Reducing Hyperbole in Neurotechnology samalanascience.substack.com… From the article: "While intentions of the originators of ethical frameworks are usually extremely positive, I have seen time and again how bad actors in the private sector co-opt these initiatives to virtue signal. It happened in psychedelic medicine, crypto, desci, AI, etc., and it will continue to happen in any industry built upon emerging technology that offers newcomers/people with no expertise the ability to turn a profit quickly." See my most recent long form X post for this content, too. Still trying to optimize for posting across platforms.

Brom is definitely a social glue 💕😘

OMG! DID I MANIFEST THIS INTO EXISTENCE? Was watching Girls last night and thought, "when will this happen??" WOWOWOWOW

If you're working on anything in the compute markets, reach out to @therealbrom

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Continuing to feel very liberated in allowing myself to write & publish without too much refinement or editing. Stochastic brain-dumping will become more valuable over time. Perhaps it will be the only way to signal humanity online. Big fan of stochastic writing styles.

Nothing kills a great pitch more quickly than demonstrating a lack of situational awareness. Not knowing who else is building in your domain and not understanding what validation you must demonstrate to prove superiority over alternative solutions is a flag. It signals naivete and a whole host of other non-specific personality traits that make you less attractive as a founder. In deep tech and biotech specifically, this seems to come as more surprising to new founders, as I've often found many of these founders feel like scientific or engineering accomplishments should speak for themselves. In reality, having "evals" for how your tech outshines others across applications is even more important because of how capital intensive these segments are. This is a consideration that's decoupled from market research and problem identification. A lot of people new to building think it's just about showing that what you're building works. Table stakes. The hard part is convincing others that you know how to demonstrate superiority and can communicate it effectively. If you're building where no other solutions exist, think again - there's always a more distant-solution that you can compare your product to.

The tech world and Hollywood are converging along the same asymptote.

Lily runs a Chinese takeout spot in the Outer Richmond that kicks ass. Her storefront sign recently went SF viral - she had no idea! I went to go show her. Go visit her! She loves chatting about many different things and getting a chance to learn about others’ lives. A true neighborhood gem. Love you Lily!

A UCSF clinician just told me that shingles is common in the younger generation in San Francisco because of how stressed everyone is here!!! Anyone know someone who’s had shingles lately??

Relinquishing the idea that I will never have any typos is what's liberated me to start writing more. This has been genuinely catalyzed by human error becoming a novelty in the era of AI writing.

I’m pretty negative on the idea of trying to encourage investors and founders to adhere to specific ethical guidelines or frameworks, especially in emerging technology spaces. I'm negative for a number of reasons I'll dive deeper into some other time. That doesn't mean that I don't think discussion around these topics is important. It also doesn't mean that I think that the organizations trying to build these frameworks are wrong. Earlier this year, I was asked to lead a workshop at Asilomar for the Brain and Mind, hosted by BrainMind. I was ultimately tasked to co-build a set of "guiding principles" for the neurotechnology investor and founder community inspired by existing neuroethical frameworks. Months later, my ironic position is that we cannot create guides or tools for the investor community to use because there are some other, fundamental issues that exist, which should be prioritized before putting out forms or checklists. I personally feel that investors already have their sets of tools for underwriting companies and that imposing additional layers of formality, sociologically, is an ironic turnoff to capital allocators, including myself. Here's why: While intentions of the originators of ethical frameworks are usually extremely positive, I have seen time and again how bad actors in the private sector co-opt these initiatives to virtue signal. It happened in psychedelic medicine, crypto, desci, AI, etc., and it will continue to happen in any industry built upon emerging technology that offers newcomers/people with no expertise the ability to profit from quickly. What was supposed to be a constrained endeavor post-Asilomar has turned into a larger, separate, initiative that I'm now sharing in order to elicit participation from industry writ large. After speaking with dozens of people over the past 18 months around these topics, here's what I've decided to draft on my own instead of a set of neuroethical guiding principles: 1. A paper describing the ontology investors and founders are using, bringing real consensus to definitions of terms and concepts that are haphazardly thrown around with hyperbole and catalyze virtue signaling (think "NeuroAI", neural data, etc.). 2. An objective piece highlighting specific concerns in neurotechnology and providing a balanced view on the role (if any) of the investor and founder in these contexts. There are sociological realities of operating a for-profit business that ethical frameworks unknowingly constrain. There are also real, meaningful precedence being stewarded by organizations like OECD that we should turn to for inspiration and potential collaboration. We just need a white paper to synthesize all of this in a very balanced manner. Currently, I am organizing small dinners with high impact individuals to talk more strategically about this in collaboration with BrainMind. Individually, I am also putting out a call for experts in neurotechnology across the stakeholder environments to participate in the drafting of these two pieces with me. I will be finalizing my "drafting committee" in by December.