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 595 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
Sam Parr actually trusts Meta with user data and privacy
“I kind of trust them for some reason. I definitely trust them.”
Sam Parr: Newsletters are overhyped treadmills and vastly more competitive now
“I think starting a newsletter is really popular right now. Most people don't realize it is a treadmill. It is very challenging to create new content, just like this podcast. It's hard. This is a hard job. I like it because I think I'm good at it, or I'm decent…”
Yanowitz: Bizabo dominates enterprise events despite a terrible product
“It's an enterprise events platform. It's like, it's, they sell it like SaaS. It's like 20 K a year, 30 K a year subscription. You host all your platform, your events on them. They don't take a cut of the fee, of the ticket sales. I don't think it's just a, but…”
Sam Parr: 90% of Web3 and NFTs are 'total bullshit' and scams
“I think that 90% of the rest of the stuff is a complete scam. I think NFTs are, for the most part, total bullshit. I think Web Three, for the most part, is total bullshit. And I think that the people who entered into that space oftentimes are horrible entrepre…”
Adcock: Enterprise demand for functional humanoid robots is almost unbounded
“I I've never seen a business like this where we walk in and they're like, we'll buy a million of them if you could do this. And so the demand is like, I would think almost unbounded.”
Coogan: Elon Musk's Twitter takeover officially ended cancel culture for founders
“Now that Elon bought Twitter and kind of just like caused enough chaos, like you can just say whatever you want. And there's like, no, I, I've been telling every, every founder I know, like cancel culture is over.”
Google's ad dominance stems from DoubleClick capturing early international market share
“And that is the reason today, 25 years later that, you know Google still has a commanding share because we got it early on and it's never been given up.”
Henry Blodget did nothing legally wrong during Wall Street research scandals
“And so legally, I don't think he did anything wrong. Everything he wrote was approved by his superiors and order.”
Core consumer problems in e-commerce have already been solved
“So one of the reasons I do almost nothing in e-commerce these days is because I don't see the problem. We solved, the industry solved the problem. Meaning if you name anything on the planet earth, just about, you know, you can find a site. They'll have 10,000 …”
Puri: Substack newsletter growth claims are inflated by deceptive auto-subscribes
“Anyone on Substack that's talking about your newsletter growth? You're full of shit is my answer to you. Like you are absolutely full of shit. It's like, people think they're filling out a captcha and they're just actually subscribing to 90 newsletters, like a…”
Attar: MMA fighters should get a larger share of promotional revenues
“I think that fighters definitely should have a bigger piece of the revenues as this thing continues to grow, which I think they've come a long way, but they still have a long way to go.”
Rogan Genuinely Agrees With RFK Jr. On Vaccines, Shaan Puri Claims
“You can't really say that Joe's just doing this for ratings. I think Joe actually thinks RFK. I think he actually sides with RFK”
DeMuro: Investing heavily in single-creator businesses is a crazy model
“They're making massive investments into businesses that have dudes like me who could just go off the rails one day. And I think that is a crazy business model”
DeMuro: Cadillac Super Cruise outperforms Tesla, which isn't top-four anymore
“The Cadillac system lets you be totally hands off. Tesla system is not even an, I would say in the top four anymore.”
DeMuro calls the Porsche Carrera GT the greatest driving car ever
“And I truly, truly believe that it is, and I've driven them all, the greatest driving car that has ever been made.”
Parr: Dave Portnoy's Barstool Sports antics will look pathetic as he ages
“I've always said about this about Barstool Sports. I'm like, dude, Dave Portnoy is getting older. Like, some of these antics are kind of not going to be cool anymore. They're more so like pathetic.”
Puri: Big Tech will reduce AR captioning hardware to a software feature
“And they're going to get there first, most likely, as to having the lightweight form factor. And at that point, captions might just be a feature Or an app on top of their thing. And so you're gonna waste a ton of money. I think doing, trying to get the hardwar…”
Shaan Puri says Martin Shkreli is intelligent and worth learning from
“I think it's hard to deny that the guy's very intelligent and has a lot of interesting things to say. And I, you know, frankly, you can learn a lot from somebody who's highly intelligent, has interesting things to say.”
Shah: LLM capabilities cannot be explained by simple next-token prediction
“It's able to do things. That are not explainable by a simple probabilistic model of auto-suggesting next character, next word, next token, next sentence, right? Like it's gone well beyond that.”
Shah: AI is an order of magnitude bigger than mobile
“I think it's the single largest opportunity and biggest kind of a tech paradigm shift we've seen since the internet originally came out. Like mobile was big but there was a discrete set of use cases. Like when you put a camera on a phone, when you put a GPS de…”
Shah: Losing millions on Chat.com is worth the price of AI credibility
“Chat.com for let's say I even break even, let's say I lose a few million dollars. It is worth the price of admission for me just because that pays the cover charge.”
Puri: The public wrote off Martin Shkreli far too quickly
“I am buying a lot of Shkreli stock because everybody abandoned. He became a penny stock. Everybody's abandoned. Everybody just sort of wrote this guy off. And I'm not saying that I would give this guy my money. But this is a very smart person who has very inte…”
Eazy-E and Jerry Heller overlooking Dr. Dre birthed Death Row Records
“I don't think that Eazy-E, rest in peace, and Jerry Heller, also deceased, understood what, understood Dre's value to the point where it shouldn't have been, ah, overlooked, and so that opened up an opportunity”
Sam Parr says tech workers earning over $100,000 cannot claim solidarity
“Don't say solidarity. Don't say comrade. If you make over a 100,000 dollars a year, you don't get solidarity.”
Sean Puri argues sleep trackers are unnecessary because great sleep is obvious
“You don't need a sleep tracker. Great sleep is obvious.”
Wilkinson: Buying Cash-Flowing Businesses Beats Venture Capital
“I think that I'm much better off incubating businesses and buying businesses. Cause it's a very steady, 15 to 30% cash return. And I feel it. I feel the wind in a much bigger way.”
Parr: Web3 is a circular economy that rarely beats Web 2.0 solutions
“My opinion on the web three is basically, it's a bunch of like, it's just this kind of circular economy of a bunch of people making, making products to serve an industry that has yet to like truly figure out, or I don't know what you call an industry, a moveme…”
Luckey: Obesity won't be solved without zero-effort dietary solutions
“Obesity is not going away unless you let American people eat whatever they want, whenever they want, as much as they want with no lifestyle changes, no exercise, and absolutely no effort on their parts whatsoever.”
Puri: Smart people hide behind nuance because 'it depends' avoids definitive stances
“I think that nuance is something that smart people love to hide behind because it's so easy to just say, ah, well, you know, it depends.”
Tesla's Competitive Advantage Is Overestimated Due to Apple and Google Software
“I just think that everyone overestimated their competitive advantage. And then at the end of the day, you've got all these legacy manufacturers and, you know, ultimately if Apple and Google are providing the interface that most people use, it barely matters, r…”
Smart Investors Should Rent Homes and Put Their Capital Into Equities
“If someone's completely, if they're not an investor at all, then sure, go buy a house all day, whatever. It's a reasonably okay investment. But if you're even remotely smart and you know how to read and you go and read investing books and stuff, I think it's c…”
Ben Wilson: Malcolm Gladwell is full of crap with little substantive value
“I think that Malcolm Gladwell is full of crap. Most of his stuff is, like, of little to no value.”
Sam Parr: Most tech jobs are just superfluous roles for managerial prestige
“I think a large percentage of jobs, at least in the tech world, and I would say most companies are bullshit jobs. And they're only there because the person who's running this particular division has to request more budget and hire more.”
Ryan Holiday: Fox News programming exists to sell grifts to viewers
“There's an argument that Fox news basically exists for the sake of like reverse mortgages, gold coins. And other forms of grift. Like, if you watch Fox News, just the commercials, you get a sense of, like, Just how dumb the audience is to be perfectly honest.”
Parr: Ross Ulbricht acted alone in operating the Silk Road marketplace
“I think the Silk Road case is far more cut and dry than anyone thinks. I think Ross did it. I think Ross did everything.”
Puri: CNN and cable news manufacture storylines just like the WWE
“What's the difference between, you know, CNN and the WWE? There's not much. They make up storylines for entertainment. And so like, you know, the, All these three letter acronyms, the NFL, same way. Storylines for entertainment. And like, if you say that the n…”
Puri: Business Insider contacting Barstool advertisers is warfare, not journalism
“There was a reporter for Business Insider that started reaching out to Barstool's advertisers and saying, Hey, are you aware of the story we wrote about how bad Dave is and businesses and a Barstool? Like, you know, would you like to comment on being an advert…”
Parr: Dave Portnoy's retaliation makes him look weak and endangers employees
“Now, the reaction, I think, is totally inappropriate, and I think it totally makes him look butt hurt. I think it makes him look weak. I think it's a bad move. The reason why it's a bad move is because Dave has fans, and he could be like, well, you know, I'm o…”
Brian Halligan says the era of giant enterprise sales forces is over
“With ye olde giant outside sales forces it just feels like the time has passed to build that kind of thing, and I've predicted that before and been wrong. But it feels like there's a new breed of company that sells in a new way, and they start with small busin…”
Parr: Laurene Powell Jobs funds non-profitable ventures indiscriminately
“I'm a little surprised Axel Springer invested in it because they're pretty legit, but I'm not surprised that Steve Jobs wife invested into it because she invests in a lot of nonprofit making stuff. So I'm like, well, she just gives money to anyone.”
Puri: SoftBank and athlete-backed Series F rounds are overpriced 'sucker rounds'
“Oh, and also, the wonderful kiss of death, SoftBank, and then Kevin Durant and other athletes are investing. You know, that's called the sucker round. It's not called the Series F, it's called the sucker round.”
Shaan Puri: Jewish business success stems from cultural mutual support, not genetics.
“Jewish people have, they punch above their weight. They have a lot of impact. They have a lot of power. They have a lot of success. And I don't think it's genetic. I think it's cultural. I think basically there's a strong foundation of basically like helping e…”
Parr: Taking on Debt for a Top-20 University Is 100% Worth It
“If you could get into a top 20 university and you have to get go into a ton of debt, it is 100% worth it.”
Parr: Belmont University Provides Zero Value and Current Students Should Quit
“Belmont University, where I went, that cost 50,000 dollars a year, and then they're like, fuck Belmont. I mean, who, no one knows what Belmont is. It provides zero value. Like, there's no point. If you go to Belmont, you should quit right now.”
Dan Held: 50% chance Hal Finney was Satoshi, 20% chance the NSA
“This is super tough, but maybe like 50% Hal Finney 30% Nick Szabo and 20% NSA.”
Mares: Superior recreational drugs are driving the non-alcoholic beverage market boom
“I honestly think one of the reasons I'm bullish on the non-alc space is, like, we are getting to the point where there are just better drugs. Like, if people want to, you know, alter their state of consciousness, I'm seeing a lot more friends that are like, Op…”
Puri: ConsenSys is a poorly run company lacking fundamental business logic
“Now I should say, I personally think consensus is kind of a shitty company. They hired like a thousand people. I don't think they had like the business fundamentals to support any of that. You know, so, so I don't think consensus itself is gonna be that succes…”