If you’re like me, you’ve been put off from digging deeper into DeFi by the terrible signal-to-noise ratio of anything crypto-related on the interwebs. That’s why I found this DeFi primer (using Maker DAO as a specific example) by ET contributor and banking analyst Marc Rubinstein to be so fantastic.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Recent major media stories that feel to us like they’re part of a larger narrative campaign.
Modeling Common Knowledge by analyzing Missionary statements and their reverberations works. Except when it doesn’t.
What do you get when you give a Raccoon billions of dollars AND invisibility from regulators? Collusion and insider trading.
Most of us are under the impression that a protracted conflict within China will increase national unity. Not this time.
Recent Notes
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 4: Epimemetics
Every Narrative is built on memes that have evolved and adapted to human culture over centuries.
But some environments change the way that those memes are expressed. The effects can be explosive.
The Launch of FiatNews.com
Today we announce the beta launch of FiatNews.com, an Epsilon Theory sub-site devoted to the measurement of opinion content in news.
Our goal? Giving citizens the ability to know when they’re being told how to think.
Fostering Reality in an Unreal World
ET contributor Brent Donnelly captures the spirit and the content of our Epsilon Connect conference better than anything we could have done ourselves. Plus you get the slides from our presentations!
Men of God in the City of Man, Part 3: Memetics
In the same way that genetics governs how physical viruses reproduce within a host, memetics governs how narrative viruses reproduce within a culture.
And the memes which govern our narrative virus are powerful.
Derivative Hoops
A synthetic basketball lasted only one year (2007-2008) in the NBA.
But Synthetic Basketball? Oh, that’s here to stay.
When The Best Conference Speaker Is Your Uber Driver (Epsilon Connect 2023 Notes)
The best speaker at Epsilon Connect 2023 was my Uber driver.
Buckle up, honeys.
The United States of Bed Bath & Beyond
A grown man made a wager. He lost. He made another wager. He lost again. End of story.
– Tony Soprano
This is the story of weak men and rapacious men.
This is the story of Bed Bath & Beyond.
This is the story of America today.
Trading is a lot like Poker
With the passing of Doyle Brunson, it’s a good day to compare poker to trading.
An AI in the City of God
The City of Man always wins.
The Visigoths always sack Rome. The Vandals always sack Hippo. Augustine always dies in the siege. Bad things always happen to good people … at scale.
Here’s how we use generative AI to flip the script.
Dedollarization is Not a Thing
People like to throw around the phrase “gradually, then suddenly” as a witty rejoinder to suggest a dedollarization of the world is a nonlinear process that will unfold any day now. That only sounds smart when Hemingway says it.
There is no structural dollar depreciation or dedollarization story. Global usage of the USD is stable and changes in the value of the USD are cyclical.
Office Hours Recap 03/24/2023
These are the major topics and ideas we discussed during the 03/24/2023 Office Hours as well as some of the biggest takeaways. If you have something you want to add to the conversation, let us know in the comments and join us next time.
Office Hours Recap 03/17/2023
These are the major topics and ideas we discussed during the 03/17/2023 Office Hours as well as some of the biggest takeaways. If you have something you want to add to the conversation, let us know in the comments and join us next time.
Dark Forest: The Brutal Game of Modern Banking
I think that the Big Banks’ collective deposit of $30 billion in uninsured accounts with First Republic is the first step in solving the Dark Forest problem of the American banking system.
Office Hours Recap 03/10/2023
These are the major topics and ideas we discussed during the 03/10/2023 Office Hours as well as some of the biggest takeaways. If you have something you want to add to the conversation, let us know in the comments and join us next time.
Office Hours Recap 03/03/2023
These are the major topics and ideas we discussed during the 03/03/2023 Office Hours as well as some of the biggest takeaways. If you have something you want to add to the conversation, let us know in the comments and join us next time.
AI R Us
The scariest thing about large language model AIs isn’t their fundamental human-ness.
It’s the fundamental AI-ness of human intelligence.
Noseblind
The half-life of just about every major news story is one week.
Barring major new developments, practically nothing captures our attention beyond six.
So how do we stay focused on things that matter for much longer than that?
They Fought the Gyre … and the Gyre Won
He Gets Us gets a lot right about our world today.
But there’s something important He Gets Us didn’t get.
Office Hours Recap 02/10/2023
These are the major topics and ideas we discussed during the 02/10/2023 Office Hours as well as some of the biggest takeaways. If you have something you want to add to the conversation, let us know in the comments and join us next time.
Office Hours Recap 02/03/2023
These are the major topics and ideas we discussed during the 02/03/2023 Office Hours as well as some of the biggest takeaways. If you have something you want to add to the conversation, let us know in the comments and join us next time.