All of Annapurna's Comments + Replies

Thank you for this post. You very elegantly laid out a scenario that has been swirling in my head, and I think I updated the probabilities of this scenario as more likely after reading your post.

Your post also strengthen my desire to pivot from finance to policy. I need to figure out how to do this. I find it paramount that more people (both in power and in the general populace) understand the possibility of massive economic disruption.

I look forward to the follow-ups of this post.

Thank you for your post. I've been looking for posts like this all over the internet that get my mind racing about the possibilities of the near future.

I think the AI discussion suffers from definitional problems. I think when most people talk about money not mattering when AGI arrives (myself included), we tend to define AGI as something closer to this:

"one single AI system doing all economic planning."

While your world model makes a lot of sense, I don't think the dystopian scenario you envision would include me in the "capital class". I don't have the we... (read more)

One example of what I am talking about is the middle chapters of the book Genesis, where it discusses applications of AI in military and general governance.

I don't necessarily agree with the book's predictions, but it really got me thinking of a near term pre-AGI world.

https://www.axios.com/2024/11/19/henry-kissinger-ai-book-released

Someone recommended I create the community, maybe I will in the new year.

Your comment would have more validity had the market not corrected the dislocation created by Theo. It took three weeks, but the market eventually corrected itself. 

4jbash
Another way to look at that is that during a relatively long stretch of time when people most needed an advance prediction, the market was out of whack, it got even more out of whack as the event approached, and a couple of days before the final resolution, it partially corrected. The headline question is sitting at 59.7 to 40.5 as I write this, and that's still way of line with every other prediction source.

There are no transaction costs if you have USDC on Polygon. Onboarding USDC into Polygon might bear costs but they are minimal. 

I would say very low? 

I would also rank the theory that these mystery traders have hidden information as low. As of right now, based on what I have uncovered, I would say that the mystery trader(s) could be one the following (rank in order of what I think more likely to least likely): 

1. A wealthy francophone european, somewhat involved in crypto and/or tech, who believes Trump will win and is betting a somewhat trivial amount (to this person) on this outcome. It is key to note that the main account has been trading since June, yet it only starte... (read more)

6winstonBosan
I can see how the article can be convincing. But it is worth it to keep in mind that Hunterbrook is also a hedge fund that trades on their own news - an obvious case of potential alignment failure if there ever was one. Though I am not sure if they are shorting this one. Perhaps more damningly: Per the Hunterbrook article. PS: It is likely critical, but I am more uncertain about it being a single point. Unless we are limiting ourselves to the allegorical West.

I am with you, I have been trying to find more sources to see if semiconductor-grade quartz if being produced in places like Norway and Brazil, where deposits of high purity quartz are found. But from the research I have done, it seems that roughly 90% of semiconductor-grade quartz produced today is produce at Spruce Pine. Please let me know if you find any sources that say the contrary (I hope I am wrong honestly).

With respects to road disruptions, I agree. If it's a matter of national security, stakeholders will do whatever is necessary to ensure the mat... (read more)

I am certainly saying YES to a lot of stuff on the chance that ASI arrives and our lives change completely (Or we all die). Lets say that I am living more in the present now than I was 2 years ago. I do wonder if those closest to the frontier work would realize first and just go do things that really matter to them. 

If Mira Murati goes the way of Sam Trabucco, it will be concerning tell. 

Re: Mira Murati departure, 

I wonder if a sign of AGI / ASI arriving soon is executives of frontier AI companies retiring early to enjoy the fruits of their labor before the world fundamentally changes for all of us. 

It would be very surprising to me if such ambitious people wanted to leave right before they had a chance to make history though.

1lillybaeum
This seems to be what Jimmy Apples on Twitter is implying, that people should go out and "wash their balls in the water at Waikiki Beach" between now and AGI in 2027.

That would be ideal. How does the world urge them?

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/breaking-superconductor-news

https://archive.is/2023.07.26-181113/https://www.newscientist.com/article/2384782-room-temperature-superconductor-breakthrough-met-with-scepticism/

2Ben
They link a video (  https://archive.is/GLKS8 ) in that article. I can't get it to play for some reason, but I think that is a really positive update towards it actually being legit. I can't imagine all the ways the electrical measurements might be mistaken, but a video of "look, this stuff hovers" sounds hard to mess up. Got the video working at last (found a version of it on twitter), now I think its an update against the supercondutor. I have played with bits of metal touching magnets before, and they often sort of "spring up" on one end, or form slightly rigid structures. The video looks just like that, not like its levitating at all. Other minor point. Their competing interests and data statements follow the Nature template, so that it very likely where it has been submitted. If the template had suggested submission to anything other than a high impact journal (Nature, Science) that would indicate some kind of problem.

I'm seeing OTC markets at 50% confirmation by year end. 

By the way, in 2050 you are more likely to reduce your consumption anyways because of age. This is a very common thing among humans: those who very successfully save for later end up saving so much that they end up dying with a pile of assets.

This new paradigm (AGI arriving in our lifetimes) is beginning to change the way I optimize life design.

"If there is a new world order - AI or something else changes everything - and we are not all dead, how do you prepare for that? Good question. What does such a world look like? Some such worlds you don’t have to prepare and it is fine. Others, it is very important that you start with capital. Keeping yourself healthy, cultivating good habits and remaining flexible and grounded are probably some good places to start."

This is the question I am working on answering at the moment. It seems to me that it is universally agreed that AGI will happen in my lifetim... (read more)

I feel the same way. You're not alone.

You're right it is not obvious. I just want ideas of things that are not so obvious that I can look into and if I am convinced that there is a small probability one of those ideas could be the one with the breakthrough, I will buy some of it. 

3Dave Orr
In general I am no fan of angellist syndicates because the fees are usurious, but if you have high conviction that there are huge returns to AI, possibly LLM syndicates might be worth a look.

This post gives us a glimpse at the exploitable inefficiencies of prediction markets. Whether prediction markets become mainstream or not is yet to be seen, but even today there are ways for sharp people to make money arbitraging and reading the fine print of the market rules carefully.

Perhaps you are right: Creating a financial system for e-tulips was dumb in the first place. 

But that discussion goes beyond the scope of this post. The fact of the matter is the financial system for crypto was created, and a major player crashed, and people not well versed in finance and crypto are somewhat interested in how it happened. 

6RamblinDash
I think it's directly relevant to what you wrote in the "What Happens Now" and "What Happens to Crypto" section, which I take to be the point that the rest of the post is kinda building up to. These sections seem to be written with some assumptions which I think are unwarranted and, at least, untrue in my opinion. Comparisons with Enron, Lehman, etc -> Assumption: There was some real value here that customers put in, that was lost/destroyed/stolen by fraud. I think this assumption is not true for other crypto assets, only for the USD that people put in. "In reality I think it is good that these bad actors get flushed out."  -> Assumption: there are good actors, i.e. that after bad actors get "flushed out" there will be a significant number of non-flushed actors "the engineers working on figuring out ways that the technology can have utility are still working on the space." -> Assumption: crypto can have significant utility and thus has value "I hope that this saga leads to more due diligence . . . . when it [comes] to internal accounting controls and good governance [at crypto firms]. . . ." -> Assumption: It is possible for there to be crypto firms that have good internal accounting controls, good governance, and be well capitalized. IMO, doing due diligence on a crypto firm is like entering a cat in the dog show - sure you can list all the ways it does or does not conform to breed standards (pointy ears, upright tail, etc) but fundamentally the problem is that it's a cat. "People will always say that this is a story about crypto. In reality, this is a story about lending." -> No, I think it's a story about crypto.

Isn't the most accurate source of information about the world Wikipedia?

And it works fairly well?

Anyways, great post. Watching the pitchforks come out against this whole ordeal is kind of comical, and I am excited to see how this Culture Battle over Musk-owned private Twitter plays out. 

Excellent comment.

What I fear is being left out of certain social outings because I don't drink and you out it succinctly.

We are the minority but I think our minority is not so small.

I also agree with you that the AA framing turns me off. I wonder when western society will stop seeing people who don't drink as someone who used to have a problem?

I found the perfect hedge: 

I bet $5,000 to win $33,500 that the following Metaculus question resolves YES https://metaculus.com/questions/8898/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-before-2023/… 

Bet is voided if resolution is ambiguous. 

1Pee Doom
Did you actually bet the money?
6Liron
Nicely done

Yeah this sucks, and I have no idea how to fix it. 

But if you want top notch information of what's happening at the front lines in SF, follow this twitter account:

https://twitter.com/Bob_Wachter/status/1475188579684913152

Zvi, are you betting your beliefs on Polymarket?

Have you seen the flip of the record cases market in the last three days?

A few ways to hedge that were floating in my head:

Long natural gas futures

Long Brent oil futures

Buy VIX calls

Buy DXY calls

Buy VGK puts

If you use the platform, just link your polymarket address and people can peer to peer you tips at no cost.

Hey Zvi, do you accept tips through Polymarket?

3Zvi
I did not know such a feature existed, say more?  You can subscribe to the substack (thezvi.substack.com) or use my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/thezvi) if you'd like to contribute.  Also considering turning on Twitter tips, which I think would have relatively low fees.

Zvi you got one of your markets:

https://polymarket.com/market/will-the-fda-give-emergency-use-authorization-or-otherwise-approve-paxlovid-before-2022

2Zvi
Nice. Working on getting more. Hopefully it will get more volume once it gets more eyes.

Re: effectiveness of Paxlovid vs Omicron: 

https://twitter.com/MonicaGandhi9/status/1464099757408751616?t=_ewDKnnijBgpeAzydqew4g&s=19&fbclid=IwAR2Jmkxy_iLjXkQhUoGrtBqMimpqBTWy5NLPRWheemNWcJAcT6j93JjydWA

5CraigMichael
Thanks for this. But had to copy and paste. Hopefully LW makes this a hyperlink- https://twitter.com/MonicaGandhi9/status/1464099757408751616?s=20

It stays in the contract until a new mint (called it mint B) happens. Then the 30 day clock begins again. If no new mints happen in those 30 days, then mint B takes 50% of that 50% remaining. 

1elspood
Well maybe I'm missing something, but the game theory doesn't seem that interesting to me. And calling it a 'return on investment' seems a bit generous for what is really just a game of blockchain chicken. In fact, it might be as crazy as a dollar auction where people might end up bidding more than what half the accumulated contract is worth due to sunk cost fallacy or other irrational behaviors. Either way, you're not really buying anything of value here: you're just betting that the auction gets so little attention that you can walk away with free money, or else you're financing someone else's eventual bad decisionmaking (possibly your own). You say "which in theory should increase the value of every minted NFT so far", but I don't see how. What additional value is added to a previously purchased NFT by someone purchasing the next one? If anything, each incremental minting makes the previous one worthless (unless you ascribe some inherent value to owning an arbitrary NFT). In fact, every NFT in this game is a badge of shame except the one that that wins the pot, and even that one could be shameful if it cost more than the pot was worth. It seems especially insidious that the game perpetuates itself by trying to get people to restart the bidding war again with the other half of the prize pool. You didn't say whether the price of minting resets after half the pool gets claimed, but either way it's terrible: either the price resets and make the next bidding war even more furious and ties up even more people/funds, or it doesn't and makes it more likely that the other half just sits there unclaimed forever because it costs more to mint the bid than you'd see in return, but I don't see how this ever ends well for anyone. On the other hand, one could view this game as punishing greed at a meta level: at first it looks like you get a free 242x return, but at best you realize you've only thrown away $500; at worst you end up much deeper in the hole you tried to dig yo

I assumed that, or derivatives of those commodities. 

Thank you. 

I am inferring that your investing portfolio is 100% in equities and equity derivatives, and it seems that quite a bit of it is in high beta stuff. 

So you combine high beta with derivatives (leverage), and you get a great combination of risk that in the 22 months that you've invested paid off quite handsomely. 

Congratulations, your ability / willingness to bear risk combined with timing has worked. I hope we get to see future updates on your strategy. 

1Daniel_Eth
"uranium, copper, lithium, oil" These are commodities, not equities (unless OP meant invested in companies in those industries?)

Can we get a snapshot of your portfolio? 

I am interested in seeing what you hold / held to assess your risk adjusted return. 

You started investing at a time where virtually all real assets beat their mean averages substantially. It was quite difficult to lose money investing in capital markets if you bought in January 2020 and held until today. 

5at_the_zoo
I currently have ~100 positions spread across: uranium, copper, lithium, oil, fertilizer, shipping, Nvidia Google Microsoft Baidu (hedge against short AI timeline), a basket of SPAC/deSPAC commons&warrants (which I bought after the SPAC sector became severely depressed), individual "value stocks" and "special situations" in various other sectors. Most of these were entered within the last few months, and my portfolio looked pretty different before that, but I can't really talk about what I was doing before without risking de-anonymizing myself.

Did you just call me an NPC?

Polymarket is prediction a 65% chance of a cases trend reversal starting on November 10: 

https://polymarket.com/market/will-the-7-day-average-of-covid-cases-on-november-17th-be-higher-than-the-7-day-average-of-covid-cases-on-november-10th

1TheSimplestExplanation
That is, a growth in case rate.(79% now)

Has anyone found a good explanation as to why cases decline so rapidly in places where the Delta variant took over?

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1419301928790417411 

Has anyone found a good explanation as to why cases decline so rapidly in places where the Delta variant took over?

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1419301928790417411 

Any reason why not use your reasoning and expertise to put skin in the game? Polymarket has a couple of markets such as this one:

https://polymarket.com/market/will-the-us-have-more-than-100000-new-daily-covid-19-cases-before-january-1

2Zvi
It's certainly not the most efficient market (e.g. there's been no update in the past few days which is clearly wrong), but I think it would be more a distraction than it's worth. Maybe after my apartment closes I can look into such things more seriously. 

Zvi, what do you think of this market, given the rise in the delta variant?

https://polymarket.com/market/will-the-us-have-fewer-than-1000-covid-19-cases-on-any-day-before-september-1

3Zvi
No seems like the right side. That requires 3 additional 50% drops within 75 days. Not impossible it happens, but if I had easy liquidity there putting in 2k-3k seems reasonable here. After that the odds get distorted a lot. 

Whoa, I always read it as Metacalculus. Editing on both thanks for the heads up.

Previous suggestion on LessWrong suggests that savy uses of PolyMarket don't do that. They would create a Yes/No share pair and then sell the No for a few of 2% of $0.09.

This is true. Polymarket has a couple of tricks to save on fees. 


I don't think that's the case. Having access to an accurate probability about whether the Olympics will tell local hotels about how important it is to have a lot of beds available. It will tell AirBnB whether it makes sense to run ad campaings to get people to rent out their homes for hosting tourists that come for the Olympics. 

I agree with you. Didn't really think of this to be honest!

The problem with doing it on the Ethereum network is gas fees. Even with super low gas fees (~$3), this strategy would cost over$100 to implement. 

I agree that doing this on Polygon / Matic is not ideal, as it is a sidechain / quasi L2 solution that sacrifices decentralization for speed and cost, but for illustration purposes, it works. 

It takes ~40 mins to bridge Ethereum from the Matic network to the Ethereum mainnet, 

2[anonymous]
ah yes, the proof of stake bridge is faster. i guess it depends if you're running this strategy with size. e.g. for over $100,000, 10% returns means you'd earn back gas fees in ~3 days.

This write up is a good complement to this post: 

https://wifpr.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/DeFi-Beyond-the-Hype.pdf

I am excited to go to the US in July to get my shot. 

Where I live, my age group will be eligible sometime in September. Might as well make a vacation out getting vaccinated. 

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