SWL Week in Review - Never Compete

From:

sam lessin <s@wlessin.com>

To:

Hidden Recipient <hidden@emailshot.io>

Date:

8/2/2026, 2:56 PM

MORE OR LESS — Meta, China, X & Lilian Weng

We get into it from the beach (and teslas)… and spend a lot of time on analogies in AI to Star Wars / mythology … we all know that AI founders want to believe they are Oppenheimer … or even better yet von Neumann (the Maniac is a great read btw)… but the real question is who actually is The Emperor, Darth Vader, and Luke - regardless of what they think.

HOT TAKES

Never Compete — the worst thing you can put on a tombstone is ‘market participant’ … if you want your money to matter / to make a difference, you want to be funding otherwise unfunded opportunities — where you see something others don’t… where money is most expensive, commands the highest return AND - to put a nice spin on it - where the money matters the most.

”Everyone Needs an Assistant” — The Fin Assistant Commercials are Perfect for 2026 — about 10 years ago we shot a series of commercials for Fin Assistant of people rolling around town asking real human requests of their phones with voice … our AI was human + machine … but it is fun to re-watch them now because they are basically indistinguishable from marketing from OpenAI or Anthropic, just from a decade ago — they get better as you watch :)

Trivial pursuit doesn't work anymore popular knowledge is too diffuse … it isn’t like there are 10 movies to know every year anymore and 5 TV shows.

Everyone is now an Engineer & Marketer — great one from Lenny Rachitsky … and totally rings true — basically there is this irony that in the future everyone is a generalist… and everyone has to be an engineer, marketer, etc. (and we are seeing this reality showing up)

The Importance of Capitalism to Truth — I am reading a book on the history of zero (very good)…. And also good to read at the same time as ‘The Maniac’ … which is also basically about the same thing / the West dealing with non-Aristotelian concepts of infinity and zero and going crazy over it — key point, the church closing ranks after the reformation really tried to outlaw zero — but the reason they couldn’t is it was just too useful for commerce / the commercial world — so the business people wouldn’t let it go… the insight? Thinking of AI… commerce and capitalism dominate / require truth even when the establishment and society really don’t want it.

Between two Sittigs — spent a lot of time this week on this… and honestly I think it is a great podcast…. One that will never happen but would literally be gold content. If you know, you know I am right.

Market Pricing Odyssey Tickets — apparently the most controversial thing I have said in a long long time… first Threads tried to cancel me / the left HATES this… and eventually days later twitter picked it up as well… do you want efficiency or do you want star-wars product placement — also btw, I did figure out you can just rent an IMAX for $15K-$20K and put an associate at slow on a private screening for our founders… so I guess you can in fact buy at market prices.

Tracking the cost of kids through spotify — throw your entire spotify history at Claude in a long-term 16 year data-set… you get a ton about how you work, when you work, etc… and it turns out that until 2021 I was very thoughtful and worked in concentrated blocks listening to classical music… since then / pandemic — kids and no solid work blocks really (or at least not like I had) — it is WILD to quantify your life through these stark shifts in data just sitting there.

The AI youths are too transactional to work with — I think it comes from the culture of ‘permanent underclass’ — and the thought that all that matters is right now (and that single wins can be your entire career / just gotta get this month right… but by default (most not all) of the young ones seem way too transactional / they want to get in/ get out… get a big score - which does not breed strong actual relationships in commerce / capitalism as an iterated game of collaboration and trust.

National AI Policy is Like National Global Warming Policy..Sounds good… fun for rallies, feels good for kids and hot takes… structurally doesn’t work… because you are putting rules on an incomplete system / set of players — dumb thing to do.

How do you trust untrusted compute?? — I LOVE this problem statement / it reminds me of the days before the CME / standardization of agricultural products (which was both critical AND has all sorts of issues)… but here is the thing, we are moving towards a world where multiplying big numbers is clearly a key part of the economy AND there is a global competition to zero margin… BUT you really need those numbers multiplied correctly (the defensibility of any provider is just the trust you have in them over the generic cheap multiplication) — SO… how can you ‘cheaply’ verify compute operations you didn’t do / control yourself? (The key being CHEAP at AI scale)… because that is a big deal intellectually and commercially.

First They Hate You, Then They Realize You Aren’t Gonna Stop — And Eventually They Love You. This is my experience of sooo many things… the key is to just keep doing what you are doing… case in point the evolution of comments on YouTube on our podcast lol.

Waymos Need Water Guns Mounted Internally : smoking, get soaked. Not putting on seat belt, get sprayed. Touch the steering wheel... drenched. A dash mounted water gun would solve all of waymo's issues and keep the cars cleaner, safer, better functioning ... and the mere threat of a cold water blast (no big deal for rule followers) would keep ruffians out / using other services ... which would be the greatest overall benefit / ...

AI knows when you are going to hurt yourself — as skeptical as I am of labs companies commercially, g-d do I love what I have put together for myself — I screwed up this week on a run / too hot, too hard… and slightly pulled my left calf… the data saw it coming is the amazing part (not just in load, but in how I personally respond to higher temps when running, etc… and then literally IN the run data itself) — now I have a daily injury likelihood report going… warning systems, etc. and it is AMAZING that they seem to really work.

Why does Russia Always Suffer So Many Casualties? - posed this looking at the insane Ukraine numbers… and internet’s cultural answer is fascinating to me — man does culture mater…

Kalshi / You want to be sued by NY — Can you name a single major company that was NOT sued by NY on its way to a big outcome? … because I can’t — congrats Kalshi!

Best,
Sam

P.S. The internet … this is just gold… we really are in a comedy renaissance.

Similar newsletters

There are other similar shared emails that you might be interested in: