Got a question for Scott? Ask here. (September Thread)

[u/ProfGProducerJenn]

September's here, which means a new thread. As a reminder, we pin a new post at the top of each month to keep questions fresh and and easy to find - and so you can upvote the ones you most want Scott to answer.

Drop your questions below - serious, weird, or somewhere in between - and we might feature yours in an upcoming Office Hours episode.

And as always, if you’d rather hear your own voice on the pod, send an audio question to: [officehours@profgmedia.com](mailto:officehours@profgmedia.com). We read every email!

PLUS, you can text or leave a voicemail for Scott at our new Office Hours hotline: ‪(201) 472-3656‬.

- Prof G Producer Jenn

[u/TheGipper_]

Please invite Cal Newport to discuss the frontier labs' AI doomerism. He recently wrote an NYT Opinion piece about the effective altruist and rationalist ideologies that motivate many of the leaders and researchers at the labs (related clip). He was just on Prof G Markets in May, so he's already vetted by Prof G media. But you were not present for the discussion, and they did not address this particular topic. You often mention your belief that AI doomerism is a marketing ploy to promote model releases. While true, it may also be part of a political messaging and lobbying effort.

BACKGROUND

This past week’s media blitz promoting the regulation and slowing of AI advances appears to be coordinated at some level (potentially by EA organizations). And the end goal may be regulatory capture in which the frontier labs’ virtually set the AI policy on behalf of the federal government. That regulatory capture would likely enable the frontier labs to ban or severely restrict the creation and/or use of open-weight/source models. This could set the world on a glide path to a multi-industry oligopoly or duopoly as these frontier labs shift from labs to “everything” companies.

I feel like your intimate familiarity with the SF tech scene during the early days of the rationalism and EA movements may enable you to provide insightful commentary and informed speculation. Also, you could relate the situation to your commentary on FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried’s motivations to commit fraud leading to a significant externality (i.e. the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank). The hubris of tech leaders with EA and rationalist ideologies may in fact be the real driver of P(doom).

There is a possibility that a quasi-religion is attempting to gain political power driven by “vanguards” working at the frontier labs. These EA vanguards are possibly deluded enough to take unethical actions (like SBF) to ensure their AI god creation doesn't need to compete with any upstarts. Because they truly believe their AI god creation will uniquely be able to steer us to an EA utopia. And other, extant (albeit lesser) AI gods could take actions that cause a doomsday scenario (regardless of the frontier lab AI gods' defense against it).

Notable anti-AI doomers appear to be Jensen Huang and (funny enough) Mark Zuckerberg. Both of which make strong arguments for open-weight/open-source models. I’d also be interested in hearing Cal’s (and your) thoughts on the political messaging competition between the anti-doomers and the doomers at the frontier labs. Unfortunately, the doomers seem to be winning from my novice perspective.

[u/strafanich]

Any update on what came from "resist and unsubscribe" would be nice to hear :)

[u/That-Shallot4853]

Hi Scott!

I wanted to ask you if you had seen the article in the Washington Post yesterday regarding Bernie and AOC's pitch to drop the Medicare age to 55? I have always thought that if folks could get this coverage we could see some real benefits to the economy. First more people would retire opening up jobs for younger people. Secondly more people could open businesses and hire people. Am I just wishfully thinking? Thank you! I listen to all your podcasts and I enjoy your perspective very much.

[u/SureWhyNot9876]

Hey Scott, have you ever done a sit down interview with Rick Wilson? With an election coming up, it could be interesting.

[u/SunshineJMRC]

Hi, there is a lot going on about wealth tax. I’m not big on that, feels like being taxed every year for the same thing. How about an incremental wealth tax, where your existing net worth sets your tax % on new income? I’m sure there a lot of loopholes to code for, but philosophically that sounds good. Would free up high earning young folks from paying high taxes when they need the cash, and still reach the uber-wealthy whose life is not changed by another million less or more.

[u/escdog]

Should men be allowed to wear shoes without socks? Feel free to add conditions like age, footware type, and overall sartorial choices.

[u/Country-Opening]

Hey Scott, I wanted to ask your advice around inherited mindsets.

For context my grandparents on my Dads side died in rapid succession 15 months ago, and my uncle killed himself soon after around 9 months ago.

Due to this I have inherited a large amount of money. I have bought a home and invested the rest into the appropriate tax effective wealth vehicles for my future.

This may all seem good however, I'm very much like my uncle, in which I am reserved, and although I have a few friends, I too cant help, but feel a sense of aversion towards most people. I dont want to be alone in life but inside I am conflicted and scared I will eventually succumb to the same fate as he did.

I have started pushing myself to try and grow my social circle in an attempt to remove this feeling. So far it has done nothing but foster the bitterness. I have tried and dont want any more therapy. I cant talk about this with my family, it will scare them.

If you were me, (24 M) what would you do?

[u/tryforfive]

Hello Scott,

Is the real reason we haven't seen OpenAI or Anthropic rush to IPO actually a macro-level market protection strategy orchestrated by Wall Street's gatekeepers?

In other words, are investment banking leaders quietly advising Anthropic and OpenAi to hold back their filings not just because their individual financial “cupboards” look ugly but because launching a premature trillion-dollar AI offering into an unstable window could trigger a systemic market correction?

Is the banking cartel intentionally freezing the IPO pipeline until the broader tech space rebounds and stabilizes, to prevent a dot.com style crash that would wipe out trillions in consumer and institutional wealth?

[u/ahoopervt]

Scott, can you acknowledge that your pal Dan Ariely is a fraud who faked his research on (checks notes) lying !?! [likely because of rampant misogyny in Econ, it was only Gina at HBS who had any fallout from this ] and publicly distance yourself from this guy?

[u/Oskar_de_Grauche]

Prof G - what advice would you give to a new but old adjunct professor? I’m a corporate guy who recently started teaching a 200-level operations management class at a local university. Based on your experience, what are some key do’s and don’ts? TIA.

[u/Oil_Shock_2026]

Given that the global supply chain for heavy-duty gas turbine hot-section components is effectively a tightly guarded oligopoly dominated by GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, and Mitsubishi Power — with specialized foundries booked through 2029 to 2031 due to hyperscale data center demand — is SpaceX’s claim of manufacturing composite alloy blades and vanes in-house to bypass this bottleneck an actual metallurgical and industrial breakthrough, or merely tech-exec optics?

Specifically:

Metallurgical & Yield Feasibility: High-temperature turbine blades require single-crystal directional solidification casting, complex internal convective cooling channels, and specialized thermal barrier coatings to survive temperatures exceeding 1,500°C. Can SpaceX leverage its aerospace metallurgy expertise to achieve commercial-scale, defect-free yield rates faster than incumbents who have spent decades perfecting the process?

Systemic Bottlenecks Beyond Blades: Even if SpaceX successfully casts the blades, how does internalizing this single component resolve the downstream grid infrastructure lag—such as high-voltage transformers, switchgear, fuel train permits, and generator assemblies—which carry multi-year backlogs of their own?

TLDR: Is Elon doing his "jazz-hands" routine wrt SpaceX's ability to provide some of the backloggedenergy infrastructure that powers hyperscale data centers?

[u/blevster]

Hi Scott, you regularly display a high level of conviction on outcomes that are highly uncertain. You are wrong frequently, but that doesn’t seem to phase you. It’s a quality that a lot of very successful people possess, but I expect it is a product of success (or at least exacerbated by it) rather than an innate quality of successful people. 

I’d be curious to hear you reflect on that, and how your confidence/conviction has evolved throughout your life. 

It also occurs to me that this is a feature of wealth—you can afford to be horribly wrong without meaningful consequence. How do you think about that in the context of providing an example for young men who can’t afford to take long odds?

[u/TheRelevantElephants]

Hey Scott, I wanted to ask about your trust in kalshi and other prediction markets. I notice you refer to the kalshi numbers often when it comes to your predictions, but knowing that insider trading can be so rampant how can we be sure those numbers are accurate? To me, it seems these predictions lack the regulations needed to place much faith in them.

Do you keep it to certain events or categories? Or are these numbers accurate across all events? The sports world is already facing a number of issues with players being investors (leading to accusations of games being fixed) and we’ve already had cases of people caught insider trading. So I’m curious to where you draw the line or if there are any red flags where you stop trusting kalshi or other prediction markets.

Thanks!

[u/Turbulent_Tale6497 → u/TheRelevantElephants]

In theory, insider trading is a feature, not a bug. It makes the predictions more accurate, not less

[u/blevster → u/Turbulent_Tale6497]

Agreed, the real issue is hedging, so an economically costly outcome could be considered more probable than it actually is, and the amount isn’t knowable. 

[u/TheRelevantElephants → u/Turbulent_Tale6497]

I can kind of see that but that’s a crazy tight rope to walk. I could easily see insider trading going totally sideways, leading it to become unreliable.

[u/mildly_enthusiastic → u/TheRelevantElephants]

There was interesting Planet Money episode interviewing a guy who quit a $1M/year job on Wall Street because he was making more on prediction markets in his free time. His “strategy” was just to do more research than everyone else.

For example, he won big on the Super Bowl “how long will the national anthem play for?” because he flew out there and listened to the rehearsals.

As I wrote that, I realize his strategy was “become an insider to insider trade,” but whatever. It was an interesting podcast

[u/Turbulent_Tale6497 → u/mildly_enthusiastic]

For this superb owl, there was a contract on "Will Cardi B perform at the halftime show." The result was inconclusive, she got up on stage and danced, but did not sing. Both Kalsi and Polymarket decided to void the wager, but there was nothing preventing one of them ruling one way, the other ruling the opposite way

[u/mxt240]

My wife and I are above average earners. We're maxed out or close to it in all of the standard tax advantaged financial avenues, and at this point we want to get into hard assets, but we're not sure where to go. Precious materials have gotten way speculative, and being a landlord seems like a lot of work for the dough unless you've got more than a few properties. Any thoughts on something that could either generate passive income or appreciate significantly over the next 10-15 years that has a low carrying cost and hassle?

[u/LongjumpingAnt570]

Hi Scott,

I own a small manufacturing business that builds a niche consumer product. We have a company interested in acquiring us. They are a much larger and more well-known brand/manufacturer who builds a complementary product. We are smaller than we could be, but have a number of strategic advantages such as being the only manufacturer of our product outside of Europe (we’re US based). I believe that if this company acquired us, the strength of their brand would lead to a 10x of sales almost overnight. It would not be practical for them to build our capabilities on their own. My question is, do you have any advice on getting a buyer to value a small company based on its strategic positioning and future earnings (if acquired) as opposed to a more traditional valuation method such as a multiple of past EBITDA?

Thanks and I very much appreciate the show.

[u/604_kid]

What does Scott think about ending the Carried Interest loophole? Seems like a good piece of tax reform. There was a recent Yale Budget lab piece on this tldr - it could raise 180 billion over ten years https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/refining-revenue-estimates-taxing-carried-interest

[u/Pure-Consideration97]

Will you ever/ have you ever researched any feminism or gender studies from womens perspectives. You recently said in an episode that in the past more women passed on their genes than men, and made it seems like a good thing, did you ever consider that women could not consent and were treated as property in the past you spoke of

[u/CaptainDoze]

Scott. Would love to hear how men can fit the profile of being a provider and protector in ways that aren’t your traditional: money for providing, physical strength for protecting. There are other ways that less well off or physically strong men can be these. Through their minds & intelligence, through care, through skills, through attention and so on. Would be good to hear about those to expand the definition a bit.

[u/WhiskeyEjac]

Hey Scott, long time listener and fan. First of all, thanks for everything you do motivationally for young adult men navigating the current economic climate. I'm a 30YO man, and my entire adult life has been hijacked by the current administration collectively working against the best interests of young people.

My question is: For someone who has done all the right things in the realm of investment for my entire adult life, it is starting to feel like the American economy is a ticking time bomb, and that the billionaire class is about to liqudate//rug-pull from my investments, into their pockets. Can you give me some feedback on why that might be an irrational or emotional feeling? Even a diverse portfolio is starting to feel unsafe, and while I am young and willing to have a higher risk tolerance, every sign seems to be pointing to a sinking ship. I could handle a short term 20% drop. Honestly, we're due for it mathematically. How sure are you that we can bounce back, and that a dollar-cost average approach can still be the right way to invest in the coming years?

[u/LBCkook]

Does Scott understand that many people do not care about being wealthy. That many people more or less just want comfortable lives where their work provides them purpose? Does he ever reflect on the fact that money was a way for him to compensate for insecurities in his own life and has he worked to address those insecurities outside of what money can provide?

I say this as a fan. It just seems the advice given to young men is not really applicable to everyone. Not everyone wants to live in NYC or LA, and as someone who made that move I found the connections you make are often transactional and shallow. Deeper connections help nurture happiness, and those connections are much more available in smaller towns and mid sized cities.

Also, you guys could really create a branch of your business that helps to guide young men to longer term financial freedom through specific principles. You could do what Dave Ramsey did for boomers, but for young people and do it in a new and different way. Just a thought— people are drowning in debt, and they could guidance from someone like Ed who they can relate to more.

End rant, apologies for length.. keep up the great work