#noahsmith — Public Fediverse posts

My theory is that as the world improves, expectations rise even faster, leading to the persistent illusion that the world was better in the past. The only time the illusion is punctured is when a society is successfully digging out of a very big slump.
-- Noah Smith (@Noahpinion)

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #NoahSmith #Nostalgia #Progress #ThePast

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #BartolomeIsland #PinnacleRock #Galapagos

China is killing the fish - by Noah Smith
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/china-is-killing-the-fish

#environment #fishing
#NoahSmith #noahpinion

The cool thing about cyberpunk coming true is that we got ALL the cyberpunk futures, China: universal surveillance and social control; America: cool gadgets and staggering inequality; Russia: shadowy plots, covert ops, and assasins; and Japan: Japan.
-- Noah Smith (@Noahpinion)

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #NoahSmith #Happiness #Truth

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Sunset #Kayaks #Everglades #Florida

Economics expert pinpoints the exact moment in 2012 when 'America went to hell'

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/americas-2012-vibe-shift-ex1

Dystopia is when robots take half of your jobs; Utopia is when robots take half of your job.
-- Noah Smith (@noahpinion)

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #NoahSmith #Dystopia #Robots #Utopia

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Canyon #SlickRock #IcebergCanyon #LakePowell #Utah

is #NoahSmith’s portrayal of China’s not-so-great quality of urbanism fair? https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/thoughts-on-sinofuturism

Along with the tech-centric WhatsApp groups Krishnan had organized out of a16z,
Andreessen joined a slew of others,
including ones that Torenberg set up for tech founders and for more political discussions.

The tech chats tended to be on WhatsApp and the political ones on Signal, which is more fully encrypted,
and they had different settings.

(“Every group chat ends up being about memes and humor and the goal of the group chat is to get as close to the line of being actually objectionable without tripping it,” Andreessen told Fridman.

“People will set to 5 minutes before they send something particularly inflammatory.“)

After a group of liberal intellectuals published a letter in Harper’s on July 7, 2020, some of its signers were invited to join a Signal group called “Everything Is Fine.”

There, writers including #Kmele #Foster, who co-hosts the podcast
"The Fifth Column", Persuasion founder #Yascha #Mounk, and the Harper’s letter contributor Williams joined Andreessen and a group that also included the anti-woke conservative activist #Chris #Rufo.

The new participants were charmed by Andreessen’s engagement:
“He was the most available, the most present, the most texting of anybody in the group
— which shocked me because it seemed like he was the most important person in the group,” one said.

But the center didn’t hold.

The liberal Harper’s types were surprised to find what one described an
“illiberal worldview” among tech figures more concerned with power than speech.

The conservatives found the liberal intellectuals tiresome, committed to what Rufo described to me as “infinite discourse” over action.

The breaking point came on July 5, 2021, when Foster and Williams,
along with the never-Trump conservative #David #French and the liberal academic #Jason #Stanley,
wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing new laws against teaching “critical race theory.”

“Even if this censorship is legal in the narrow context of public primary and secondary education,
it is antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression,”
they wrote.

The conservatives had thought the Harper’s letter writers were their allies in an all-out ideological battle,
and considered their position a betrayal.

Andreessen “went really ballistic in a quite personal way at Thomas,”
a participant recalled.

The group ended after Andreessen “wrote something along the lines of
‘thank you everybody, I think it’s time to take a Signal break,’” another said.

The meltdown of this liberal-tech alliance was, to #Rufo, a healthy development.

“A lot of these technologists hoped that the centrist path was a viable one, because it would permit them in theory to change the culture without having to expose themselves to the risk of becoming partisans,”
he said.

“By 2021, the smartest people in tech understood that these people were a dead end
— so the group chats exploded and reformulated on more explicitly political lines.”

Rufo had been there all along:
“I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high-impact new coalition partners for the right.”

#MarcAndreessen #LexFridman
#ChrisRufo
#VivekRamaswamy #ErikTorenberg #Krishnan
#NoahSmith

https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america

Along with the tech-centric WhatsApp groups Krishnan had organized out of a16z,
Andreessen joined a slew of others,
including ones that Torenberg set up for tech founders and for more political discussions.

The tech chats tended to be on WhatsApp and the political ones on Signal, which is more fully encrypted,
and they had different settings.

(“Every group chat ends up being about memes and humor and the goal of the group chat is to get as close to the line of being actually objectionable without tripping it,” Andreessen told Fridman.

“People will set to 5 minutes before they send something particularly inflammatory.“)

After a group of liberal intellectuals published a letter in Harper’s on July 7, 2020, some of its signers were invited to join a Signal group called “Everything Is Fine.”

There, writers including #Kmele #Foster, who co-hosts the podcast
"The Fifth Column", Persuasion founder #Yascha #Mounk, and the Harper’s letter contributor Williams joined Andreessen and a group that also included the anti-woke conservative activist #Chris #Rufo.

The new participants were charmed by Andreessen’s engagement:
“He was the most available, the most present, the most texting of anybody in the group
— which shocked me because it seemed like he was the most important person in the group,” one said.

But the center didn’t hold.

The liberal Harper’s types were surprised to find what one described an
“illiberal worldview” among tech figures more concerned with power than speech.

The conservatives found the liberal intellectuals tiresome, committed to what Rufo described to me as “infinite discourse” over action.

The breaking point came on July 5, 2021, when Foster and Williams,
along with the never-Trump conservative #David #French and the liberal academic #Jason #Stanley,
wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing new laws against teaching “critical race theory.”

“Even if this censorship is legal in the narrow context of public primary and secondary education,
it is antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression,”
they wrote.

The conservatives had thought the Harper’s letter writers were their allies in an all-out ideological battle,
and considered their position a betrayal.

Andreessen “went really ballistic in a quite personal way at Thomas,”
a participant recalled.

The group ended after Andreessen “wrote something along the lines of
‘thank you everybody, I think it’s time to take a Signal break,’” another said.

The meltdown of this liberal-tech alliance was, to #Rufo, a healthy development.

“A lot of these technologists hoped that the centrist path was a viable one, because it would permit them in theory to change the culture without having to expose themselves to the risk of becoming partisans,”
he said.

“By 2021, the smartest people in tech understood that these people were a dead end
— so the group chats exploded and reformulated on more explicitly political lines.”

Rufo had been there all along:
“I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high-impact new coalition partners for the right.”

#MarcAndreessen #LexFridman
#ChrisRufo
#VivekRamaswamy #ErikTorenberg #Krishnan
#NoahSmith

https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america

Along with the tech-centric WhatsApp groups Krishnan had organized out of a16z,
Andreessen joined a slew of others,
including ones that Torenberg set up for tech founders and for more political discussions.

The tech chats tended to be on WhatsApp and the political ones on Signal, which is more fully encrypted,
and they had different settings.

(“Every group chat ends up being about memes and humor and the goal of the group chat is to get as close to the line of being actually objectionable without tripping it,” Andreessen told Fridman.

“People will set to 5 minutes before they send something particularly inflammatory.“)

After a group of liberal intellectuals published a letter in Harper’s on July 7, 2020, some of its signers were invited to join a Signal group called “Everything Is Fine.”

There, writers including #Kmele #Foster, who co-hosts the podcast
"The Fifth Column", Persuasion founder #Yascha #Mounk, and the Harper’s letter contributor Williams joined Andreessen and a group that also included the anti-woke conservative activist #Chris #Rufo.

The new participants were charmed by Andreessen’s engagement:
“He was the most available, the most present, the most texting of anybody in the group
— which shocked me because it seemed like he was the most important person in the group,” one said.

But the center didn’t hold.

The liberal Harper’s types were surprised to find what one described an
“illiberal worldview” among tech figures more concerned with power than speech.

The conservatives found the liberal intellectuals tiresome, committed to what Rufo described to me as “infinite discourse” over action.

The breaking point came on July 5, 2021, when Foster and Williams,
along with the never-Trump conservative #David #French and the liberal academic #Jason #Stanley,
wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing new laws against teaching “critical race theory.”

“Even if this censorship is legal in the narrow context of public primary and secondary education,
it is antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression,”
they wrote.

The conservatives had thought the Harper’s letter writers were their allies in an all-out ideological battle,
and considered their position a betrayal.

Andreessen “went really ballistic in a quite personal way at Thomas,”
a participant recalled.

The group ended after Andreessen “wrote something along the lines of
‘thank you everybody, I think it’s time to take a Signal break,’” another said.

The meltdown of this liberal-tech alliance was, to #Rufo, a healthy development.

“A lot of these technologists hoped that the centrist path was a viable one, because it would permit them in theory to change the culture without having to expose themselves to the risk of becoming partisans,”
he said.

“By 2021, the smartest people in tech understood that these people were a dead end
— so the group chats exploded and reformulated on more explicitly political lines.”

Rufo had been there all along:
“I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high-impact new coalition partners for the right.”

#MarcAndreessen #LexFridman
#ChrisRufo
#VivekRamaswamy #ErikTorenberg #Krishnan
#NoahSmith

https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america

Along with the tech-centric WhatsApp groups Krishnan had organized out of a16z,
Andreessen joined a slew of others,
including ones that Torenberg set up for tech founders and for more political discussions.

The tech chats tended to be on WhatsApp and the political ones on Signal, which is more fully encrypted,
and they had different settings.

(“Every group chat ends up being about memes and humor and the goal of the group chat is to get as close to the line of being actually objectionable without tripping it,” Andreessen told Fridman.

“People will set to 5 minutes before they send something particularly inflammatory.“)

After a group of liberal intellectuals published a letter in Harper’s on July 7, 2020, some of its signers were invited to join a Signal group called “Everything Is Fine.”

There, writers including #Kmele #Foster, who co-hosts the podcast
"The Fifth Column", Persuasion founder #Yascha #Mounk, and the Harper’s letter contributor Williams joined Andreessen and a group that also included the anti-woke conservative activist #Chris #Rufo.

The new participants were charmed by Andreessen’s engagement:
“He was the most available, the most present, the most texting of anybody in the group
— which shocked me because it seemed like he was the most important person in the group,” one said.

But the center didn’t hold.

The liberal Harper’s types were surprised to find what one described an
“illiberal worldview” among tech figures more concerned with power than speech.

The conservatives found the liberal intellectuals tiresome, committed to what Rufo described to me as “infinite discourse” over action.

The breaking point came on July 5, 2021, when Foster and Williams,
along with the never-Trump conservative #David #French and the liberal academic #Jason #Stanley,
wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing new laws against teaching “critical race theory.”

“Even if this censorship is legal in the narrow context of public primary and secondary education,
it is antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression,”
they wrote.

The conservatives had thought the Harper’s letter writers were their allies in an all-out ideological battle,
and considered their position a betrayal.

Andreessen “went really ballistic in a quite personal way at Thomas,”
a participant recalled.

The group ended after Andreessen “wrote something along the lines of
‘thank you everybody, I think it’s time to take a Signal break,’” another said.

The meltdown of this liberal-tech alliance was, to #Rufo, a healthy development.

“A lot of these technologists hoped that the centrist path was a viable one, because it would permit them in theory to change the culture without having to expose themselves to the risk of becoming partisans,”
he said.

“By 2021, the smartest people in tech understood that these people were a dead end
— so the group chats exploded and reformulated on more explicitly political lines.”

Rufo had been there all along:
“I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high-impact new coalition partners for the right.”

#MarcAndreessen #LexFridman
#ChrisRufo
#VivekRamaswamy #ErikTorenberg #Krishnan
#NoahSmith

https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america

Along with the tech-centric WhatsApp groups Krishnan had organized out of a16z,
Andreessen joined a slew of others,
including ones that Torenberg set up for tech founders and for more political discussions.

The tech chats tended to be on WhatsApp and the political ones on Signal, which is more fully encrypted,
and they had different settings.

(“Every group chat ends up being about memes and humor and the goal of the group chat is to get as close to the line of being actually objectionable without tripping it,” Andreessen told Fridman.

“People will set to 5 minutes before they send something particularly inflammatory.“)

After a group of liberal intellectuals published a letter in Harper’s on July 7, 2020, some of its signers were invited to join a Signal group called “Everything Is Fine.”

There, writers including #Kmele #Foster, who co-hosts the podcast
"The Fifth Column", Persuasion founder #Yascha #Mounk, and the Harper’s letter contributor Williams joined Andreessen and a group that also included the anti-woke conservative activist #Chris #Rufo.

The new participants were charmed by Andreessen’s engagement:
“He was the most available, the most present, the most texting of anybody in the group
— which shocked me because it seemed like he was the most important person in the group,” one said.

But the center didn’t hold.

The liberal Harper’s types were surprised to find what one described an
“illiberal worldview” among tech figures more concerned with power than speech.

The conservatives found the liberal intellectuals tiresome, committed to what Rufo described to me as “infinite discourse” over action.

The breaking point came on July 5, 2021, when Foster and Williams,
along with the never-Trump conservative #David #French and the liberal academic #Jason #Stanley,
wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing new laws against teaching “critical race theory.”

“Even if this censorship is legal in the narrow context of public primary and secondary education,
it is antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression,”
they wrote.

The conservatives had thought the Harper’s letter writers were their allies in an all-out ideological battle,
and considered their position a betrayal.

Andreessen “went really ballistic in a quite personal way at Thomas,”
a participant recalled.

The group ended after Andreessen “wrote something along the lines of
‘thank you everybody, I think it’s time to take a Signal break,’” another said.

The meltdown of this liberal-tech alliance was, to #Rufo, a healthy development.

“A lot of these technologists hoped that the centrist path was a viable one, because it would permit them in theory to change the culture without having to expose themselves to the risk of becoming partisans,”
he said.

“By 2021, the smartest people in tech understood that these people were a dead end
— so the group chats exploded and reformulated on more explicitly political lines.”

Rufo had been there all along:
“I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high-impact new coalition partners for the right.”

#MarcAndreessen #LexFridman
#ChrisRufo
#VivekRamaswamy #ErikTorenberg #Krishnan
#NoahSmith

https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america

The cool thing about cyberpunk coming true is that we got ALL the cyberpunk futures, China: universal surveillance and social control; America: cool gadgets and staggering inequality; Russia: shadowy plots, covert ops, and assasins; and Japan: Japan.
-- Noah Smith (@Noahpinion)

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #NoahSmith #Happiness #Truth

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #WhiteRimTrail #Canyonlands #Utah

tl;dr: It’s the lack of housing

So let’s go on a journey in which I will examine the validity of six common claims we hear about homelessness and the solution to our homelessness crisis: housing, housing, and more housing.

~ Noah Smith, from Everything you think you know about homelessness is wrong

slip:4unope1.

“But wait,” I hear you protest, “it’s more nuanced than that!”

Yes, yes, okay, fine. Again, this time with more nuance:

It’s the lack of affordable housing.

And how might we solve that root cause?

ɕ

#NoahSmith #Society

Vernor Vinge

But what really made Vinge the father of the Singularity was his fiction. His 1981 novella “True Names” created many of the tropes about artificial intelligence and virtual worlds that have now become standard. It’s such a tour de force that top computer scientists felt compelled to write a series of essays exploring its ideas, and it’s often considered the founding work of the entire cyberpunk genre.

~ Noah Smith from, Go read some Vernor Vinge – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion

slip:4unopo1.

Note to self: Go read some Vernor Vinge.

ɕ

#Books #NoahSmith #VernorVinge

This article by Noah Smith gave me pause for thought. There’s plenty of people talking about ‘degrowth’ at the moment and, I have to say, that I don’t know enough to have an opinion.
It’s really easy to get swept up in what other people who broadly share your outlook on life are sharing and discussing. While I definitely agree that […]

https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2023/11/13/is-the-only-sustainable-growth-degrowth/

#Turkey, you were doing so well! (repost) - by #NoahSmith

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/turkey-you-were-doing-so-well-repost

#Progressives need to embrace #progress - by #NoahSmith

"Stasis won't lead to a prosperous or equitable society."

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/progressives-need-to-embrace-progress?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=35345&post_id=110028744&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

China’s regulatory crackdown is good news for startups aligned with CCP goals - Watching the Chinese technology sector over the last week has been a fascinating e... - http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/7mtY08x83k0/ #chinesecommunistparty #natashamascarenhas #fundings&exits #startupcompany #venturecapital #privateequity #ecnewsletter #theexchange #noahsmith #startups #antgroup #bigtech #ecchina #tencent #edtech #jackma #china #kpmg #ccp #tc