The Long Horizon
Essays on the hidden systems shaping innovation, power, and humanity's long-term future.
Writing
Essays and research on innovation systems, discovery, and the conditions that allow consequential ideas to emerge and endure.
Project Aeon Essays
Writing about science funding, scientific freedom, and open-ended exploration and discovery.
Writing archive
Project Aeon
Surface Areas in Technoscience (Part 1)
Why compressed timelines do more than accelerate discovery: they filter which kinds of science can be pursued at all.
The Long Horizon
The Permanent Underclass Narrative Gets It Backwards
How the Ideaocracy mistakes gatekeeping for capability.
Project Aeon
The Death of Generative Wandering
What the pressures of modernity have taken from open-ended technoscientific exploration.
Project Aeon
Project Aeon in Practice
Structure, strategy, and support for breakthrough scientific discovery.
Project Aeon
Introducing Project Aeon
An introduction to Project Aeon's model for long-term, open-ended funding for 1,000 researchers.
The Long Horizon
On Generative Wandering
A case for long-horizon, taste-guided exploration and the conditions that allow it to flourish.
The Long Horizon
5 Book Recommendations (2H 2025)
Five books from the second half of 2025.
The Long Horizon
Innovation Layers
A framework for seeing innovation as a layered system and for finding the interfaces where promising ideas stall or gain momentum.
The Long Horizon
The Dual Selection Theory of Information
Why truth isn't enough in the viral age.
The Long Horizon
6 Book Recommendations (1H 2025)
Six books from the first half of 2025.
The Long Horizon
Betting on Chaos
What financial derivatives reveal about our deepest motives.
The Long Horizon
The Mathematics of Luck
Why success might be becoming more random, not less.
The Long Horizon
A Brief(ish) Actionable Guide on How to Write with AI Support
A stage-by-stage framework for writing better with AI.
The Long Horizon
The Greatest of All Games
What is it all for?
The Long Horizon
On Abundance
Strong vs. weak-form abundance, and why the difference matters.
The Long Horizon
Nature vs. Machine
A reconsideration of computational efficiency in the AI era.
The Long Horizon
6 Book Recommendations (2H 2024)
Six books from the second half of 2024.
The Long Horizon
Leaving Innovation on the Table (Part 2)
How innovation inadvertently gets trapped.
The Long Horizon
Leaving Innovation on the Table (Part 1)
Why it is unwise to assume we've reached the rate limit of innovation.
The Long Horizon
The Objective Paradox
Why seemingly bad but novel ideas are often discarded before their potential becomes visible.
The Long Horizon
The Evolution of Innovation: An Insight from Nature's Playbook
How constraints shape the novelty of innovation.
The Long Horizon
5 Book Recommendations (1H24)
Five books from the first half of 2024.
The Long Horizon
Non-Obvious: What is a Utility?
The neglected task of assessing new technologies for utilitization.
The Long Horizon
Non-Obvious: The Smoke and Mirrors of Rich World Wealth
The broken link between GDP and common prosperity.
The Long Horizon
Rethinking: The Rural Paradox - Why Low-Density Living is Unsustainable
Supra-urbanization can help us rewild the planet and secure our future.
The Long Horizon
It’s Never Been Easier to Start a Tech Business. Could That Be a Bad Thing?
Do declining barriers to entry reduce the boldness of innovation?
The Long Horizon
Venture Capital, Veblen Goods, and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
When startup equity prices diverge from fundamentals, we all suffer the consequences.
The Long Horizon
Beyond the Parts: The Benefit and the Curse of Emergence
How a common property of systems could be our salvation or our downfall.
The Long Horizon
A New Taxonomy for Venture Capital
A framework for getting more groundbreaking innovation from venture capital.
The Long Horizon
Are Humans Bad at Work?
If modern work has any relation to human worth, why are we naturally bad at it?
The Long Horizon
White Swans, Lessons from Poker, and Saving the Planet
Incremental innovation might be a safe route to a predictable failure.
The Long Horizon
The Decline of Genetic Diversity in the Capital Markets
What can economics and finance learn from the case of the banana?
The Long Horizon
Exploring the Development Dilemma
Rethinking strategies for catalyzing economic prosperity.
The Long Horizon
Understanding the Inequality Trap: Rising Returns and Its Impact on Society
A theorem for understanding how outsized returns to inequality create a vicious cycle.
The Long Horizon
Can A.I. Solve the Local Knowledge Problem?
If so, what would that mean for decentralized markets?
The Long Horizon
The Seductive Allure of One-Dimensionalism
Why attempts to simplify complex issues so often fail.
The Long Horizon
The Disappearance of Natural Limits
What happens when the gloves come off?
The Long Horizon
Interview: Building a Business to Last 100+ Years
A conversation with Jordan Tepper about building a business to last more than a century.
The Long Horizon
9 Book Recommendations (2023)
Nine books from 2023.
The Long Horizon
Artificial Intelligence and the Better Angels of Our Nature
A higher purpose for AI: making us the best versions of ourselves.
The Long Horizon
Imagining the Future of Insurance
The need for a value-creation mindset shift in a misaligned industry.
The Long Horizon
Ignoring Compound Growth (Or: A Reason Investors Love Big Numbers)
How the upward march of inflation is changing the rules of the game for innovation.
The Long Horizon
The Future of Work: A Long Horizon View (Part 2)
What the future may hold.
The Long Horizon
The Future of Work: A Long Horizon View (Part 1)
The historical role and modes of work may not last much longer.
The Long Horizon
Are Returns on Investments Too High?
A thought experiment for reducing inequality.
The Long Horizon
The Trouble with The Power Law in Venture Capital
A chicken-and-egg problem at the heart of venture capital.
The Long Horizon
The Historical Insufficiency of Financial Analysis
Mistaking past limitations for scripture & the culture war around ESG.
The Long Horizon
Venture Capital's Reality Distortion Field
How venture capital can become trapped by its own narratives.
The Long Horizon
When is Enough, Enough?
The New American Dream, its global implications, and its unsustainability.
The Long Horizon
An Interesting Question
The hidden influence of short-termism.
The Long Horizon
A World Awash in Short-termism
The many perils of a world awash in short-termism.