On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

Is America’s increasing penchant for gambling another sign of stagnation?

“The rationalist utopia is a power trip,”

“The superforecasters see the doomsters as somewhat self-aggrandizing, narcissistic, messianic, saving-the-world types,”

Von Neumann was worried about global warming long before most people were—but mostly he worried about nuclear war, fearing that “mankind might not survive another twenty-five years but instead would become the victim of its own self-destructive inclinations.” However, charged with less abstract

prediction is that about 90 percent of you would push the button. And thank goodness for that, because that rather than SBF-style rationality is what creates nuclear deterrence.

worth literally trillions, which he claimed he could put toward EA-related causes. Who knows what the limits were; he’d even told Ellison there was a 5 percent chance he could become president of the United States. His utility function was “closer to linear,” he explained; the trillionth dollar really was almost as good as the first. Technically sp

But Sam Bankman-Fried, of course, thought the Kelly criterion had you wagering far too little. He thought it was for wimps.

Although Baha Mar is one of the nicest resorts you could imagine, the Bahamas also has among the world’s highest rates of wealth inequality.

He has distanced himself from the faction known as “e/acc” or “effective accelerationism,” a term used by Beff Jezos, Marc Andreessen, and others as a winking dig at effective altruism. (Altman has tipped his hat to e/acc too, once replying “you cannot out accelerate me” to one of Jezos’s tweets—another sign that he serves at the pleasure of the ph