So this guy just takes the time and money (I guess that part doesn’t hurt if you’ve got 15 billion) to write a book and produce an excellent video version for a broader audience, just for … what exactly?
According to his Wikipedia his employees are forced to agree to continuous recordings, the NYT claims he does some sort of (i assume perfectly legal) insider trading and just acts like he’s got the perfect system in place, he defended the CCPs actions on multiple accessions and just in general does not seem like the type of guy to provide anything of value for free.
So can someone educate me on the angle? What’s the goal here?
And why would anyone read this and not get the feeling of being scammed. There is no way this guy is in it for the book sales.
Honestly I’m sometimes questioning my sanity while reading the comments of videos like this. There are people acting like he’s a modern Prometheus, sharing the knowledge of financial whatever. I would really be amazed if my cynicism turns out to be wrong on this one.
> So can someone educate me on the angle? What’s the goal here?
Gain influence, increase his marketing & exposure, creating new opportunities for himself. Good chance he also believes what he is preaching. All these things can be true at the same time.
He gives away a lot of the info in the book for free, so you can consider the book as just a method of marketing his ideas.
One of the original authors also published a follow up with some additional details and analysis that may be of interest (still reading through it myself) [0]
yes I think that'd be a great addition. any publisher can, optionally, introduce a hub for their feed, so people get realtime update of their content, and even a social hub, where other authors reacting to their content can use to notify them (and ease the aggregation of these "reactions"). I suspect that can lead to a situation where there are a few hubs and social hubs that anyone can use for their choosing.
I started reading the book but haven't finished it yet. It's also been a while since I've been surfing. I enjoyed the video and it's a good reminder to both finish reading the book and go surfing.
What were your main takeaways of the book and how has it influenced your startup?
I did YC in W20. It's been almost 4 years since I incorporated the startup, and it has definitely not been easy — certainly not the rocket ship story.
The book discusses how progress can only be achieved through error correction and criticism. There are some companies where you can correct errors very quickly and iterate rapidly. However, we are building a cancer diagnostic test, and rapid iteration isn't so straightforward in our context.
The book helped me step out of my bubble, where I was too close to the problem. It allowed me to see that, in perspective, we are still error-correcting on a meaningful problem, even if the process takes years.
I hope you get back in the water and finish the book! Let me know how it goes and what you enjoy about it.
https://blog.google/technology/ai/dolphingemma/