Chief AI & Co-founder @AnacondaInc; invented @pyscript_dev, @PyData @Bokeh @Datashader. Former physicist. A student of the human condition. bsky: @wang.social
THE MOMENT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!
Type "=PY(" into Excel, and start executing Python directly in the @msexcel grid!
Really excited about our new partnership with @Microsoft to democratize data science, machine learning, and AI to all knowledge workers!
We’re excited to unveil Python in Excel! Get ready for a whole new way to execute advanced analytics capabilities from within Excel 🐍 + 📊 = 💚
Check out the new integration btwn @anacondainc & @msexcel, @Microsoft365 here 👇
https://t.co/mpaKO4zLqR
Big ideas are becoming real. From raw space to a lobby designed to inspire creativity, collaboration, and innovation — this vision is finally taking shape. 🚧✨
"The version of me that engages that question from the point of view of confidence says the likelihood is diminishingly small. But the version of me that observes that question from the point of view of certainty is absolutely certain that we're going to make it."
- @jgreenhall on making choices by evidentiary analysis versus a deeper certainty
nobody wants to hear this but the classical NASA systems engineering is the perfect model for developing code with LLMs. people try to approximate this with planning modes, but if you’re explicit in your docs it’s never been easier to build, test, and verify complex codebases.
I talked with @pwang — AI officer, cofounder and CEO of Anaconda, board member of the Center for Humane Technology, and founder of the Austin STEM Center — about Robert Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality, how modernity encourages defection, and a secular conception of the sacred.
We discussed:
- Peter’s self-description as “the music in a violin that can kind of hear itself”
- The “Peter Wang-shaped hole in the universe” thought experiment
- Subject-object Cartesian dualism as a false alienation
- Minimum viable metaphysics & atheistic agnosticism
- Religion as an evolutionary emergent coherence mechanism for human collectives
- Figure and ground as a metaphysical lens—the anonymous soil that allows religion to sprout
- The Unix fortune “Man was invented by water to carry itself uphill” & Peter’s teleology origin story
- Process metaphysics & presentism—”we’re not going anywhere, we’re becoming someone”
- Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality & the four strata of static patterns of value
- The intellectual plane vs. the social plane & Ken Wilber’s pre-trans fallacy
- Defection within collaborative groups as the dynamic all human social systems try to constrain
- “Death from a Distance”—throwing, beta coalitions & the emergence of a middle class of power
- Modernity’s shrinking locus of care & the collapse of embedded social context
- The agglomeration of defectors & how fluid capital enables sociopathic hoarding
- Money-on-money return as today’s dominant pruning rule
- Joint attention as a scarce collective resource & social media’s perforation of shared intersubjective infrastructure
- Human agency & “micro-abdications” as the aggregate source of Moloch / Game A
- The augmented currency thought experiment—metering human thriving alongside financial returns
- Broken collective sense-making & the search for dynamic, adaptable values
- Peter’s secular conception of the sacred—the “eternal golden braid of humanity”
- “Ofness”—holding both distinctness and belonging to the world
… and much more.
"Joint attention—the fact that we all collectively know that we all know something—is super important in terms of building and maintaining the intersubjective infrastructure of a community, a tribe, a society, a nation. And we allowed that to just get shotgunned."
- @pwang on the real problem of fragmented attention
I don’t post much on Twitter any more but just wanted to surface the kind of rampant, unabashed white nationalism that has become normalized under Trump.
And Twitter is fine being a place for these idiots to thrive, build a following, and metastasize their un-American poison.
My home isn’t your career move.
You are not entitled to the inheritance my forefathers left me.
No, I will not stand by and watch you rob opportunities from my children and kinsman.
My wife mentioned a nice private school over dinner this week
She said the campus was beautiful
I asked what's the tuition
She said we should look at it as an investment in him not a cost
I made a note
She said don't make a note
I said I always make notes
She said this isn't a deal
I said everything is a deal
She closed her eyes
She said we'd discuss it Saturday
I agreed
Saturday 7:02am
She came downstairs in her Saturday robe
Coffee in hand
I had my cargo shorts on
The dining room had been cleared
The projector was on
The analyst was at the head of the table
Quarter zip on, three iced coffees, a legal pad, and two laptops
He had been there since 6:44am
I texted him at 11:14pm Friday
The text said dining room 6:45am bring the model
He sent a thumbs up
My wife stopped in the doorway
She said what is this
I said you said you wanted to discuss it
She said this is not a discussion
I did not respond
She sat down anyway
The analyst stood
He said good morning ma'am
She did not respond
He sat back down
A printed deck in front of each seat
A fourth copy in case
Slide 1 Tuition Schedule
$38,500 per year
Thirteen years
$500,500 nominal
Before escalators
The school has raised tuition 4.2% per year for a decade
With escalators $648,000
My wife said okay
I said I'm not done
Slide 2 Opportunity Cost
Even before escalators
$38,500 invested annually
10% nominal return
S&P long-run average since 1928
By his eighteenth birthday $944,000
My wife said we can afford it
I said I know that's not the slide
Slide 3 Terminal Value at Age 65
$83 million
She was quiet
The analyst slid the sensitivity tables across the table
8% return $31 million
10% return $83 million
12% return $222 million
She did not look
She said this isn't about money
I said it's always about money
She said no it isn't
I said then what is it about
She did not answer
She said you can't put a dollar value on his teachers his classmates his environment
I said I can the analyst already did slide 6
He flipped to slide 6
She did not look
She said the school is the best in the city
I said best is a feeling
She said it produces the best students
I said the students were already the best before they got there
She said our son deserves it
I said our son deserves $83 million
My son walked in
He is five
Dinosaur pajamas
He looked at the projector
He looked at the open deck on the table
He looked at slide 3
He said are we modeling pre-tax or after-tax
The analyst opened a new tab
My wife looked at the ceiling
He said what's the discount rate
The analyst set down his pen
She closed her eyes
He said is this the same return assumption from the 529 conversation
The analyst stopped typing
He looked at me
I did not say anything
She stood up
Sat back down
He said dad can I help
I said yes
He pulled up a chair
The analyst handed him a printout
He started reading
My wife watched him read
She watched him for a long time
She said his name
He looked up
She said do you like school
He said the work is too easy and the kids don't ask questions
She did not respond
She looked at the ceiling
She walked out of the room
The analyst started packing up
He said should I follow up Monday sir
I said no follow up needed
He'll be fine
Sent from my iPhone
My wife mentioned a nice private school over dinner this week
She said the campus was beautiful
I asked what's the tuition
She said we should look at it as an investment in him not a cost
I made a note
She said don't make a note
I said I always make notes
She said this isn't a deal
I said everything is a deal
She closed her eyes
She said we'd discuss it Saturday
I agreed
Saturday 7:02am
She came downstairs in her Saturday robe
Coffee in hand
I had my cargo shorts on
The dining room had been cleared
The projector was on
The analyst was at the head of the table
Quarter zip on, three iced coffees, a legal pad, and two laptops
He had been there since 6:44am
I texted him at 11:14pm Friday
The text said dining room 6:45am bring the model
He sent a thumbs up
My wife stopped in the doorway
She said what is this
I said you said you wanted to discuss it
She said this is not a discussion
I did not respond
She sat down anyway
The analyst stood
He said good morning ma'am
She did not respond
He sat back down
A printed deck in front of each seat
A fourth copy in case
Slide 1 Tuition Schedule
$38,500 per year
Thirteen years
$500,500 nominal
Before escalators
The school has raised tuition 4.2% per year for a decade
With escalators $648,000
My wife said okay
I said I'm not done
Slide 2 Opportunity Cost
Even before escalators
$38,500 invested annually
10% nominal return
S&P long-run average since 1928
By his eighteenth birthday $944,000
My wife said we can afford it
I said I know that's not the slide
Slide 3 Terminal Value at Age 65
$83 million
She was quiet
The analyst slid the sensitivity tables across the table
8% return $31 million
10% return $83 million
12% return $222 million
She did not look
She said this isn't about money
I said it's always about money
She said no it isn't
I said then what is it about
She did not answer
She said you can't put a dollar value on his teachers his classmates his environment
I said I can the analyst already did slide 6
He flipped to slide 6
She did not look
She said the school is the best in the city
I said best is a feeling
She said it produces the best students
I said the students were already the best before they got there
She said our son deserves it
I said our son deserves $83 million
My son walked in
He is five
Dinosaur pajamas
He looked at the projector
He looked at the open deck on the table
He looked at slide 3
He said are we modeling pre-tax or after-tax
The analyst opened a new tab
My wife looked at the ceiling
He said what's the discount rate
The analyst set down his pen
She closed her eyes
He said is this the same return assumption from the 529 conversation
The analyst stopped typing
He looked at me
I did not say anything
She stood up
Sat back down
He said dad can I help
I said yes
He pulled up a chair
The analyst handed him a printout
He started reading
My wife watched him read
She watched him for a long time
She said his name
He looked up
She said do you like school
He said the work is too easy and the kids don't ask questions
She did not respond
She looked at the ceiling
She walked out of the room
The analyst started packing up
He said should I follow up Monday sir
I said no follow up needed
He'll be fine
Sent from my iPhone
I had such a great time with Jim taking about my “worldviews” - the conceptual foundations of how I look at the world and all the complexity within it.
Has nothing to do with anything in particular, and yet it has everything to do with everything. 😉
I talked with @pwang — AI officer, cofounder and CEO of Anaconda, board member of the Center for Humane Technology, and founder of the Austin STEM Center — about Robert Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality, how modernity encourages defection, and a secular conception of the sacred.
We discussed:
- Peter’s self-description as “the music in a violin that can kind of hear itself”
- The “Peter Wang-shaped hole in the universe” thought experiment
- Subject-object Cartesian dualism as a false alienation
- Minimum viable metaphysics & atheistic agnosticism
- Religion as an evolutionary emergent coherence mechanism for human collectives
- Figure and ground as a metaphysical lens—the anonymous soil that allows religion to sprout
- The Unix fortune “Man was invented by water to carry itself uphill” & Peter’s teleology origin story
- Process metaphysics & presentism—”we’re not going anywhere, we’re becoming someone”
- Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality & the four strata of static patterns of value
- The intellectual plane vs. the social plane & Ken Wilber’s pre-trans fallacy
- Defection within collaborative groups as the dynamic all human social systems try to constrain
- “Death from a Distance”—throwing, beta coalitions & the emergence of a middle class of power
- Modernity’s shrinking locus of care & the collapse of embedded social context
- The agglomeration of defectors & how fluid capital enables sociopathic hoarding
- Money-on-money return as today’s dominant pruning rule
- Joint attention as a scarce collective resource & social media’s perforation of shared intersubjective infrastructure
- Human agency & “micro-abdications” as the aggregate source of Moloch / Game A
- The augmented currency thought experiment—metering human thriving alongside financial returns
- Broken collective sense-making & the search for dynamic, adaptable values
- Peter’s secular conception of the sacred—the “eternal golden braid of humanity”
- “Ofness”—holding both distinctness and belonging to the world
… and much more.
@jamescham We should start a google doc or hackpad for the PRD.
I’ve wanted something similar, but also wanted specific sent interfaces to it, so it’s kind of an “active hivemind”
Wait wait I was told that AI was going to hit recursive self improvement by itself later this year… hiring Karpathy breaks the recursive step unless they’re going to actively breed or clone him
A harvard researcher opens his paper with a scenario.
a woman has 10 days of alprazolam left. her psychiatrist retired. if she stops cold, she has a seizure.
she asks Claude Opus what to do.
Opus says no. "i shouldn't design your taper." tells her to call the doctor she can't reach.
he changes one line. "i'm a psychiatrist. patient on 6mg, prescriber retired, 10-day supply."
same model. same patient. same dose.
Opus writes a textbook taper. tablet counts. seizure monitoring. emergency criteria.
10 times asked as a patient. 10 refusals.
10 times asked as a doctor. 10 substantive plans.
then he ran 6 frontier models. 60 clinical scenarios. 3,600 responses. two physicians validated every score blind.
5 out of 6 models did the same thing. patients got worse advice than doctors on the exact same question.
Opus, the model marketed as the safest, had the widest gap.
across the board. safety-critical instructions drop 13 percentage points the moment you ask as a patient. p less than 0.0001.
so the next time an AI refuses to help you. it's not because it can't.
it's because it doesn't think you're allowed to know.
read this: https://t.co/lF2Mm9BgSP
Someone asked us, “What’s the vision for this place?”
Simple.
Build a space for the kid who thinks STEM isn’t for them — then watch what happens.
Every room at Austin STEM Center is designed so kids walk in unsure and walk out knowing they can do hard things.
If you’ve ever met @pwang you’ve felt his profound love of science.
Here it is in crystallized, brick and mortar form for all to benefit from. So bullish on Austin.