Month: July 2025| greyenlightenment.com
Walt Mismark argues that the alt-right has won, calling it “wildly successful”. Sebastian Jensen takes the opposite view, which I agree. | Grey Enlightenment
Bitcoin crashes, just like I said would happen.| Grey Enlightenment
Over the past few years that has been considerable hype over tail-hedging funds, most notably Universa, which made headlines everywhere after it booked a 3,000-4,000% return in 2020:| Grey Enlightenment
Interesting Richard Hanania article, How to Be an Intellectual and Writing for the Public.| Grey Enlightenment
The US-China trade wars wars reignited over the past four days. A lot to cover. In the early hours of Friday, October 10th, Trump threatened tariffs on China, causing the Nasdaq to drop 3%. But after the market close, Trump confirmed the decision, announcing that ‘100% tariffs on China’ would go into effect on November… Continue reading US-China trade wars resume: Bitcoin hedge a success| Grey Enlightenment
A common narrative is that AI/LLMs will make writing as a profession obsolete. We already see this in school and college, in which millions of students have taken to using chatbots to expedite the often tedious process writing essays, or for homework assistance, to the chagrin of teachers and administrators, who see now their roles… Continue reading Why long-form writing and blogs will continue to thrive in spite of AI| Grey Enlightenment
There’s a popular narrative, which is that a high IQ is insufficient for making money, and that many smart people are either unwilling or unable to make money due to personal issues or being unfairly excluded from society. And there is some truth to this. I can relate to not wanting to work in a… Continue reading If you’re actually smart, there is no excuse to not be able to make money| Grey Enlightenment
1. The AI market can support many players. What is interesting about the AI/LLM boom is how it can support so many entrants and big players–like Cursor AI, Open AI, Cline, Gemini, Claude, Grok, CoPilot etc.–and each carving a niche and a high valuation. This is in contrast to social networking, in which Facebook was… Continue reading Two thoughts on AI: How it’s different from past bubbles| Grey Enlightenment
AI is creating so many millionaires–such as startups, investing, huge salaries, VC, consulting, etc. Even if these companies run at losses, so many people are getting rich. At the same time everyone is now wondering, “Is this the biggest bubble ever?” These bubble arguments sound reasonable and the people who make them have credentials and… Continue reading Is AI a bubble? Maybe, maybe not. Who cares.| Grey Enlightenment
A recurring theme is that ‘commonsense’ advice is often wrong. This is why so much advice is wrong or bad, because it’s rooted in commonsense or ‘first principle’ notions of virtue, but unsupported by empirical evidence or experience after said advice is applied and predictably fails. We live in a society, for example, where low-grade… Continue reading The pitfalls and worthlessness of commonsense advice| Grey Enlightenment
Bitcoin passes $122k. It would appear I was wrong about shorting Bitcoin as a hedge, but Bitcoin has a tendency of forfeiting its gains. This was seen in August 2025 when it passed $124k, only to fall to $107k weeks later. There are three factors that portend negatively to Bitcoin: 1. No progress on Bitcoin… Continue reading Bitcoin update: three negative factors, and more correct predictions| Grey Enlightenment
It’s interesting how ‘efficiency’ also applies to non-financial things. This can be the tendency of the lines at food stores to have the same waiting time despite differences of line length (e.g. a long line of people with small orders who are paying in cash, versus someone with a huge order that is holding everyone… Continue reading Efficient markets and the replication crisis| Grey Enlightenment
This tweet went hugely viral, as many can relate: Sorry but how tf do construction workers get so fat that looks like a hard job idk — Mariè (@p8stie) July 24, 2024 What is the deal with overweight blue-collar workers especially in construction, compared to sedentary office workers, who are comparably more slim? I am… Continue reading Metabolism and IQ, revisited| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this post going viral by Richard Hanania, “Indians Are Hated Because They Are Dark and Can’t Play Football.”| Grey Enlightenment
Over and again, all of these people who are held up by the media as geniuses or experts keep being wrong, whether it’s about Covid (specifically, the ‘health experts’ vastly overestimating the efficacy of masks and vaccines at stopping the spread of Covid), investing (such as Cathie Wood, who was hyped by the media in 2020-2021 before her fund lost 75% of its value, erasing all its 2020-2021 gains), cryptocurrency (Yahoo Finance and Twitter hyping crypto and giving a platform to crypto ...| Grey Enlightenment
Month: June 2025| greyenlightenment.com
Month: September 2025| greyenlightenment.com
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares debuted a few weeks ago to much initial fanfare. However,| Grey Enlightenment
This is an astute observation by @JackPosobiec, that I had been waiting to respond to:| Grey Enlightenment
It’s commonly asked, “What if AI (or the tech industry in general) is a bubble?” This is less important for employees compared to investors. Investors of AI face much more downside risk compared to employees, who are paid first. With a salary, you’re still getting paid every day that you show up. The company could fail tomorrow or the AI bubble could burst, and you would keep everything that you earned up until that point. Just 3-5 years at a high-paying AI or other tech job, assuming...| Grey Enlightenment
Many have observed that the Shiller PE Ratio indicator is is close to record highs, at 39 as of writing this, signifying that the stock market (specifically the S&P 500) is overvalued and possibly portending to a crash, as seen in 1999-2000 when the indicator crossed 40:| Grey Enlightenment
The big story is Trump yesterday (9/19/2025) signed an executive order imposing a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas. Many are celebrating this as a win against ‘big tech’. Reuters described it as a “blow to tech”. The Washington Post called it a “clampdown on legal immigration”. | Grey Enlightenment
Warning: lots of finance jargon ahead. | Grey Enlightenment
I saw this going viral “Humanity will shrink, far sooner than you think.” Although the issue is often described in alarmist language, the evidence shows that population decline remains very gradual. Japan, the posterchild of low fertility, has only seen its population fall a tiny bit since peaking, from 127 million in 2000 to presently 124 million. Even more remarkable, this is in spite of minimal immigration. Japan’s fertility rate first went sub-replacement in 1975, only for its popul...| Grey Enlightenment
People continue to be taken aback by Richard Hanania’s success:| Grey Enlightenment
The week following Charlie Kirk’s death has seen an abrupt change in the state of discourse on Twitter/X. As expected, The Right is much more energized and united. But notably, accounts and topics unrelated to national politics have been pushed to the periphery, such as AI. It’s as if that entire part of Twitter, which until a week ago was constantly in ‘mentions’ or ‘suggestions’, has been excised from discourse. It shows how during political crisis or turmoil, the intellectual...| Grey Enlightenment
On August 22nd, 2025, a Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, was slain on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina. A week later shocking live footage of the incident went viral on social media that showed her being stabbed in the neck by a black male, Decarlos Brown, as onlookers did nothing. And on September 10th, conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk was murdered in Utah during a campus event, the horrifying details of which were also captured live. Both victims were failed by law enfo...| Grey Enlightenment
The ‘magic screenshot‘ never fails, Bitcoin now at $60k after $68k last week. Bitcoin has now fallen $8k since the scam conference ended. Here is what I wrote: | Grey Enlightenment
Item #1: Bitcoin crashes, as I predicted last week, on Iran escalation (and the overall shittiness of cryptocurrency that requires no additional explanation). It’s going all the way back to $20k, maybe lower: | Grey Enlightenment
I saw this tweet:| Grey Enlightenment
I saw a this post going viral on Reddit, “Why do I gain 5 lbs just looking at bread but my friend eats like a raccoon in a Taco Bell dumpster and stays fit?” The fact many many people have observed this and can thus relate, explains how the post went so viral. We all know those people or have seen them in action. | Grey Enlightenment
Month: August 2025| greyenlightenment.com
In response to Curtis Yarvin’s post “The riddle of the niggardly billionaires,” I posit philanthropy is largely ineffective for opposing wokeness. The right is much more successful at affecting sentiment through a more bottom-up or grassroots process starting online, than patronage or indirect power. Negative sentiment can affect the ‘real world’ in material ways, much more so than bloated charitable organizations or easily-ignored newsletters or magazines. When was the last time ...| Grey Enlightenment
Twitter’s 2022 revenue sharing program for blue/verified accounts has predictably opened the floodgates of slop for the purpose of boosting engagement and hence ad revenue. Slop differs from your typical spam, e.g. casinos or pills, in that it’s marketed under the pretext of being insightful or new, when it’s either stale and or clickbait. The objective is to get people to click out of curiosity and to elicit predictable outrage as it’s shared and retweeted. Because it’s less obviou...| Grey Enlightenment
Item #1: Bitcoin continues to fall| Grey Enlightenment
Why are so many young people delaying family formation? Rather than some deep social analysis, it can simply be explained that men and women alike enjoy having free time. When viewed through the lens of maximizing one’s free time, it makes more sense. Having enough free time is an essential ingredient for being successful. | Grey Enlightenment
Has society gotten easier or harder? The usual rebuttal is that the U.S. is wealthier now compared to, say, 30 years ago. And this is true if you go by objective economic data, but at the same time, it’s hard for me to think of many examples–aside from a handful–where American society has necessarily gotten easier or feels easier. “Society becoming wealthier” and “how easy things are” are not necessarily the same, as the latter also has a subjective element.| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this going viral, “Sunny Days Are Warm: Why LinkedIn Rewards Mediocrity“:| Grey Enlightenment
Item #1: Bitcoin continue to lag tech stocks; huge profit with shorting method; Scott Bessent rules out any treasury purchases. | Grey Enlightenment
Two weeks ago I published “More correct predictions , and the role of IQ and forecasting” , in which I predicted no Bitcoin reserve, in addition to the success of Bitcoin hedging method, by modifying it to short Bitcoin 24-7 instead of only during market hours.| Grey Enlightenment
A couple of days ago I argued that the impact of AI (in the context of LLMs) on the economy will be sanguine. This will come to the possible relief of some and to the disappointment of others. There will be no AGI, takeoff, ramp-up or other hyped-up scenarios in which AI somehow escapes its confines, becomes sentient, or sees a recursive sort of compounding of its capabilities. 2027 and beyond will come to pass without the anticipated ‘phase shift’, but rather continued incremental impro...| Grey Enlightenment
In my earlier posts I argue that AI will not lead to meaningful economic change, or even boost productivity much. It will not liberate people from work, or even lessen the workload much overall. My prediction has generally been that AI will make continued, incremental progress at the sort of things it’s already good at, but there will be no fundamental change or paradigm shift where it renders humans obsolete or surpasses them, except for perhaps those specific tasks. | Grey Enlightenment
McDonald’s misses Q2 estimates across the board, as consumers pull back on dining out.| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this going viral: Walmart says users of weight loss drugs are buying less food, and a related Elon tweet:| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this post from Brian Chau:| Grey Enlightenment
Month: May 2025| greyenlightenment.com
I saw this Ozempic ‘Very Likely’ to Face Drug Price Negotiations, Novo Says:| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this going viral, “How GLP-1s Are Breaking Life Insurance.”| Grey Enlightenment
Month: April 2025| greyenlightenment.com
A common narrative, as I have often observed on Twitter and Hacker News, is that East Asia ought to serve as a role model for mitigating obesity in the US. The apparent success of East Asian countries at having low rates of obesity is something that can be emulated in the US, or that their lifestyles and diets are superior, as the comment below demonstrates: | Grey Enlightenment
Michael Perilloux of Social Matter discusses the need for an Imperial Mindset:| Grey Enlightenment
An excellent post by Scott Greer, Misunderstanding The MAGA Base. This echoes my sentiments exactly:| Grey Enlightenment
To recap, during the ’90s, Epstein was at the center of a large social circle of well-connected people, such as businessmen and some academics. He also, along with associate/friend Ghislaine Maxwell, engaged in child trafficking. He also had a predilection for younger women. It’s possible some of his guests who accompanied him on his plane and partied at his infamous island were aware of this and even solicited underage sex. Epstein also blackmailed some his acquaintances, which could exp...| Grey Enlightenment
This is going massively viral “OpenAI claims gold-medal performance at IMO 2025”.| Grey Enlightenment
Yesterday, a Bitcoin whale offloaded $8 billion of Bitcoin to Galaxy Digital. | Grey Enlightenment
From Garry Taubes, The Curious Lessons of Calorie Restriction, in which he contrasts his ad libitum low-carb approach to Peter Attia. He writes:| Grey Enlightenment
A common argument is that AI will make smart people redundant, as their jobs are replaced or AI outperform them. I disagree. AI does not change this or devalue IQ. As I argued last week, AI will only amplify differences of human capital. Smarter people will be able to use AI more effectively to increase their already big advantage. In this way, AI is like a force multiplier. | Grey Enlightenment
The big story is the Trump administration’s reversal and denial of the Epstein list. Last night, Trump put out an incoherent rant telling people to ignore Epstein, generating confusion and anger among some of his online “supporters”, which I add in quotes because I also believe some of this controversy is part of a demoralization campaign to split his voters and discourage turnout, similar to when Trump attacked Iran. As I correctly predicted, the Iran attacks were a success, and quick...| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this Reddit post going massively viral, ““Fast metabolism” is a lie, stop making yourself feel bad.” | Grey Enlightenment
I saw this viral post by Dwarkesh Patel, “Why I don’t think AGI is right around the corner.” This is a reasonable take on AI, in contrast to the hype that is typical of the topic. There is a middle ground of people, such as myself and Freddie deBoer, who believe AI will lead to improvements in some respects of life, but will not liberate people from work or anything grandiose like that. Nor will AI bring about the end of humanity either.| Grey Enlightenment
Elon’s political party “America party” is official:| Grey Enlightenment
The ‘some guy’ phenomenon is my observation that the best people in the world at a given task or skill are unknown or random people. Instead of only famous people or credentialed experts, breakthroughs are being made by nobodies.| Grey Enlightenment
As I discuss in the July 2022 post “Fixing the Expertise Misallocation Problem“, having a large social media following and a lot of media coverage or clout is a poor predictor of “useful, actionable advice” or accuracy. It’s as if those who have the most followers, visibility, or status who are the least effective at their jobs, or give the worst advice, or recommend the worst investments. There is a problem in which society systematically promotes people who are the least competen...| Grey Enlightenment
From Richard Hanania, Government Science and the Prestige Economy.| Grey Enlightenment
Here are my thoughts about the Iran situation| Grey Enlightenment
It’s another morning of the familiar sight of bombed-out buildings and smoke. My prediction is there will be no productive negotiations between Iran, Israel, and the US. The way these conflicts have typically resolved is Iran spontaneously relenting, typically for 9-12 months, until resuming. Iran initially attacked Israel in April 2024, paused until August, and resumed in June 2025. (I’m guessing according to Iran’s LinkedIn, “nuclear scientists wanted” or “generals wanted” pos...| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this post by Jeremiah Johnson, “Persistence Beats Talent: And how to think about achieving success.”| Grey Enlightenment
Polymarket as of 6/17/2025 is giving a 58% chance of “US military action against Iran before July,” where this is defined as:| Grey Enlightenment
A recurring complaint I have seen by Richard Hanania and others on the center/middle-right is that the tech-right, who are otherwise intelligent, come off as dull, uniformed or intellectually-incurious about politics: | Grey Enlightenment
The news cycle is moving so fast. Just 2 days ago, the big story was riots and the plane crash. Now it’s Israel’s airstrikes on Iran. This is being framed as Israel thwarting Trump’s attempts at peace talks or even as the prelude to world war. | Grey Enlightenment
It looks like I was right again on multiple counts. First, I predicted that stocks would quickly recover from tariff-related losses and to buy the dips. Indeed, the Nasdaq has recovered all its losses and is within striking distance of a new high: | Grey Enlightenment
I looks like I was right again. A few days ago, I wrote that Elon had ulterior motives and was only feigning concern over the national debt and spending in regard to his opposition to Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’. I said:| Grey Enlightenment
Last week I wrote:| Grey Enlightenment
Item 1#: The ‘TACO Trade’ is now a meme: ‘Trump always chickens out’ trade is the talk of Wall Street.| Grey Enlightenment
I have been thinking about why writing has become harder in recent years. I blame what I call the ‘Substack effect’. In short–the sudden, huge success of the Substack blogging platform has raised the bar for online, short-form non-fiction writing. The popularity of Substack has both raised the quality of online writing in the aggregate, and increased readers’ expectations of other’s writing. Consequently, this means more work in the writing process and stiffer competition.| Grey Enlightenment
The news cycle has been so erratic since Trump’s inauguration. I have tended to avoid topical matters, as I don’t want to spend hours writing posts about tariffs or about the Middle East or China, only for my efforts to be wasted when a new development breaks. | Grey Enlightenment
I saw this going viral from Forbes, The High Price Of Minimum Security Federal Prisoners:| Grey Enlightenment
In an upcoming book co-authored with Nate Soares, Eliezer Yudkowsky doesn’t pull any punches, promising in the title that if anyone builds superhuman AI, that ‘everyone in will die.’ But It’s more likely that rather than everyone dying, this book will go in the dustbin of history. Like most non-fiction books, the putative objective of his book is a call to action and to raise awareness–in his case, about AI risk. However, two things: the public and policy elites are already abundant...| Grey Enlightenment
Inspired by Dynomight’s viral post “Why doesn’t advice work?” I have been thinking about why does advice work so poorly. Or why is there such a stark disconnect between the application of said advice and the desired outcome? Why does advice work for a few and not most? I am going to ignore the edge case where the advice is ignored, in which the outcome is certain failure. So assuming the recipient makes a concerted effort at applying advice, why doesn’t it work?| Grey Enlightenment
Tesla stock keeps going up having surged from as low as $230 a month ago to over $350. | Grey Enlightenment
Consider the following recent stories as indicative of the stark contrast between the risk of small business, compared to the relative safety and high-ROI of careerism–a similar patten observed in 2008, 2020, and now 2025 it pertains to Trump’s tariffs:| Grey Enlightenment
On the hierarchy of intelligence or difficulty/rigor, ‘wordcels’ are ranked too low. And data/AI people are ranked too high. Although STEM and practical-minded stuff (e.g. business) are often positioned higher on the ‘intellectual totem pole’ compared to the ‘soft and subjective humanities’, my evidence shows it’s not so clear cut. With the exception of the highest tiers of math, one is not necessarily easier or less rigorous than the other. They are hard in different ways. | Grey Enlightenment
I saw this tweet going viral| Grey Enlightenment
The Red Queen race or parable describes how, “Species have to ‘run’ or evolve in order to stay in the same place, or else go extinct as the Red Queen said to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass in her explanation of the nature of Looking-Glass Land: Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.'”| Grey Enlightenment
Looks like I was right yet again about the tariffs. On April 9th I wrote:| Grey Enlightenment
From a comment on Scott’s blog post, Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know:| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this post by Moldbug, “Harvard to the Finland Station.”| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this article by Auron MacIntyre defending the tariffs, “‘I, Pencil’ defined free trade — Trump’s tariffs are writing the sequel.” Even though I broadly agree with the author’s politics, this article is pretty bad.| Grey Enlightenment
It has been a little over 2 weeks since ‘liberation day’, when Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs against many countries. I wrote a 3-part series about this (here, here, and here) in which I predicted the tariffs would not be as bad as forecasted. | Grey Enlightenment
From Freddie DeBoar, The Creative Underclass is Still Raging:| Grey Enlightenment
Individual differences of metabolism is like the health-equivalent of IQ–something that is often downplayed, minimized, or denied–but of great importance (unlike IQ, at least it’s not taboo–yet). It is trendy to say that metabolism does not matter in so far as weight loss is concerned, or that fast or slow metabolisms are myth, or such differences of individual metabolism are only very tiny, as seen on Reddit:| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this tweet going viral:| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this going viral, How University Students Use Claude. As to be expected, the main issue is cheating: | Grey Enlightenment
Item #1. Trump announces 90-day pause on tariffs; stocks surge. | Grey Enlightenment
Your IQ isn’t 160. No one’s is: Stratospheric IQs are like leprechauns, unicorns, or mermaids, writing: | Grey Enlightenment
A lot people are amazed or impressed by Richard Hanania’s apparent overnight success, and with minimal promotion by the media. | Grey Enlightenment
I define bullshit as that which does not replicate when put to the ultimate test, that being reality or practice. This can be advice, a scientific claim, whatever…This is especially prevalent in the wellness industry, be it dieting advice or fitness advice. Someone will make a claim that a certain diet or macro is optimal for weight loss, and then when ordinary people try it, the results tend to be much more underwhelming than promised, if not downright useless. This can be ‘eating window...| Grey Enlightenment
I saw this going viral: Harvard says tuition will be free for families making $200K or less.| Grey Enlightenment
Over the past few months, the legendary investor Warren Buffett has been showered with adulation by the media for raising cash in 2024, having seemingly anticipated the downturn of 2025. Note: We’re talking Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway, not Buffett himself, although these are often used interchangeably. From Business Insider, The internet is in awe of Warren Buffett’s perfectly timed cash-out:| Grey Enlightenment