2025 Year In Review

Twitter discourse on San Francisco lacks signal

Both positive and negative viral narratives about the city are likely wrong (>50% chance), and politicians have far less agency than attributed—macro forces like COVID, office vacancies, and policing trends drive outcomes more than individual leadership.

From overpopulation panic to depopulation crisis

The 1960s Stanford Food Research Institute promoted anti-natalism due to food scarcity fears; rising living standards solved overpopulation naturally, yet the ideology persisted in public policy and still influences people to delay childbirth today.

Government fertility incentives show zero effectiveness

Tax credits and cash incentives for having children primarily accelerate existing plans rather than change behavior, with studies suggesting approximately 0% net increase in birth rates from such programs.

The self-driving parallel cautions against AGI hype

Self-driving cars predicted for 2017 by 'crazy utopians' required technical breakthroughs (shifting from hard-coded rules to ML) and only became reality in 2025—suggesting AGI predictions may be directionally correct but temporally off by years.

Making life decisions on 18-month AGI timelines is dangerous

While AI models improved faster than expected in 2025, planning business strategies or personal decisions (like delaying having children) around imminent superintelligence timelines remains risky given the uncertainty between 'superpower tools' and true AGI.

Debt-financed data centers mirror the fiber optic bubble

Massive debt issuance to finance GPUs and data centers resembles the telecom fiber bubble—downstream users and consumers will benefit from the infrastructure even if the financing layer experiences severe corrections or bankruptcies.

True 'cheap launch' hasn't arrived yet

While SpaceX has dropped cost-per-pound exponentially, Starship may represent the real 'iPhone moment' for space; current launch costs still limit applications, and SpaceX/Starlink priorities are bumping other startups from launch schedules.

Remote work suits big companies, hurts startups

Large organizations function as 'remote' entities regardless of policy (colleagues rarely sit together), but startups copying big-tech remote norms made a strategic error; however, pandemic-era norms like Zoom meetings and real-time chat created lasting efficiency gains.

Abundance governs better but affordability wins campaigns

Technology delivers objective abundance (smartphones, healthcare), but housing costs and inflation create felt scarcity; 'abundance' messaging represents effective long-term governance while 'affordability' serves as the superior short-term campaign strategy.

Dual populist threats for 2026

The Democratic Party will likely adopt populist affordability messaging ('bad people make things expensive') to counter Republican populist narratives, potentially obscuring complex economic realities while both parties abandon long-term policy solutions.