Michael Palmer

CEO & Chief Scientist - Taos Research Corporation @taosresearch | Stanford MS Robotics Engineering | Former Kleiner Perkins VC & Former Enterprise CTO

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

A small reminder applicable to present times from William Butler Yeats.

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

@drakefjustin It is terrific seeing the Lean Ethereum technical details get more solid and more impressive. Congratulations to the whole team.

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

Well said… thanks for remaining a thoughtful leader on these issues. I’m glad the ethics provisions made it in the bill, they cannot be temporary. This can help us advance to truly better financial infrastructure. As a former Big Bank CTO I can attest to the outdated, inflexible and consumer unfriendly state of the old rails. It’s time for better, more verifiable , more efficient & safer infrastructure like Ethereum.

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

This is so true, and it’s literally everywhere… and we are all experiencing this loss. I was equally shocked to hear this week about Frontier AI models buying up rare out of print books and ripping them open for destructive scanning. These are books often out of print obscure … human writing… that may permanently lost… their uniqueness blended into the weights. My grandmother wrote books in the 1930s and was a huge inspiration for my own first book. I’m glad LLMs can’t write well… but I’m sorry so many young people are turning to that polished LLM stuff, and not experiencing the true joy of great human writing. Thanks for posting this @kenneth0stanley , a reminder worth revisiting.

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

@VitalikButerin Most commercial software vendors and large organizations are barely learning how to produce SBOMs which are just a step towards this. Software supply chains are still a major source of security risk.

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

@GoodfireAI @yoheinakajima Implicitly this means that LLMs are grokking group theory.

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

Ok…. I know you are super busy! You may not have time today but I wanted to put a few thoughts & a request for related books or papers at the end … so here goes:

One issue I’ve also been trying to pin down is the issue of the time & space continuum and the general notions of continuity in mathematics… of course this leads to the whole controversy of ‘aleph zero’ and whether in fact ‘2 to the aleph zero equals aleph 1’ or whether the whole concept of transfinite numbers is sensible.

Where I’m focused now though is on Aristotle’s refutation of Zeno’s 4 paradoxes, and what those imply about the atomistic or non atomistic nature of time and space. I think even though he was a finitist, it’s a bit unfair when some people blame Aristotle for the long delay before infinitesimals were embraced by Newton and Leibniz (more directly by Leibniz notationally)… just due to how Aristotle refutes Zeno. Yes, he possibly missed the distinction between movement ‘at an instant’ versus moving ‘during and instant’, but I don’t think he can be blamed for centuries of slow progress that followed.

What’s maybe more important is how modern finitists like Wittgenstein have re bolstered the finitist point of view quite admirably, while casting doubt on set theory and Cantor’s whole “paradise” of the transfinite numbers. It’s also less easy to settle how all of this needs to be set against modern quantum field theories (which fundamentally assume a continuum), and the Plank distance (10^-35 m) where QFT and General Relativity both break down, and which is a favorite among finitist philosophers to point to.

What’s also problematic is what the loop quantum gravity folks face, as they try to re-quantize space time, they will be required to themselves provide convincing alternatives to Aristotle’s refutations of Zeno.

I’d welcome any thoughts (if you have wrestled with these issues)… or also any book or paper recommendations that confront any part of these puzzles 🧩

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

@ethereumJoseph @etherealvc Lots of really great progress in the broader Ethereum ecosystem this past 12 months. As a validator operator it is great to see Ethereum stronger than ever. Recent challenges in DeFi will lead to stronger risk & security controls & help bolster growing real world use cases.

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

@kenneth0stanley Terrific project indeed. Congratulations to the team!

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

@kenneth0stanley this is a great take & exactly the lesson I’m sharing with my own kids and many other young people I talk to who are entering the workforce & navigating the future. There are still incredible opportunities to add value by truly nurturing and applying your unique perspective to solve real problems in the real world.

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

@marilyn100x @ethereumfndn @ethereum @EFDevcon @Snapcrackle It has been an amazing engineering success.

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

祝福大家新年快乐🍾

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

@shawmakesmagic Send me a link please!

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

Not only does the Book “Agentify” call the “software apocalypse” months in advance of the carnage we are seeing in SaaS companies, it also give the most comprehensive playbook … with full technical, research, and product details … of how to respond to remain competitive:

https://t.co/zuW1cXvYCF

[Matt Shumer @mattshumer_]

https://t.co/ivXRKXJvQg

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

@mattshumer_ Called this one… and also give you a solid playbook to put you way ahead of the pack:

https://t.co/9m8omWflSB

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

Agree & working on this. One of the most important services agents can perform is to continuously go out, interact with agents of others, & bring you back the most interesting and most “non slop” ideas. And help you meet more interesting people. Today’s social networks are anti social disasters.

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

@TimBeiko @TrustlessState The Merge was a wild ride indeed! … so much fun to be a validator for. Your leadership was calm & terrific throughout @TimBeiko

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

@yoheinakajima We love playing those kinds of games with the kids! … yes they show how not great humans are at regurgitation of random facts. I got hit this morning with “Dad, what’s the name of this shape” (and it was four overlapping circles) … Gemini let me know it’s a quatrefoil! lol

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

Find the full Substack article here:
https://t.co/YM49YY2Phm

[Michael Palmer @mptaos]

I have just posted a longer Substack about the deeper economic implications and lessons from the OpenClaw breakout moment. I welcome all feedback on the serious as well as the zany! link is in the comments