Gutenberg didn’t invent the printing press to change the world. He wanted to get rich. The Catholic Church was selling “heaven tickets,” and he saw a supply-demand mismatch. History is weirder than you think. #history #renaissance
Most of the internet is pessimistic. Most of the people actually building things aren’t. Packy McCormick explains why spending time with founders makes it hard to be too pessimistic about the future. #tech #future #business
Packy McCormick is one of the most thoughtful writers in tech and investing. In this episode of Infinite Loops, we talk about why writing is still the most powerful way to think clearly, how optimism becomes rational when you spend time with people actually building things, and what happens when…
Shakespeare. Moby-Dick. Cormac McCarthy. The Bible. All of them have mediocre ratings on Goodreads. It's a freeing lesson for creators — if the greatest works ever written get bad reviews, you have nothing to be afraid of.
What if farming didn’t mean endless monocrops, pesticides, and soil depletion? Jean-Marc Decius explains how humanoid robots and AI could transform industrial agriculture into diverse “food forests” — running millions of experiments, rebuilding topsoil, and eliminating the need for pesticides. This is what farming looks like after AI.
When you slip into a monoculture, bad sh*t happens." Jean-Marc Daecius (COS at O'Shaughnessy Ventures) shares the historical story of Chairman Mao and the Great Sparrow Campaign. Discover why trying to eliminate a "pest" without understanding the ecosystem led to a national catastrophe and what we can learn from it…
"I will be your last human Chief of Staff." Jean-Marc Daecius (COS at O'Shaughnessy Ventures) explains why the modern workplace is "nuking" our ability to concentrate and how AI is changing the game. #AI #Business #financ
What happens when you design a company assuming AI should do everything it possibly can? Jean-Marc Daecius, OSV's Chief of Staff, joins Infinite Loops to explain what it means to be “AI first” — and why he believes he may be the company's last human chief of staff. The conversation…
John Wang explains why the Queens Night Market has what he calls “the worst business model ever” — and why it somehow still works. #food #newyorkcity #urbanlife
The Queens Night Market was built on two principles: representation and affordability. John Wang explains why the $6 price cap matters — and who gets forgotten when people say “just make it $10.” #food #newyork #Queens
The Queens Night Market started as a simple question: why doesn’t New York have a night market? Eleven years later, it’s been recognized by the Financial Times as one of the top markets in the world. #queensnightmarket #food #newyork
The Queens Night Market is one of New York City’s most beloved institutions — but it was never supposed to last more than a year. John Wang, founder of the Queens Night Market, joins Infinite Loops to explain how a side project with a “terrible business model” unexpectedly became one…
One of the perks of being a quant? You only need to be right 52% of the time.
Losses hurt more than gains — even when you understand the math. Cliff Asness explains why prospect theory feels so real in practice, and why even the most rational investors struggle emotionally during bad years. #investing #Finance #wallstreet #quant
What happens when models outperform intuition — but you can’t fully explain why? Cliff Asness explains what it means to “surrender to the machines,” why some opacity is unavoidable in modern investing, and how AI changes the way decisions get made. #investing #AI #business
Cliff Asness explains why modern trading apps blur the line between investing and gambling — and how that confusion leads to blowups. #investing #stockmarket #finance
Cliff Asness is one of the most influential quantitative investors of the last 30 years — and one of the most candid. In this conversation, Cliff joins Infinite Loops to talk about why losses hurt more than wins, how bubbles form, why modern investing increasingly resembles gambling, and what the…
The narrative of socialism is beautiful: "We're all going to be nice to each other and help." But it just doesn't work. ~ Tomas Pueyo explains how socialism may win in the short term, but is disastrous in the long term.
"Most people don't realize that the US geography is probably the best in the world, bar none." ~ Tomas Pueyo explains how the U.S. has the best geography (the "hardware") and also the best system of government ("software")
"[Twitter] works very similar to how a neuron works. It's asymmetric: you have one person sending information and a bunch of other people listening, exactly like axons and dendrites. Information flows through Twitter the way it flows through the brain; the most interesting ones get amplified." ~ Tomas Pueyo on…
"I think government just doesn't work. Before, we had to elect leaders to make choices for us because the bandwidth of information was so narrow. You don't need to do that anymore." ~ Tomas Pueyo on the future of governance
Vik Muniz explains how art and representation can transcend space and time, going back to the stone age.
Tomás Pueyo, the French-Spanish engineer and writer behind the successful "Uncharted Territories" Substack, joins me to dismantle the invisible forces that shape our history and future. This conversation covers everything from why humans are horrible at understanding exponential change, the arbitrage opportunities in the podcast market, why the US has…
Most people confuse probability with possibility — and that confusion leads to bad decisions. In this clip, Annie Duke explains why something can happen doesn’t mean it’s likely, and why good decision-making is about increasing your odds over time, not eliminating risk entirely. 📌 From Infinite Loops with Annie Duke.