Even though I have talked with Balaji in person several times in the Network School, it is still refreshing to read the new book The Anthology of Balaji which collects his thinking and wisdom.

We talked about academia versus industry, he said academia especially in western is declining so for any ambious young people who wants to make a change can go directly insdustry. I was in dilemma whether go phd or work and decided continue working.

Another topic we discuss is about startup/entrepreneur versus working. He thinks entrepreneurs must be pain endurable while for easy life, one should aim for working in a big company. I have been working remotely all my work life and mostly at startups, I feel sometimes I feel pain and sometimes not, I think it mostly depends on the leadership.

Back to the book, I think AI acceleration is real and ASI (super intelligence) will be around within 1-2 years where it will help with our daily life in all most everything. And we can buy robots like we buy cars.

For crypto, I am not really sure espcially for the memecoin trend, I just don’t see any support for the value besides the community.

Another good advice in the book is how to manage the time, Balaji sets the meetings on Monday and Thursday, only on these two days every week. The rest days he will have longer time to focus on his own stuff, especially for deep thinking.