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The pharma industry from Paul Janssen to today: why drugs got harder to develop and what we can do about it
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19 September
18 September
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Their words
The moment when you realize that you thought drugs were powerful and meditation was mild, but you now realize the opposite is true.
Average moments of a long-term meditatorsashachapin.substack.com
17 September
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korrents.com
AI-developing companies cannot be trusted to protect the public from the dangers of their own systemsTheir words
The systems are really dangerous, but we cannot trust the companies that develop them to protect us from them.
15 September
12 September
11 September
10 September
2 September
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Their words
I think people really underestimate how many people are on gear (TRT, Tren, HGH etc) and are not natural
31 August
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korrents.com
Even well-informed AI insiders frequently develop something like "AI psychosis" from engaging with these ideas.Their words
Though be very, very careful when speaking with others, whether it be the less informed public or the more informed insiders who often come down with AI psychosis.
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Their words
The key to developing a child is that they struggle and fail on their road to success supported by a caring adult. And you just want to run that loop.
29 August
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Their words
In the 70s and 80s, Japanese companies could get cheap plentiful bank loans to develop new products and explore new markets. Today, they can't. Innovation is downstream of finance.
27 August
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korrents.com
Killing suspected drug smugglers at sea without trial is murder, because smuggling is not a capital offence.Their words
Even if it turned out that they were drug smugglers, as claimed, and even if it turned out that they were bringing drugs to the United States, a dubious proposition, the penalty for smuggling drugs is not summary execution.
26 August
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Their words
Don't try to anticipate anything. You will literally go crazy. Because even the smartest brains in the business cannot anticipate what two model hops from here is going to look like. It's an absolute waste of time, and you will develop an AI psychosis trying to deduce what two years from now is gonna look like. Focus on right now, and right now is the most incredible time to be into computers.
25 August
24 August
20 August
From one piece From Restoring Sight to Reimagining the Brain, with Max Hodak 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
Humanity is not good enough at molecular biology to make drugs that restore vision or hearing or stop Parkinson's.Their words
People have spent huge amounts of time and money looking for drugs to restore vision or to restore hearing or to stop Parkinson's or to to help paralyzed people move again. Understanding the like the biology and the molecular detail required to make a drug has been very difficult. Humanity just isn't that good at that, to be totally honest.
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Their words
Yeah, I mean I think BCI is a category kind of like how pharma is a category. I think sometimes you I I'll talk to VCs and like, "Oh, we have a BCI bet." I'm like, "Do you have a drug bet? You made one bet on a drugs? Like that's that's how you think about the category?"
16 August
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Lovedrcmnd.app
The Design of Everyday ThingsTheir words
Must read not only for designers, but for software developers too, even if you develop backend exclusively. I wish everybody read it really.
15 August
13 August
12 August
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Their words
Uh and this means that they're going to be far more useful when they're operating fully autonomously. And as a result, this requires us to develop physical AI systems that make far fewer mistakes than the machine learning systems that have been deployed thus far.
10 August
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Their words
Part of it is just like you develop a little bit of a feeling how long something should take. So if I do a small tweak that should like change how dragging works and it takes three hours, I know something's wrong. I'll look closely. But otherwise, part of code review is simply like observing, looking how big it changes and trusting your gut.
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Coding isn't yet another application domain -- it's the meta-skill required for AI to automatically develop its own training material, via symbolic world models. That's how the RSI loop actually kicks off.
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Their words
The next frontier of AI as I have been saying is beyond language because again humans develop first preverbally. evolution took, you know, 500 million years without verbal communication
7 August
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korrents.com
AI-driven bureaucratic systems will develop their own internal politics and be gamed by the people subject to them.Their words
(and it will be gamed - AI bureaucracies will absolutely have their own politics)
6 August
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korrents.com
The only style worth having is the one you cannot help; setting out to develop a personal style is the wrong goal.Their words
And that there might come a moment, while reading a new, just-edited-for-the-thousandth-time draft, where that true self, or voice, pops out at you, suddenly revealed, as if someone else, not you, had done it.
On the Perils of Self-Assessing...georgesaunders.substack.com
2 August
29 July
From one piece Alexandr Wang: “This is a Once-in-a-Civilization Opportunity” 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
A swarm of agents with the right loop and the right metric can already out-produce a team of a hundred engineers.Their words
Like I think we've seen internally at Meta um cases where if you can develop the right agentic loop and you have the right eval or the right metric for the agents to optimize, you can have a swarm of agents accomplish more than like a team of 100 engineers in, you know, uh very very handily actually, very very easily.
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Their words
you just you can't base your business decisions based on what everyone else is saying around you. Like, if you go too much with the herd, you will get immensely confused and you will end up nowhere. And so you have to develop your own compass of what you think the future is going to look like because everyone else will just confuse you.
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Their words
I think the the key thing is you need to develop conviction in a set of beliefs that nobody else um agrees with. Like, I think if you look at all the most successful companies in the world, um they were started at a time long before the sort of like core idea was popular.
28 July
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Their words
is find the things that you can develop like reasonable conviction in that people decide like the conventional wisdom is they're just wrong. And be okay with it taking a long time and having people be like very you know, very frustratingly wrong and dismissive.
21 July
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Their words
Take Eroom’s Law: the number of new drugs approved per dollar of R&D has fallen for decades, even as our scientific tools have grown vastly more powerful, the exact opposite of what the existence of more raw capability would predict.
Intelligence is not the main bottleneckwritingruxandrabio.com
15 July
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Their words
there's a different kind of intuition that you that you develop over years as a software engineer and uh there's many categories of it but the one I'll I'll call attention to that is like a thing that you cannot teach you cannot do you cannot learn in a textbook. The only way to learn it is like I know bad patterns in software because I have debugged them at three in the morning.
13 July
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Their words
And actually, more recent research shows that those who have a positive attitude live longer, they're less likely to develop dementia.
4 July
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Their words
That’s a lesson we could all learn about our approach to supplements and even drugs: not to fall for hazy promises that a single molecule will deliver vaguely-defined benefits for all aging persons, but to demand rigorous evidence for well-defined benefits for well-defined problems in well-defined populations.
Metformin and cancer: active surveillance neededpeterattiamd.com
29 June
26 June
10 June
27 April
16 April
2 April
25 March
23 March
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Their words
They come to a computing platform because the install base is large. Because a developer, like anybody else, wants to develop software that reaches a lot of people. So, the install base is, in fact, the single most important part of an architecture.
13 March
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Their words
but I think he can build the uh clean room. It'll take a year or two. Maybe initially it won't be super fast, but then over time you'll get faster and faster at it. But then the really complex part is actually developing the process technology and building wafers. And I don't think he can develop that uh quickly. I think that has a lot of built-up knowledge.
3 March
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korrents.com
Native OS APIs are worse to develop against than web APIs, and platform vendors discourage native app development.Their words
Native APIs are terrible to use, and OS vendors use everything in their power to make you not want to develop native apps for their platform.
28 February
From one piece A response to Dario Amodei on AI & clinical trials 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Even if AI can help design more effective drugs, timelines will not compress until we solve the operational and regulatory bottlenecks of trials.
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Their words
The current success rate for a drug entering clinical trials is only about ten percent, meaning 90 percent of all drugs fail.
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Their words
Lastly, the duration of a clinical trial does not merely determine how fast an individual therapy reaches patients. It also shapes which diseases attract serious investment and which do not.
12 February
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Their words
I even switched to local CI, you know, like DHH inspired where I don't care so much more about the CI on GitHub. We still have it. It's still, it still has a place, but I just run tests locally and if they work locally, I push to main.
15 January
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korrents.com
Local-first software will not become the dominant architecture, and that is an acceptable outcome.Their words
Local-first is not going to win, but that's okay We'll explore the complexities of traditional stack (db-server-frontend), develop a theory of software evolution: which systems succeed and why.
7 January
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Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
The Power of a Positive No: Save The Deal Save The Relationship and Still Say NoTheir words
. Saying no gracefully and firmly is one of the most important skills for a product manager to develop. This is the classic guide for learning to do so.
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Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
The 15 Commitments of Conscious LeadershipTheir words
This book dramatically changed me as a leader and as a person. It will help you develop self-awareness and connect deeply with your sense of purpose as a leader. If I could recommend one book to help you develop the human skills behind the
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Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your OrganizationTheir words
. Understanding how we grow and develop will help you become a better leader and a more empathetic colleague. More accessible than his academic work, this book also provides a framework for understanding underlying beliefs and motivations that might be holding you back.
+ 1 more
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Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
Strong Product People: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product ManagersTheir words
Whether you’re a product leader coaching a team member or still early in your product maangement career, Petra Wille will help you break down the essentials of the job and develop a plan for growth.
28 December 2025
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Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
Hard DrugsTheir words
And if you prefer podcasts, may I suggest Hard Drugs
26 December 2025
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Lovedrcmnd.app
The NotebookTheir words
Another favorite of 2025. The author traces the evolution of notebooks, from wax tablets and parchment to paper, and examines how figures like Leonardo, Darwin, and Newton used them to develop ideas.
20 October 2025
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Their words
You use a tool, but you play an instrument. It’s a more expansive way of doing, and the doing of it all is important, because that’s where you develop the instincts for excellence. There is no purpose to better machines if they do not also produce better humans.
8 October 2025
19 September 2025
From one piece Norman Ohler: Hitler, Nazis, Drugs, WW2, Blitzkrieg, LSD, MKUltra & CIA | Lex Fridman Podcast #481 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
That was the victorious idea. So it's not the drugs. Actually, that idea to go through the Ardennes Mountains, if you think monocausal, you would say that's the reason. That idea was genius, and Hitler immediately understood it, because before, the plan was to attack in the north of Belgium, which is the same as World War I.
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Their words
So the Navy hired the shoe runners unit from the SS, paid them money, and then gave them drugs, different kinds of drug combinations, methamphetamine combined with cocaine and chewing gum and all kinds of things. So this is a big thing, you know. And there are documents to it.
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Their words
And he said this is actually the missing link that historians did not have, especially to explain Hitler's degeneration as a leader. He made very good decisions, good in meaning militarily effective decisions in the beginning of the war, and very bad decisions for the German war effort towards the end. And you can link that to drugs.
+ 1 more
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korrents.com
The Neanderthals lost to us because they had no drug culture — they were too sober for the future.Their words
And I think, a lot of evidence kind of points to it that we were able to develop our consciousness in a better way than the Neanderthals, who did not have a drug culture. They were basically too sober for the future. We assimilated them.
29 August 2025
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korrents.com
Competition and experimentation among local officials has been a major driver of China's economic growth.Their words
China does much better in basic service delivery-and its local governments have also played a very obvious and important in driving growth, thanks to the competition and experimentation among local officials driven to develop their jurisdictions.
19 August 2025
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Their words
My model is that research requires a mix of skills. The day-to-day coding and execution is crucial. But there's also a set of harder-to-learn conceptual skills, collectively called research taste. These skills take a long time to gain because they have poor feedback loops, but they take very little time to use.
18 August 2025
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Their words
I don't think all parts of the economy can absorb intelligence equally. So let's just say we develop fairly generalized super intelligence. I always use the analogy like you can invent a lot of drugs, but if clinical trials still take a long time, you're not necessarily going to get new therapies rapidly.
9 August 2025
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Likedrcmnd.app
Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi GermanyTheir words
However, after reading a few pages my original inhibitions were overturned and I bought the book.
2 August 2025
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Their words
The design of the initial molecules to test is pretty magic-feeling, and is happening already – but the arrival of new drugs prescribed by your doctor will not be magical and sudden.
AI could help lead to an Alzheimer's cureblog.jacobtrefethen.com
11 June 2025
28 May 2025
From one piece What Was The War on Drugs? Part V 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
Drug enforcement cut casual use and barely touched heavy users, who account for most of the drugs consumed.Their words
But by the available evidence, the War on Drugs was far less successful at reducing use among the “hard core” of users, mostly meaning people addicted to their drug of choice.
What Was The War on Drugs? Part Vthecausalfallacy.substack.com
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Their words
Drug offenders never accounted for a particularly large fraction of the U.S. prison population, peaking at about 22 percent of state prisoners in 1990.
What Was The War on Drugs? Part Vthecausalfallacy.substack.com
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korrents.com
After two decades of the war on drugs, drugs were cheaper and more potent than when it began.Their words
After two decades of the War on Drugs, in other words, drugs were much cheaper and more potent than they were when the War on Drugs began.
What Was The War on Drugs? Part Vthecausalfallacy.substack.com
3 April 2025
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Their words
But no one has (yet) been able to develop a model that is resistant to targeted “jailbreaking” that evades these restrictions.
19 January 2025
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Their words
And almost single-handedly, Friedman will introduce political and ideological diversity into the field of economics because, from his beachhead in Chicago, he will develop the theory of monetarism.
20 December 2024
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Their words
I don’t think many in the West have yet fully internalized a mental model of China as a source of genuine innovation.
9 December 2024
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Their words
Until we develop better ways to bridge this gap - aligning what analysts understand with what is formally forecast - we'll continue to see the same pattern: reality consistently outperforming conservative predictions.
30 September 2024
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Their words
In fact, strangely, the majority of plants that are actually psychotropic, not just mood altering, are from here in the Americas. There are very few drugs that will make you hallucinate outside of the Americas.
13 May 2024
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korrents.com
The drugs advertised as having AI-discovered targets are aimed at targets people already knew about.Their words
What you will see is that in almost every case, these targets were already known to be implicated in the disease under investigation.
18 April 2024
23 December 2023
From one piece The pharma industry from Paul Janssen to today: why drugs got harder to develop and what we can do about it 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
The cost to discover and develop a drug today is orders of magnitude higher than in the 1950s. Despite this, the probability that a drug entering clinical trials will eventually reach the market has hardly improved in the intervening years.
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Their words
Because patents have fixed term lengths, with small extensions to compensate for the year or so when the drug is under regulatory review, drug developers are incentivized to go after conditions where clinical trials can be completed quickly, all else being equal.
20 December 2023
30 October 2023
9 July 2023
25 May 2023
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Their words
There are no existing AI/ML systems that mitigate clinical failure risks due to target choice or toxicology.
11 September 2021
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Klara and the Sun: A NovelTheir words
Klara and the Sun is an absolutely remarkable example of how to develop this understanding.
21 June 2021
22 November 2020
16 June 2020
Nothing matches.
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
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