The Curious Mind: Bull Market in Humanities, How To Get Rich, Finding Your Mission, Paul Singer & Tangen, Trump's Plan, Gen Z and Progress, Palmer Luckey & Coaute on Defence, Bio Design Revolution....
February 27, 2025
I am sharing this weekly email with you because I count you in the group of people I learn from and enjoy being around.
If you missed last week’s discussion: Sequoia on AI, Why AI Might Suck, Changing Nature of Defense, What Will Be Obvious in 2035, Longevity Tech, Charts You Missed, Fiction Of The Month, Something Beautiful..
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Quotes I Am Thinking About:
"People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom."
- Naval Ravikant
“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.”
- Naguib Mahfouz
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”
- Frederick Douglass
A. A Few Things Worth Checking Out:
1. 13D / WILTW had a great article titled: The humanities mount a comeback in a world dominated by STEM. A bull market in the humanities accelerates.
The 3 BIG IDEAS:
Changing Education: The past fifteen years have seen a dramatic shift in higher education, with humanities majors plummeting after the 2008 financial crisis while STEM degrees rose to historic highs of 40% of all bachelor's degrees. But this trend is now showing signs of reversal, with several major universities reporting substantial increases in humanities enrollment - Berkeley saw a 121% jump in arts and humanities declarations, while the University of Washington experienced a 227% increase over five years.
The Impact of AI: This reversal appears driven by AI's dual impact on the job market. While AI is reducing demand for traditional software engineering and technical roles, it's simultaneously increasing the need for workers with strong communication skills, ethical judgment, and interdisciplinary thinking abilities. This shift is already visible in the job market, where elite MBA graduates are struggling to find positions and tech companies are scaling back hiring, while employers increasingly value the adaptability and communication skills typically developed in humanities programs.
Shift from Left Brain to Right Brain: These changes reflect a deeper transformation in how we value different types of knowledge, described by Dr. Iain McGilchrist as a shift from left-brain (technical, specialized) to right-brain (intuitive, integrative) thinking. As AI takes over more technical and analytical tasks, the most valuable human skills are becoming those that help us understand and guide technology's impact on society - precisely the types of skills developed through humanistic education. This suggests we're entering an era where, as Henry Kissinger argues, success will depend on combining technical capability with philosophical vision, much like during the Enlightenment.
2. This is timeless wisdom and one I go back to annually from Naval Ravikant: How to Get Rich (without getting lucky):
3. This was a great piece by Frederik and worth reading twice, titled: The momentum of mission.
Have you ever envied those people who seem to move through life with unwavering purpose?
This powerful piece on finding your life's mission offers a refreshing counterpoint to conventional wisdom. Rather than adding another productivity hack to your arsenal, it invites you to consider that true purpose isn't something you achieve—it's something you uncover by learning to listen.
What makes this piece extraordinary is its honesty. Frederik vulnerably shares his journey from exhausting self-pressure to liberating surrender, revealing a truth many of us suspect but rarely hear articulated: our mission often isn't what we think it should be, but what already flows naturally through us.
The 3 BIG IDEAS:
Stop Pushing, Start Being Pulled: The most profound shift happens when we abandon the exhausting effort of "pushing" toward chosen goals and instead allow ourselves to be "pulled" by what naturally energizes us. Your true mission creates a distinctive feeling—work transforms from grinding effort into flowing contribution. You'll find yourself with more energy after working than before you began.
Your Stream Is Hiding in Plain Sight: Your mission isn't waiting to be discovered in another self-help book or expert's advice—it's already revealing itself through patterns in your life. He provides practical ways to notice these signals: create space through stillness practices, reduce digital consumption, engage in deeper conversations, and pay attention to where life keeps directing you. When you're on the right track, synchronicities multiply, criticism loses its sting, and you feel almost compelled to share what you're doing despite any fear of judgment.
Trust Your "Healthy Delusion": The most intriguing concept is the notion of a "healthy delusion"—a vision that simultaneously feels too ambitious or unconventional to share, yet deeply meaningful to you. This mission might appear irrational to others, but carries an unmistakable energy that feels like "an entity from another dimension trying to manifest" through you. Embracing this requires surrendering control and accepting that you're not choosing the mission; it's choosing you.
Your mission is likely right in front of you, waiting not to be discovered, but to be accepted.
4. Nicolai Tangen sat down with Paul Singer, legendary investor and founder of Elliott Investment Management, one of the world's most influential activist investors.
Singer shared insights from his remarkable career spanning several decades, discussing how activist investing works, why companies need external pressure for change, and his philosophy of never losing money. He opens up about major investment cases, while offering sharp observations on current markets, which he sees as "just about as risky as I've ever seen."
The 80-year-old Singer also shares his views on crypto, AI valuations, and his advice to young people. The conversation offers a rare glimpse into the mind of one of investing's most successful and determined practitioners.
The 4 BIG IDEAS:
Never Lose Money Philosophy: Singer's investment approach is built on a foundation of avoiding significant losses, shaped by a devastating personal investment loss early in his career where he lost 88% on margin trades. He observed that investors facing significant losses often make poor decisions due to impaired judgment. By preserving capital during downturns, Elliott can capitalize on rare opportunities when assets become extraordinarily cheap, creating what Singer calls a "ratchet effect" - make money, keep it, and make more without measuring against benchmarks.
Persistence and Results: When engaging with companies, Singer claims a success rate of about 70% in implementing meaningful changes that add value. His persistence is demonstrated by a 15-year legal battle with Argentina over sovereign debt, which he pursued not out of patience but determination after the country refused to negotiate fairly. Despite sometimes being portrayed as an "attacker" by media, Singer views his role as holding companies accountable to shareholders in an era when fewer investors act like true owners.
Market Risk Assessment: Singer considers current markets among the riskiest he's ever seen, with excessive leverage building throughout the system. He criticizes negative interest rate policies in Europe and Japan, along with the Federal Reserve's zero-rate policy that lasted nearly a decade. He's particularly concerned about government spending deficits exceeding 6% of GDP during non-recessionary periods. Singer also believes AI valuations have gone "way over their skis" relative to their practical value, reflecting broader market complacency.
Education for Future Investors: For young people interested in finance, Singer strongly advocates for a broad, classical liberal education rather than specialized business courses. He values knowledge in history, political science, philosophy, and religion, believing that technical business skills can be learned later. This breadth of knowledge better equips future investors to understand complex world events and market dynamics. Singer attributes some of his own success to thinking like a lawyer and having this broader perspective, which helps in navigating the increasingly complex investment landscape.
5. If you feel like the world order is being rearranged, you’re right. It is, and quickly.
Renowned forecaster George Friedman, founder of Geopolitical Futures (former CEO of Stratfor) spoke to John Mauldin about important signals.
This is a useful listen because this isn’t what you here on the news and in the mainstream.
The 5 BIG IDEAS:
Presidential Crisis Leadership: During major crises, American presidents like Jackson, Roosevelt, and Trump break established rules. Trump is following this historical pattern by disrupting both domestic and international systems that have become unsustainable, acting quickly before opposition can organize.
Russia's Military Failure: Russia's war in Ukraine has exposed its weakness, not strength. After three years, Russia gained little territory while suffering heavy losses. This failure damaged Putin's position at home and destroyed Russia's superpower image, forcing both sides toward negotiation.
New Global Power Structure: Choosing Saudi Arabia for negotiations signals a major shift in global alliances. Trump is creating a new world order centered on the US, Russia, and Saudi Arabia as major powers, while sidelining Europe and isolating China. This addresses both Ukraine and Middle East conflicts simultaneously.
Europe's Fragmentation: The Ukraine war revealed NATO's ineffectiveness and Europe's disunity. European countries responded individually rather than collectively, with NATO providing only limited support. This marks a return to pre-1945 dynamics where nations pursue separate interests instead of collective security.
China's Vulnerability: China is weaker than it appears. Its economy faces serious problems, forcing reforms that risk Communist Party control. Its military capabilities have clear limitations despite aggressive rhetoric. As Russia and the US potentially reach new understandings, China fears isolation, driving its attempts to improve relations with rivals.
My friend Erik Renander at YWR thought about geopolitical implications of the New World Order in this piece titled: The New Empire.
6. Generations are tricky to generalize as individual experiences are very different, especially in a country as big as the US. Still, broad patterns can offer insights into how technology and economic shifts shape generational identity and opportunity.
Kyla Scanlon had a great piece titled: Gen Z and the End of Predictable Progress.
The 5 BIG IDEAS:
Gen Z faces unprecedented dual challenges: AI's radical transformation of work alongside crumbling institutional structures. Unlike previous generations who worried about finding good jobs, today's young people question whether traditional careers will exist at all in five years, forcing them to reimagine how value is created and captured in society while forming identities amid constant disruption.
Digital immersion has created three distinct Gen Z cohorts with fundamentally different worldviews. The eldest remember pre-smartphone life, the middle group watched institutions falter during Covid while digital platforms sustained society, and the youngest have only known algorithmically-mediated reality. These divergent experiences shape everything from career choices to political alignment, creating essentially different generations within a single demographic label.
Economic uncertainty has driven Gen Z toward extreme career strategies that reflect a barbell approach. "Safety seekers" pursue trades and stable employment while avoiding crushing student debt, while "digital gamblers" chase creator economy windfalls and tech moonshots where a single viral moment can outperform years of traditional work. Both strategies represent rational responses to a world where "playing it safe" may actually carry the greatest risk.
Gen Z's political behavior stems from economic anxiety rather than ideological conviction. The significant drop in Democratic support among 18-24 year olds reflects pragmatic concerns about affordability and opportunity, not conservative values adoption. Having matured during institutional failures and political gridlock while consuming information through algorithmic feeds, this generation approaches politics as another system to hack rather than an identity to embrace.
The economic landscape Gen Z inherits features mounting government debt, institutional dismantling, and America's retreat from global leadership. When viral content creates more wealth than professional advancement, when housing requires twice as many years to afford as previous generations needed, and when algorithmic opportunity replaces institutional stability, young people aren't just navigating a different economy—they're being forced to redefine success itself in systems designed for a reality that no longer exists.
B. The Science and Technology Section:
1. Palmer Luckey is quite possibly the brightest and most ambitious American mind since Elon Musk first sprang into the scene.
The difference is that he is only 32. His business, Anduril, just hit a $28 billion dollar valuation in its latest private round. He thinks it’s the most important company in America and if you watch this 4 hour marathon conversation on the Shawn Ryan show, you’ll understand why and a whole lot more.
The 4 BIG IDEAS:
Anduril's "Lattice" AI represents a fundamental shift in warfare technology—a unified brain capable of controlling everything from fighter jets to surveillance systems. Beyond simply automating individual platforms, Lattice creates a networked battlefield consciousness where sensors and weapons share information in real-time, operate autonomously in communications-denied environments, and incorporate the tactical expertise of elite operators. This system enables smaller forces to wield outsized combat power through distributed, AI-enhanced capabilities.
America faces an existential manufacturing crisis against China, which possesses 350 times more shipbuilding capacity and requires even civilian vessels to meet military standards. In simulated Taiwan invasion scenarios, the US exhausts its missile stockpiles within eight days—a vulnerability China could exploit given America's inability to rapidly produce replacements. Luckey advocates strategic reshoring, tariffs despite his libertarian leanings, and specialized immigration pathways to attract manufacturing talent from adversary nations.
The "Eagle Eye" system (which Anduril is taking over from Microsoft) transforms soldiers into augmented warriors through seamlessly integrated ballistic helmets with AI-powered vision enhancement. Unlike clunky previous attempts, this system provides thermal vision, threat detection, and networked battlefield awareness that allows operators to see through obstacles, mark targets without lasers, and share information instantly across all connected systems. This represents a leap in capability comparable to Luckey's original VR breakthrough with Oculus.
America's defense innovation ecosystem fails when breakthrough technologies only reach the military through billionaires like Luckey. He laments that his 19-year-old self could never have sold revolutionary technology to the Pentagon despite its potential, highlighting how bureaucratic risk-aversion paradoxically creates greater national security risks. The recent shift of tech talent from consumer apps to defense presents an opportunity to rebuild America's technological advantage, but requires procurement reforms that enable unknown innovators to contribute directly to national security.
On a related note, Coatue published a great deck titled: America’s Industrial Reboot: A Massive Tech Opportunity.
In their opinion, the defense sector was a driving force behind technological breakthroughs – from the internet to GPS but in recent decades, its role as a primary engine of innovation has diminished. They believe the U.S. industrial base is at a pivotal moment. Decades of consolidation, outdated practices, and limited competition have left it ill-prepared to face the technological and geopolitical challenges of the 21st century.
But within this challenge they believe there lies immense opportunity. A wave of innovation is emerging, driven by new government initiatives, groundbreaking technologies, and an urgent call for modernization.
2. The Biological Design Revolution.
For more than a quarter-century, synthetic biologists have dreamt of designing new biological systems: gene circuits that behave like electrical ones, for example, or entirely original life forms. But nature rarely cooperates, and a slew of prior attempts suggest that even the brightest scientific minds cannot design biology as exquisitely as evolution.
This week, Arc Institute (a research nonprofit in Palo Alto, California) and NVIDIA launched a broader AI model for biology, called Evo 2, that can do much the same for entire genomes. It is one of “the largest-scale fully open language model[s] to date.” The release includes “open-source training code, inference code, model parameters, and the OpenGenome2 training data.”
What’s the BIG DEAL:
Evo 2 marks a fundamental shift in how we approach biology. Traditional bioengineering involves painstaking modification of existing systems, but Evo 2 can interpret genetic sequences across bacteria, plants, and humans with remarkable fluency. Trained on 9.3 trillion nucleotides from 128,000 organisms, this 40-billion-parameter model operates at an evolutionary scale that human designers simply cannot match, potentially transforming how we create biological tools and therapies.
Unlike previous AI models that analyze only fragments of DNA, Evo 2's million-nucleotide context window captures the three-dimensional reality of genomes. This breakthrough allows it to understand how genes separated by vast distances physically interact within the cell nucleus—crucial relationships that drive development, disease, and cellular identity. This capability particularly matters for complex organisms where gene expression depends on distant regulatory elements and chromosomal architecture.
This system delivers practical medical and scientific applications through its dual predictive-generative capabilities. It can instantly evaluate whether genetic mutations might cause diseases like breast cancer, potentially helping clinicians interpret variants of unknown significance. Simultaneously, Evo 2 can design entirely new genomes that encode functional proteins and control elements, even creating DNA sequences programmed to be active only in specific cell types—a critical advancement for targeted gene therapies.
What distinguishes Evo 2 from mere pattern-matching algorithms is its emergent biological understanding. The model has independently discovered fundamental concepts of molecular biology—identifying exon-intron boundaries, protein structures, and viral signatures without explicit training on these features. This suggests a deeper comprehension of biological principles rather than simple memorization, demonstrated when it accurately mapped genetic architecture in species absent from its training data.
Evo 2 represents for bioengineering what AlphaFold achieved for protein science: a paradigm shift toward more predictable, rational design. While initially disruptive to established fields, this technology promises to liberate scientists from laborious screening of thousands of genetic variants. Instead, researchers can focus on deeper questions and more ambitious designs, potentially accelerating breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology with unprecedented precision and efficiency.
3. The team at ClockTower Group had a good piece titled: China Macro Watch, a conversation with Mr. X.
The 5 BIG IDEAS:
DeepSeek represents a paradigm shift in AI development, achieving comparable results to US competitors while using only 10,000 A100s and several thousand H800s at a cost of $400 million—roughly 10% of what US companies have spent. Their success stems from innovative approaches like the "Mixture of Experts" architecture and revisions to Google's scaling law formula, demonstrating that resource constraints can drive breakthrough thinking.
By open-sourcing its technology, DeepSeek has fundamentally altered global AI geopolitics. This approach has neutralized US attempts to create tiered access to AI technology, empowering countries worldwide to develop sovereign AI capabilities without choosing sides in US-China competition. This democratization may eventually force US companies to open-source their own technologies to remain competitive globally.
Chinese tech stocks have rallied 40% since mid-January 2025, defying domestic deflation and insufficient stimulus. This surge reflects a fundamental revaluation as these companies transition from value plays to growth stocks leading China's AI revolution. Alibaba's recent financial results signal the beginning of a major tech capital expenditure cycle that could sustain this momentum despite macroeconomic headwinds.
US-China economic decoupling is accelerating. Mr. X forecasts aggressive US tariffs that could halve Chinese exports and believes a complete ban on US investments in China is "only a matter of time." The "America First Investment Policy" likely foreshadows more comprehensive restrictions on capital flows to China, making financial decoupling between the two economies virtually inevitable.
The success of DeepSeek reveals foundational AI models as "the fastest depreciating asset in human history." This realization could dramatically shift investment patterns as US tech companies reconsider their massive AI capital expenditures. The implications extend beyond tech to semiconductor stocks and even US power utilities that have invested heavily in infrastructure for AI data centers, creating potential shorting opportunities by next year.
Believe it or not, that “♡ Like” button is a big deal – it serves as a proxy to new visitors of this publication’s value. If you got value out of reading, please let others know!
Really good stuff this issue in every section. Much appreciate the time and effort you put into it!
Yes, this was a great issue! Thank you.