If you agree it is a bubble, you are agreeing it is going to burst. Because that is what defines a bubble.
I have two questions about this, really:
- is he going to be the last guy getting this kind of value out of a couple of research papers and some intimidated CEO's FOMO?
- are we now entering a world where people are effectively hypothetical acquihires?
That is, instead of hiring someone because they have a successful early stage startup that is shaking the market, you hire someone because people are whispering/worried that they could soon have a successful early stage startup?
The latter of these is particularly worrisomely "bubbly" because of something that people don't really recognise about bubbles unless they worked in one. In a bubble, people suspend their disbelief about such claims and they start throwing money around. They hire people without credentials who can talk the talk. And they burn money on impossible ideas.
The bubble itself becomes increasingly intellectually dishonest, increasingly unserious, as it inflates. People who would be written off as fraudsters at any other time are taken seriously as if they are visionaries and ultra-productive people, because everyone's tolerance for risk increases as they become more and more desperate to ride the train. People start urgently taking impossible things at face value, weird ideas get much further advanced much more quickly, and grifters get closer to the target -- the human source of the cash -- faster than due dilligence would ordinarily allow them.
"This guy is so smart he could have a $1bn startup just like that" is an obvious target for con artists and grifters. And they will come.
For clarity I am ABSOLUTELY NOT saying that the subject of this article is such a person. I am perfectly happy to stipulate that he's the real deal.
But he is now the template for a future grift that is essentially guaranteed to happen. Maybe it'll be a team of four or five people who get themselves acquihired because there's a rumour they are going to have billions of dollars of funding for an idea. They will publish papers that in a few months will be ridiculed. And they will disappear with a lot of money.
> The bubble itself becomes increasingly intellectually dishonest, increasingly unserious, as it inflates.
You started to sound like Dario, who likes to accuse others as intellectually dishonest and unserious. Anyway, perhaps the strict wage structure of Anthropic will be its downfall in this crazy bubble?
I am accusing no one individually or particularly. I am observing that the problem is that within a bubble, people collectively become increasingly unserious and less intellectually honest as their appetite for risk increases with their desire to get a slice of the action. Indeed, it gets worse as people begin to think it might not last forever.
The same thing happened in the dotcom era, the same thing happened in the run-up to the subprime mortgage crisis. Every single bubble displays these characteristics.
I have two questions about this, really:
- is he going to be the last guy getting this kind of value out of a couple of research papers and some intimidated CEO's FOMO?
- are we now entering a world where people are effectively hypothetical acquihires?
That is, instead of hiring someone because they have a successful early stage startup that is shaking the market, you hire someone because people are whispering/worried that they could soon have a successful early stage startup?
The latter of these is particularly worrisomely "bubbly" because of something that people don't really recognise about bubbles unless they worked in one. In a bubble, people suspend their disbelief about such claims and they start throwing money around. They hire people without credentials who can talk the talk. And they burn money on impossible ideas.
The bubble itself becomes increasingly intellectually dishonest, increasingly unserious, as it inflates. People who would be written off as fraudsters at any other time are taken seriously as if they are visionaries and ultra-productive people, because everyone's tolerance for risk increases as they become more and more desperate to ride the train. People start urgently taking impossible things at face value, weird ideas get much further advanced much more quickly, and grifters get closer to the target -- the human source of the cash -- faster than due dilligence would ordinarily allow them.
"This guy is so smart he could have a $1bn startup just like that" is an obvious target for con artists and grifters. And they will come.
For clarity I am ABSOLUTELY NOT saying that the subject of this article is such a person. I am perfectly happy to stipulate that he's the real deal.
But he is now the template for a future grift that is essentially guaranteed to happen. Maybe it'll be a team of four or five people who get themselves acquihired because there's a rumour they are going to have billions of dollars of funding for an idea. They will publish papers that in a few months will be ridiculed. And they will disappear with a lot of money.
And that could burst your bubble.