SF's math obsession: median Anthropic employee believes in 17% annual GDP growth
stevenstrogatz · x · 2026-11-13
Mathematician Steven Strogatz shares an excerpt from Lila Shroff's new piece portraying San Francisco as a city steeped in mathematics — from its sinusoidal hills to Pacific Heights investors discourse on scaling laws, S-curves and hockey-stick charts.
The tech industry's improbable main bet: if machines can be taught to improve themselves ad infinitum, that will set off an age of impossible growth. Per the excerpt, the median Anthropic employee's beliefs imply the economy expanding 17% annually by the end of the decade, with private-company valuations running into the trillions.
The kicker: in math, numbers can be natural, irrational, p-adic, and surreal — in San Francisco they simply feel made-up.
Related event: The Atlantic Portrays San Francisco's Math and AI Obsession(2 posts)→
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