Tim Urban

Co-Founder & Writer, Wait But Why · 1 appearance on the record.

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Tim Urban is the creator of the explainer blog Wait But Why and authored the 2023 book What's Our Problem? A Self-Help Book for Societies. He also delivered the widely viewed TED talk, "Inside the mind of a master procrastinator."

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1 prediction · 1 opinion · 3 insights · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 1 claim: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

What they said5 What others said1 Episodes1

Everything Tim Urban said on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Urban: Humanity Faces Impending Extinction or a Radical Utopian Paradigm Shift

“It's either going to be the coolest story for humans or it's the end. This is the, That is a, it is a 501 page book. And that's it. Or this is the beginning of like the new paradigm. We have a new BC AD situation. We have a BC, which is like before something t…”

Tim Urban Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 5:52 Tim Urban of Wait But Why · Y Combinator

Insight

Urban: Political Echo Chambers Lack Immune Systems to Filter Bad Ideas

“In, you know, in an echo chamber environment, there's no kind of like white blood cells to kill the virus, and so it just explains, it just, because dissent isn't okay over there. You know, it's not, not only is it not valued, it's very much frowned upon. So e…”

Tim Urban Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 32:15 Tim Urban of Wait But Why · Y Combinator

Insight

Urban: Convincing Smart People to Solve Big Problems Maximizes Impact

“If I can convince really smart people to turn their attention or their money or their time towards important things I think that that's about as big an impact as I could have as a human, because me going into it myself, that's one person.”

Tim Urban Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 2:30 Tim Urban of Wait But Why · Y Combinator

Opinion

Urban: The Public Unfairly Reduces the Entire Tech Sector to Facebook

“People are pushing tech away, like in big quotes, because they think of tech as like just Facebook. But in reality, it's so, so, so much more.”

Tim Urban Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 7:12 Tim Urban of Wait But Why · Y Combinator

Insight

Urban: Bostrom's 'Superintelligence' Provides a Sufficient Foundational Base for AI

“One good book, like super intelligence in the case of AI, can give you a really, really great foundation right there, and then you can just kind of tack on information to that foundation or poke holes in that foundation, and then you end up with a solid unders…”

Tim Urban Jan 3, 2018 ▶ 29:41 Tim Urban of Wait But Why · Y Combinator

The other half of the tape: Tim Urban's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

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Andrew Kortina of Venmo and Fin on Technological Determinism and Work's Relationship to Dignity · Y Combinator Nov 20, 2018 · 1 mention · from 37:40
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Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
Tim Urban of Wait But Why · Y Combinator	Jan 3, 2018	4m

Tim Urban

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