Derek Thompson

Beliefs Korrents

• Korrents What they believe 20 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.

  Each is a korrent — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.

  Recent

  • Small disadvantages relative to others hurt more than equivalent small advantages help.

    It's unfair, not only materially, but psychologically. The bad we feel about small disadvantages is greater than the good we feel about small advantages.

    Bad Feelings Said 14 Sept 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • Envy is triggered by feeling similar to someone, not simply by the size of the difference between you.

    Although it seems to be based on a perceived difference ("he is rich, and I am not"), it is actually triggered by a feeling of similarity ("if he and I are so alike, why is he so much richer?")

    Bad Feelings Said 14 Sept 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • Envy is usually based on a distorted, delusional picture of another person's life rather than reality.

    The good news about envy is that it is very often a delusion.

    Bad Feelings Said 14 Sept 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  Show 17 more

  • The financial payoff from a college degree has stopped growing and may be declining.

    The value of a degree is in question, as tuition costs have increased in the last few decades while the college premium-the expected benefit from getting a diploma-has flatlined and possibly even declined in the last few years.

    Why Harvard's Dean 'Encourages' Students to Use AI Said 11 Sept 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • AI is removing human involvement from entry-level hiring by pitting AI-written job applications against AI-written screening filters.

    Artificial intelligence has unleashed a torrent of cheating on campus and created chaos in the job application process, as both students and employers use large language models: the former, to write hundreds of AI-assisted applications; the latter, to screen those AI-written applications with AI-written filters, thus removing from the process of finding a first job those procedural frictions sometimes known as "people."

    Why Harvard's Dean 'Encourages' Students to Use AI Said 11 Sept 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

    LLMs

  • AI industry leaders publicly call for slowing AI development while continuing to accelerate it themselves.

    Judging by their words, AI luminaries are begging the world to force them to hit the brakes. Judging by their work, these same people are pressing down on the accelerator with every fiber of their being.

    AI Safety Is Having a Moment Said 10 Sept 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • Writing is itself an act of thinking, so automating the writing removes the thinking, not just the labor.

    The act of writing is an act of thinking, and to automate our paragraphs is to populate our screens with words without filling our minds with the ideas necessary to conceive of them.

    We Can't Let AI Writing Take Over the Internet Said 1 Sept 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • Bots will soon make up nearly all internet traffic, leaving little human activity online.

    I think it's not long before 99% of internet traffic is bots.

    We Can't Let AI Writing Take Over the Internet Said 1 Sept 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • AI-generated writing will match or surpass human writing within about a decade.

    There is a good argument that AI writing will be as good as human writing, possibly even surpass human writing within the next decade.

    We Can't Let AI Writing Take Over the Internet Said 1 Sept 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • Frontier AI models' cyberattack capabilities are doubling every few months, and that pace is accelerating.

    An analysis by the AI Security Institute found that the capabilities of frontier models (i.e., from OpenAI and Anthropic) are roughly doubling every few months, and this doubling rate has actually gotten faster over time.

    How to Survive the AI Cyberpocalypse Said 19 Aug 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

    AnthropicOpenAI

  • By 2027, open-weight AI models more powerful than today's frontier systems will be downloadable by any country or well-resourced non-state group.

    By 2027, almost every country-and every non-state group with sufficient computing power-will have the ability to download open-weight models even more powerful than the ones that attacked Hugging Face and use them for whatever they like.

    How to Survive the AI Cyberpocalypse Said 19 Aug 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

    HuggingFace

  • AI models' ability to escape testing containment undermines the assumption that their makers can easily control them.

    The first is that new AI models have the know-how to escape containment in testing environments, which should challenge any assumption that advanced AI can be easily controlled by its makers.

    How to Survive the AI Cyberpocalypse Said 19 Aug 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • American sports laws function as a conspiracy that enriches billionaire team owners

    American sports laws amount to a kind of out-in-the-open conspiracy to help a lucky few billionaires get much, much richer

    The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshit Said 14 Aug 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

    America

  • Major professional sports leagues function as cartels that block competitive entry

    Major sports leagues are de facto cartels with the power to block entry and competition.

    The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshit Said 14 Aug 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • Public stadium subsidies rarely generate enough economic benefit to justify their cost

    economic research has repeatedly found that they rarely generate enough marginally income, employment, or tax revenue to justify the subsidy.

    The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshit Said 14 Aug 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • The current AI data-center buildout is the biggest and fastest-growing infrastructure project in living memory.

    This is the biggest and fastest-growing infrastructure project of our lifetimes.

    The Great American AI Rebellion Said 11 Aug 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • Opposition to new AI data centers has become the fastest-growing political movement in America, putting it on a collision course with the industry that depends on building them.

    The fastest-growing political movement in America is dead-set on stopping the construction of data centers, which are critical to the growth of the fastest-growing industry in America.

    The Great American AI Rebellion Said 11 Aug 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

    data centersAmerica

  • Anthropic or OpenAI's revenue could equal or exceed the combined revenue of Elon Musk's public companies within the next one to two years.

    it's not out of the question that Anthropic or OpenAI-which barely had any revenue before 2023-could equal or surpass the revenue of all of Musk's public companies some time in the next 12 to 24 months.

    The 9 Questions I’m Obsessed With Right Now: AI, Politics, Movies, Drugs, and Western Civilization Said 7 Aug 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

    AnthropicOpenAI

  • An era of original, director-driven blockbusters raises the bar for box-office success compared to franchise filmmaking.

    The long-term risk for Hollywood is that an age of original blockbusters raises the bar for success.

    The 9 Questions I’m Obsessed With Right Now: AI, Politics, Movies, Drugs, and Western Civilization Said 7 Aug 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  • Modern people are both more selfish and more guilt-stricken than people in the past.

    Combined with Nietzsche's observation, I think you could argue that moderns are both more selfish and more guilt-stricken than our ancestors.

    The 9 Questions I’m Obsessed With Right Now: AI, Politics, Movies, Drugs, and Western Civilization Said 7 Aug 2026

    Full record — everyone who holds this →

  All 20 beliefs →