I use Twitter constantly, and For me, it's a, it's probably one of my most important work tools in that I've, you know, have a carefully curated list of people I follow who essentially I have whatever it is, 20…”