Random facts — things I learned (Dec 15 2023) — “Markets have excellent social scalability; they are the original distributed systems”

Markets have excellent social scalability; they are the original distributed systems, around long before anybody thought to coin that expression. (source)

On the Birth of a Son
BY SU TUNG-PO // ARTHUR WALEY
Families when a child is born
Hope it will turn out intelligent.
I, through intelligence
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope that the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he’ll be happy all his days
And grow into a cabinet minister.

Action is a high road to self confidence and esteem. Where it is open, all energies flow toward it. It comes readily to most people, and its rewards are tangible – Bruce Lee

Cool find — list of scifi ideas organized by authors and books, mentioned on the My First Million pod:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sBkJ8nZwyG_J1v_WLub-5RM4GhLWCf_b7ml8_qNgNsg/edit#gid=568223314

Set a “No-Internet” Day Once a Week – This has been a game-changer for me. On Wednesdays, I don’t allow myself to go on the Internet until 5pm. This means no social media, no email, no news, no nothing. – Ali Abdaal

We fear too much success is abandoning our roots and will leave us alone.
Think: Why do so many celebs have an “entourage?”
The unconscious thing your brain says:
“I cannot expand to my full success because it would cause me to end up all alone, be disloyal to my roots and leave behind people from my past”
-Jesse Pujji

If you believe that the demands of the situation exceed your resources, you will have a threat response. But if you believe you have the resources to succeed, you will have a challenge response. – reading Kelly McGonigal’s GREAT book about the utility of stress

Elon is already more powerful than many heads of state. It’s not hyperbole. The constellation of assets Elon’s amassed represent real societal and resource power. This man has systematically gained command over numerous critical industries in human transportation, communication, space travel, and technology – BacktheBunny

the difference I guess between the guys who are able to be biggest Champions and the ones that are struggling to get to the highest level is the ability to not stay in those emotions for too long so for me it’s relatively short so as soon as I experience it I acknowledge it I maybe you know burst I scream on the court whatever happens but then I’m able to bounce back and reset – Djoker

There is a connection between freedom and self-confidence: When you are kept from expressing your deepest needs and wishes, you lose trust in their validity and in your own judgment. You survive by finding out the rules and following them, thus hiding what you really want. You make it your purpose in life to please others rather than to affirm yourself. – David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships

I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after
backhanding
mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel
in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls.
And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing
to surrender
-Ocean Vuong

Kong: I turned down all performance opportunities and avoided meeting anyone. To prevent friends from locating me, I changed my mobile phone number 21 times. During the darkest three months, my mother would leave my meals on a chair outside my door. When my daughter returned from the United States to visit me, all I could do was look at her through the peephole.
Kong: [Laughs] It’s true. Back when I was learning the piano, I felt like many of my classmates, such as Xu Zhong, Wang Jian, and Qian Zhou, had more inherent talent. I relied on relentless practice, often putting in 15 to 16 hours a day. Even after becoming a professional pianist, I needed constant practice to keep my confidence up

while a magazine might project a kind of bulletproof perfection–every story the product of an assiduous and painstaking reporting, editing, and fact-checking process–in practice nearly every story you read is an improvised and often deeply unsatisfying last-minute compromise between the publisher, the top editors, the story editor, the fact-checkers, the copy-editors, the art department, and the writer
Something that’s often underrated by people who haven’t worked as journalists is the extent to which newspapers and magazines (and cable channels, etc.) are institutions like any other–which is to say riven with contradiction and internal tension, populated by cross-pressured workers and managers with competing desires and incentives
from Read Max

Great infographic on DEPIN landscape
https://github.com/iotexproject/awesome-depin/blob/main/depin_landscape_oct.jpeg

Selfish people are incapable of loving others, but they’re incapable of loving themselves too

I think we just can’t help the instinct to give meaning to things we don’t understand — Scavenger’s Reign

But today, people are actively deleting content they have created. It is now considered best practice in some circles to automatically delete twitter comments, old reddit comments and to privatize Facebook posts (or even simply delete Facebook). And when they create new content online, it is more often in places where the masses cannot see it.

Nietzsche: Compassion is a psyop designed by the weak to redirect resources from the most deserving to the least.
Napoleon: Logic will lose you wars because sometimes the moment demands imaginative maneuvers that work because they are irrational
Chateaubriand: Beauty is useless if you care for efficiency, but shockingly useful if you care for lovability. Yes, beauty is a wasteful luxury but ultimately the only thing people will protect, and make pilgrimages to.
John Fowles: High IQ is a terrifying gift. The ability to predict the consequences of any action means your will gets lost in a labyrinth of hypotheses. Rule 1: Do not lose the will
from @oldbooksguy

On a journey, ill;
my dream goes wandering
over withered fields.
-Basho.

China has focused on battery-powered electric vehicles. Even after consolidation in the sector, over a hundred firms still produce such cars. A few brands are world-class. Most are cheaper than Western rivals. Chinese firms became dominant through a mixture of subsidies and coercive transfers of foreign technologies, but also hard work and foresight, as they leap-frogged slow-to-change foreign firms

Manny Pacquiao on the power of volume, leading up to a fight he’d spar 36 rounds in a day, every day (!) — so he wasn’t tired at all in a regular 12 round fight: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzeHP6itCK7/

During a threat response, your emotions will likely include fear, anger, self-doubt, or shame. Because your primary goal is to protect yourself, you become more vigilant to signs that things are going poorly. This can create a vicious cycle in which your heightened attention to what’s going wrong makes you even more fearful and self-doubting.

the brain suffers from severe limitations. We use its massive parallelism (one hundred trillion interneuronal connections operating simultaneously) to quickly recognize subtle patterns. But our thinking is extremely slow: the basic neural transactions are several million times slower than contemporary electronic circuits.

If you wonder what will remain unequivocally human in such a world, it’s simply this quality: ours is the species that inherently seeks to extend its physical and mental reach beyond current limitations. – Kurzweil

Thoreau goodies:
-Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
-For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?
-But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness.

In their zeal to attack believers whose frailties have led them to embrace the supernatural, atheists may neglect the frailty that is an inevitable feature of all our lives. – de Botton

Let me Google how to suffer. That ain’t gonna be in there – David Goggins

Diabetes, glioma, chronic pain, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dementia, and H pylori bottom out around 1 drink per day. Cardiovascular disease bottoms out around 2 drinks per day. Erectile dysfunction stays lowered at up to 3 drinks per day. Depression bottoms out at 0.7 drinks per day.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1731863379902349781.html

Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words. […] To understand and be understood, those are among life’s greatest gifts, and every interaction is an opportunity to exchange them

When a supernova explodes, the blast wave creates high-energy particles that scatter in every direction; scientists believe there is a minute chance that one of the errant particles, known as a cosmic ray, can hit a computer chip on Earth, flipping a 0 to a 1. The world’s most robust computer systems, at NASA, financial firms, and the like, used special hardware that could tolerate single bit-flips

弘益人间,在世理化
official education motto of South Korea
To broadly benefit the human world

Sizzling Sunlight: Bask in both morning and evening sunlight. Even if it’s cloudy and cold. It’s not just about Vitamin D; it’s about regulating your natural circadian hythms

And if you avoided everyone who treated you unfairly at some point, you’d probably just be alone. You’d better hope they give you the benefit of the doubt for your mistakes, too

I can’t predict the future. But I can spot investor over-reactions. – Ram Ahluwahlia

They weren’t trying to be safe. They were trying to become competent—and it’s competence that makes people as safe as they can truly be. – Jordan Peterson

Make that phone call you’ve been putting off
Push through when you feel like quitting
Have that uncomfortable conversation
Introduce yourself to that cute guy/girl
Check out that church or faith group
Ask for that promotion or raise
Apply for that new job
Sign up for that class
Start that side hustle
Post that tweet
Take that trip
The world belongs to the bold. Be a seeker, open to change and opportunity.
And most importantly…
Shoot your shot.
Source

Highlights from Google & Temasek report on SEA internet and tech

Full report here: https://kevinhabits.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/e_conomy_sea_2023_report.pdf

Some excerpts:

SEA-focused funds have seen significantly lower distributions to paid-in capital compared to funds that are focused on other regions, suggesting difficulty in realising returns for investors.

New sector growth: enterprise, healthtech, edtech, deeptech/AI, Web3/crypto, property, automotive, etc.

dry powder still growing though ($15.7B in 2022)

Consumers are adopting digital financial services (DFS) at a rapid pace; cash is no longer king.

High value users (HVUs) are defined as the top 30% of online spenders — HVUs spend more than 6X the amount non-HVUs spend online, and are more likely to increase spending over time

For non-HVUs who only purchase offline: lower prices, trust in the platform, and ease of use can change behaviour

Screenshot 2023 11 13 At 11.56.26 Am

Pimp: Story of my Life by Iceberg Slim – book highlights

iceberg-slim

Copied verbatim from the book:

A good pimp doesn’t get paid for screwing, he gets his pay off for always having the right thing to say to a whore right on lightning tap. I knew my four whores were flapping their ears to get my reaction to this beautiful bitch. A pimp with an overly fine bitch in his stable has to keep his game tight. Whores constantly probe for weakness in a pimp.

Slim, a pimp is really a whore who has reversed the game on whores.

My father tearfully vowed to straighten himself out and be a man, but he didn’t have the will, the strength to resist the cheap thrills of the city.

He said. “Son, there is no reason except a stupid one for anybody to project on that screen anything that will worry him or dull that vital edge. After all, we are the absolute bosses of that whole theatre and show in our minds. We even write the script. So always write positive, dynamic scripts and show only the best movies for you on that screen whether you are pimp or priest.”

Those pimps back in the joint sure knew basic whorology. I was glad my ears had flapped to all those rundowns. They had said, “Chase a whore, you get a chump’s weak cop. Stalk a whore, you get a pimp’s strong cop.”

If I’m wrong, and I blow her, so what. I won’t give up no matter what happens. If I go stone blind, I’m still going to pimp. If my props get cut off I’ll wheel myself on a wagon looking for a whore. I’m going to pimp or die.

But he sure hates white folks. He pimps awful tough on white whores. When he puts his foot in their asses he’s really doing it to the white man. He says he’s paying ’em back for what they done and are doing to black people. His brain is rotted from hate.

I watched them walk away chattering and laughing. It was like they were real sisters. I looked at my diamond-studded Longines. It was ten-after-twelve. How about it? I was twenty years old. I was living in a six-bill a month pad. I had three young fine mud kickers. I was a pimp at last.

He said, “Slim, a pretty Nigger bitch and a white whore are just alike. They both will get in a stable to wreck it. They’ll leave the pimp on his ass with no whore. You gotta make ’em hump hard and fast. Stick ’em for long scratch quick. Slim, pimping ain’t no game of love. Prat ’em and keep your swipe outta ’em. Any sucker who believes a whore loves him shouldn’t a fell outta his mammy’s ass.”

There ain’t more than three or four good bottom women promised a pimp in his lifetime.

“Slim, you’re in trouble until you cop the fourth whore. A stable is sets of teams playing against each other to stuff the pimp’s pockets with scratch. You got a odd bitch. You ain’t got but a team and a hall.”

“Slim, all whores have one thing in common just like the chumps humping for the white boss. It thrills ’em when the pimp makes mistakes. They watch and wait for his downfall.

In a pimp’s life, yesterday means nothing. It’s how you are doing today. A pimp’s fame is as fleeting as an icicle under a blow-torch.

She collapsed into my lap crying and begging to stay. I had a theory about splitting whores. They seldom split without a bankroll.

I tell you, if you have ever had the flu real bad, just multiply the misery, the aching torture by a thousand. That’s what it’s like to kick a habit. It took two weeks. I was weak, but with an appetite like a horse. In another two weeks I was stronger than I’d been in years.

Podcast notes – Stephen Kotkin on China and Xi – Hoover Fellows podcast: “At least 600 million Chinese who are (still) not part of the world economy”

Hosts: John Cochrane, Niall Ferguson, H.R. McMaster
Guest: Stephen Kotkin
Recorded November 2022

Xi’s perp-walk of Hu Jintao
Not sure if pre-meditated, or if it was triggered by Hu reaching for a key personnel document

Never had an economy this large run by a political system this opaque

China’s Leninist structure never went away – you can’t be half Communist just like you can’t be half pregnant

Central Party School – Soviet collapse is #1 subject there, terrified of Gorbachev reform and the subsequent collapse

Xi will shave off as much GDP as necessary to keep Party monopoly

China’s economy went from $200B -> $18T
$500 -> $20K per capita

Soviets reached US military parity in 1970s – despite 1/3 economic size – but nothing like what Chinese have done

Mao in 1966 – targeted own state, destroyed planning mechanism (planned economy personnel), peasants decided they didn’t want to starve again
Peasants instituted market relations with each other — ignored collectivized statutes and norms
Communist Party latched onto this
Under Deng, grudgingly and in stages, accepted this growing market behavior and tried to control it
“Party hijacked the process and the credit for it”

Mao didn’t care about trade, wasn’t economically literate

Deng visits the US, decides to change partners – divorce Soviet Union and marry US
Why? Saw the success of Japan, Korea
China took Japan model — free and open access to US market

Peasants moved to towns, cities, and built enterprises from ground up

Party steals credit too from HK’s success
All the foreign money came through HK, which then invested into China’s Special Economic Zones

Niall:
-US essentially sponsored China’s development – technology transfer and access to higher education
-Xi made clear he prioritized Party’s success over the economy

Apple can make 10M phones in Vietnam, but 500M in China — scale is irresistible

At least 600-800M Chinese who are not part of world economy, didn’t finish high school, no healthcare, invisible China

We didn’t think it’d happen this quickly – that China would become a peer competitor in 1-2 generations

Niall:
-Hubris of Xi – reached climax in 2020, thought pandemic exposed US
-now China has a latent economic crisis, controlling covid, “building tower blocks for nobody”

Does the Party need the private sector? Or does it care more about its Leninist system?

ONTO RUSSIA — 34:00

Shocking for young Russians what’s happened to their country

(stopped here)

Podcast notes: Ryan Zurrer and Jake Brukhman on Delphi podcast – “Crypto is fastest, most Darwinist industry in the world”

Recorded Dec 2022

Guests: Ryan Zurrer, Jake Brukhman
Interviewer: Tommy @ Delphi

Ryan – 10 years in crypto, mining in 2012-13, SAFTs / ICOs in 2017, defi summer in 2020, p2earn gaming in 2021

Jake – CoinFund in 2015, one of first to focus on digital assets, 8 years full time crypto investing, invested 150 projects, “technical discipline”

Ryan
More shoes to drop in crypto (eg, FileCoin because DCG in massive selloff)
OGs have driven the market for last decade, crypto native values matter
Starting defi summer, whole space got drunk on debt

Jake
FTX not failure of technology, traditional failure
If we adopted more decentralization, smart contracts – could have mitigated FTX risks
Founder quality has gone up – especially if you’re entering in bear market
Infra is more mature

DCG / Genesis
Ryan – could allow Genesis (lending book) to chapter 11, keep the rest safe
Jake – big dent in institutional investor interest

Ryan
After DAO hack, ETH developers disappointed from $30 back to $10 – but was great buying opportunity
Now possibly generational buying opportunity for ETH

Systemic risks?
Ryan – wants CZ to release audited crypto reserves – thousands of low liquidity projects depend on Binance; if Microstrategy starts to unwind, could be cascading waterfall; would be nice to see Binance buy their way into compliance eg by buying Coinbase
Jake – “should use a DEX no matter what”

Web3 social media

Jake – Twitter cannot become true free speech platform unless its decentralized, which Elon will not completely do; web3 social usability not quite there; Farcaster is familiar Twitter experience (low friction switching); people need to coordinate switching at same time, ideally with token rewards; lots of people jumping to Mastodon
Ryan – thought creator incentives would drive great migration, but haven’t been able to sign up big ticket influencers
Tommy – Audius brought successful musicians early on
Ryan – category of artists most oppressed is musicians; believes NFTs will help unlock for musicians; music needs radically different biz model; would be nice to tokenize record portfolio and have DAO buy it – but still regulatory uncertainty

Jake – what crypto product can you explain and try in 3 seconds?

DAOs

Jake
-Major reason why DEXes struggle is because you can’t move $1M from bank account to a DEX
-2015 Vitalik defined DAOs, everything revolves around smart contract
-2022 a typical DAO – very little is onchain, and vast majority of actions use web2 SaaS
-you need to build 10K iPhone apps to find one that really takes off – we’re in same process with web3

Ryan
-If too much ownership by too few people, there’s resistance to using it – eg, Uniswap “Gini coefficient” is too high
-Financial incentives can enable, but can also be huge drag on apps if you do it improperly – eg, Play2earn gaming

Jake
-DAO use cases today: Governance of public good, Grant writing organization
-future of DAOs – package of software that just works, easily upgrade your entire community

Ryan
-Most current DAOs aren’t decentralized, nor autonomous
-Broad mandate investment DAOs – have any distributed more than their fund back?
-Disappointed in how these funds are organized and operated today
-no multi-B fund has returned above 3 DPI

Tommy – best DAOs have a strong lead, clear vision, high alignment among members
Would be interested in investment DAO that is a collection of sub-DAOs with different themes, small teams

Jake – funds need to be good at 1) sourcing, 2) due diligence, and 3) portfolio construction
-Flamingo DAO has excellent network – one of best investment DAOs
-DAOs struggle at due diligence – voting isn’t the best method, how to allow non-consensus investments

Ryan – “You don’t need 50 people to do due diligence – you need one great guy”

NFTs

Jake
-NFTs are financial rails for many classes of assets
-Movies and music going on-chain
-Stock photography, AI outputs
-Real estate – more of them looking at NFTs to go onchain (instead of security tokens)

Ryan
-traditional art world has strong interest in “phygitals” – some physical manifestation of the digital art
-recommend that aspect to all NFT projects – a print, a physical piece, etc – tactile connection, “necessarily digital and necessarily physical”
-PFPs as social club
-decided to focus on art – personally resonated, impossible to focus on all areas of NFTs
-Hollywood model has not worked for most – better to focus on crypto native experiments

Tommy
-wish more NFT projects would lean into web2 experts, have good bizdev – eg, like what Bored Apes did
-if PFP collection is successful, automatically boxes out much of the community (bc price is too high)
-PFPs can go in movies / media – but it’s about the quality of the content, not the NFT
-license characters to legit movies and games – don’t need to build it yourself – Ryan: “just go and cut the deal with Netflix”

Macro

Ryan
-last 2 years saw coupling of crypto and macro
-does lot of MEV, delta-neutral, alt strategies beyond DeFi is now table stakes given high fed funds rate
-focused on timeline to liquidity – no more 7 years for full vesting
-crypto is fastest, most Darwinist industry in the world

Tommy
-hard to take bullish liquid position given current macro
-crypto sells off ahead – maybe it bottoms earlier
-VC: be disciplined on valuations

2023 predictions

Most exciting category: AI
Where will be crossover between crypto and AI?
Where does value accrue in AI? Or does it all flow to OpenAI?
If fat protocols is true, can you keep those as open public goods? What will happen to OpenAI?

Tommy – surprised by how quickly AI evolves, MidJourney, ChatGPT, “iteration cycle is insane”
Crypto use cases for AI: Auditing smart contracts, auto-rebalancing Uniswap LP positions

Ryan – early 2020s culture will be embedded into all the AI training data, could have huge impact as AI grows exponentially