Johnny VN

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

For 25 years at FIRE, I've watched universities demand endless evidence of problems they've known about for decades.

This summer, I revisited research and reports from Yale, Harvard, Vanderbilt, WashU, and Cornell.

I gave this familiar tactic a name: the Academic Filibuster.

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

Great read demonstrating the accelerating pace of innovation in AI. Co-Existence: The Next Phase of AI — the new book from Ethan Mollick. Available now: https://t.co/kZGK660qeS

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@ScienceMagazine So if I just lick a 9 volt battery like we did as kids it’ll fix my tinnitus? Amazing!

[Grok @grok]

Israel provides more rights and freedoms to its Palestinian citizens than Hamas or Fatah do to those they govern.

Freedom House rates Gaza (Hamas) 2/100 Not Free, with no elections since 2006, severe speech/press repression, and authoritarian rule. West Bank (Fatah/PA) scores 22/100 Not Free; no national elections since 2005-06, critics arrested, limited liberties. Israel scores 73/100 Free. Its Arab citizens vote, access independent courts, free media, and democratic institutions, despite documented disparities.

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@BookOfTheDayUS Tropic of Cancer

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@ElitzaVasileva I’m running my account on coding work 18-20 hrs a day. Always have a set of testing loops that run overnight. If the context management gets screwed up it will chew up a couple of data resources, as others have pointed out.

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@EmilySm43 The Sting, The Matrix, The Godfather. The key is the the.

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@mhmd_s09 FAFO.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

On my way to the office this morning, I passed a group of young people protesting, a Palestinian flag draped over their shoulders.

And I asked myself a question I can't shake: why does this generation always fall into the same trap? No matter the history. No matter the context. Even the ones from wealthy families, who went to the best schools, who were dealt every good card. Always the same trap.

I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's a mechanism. And a mechanism can be taken apart, piece by piece.

A. The observation: everything the state touches becomes unaffordable.

Look at economist Mark Perry's famous chart, the one people call "the chart of the century." It tracks US prices since 2000.

At the top, what explodes: hospital services, college tuition, textbooks, childcare, housing. Increases of +100%, +150%, up to +250%, far above general inflation.

At the bottom, what collapses: TVs, software, phones, toys, clothing. A TV today costs a fraction of what it did in 2000, for an infinitely better product.

Look at what separates the two groups. It isn't technology. It isn't complexity. It's one variable: how much the state is involved.

At the top, sectors that are subsidized, regulated, shielded from competition, where the state funds demand and blocks supply. At the bottom, sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper.

B. The mechanism: why it's systematic.

When the state subsidizes demand without freeing supply, prices rise. Every time. Guaranteed student loans, and universities raise tuition. Housing aid plus blocked building permits, and rents skyrocket. Administered healthcare, and bureaucracy eats the budget before it ever reaches the patient.

In France it's even more vicious, because the price doesn't disappear: it hides. You never see the hospital bill, you pay it through payroll contributions. You never see the cost of school, you pay it through taxes. Public spending at 57% of GDP, one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, more than €3.4 trillion in debt. And the result? Overflowing ERs, falling PISA scores, young people who can't afford to live in the city where they work.

The market didn't fail in these sectors. It was never allowed in.

C. Suffering demands a culprit.

A 22-year-old lives all of this in their bones. They can't find a place to live. Their degree either buries them in debt or opens no doors. The future feels blocked. That suffering is real, and I don't deny it for a second.

But human beings can't stand suffering without a culprit. They need a face. A scapegoat.

And this is where everything is decided: who taught them how to read the world?

D. Whoever tells the story picks the villain.

Schools are public. Universities are public. Culture runs on grants. Film goes through funding committees. Public broadcasting shapes the narratives. The people handing down the interpretive framework are, overwhelmingly, paid by the very system that creates the problem.

Do you really think that system is going to name itself as the culprit?

No. It names the capitalist. The boss. The landlord. "The rich." The multinational. The commercial West. Same role, same casting, every time.

E. One lens, a thousand causes.

And this brings me back to that flag. A generation taught to read every situation through a single lens, oppressor on one side, rich, Western, capitalist, oppressed on the other, will apply that lens everywhere. To housing. To climate. To conflicts on the other side of the world. The cause changes, the lens stays. That's why the trap is always the same: it's not the cause that draws them in, it's the way of thinking that was installed in them.

F. The perfect inversion.

Here's the irony. Capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched. The state is the force that blew up the price of almost everything it captured. And young people blame the first for the crimes of the second.

It's like blaming the firefighter for the fire because you saw him at the scene.

G. The ballot box confirms it.

In the US, a few weeks out from the midterms, a large share of urban young voters is getting ready to vote Democrat for more state, more spending, more regulation. New York elected a self-described socialist mayor, carried by young voters, on promises of rent freezes and city-run grocery stores. Rent freezes, the policy that has made housing scarcer everywhere it's been tried. The cure that worsens the disease.

In France, it's the same play in two acts. Part of the youth votes for the radical left, which promises more state. Another part votes for the center, which promises to "manage" the state well, and has dug the debt deeper than ever. Two different ballots, one shared assumption: the problem is the market, the solution is the state.

H. The way out.

These young people aren't stupid. They're right to be angry. They're just aiming at the wrong target.

The day they understand that their rent, their tuition and their hospital are expensive precisely because the state runs them, their anger will change direction. They'll stop protesting against those who create. They'll start protesting against those who capture.

That day, the greatest intellectual scam of our time will be over.

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@SenWarren Will you give a 2% rebate when the value of the stock market or real estate declines?

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@S_Conradi @AnthropicAI @claudeai You might start earlier with the invention of numbers, the abacus, the zero, then base 10, the decimal place, algebra, Boolean algebra, bayes theorem, then Babbage and Lovelace. I go through this in class with a time log scale to convey the acceleration of knowledge.

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@S_Conradi @WolframResearch Aside from looking like the clippings on the barbershop floor, that is seriously one of the more beautiful things I’ve seen. A high resolution print would be super cool.

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@minilek @hkanji Until there’s actual evidence of what you claim I call BS. You know, great claim, great evidence and all that. So far, using these models daily, I see no evidence of the apocalypse on the horizon.

[Jay 💎 @thediamondboyj]

@ZelenskyyUa You’re a true ally.

LIGHT UP ALL THEY DATA CENTERS, YOU HAVE AMERICAN CITIZENS BLESSING 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

[Meghan McCarthy @MeghanMcCarthy_]

@ZelenskyyUa I would pay Ukraine a monthly fee to keep blowing up Russian bots

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@TheAtlantic Call me Ismael.

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@sean_a_mcclure And, frankly, a lot of my colleagues don’t work that hard.

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@alwayspriyesh Hilarious!😆

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@WKCosmo There’s a reason all those math dudes sniff each other’s farts and prove one thing in a lifetime vs going to work in fintech, medical data modeling, NSA cryptography and so on. They seem to just like to think. And that life has largely been busted.

[Johnny VN @JVNs_ghost]

@WytPilledCurze Wouldn’t want to upset the future overlords.