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 185 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
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.”
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.”
Poilievre: Bill C-11 lets CRTC manipulate social algorithms
“We've seen this government has been trying to concentrate more and more media power, whether it's through C-Eleven
Which allows the CRTC to manipulate social media algorithms to favor certain types of media”
Parrish: El Salvador replaced public teachers with Synthesis AI tutoring software
“Oh, so they developed this Synthesis, this AI company developed this tutor, which actually teaches kids, and it's so good that El Salvador, the country, just recently adopted and replaced their teachers.”
Poilievre: Mark Carney Claimed in 2021 There Would Be No Inflation
“Like, you know, Mr. Carney, for example, told us in 20, 21, don't worry about inflation. There won't be any inflation. We should print even more money. Well, he was totally wrong. Like, utterly wrong.”
Controlled Studies Show Grieving People Suffer Worse Outcomes From Therapy
“There's a whole body of research that shows, you know, people who've gone through natural bereavement, the loss of a loved one, often feel worse after therapy. They did these controlled studies with You know, a control group who didn't, who lost a loved one, b…”
Therapy Causes Breast Cancer Survivors to Experience Worse Anxiety and Depression
“Same thing with you know, breast cancer survivors, anxiety about it, depression about it. They did worse if they had gone to therapy and also alienation from a spouse, alienation from parents. All of these are classic iatrogenic effects of therapy, and there's…”
No Robust Scientific Evidence Shows That Preventive Mental Health Therapy Works
“There's no good study showing preventive mental health works unless you're talking about things like a good life, like connection, you know, doing things for others, getting involved in community, dancing, you know, exercising, eating right.”
Natural gas produces more net global warming than coal
“Natural gas actually produces more global warming in almost every case than coal.”
Driving a Tesla on the US East Coast actively hurts the climate
“If you drive a Tesla and you live in the East Coast of the United States, statistically speaking, you're hurting the climate, not helping it.”
Huberman: Mouth breathing causes deviated septums in most non-trauma cases
“The reason you have a deviated septum is because you're a mouth breather. There are rare exceptions where if people boxed or they had broken nose or something like that, but your sinuses can learn to dilate.”
Robinson: Palo Alto Has the Highest Teenage Suicide Rate in the US
“Of all the cities in the United States, the one with the highest teenage suicide rate is Palo Alto, which is tax central, right?”
Rockefeller Predicted Standard Oil Would Someday Refine All Oil
“The Standard Oil Company will someday refine all of the oil and make all of the barrels.”
Pincus: Every Amazon C-staff member was once Jeff Bezos's technical assistant
“In fact, I believe every C staff member at Amazon was at one point Jeff Bezos' tech assistant, And Andy Jassy was, and the CEO.”
Ovitz claims CAA never lost a single client during his entire tenure
“In the years I was at CA, we never lost a client, and the reason was if they tired of one person, they'd go to the next, but everyone was up to speed.”
Cava limited investment bankers to 9% of its IPO share distribution.
“Essentially we only allowed the investment banker, nine percent of the shares in distribution, which essentially went to their clients and the hedge funds. We protected 91% of it, of that distribution so that it ended up in the right hands.”
Volkswagen secretly supplied gray market dealers to maintain artificial scarcity
“He discovered he could sell Volkswagen as a gray marketer, buying beetles that Volkswagen secretly supplied while keeping official dealers on the allocation to create artificial scarcity.”
Diller asserts 80% to 90% of employees immediately cash out vested options
“What I have learned is that most people, you think that giving large populations options in the company's securities, that they would hold on to them. And what you find out is 80, 90%. The first moment that they, quote, vest, they cashed them.”
Gil: Crash data shows children only need car seats until age two
“If you actually look at crash data, Real data, and people have now reproduced this across multiple countries, multiple time periods, it's the age of two. So for six extra years, we keep people in booster seats and car seats, at least against the data, right?”
Garry Tan: 60% of serial founders who built recent unicorns are YC alumni
“Did you know that 40, you know, of those 40%, 60% of those people, the people who created unicorns the last 10 years are YC alumni.”
School Psychology Associations Stayed Silent on Foreseeable Lockdown Damage to Children
“The school counselors association, school psychologists association, none of these organizations had anything to say about the foreseeable damage that was going to happen to kids.”
Rey Flemings: NY State wired firm $45.9M for ventilators, prompting FBI call
“We got a wire from the state of New York for 45.9 million dollars and a phone call from the FBI.”
Karp: Over 90% of non-organic US wheat contains traces of glyphosate
“I don't remember the exact number, but it's in the high nineties percent. Might be 99%, might be 97%. Of the US wheat crop that's not organic has traces of glyphosate, which is Monsanto's herbicide also called Roundup.”
Global temperatures will rise for a century even if emissions stop
“It turns out if you stopped all emissions on day one, the climate will continue to drift, drift upwards for about a hundred years. I have written a bunch of papers on global warming. I've done this calculation. Other people have done this calculation. You know…”
Shah: Less than 6% of urban Indian women have independent income
“Less than six percent of urban Indian women have financial income of their own.”
Shah: No SaaS company makes over $10M ARR from Indian businesses
“I wouldn't be able to find one company that makes more than 10 dollars, ten million dollars annual revenue by selling software to Indian businesses.”
Shah is the only Indian unicorn founder with a humanities background
“India has hundred unicorns. I would go on to say that I'm the only founder in the hundred unicorns, which has a humanities background. Everybody else is STEM.”
Huberman: 15 seconds of bright nighttime light drops melatonin to zero
“Light viewed by the eyes inhibits melatonin, so much so that if melatonin levels are at their peak and you walk into the bathroom at night and you flip on the lights and it's really bright, if you spend more than 10 or 15 seconds in that light, your melatonin …”
Conant: Most companies no longer report quarterly earnings
“Most people aren't reporting quarterly earnings. They're doing annual, they provide guidance, but they're looking more long-term in nature, which is appropriate.”
Chamath Palihapitiya predicts the world's first trillionaire will be in climate change
“The world's first trillionaire will be somebody in climate change.”
Holland: Google's Project Zero was largely built with ex-intelligence talent
“I mean, Google's Project Zero is largely built from people who have exited the intelligence industry with a chip on their shoulder.”
Coloroso: Violent games wire brain pathways connecting violence to pleasure
“It also does something that neurologists have found out, and neuroscience, it creates neural pathways that connect violence with pleasure and rewards, rather than sadness and sympathy and fright.”
MacAskill: The poorest people in the US or Canada are in the top 10-15% globally
“Even the very poor in the United States, for example, or Canada, They're still in the richest 10 to 15% of the world's population”
Leading Medical Textbook Harrison's Ignores Hormonal Mechanisms of Obesity
“The medical textbook, the most seminal textbook, and the Harrison's Principles of Medicine, I think it's called, and the chapter on obesity is written by the, you know, a very, very smart researcher named Jeff Flyer, who just, until recently, was dean of Harva…”
Domingos: Machine Learning Algorithms Typically Outperform Human Doctors in Medical Diagnosis
“Machines are remarkably better than human doctors at doing all types of medical diagnosis, not just from x-rays, but from, you know, symptoms, right? You have a patient, you have their symptoms, what is the diagnosis? And even very simple machine learning algo…”
Dixon: By 2025 remote conversations will probably occur in VR
“I think, you know, in 10 years, we'd be probably having this conversation in virtual reality, and we'd be, you know, looking at each other across the room, and it would feel like we're in the same room.”
Nejatian: Opendoor halved its operating expenses while maintaining previous transaction volume
“To give you a sense, the last time Opendoor bought as many homes as we bought last quarter, Opendoor's OPEX was more than twice as high.”
Liemandt: Multiple US states legally mandate teaching strictly at grade level
“There's actually laws in states, various states, that you must teach at grade level. Like, it's illegal for a teacher not to teach at grade level, right?”
Wozniak: Every computer prior to Apple I used front-panel switches and lights
“Every computer before the Apple One had a front panel of switches and lights, he noted. Every computer since has had a keyboard and a screen.”
Parrish: Apple I marked first time typing on a keyboard displayed directly on-screen
“He didn't realize it then, but this was the first time in history anyone had typed on a keyboard and seen it appear on their own computer screen.”
Parrish: Most Share Buybacks Merely Cover Up Stock Option Dilution
“You know, if you look at most buybacks, they're just covering up stock options.”
Hetty Green Loaned Over $6M to Save Texas Banks in 1907
“Her son, Ned, revealed years later that during the 19 oh seven panic, Hetty had loaned over six million in Texas alone in addition to her New York loans. She single-handedly kept several banks from failing, prevented numerous businesses from going under, and h…”
Flexport hired roughly 900 U.S. software engineers over 12 months
“I think we added 900 software engineers in 12, in like 12 months. Oh wow. And turned out, they're all in the U.S. Or almost all in the U.S., Seattle mostly. It was like very expensive people.”
Flexport is the only top-100 freight forwarder founded after the web browser
“We're the only one founded, only one in the top hundred in the world founded after the web browser was invented.”
Garry Tan: Paul Graham created the first web browser-based application
“He actually basically created the first web browser based program. So he was one of the first people to hook up a web request to an actual program in Unix.”
Garry Tan: About 2.5% of Y Combinator startups become $10B decacorns
“Yeah, about two and a half percent end up becoming Decacorns sooner or later, so.”