Thanks I’m Touched
I’m touched and inspired by the responses to my first newsletter.
Several of you inquired about my health, thanks, to which my response is “the odds are in my favor!” But the question of who I should trust with answers is key. How do I make sense of the variance in expert human judgment that Kahneman and Tetlock describe? And there’s a different kind of murkiness in the machine’s judgment, as in, how similar or different am I from its cases? How stable are its judgments? How biased is it? (Solon Barocas did a great job talking about removing bias from machines.)
Some responses were from young folks (do I sound like Biden?) setting up businesses in the tech space –mostly AI and crypto – which are the current rage. Check out my conversation with David Yermack on the Crypto Revolution.
The current environment reminds me of the year 2000 when the dotcom bubble burst. I recall heading down to the Caribbean from JFK on a Monday morning, where the last thing I recall seeing on a television screen was analyst Dan Niles saying “just sell,” which turned out to be great advice. The current froth in markets and the evangelism around crypto sound familiar. So, my advice to young investors is “go for it, there’s a party going on, but be very careful.” And if you have startup fever, you should read “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore: as an entrepreneur, you’ve got a chasm to cross, so recognize that instead of building your product with the expectation that “if you build it they will come.”
A got a couple of good guest suggestions for Brave New World. Thanks and keep ‘em coming.
The Bright Side of Social Media!
The responses brought out an interesting irony. My conversations have focused largely on the risks of social media, and on the need to be mindful about such risks so that we don’t end up in dystopia. But we wouldn’t be connected and talking in this way without tech platforms! At the end of the day, I’m optimistic about tech as long as we harness it properly and don’t lose sight of what makes us human. And the lessons we’ve learned from history.
The Latest Episode: Liberalism and Democracy
My latest guest is intellectual historian Helena Rosenblatt, author of The Lost History of Liberalism. I’ve talked to tech computer scientists, psychologists, philosophers, journalists, and sociologists about the impacts of technology on our health and our democratic process, but I figured its time to talk to someone who has studied the history of thought and how we’ve gotten to where we are in the first place. Its been a messy process of trial and error, and it looks like we’re not done yet — Fukuyama was a little too hasty in declaring the triumph of liberal democracy!
I had a great conversation with Helena on the history of liberal democracy and its current crisis in the age of technology. So check it out.
Hasta.
Vasant