Patri Friedman 🌆 @patrissimo Twitter profile

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Patri Friedman 🌆

8 months

Welcome! If you're interested in my charter city work @PronomosVC , get oriented to the space with my talk at @thenetworkstate conference:

17 - The Network State Conference 2023 - Patri Friedman - Competitive...

If we think of "government" as an industry, it's characterized by massive monopolies, infinite barriers to entry, and extremely high customer lock-in. How do...

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 years

If you can't rest because you have: (full todo list, backlog of projects, desire to accomplish more, self/life/world aspects you want to change), you will never rest. These lists are infinite. So you must learn to rest peacefully beside an infinite mountain of potential work.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

There should be an extreme sport of trying to advance up the tech ladder with minimal tools as fast as possible. Ie, start with stone age tools and try, in a week, to build a forge and basic set of iron tools. Start with iron and make a steam engine.

Balaji

@balajis

5 years

“We've identified the 50 most important machines that we think it takes for modern life to exist...then we set out to create an open source, DIY, do it yourself version that anyone can build and maintain at a fraction of the cost.”

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

9 months

I got curious about @chamath 's stat on excess mortality for the young, so I dug into the data, focused on the tables that excluded covid. The graphs below confirm that US mortality for those 45 and over is at or below the pre-covid rate, while under 45 remains substantially

The All-In Podcast

@theallinpod

9 months

THE 2023 BESTIE AWARDS! join the besties as the recap the best, worst, and craziest from this past year! (live on @X ) timestamps: (0:00) welcome to the fourth annual bestie awards! (4:14) biggest political winner (10:26) biggest political loser (15:14) biggest political

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

10 months

Here's a longer take of why I'm against e/acc, since I was not that clear & many commenters got it wrong: I'm an OG transhumanist singularitarian, broadly in favor of rapid tech progress as the best way to relieve suffering, upgrade civilization & protect our species

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

Umm, your company lost $800B last year. Traditionally, you need profit before issuing dividends. Also, a company with 320 million employees, that starts paying them even if they don't work, is going to go broke pretty fast (even with $20T in revenue).

Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸

@AndrewYang

5 years

If I were one of 320 million shareholders of a company producing $20 trillion+ in annual revenue I would probably want a dividend.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

If you favor taxing billionaires more, that means you want to transfer resources from @BillGates , who is revolutionizing philanthropy and saw #COVID19 threat years ago, to the US govt, who have disastrously bungled our response to the virus. Here's why that's wrong.

Ezra Klein

@ezraklein

5 years

In 2015, Bill Gates told me a deadly flu-like pandemic spreading under globalized conditions was the most predictable disaster in the history of the human race, and so there was no excuse to not be prepared for it. I'm thinking about that a lot lately.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

The argument against the One Ring is not "it can't do good things". It's that no one being should have all that power. The argument against censorship isn't "all ideas add to the marketplace". It's that no institution can be trusted to gatekeep the noosphere.

The Esports Guy at PUMA

@NotMattShaw

5 years

@micsolana One argument is that some people are too easily persuaded by bad faith actors in the marketplace of ideas, and those actors have an easier time than ever of being believed. And because that persuasion leads to all sorts of social maladies, censoring those actors is appropriate.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

7 years

1/ Watching #btc volatility & thinking about current use cases, I finally appreciate why @VitalikButerin says it's important to make a StableCoin. Ppl should be able to store value w/o taking on all this currency risk.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

1 year

Let's talk Zuzalu (), a pop-up village in #Montenegro of ~200 ppl (1-2 months) & ~300 visitors, centered on longevity, @ethereum & ZKs. Plus mini-conferences like "New Cities & Network States" (which drew me). Longer post:

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

The political ramifications of Covid19 ignore our arbitrary left/right policy bundles. It boosts: * Border controls * Socialized medicine * Xenophobia * UBI (for ppl missing work due to quarantine) * Fast-track test & vaccine approval * Surveillance & tracing What else?

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

I believe that a person’s ability to speak accurately about how aliens might plausibly differ from humanity is a profound reflection of their understanding of reality. If we ever hang out at a party I’m always game to discuss this.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

Dear colleagues, I apologize for my low responsiveness these past few days. I live in a poor, remote province called California, which suffers from mismanagement & crumbling infrastructure. I have a generator, but my internet & cell providers don't, and so are down.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

This is like if a company said "We won't fund or endorse specific sports teams, or allow sports-based rivalries to divide our company. We're here to ship product", and someone responded "So like do we just pretend the NBA finals didn't happen?"

Aaron Levie 🇺🇸

@levie

4 years

So like do Coinbase employees just pretend that debate didn’t happen tomorrow?

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

Fasting is the fundamental paradigm of self-improvement: Fasting: a break from food. Sobriety: a break from substances. Meditation: a break from thinking. Solitude: a break from interaction. Humility: a break from ego. Shabbat: a break from working. NoFap: a break from PMO.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

7 months

And what an absolute blessing it is to be alive on a Sunday afternoon and able to not know what to do with yourself. A true miracle, for which many of us give thanks daily, denied to those poor souls no longer with us.

Taylor Pearson

@TaylorPearsonMe

7 months

"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." - Susan Ertz

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

10 months

I am in absolute fucking awe of the cojones on @TuckerCarlson to make this satire. And I think it's critical to note this video is ONLY POSSIBLE because @elonmusk bought X. A creator couldn't safely do this on YouTube, let alone @FoxNews , while Gab etc have too few people.

delian

@zebulgar

10 months

this is the highest form of art ive ever seen

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 years

"Code is Law", as @lessig famously said. But for a decade now, people like myself, @balajis , @paulmromer and Tom Bell have been pointing out that Law is Code too: laws are lists of procedural instructions executed by judges and arbitrators as the CPUs.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

We should have an electoral system where you secretly nominate community leaders, and then we all vote & force the "winner" to serve as President whether they want to or not. That way you get someone well-respected who has *not* been selected for narcissism & megalomania.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

So the alternative to free speech isn't a magical realm with only the ideas worth debating. It's a MUCH stronger political establishment. At the best, you get China today. At worst you get North Korea under Kim Jong-il. Nowhere in the spread is the USA of any era.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 years

Spread a message that resonates with teenagers, then wait a decade. You will find a world of enthusiastic twentysomethings for whom your distinct perspective is one of their basic mental models. It's a form of intellectual capital compounding.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

This seems plausible to me, and I don't think it's just irrational pride for my ingroup. The @nytimes is vastly weaker than in the past, and SSCs readers include many of the biggest names in tech. The blowback could destroy much of the NYTs remaining brand equity.

Guy

@nosilverv

4 years

Wondering if the doxxing of Scott Alexander will be NYT’s Thiel is gay moment

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

7 years

Update on making an angel investment in a combination of #Ethereum /USD: My US bank held the USD wire in secondary review & locked my account, tx ultimately took 2 days, 10 min on phone, and $25 fee vs. ETH from @coinbase cleared in 3.5 minutes for ~36c.

Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

7 years

Actual utility of cryptocurrency for monetary transfer confirmed: today I used #ETH to pay for a startup investment. It was way better than a wire: faster & not closed for the day at 3pm pst. (Haven't compared tx costs).

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

7 years

1/ At my wedding last month, I gave each of my groomsmen 4 books that have influenced my life. First, "The War of Art" (), by @SPressfield , an incredible book on professionalism (especially for creative or entrepreneurial pursuits).

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 months

On the plastics issue - my intuition is that environmental disruption of our hormones is the largest factor behind the massive growth of trans/LGB*. The left says it’s about freedom to be yourself, the right about woke madness, but what if it’s primarily biological? I

The All-In Podcast

@theallinpod

4 months

E180: scarlett johansson vs openai, nvidia's trillion-dollar problem, the "vibecession," plastic in our balls (0:00) bestie intros: recapping "general ai hospital" (2:46) scarlett johansson vs. @openai (14:37) openai's novel off-boarding agreements, ex-employee equity problem,

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

Googling "Patagonia vest for babies" "can a baby be a VC" "What do I do if my baby has dealflow" The real question is: "if I put babies in Patagonia vests will a baby VC fund form around them" @vcstarterkit @hunterwalk

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

7 months

In 25yrs, I've heard 2 types of arguments against artificial minds ever becoming as smart as people: Those which explicitly depend on human capabilities being enabled by some irreplicable metaphysical property (soul, etc), and those which implicitly do the same.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

10 months

Disagree with my frens all day - we have a menagerie of wild ideas and live for respectful debate. But mockery & condescension are out of bounds, and I don't respect those unwilling or unable to defend their ideas in a clean fight. I hope to see you make different choices 🙏❤️

Beff – e/acc

@BasedBeffJezos

10 months

@patrissimo that's a lot of words to say "Beff dunks on my frens so I don't like him" I will dunk on xrisk until morale improves. In the meantime, nice try conflating us with Landians.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 months

Robin Hanson

@robinhanson

5 months

What could we try to build today that would be a worthy successor to this?

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

10 months

E/acc is the worship of Moloch, either by not seeing that their "inevitable dynamical adaptation process" is simply a hidden face of Moloch, or (like @Outsideness ), choosing to side with Moloch over humanity. I side with humanity over Moloch, so I am against e/acc.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 years

"Legal Systems Very Different from Ours", my dad's latest book, is now out in paperback (Kindle soon). Based on a decade of research, it respectfully examines 13 different legal systems, then looks for common patterns:

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

2 years

A psychological benefit of conspiracy theories is they often transform complex, systemic problems into “I’m being harmed by an evil person or group.”, a much more natural and comfortable place to be than “Damn the unforeseen effects of these new incentives!”

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

11 months

A man who's superhero identity is "Capitan Ancap", who rants against leftism w/ the black-and-white passion of an Objectivist, who vows to demolish @BancoCentral_AR & has a cloned dog named "Milton" after my gramps, is going to be President of Argentina. We just might be ok.

Crazy Ass Moments in LatAm Politics

@AssLatam

11 months

In a recent campaign ad, Javier Milei appears receiving the clothes of Capitan Ancap, his superhero counterpart, and destroying the argentine Central Bank with Thor's Hammer.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

Imagine a world where the best weapons are swords, which are rare. An elite class of samurai form & ally with the wealthy/powerful to lord it over all. Then a Remington-Gutenberg invents the $99 sword. Chaos reigns as people are sliced and stabbed left & right.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

2 years

Wow, this Startup Society dashboard is such a slick offering from @balajis as part of The Network State. It lists 20+ societies with one-click to their website, twitter, discord, and society application:

Balaji

@balajis

2 years

How do we get the first network state with diplomatic recognition? We’ll need a pipeline of hundreds, perhaps thousands of startup societies. Fortunately, there are already 20+ such societies today. So we set up a little dashboard to track them:

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

Just as there is no Maxwell's Demon to magically sort atoms without doing thermodynamic work, there is no Speech Daemon to magically sort ideas without doing political work. Such a Daemon would be implemented by, and part of, the status quo power structures.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

If it's wrong for a charity to accept money from a scumbag, and use it to help people... Why doesn't our government return the tax payments of people convicted of terrible crimes? Aren't we, otherwise, all being tainted by evil in the same way as the charities?

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 years

1/ Hypothesis: crypto has a "Bitcoin Bias": almost all thinking analyzes crypto networks as being much more like BTC than they are. As first mover, BTC is highly salient, and everyone in crypto either got rich from BTC, knows ppl who did, or wishes they got rich from BTC.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

Proposed: the "Many false Scotsmen" principle, which says that all schools of thought get misinterpreted & misrepresented so often that we should be very careful about judging them by random representatives (esp when selected by noticing rep's annoying stupidity)

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

Excited for this new series on the Cypherpunks, featuring my dad and many friends. When hundreds of billions of value have been created, it’s easy for a movement to forget its roots. But those roots are important to remember because the big vision is what led to that value.

Jim Epstein

@jimepstein

4 years

@reason @wikileaks @laurashin @AaronvanW @edyson @marksammiller @TheTedNelson @NickSzabo4 @zooko @bramcohen @DeanTribble @epopt @adam3us @patrissimo @hmichellerose @PeterMcCormack And here's a trailer for the series.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

10 months

I’m done arguing with people who aren’t listening.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

1/ On the danger of "Puzzles". A puzzle is an activity which takes brains but not effort, like Sudoku, crosswords, Hearthstone/MtG, bridge, chess, or brain teasers. They are dangerous because they feel like whole brain exercise, but aren't.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

The numbers are now very clear. In the next 3-5 weeks, the US must either: a) Do massive China-style quarantines. b) Manufacture ventilators & O2 concentrators for millions of "Home ICUs" c) Test 10x more than today, doubling weekly. Otherwise, > 2% will die.

Liz Specht

@LizSpecht

5 years

By this estimate, by about May 8th, all open hospital beds in the US will be filled. (This says nothing, of course, about whether these beds are suitable for isolation of patients with a highly infectious virus.) 9/n

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

The US govt spent $4,500 billion last year. @JeffBezos accumulated the most individual wealth, at $10B/year. And they're blaming rich people for not paying for climate change? Are you f**king kidding me? If it's that important, cut a program do it, wtf else is public budget for?

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

If you liked "Elephant in the Brain" by @robinhanson & @KevinSimler you'll like "Luxury Beliefs" - the idea that, with physical goods cheap, the upper class now signal their uniqueness with false/damaging beliefs that people w/ less privilege can't afford to hold.

Rob Henderson

@robkhenderson

5 years

These and other findings, along with my own observations, inspired me to write about what I refer to as #luxurybeliefs "In the past, upper-class Americans displayed their social status with luxury goods. Today, they do it with luxury beliefs."

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

13 days

Forest City, Malaysia is the most #solarpunk place I’ve ever seen. Being deserted adds to the eerie beauty. What an epic setting for @balajis network school.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 months

Even if you excuse @hubermanlab 's constant lying to juggle 6 gfs as "just alpha male stuff"... He's still a total hypocrite, because he preached dopamine sobriety while living as an out-of-control dopamine addict.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

Utah passes first “regulatory sandbox” in US: Any innovative new company can apply for a renewable one year exemption from regulations that block their business, if they show it benefits the state to give them an exception. Perfect example of my “Law as Code” thesis.

Mark Lutter

@MarkLutter

4 years

Utah regulatory sandbox. Better than the more hyped Nevada proposal. Something comparable at the national level would be a game changer

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 years

Imagine a world with the same vast mountain of climate change evidence, but reversed popularity (ie believers were as thoroughly marginalized as deniers are today). Hella frustrating & stupid, right? That's how it feels to know basic economics in our world.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

3 months

A strategy I favor to reduce tribal conflict (a critical issue today) is to reorient around the shared conflict of humanity vs nature. The enemies are poverty, disease, aging, death, depression, being single-planetary, and human suffering - not each other.

Bryan Johnson /dd

@bryan_johnson

3 months

Human Greatness is Over I’m unsure why I am ambitious. At the age of 21, it just turned on. I don’t remember turning it on or even asking for it. Ever since, it's been omnipresent, indifferent to my preferences. Because like attracts like, ambitious others populate my world. In

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

Normally it's easy to ignore the news & live my life without the perpetual stress of the daily panic topics. Not so with Cov19. I'm infected by worry at the global slow-motion train wreck. It's breached my fear boundary. I'm not used to this. What do I do?

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

Here’s a way to think about the illusion that low effort can produce great results. It applies to any power law field, whether actors, entrepreneurs or meditators. Suppose there are 300 incredibly successful ppl in a field - 100 who put in high effort, 100 medium, 100 low.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

2 months

Pretty exciting to see @realDonaldTrump infected with new city fever - America, it’s time to build!

George

@BehizyTweets

2 months

WATCH: A massive part of Trump's 2nd-term agenda is to charter TEN new mega-futuristic cities in various states on federally-owned lands "Almost one-third of the landmass of the United States is owned by the federal government, with just a very, very small portion of that

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

I tried to explain to my 14yo how depressing the laws of thermodynamics are because the universe is absolutely doomed to end in grey nothingness by 3rd law. He pointed out that the creation of the universe may be an exception, so maybe we can win by making new universes!

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

7 years

4/ A club that won't let anyone in who doesn't want to gamble is going to end up being a club of gamblers, not the world new financial system. A good StableCoin is one possible answer.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

One more trade and I’ll be rich = one more drink and I’ll relax = one more lay and I’ll feel sexy = one viral tweet and I’ll be popular =one more hour staring into this candle and I’ll be enlightened. Same treadmill, different belt.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

Metacontrarian take on nCoV: Your panic is the real pandemic. We live in an age of anxiety, where global connected media have driven us to a fever pitch of unhealthy obsession with irrelevant distant events. Our brains are hijacked by amplified signals of primitive threats.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

8 months

The “ratchet” effect of democracy, where things like spending, departments, positions, laws can be easily expanded, but are systemically more difficult to remove. Like a ratchet gear, it moves only in one direction. (Also note these all have very similar population dynamics.)

David

@Data_David1

8 months

Social spending as a percentage of GDP has increased in basically every country that we have data for over time.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 years

We thought the 'net would at best be World Library meets Trek Communicator, at worst Neuromancer meets Panopticon. Instead, we got Salem Witch Trials meets America's Funniest Home Videos. Sigh.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 years

Outstanding crypto-skeptic interview by cypherpunks founder Tim May. A *must-read* if you value a 30-year perspective over the weekly crypto hype. Fairly BTC maximalist, and even connects Satoshi's paper to ancap theory. Quotes below:

Enough with the ICO-Me-So-Horny-Get-Rich-Quick-Lambo Crypto

What are cypherpunk legend Timothy May's thoughts on the bitcoin white paper? Keep the text but throw out the hanger-ons that have came with it.

www.coindesk.com

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

7 years

1/ I doubt I'm the first to say this, but: #HODL is a cartel, one which (approriately) is simultaneously pedestrian and innovative in the same ways as #cryptocurrency itself.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

7 years

5/ Making one, however, without centralization or counterparty risk, is...non-trivial. But deeply fascinating if you're into monetarism & cryptoeconomics! Looking forward to continued community speculation on the topic.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

I think a lot of internet advice comes from the wrong place in the experience hierarchy, and that's especially bad because advice has a power law distribution. Here is a draft hierarchy. 1) I heard about this cool idea. 2) I read for a few minutes about this cool idea...

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

Caring what other people think of you is a security hole. Patch it or be exploited - including by mere script kiddies like sales & marketing departments or political campaigns.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

To be a sovereign man, form a circle of friends who are: - Male (and happy to be). - Fit. - Self-employed. - Seeking to better themselves. - Constructively critical, but not cynical. - Sober(ish). - Generally abstain from superstimuli. - Live primarily offline.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

Internet-native digital currency...huh, that's a pretty good idea! This Friedman fellow was onto something. (Pausing for a photo at the #bitcoin history wall at #sfblockchainweek )

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

2 years

Fuck jail - we need to bring back banishment. It’s so much more humane! Kicking someone out of your society makes sense, but locking them up so they can’t go make a life elsewhere seems pretty evil.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

I'm scared of my parents getting sick, my country going bankrupt, and of the growing emotional trauma to my entire species. But hot damn am I going to get my schedule, routines, and processes dialed in during lockdown, and catch up on self-improvement debt! Thread 👇

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

"The terrible truth the virus revealed is that the US & UK are not even countries. They are free-trade zones. Our govts are bureaucratic anarchies with ceremonial elected monarchs. Pitting them against a ruthless virus is sending Don Quixote to Vietnam."

Plan A for the coronavirus

As everyone can now see, the coronavirus is a test of every government.

medium.com

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

11 months

Why are people allowed to refuse even life-saving medical treatments, to do sports that risk their lives, to smoke, but not to try experimental medical treatments after becoming fully informed? It's insane. (H/t @longevion )

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

Most Westerners know how China became far more capitalist in the last few decades, while saving face by labeling free-market reforms as being in the true spirit of Mao. In reality, they moved to a mixed system, without changing the label. What if the same is true of the West?

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

1/ Yesterday was my farewell lunch at Google after 10 years (2004-2008 & 2013-2019). The first stint was my first full-time job, it was amazing to see growth from 5k to 50k employees, and I learned a lot about tech & culture.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

Prediction market PSA: It's surprisingly hard to manipulate markets. Why? "Dumb money attracts smart money". Accurate prices mean no profit, and ppl only bet for fun. But if the price moves away from the true odds, professionals can profit from fixing it.

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@patrissimo

3 months

I have found this to be a robust phenomenon - even people who think they are scientific materialists often have a strong & unsupported opinion that AI can’t replicate the human brain. They don’t realize they are assuming magic dust. IMO this is behind the “quantum mechanics”

Andy Masley

@AndyMasley

3 months

Memes like this made me realize how many people seem to believe that there's something fundamentally magic happening in human brains. If you're religious that makes sense, if not what's the deal?

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 years

Is there a term for the day each year when our progress bar through the year is the same as through the century? Easy examples: 1/1/2000, 7/1/2050, 12/31/2099. This year it's March 7, 2019 (I think?). We should celebrate it annually to build intuition for century time scales.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 months

Since jhana is a hot new thing in my teeny-tiny corner of the world, thanks to @jhanatech & ppl like @nickcammarata , reminder that I have a resources doc (with a brief intro to wtf is jhana):

Jhana Resources

Jhana Resources by Patri, v0.1 This is a quick page to send to people who ask me about the form of meditation I’ve been interested in during the 2020s, to orient them and give them further resources....

docs.google.com

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

Okay, I understand how the Silicon Valley attitude "I will learn egoless mindfulness in order to better impose my will on the universe" is an extremely mockable thing to say. But isn't it also an extremely sensible thing to do?

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

I want teenagers walking by parks, looking appreciatively, and saying "Wow, there's wood, clay, running water, you could totally do a Stone to Bronze leap with that. I saw SidMeierIRL do it in 6 days live on Twitch last week".

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

3 years

“It's sad to think of high school kids turning their backs on building treehouses to sit in class learning about Darwin or Newton to pass some exam, when the work that made Darwin & Newton famous was more like building treehouses than studying for exams.”

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

1/ As a potential victim of anti-Semitism, I am supposedly being supported by those who use violence to suppress Nazis who may harbor me ill-will for my ethnicity. But they scare the hell out of me, because truly, they are on the Nazis side.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

7 years

9/ Final thought: BTC's governance issues stem, at least partially, from the disappearance of the founder. But in truly Zen fashion, this is one area where Satoshi's inaction is perfect leadership. His only contribution is to be hodler-in-chief. But it's an important one.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

3 years

Ok, so at Bitcoin Miami the @urbit guys got me set up with a planet. So now I can hang with you next gen cypherpunks. My True Name planet is ~bitrel-natrel. Please invite me to your shadowy conspiracies to disrupt Big Tech and decentralize the Internet.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

Parenting, like venture capital, pays 2 and 20. First you get the automatic two years of baby & toddler cuteness. Then comes a lot of sweat and tears and dreams and if you're lucky after 20 years you'll see an amazing human ready to storm the world.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

To reduce tribalism, it's critical to praise the outgroup for good work, so: I love this Vox piece! Great follow on to @pmarca 's CTA. Ezra digs into the systemic barriers to becoming a nation of builders, with an apolitical, mechanism-focused analysis. Hurrah!

Ezra Klein

@ezraklein

4 years

America’s inability to build is destroying our future. On that, @pmarca is right. But fixing it requires repairing broken institutions. It means breaking the “vetocracy.” And that’s a slow, frustrating task that builders tend to ignore.

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@patrissimo

5 years

Humility is, ironically, a posture of incredible strength and power.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

9 months

Journalist: Do you have any comment on <biased collection of negative opinions about my 20 years of work enabling people to live together in new ways and my current focus on alleviating global poverty>?

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

3 years

My kids have Internet schedules enforced by the router…and a rule that once they can bypass the security, they are welcome to do so. It taught my son (now 15) to appreciate the varying feature sets of certain WiFi chipsets and drivers.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

I think that New Zealand, Taiwan, Iceland, Singapore, and Liechtenstein are all significantly saner than the US. Also much smaller - which is no accident. Our world is governed in ways that scale poorly, so smaller jurisdictions simply work better.

James Hudson

@Philonous

4 years

@patrissimo @eprefon Please name the sane country. Grading on a curve, the U.S. doesn’t look so bad.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

30 days

OMG this attitude pisses me off. Marriage is a sacred institution, vital to civilization, and the base of a strong family, and so extending that franchise to long-term homosexual relations is pro-civilization, while excluding gays from it is anti-civilization. More families more

Hazel Appleyard

@HazelAppleyard_

1 month

Two men in their 50s should not be buying a baby.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

10 months

It’s shockingly easy to see why govt regulations almost always favor big corporations, whatever they pretend: Regulations impose fixed costs. Fixed costs hurt small producers. Thus, regulation hurts small producers. It’s actually just that simple.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

5 years

The hate comments on the simple idea of studying progress in order to do better are sad! Whether it's a country or a group of friends, when you see people openly ridiculing self-improvement, that culture is doomed. Find a healthy subgroup and put up the razor wire!

Patrick Collison

@patrickc

5 years

Progress is amazing, influenceable, and understudied. @tylercowen and I decided to make the case for Progress Studies: .

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@patrissimo

4 years

One of the marvelous things about this strange, sad age in which we live is that it's often comedians who see the most clearly.

John Cleese

@JohnCleese

4 years

Hard to tell if I recorded this 30 years or 10 minutes ago...

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@patrissimo

5 years

VCs: If you were starting out on your first fund, after a decade of angel investing, what books would you read? @eriktorenberg @balajis @naval @bhorowitz @WilliamAEden @William_Blake @vcstarterkit @briansin @cyantist @hunterwalk @msuster @arrington

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

1 year

This arrived from @EricJorgenson with perfect timing as I prepare for @balajis ' (sold-out) Network State Conference next week:

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

10 months

The FDA peptide ban is such absolutely evil regulatory capture. These substances are extremely safe, effective, widely used by top doctors for years, and their only fault is they are public domain competitors to big pharma. It's a shameful action.

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

2 years

@SamoBurja @Grimezsz @csvoss @Lan_Dao_ You are giving autists some extremely unreasonable expectations about how many beautiful women they should ever expect to be on a couch with 😂😂😂

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 years

Cultural knowledge (evolved rules for operating in an environment) depreciates as the environment changes. Today's world changes so fast that our cultural infrastructure has been depreciated to almost zero, which causes many social ills.

Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

6 years

"Rapid change means we can’t just listen to parents or sages. Nor can we just follow every new fad: most are pre-failure experiments and many were crafted to benefit others at our expense, memetic boarders who must repelled lest they sink our mental ship." #MySecretWritingProject

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

7 months

When you get a bit older you’ll realize that arguing with people is a waste of time and bad for your mental health. For some reason the human brain sees “This person is spouting utter nonsense” and thinks “So it’ll be easy to convince them” instead of “mind closed, useless”

Aidan Gold

@MrGoldBro

7 months

I argued with a decel who despised @elonmusk . It started by him claiming Elon inherited $100M from his father. I asked him Elon’s father’s name. He didn’t know. He didn’t know a thing about Errol Musk. Just recited propaganda. Then he said Elon wasn’t even an engineer. Just

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

Want a rarer cooler hypothesis for declining fertility & modern health problems? John Tooby suggests that low childhood mortality has removed our genes’ main anti-entropic mechanism, thus increasing mutation load

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

If depression is partly a self-reinforcing prediction of failure, that results in an energy-conserving state, could it be treated with video games calibrated for flowing success?

Toward A Predictive Theory Of Depression

[Epistemic status: Total wild speculation] I. The predictive processing model offers compelling accounts of autism and schizophrenia. But Surfing Uncertainty and related sources I’ve read are…

slatestarcodex.com

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Patri Friedman 🌆

@patrissimo

4 years

Extraordinary outcomes require extraordinary effort, skill, or luck. Effort is the dial you can best turn. Find a goal so inspiring, so suited to your talents, or so perfect for your life context that you can make an extraordinary effort relative to the field. Then go after it!

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