Chris Madden

dadding...entrepreneur & marketer...co-founder @matchnode...driving digital growth for great digital health brands...

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

I have found it, the Platonic form of every New York Times op-ed.

[Grok @grok]

No. No large-scale implementation of communism—defined as a stateless, classless, moneyless society—has ever been achieved or sustained. Historical Marxist-Leninist states (USSR, Maoist China, Cuba, etc.) delivered early gains in literacy, industrialization, and some social metrics but consistently faced chronic shortages, stifled innovation, authoritarian rule, famines, and repression, leading to collapse, mass emigration, or market reforms. Small experiments also proved unsustainable. Outcomes reflect real-world incentive and coordination challenges, not just "not real communism."

[Naval @naval]

The human brain isn’t designed to process all of the world’s breaking emergencies in realtime.

[Blake Scholl 🛫 @bscholl]

Guys we need to remember what profit is: the difference between how much a buyer is willing to pay for a thing versus what it cost to create it.

Profit happens only when the outputs are worth more than the inputs.

Profit is literally value creation.

Profit is good.

[nicolas, 30 ans @nic_carter]

I ate one almond the other day. Then I felt bad about the water usage, so I thought to myself - well I just won’t make the next 15,000 AI queries I was planning on making

[Henrick Johansson @compliantvc]

A trolley is about to hit 5 people laying on the track

You can redirect the car, but the other track has not yet reached regulatory approval or completed its 1 year environmental testing period, so operating a train car on it is a violation of transit regulations

What do you do?

[Lukas (computer) (In SF) 🔺 @SCHIZO_FREQ]

“We hate technology, billionaires, white people and men” might be the worst political platform of all time

[TBPN @tbpn]

.@signulll says advertising is one of the most useful economic paradigms for delivering equal access to services for people who otherwise couldn't afford them:

"Advertising has done a lot of good for the world. It has actually made things accessible."

"If advertising is done well, it is actually one of the most useful economic paradigms in terms of delivering equality and services to people who would otherwise [not be able to] afford them."

"I believe in good advertising. I believe in advertising that is complementary to the user experience, not necessarily taking away from it."

[Chris Madden @MaddenCM]

@BlockClubCHI Can you be more specific and descriptive than "the man"? Any relevant details you could add to allow your sentence to be more truthful?

[Chris Madden @MaddenCM]

@TaylorHoliday @BillDA Or 2 hours to replace a $5k per year software?

[Sandy Petersen 🪔 @SandyofCthulhu]

100 economists signed a letter about how Javier Milei’s election would destroy Argentina’s finances.

This should completely discredit all modern economics.

[Chris Madden @MaddenCM]

@missteencrypto Find the right person and there is nothing better, especially after adding kids.

[Shawn Farash @Shawn_Farash]

How come nobody flees Capitalism for the "Warmth of Collectivism?"

Why is it always the other way around?

[Michael A. Arouet @MichaelAArouet]

Venezuela used to be much wealthier than Poland, which was suffering under socialism. Then Poland implemented free-market and capitalist principles and enjoyed an economic boom.

Venezuela chose socialism, which brought poverty and misery to its people.

That’s the difference.

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

Picture of one rugged individualist standing against the warmth of collectivism on June 5, 1989.

[Chris Madden @MaddenCM]

@ChrisJBakke I mean yes, it's selfish to not share 4 points you worked for when you have 38 other points. Who deserves to keep 42 points? Some people have 0 points, not fair!

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

David Sacks @DavidSacks is a throwback to the era of American greatness in which the most capable private sector citizens selflessly volunteered for government service in moments of peril for a dollar a day. He is a credit to our nation, and we need more like him, not fewer. 🇺🇸

[Gavin Baker @GavinSBaker]

Deeply strange @nytimes article about @DavidSacks

Leading in AI is good for America. And there is no way for America to lead in AI without American investors in AI doing well. Irrespective of whether those investors are David’s friends or his enemies. And like everyone who has been in Silicon Valley for a long time, David has enemies in Silicon Valley who are also doing well by investing in AI.

The most disappointing part of the article is that there an interesting debate to be had about the wisdom of selling deprecated GPUs to China that are 18 months ahead of Chinese domestic alternatives and roughly 15 months behind our state of the art. As someone who is an active investor in national defense and super patriotic, I think this is a good idea but reasonable minds can disagree and zero attempt was made to engage with the relevant issues.

From a conflict of interest perspective, I think they are being appropriately managed and this has been to David’s economic detriment. His defamation attorneys letter to the NYTimes makes it clear that an exhaustive, good faith effort was made to divest from all potential conflicts. But it is quasi-impossible for David to fully divest from *every* company he and/or Craft has invested in that might *conceivably* benefit from good AI policy making. At the limit, theoretically every company in America and the American government itself (i.e. government bonds) benefit from good AI policy making.

I would guess that most of David’s assets are in private companies - if he were to leave the private sector entirely and put his assets into a blind trust he would still know what he owns as they are not liquid. Even if he were to do some dog and pony show of full divestment and a blind trust, does any reasonable person think he would not be able to walk back into Craft with his current economics intact?

And everyone who is even remotely qualified to shape AI policy has the same theoretical conflicts of interest.

I am 100% ok with talented citizens being able to have a dual role in the government and the private sector. That is actually the entire point of the SGE program. I think there is an argument to be made that it promotes and incentivizes ethical behavior. The downside of malfeasance for David is enormous and there is minimal upside relative to what he already has.

Separately, the @nytimes urgently needs to provide remedial math education for these journalists and their editors. The idea that 500,000 GPUs sold to the UAE could generate anywhere near $200 billion in revenue to Nvidia is ridiculous.

I look forward to the correction that will be assiduously posted to the @NYTimesPR account which has 90k followers vs. the main account with 52.8m followers.

I should note that while I do not know David well, we have many good friends in common and I like him personally. More importantly, I am grateful for his service, which has unquestionably cost him a vast amount of money. And my superstar sister-in-law is a partner at Craft, for which David is lucky.

[David Marcus @davidmarcus]

This hit job by the @nytimes on @DavidSacks couldn’t be more misguided. We should celebrate competent people with real world and business experience spending their precious time serving American interests and the American people instead of inventing nonsensical BS because your favorite incompetent technocrats aren’t in power anymore.

Facts:

1) the Biden administration was on a path to weaponizing AI (wokeAI) and constraining its development in such a way that would’ve led to us losing the existential AI war with China. This would’ve been an irreversible disastrous damage to America’s leadership in the world;

2) the previous administration was also actively trying to kill the digital assets/crypto industry altogether because they wanted more control. The world’s financial system is being rewired by these technologies and America was losing its best builders and was falling behind. We almost lost that one.

@DavidSacks leadership was and continues to be at the heart of what can only be described as a just in the nick of time turnaround for the two most important races America must win.

It takes a special kind of people to turn these achievements into this hit piece. A special kind of people who clearly don’t understand how the world works, and are sad other people who are like them are not in charge anymore. It turns out being an investor and not being in a position to dedicate all your time and attention to deploying capital in these two industries in their hypergrowth stage is the most costly thing anyone in that line of work could do!

The sad part is that’s the kind of crap that will dissuade more talented people from jumping in and making our country better. I hope it won’t.

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

Yes. All land is stolen, and whatever race of people you believe has a blood right to some chunk of dirt, THEY STOLE IT TOO