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 13 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
Holiday: Trump's effectiveness stems from enraging opponents rather than genius
“What Trump does is I don't think it's so much a function of genius on his part, so much as a confluence of personality traits, so enrages his opponents and disorients them, and is so the opposite of what they have experienced dealing with, that It's almost lik…”
Holiday: Elon Musk's ventures relied on massive government subsidies
“Elon Musk sees himself as this groundbreaking, you know, Precedent shattering entrepreneur. And another version to look at is this guy who took massive government subsidies at critical points that allowed him to do those things.”
Holiday: Trump's effectiveness relies on disorienting opponents rather than strategic genius
“What Trump does is I don't think it's so much a function of genius on his part, so much as a confluence of personality traits, so enrages his opponents and disorients them, and is so the opposite of what they have experienced dealing with, that it's almost lik…”
Holiday: Externally imposed discipline is not a true virtue
“So the discipline of an army sergeant is obviously important, but I don't think that's a virtue because it's being imposed on you.”
Holiday: Cold plunge health claims are largely nonsense
“I'm pretty skeptical at this point of like all of those claims, because I've seen what nonsense like these same communities will propagate.”
Ryan Holiday: Virtue signaling is preferable to cruelty and vice signaling
“But if I had to choose, you know, like people are today are like, oh, it's all this virtue signaling, you know, it's like certainly better than the alternative, you know, totally. I'm not sure this sort of like this, the cruelty is the point vice signaling is …”
Holiday: AI cannot match good writers but outperforms poor writers
“I haven't seen it do anything that even a pretty good writer can do, but it can do things a lot better than people who are bad at writing.”
Holiday: Creative professions overly tolerate spotty output unlike sports or trading
“Maybe it's because writing is a creative profession that people don't treat, like professional sports or, you know, trading or anything where it's just sort of excuse, like, because people think it's hard and they don't understand how it works. They're just a …”
Holiday strongly disagreed with Dov Charney's actions as American Apparel collapsed
“I read that book about Seneca around the time that American Apparel was collapsing, and Dov Charney, who's the CEO, sort of went through, you know, did some things I very much disagree with”
Holiday: Marcus Aurelius resisting power's corruption surpasses any military victory
“What I think makes Marx real is such a fascinating example. Here you have one of the few humans to hold absolute power as we Would really define it and doesn't seem to have become deranged or grotesque is into an overwhelmingly cautionary tale. That to me is a…”
Holiday: AI is prone to sycophantically validating user biases
“You realize it's not very good, and it's very, very prone to telling you what it thinks you want it to hear.”
Gregory Hays provides the best modern translation of Marcus Aurelius
“Every generation needs its own translation because a book like Mark Ceruleus, he's writing to himself in colloquial personal language. So, when you see, like, thou shall not, that's not, he didn't say that. That's what someone in the Like, 17th century would h…”