Peggy Noonan on whether Sam Altman can be trusted

In a less friendly profile for the [New Yorker] published this April, titled “Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?,” Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz wrote that Mr. Altman is “often described, either with reverence or with suspicion, as the greatest pitchman of his generation.” Many around him say he lacks extensive expertise in coding or machine learning. Messrs. Farrow and Marantz report “multiple engineers recalled him misusing or confusing basic technical terms.” 

Most of those interviewed shared the critics’ judgment that “Altman has a relentless will to power that, even among industrialists who put their names on spaceships, sets him apart.” A board member who had worked with Mr. Altman told the authors: “He’s unconstrained by truth.” 

Messrs. Farrow and Marantz report that in the fall of 2023, when the OpenAI board famously fired Mr. Altman as CEO, the company’s chief scientist told another board member: “I don’t think Sam is the guy who should have his finger on the button.” Board members believed he had “deceived them about internal safety protocols.” 

Mr. Altman famously fought back and was reinstated. Still, “the colleagues who facilitated his ouster accuse him of a degree of deception that is untenable for any executive and dangerous for a leader of such a transformative technology.”

~ Peggy Noonan, "Sam Altman Is No Oppenheimer: Neither a scholar nor a scientist, someone like him shouldn’t be in charge of the future of humanity," WSJ, October 9, 2026

 

Dylan Grice on money, trust and social cohesion

At its most fundamental level, economic activity is no more than an exchange between strangers.  It depends, therefore, on a degree of trust between strangers.  Since money is the agent of exchange, it is the agent of trust.  Debasing money therefore debases trust.  History is replete with Great Disorders in which social cohesion has been undermined by currency debasements.  The multi-decade credit inflation can now be seen to have had similarly corrosive effects.  Yet central banks continue down the same route.  The writing is on the wall.  Further debasement of money will cause further debasement of society.  I fear a Great Disorder. 

I am more worried than I have ever been about the clouds gathering today.  I hope they pass without breaking, but I fear the defining feature of coming decades will be a Great Disorder of the sort which has defined past epochs and scarred whole generations. 

"Next to language, money is the most important medium through which modern societies communicate,” writes Bernd Widdig in his masterful analysis of Germany’s inflation crisis, Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany (2001).  His may be an abstract observation, but it has the commendable merit of being true.. all economic activity requires the cooperation of strangers and therefore, a degree of trust between cooperating strangers.  Since money is the agent of such mutual trust, debasing money implies debasing the trust upon which social cohesion rests. 

So I keep wondering to myself, do our money-printing central banks and their cheerleaders understand the full consequences of the monetary debasement they continue to engineer?  Inflation of the CPI might be a consequence both seen and meas-urable.  A broad inflation of asset prices might be a consequence seen, though not measurable.  But what about the consequences that are unseen but unmeasurable—and are all the more destructive for it?  I feel queasy about the enthusiasm with which our wise economists play games with something about which we have such a poor understanding.

~ Dylan Grice

(As quoted by Tim Price in "Flying Blind," December 4, 2023.)

Charlie Munger on trust

Of all forms of pride, perhaps the most desirable is a justified pride in being trustworthy.

~ Charlie Munger

Tim Price on investing and trust

We don’t trust politicians.  We don’t trust overvalued ‘meme’ stocks.  We value committed free market capitalist entrepreneurs, we trust in price discovery as far as central banks will allow it, and we trust gold.

~ Tim Price, "A Question of Trust," Price Value Partners, February 15, 2021

Jeffrey Tucker: "Fauci is a performance artist"

Fauci is a performance artist who wakes up in the morning and tries to more than anything else figure out his media gigs.  He doesn't look at the science...  He knows his talking points and he clearly believes in the noble lie, as he himself admitted on the mask [issue].  And he's flip flopped on every issue from schools to PCR testing to travel restrictions to business closures and so on.  This man will say anything.  He is impressed with himself as a performance artist; that's what he is...  His main concern is "what am I supposed to say today to achieve my political goals and please my benefactors?"...  This is the most untrustworthy intellectual in the 21st century as far as I'm concerned.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, "Fauci Slammed by Nobel Prize Winner with Jeffrey Tucker," OAN via YouTube, December 14, 2020

Steve Jobs on vision

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

~ Steve Jobs

Kevin Duffy on trusting authorities

If we want our country back, people are going to have to stop trusting the authorities - government officials, the media, so-called medical "experts." Your best defense is to develop critical thinking. Your last defense is to own a gun.

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, June 4, 2020

Criminologist on fear, lack of trust, and the social fabric

We live in a society with a quarter of a billion people.  Once in a while these terrible things are going to happen to people.  Should we all worry all the time?  What kind of society are we going to have if no one trusts each other? It tears the social fabric apart if we assume that everyone we run into is a criminal.

~ Mark Warr, criminologist, University of Texas, "Are we scaring ourselves to death?," video by John Stossel, 12:42 mark

Nassim Taleb on trust

I trust everyone except those who tell me they are trustworthy.

~ Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes, p. 67

Sheldon Richman on trust, freedom, and power

How, if we can't trust people with freedom, can we trust them with power?

~ Sheldon Richman

Kevin Duffy on trust

Don’t trust politicians. Or anyone who spends other people’s money.

Don’t trust warmongers. Or anyone who spills other people’s blood.

Don’t trust power-seekers. Lord Acton was right: “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Kevin Duffy on trusting your fellow man

Why is it that, for the most part, we go about our lives without a second thought of getting knifed or robbed? Because the vast majority of people have some kind of moral compass. Do 99.9999999% of the people who ride the subway resist the urge to murder someone because they’re afraid of being caught and sent to jail? A tiny proportion, perhaps. But nearly all don’t do it because they know it’s wrong.

If we have a distrust of people (or lack of faith), why aren’t we more concerned about handing over massive power to a tiny minority? If people are inherently bad, or can’t be trusted, the last thing we'd want is concentration of power.

~ Kevin Duffy, Bearing Asset Management, November 5, 2004