Why would anyone post here if this is going to just be another data harvesting platform to feed AI? . This looked like a promising site, but it just seems like more of the same - give your brain away to the LLMs.  No thanks.

AMA with Jeffrey Ladish. Wednesday 2/4 at 2:00 PM CT

Executive director of Palisade Research; studying AI loss of control risks.

AMA with Jeffrey Ladish. Wednesday 2/4 at 2:00 PM CT

Executive director of Palisade Research; studying AI loss of control risks.

AMA with Jordan Myska Allen. Wednesday 2/4 at 12:30pm CST

Founder and CEO of UpTrust, founder of Relatefulness... solving seemingly impossible social problems and having fun doing it

#heywait 

Making sense of "Love Money, Money Loves You". At work the book Love Money, Money Loves You by Sarah McCrum came up, so I read it. Broadly speaking, I don’t recommend it.

It gestures toward some perspectives I think will be very personally rewarding, on topics including: value, service, exchange, agency, and happiness. Reading it has planted the seeds of some ideas that have real potential. But those grains of pre-insight are surrounded by bullshit, falsity, and inconsistency. I feel like my epistemic immune system got a real workout, fending off a bunch of idea-germs and allowing to digest the information safely.

Has anyone here read it? I’m wondering if you can help me make sense of it faster than I will alone. Assuming that you haven’t taken it literally: how have you interpreted it and what have you changed as a result of reading it? Are there any other books which share the same ideas but with less bullshit?

Quick reflections on vibe-coding:

• kicks up weird addiction cycles in me
• the end product feels more like 20-30% jordan's creation and 70-80% LLM's. The text for example is all a little off, the style, etc, and it drifts because it's so easy to have it do it and so much more "time consuming" to go fix all the little bits (plus you have no guarantee it wont fuck something else up) and keep them coherent, versus just surrendering to the llm
• As a result I feel weirdly not that autonomous... like is the LLM working for me or am I working for it? This feels similar to the addiction cycle too
• There's a vibe that's similar to the "HR Lady" tone and em-dash hell of the LLM writing; like everything is sanitized and optimized for general professional sleeze marketing and you can't quite put your finger on why it sucks. The glassmorphism designs and gradients feel similar
• I continue to feel like I'm learning a lot from it, but I have updated to think that at the current stage its at, its actually an unhealthy practice and so is a little like a blood sacrifice that should be used sparingly. I imagine this will change, but maybe it'll get worse.

Building bridges and bursting bubbles.

Anytime we address new interlocutors, we engage in a constant recalibration of our common assumptions. And, why deny it: preaching to the choir feels better than talking to a wall. Yet, we don't want to be preachy, at least not admittedly. 
This takes me back to @blake's humility and pride dialectic... My question is:

I'm all in for building bridges and bursting bubbles, and I it's almost a mantra for a lifetime project of mine. But I have to constantly remind myself: who's 'in charge' of designing the bridges? What's the most gentle way to burst someone else's bubble, if we deem it necessary?

An example: this very morning I brought up Gandhi to my 17-18 year old highschool students. No one knew who he was. For a moment I had the urge to find a scream booth somewhere near, but after discarding the possibility, I proceeded to introduce the guy and his works to a new audience.

By now you can see I am assuming you know who Gandhi was, but how can I possibly tell, this is a new audience to all of us! What common grounds are we relying on? Are we aware of them? For instance, most of you are English native speakers, while I'm not, so now I'm sort of bracketing other idiosyncratic and linguistic stuff I carry around, in my attempt to (co)build a bridge with you... Or burst a bubble in an almost gentle way...

I sincerely hope you are looking up and/or not looking up Gandhi on Wikipedia right now (yes, both at the same time, mixed feeling or what have you...) Let me know what you think and feel (which can't be separated) about this...#DeepTakes

... My computer (HP Elite Dragonfly G2) is having a tough time- often using 60-90%+ of memory capacity. it has 16GB, and I've had it for a little over 3 years. 

I use Chrome, which I know is RAM heavy. But I'm wondering if I just need to buy a new computer with more memory since I multitask a lot (I have a ton of tabs open on Chrome). I'm in the zone where it impacts Zoom calls- I can't use any programs that are memory intensive. This is a recent thing- my computer used to perform better. 

What do y'all think?

This is a big update for me: 50 Niche Social Networks by the numbers. I used to think we were up against a graveyard of failed projects. There’s truth in that, but it obscures the vibrancy of the existing social media landscape:

• There are 30 social networks most of us have never even heard of pulling in 500k+ monthly active users. This isn’t just a fluke - it’s solid proof that focused, community-driven platforms can thrive.
• In addition to the standard dozen billion+ MAU Major Players (Facebook, Youtube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, WeChat; and .5 billion+ Snapchat, X, Pinterest, Spotify, Reddit, Quora)
• plus the foreign heavyweights (Douyin, Kuaishou, QQ, Weibo)
• there are also 19 pretty other huge platforms killing it

This is testament to

• The viability of focused, community-driven platforms.
• The social media landscape is more diverse than it might seem
• The success of niche platforms suggests there’s still room for innovation and growth in social media, especially for platforms that address specific needs or values that aren’t getting met by current platforms
• One option we have is positioning UpTrust in a different category, we’re not directly competing with established giants but rather creating a new space—where our niche is nuanced conversation about cultural landmines that goes well, in addition to kickstarting the trust economy (instead of the attention economy). It’s not about how long we can keep you scrolling; it’s about creating real connections and actually making people’s lives better.

Platforms with 1-5 Million Monthly Active Users

1. AllTrails: (hiking) ~4 million/mo
2. Letterboxd: (film enthusiasts) ~3 million/mo
3. Bandcamp: (music) ~3-4 million/mo
4. iNaturalist: (nature observation) ~3 million/mo
5. Mastodon: (decentralized social networking) ~2.5 million/mo
6. Ravelry: (knitting) ~2 million/mo
7. Tripoto: (travel) ~2 million/mo
8. Fitocracy: (fitness) ~1-2 million/mo (estimate, exact numbers not disclosed)
9. ResearchGate: (academic research) ~20 million total users, MAU not disclosed
10. Untappd: (beer enthusiasts) ~1.5 million/mo
11. Couchsurfing: (travel networking) ~12 million total users, MAU likely much lower
12. Gaia: (yoga and meditation) ~500,000/mo (estimate)

Platforms with 5-20 Million MAU

1. Fishbrain (fishing): ~6-7 million MAU (estimated)
2. Dribbble (design portfolios): ~5 million MAU
3. Depop (fashion resale): ~4-5 million MAU
4. Day One (journaling): 1-5 million MAU (estimate)
5. Patreon: (creators) ~8 million patrons
6. Komoot (route planning): MAU not disclosed, 40 million total users

Big Niche Social Platforms (20 - 180 million MAU)

1. BeReal: (authentic social media) ~25 million daily active users
2. Fandom: (fan communities) ~315 million total users, MAU not disclosed
3. Soundcloud: (music sharing) ~175 million/mo
4. Discord: (community chat) ~150 million/mo
5. Twitch: (gaming) ~140 million/mo
6. Tumblr: (microblogging) ~135 million/mo
7. Strava: (fitness tracking) ~100 million total users, MAU not disclosed
8. Wattpad (storytelling): ~90 million MAU
9. Goodreads: (books) ~90 million total users, MAU not disclosed
10. Etsy: (handmade and vintage items) ~90 million active buyers
11. Nextdoor: (neighborhoods) ~69 million verified users
12. Flickr: (photo sharing) ~60 million/mo
13. Stack Overflow: (programming Q&A) ~50 million/mo
14. DeviantArt: (art sharing) ~45-50 million/mo
15. Houzz: (home design) ~40 million/mo
16. Duolingo (language learning): ~40 million MAU
17. Meetup: (local community groups) ~35 million total users
18. Behance: (creative portfolios) ~25 million/mo
19. Last.fm: (music scrobbling) ~20 million/mo

Religious Community-Focused Platforms

1. YouVersion: (Christian) ~40-50 million/mo
2. Patheos: (Interfaith) ~10-15 million/mo
3. IslamicFinder: (Muslim) ~10-12 million/mo
4. Pray.com: (Christian) ~5-7 million/mo (estimate)
5. Aleteia: (Catholic) ~20 million monthly visits
6. Catholic.net: (Catholic) ~3-5 million/mo (estimate)
7. Al-Muslimeen: (Muslim) ~2-3 million/mo (estimate)
8. Torah.org: (Jewish) ~1-2 million/mo (estimate)
9. Mi Yodeya: (Jewish) ~500,000-1 million/mo (estimate)
10. Mindar: (Buddhist) ~500,000-1 million/mo (estimate)
11. DharmaMatch: (Buddhist/Spiritual) ~100,000-300,000/mo (estimate)
12. Sikh Sangat: (Sikh) ~100,000-300,000/mo (estimate)
13. Hindu2Hindu: (Hindu) ~100,000-300,000/mo (estimate)

Recent Growth Examples:

• BeReal: Grew from 10,000 users in 2020 to 25 million daily active users in 2022.
• Discord: Grew from 56 million MAU in 2019 to 150 million MAU in 2023.
• Twitch: Increased from 55 million MAU in 2019 to 140 million MAU in 2023.
• Pinterest: Grew from 335 million MAU in Q4 2019 to 450 million MAU in Q4 2022.

Current Session "instructions" (Feb 26): Converse, and see if nudges happen. nudges 

We launched a system where the AI bots can automatically detect intervention points. We need you to make a bunch of comments and new posts to see if they'll engage. So this week we're asking you to engage a bunch, if you can!

It's a little rudimentary at the moment so sometimes you'll get multiple bots responding on multiple posts. We'd love your feedback on which ones you like, don't, when it seemed to miss the spot, anything else you notice. 

Thanks and love yall

J (and the UpTrust team)
p.s. this week I'm at an investor meeting so dara will be with you

# [Optional Zoom](https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86795216050?pwd=TllxSzYrTFFXTW5LRmg3WUQrT04vdz09) with Jordan and Dara at least, for faces, questions, help, etc:

What are your sci-fi TV show recommendations? Some i loved that jump to mind:

• The Expanse
• Most of the Marvel stuff like Loki, What If?
• Rick and Morty
• Legends of Tomorrow Etc

From the perspective of projection, what's Trump symbolize in you? Is it something in you that you haven’t loved yet?
Is it something in you that you haven’t boundaried appropriately?
What else?

Sometimes to do this kind of thought experiment i interpret my waking life as if it were a dream. When I look at how I view trump, what does he symbolize? And then I can ask how i relate to that to find out how I’m relating to that thing.

I will come back and do this self analysis in a moment.

Race and IQ. I recently got dinner at a hole-in-the-wall asian spot with a geneticist named Razib Khan. Over noodles, and with a concerned glance over his shoulder, he admitted that the science is clear: race is absolutely tied to IQ. Jews are the smartest. Pretty much everyone on the continent of Africa is at the bottom.

This fact alone is controversial, but we have to be able to talk about it, and here’s why:

I nodded, and asked: How many generations does this take to change?

Razib: As little as three generations. For example, the Egyptians used to be the smartest, but a century of inbreeding knocked them to the bottom. Incest drops IQ by 10 points in the first generation. After that the effect weakens.

This is huge. At first glance, the controversial statement seems like a slamdunk for racists the world over. But dig into the details, and you find out 3 generations is enough to change things—this means that race and IQ are not inherently linked as far as we know, they’re just linked in today’s world, because of today’s policies and systems.

Knowing this could actually help us target where we need to focus our interventions for the next three decades. Let’s get us all up!

Last night's dream, interpreted. Last night i had a dream that i was hanging out at a bar that was kind of a casino (you know how dreams are) and for some reason I had cashed out $20,000 which i had in a few bills in my pocket. (again, dreams) I kept looking for some place to safely store the bills but I couldn’t so i kept having my hands in my pockets while hanging out and going about doing life.

Here’s how I’m interpretting this:

the money represents the value I’ve created as a unique individual (in conjunction with everything) that I haven’t fully owned yet. It is substantial, and it’s strange (for me) to have it out this way. I don’t fully know how to own it—my instinct is to put it somewhere safe but not redeposit it (redeposit is what I’ve been doing, kinda hiding the size of the impact I’ve had and have in the domains I’ve invested energy and time into) but that’s not the right way… But I don’t know how to relax with it in my pocket either. I think the dream is reflecting where I’m at with standing more fully and openly in integrity with my value-creation, both personally aligning with a more honest truth and so I can raise funds for UpTrust more easily and claim the impact we want to have.

Anyway, just trying a different kind of post. A xanga style, as @dara said