nwiswell

I think this is focused on the wrong side of the distribution. You can view the value of bear cases at ~zero and it doesn't move the math much.

The $2T comes from the implied odds (perhaps 10 or 20%) that we get near term AGI or RSI and AI becomes the entire economy, crossed with the odds that Anthropic gets there first and is the runaway winner (maybe 25%).

The trouble, in my view, is that today's revenue numbers are essentially irrelevant to the outcome that drives ~all of the expected value. The market has been pretending otherwise, but fundamentally we're looking at a globally top-10 public company that boils down to a binary call option, and the probability underlying that option is inscrutable. That's never happened before, and an inability to divine a fair valuation properly demands extreme volatility, especially in reaction to capabilities progress.

Finally (total speculation): I think Anthropic knows this. I think they're sitting on something with Fable 5.5 and the surprise outperformance of Opus 5.5 is a tell. They intend to release it just before the IPO and make some big claims underwritten by its performance.

That's not incompatible with many people being unproductive. If you blanket terminate, some of them will have been contributing

Here's my thinking:

Cloud:

- You cannot directly execute a remotely-hosted program.

- You cannot run inference on an API-served model.

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Closed-source:

- You can execute a program with the binary. You cannot generate a new binary, but you could try to reverse-engineer it or (painfully) modify its execution.

- You can run inference on a model with the weights. You cannot re-produce a new set of weights from scratch, but you can fine-tune.

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Truly open:

- You can freely modify the source and produce new binaries.

- You can use the original training data and model architecture to independently re-produce the weights (assuming you've got the compute). You can modify the model architecture to get the weights that would've resulted from training the model that way.

---

To me these are pretty clear parallels... I don't think the weights provided in a vacuum are in the spirit of open source, historically speaking.

The policy argument is totally separate, of course, and I fully understand why none of the frontier labs are truly open.

You can make parallel arguments for binary executables.

I believe this is due to a surge in imports in response to looming tariffs - supply chains are trying to stockpile before they hit. I am skeptical that this stockpiling is significantly displacing real investment.

The way that the figures are calculated views imports as a negative factor to GDP (because NET exports is an input to the model). Please correct me if I am wrong.

In any event, view the headline with suspicion.

> Anyone who can pay this, can run private tests and compare scores.

Yes, by uploading the tests to a server controlled by OpenAI/Anthropic/etc

Companies with actual profits can, and do, simply buy back their own stock. Inflating market expectation of future cashflows is not the only way to realize asset appreciation.

> i'm the one who set the password

You, personally, set the password to a public internet-facing database to 'abc123'?

And if you really did, how much do you estimate that increased your 'velocity'?

> the comment I was replying to only mentioned as a benefit that Mars could be a second home

The first and second sentences of that comment literally say

> A Mars mission would benefit humanity, but less directly. The past lunar missions and space program benefited humanity in many ways.

And then it goes on to acknowledge the "second home" element, but only as a small consideration.

No, he clearly said that a "second home for humanity" is of dubious (but potentially nonzero) value.

Rather, the main benefit would lie in the technological advances made in order to enable such a Mars mission in the first place (similar to advances during Apollo).

If you come into contact with a harvester, it should be clear that it's a harvester, correct.

If you come into contact with a dough mixer, it should be clear that it's a dough mixer.

But if you come into a contact with a book, I imagine you might have trouble recognizing it.

No, in other words, states and local governments are also bound by the Constitution in many of the the same ways that the federal government is.

The major difference is the Tenth Amendment, which sets the states apart by specifying that any powers not "delegated to" the federal government are reserved exclusively for the states. (In practice courts have found many "implied powers" that are not explicitly enumerated).

Federal laws are distinct from the Constitution.