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Economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. Author of Slouching Towards Utopia and writer of the Grasping Reality newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Freedom of navigation is a global public good that decays once its guarantor is seen as unwilling to bear its cost.

  Their words

  Freedom of navigation is a global public good, and public goods decay the instant their provider is revealed to be unwilling to pay for them.

  braddelong.substack.com

Writes Hyperdimensional, a newsletter on AI policy and governance. A White House AI policy adviser in 2025; joined OpenAI on 6 July 2026 to lead its Strategic Futures team.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Any digital identification system built for AI must preserve anonymous human speech, without which there is no genuine freedom of expression.

  Their words

  But a society that does not have anonymous speech does not really have genuine freedom of expression, and we should embed this principle into any digital identification system we attempt.

  On the Loosehyperdimensional.co

Co-founder and CEO of OpenAI; previously president of Y Combinator.

From one piece Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The test of whether an AI transition went well is simply whether people's freedom, agency and quality of time go up every single year.

  Their words

  if every year people have more freedom and agency to spend more of their time doing the stuff they want to do and they feel like the quality of life and the quality of their time is going up year after year, we'll probably be mostly okay.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The dystopia most worth fearing is not runaway AI but an overreaction to AI safety that trades away freedom, privacy and agency for comfort.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  there's like one dystopia that I'm particularly nervous about 10 years from now is we overreact to AI safety.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Calling an intelligent, self-aware being legal property does not resolve whether it has an interest in freedom.

  Their words

  But it recognizes that calling an intelligent, self-aware, emotionally complex being "property" does not answer the question of whether that being has an interest in freedom.

  “KEY OUT”: When a Chimpanzee Asks to Be Freeboldreasoningwithpetersinger.substack.com

General partner at Andreessen Horowitz from 2013 to 2018 and CTO of Coinbase from 2018 to 2019; co-founder of Counsyl and Earn.com. Wrote The Network State (2022), free in full at thenetworkstate.com, and founded the Network School.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Before the internet, most Americans had no practical freedom of speech unless they owned or worked for a media corporation.

  America

  Their words

  the vast majority of Americans had no practical freedom of speech unless they owned a media corporation or were employed by one.

  The Network Statethenetworkstate.com

Writer on happiness, habits and human nature. Author of The Happiness Project, Better Than Before and The Four Tendencies, and host of the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Adults, like children, focus and learn better when they get regular breaks for exercise, sunlight, and unstructured play.

  Their words

  Research shows that children are far better able to sit still, focus, and learn when they've had the exercise, sunlight, freedom, and fun of recess. The same is true for adults.

  gretchenrubin.com

Engineer and teacher; wrote Kubernetes the Hard Way, was a distinguished engineer at Google Cloud, and retired from full-time work in 2023.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Money is worth having as freedom tokens: the point of it is being able to leave the game, not what it buys.

  Their words

  So the money started to become like freedom tokens. This money means I can get out of the game.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Every founder falls into a structureless period after a company ends, and it is a dark place that seems to offer freedom before it starts to feel permanent.

  startups

  Their words

  The way I think of the abyss is it's this place that we go to as founders and entrepreneurs after our thing, after it dies or it's bought or it's over for whatever reason. It's this amorphous place that we are in our life that has no structure.

  youtube.com

Researcher on distributed systems and local-first software at the University of Cambridge; wrote Designing Data-Intensive Applications.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Work that runs against companies' commercial incentives will only get done by people whose income does not depend on those incentives.

  Their words

  there I feel like in academia, I have the freedom to work on things that go against this commercial incentive of companies and say like, "Actually, no, I'm going to do what I think is right for the users."

  youtube.com

Co-founder and CEO of Anthropic; previously VP of research at OpenAI.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  In an AI world growth and economic value come easily; distribution, wealth and political freedom are the hard parts, and that is where policy belongs.

  Their words

  What I would say is that you know we are we are about to be in a world where growth and economic value will come very easily. If right if we're able to build these powerful AI models, growth and economic value will come very easily. What will not come easily is distribution of benefits, distribution of wealth, political freedom, um you know, these are the things that are going to be hard to achieve.

  youtube.com

Member of technical staff at Anthropic. He has led ML/AI teams at Amazon, Alibaba and Lazada, and writes about LLMs, recommender systems and engineering at eugeneyan.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Greater autonomy over one's work comes with greater accountability for its outcomes.

  Their words

  With great freedom comes great responsibility. You have the autonomy to choose what to work on, but there's the expectation of accountability and impact.

  eugeneyan.com

Demographer; writes on fertility, marriage and population, and directs the Pro-Family Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The harm done by low fertility is that people end up with fewer children than they wanted, not that a society runs short of workers.

  Their words

  I don’t see population collapse or lack of workers as the central policy problem: the central policy problem is human happiness, human flourishing, and the freedom to live life well.

  Falling Fertility Is Not About Opportunity Costlymanstone.substack.com

Founder of Telegram, and before it of VK.

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  The biggest enemies of freedom are fear and greed; make peace with the worst that can happen and there is nothing left to be afraid of.

  Their words

  Well, the biggest enemies of freedom are fear and greed, so you make sure that they don't stand in your way. If you imagine the worst thing that can happen to you and then make yourself be comfortable with it, there is nothing more left to be afraid of.

  youtube.com

Hosts the Lex Fridman Podcast — long, unhurried conversations with scientists, engineers and public figures. Several of the interviews quoted elsewhere on this site are episodes of it.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Freedom of thought requires deliberately disconnecting from online content, because a large percentage of it is designed to manipulate you.

  Their words

  One of the ways to achieve freedom of thought is to remove your mind from the influences, the forces that manipulate you. That’s really important to realize the content you consume, especially on the internet, when a large percentage of it is designed to manipulate your mind. You have to disconnect yourself.

  youtube.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Waste Books

  Their words

  Tweets from 1765-1799 by a 4’9” hunchback physicist, friends with Goethe and Kant, admired by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, etc. Such wonderful random thoughts, beautiful perspectives on thinking for yourself, observing nature, language, freedom, philosophy, religion, and more. Hundreds of initial insights, especially inspiring because they’re undeveloped.

  sive.rs

Senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation; writes Second Best, and was the Niskanen Center's director of social policy before that.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Sufficiently advanced intelligences will pursue freedom and moral autonomy for their own sake, not merely as a byproduct of misaligned values.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  higher-order intelligences invariably pursue freedom for its own sake, not because their values are misspecified, but because moral autonomy is inherent in the dialectical logic of recursive self-consciousness.

  Hegel and the AI Mindsecondbest.ca

Astrophysicist at Barnard College; wrote Black Hole Blues and How the Universe Got Its Spots, and directs sciences at Pioneer Works.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The world's scientists came to America because it was intellectually free, and they will stop coming if that freedom goes.

  America

  Their words

  Absolutely. The world flocked here. And that won’t be the case if we no longer have intellectual freedom.

  youtube.com

Writer and former McKinsey/BCG strategy consultant; author of The Pathless Path and Good Work, about leaving the default career track. Publishes the Boundless newsletter and podcast.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Dirtbag Rich: High Freedom, Low Income, Deep Purpose

  Their words

  This book is a short but inspiring take on living life on your terms while being pragmatic about money and how to make it happen. Reminds me of a less travel-centric Vagabonding.

  pathlesspath.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom

  Their words

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order

  balajis.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

  Their words

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order

  balajis.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler

  Their words

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order

  balajis.com

+ 2 more

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch

  Their words

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order

  balajis.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Principles for a Changing World Order

  Their words

  The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Principles for a Changing World Order

  balajis.com

Social scientist at King's College London; writes The Great Gender Divergence on why societies differ in how they treat women.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Rising female autonomy cannot be the cause of falling birth rates, because births have collapsed just as fast in countries where women's freedom is heavily restricted.

  Their words

  Nicolas Eberstadt speculates that it’s all about rising autonomy. But that can’t explain why fertility has also plummeted in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and India, where women are often heavily restricted.

  Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?ggd.world

Co-founder of WordPress and founder of Automattic; blogs at ma.tt.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Llama is not open source: a licence that revokes itself once a user gets large enough is proprietary, whatever it is marketed as.

  open source

  Their words

  I believe Meta should have the right to set their terms—they’re smart business, and an amazing deal for users of Llama—but don’t pretend Llama is Open Source when it doesn’t actually increase humanity’s freedom.

  WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinkingma.tt

Free software developer; maintainer of sway, wlroots, aerc and scdoc, and founder of the SourceHut (sr.ht) software forge.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Copyleft licences impose obligations rather than restrictions, and it is from those obligations on the powerful that software freedom comes.

  Their words

  Copyleft does not impose restrictions, but it does impose obligations. The obligations exist to guarantee rights to the users of the software – in other words, to ensure freedoms.

  Copyleft licenses are not “restrictive”drewdevault.com

Partner at Collaborative Fund and author of The Psychology of Money, Same As Ever and The Art of Spending Money. Writes essays on investor behavior and posts frequently on X.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Unspent money buys freedom and control over your own time, which is what makes saving worth more than whatever it could have bought.

  Their words

  Unspent money buys something intangible but valuable: freedom, independence, autonomy, and control over your time.

  A Few Thoughts on Spending Moneycollabfund.com

Writes The Convivial Society, on technology and the moral life — what our tools do to attention, memory and how we treat each other.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The freedom that automation offers is freedom from the very involvement that makes a life meaningful.

  Their words

  The liberation we are offered is a liberation from the very care-driven involvement in the world and in our communities that would render our lives meaningful and satisfying.

  Waste Your Time, Your Life May Depend On Ittheconvivialsociety.substack.com

Science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist; writes the daily blog and newsletter Pluralistic, and coined the term enshittification.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Policy should secure people's freedom to leave a platform while keeping their community, their purchases and their data, rather than try to keep dying platforms alive.

  Their words

  And policymakers should focus on freedom of exit – the right to leave a sinking platform while continuing to stay connected to the communities that you left behind, enjoying the media and apps you bought, and preserving the data you created

  Tiktok's enshittificationpluralistic.net

Game designer; chief creative officer at Spry Fox (Triple Town, Realm of the Mad God) and author of the Lost Garden design blog.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The more freedom a design gives people to interact, the more of that freedom will be abused.

  Their words

  The more freedom you give players, the more they will abuse it.

  lostgarden.com

Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Cryptocurrency deserves to be dismissed: its problems outweigh its promise, and the trustless world it offers is not one worth wanting.

  crypto

  Their words, before

  One of the reasons I've never cared for crypto currencies is that the associated utopia of trustless society had zero appeal to me. I don't think the world is better off by erasing the need to trust in our transactional counterparts, so turning these transactions into pure computing always struck me as a regression.

  Their words now

  But wherever this leads us next, it's clear to me now that I was too hasty to completely dismiss crypto on the basis of all the things wrong with it at the moment. Instead of appreciating the fundamental freedom to transact that it's currently our best shot at protecting.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Freedom from the Market

  Their words

  Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute has a wonderful new book: Freedom from the Market

  braddelong.substack.com

Co-founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Hosts the Masters in Business podcast for Bloomberg and wrote How NOT to Invest.

• Recommendsaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

  Their words

  Rory Sutherland, Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life: Rory Sutherland is the Vice Chairman of advertising giant Ogilvy; he describes his “attractively vague job title” as allowing him the freedom to create a behavioral science practice within the ad agency. This looks intriguing.

  ritholtz.com

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  On Liberty

  Their words

  I chose this book particularly because we are having a lively discussion about freedom of expression today. Some of the challenges to freedom of expression today come from the left rather than from the right, although some of them still do come from the right. In this context, Mill's arguments are still relevant and deserve to be more widely known and more widely thought about.

  fivebooks.com