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The Author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant Did It Again!
Matt Karamazov
August 20, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 24 minutes
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Today’s post is a monster. I spent 20+ hours summarizing one of my favorite books of all time, The Anthology of Balaji, by Eric Jorgenson, and my full book breakdown is finally ready.
Eric’s also the author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, another favorite of mine that has sold well over a million copies and influenced the thinking and decision-making of millions more.
I recorded a podcast episode with Eric a while back and I’m editing the thing now…To be honest, I’ve been living in mortal fear that he’d ask me when it’s finally coming out, but luckily he hasn’t so far!
Anyway, it’s coming out soon, and it’ll be uploaded to my YouTube channel.
Before we dive into the breakdown of The Anthology of Balaji though, I want to take a hard 180 and turn to the world of minimalist books, which is what my friend Jamie’s newsletter is all about.
You may be wondering what a “minimalist book” is, so here’s the short version:
A small book (6x9 or smaller) that has under 120 pages.
A larger book (larger than 6x9) that has under 80 pages.
Jamie has been in love with reading and publishing minimalist books for a while now. He wanted to share his passion and discoveries with other authors or aspiring authors who are interested in reading and/or publishing short books.
Each week in the newsletter you will discover:
A minimalist book to read.
A resource to help you publish your minimalist book(s).
A resource to help you promote your minimalist book(s).
As you can see, it’s the complete opposite of these gigantic book breakdowns that it takes me forever to write. Hey, maybe I should give this minimalism stuff a try sometime!
Anyway, I’ve been a big supporter of Jamie’s for at least the past year, I love what he’s doing online, and he’s got another newsletter I rarely miss called Minimalist Hustler, where 8,000 people receive a daily email with 3 quick & valuable resources that help them make more money online.
And here’s the link again for Minimalist Books, which I’m subscribed to as well.
And now, let’s talk about techno-utopias, ending death, verifying miracles on the blockchain, infinite wealth-creation, and building the future…
This Book is For:
*Anyone who's fascinated by technology and wants to become more involved, whether that's to study in a certain field, join or start a business, or simply follow along as we invent the future.
*Optimists and other forward-thinking people who are interested in things like life-extension, and other ways that all our lives could be improved by technology.
*People who are concerned about how fast the future is rushing towards us, yet who are open to ways we can mitigate the dangers while remaining open to the exciting possibilities.
*Everyone who believes that the future of humanity is brighter and bolder than its past, and who's ready to build the kind of world they want to live in.
Summary:
“Though it is full of Balaji's ideas, this book is actually a guide to thinking for yourself. Discover your own way to build the future you want to see. You might find your next great investment, start a billion-dollar company, or found an entirely new country.
Does Balaji sometimes sound a bit like a comic book villain? Maybe. He is an eccentric genius, after all. Have a conversation with this book. Adopt the ideas that serve you and wrestle with the others. When you're done reading, put the book down and get to work.
Our future is born anew every day. Use your powers well.
Create a product. Solve a problem. Build."
The feel of this book in my hands is like holding a revelation. It's like holding a vision of humanity's marvelously bright future, and after you're finished reading it, that bright, techno-utopian future Balaji predicts and describes is going to seem a lot more believable - and more imminent.
Balaji Srinivasan is a serial entrepreneur, investor, futurist, and yes, like Eric Jorgenson says, sort of an eccentric genius and comic book villain. He's a big, optimistic thinker with his feet firmly on the ground, while his head can be found way up in the clouds. When he looks at humanity and at the world, he sees value and infinite potential; where other people see walls, Balaji sees windows.
All of which makes it kind of difficult to summarize such a wide-ranging book about the potentially million-plus-year future of humanity and all the progress that could occur over that timespan. Make sure you're sitting down while reading this one, is I guess what I'm trying to say.
Eric Jorgenson (who's also the author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant) said that researching and writing this book made him live differently, and influenced the kinds of companies and fields he invests in. It gave him an appreciation for our place in the history unfolding today and impatience for the many ways we're punching ourselves in the face.
The Anthology of Balaji is built entirely out of transcripts, tweets, and talks Balaji has shared and that are scattered all over the internet, much like The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.
In the first part (and the rest of this paragraph is from Amazon), “Technology,” you will see how technology shapes our world today and the ways it could shape our future. In “Truth,” you learn how to think for yourself through the constant clamor of information and media. Finally, in “Building the Future,” you will learn how to wield Technology and Truth to change your life, change your community, and—maybe—change the future of our species.
My breakdown can be read in about an hour, but this, like most of the books for which I've written complete breakdowns, is one that I'd definitely recommend reading in its entirety. There's just too much in there, too many thoughts and ideas that are going to be relevant in different ways to different people, for my breakdown to be an adequate substitute for reading it yourself.
That being said, I've selected 18 of the most fascinating Key Ideas from the book for your consideration here, dealing with everything from life extension and the quest to live forever, to free speech and cryptographic proof of miracles, to the potentially millions of years of technological progress and techno-utopia we have to look forward to, on this planet and out there among the stars.
Key Ideas:
#1: Growing Toward Infinity
"I have a long-term horizon; I have my eyes set on the long-term goal of transhumanism. But I'm willing to be pragmatic and execute in the short run. I go down the to-do list toward that North Star. I'm always conscious of the long term.
Every few years, I feel like my life starts anew. I'm in my forties now, but I feel like I've just started because I built up various resources like distribution, network, and capital. Now I can broadcast ideas, invest money, and see big things happen.
The past has all been prologue. Now I've got a canvas to play with. Some people make a bit of money and go sit on the beach. I think of money as a stick of dynamite. It is leverage to go and blow up the obstacles in the path of my next goal.
I'd like to see us ethically and technologically aligned on progress. I'd like to see humanity believing math is good. Believing generating nuclear power is good. Believing getting to Mars is good. Believing expanding is good.
Let's get on the long-term track toward ascent. In my lifetime, I want to see humanity working together to grow toward infinity."
I'm even younger than Balaji (34 at the time of this writing), and I feel exactly the same way - that my life is just beginning. That I'm at the beginning of the beginning of my life, and that my future will be much longer, fuller, and brighter than my past.
This is the dream of transhumanism, which is multifaceted, but rooted in the idea that technological advancements can assist humans in living longer, healthier, more vibrant and cognitively rich lives than has been possible in the entire history of humanity until this point. Perhaps indefinitely, but we'll get to that later.
In fact, some people believe that the first humans who will live to 1,000 years old have already been born...and I don't think that's crazy anymore. Again, more on this later, but when you think of the quite literally unbelievable progress we've made to this point, not to mention the science-fiction-like medical technologies that are either here now or coming soon, I'd say that all of us have plenty of justification for feeling extremely optimistic about not just our own personal futures, but the future of humanity itself.
When you consider what's become available over the last 5-10 years, you have to ask yourself, What if this were to continue indefinitely? Is it that crazy to think that someone who's, say, 5 years old today, would stand a chance of living t0 500 years old given 75 more years of medical progress before they even reach the current life expectancy?
In his book, Excellent Advice for Living, the optimistic technologist Kevin Kelly points out that:
“Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist, you don't have to ignore the multitude of problems we create; you just have to imagine how much our ability to solve problems improves."
The breadth and scale of the problems we'll be able to solve 75 years from now (5 years from now!) literally only used to exist as science fiction, but today it's an actual possibility. Our capacity to solve problems improves so quickly as a society, yet the majority of people are trained to focus only on shorter timescales.
In their book, Scarcity, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir show that when people are forced to make due with limited resources, their attentional capacities are restricted to a narrower focus on the very next short-term problem. An idea like transhumanism wouldn't even register to the person who has no reliable access to clean drinking water, and why should it? They likely wouldn't be able to spare the cognitive resources to think about living forever. They have to survive today first.
But once we make inroads on solving these sorts of immediate, scarcity problems, we will free up capacity to lift our sights and attack the next biggest problem we face. The world is confronted by far too many short-term problems for transhumanism to become an immediate global priority today, but we can work towards it. Both as individuals and as a society. Individually, we can get rich ourselves and help other people get rich too, which I'll come back to later.
Solve your immediate scarcity problem, and make sure you can survive today and for a reasonable time into the future. Then, as Balaji has done (and is doing), build distribution; build a network; build optionality. Put your ideas out there into the world, claim them, and become known for them. Enlist the help of others to spread those ideas, and build an audience.
Then, on a longer-term horizon, you can think about transhumanism, the techno-utopian future of humanity, and living forever. Never ignore your long-term vision or forget about it either. It has to stay with you, even in the beginning. You have to build the muscle of looking up from your daily concerns and asking the BIG questions, like What am I going to dedicate my life to creating?
Some people think that they "should" or would even want to "retire" as soon as possible and then set up on a beach somewhere, slowly sinking into the sand until they die. But it's a bad idea. Maybe not a bad idea - just a boring idea. Honestly, I'd give it a month or two (max) before you start looking around and asking hard questions again.
Eventually, if you're anything like Balaji and myself (and not everyone has to be, but I suspect many people are), you'll feel an irresistible pull - a compulsion - to start investing in the future you want to live in. To be a part of that future, instead of sitting it out on the beach.
#2: Technology is Just Getting Started
"The incredible thing many people don't get? Technology is just getting started. We're only at the base of the exponential."
It's exciting enough talking about all the amazing stuff that's here now, but we're only talking about present-day realities and the science-fiction-y stuff that's coming around the very next bend. In, say, 5-10 years. But what about the next 100 years?! What about the next 1,000?!
I mean seriously: what might we be able to do, given 100...1,000...hell, what about 1,000,000 years of technological progress? Think! Dream! Imagine!
There's an absolutely incredible book on this called What We Owe the Future, by the Oxford philosopher William MacAskill. It's one of my absolute favorite books of all time and it's just...mind-blowing. There's no other word for it. Anyway, what he urges us to imagine (there's that word again) is that the 117,000,000,000 humans who have ever lived might represent less than 1% of the total number of human beings who ever will exist.
Here, take a breath while you ponder that.
Seriously, I won't keep going until you're ready.
Still need a minute? You good? Okay...
There could be millions and millions of years of human history yet to come; we could expand and explore and colonize the vast reaches of the outer universe; there are potentially trillions of human beings who will exist (and, most importantly, have great lives) in the future. But only if we solve our most pressing problems now. It's up to us. None of those beautiful, infinitely valuable human beings will ever exist if we don't get our collective shit together, is I guess what I'm saying here.
Another important point that Balaji makes is that the rate of change is accelerating as well. It's not that we'll make the same amount of progress in the next hundred years as we did in the last hundred years, but that we could make more progress in the next 10 years than we have in the last 10 million.
#3: The Most Important Thing We Can Invent
"Mortality is the main source of scarcity. If we had more time (or infinite time), we would be less concerned with whether something was faster. The reason speed has value is because time has value; the reason time has value is because human life spans are finite.
If you make life spans longer, you reduce the effective cost of everything. If reducing scarcity is the purpose of technology, eliminating the main source of scarcity - mortality - is the ultimate purpose of technology. Life extension is the most important thing we can invent.
We need to evangelize technological progress with every word and action. To recognize that the purpose of technology is to transcend our limits and to motivate everything we do with this sense of purpose. To take the winnings from our web apps and put them toward Mars. To feel no hesitation to start small and no shame in dreaming big. To tell the world it is possible to cure the deaf, restore sight, and end death itself."
We are the first generation of humans who actually have a realistic shot at ending death, but...should we?
I think Balaji may be missing something here, but he's absolutely correct in assuming that time has value because it's so limited. Then again, so does life. It means something because it doesn't last forever, and our lives are infused with a thrilling (and terrifying) sense of urgency because they won't last forever.
Ending death might make human lives less meaningful, but I also don't think that's an argument against making the attempt. Because, say we do "end death" and come up with technology that will expand human lifespans indefinitely. You can just...opt in. No one's saying that you have to upload your consciousness to a computer. You can still die if you want. A moral, open question.
Another interesting part to this is that having a realistic shot at living to 500 makes tragic accidents even more tragic, something else that Will MacAskill tackles in his book. If you expect to live for another 480 years, yet die at 20, somehow that's "more sad" than "only" missing out on, say, another 60 years of life.
What every optimistic, forward-thinking person can agree on, though, is that we need to evangelize technological progress and push for the elimination of as much as scarcity as we possibly can.
In that sense, life-extension (and everything that comes with it) is the most important thing we can invent. Some people still die even though they don't want to. Some die without even being given the choice.
Book Notes:
"To be against technology is to be on the wrong side of history. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. You won't take away voices newly gained by billions."
"We haven't made the emotional case for technology. The assumption behind sci-fi like Black Mirror is that the present is okay, but technology could make the future dystopian. But perhaps the present is dystopian and technology is our only hope for a positive future."
“Believing the next problem is solvable is a fundamental tenet of the philosophy of technology.”
"The incredible thing many people don't get? Technology is just getting started. We're only at the base of the exponential."
"The future I envision is so much better than how we live today. How much better? Think of how much better we are now than starving medieval peasants or slaves building the pyramids.
Future humans will look at today's living standard the way we look at those living conditions. These leaps in progress can continue. We can ascend.
Humans expanded out of Africa to the rest of the world. Oceanic navigation let us cross oceans. When we created submarines, we could go underwater. After inventing airplanes, we could fly.
That's the transhumanism of the past. Those machines all added to human capabilities. Our current constraints will fall away too. We can expand to the stars. We can live underwater. What else comes next?"
Action Steps:
#1: Learn to Code
You're very unlikely to regret learning how to code. It's useful damn-near everywhere, it's in high demand, people who possess the ability are paid well, and this is likely to continue. It's one of the surest bets when it comes to skills that are still going to be relevant for years and years.
It's also highly satisfying when you run a test on the code you've just developed and find that it works. No matter how simple the command or function, it's cool seeing what was once a foreign language to you turn into an external reality. Thinking in code is an entirely new way of perceiving, and even the process of learning it is worthwhile.
The future is going to be built on code - it is being built on code - and if you want to help build it, speaking the same universal language as the other builders is only going to help you. I like to give myself at least "two ways to win and no way to lose," and learning to code is an excellent example of this.
#2: Question Everything
Balaji wants you to question underlying assumptions about how things are currently done. Krishnamurti, in much the same way, wanted people to think for themselves and never delegate their thinking to a leader or other external authority.
I may not have an "i" at the end of my name, but you can put me in that crowd too: I don't want you to follow me, or believe me just because I said something or wrote something you agreed with. I want you to go and find out for yourself.
Alex Hormozi said that we can question all our beliefs except those we truly believe, because those are the ones we never think to question. Going deeper, asking yourself why you believe what you believe, and whether you can even explain your beliefs is what you must do. As they say, if you can't explain why you believe what you believe, then they're probably not really your beliefs. They're someone else's.
No one - and I mean absolutely no one - can tell you what to think, based on their authority alone. "Because I said so" is not a valid reason. Beliefs are the product of a dead mind, a mind that has ceased to question. The future is a process, always becoming, always "not yet," and once your mind has settled on a belief, that's the moment that it has become to die.
#3: Invest in the World You Want to See Built
Everyone changes the world every single day. Some people change the world more than others, of course, but it's not a competition. You don't have to invent anything that saves a billion lives (although if that's your ambitious, I say fucking go for it). You can just start wherever you are. Pick something you want to change, keep coming up with potential solutions, and keep running experiments.
If you can't find anything to change, what you're really saying is that the world is perfect and needs nothing. You and I both know that's not true. Again, it all comes back to running experiments. You don't know what you want to change, because you've never tried to change anything.
If it helps, you can draw your mind back to the fact that there is an abundance of problems and opportunities everywhere - potential directions that humanity could head - and you can play a part in directing the future.
Humanity can feed everyone, and you can be a part of that. Humanity can clothe everyone, and you can be a part of that. Humanity can expand into interstellar space and explore the fucking galaxy - and you can be a part of that. Why not you? Why not now?
"The path to success is to take massive, determined action."
-Tony Robbins
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With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your week!
Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
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