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Every week, Nightview Capital's Eric Markowitz delivers thought-provoking articles on technology, innovation and long-term investing.
This is The Nightcrawler, a weekly roundup of thought-provoking articles on technology, innovation and long-term investing from Nightview Capital's Eric Markowitz. Sign up above to receive articles like this one directly to your inbox every Friday evening. X: Follow him at @EricMarkowitz.
Investor Gavin Baker offered some smart analysis this week about what's at stake (and who's winning) in the race to make artificial intelligence a reality. Baker, managing partner and chief information officer at Atreides Management, began covering Nvidia in 2000 and Tesla since its IPO in 2010, and has been providing insightful commentary on the future of technology and investing for many years.
Gavin's high-level observation, with which I strongly agree, is that leaders of today's “Mag Seven” companies will keep spending “until there is irrefutable evidence that the laws of scaling are slowing down.” The reason is simple: they see this competition as fundamentally essential to their continued advantage and long-term survival.
The interviews cover a wide range of topics, including the “shootout” taking place between today's leading tech companies, scaling methods and semiconductors, the future of robotics, Tesla's rapid advances in AI, and the importance of infrastructure efficiency.
Key quote: “The people who actually control these companies, the founders, have super voting stock or a lot of influence. In the case of Microsoft, they believe they're in a race to create a digital god. And if they create the first digital god, it's debatable whether it'll be worth tens of trillions or hundreds of trillions of dollars. It's also debatable whether that's absurd. But they believe it. And they believe that losing that race would be an existential threat to the company.”
Why studying mythology, not math, makes you smarter
Modern education prioritizes a few core subjects like mathematics, language, science, and history, but it devotes very few educational resources to the study of mythology, and perhaps it should.
In his latest essay for The Leading Edge, Tom Morgan makes a compelling case that myths are more than just ancient stories—they are powerful tools for understanding human experience and navigating the complexities of modern life. The study of myth may even yield “information alpha” that leads to better decisions for investors, executives, and entrepreneurs. “Myth may seem an odd topic for a series on wisdom,” Tom writes. “This is largely a failure of language,” he continues.
Key Quote: “Our information ecosystem is now so dangerous that our attention is constantly being competed for by a variety of news stories, with less and less of them directly relevant to our daily lives. If we don't pay attention to the quality of the news we consume, we open ourselves up to exploitation and manipulation. With the rise of AI, this trend will only get worse over time. Until we have a visceral understanding of what real news feels like, we will be constantly bouncing between stories.”
Roger Federer, the wires and the investment connection
This week, I published my latest essay in Big Think's The Long Game column, about compound interest, a phenomenon Albert Einstein once called “the eighth wonder of the world.”
What particularly caught my attention in this week's column was the idea of ”marginal gains” — small adjustments added up over time — that can add up to surprising results. You see this in almost every field: investing, sports, technology, etc. It's an undoubtedly winning strategy, yet it's often ignored.
For those with enough bandwidth (i.e. time) and motivation, this scenario creates interesting arbitrage opportunities to gain an advantage in business (and life) in the long term.
Key Quote: “When organizations and management teams are struggling, they tend to shy away from the idea of making small tweaks. When there is pressure to deliver short-term results, a typical corporate strategy is to make sweeping, grandiose changes: massive layoffs, canceling product lines, or a new CEO who completely changes strategy. On the surface, these big changes may seem productive; they may even feel good. But more often than not, these massive changes turn out to be short-sighted and lead to equally big failures.”
Here are some links I liked:
Controlling the Mind with Arnold van den Bergh – via William Green
Key Quote: “In today's episode, William Green speaks with Arnold van den Bergh, who has run the renowned investment firm Century Management for nearly half a century. A Holocaust survivor and self-taught investor who didn't attend college, Arnold shares how he overcame extreme adversity to become a successful investment manager. He uses his experiences to share powerful, practical lessons about how to take control of your mind and create a truly wealthy life.”
Mapping AI's rapid progress: Q&A with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt – via Noema
Key Quote: “The important thing that's happening right now is that we're moving up the capabilities ladder very rapidly. There are about three things happening right now that are going to change the world in a big way, very quickly. And when I say very rapidly, I mean roughly every 12 to 18 months, we're seeing new models coming out. So, in 3 to 4 years.”
The Overlooked Virtues of a Crowded World – Jason Crawford / Freethink
Key Quote: “Our rapid progress is driven by another uniquely human ability that deserves respect: humans are the only species capable of criticizing themselves. Whereas biological evolution “learns” through birth and death, our capacity for theorizing and criticism allows our ideas to die, in Popper's words, on our own behalf. The capacity to criticize is the capacity to improve.”
From the archives:
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Thinking – Peter Kaufman (2018)
Key Quote: “So why is it important to be a multidisciplinary thinker? The answer comes from Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: 'To understand is to know what to do.' Is there a simpler statement than that? But 'To understand is to know what to do' is a stroke of genius. How many mistakes do you make when you understand something? You don't. Where do mistakes come from? They come from blind spots, from lack of understanding. Why do we need multidisciplinary thinkers? Because, as the Japanese proverb goes, 'A frog in a well does not know the ocean.' You may know all there is to know about your discipline, your silo, your 'well,' but how can you make good decisions in life — in any complex living system, any dynamic living system — if you only know one well?”
Night Pixel:
5 charts showing the demand for smart wearables
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Every week, Nightview Capital's Eric Markowitz delivers thought-provoking articles on technology, innovation and long-term investing.
