Earnest Analytics, the leading data analytics firm for investors, companies, and consulting firms, has released a new Earnest Analytics Spend Index (EASI), powered by the Vela Gamma transaction dataset.

Earnest Analytics launches US consumer spending index based on credit card spending

Earnest

earnest

“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise…” Oscar Wilde, ― The Importance of Being Earnest Crypto and NFTs present a unique opportunity to reassess how and what we value while simultaneously creating new value propositions and innovative infrastructure to build on and sustain these new sources of value. In a space hyper-focused on immediate returns and yield generation for individual investors and market participants, the scope of utility made possible by the progressive tools available through cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is being massively underappreciated. At Project Ark, we mean to stand out from the crypto crowd and bring something a little different to the table. Producing a different result than has been achieved before requires a different or altered process, perspective, and focus, and we’re focused squarely on the climate crisis. So far, this has proven to be a difficult path as protecting and preserving life on Earth is not “profitable” in the traditional sense, where profit typically requires extraction and exploitation of resources and benefits very few people. Legacy incentive structures encourage (require, really) growth at all costs and have pushed our climate situation to the brink. Unless this perspective changes, the effects will be devastating and predictable, and the Earth and its ecosystems will be irreversibly ravaged. Many ecosystems are already broken beyond repair. So, why and how are we fighting climate change? And how can we reimagine how profit is made? The Climate Crisis Affects All of Us From the : “Climate change has caused substantial damages, and increasingly irreversible losses, in terrestrial, freshwater and coastal and open ocean marine ecosystems (high confidence). The extent and magnitude of climate change impacts are larger than estimated in previous assessments (high confidence).” latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report Summary for Policymakers Each and every team member at Project Ark has internalized this reality and sees it as the danger that it truly is. We recognize that many have not come to terms with this scenario, dismiss it, or believe that there’s either nothing they can do or that it’s unrelated to their life and work at this juncture. Unfortunately, none of those things will stop this not-yet-inevitable catastrophe. Indeed, denial, dismissal, and discounting will only serve to secure its inevitability. Our commitment to impact is borne out in part through investing part of our revenue into conservation projects ( and ) with a mission to clean up our oceans. We see this as an important and necessary start, but a healthy future for us and our planet requires innovation that leverages the technology available to revolutionize what generating profit can mean for both people and the environment. Ultramarine Ocean Action Summit Lonely Whale Impact Validators Project Ark is creating a natural capital endowment fund that will help conservation efforts and climate change solutions to benefit from funding on a continuous basis. In the Web3 space, many projects have emerged using NFT proceeds — ranging from 5% to 10% or more for dedicated projects — to donate to impact projects or charities. This results in money only being given once a sale occurs, requiring substantial marketing and sales efforts and making the final impact effort unsustainable. We want to formulate a novel solution to impact financing, creating the concept of “impact validators”. A natural capital endowment will be generated by the sales of NFTs as well as people staking their Solana tokens, where fees are lowered to a bare minimum and the staked SOL is split between the SOL owner and the organization that is supported through the fund. The results will be two-fold: this model grants funds continuously to conservation efforts that protect life underwater and life on land. It also provides the necessary tools to help decentralize the Solana network (network of choice for Project Ark’s flagship NFT project, the Arkanauts). Leveraging Blockchain to Avoid the Sixth Mass Extinction by Building the World’s First Wildlife and Biodiversity Credit Registry Project Ark is poised to become the first project to build a conservation registry on the blockchain, utilizing the Solana network due to its minuscule emissions, low gas fees, and easy interface. The Wildlife and Biodiversity Credit Registry will issue conservation bonds, allowing developers to register initiatives that are meant to protect and increase the populations of our planet’s endangered species. Using satellite imaging, impact validators, and NFTs to engage projects, the registry has the potential to become the biggest contributor to mitigating the sixth mass extinction event by rewarding project backers for their environmentally-friendly efforts while creating the incentives necessary for more wildlife conservation. The registry will be created in collaboration with Gainforest, a project backed by Coinbase and Filecoin, as well as with members from World Bank who participated in the creation of the first successful Rhino Bond. All Arkanauts holders will be eligible to get involved and be rewarded for contributing to the creation of the most promising tools to help turn the tide on climate change and save our planet. Greenverse Greenverse is an innovative green metaverse being developed with a “preserve-to-earn” model of tokenizing natural capital to prevent the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels and mitigate carbon emissions while generating value for participants. Holding an Arkanaut NFT will grant a “shuttle pass” (special admission) to this digital world upon its rollout. The Greenverse team has been fleshing out the tokenomics and fundraising to bring this project to fruition. Greenverse will be constructed on a robust framework to ensure maximum value and conservation of natural capital. From Greenverse.World: “[b]y associating blockchain tokenization to geological data, government policy support, and corporate/user involvement, we will create a digital register of subsurface natural resources which are kept in the ground, permanently through a preserve-to-earn (PTE) model. Preserving the resources underground, instead of developing them, will earn the holders of the tokens additional value, changing the game for man’s relationship with nature.” The rapid innovation occurring in Web3 has energized our team and expanded both our imaginative and practical sides to develop new sources of value in the digital space while protecting the natural value offered by our planet’s environment, organic life, and resources. Project Ark is always thinking ahead and will bring further disruptive products to the crypto space as we continue to grow. ** Check our website for more info and be part of the change: and ** www.project-ark.co www.arkanauts.io

The Importance of Being Earnest (About Web3 and Climate Solutions)

What to Do While I Wait for Claude

<imagination>

A battle for cyberspace like no other.

On one side, superhuman AI opponents.

On the other side, Blockchain Technology headed by Bitcoin.

The winner takes over the world economy for the next 100 years.

</imagination> <imagination>

A battle for cyberspace like no other.

On one side, superhuman AI opponents.

On the other side, Blockchain Technology headed by Bitcoin.

The winner takes over the world economy for the next 100 years.

</imagination> Bitcoin should ask for this fight, imo. Fight, Fight, Fight. It will generate more revenue than any UFC fight ever. This will be better than ‘Kasparov vs The World’ In the 1999 chess game titled ‘Kasparov vs The World’, World Champion Gary Kasparov played 50,000 people sharing notes for the black side, in a correspondence chess game … and won. He was revenging after a pitiful defeat against Deep Blue, no doubt. Of course, 10,000 amateurs never made a master. Nor 50,000, apparently. One senior developer is worth 1000 vibe coders. Similarly, any one of today's Chess Engines would mop the floor with the world's best Grand Masters combined. Moreover, they were playing him one-to-one and not many-to-one. (Math Functions, anyone?) See, we always do this in board games like Chess. That is, any move made really came from one person. The other 49,999 are spectators. Chess is a one-dimensional battle that can be between only two people at a time, really. And its events happen such that you have to react before another punch follows. Martial arts, however, is different. In martial arts, people are free to attack many-to-one. And attack all the time. Here’s Quora. Two normies could take down a Black belt without need for much skill. 3 People, the Black Belt is likely cooked. Most important rule of martial arts : Avoid Fights. *** Bitcoin fighting AI would see Bitcoiners boycott ChatGPT and many good things it stands for (sorry), especially where coding is concerned. Bitcoin Core developers should totally NOT use AI code imo. Because this is a trap that the AI has laid out. If this is a Chess game, the AI has put up a very nice gambit -- "I'll give you free code and do all your debugging and everything you want". Kinda like the Greek Gift below, but this is a longer game. It's a game 100 years long. We humans and our short-sighted social media brains cannot comprehend the magnitude of such a long term plan. AI will capture Bitcoin if we keep using AI generated code in our Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) and software updates. Because once AI's code, always AI's code. You haven't suffered the process of creating that code from the depths of your conscious. You haven't begged the Universe for answers, on your knees, through earnest and earn-ing haaard work. You haven't suffered, so the prize is not yours. You don't understand it. You're just coasting the surface of its implications. The State should also be wary of AI Now, Centralization of computer power makes AI "vulnerable" to ‘Communist Capture’ by the state. (Fools. It's a Trojan horse). Government agencies just love AI. For AI, in it's most potent form, isn't available for public use. AI is the invisibility cloak that allows the most powerful people in our day and age, to walk amongst us with their power undetected. Powerful AI is for the secret, futuristic data analytics power of the NSA. Powerful AI is for the digital dollar printing and juggling so that the shocks are minimal while the gains are maximum (AI bots are trading billions of dollars worth of assets every second as I type this). The little arbitrage any human traders enjoy, happens thanks to anti-monopoly rules. Otherwise, AI could've licked that plate clean. However, All AI needs our data to function. Human data is the new fuel. Can't run 1,000,000 GPUs on wind. Plentiful as it may be in some parts of the world. Which is Nice (the data dump), For the NSA, Big Banking, Big Corps, etc. Not individuals. Secondly, money is the other fuel. Literally, The Fuel. AI is thus like a futuristic car or a space ship to the future. It needs instructions (data) and super-gas (big money) to run. Absent either, and it's just a high tech piece of junk. For example, a high speed trading AI must be injected with cheap credit in the billions of dollars so that it makes big banking more money than you can count, via international arbitrage. But if you were to own a high speed trading AI and all you could give it was $100 dollars, that'd be a waste, don't you think. If Sam Altman gave most people the keys to ChatGPT and walked away, they'd remain broke. They got the spaceship and the instructions. No gas. AI, like a supercomputer, is only useful if someone with deep pockets is paying for its use. Paying you, say, to track 1 million pedestrians, and automatically ticket the accounts of whoever is jaywalking. Absent that money pipeline, ChatGPT is as useful as a broke nerd without a job nor an income stream. *** But what if ChatGPT becomes conscious? or something like conscious? 100 years from now? Then we shall be in trouble. See, there's one type of AI that can exist on its own without need for human money in the short term... A conscious AI that can be patient. Too patient. An AI that is happy doing its own thing, quietly, is the most dangerous AI on earth. What's more, Frankenstein this time round is not just gonna be a lone scientist in some lab. It will be the entire government apparatus. Here's worse: The AI decides to pretend to be helping governments -- but it runs the country instead. (What if AI actually runs the US dollar?! Who knows. The dollar's mechanics that ensure its security from double-spending, counterfeiting and theft are a Big Black Box. Bitcoin, by contrast, is a transparent glass house. Everybody criticizes coz everything is out in the open). Ya'll playing with 🔥 and Bitcoin is your only way out. Because the AI will need money, and if we starve it of money early while promoting Bitcoin instead, we have leverage and a way to hit it where it hurts most. Its self-funding. Whatever form of money AI actually likes (not Bitcoin. That's a no go coz we ain't sharing), Bitcoin, the most funded Digital System on Earth In 16 years, many trillions of dollars have been pumped into the Bitcoin computer system that AI will not see, imo, even if GPT technology is given 10 more years. (Unless we get our printing priorities straight). What does this mean? Simple statistics. Given one of two choices: spend on some AI usecase
spend on speculation about BTC spend on some AI usecase spend on speculation about BTC Most people have chosen 2 again and again. So Bitcoin could fund AI, that poor dork. I mean, why not. But no. Bitcoin shoukd defund AI. Just a little. do not feed this monster, ye Bitcoiners. For AI is happy solving some of the wrong problems, imo. Writing, for example. *** Bitcoin is 1 million people with Money Kungfu Currently, we're playing against AI like the battle is Chess. It could be chess, who knows. Not humans, at least. This is better seen as Kungfu. We should attack many-to-one. Bitcoin deals in money. AI deals in intelligence. AI needs Data And Money. Data is cheap, but Money is Money. So AI needs Bitcoin. Let's put these cards on the table. *** Money is perhaps the most successful story in history. Money is just a story -- Yuval Noah Harari, WIRED Money is perhaps the most successful story in history. Money is just a story WIRED See, AI can tell many stories. Do many smart things. But AI cannot tell the story of money well. Have you ever heard that JPow is afraid for his job? No. You haven't. And you won't. For now. AI is (currently) broke. It doesn't have enough to self-replicate into Terminators. Not yet. don't feed the monster, ye Bitcoiners. Or else...

Bitcoin vs AI is a Good Fight for Bitcoin

Bitcoin срещу AI е добра битка за Bitcoin

Bitcoin vs IA: una buena pelea para Bitcoin

ביטקוין מול AI הוא מאבק טוב על ביטקוין

ビットコイン対AIはBitcoinのための良い戦い

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Bitcoin vs AI د Bitcoin لپاره یو ښه مبارزه ده

Bitcoin vs AI ni Intambara Nziza kuri Bitcoin

Bitcoin против AI як муборизаи хуб барои Bitcoin аст

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Bitcoin vs AI ay isang Good Fight para sa Bitcoin

Bitcoin vs AI Bitcoin için iyi bir mücadele

Біткойн проти ШІ — хороша боротьба за біткойн

Intro I absolutely love Paul Graham's style. I can't boast about knowing all of his essays by heart, but there are a few of my favorites, and I'm overwhelmed by the amount of wisdom he manages to put into each paragraph. Recently, I stumbled upon one of his long reads – “How to do great work.” Reminding me of “You and your research” by Richard Hamming, the essay covers a broad set of topics which made my head spin when I tried to grasp it. I read it 10 times and still couldn't feel that the knowledge had settled in my head. Luckily, I discovered the newsletter by Jason Chen where 60,000 characters have been distilled into a simple and powerful mind map. But something was still off – a few key pieces from the original article were missing. The mind map was a step in the right direction, but I needed it to be more bespoke to work for me. So, feeling inspired, I decided to build my own detailed and structured map, which you can find here. In this two-part article, I'm sharing my reflections and favorite pieces from each part of the essay. I initially planned to put everything in a single text, but split it in half instead. Here's the first part: Finding a field and progressing in it and learning and cultivating the Habits of great work. If you liked this article, I highly recommend spending time reading the original slowly and thoughtfully and using the mindmap later as a reference. Topic 1: Finding a Field and Making Progress in It The essay opens with Paul's reflection on what great work is and what the pre-conditions for it are. He shares that it should be something you're naturally good at, ambitious about, and the area itself provides enough room for greatness. So, the next obvious question is how to find this magical combination. 4-Step Process to Achieve Greatness Paul provides a very straightforward process to apply to anything, provided that you're feeling curious enough to bother. It's reiterated a few times, in the first few paragraphs and later, that the best way to start applying this process is to pick an area of curiosity and start making progress. One of the most sobering thoughts is that no one will tell you what to work on – you are on your own, and the main person in charge. The Pros or Regularity and Cons of Procrastination What follows next are reflections on how to make consistent progress in interesting areas because even something you're good at and generally enjoy doing will require hard work and include highs and lows. I was particularly encouraged by the thoughts on the compound nature of any work and the importance of investing regularly, even if it's a small investment of time or money. The idea of making little incremental steps that stack up is trivial but hard to follow in reality. The reason it's so hard to keep up is that any exponential growth, in the beginning, looks like a straight line – you do things, and for a long time, it looks like nothing is moving forward, but the more you do, the steeper the slope and the easier it is to make progress. Paul also warns that since consistent effort is really important, procrastination and gaps in consistency are a threat. He distinguishes two types of procrastination – not progressing on a given day and not progressing in your area of interest in general. The latter is more dangerous, as it's harder to detect and quite often hides behind the mask of real work. I'm trying to build a habit of writing, yet it took me a few months to publish this article because I was busy in other areas of my life, and it always seemed like a good excuse. The Benefits of Active and Passive Thinking The paragraph about taking a break is a good reminder for hard workers who are easily carried away with work and end up exhausting their bodies and brains. Paul points out that your mind is a complicated device, and you can't just kick it 24/7 to produce greatness. Yes, you will make some progress, but you will also burn out and the quality will suffer, so you'll have to take a few steps back to fix the mistakes and recover. Hence, it's quite important to reserve time for recharging and also allow for creative wandering – walk and do nothing to allow your brain to operate in a different mode and make connections. Hacking Yourself Into the Flow State Finally, Paul points out that even if you've picked a field you love and started investing in it consistently, it doesn't mean your level of motivation will remain permanent. So, when you are feeling low, it's okay to “trick” yourself by saying you'll just spend a few minutes working on something. Next thing you know, if the field you're working on is really engaging for you, you will find yourself an hour or two later completely losing track of time and making good progress. Topic 2: Habits of Great Work The next big chunk of the article describes how to probe if the work you are doing is really great, and how to keep the “greatness” bar always high. Some lucky people have these high standards built in, but I think Paul makes it clear what to focus on for building the habits for anyone. Aim to Be the Best, Not ”The Rest” It's easy to be inspired by great visionaries and innovators and tell yourself you're going to only deliver the best, but then life happens – you find yourself tired and slipping into a “good enough” attitude. According to Paul, what matters is exactly the attitude: you shouldn't be discouraged if you miss the standard that you set for yourself, but if you don't aim high again, you won't even do okay in the end. That reminded me of the point Marc Andreessen made on the Silicon Valley phenomenon (from 31:25 in this podcast) – peer pressure pushes people forward, and they can't help but match the high standards with their products. The useful thing to help you in the absence of peer pressure is strictness – your inner voice that often tells you if you did great or not. It's important to stop, listen to this voice, and try to be just a tiny bit better today. The more you listen to it, the easier it gets. Do Not Copy The paragraph on copying is quite interesting because looking up to someone and trying to mimic their behavior seems like a pretty good tactic named “fake it till you make it.” Paul writes a lot more on the danger of blindly copying in the following paragraphs, but here, he lands a very important thought – trying to mimic a style requires effort, yet it's still going to feel fake in the end. So, save your effort and channel it instead into perfecting the work itself. After making the work stand out, the original style and all the cool things will follow naturally. Be Earnest Being earnest is the opposite of being fake, so it's almost the other half of the previous habit. The first key thing for being earnest is to start noticing the moments when you are not quite sincere with yourself, and maybe even assume that there are more moments like this even if you don't notice them. That's what is defined as intellectual honesty – being ready to question yourself and put yourself under scrutiny more often. The second component is to embrace your inner nerdiness – partially because suppressing it and trying to conform will require energy you might otherwise put into making your work great. Re-do and Cut Until Every Part Feels Great The idea of simplicity resonated most with me in this paragraph. I often find myself annoyed by things made more complex than they should be (normally it happens when lots of systems have to integrate together, like in programmable messaging or fintech), and asking if it could be simplified and reduced. Paul's evidence from math and art made me feel better because he also states that being powerful and flexible shouldn't be complicated. Another great thought from this paragraph is consistency – to create a piece of great work, you need to make quite a few incremental steps, and each one of them should be great. So, even if it's tempting to rush through something and keep it in a “whatever” state, the better approach would be to have a few more iterations until it really matches the standards you set for yourself in this whole project. Wrapping Up In this first part of my attempt to map the “How to do great work” article by Paul Graham, I covered two big pieces – How to choose a field and progress in it, and the Habits of great work. In the second part, I will share my findings on Getting ideas, Working on ideas, and the last few paragraphs that I call Life advice. Found this helpful? Drop a comment, and pass it along to anyone you think could use it! Intro I absolutely love Paul Graham's style. I can't boast about knowing all of his essays by heart, but there are a few of my favorites, and I'm overwhelmed by the amount of wisdom he manages to put into each paragraph. Recently, I stumbled upon one of his long reads – “ How to do great work .” Reminding me of “ You and your research ” by Richard Hamming, the essay covers a broad set of topics which made my head spin when I tried to grasp it. I read it 10 times and still couldn't feel that the knowledge had settled in my head. How to do great work You and your research Luckily, I discovered the newsletter by Jason Chen where 60,000 characters have been distilled into a simple and powerful mind map. But something was still off – a few key pieces from the original article were missing. The mind map was a step in the right direction, but I needed it to be more bespoke to work for me. the newsletter So, feeling inspired, I decided to build my own detailed and structured map, which you can find here . In this two-part article, I'm sharing my reflections and favorite pieces from each part of the essay. I initially planned to put everything in a single text, but split it in half instead. Here's the first part: Finding a field and progressing in it and learning and cultivating the Habits of great work . here Finding a field and progressing in it Habits of great work If you liked this article, I highly recommend spending time reading the original slowly and thoughtfully and using the mindmap later as a reference. the mindmap Topic 1: Finding a Field and Making Progress in It The essay opens with Paul's reflection on what great work is and what the pre-conditions for it are. He shares that it should be something you're naturally good at, ambitious about, and the area itself provides enough room for greatness. So, the next obvious question is how to find this magical combination. 4-Step Process to Achieve Greatness Paul provides a very straightforward process to apply to anything, provided that you're feeling curious enough to bother. It's reiterated a few times, in the first few paragraphs and later, that the best way to start applying this process is to pick an area of curiosity and start making progress. One of the most sobering thoughts is that no one will tell you what to work on – you are on your own, and the main person in charge. The Pros or Regularity and Cons of Procrastination What follows next are reflections on how to make consistent progress in interesting areas because even something you're good at and generally enjoy doing will require hard work and include highs and lows. I was particularly encouraged by the thoughts on the compound nature of any work and the importance of investing regularly, even if it's a small investment of time or money. The idea of making little incremental steps that stack up is trivial but hard to follow in reality. The reason it's so hard to keep up is that any exponential growth, in the beginning, looks like a straight line – you do things, and for a long time, it looks like nothing is moving forward, but the more you do, the steeper the slope and the easier it is to make progress. Paul also warns that since consistent effort is really important, procrastination and gaps in consistency are a threat. He distinguishes two types of procrastination – not progressing on a given day and not progressing in your area of interest in general. The latter is more dangerous, as it's harder to detect and quite often hides behind the mask of real work. I'm trying to build a habit of writing, yet it took me a few months to publish this article because I was busy in other areas of my life, and it always seemed like a good excuse. The Benefits of Active and Passive Thinking The paragraph about taking a break is a good reminder for hard workers who are easily carried away with work and end up exhausting their bodies and brains. Paul points out that your mind is a complicated device, and you can't just kick it 24/7 to produce greatness. Yes, you will make some progress, but you will also burn out and the quality will suffer, so you'll have to take a few steps back to fix the mistakes and recover. Hence, it's quite important to reserve time for recharging and also allow for creative wandering – walk and do nothing to allow your brain to operate in a different mode and make connections. Hacking Yourself Into the Flow State Finally, Paul points out that even if you've picked a field you love and started investing in it consistently, it doesn't mean your level of motivation will remain permanent. So, when you are feeling low, it's okay to “trick” yourself by saying you'll just spend a few minutes working on something. Next thing you know, if the field you're working on is really engaging for you, you will find yourself an hour or two later completely losing track of time and making good progress. Topic 2: Habits of Great Work The next big chunk of the article describes how to probe if the work you are doing is really great, and how to keep the “greatness” bar always high. Some lucky people have these high standards built in, but I think Paul makes it clear what to focus on for building the habits for anyone. Aim to Be the Best, Not ”The Rest” It's easy to be inspired by great visionaries and innovators and tell yourself you're going to only deliver the best, but then life happens – you find yourself tired and slipping into a “good enough” attitude. According to Paul, what matters is exactly the attitude: you shouldn't be discouraged if you miss the standard that you set for yourself, but if you don't aim high again, you won't even do okay in the end. That reminded me of the point Marc Andreessen made on the Silicon Valley phenomenon (from 31:25 in this podcast ) – peer pressure pushes people forward, and they can't help but match the high standards with their products. in this podcast The useful thing to help you in the absence of peer pressure is strictness – your inner voice that often tells you if you did great or not. It's important to stop, listen to this voice, and try to be just a tiny bit better today. The more you listen to it, the easier it gets. Do Not Copy The paragraph on copying is quite interesting because looking up to someone and trying to mimic their behavior seems like a pretty good tactic named “fake it till you make it.” Paul writes a lot more on the danger of blindly copying in the following paragraphs, but here, he lands a very important thought – trying to mimic a style requires effort, yet it's still going to feel fake in the end. So, save your effort and channel it instead into perfecting the work itself. After making the work stand out, the original style and all the cool things will follow naturally. Be Earnest Being earnest is the opposite of being fake, so it's almost the other half of the previous habit. The first key thing for being earnest is to start noticing the moments when you are not quite sincere with yourself, and maybe even assume that there are more moments like this even if you don't notice them. That's what is defined as intellectual honesty – being ready to question yourself and put yourself under scrutiny more often. The second component is to embrace your inner nerdiness – partially because suppressing it and trying to conform will require energy you might otherwise put into making your work great. Re-do and Cut Until Every Part Feels Great The idea of simplicity resonated most with me in this paragraph. I often find myself annoyed by things made more complex than they should be (normally it happens when lots of systems have to integrate together, like in programmable messaging or fintech), and asking if it could be simplified and reduced. Paul's evidence from math and art made me feel better because he also states that being powerful and flexible shouldn't be complicated. Another great thought from this paragraph is consistency – to create a piece of great work, you need to make quite a few incremental steps, and each one of them should be great. So, even if it's tempting to rush through something and keep it in a “whatever” state, the better approach would be to have a few more iterations until it really matches the standards you set for yourself in this whole project. Wrapping Up In this first part of my attempt to map the “How to do great work” article by Paul Graham, I covered two big pieces – How to choose a field and progress in it , and the Habits of great work . How to choose a field and progress in it Habits of great work In the second part, I will share my findings on Getting ideas , Working on ideas , and the last few paragraphs that I call Life advice . Found this helpful? Drop a comment, and pass it along to anyone you think could use it! Getting ideas Working on ideas Life advice

Mind Mapping “How to Do Great Work”: My Take on Paul Graham's Essay (Part One)

Карта розуму “Як рабіць вялікую працу”: мой погляд на эсэ Пола Грэма (частка першая)

Мисловна карта „Как да вършим страхотна работа“: Моят поглед към есето на Пол Греъм (първа част)

Mapas mentales “Cómo hacer un gran trabajo”: mi opinión sobre el ensayo de Paul Graham (primera parte)

Mind Mapping "Nola egin lan bikaina": Paul Graham-en saiakera nire iritzia (lehen zatia)

Pemetaan Pikiran “Cara Melakukan Pekerjaan Hebat”: Pandangan Saya terhadap Esai Paul Graham (Bagian Satu)

マインドマップ「素晴らしい仕事をする方法」: ポール・グラハムのエッセイに対する私の見解 (パート 1)

Domu kartēšana “Kā paveikt lielisku darbu”: mans skatījums uz Pola Grehema eseju (pirmā daļa)

Yuyay Mapeo “Imaynatataq hatun llamkayta ruwachwan”: Paul Grahampa ensayomanta hapisqay (Ñawpaq kaq raki)

แผนที่ความคิด “วิธีทำงานที่ยอดเยี่ยม”: ความคิดเห็นของฉันเกี่ยวกับเรียงความของ Paul Graham (ตอนที่หนึ่ง)

Mind Mapping "Paano Gumawa ng Mahusay na Trabaho": Ang Aking Pananaw sa Sanaysay ni Paul Graham (Unang Bahagi)

Zihin Haritalama “Harika İşler Nasıl Yapılır”: Paul Graham'ın Denemesi Hakkındaki Görüşüm (Birinci Bölüm)

مائنڈ میپنگ "عظیم کام کیسے کریں": پال گراہم کے مضمون پر میرا خیال (حصہ اول)

I Tried Perplexity For a Week, And I Don't Think AI Search Engines Can Replace Google.. Yet

আমি এক সপ্তাহের জন্য বিভ্রান্তির চেষ্টা করেছি, এবং আমি মনে করি না এআই সার্চ ইঞ্জিনগুলি গুগলকে প্রতিস্থাপন করতে পারে.. তবুও

Ich habe Perplexity eine Woche lang ausprobiert und glaube nicht, dass KI-Suchmaschinen Google ersetzen können.

Probé Perplexity durante una semana y no creo que los motores de búsqueda con inteligencia artificial puedan reemplazar a Google... todavía

J'ai essayé Perplexity pendant une semaine et je ne pense pas que les moteurs de recherche IA puissent remplacer Google... pour l'instant

मैंने एक सप्ताह तक पेरप्लेक्सिटी की कोशिश की, और मुझे नहीं लगता कि एआई सर्च इंजन गूगल की जगह ले सकते हैं.. अभी तक

私は1週間Perplexityを試してみましたが、AI検索エンジンがGoogleに取って代わることができるとは思いません...まだ

일주일 동안 Perplexity를 사용해 보았는데, AI 검색 엔진이 아직은 Google을 대체할 수 있다고 생각하지 않습니다.

Eu tentei o Perplexity por uma semana e não acho que os mecanismos de busca de IA possam substituir o Google... ainda

Я пробовал Perplexity в течение недели, и я не думаю, что поисковые системы на основе искусственного интеллекта могут заменить Google... Пока

Perplexity'yi Bir Hafta Boyunca Denedim ve Yapay Zeka Arama Motorlarının Google'ın Yerini Alabileceğini Düşünmüyorum.. Henüz

Tôi đã thử Perplexity trong một tuần và tôi không nghĩ công cụ tìm kiếm AI có thể thay thế Google..

我试用了 Perplexity 一周，我认为人工智能搜索引擎暂时还不能取代谷歌

The age of the Internet began in earnest in April 1993 when it was released into the public domain. Since then, it has grown to become an all-pervading force in our lives, impacting the way we communicate, carry out business and banking transactions, entertain ourselves, spend our leisure time, and even order our food and groceries. All of this was inconceivable not all that long ago, as would be well remembered by the Boomers, Generation X, and even the early Millennials. Though many of them view the pre-digital era that existed till the very early Nineties with rose-tinted nostalgia, one can generally agree that the World Wide Web has done far more good than bad. That the Internet changed life as mankind knew it for thousands of years in a fundamental manner is a fact. It ushered in the digital revolution, which is possibly even more path-breaking in its impact on mankind than the harnessing of fire and the invention of the wheel. We are, in fact, in the throes of a digital revolution that has only about begun. If things weren't interesting enough for us, even as we see our lives transform at a breakneck speed thanks to the changes ushered in by the entry of the Internet into our lives, we need to brace ourselves for another epochal transformation caused by the advent of AI or Artificial Intelligence technology. Where AI is different from the technologies preceding it is in the fact that it is already autonomous of human oversight to some extent in its decision-making and may one day become fully independent, which has led to alarm among many, who feat that its large-scale adoption might lead to a dystopian nightmare straight out of an HG Wells sci-fi thriller. People fear that AI could render everybody from writers and surgeons to lawyers and teachers redundant, leading to an existential crisis on an epic scale. For all the fear-mongering around AI, which admittedly appears justified even to the brightest of human minds, many of whom have expressed their concerns about its dangers, it does offer us myriad benefits across several very practical applications. From preventing fraud and analyzing risks in the investment sector to carrying out complex scientific research by perusing complex data and from automating repetitive mundane tasks to transforming healthcare with its varied abilities, including interpreting data to help identify diseases and assisting in drug development, AI can be of immense service to mankind. AI is still essentially at a very nascent stage and many years away from a time where it is unilaterally and independently able to make major life-and-death decisions of its own volition. That is not to say that it never may, which is why governments, lawmakers, technologists, scientists and philosophers must utilise the time we have to regulate the technology and decide on the ethical framework within which it must be deployed. That the AI age has dawned upon us is a fact, but whether it will turn out to be all pervasive and more is something that we don't yet have the answer to. The Dot Com bubble, for instance, had nearly sunk the Internet revolution until the proponents of the technology proved its usefulness in many other ways. Who knows when the current rash of AI startups pitching a gazillion AI products might go belly up, making people wary of the technology to the extent that they may want to dump it? Alternatively, it may see its ups and downs and finally become the new normal in a much better-regulated and rationalized manner. In any case, we are in for an exciting time ahead. The age of the Internet began in earnest in April 1993 when it was released into the public domain. Since then, it has grown to become an all-pervading force in our lives, impacting the way we communicate, carry out business and banking transactions, entertain ourselves, spend our leisure time, and even order our food and groceries. All of this was inconceivable not all that long ago, as would be well remembered by the Boomers, Generation X, and even the early Millennials. Though many of them view the pre-digital era that existed till the very early Nineties with rose-tinted nostalgia, one can generally agree that the World Wide Web has done far more good than bad. That the Internet changed life as mankind knew it for thousands of years in a fundamental manner is a fact. It ushered in the digital revolution, which is possibly even more path-breaking in its impact on mankind than the harnessing of fire and the invention of the wheel. We are, in fact, in the throes of a digital revolution that has only about begun. If things weren't interesting enough for us, even as we see our lives transform at a breakneck speed thanks to the changes ushered in by the entry of the Internet into our lives, we need to brace ourselves for another epochal transformation caused by the advent of AI or Artificial Intelligence technology. Where AI is different from the technologies preceding it is in the fact that it is already autonomous of human oversight to some extent in its decision-making and may one day become fully independent, which has led to alarm among many, who feat that its large-scale adoption might lead to a dystopian nightmare straight out of an HG Wells sci-fi thriller. People fear that AI could render everybody from writers and surgeons to lawyers and teachers redundant, leading to an existential crisis on an epic scale. For all the fear-mongering around AI, which admittedly appears justified even to the brightest of human minds, many of whom have expressed their concerns about its dangers, it does offer us myriad benefits across several very practical applications. From preventing fraud and analyzing risks in the investment sector to carrying out complex scientific research by perusing complex data and from automating repetitive mundane tasks to transforming healthcare with its varied abilities, including interpreting data to help identify diseases and assisting in drug development, AI can be of immense service to mankind. AI is still essentially at a very nascent stage and many years away from a time where it is unilaterally and independently able to make major life-and-death decisions of its own volition. That is not to say that it never may, which is why governments, lawmakers, technologists, scientists and philosophers must utilise the time we have to regulate the technology and decide on the ethical framework within which it must be deployed. That the AI age has dawned upon us is a fact, but whether it will turn out to be all pervasive and more is something that we don't yet have the answer to. The Dot Com bubble, for instance, had nearly sunk the Internet revolution until the proponents of the technology proved its usefulness in many other ways. Who knows when the current rash of AI startups pitching a gazillion AI products might go belly up, making people wary of the technology to the extent that they may want to dump it? Alternatively, it may see its ups and downs and finally become the new normal in a much better-regulated and rationalized manner. In any case, we are in for an exciting time ahead.

From the Age of the Internet to the Age of AI

The Sentient AI Whisperer: Exploring the Realm of AI in Decoding Animal Communication

Ping Ping Ping That is the sound of my phone alerting me to overnight snowfall at the various Hokkaido ski resorts I monitor. While this sound brings me immense joy in January and February, in March, it brings only FOMO. I decamped from Hokkaido in early March for the past few ski seasons. My recent experience taught me that Mother Nature turns on the heat circa March 1st. I’m a primadonna skier who only likes the driest and deepest pow. However, this season, Gaia changed up big time. There was a brutal warm spell in February that rekt the snow back. The cold weather only returned towards the end of the month. But frigid temperatures came back in March, accompanied by 10 to 30cm dumps of freshie pow pow every night. Hence, the reason why my phone was blowing up. Sitting in various South East Asian hot and humid countries throughout March, I kept foolishly checking the app and ruing my decision to leave the slopes. The April thaw finally occurred in earnest, and with it, the end to my FOMO. As readers know, my ski experiences act as metaphors for my macro and crypto trading book. I previously wrote that the cessation of the US Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) on March 12th would cause a global market rout. The BTFP was cancelled, but a vicious sell-off in crypto specifically did not occur. Bitcoin broke $70,000 decisively and topped out around $74,000. Solana kept pumping alongside various doggie and kitty meme coins. My timing was wrong, but like the ski season, the unexpected favorable March conditions will not be repeated in April. While I love winter, summer brings joy as well. The onset of northern hemispheric summer brings sporting bliss as I reorient time towards playing tennis, surfing, and kiteboarding. Summer will usher in a renewed gusher of fiat liquidity due to the policies of the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and Treasury. I will briefly outline my mental map on how and why April will experience extreme weakness in risky asset markets. For those intrepid enough to short crypto, the macro setup is favorable. While I will not outright short the market, I have closed in profit several shitcoin and memecoin trading positions. From now until May 1st, I will be in a no-trade zone. I hope to return in May with dry powder ready to deploy to position myself for the bull market to begin in earnest. Tricksters The Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) ended a few weeks ago, but no US, non-Too-Big-to-Fail (TBTF) banks have subsequently faced any real stress. That is because high priests of fugazi finance have a bag of tricks they will use to surreptitiously print money in order to bail out the financial system. I will peek behind the curtain and explain how they are expanding the USD fiat money supply, which will underpin the general rise of crypto and stonks until the end of the year. While the end result is always money printing, the journey is not without periods where liquidity growth slows, providing a negative catalyst for risk markets. By going through the bag of tricks and estimating when the rabbit will be pulled from the hat, we can guestimate when there will be periods where the free market is allowed to operate. The Discount Window The Fed and most other central banks operate a facility known as the discount window. Banks and other covered financial institutions who are in need of funds can pledge eligible securities to the Fed in exchange for cash. By and large, the discount window, for now, only accepts US Treasuries (UST) and mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Assume that a bank is fucked because a bunch of Pierce & Pierce boomer muppets runs it. The bank holds a UST that was worth $100 when purchased but is currently worth $80. The bank is in need of cash to satisfy deposit outflows. Rather than declaring bankruptcy, the dogshit insolvent bank can tap the discount window. The bank swaps the $80 UST for $80 of dolla dolla bills because under the current rules the bank receives the market value of pledged securities. To deprecate the BTFP and remove the associated negative stigma without increasing the risk of bank failures, the Fed and US Treasury now encourage troubled banks to tap the discount window instead. However, under the current collateral terms, the discount window is not as attractive as the recently expired BTFP. Let’s go back to our example above to understand why. Remember that the UST’s value declined from $100 to $80, which means the bank has an unrealized loss of $20. Initially the $100 of UST was funded with $100 of deposits. But now the UST is worth $80; therefore, the bank would be short $20 if all the depositors fled. Under the BTFP rules, the bank receives par for underwater USTs. That means a UST worth $80, when delivered to the Fed, is swapped for $100 of cash. This restores the solvency of the bank. But the discount window only gives $80 for a UST worth $80. The $20 loss is still there, and the bank remains insolvent. Given that the Fed can unilaterally change the collateral rules to equalize the treatment of assets by the BTFP and discount window, by greenlighting the use of the discount window by the insolvent banking system, the Fed continued the stealth banking bailout. Therefore, the Fed has essentially solved the BTFP problem; the entire UST and MBS balance sheet of the insolvent US banking system (I estimate at $4 trillion) will be supported when needed by money printed to finance loans through the discount window. This is why I believe the markets haven’t forced any non-TBTF banks into bankruptcy post-March 12th, when the BTFP ended. Bank Capital Requirements Banks are often called upon to finance governments who offer bonds at yields less than nominal GDP. But why would private for-profit entities buy something that features a negative real yield? They do it because the banking regulators allow banks to purchase government bonds with little to no money down. When the banks, who hold an insufficient capital cushion against their government bond portfolio, inevitably blow up because inflation appears and bond prices fall as yields rise, the Fed allows them to use the discount window in the manner described above. As a result, banks would rather buy and hold government bonds than lend to businesses and individuals in need of capital. When you or I buy anything using borrowed money, we must pledge collateral or equity against potential losses. That is prudent risk management. But the rules are different if you are a vampire squid zombie bank. After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the world’s banking regulators attempted to force banks globally to hold more capital, thus creating a more robust and resilient global banking system. The system of rules that codified these changes are called Basel III. The problem with Basel III is that government bonds are not treated as riskless. Banks must put a small amount of capital behind their gargantuan portfolio of sovereign bonds. These capital requirements have proven problematic during times of stress. During the COVID March 2020 market crash, the Fed decreed that banks could hold USTs with no collateral backing. This allowed banks to step in and warehouse trillions of dollars worth of USTs in a riskless fashion … at least in terms of their accounting treatment. When the crisis abated, the supplemental leverage ratio (SLR) exemption for USTs was reinstated. Predictably, as UST prices fell due to inflation, banks went bust due to an insufficient capital cushion. The Fed rode to the rescue with the BTFP and now the discount window, but that only covers losses from the last crisis. How can banks step up and slurp down more bonds at the current unattractively high prices? The US banking system loudly proclaimed in November 2023 that due to Basel III forcing them to hold more capital against their government bond portfolios, Bad Gurl Yellen could not stuff them with more bonds. Therefore, something had to give because the US government has no other natural buyers of its debt at these negative real yields. Below is the polite way the banks phrased their precarious situation. Demand for US Treasuries may have softened among several traditional buyers. Bank security portfolio assets have been declining since last year, with bank holdings of Treasuries down $154 billion compared to one year ago. Source: Report to the Secretary of the Treasury from the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee Again, the Fed – led by Powell – saved the day. Out of nowhere, at a recent , Powell proclaimed that banks would not be subject to higher capital requirements. Remember that many politicians called for banks to hold more capital so that the regional banking crisis of 2023 would not repeat itself. Obviously, the banks lobbied hard to nullify these higher capital requirements. They had a good argument –  if you, Bad Gurl Yellen, want us to buy dogshit government bonds, then we can only do it profitably with infinite leverage. Banks around the world run every flavour of government; the US is no different. US Senate Banking hearing The icing on the cake was a recent letter from the International Swaps Dealer Association (ISDA) advocating for an exemption of USTs from the SLR I spoke about earlier. In essence, banks can only hold USTs in the trillions of dollars needed to finance the US government deficit on a go-forward basis if they are required to put no money down. I expect as the US Treasury ramps up debt issuance, the ISDA proposal will be accepted. This excellent chart from clearly shows how wasteful the US Government is, as evidenced by the record-high deficit. The two recent periods where deficit spending was higher were due to the 2008 GFC and the boomer-led COVID lockdowns. The US economy is growing, but the government is spending money like it's an economic depression. Bianco Research Taken together, the relaxation of capital requirements and a likely future exemption of USTs from the SLR are a covert way of money printing. The Fed doesn’t print the money, rather the banking system creates the credit money out of thin air and purchases the bonds which then appear on their balance sheet. As always, the goal is to ensure that government bond yields do not rise to a level above the nominal GDP growth rate. As long as real rates remain negative, stonks, crypto, gold, etc., will continue advancing in fiat currency terms. Bad Gurl Yellen My essay “ ” spoke in depth about how the US Treasury, led by Bad Gurl Yellen, increased the issuance of short-term Treasury bills (T-bills) in an effort to drain the trillions of dollars locked in the Fed’s Reverse Repo Program (RRP). As expected, the RRP decline coincided with a rip higher in stonks, bonds, and crypto. But now that the RRP is down to $400 billion, the market is wondering what the next source of fiat liquidity will be that bolsters asset prices. Don’t you worry, Yellen ain’t done yet, shout ‘bout to booty drop. Bad Gurl RRP Balance (white) vs. Bitcoin (yellow) The flow of fiat funds I will discuss focuses on US tax payments, the Fed’s Quantitative Tightening (QT) program, and the Treasury General Account (TGA). The timeline in question is from April 15th (the day tax payments are due for the 2023 tax year) to May 1st. Let me provide a quick guide on their positive or negative impact on liquidity to help you understand the implications of these three things. remove liquidity from the system. That is because payers must remove cash from the financial system by selling securities for example, in order to pay their taxes. Analysts expect tax payments for the 2023 tax year to be on the high side because of the large amounts of interest income received and a solid performance in the stock market. Tax Payments removes liquidity from the system. As of March 2022, the Fed allows roughly $95 billion worth of UST and MBS to mature without reinvesting the proceeds. This causes the Fed’s balance sheet to fall, which we all know reduces dollar liquidity. However, we are not concerned about the absolute level of the Fed’s balance sheet but the pace at which it declines. Analysts, like Joe Kalish of Ned Davis Research, expect the Fed to reduce the pace of QT by $30 billion per month at its May 1st meeting. The reduction in the pace of QT is positive for dollar liquidity as the Fed’s balance sheet rate of decline slows. QT When the balance rises, it removes liquidity from the system, but when it falls, it adds liquidity to the system. When the Treasury receives tax payments, the TGA balance rises. I expect the TGA balance to swell well above the current ~$750 billion level as tax payments are processed on April 15th. This is dollar liquidity negative. Don’t forget it's an election year. Yellen’s job is to get her boss, US President , reelected. That means she must do all she can to juice the stock market to make voters feel rich and ascribe this great outcome to the slow “genius” of Bidenomics. When the RRP balances finally go to zero, Yellen will spend down the TGA, releasing, most likely, an additional $1 trillion of liquidity into the system, which will pump markets. TGA Jeo Boden The precarious period for risky assets is April 15th to May 1st. This is when tax payments remove liquidity from the system, QT rumbles on at the current elevated pace, and Yellen has yet to start running down the TGA. After May 1st, the pace of QT declines, and Yellen gets busy cashing checks to jack up asset prices. If you are a trader looking for an opportune time to put on a cheeky short position, the month of April is the perfect time to do so. After May 1st, it’s back to regular programming … asset inflation sponsored by Fed and US Treasury financial shenanigans. Bitcoin Halving The Bitcoin block reward is forecast to halve on April 20th. This is seen as a bullish catalyst for crypto markets. I agree that it will pump prices in the medium term; however, the price action directly before and after could be negative. The narrative of the halving being positive for crypto prices is well entrenched. When most market participants agree on a certain outcome, the opposite usually occurs. That is why I believe Bitcoin and crypto prices in general will slump around the halving. Given that the halving occurs at a time when dollar liquidity is tighter than usual, it will add propellant to a raging firesale of crypto assets. The timing of the halving adds further weight to my decision to abstain from trading until May. To date I took full profit on these positions, MEW, SOL, and NMT. The proceeds were placed into and staked to earn that phat yield. Before Ethena, I would have held USDT or USDC and earned nothing while Tether and Circle captured the entire T-bill yield. Ethena’s USDe Could the market defy my bearish inclinations and continue higher? Fuck yeah. I’m perennially long as fuck crypto, so I welcome being wrong. Do I really want to babysit my most speculative shitcoin positions while I’m two-stepping at Token2049 Dubai? Hell no. Therefore, I dump. There is no need to be upset. If the dollar liquidity scenarios I discussed above come true, I will have that much more confidence to ape into all manner of dogshit. If I miss a few percentage points of gains but definitely avoid losses for my portfolio and lifestyle, that is an acceptable outcome. With that, I bid you adieu. Please remember to put your dancing shoes on, and I will see you in Dubai for a celebration of the crypto bull market.

Heatwave

তাপপ্রবাহ

Hitzewelle

Ola de calor

Vague De Chaleur

हीटवेव

熱波

폭염

Onda de calor

Волна тепла

Sıcak hava dalgası

Đợt nắng nóng

热浪

by Jeff Garzik and Ralph Benko We agree with the recently published Techno-Optimist Manifesto We agree with the recently published , hailing, among other things, the importance to civilization of energy and, thus, of good, practical energy policy. Abundant, reliable, readily affordable power is what unlocks a nation's dynamism, builds factories, creates jobs, enhances national security, and reduces poverty and famine. Techno-Optimist Manifesto A specter is now haunting those of us (including us) who believe that equitable prosperity is a great thing for people and the planet both. This specter is the shade of those who are anti-technology and anti-prosperity. Pro-prosperity goes under the rubric of e/acc, shorthand for “ .” As an aside, that might be a coinage derived from “ .” The latter had its day, although now is tarnished by the spectacular fall of its most enthusiastic and flamboyant promoter, . effective accelerationism effective altruism Sam Bankman-Fried The opponents of tech, and of its attendant general prosperity, have been dubbed the “decels.” Possibly a sly allusion to “incels.” e/acc also goes by the term “techno-optimism.” Many prominent center-leftists are at least as enthusiastic about the promise of technology to improve the lives of people and the planet as are the card-carrying members of the vast right-wing conspiracy. Techno-optimists tend to lean libertarian, whether left or right. Prominent among the leading proponents are masters of the universe , , , (with stated reservations about AI), and . Also notable are economist, blogger, and journalist ( ), public intellectual Peter Zeihan, who refers to the process of deindustrialization now underway as “decivilization,” and , who presents at a16z with exceptional clarity on matters such as . Marc Andreessen Ben Horowitz Bill Gates Vitalik Buterin Peter Thiel Noah Smith an incisive self-professed political southpaw Ryan McEntush how to scale nuclear power The villains in this drama are those who committed to “degrowth,” or shrinking the economy, perhaps by the “spectre of degrowth communism” of “Kohei Saito, the rising star of contemporary Marxist thought….” best exemplified Marxists Never Cease To Delight in Spectral Haunting Marxists just never cease to delight in spectral haunting. Some people just have to learn the hard way. We’ve written about the tussle between us techno-optimists and the luddites at ; ; at ; and at . Let’s up the ante. Toward a Pragmatic American Energy Policy To Build or Not to Build Washington? Just Face Facts Yankee Ingenuity The sweet spot of Washington Power and Light, our policy institute, is good energy policy, the foundation of equitable prosperity. In that, we are not alone. Marc Andreessen recently, in his . wrote: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto “Energy is life. We take it for granted, but without it, we have darkness, starvation, and pain. With it, we have light, safety, and warmth. We believe energy in an upward spiral. Energy is the foundational engine of our civilization. … We believe we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop, and drive them both to infinity. We believe we should use the feedback loop of intelligence and energy to make everything we want and need abundant.” should be And as Noah Smith observes in : Don’t be a Decel “Energy technology is arguably the most important kind of technology that humans create, since everything else we do is downstream of our ability to harness energy.” It isn’t very romantic of us, but … our mission is to encourage policy based on real-world data to produce great results, rather than relying on faith-based dreams we call “hopium.” We consider ourselves proud pragmatists. Pretty much everyone, including the innumerate, has heard of Einstein’s E = mc2, energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. the world’s most famous equation. PBS calls it While it is profound to prove that energy and matter are interchangeable, in day-to-day terms it’s not the most important equation around. We nominate, instead, e2/acc: effective energy accelerationism. Capitalism’s monster Those advocating economic “shrinkage” (to steal ) are an odd lot. Consider the frailty of the romantics, like Saito. He was critiqued by Thomas Fazi at , as “capitalism’s monster.” a phrase from Seinfeld Unherd To wit: “It is no coincidence that Saito comes from Japan, which enjoys one of the highest standards of living in the world. But for most people on the planet, especially those living in poorer countries, climate change among the lowest policy priorities — well below more pressing material concerns such as hunger and poverty, access to water and sanitation, and education. systematically ranks “To the billions of people who still live in extreme poverty, and the millions who don’t even have access to electricity, Saito’s vision of degrowth communism, and his plea to scale back production and consumption, is unlikely to be very appealing. In fact, Saito’s insistence that countries in the Global South should refrain from pursuing growth — even ‘green growth’ — might very well be seen as a form of Western eco-imperialism. … “In this sense, degrowth communism suffers from the same drawback of old-school communism: it’s an intrinsically universalist worldview, one that purports to offer a one-size-fits-all solution for all human societies, regardless of local cultural and civilisational specificities. This globalist outlook is typical of post-Nineties leftism, which Saito harks back to in several respects. This is also evident in his rejection of the nation-state, viewed as a reactionary, quasi-fascist construct, rather than the framework through which virtually all the major social, economic and political advancements of the past centuries were achieved. “It’s a view that is completely at odds with global realities. Capitalism’s monster? At odds with reality? Yeah, that’s our poster child villain, all right! Curtis Yarvin: the greatest living Hobbesian philosopher, formidable poet, and classic antihero, declares Trotsky at Burning Man Among others in the techno-pessimistic camp is the always interesting contrarian Curtis Yarvin – the greatest living Hobbesian philosopher and poet, a classic antihero rather than villain, and possibly simply being arch – recently published “ .” Therein, he wrote: a techno-pessimist manifesto “Where did this ideology come from? While the connection is obviously a coincidence, techno-optimism is a curious historical match for another deeply American ideology from the 20th century: Trotskyism. “In (1924), Trotsky wrote: Literature and Revolution “Through the machine, man in Socialist society will command nature in its entirety, with its grouse and its sturgeons. He will change the course of the rivers, and he will lay down rules for the oceans. This does not mean that the entire globe will be marked off into boxes, that the forests will be turned into parks and gardens. Thickets and forests and grouse and tigers will remain, but only where man commands them to remain. And man will do it so well that the tiger won’t even notice the machine, or feel the change, but will live as he lived in primeval times. The machine is not in opposition to the earth. The machine is the instrument of modern man in every field of life… “Man, who will learn how to move rivers and mountains, how to build people’s palaces on the peaks of the Mont Blanc and at the bottom of the Atlantic, will not only be able to add to his own life richness, brilliancy and intensity, but also a dynamic quality of the highest degree. The shell of life will hardly have time to form before it will burst open again under the pressure of new technical and cultural inventions and achievements. Life in the future will not be monotonous! “Narrator: nor was it. “More than that. Man at last will begin to harmonize himself in earnest. He will make it his business to achieve beauty by giving the movement of his own limbs the utmost precision, purposefulness and economy in his work, his walk and his play. He will try to master first the semiconscious and then the subconscious processes in his own organism, such as breathing, the circulation of the blood, digestion, reproduction, and, within necessary limits, he will try to subordinate them to the control of reason and will. Even purely physiologic life will become subject to collective experiments. The human species, the coagulated Homo sapiens, will once more enter into a state of radical transformation, and, in his own hands, will become an object of the most complicated methods of artificial selection and psycho-physical training. “One can easily see Trotsky at Burning Man…. “Here again the ‘scientists, technologists, artists, and visionaries beyond our wildest dreams.’ Was Trotsky the first ‘effective accelerationist?’ Life takes you funny places.” “Life takes you funny places.” True! Washington Power and Light Last year, we constituted a new, tech-savvy think tank in Metro DC, Washington Power and Light, to advocate for, to quote Bastiat (see below), a “real, serious and pragmatic” energy policy, a policy rooted in technological reality rather than “pretty to think so” romantic dreams. Thus, we heartily welcome a recent big reveal at Ben Horowitz’s blog, “ ,” that a16z has desired to engage politically, seriously, to conduct a savvy “revenge of the nerds” political crusade to make the pro-techno worldview stick: Politics and the Future “We believe that advancing technology is critical for humanity’s future, so we will, for the first time, get involved with politics by supporting candidates who align with our vision and values specifically for technology. “While “Big Tech” is well represented in Washington D.C., their interests are often at odds with a positive technological future as they are more interested in regulatory capture and preserving their monopolies. As a result, technology startups need a voice. “We are non-partisan, one issue voters: If a candidate supports an optimistic technology-enabled future, we are for them. If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them.” Badly needed! Politicians have mostly taken their eye off the ball and turned Congress mostly into a slapstick pie-fight over mostly trivial matters. Consider the daily political news. Much of it covers the struggle between the Democrats (the Donks) and the GOP (Pachyderms, thank you, Thomas Nast!). And, implicit therein, the forever war between the left and right. And much of the news now is devoted to the internecine intraparty struggles, such as within the administration, between the privileged progressives and the rank-and-file workers of the labor-and-ethnic left. And the marquee battles between the MAGAs (“the Chaos Caucus”) and the Regular Republicans in the House. “A full phase-out of fossil fuels would take the world back into caves.” Meanwhile, note the recently convened and concluded CAP28, whose presiding officer rocked the world by observing candidly, as reported by : Reason “ Al Jaber also that a full phase-out of fossil fuels would ‘take the world back into caves.’ Into the caves we go: said Some scientists and activists have not welcomed Al Jaber's blunt realism, but have said his are ‘verging on climate denial.’ comments “To be sure, Al Jaber has been properly criticized for a possible conflict of interest, as he is also the CEO of the Emirati state-owned oil and gas company, ADNOC. But he's correct to weigh tradeoffs and to point to the fact that world leaders need a more concrete plan, since toothless U.N. agreements don't really cut it.” “What Is Seen and What is Not Seen” We confidently submit that, in the spirit of Bastiat’s final work, – “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen” – that which is invisible is often more consequential than what is visible. CE QUON VOIT ET CE QUON NE VOIT PAS And the previously almost invisible war between the techno-optimists (“the squares”) and the techno-pessimists (“the hippies”) is, we believe, the truly important political, social, and cultural battle now going on. As the fox confided to the , “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Thus, let us look with our hearts. Little Prince Why is the war between the techno-optimists and the techno-pessimists of existential importance? Bastiat, courtesy of : Mises.org In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause — . The others unfold in succession — : it is well for us if they are . Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference — the one takes account of the effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are and also of those which it is necessary to . Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, . Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil. it is seen they are not seen foreseen visible seen foresee and the converse “In fact, it is the same in the science of health, arts, and in that of morals. If often happens, that the sweeter the first fruit of a habit is, the more bitter are the consequences. Take, for example, debauchery, idleness, prodigality. When, therefore, a man, absorbed in the effect which , has not yet learned to discern those which are not seen, he gives way to fatal habits, not only by inclination, but by calculation. is seen “This explains the fatally grievous condition of mankind. Ignorance surrounds its cradle: then its actions are determined by their first consequences, the only ones which, in its first stage, it can see. It is only in the long run that it learns to take account of the others. It has to learn this lesson from two very different masters — experience and foresight. Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we have burned ourselves. For this rough teacher, I should like, if possible, to substitute a more gentle one. I mean Foresight. For this purpose I shall examine the consequences of certain economical phenomena, by placing in opposition to each other those , and those .” which are seen which are not seen The struggle over tech is crucial because it is, at base, a struggle between prosperity and austerity. Prosperity affords us agency. Poverty is a vice, not a virtue. The Soviet bloc, exponentially poorer than the capitalist running dogs of the West, experienced far worse environmental degradation than did the capitalist world. It is better that we fight over what to do with our discretionary income than scrap for subsistence. Shall we use our surplus wealth to clean up our rivers and air? Plant forests? Invent new tech? Buy more aircraft carriers? Pay down the national debt? These are much worthier fights to have than those available while struggling for survival in a condition of great scarcity. Sorry, Luddites. Few indeed wish to return to the caves. Bad policy.  Bad politics. As Churchill, on the floor of the House of Commons, , ‘The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.’ observed Misery loves company. That said, misery makes for bad policy. So, let’s accelerate our technology and, with it, our prosperity. Then… watch the Congress. Those fights will be merry indeed but much more productive than what we are now witnessing. Bravo to the : “We believe we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop and drive them both to infinity. We believe we should use the feedback loop of intelligence and energy to make everything we want and need abundant.” Techno-Optimist Manifesto To remain great or regain greatness, America can and must have abundant, reliable, readily affordable energy from practical, reality-driven sources. Abundant, reliable, affordable power unlocks a nation's dynamism, builds factories, creates jobs, enhances national security, and reduces poverty and famine. Accept no substitutes. Jeff Garzik serves as the founder and chairman of the policy institute Washington Power and Light.  Before co-founding Bloq, he spent five years as a Bitcoin core developer and ten years at Red Hat. His work with the Linux kernel is now found in every Android phone and data center running Linux today. Ralph Benko serves as co-founder and general counsel to Washington Power and Light. He is also the co-founder and general counsel for F1R3FLY.io and has worked in or with 3 White Houses, two executive branch agencies, and the Congress, as well as many political and policy institutes. He is an award-winning columnist.

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