Evan Armstrong – Will the Moral Tech Billionaire Please Stand Up

The Nick Halaris Show

This week on The Nick Halaris Show we are featuring Evan Armstrong, the author of the popular Napkin Math newsletter and the lead writer for Every, a technology publication focused on the intersection of AI, finance, and business. Evan regularly writes thought-provoking, extensively researched, original articles on the most important trends and issues in the tech world. His Napkin Math newsletter has become a must-read for executives, venture capitalists, technologists, and investors around the world and something I always look forward to reading.
I wanted to have Evan on the show to highlight his important and compelling writing and get his take on how technology is impacting our civil society, both for good and bad. Evan stands apart from many writers because he’s willing to explore beyond the usual boundaries of technology and business and seriously consider things like morality, society, and culture. He’s also someone who is not afraid to put forth challenging opinions and hypotheses. Tune in to this fascinating episode to learn:
- Just how hard it is to find an example of a moral billionaire and why
- What you can learn about a person from the way he/she earns and spends money
- Why the fatal flaw of the crypto industry is its over-reliance on retail investors
- How technology companies came to rely so much on deliberately addictive products
- Why the incentive structure of the internet produces ever greater moral promiscuity
- Why AI and advanced robotics could shape a whole new world and way of being
- & Much, much more
Stay tuned to the end to hear Evan’s take on why, in a world where we’ve already reached peak screentime (i.e. we’re already spending 12 hours a day in front of screens), competitive forces are incentivizing companies to brew up a toxic storm of addictive, attention-grabbing, and often morally dubious content, products and services.
As always, I hope you all enjoy this episode. Thanks for tuning in!
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