從《大空頭》到舊金山：AI泡沫裡的狂歡與眩暈

Original title: What's That Smell in San Francisco?

Original author: Spencer Yen

Original translation: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor's note: San Francisco is once again becoming the intersection of technological revolution and financial bubbles. AI companies, research labs, venture capital, outdoor advertising, and grapevine networks collectively shape a highly charged urban atmosphere: some are propelled forward by valuations and equity packages, others are immersed in apocalyptic imaginings of AGI, and still others view math prodigies as the gateway to the next generation of excess returns.

Starting from the line "I smell money" in *The Big Short*, the author records his observations after moving from New York to San Francisco: the city's technological density, wealth creation, and information asymmetry are real, but so are the anxiety, comparisons, and Big Bubble Behavior. When AI becomes the only status game in San Francisco, innovation, speculation, faith, and fear begin to mix, forming the most vivid on-site sample of this AI boom.

The interest of this article lies not in rushing to judge when the bubble will burst, but in presenting how the bubble happens: how people talk, compare, invest, and worry, and how they seek their place in the narrative that "the future is coming." The music is still playing, the party isn't over yet, but the author reminds himself, and everyone in it: you can dance, but don't get drunk.

Here is the original text:

One of my favorite movie scenes is the Jenga Tower moment in *The Big Short*: Ryan Gosling's character pitches the trade of shorting the US housing market to Steve Carell's hedge fund team.

In that conference room, he exudes a confidence so arrogant it's punchable, flanked by three props: his lackey Chris, his quant Jiang, and a Jenga tower printed with mortgage bond ratings. The opening line is also brilliant: Do you smell that? What is that smell? What smell? Perfume? No. Opportunity? No. It's money. I smell money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgF98vyn2fY

A few months ago, I moved from New York to San Francisco to join a friend's startup. Before moving, everyone told me, "You have to go to San Francisco," saying that's where everything happens. So during this time, I've been facing a question: Is San Francisco really that important? Was I really missing something by being in New York?

So far, my answer is: if you want to be at the center of this massive technological revolution and bubble, then this is indeed the place to be. The density is real, the grapevine networks are real, and because of that, information asymmetry is real.

During my time in San Francisco, I've accumulated some observations and thoughts. Here's what I "smell" in San Francisco:

1. People are shaking
2. There's only one status game here
3. A city that keeps crying wolf
4. Obsession with math prodigies

What strikes me is how starkly contrasting people's experiences can be in the same city—walking down some streets, you feel unlucky enough to think you're in hell; turn another corner, and you see the bay, distant cypress trees, and beautiful scenery. The most tech-forward, futuristic moment is probably watching various autonomous vehicles roam the city streets. I can't help but smile every time I see those new, friendly light-blue Waymo cars. Or, you might feel like you're being watched by Ava, the AI BDR. I hate that ad. But I have to admit, their "rage bait" successfully got me to still mention it. Every morning, as I step out of my apartment, I see this monster:

Why do people graffiti friend.com but not this garbage ad? Also, if you live nearby, we can go get ice cream together!

People in San Francisco are shaking

A few weeks ago, I hung out with my friend Jared (@imjaredz). He lives in New York but recently joined Cognition. We had lunch and coffee at the Cognition office. The vibe was nice, coffee was good, and the rooftop was great. I asked him what he thought of the San Francisco vibe.

"Have you noticed that people in San Francisco are shaking?" I laughed, thinking: What? Shaking? Then I realized I'd had cold brew in the morning, ingested 300mg of caffeine, and was also a bit shaky. "Yeah, literally shaking. I'm not against everyone maxing out their ADD tendencies, but next time you have a coffee chat, pay attention—see if they're shaking."

Bubbles and boom periods bring a restless energy, as if it's now or never to "make it." I'm not immune—after Jared pointed it out, I noticed I might be shaking sometimes too. The meme about "hustling to escape permanent bottom rung" is overused, but every meme becomes popular because it captures the zeitgeist. If nightlife is a city's heartbeat and a thermometer defining its culture, what does it mean when a "dog startup's" 24-hour coffee shop becomes the de facto overnight hustle haven?

Shaking is part of the process of technological revolution and financial bubbles. I used AI in this writing this time, and I apologize in advance if you want to kill me for it. But I was Googling Carlota Perez to find some quotes, and I really liked Gemini's summary of the "Frenzy Phase":

Frenzy Phase: The peak of the installation period, where market psychology abandons fundamentals. Financial participants shift from seeking dividends to capital gains, causing the "paper economy" to decouple from the "real economy."

Source: https://stratechery.com/2021/the-death-and-birth-of-technological-revolutions/

A friend of mine coined a term called "Big Bubble Behavior." It's a beautiful phrase, and I've been using it for the past two weeks to mark everything that fits the frenzy phase. Market euphoria can sometimes drive irrational behavior. Shaking is Big Bubble Behavior. I've seen platters of lobster tails twice in my life: first at a crypto party in a Venetian Island mansion in Miami in 2021, and second at ClawCon in 2026.

Big Bubble Behavior

There's only one status game here

David Foster Wallace, *This is Water*: https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

In San Francisco, the water is AI. Outdoor ads are everywhere—billboards, buses, bus stops, shared bikes, even the sky seems taken over.

My problem with San Francisco is that the dominant status game here is only one: tech. You go to dinner, or hang out in the park, and you hear the same words. You also see a lot of "alpha farming" (exploiting information advantages) because those grapevine networks are real. And I can't even be angry, because I'm that kind of person too. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

The problem is, when a city has only one dominant status game, it's too easy to compare yourself to others.

We increasingly measure and compare each other using vanity metrics, like how much money was raised, or what letter of the alphabet your company's funding round is at. I really hope someone raises a Series Z, because that would directly prove how absurd the private market has become. You hear gossip: which hot startup is being chased by financial players to invest, and at what sizzling valuation. Then you can't help but start doing that disgusting, Blind-style backward math: how much is someone's equity package actually worth now?

I told a friend that if you see the math of backward salary calculations and offer optimization on Blind, you'll cringe so hard. Blind is that anonymous big-tech social network, best known for memes like: "I'm having a life crisis, my wife might leave me, but do you think I should take Meta L6 or Google L9? TC: $969K." So why are we doing the same thing here now? Go touch some grass. Or, maybe that's just my cope.

In New York, there are at least seven status games simultaneously. Finance, big law firms, music, fashion, celebrity circles, old money family offices, journalism, sports, entertainment. Because the range is so wide, some games are so distant they feel almost unreachable, making them interesting to talk about and learn about. It disperses the attention of all ambitious people.

I enjoy asking my law school friends which top law firms are the most prestigious, and understanding the subtle differences between each; I enjoy learning about the world of fashion and luxury, and what it takes to survive in that industry; I also enjoy understanding the comfortable lives of quant elites and their garden leave arrangements.

San Francisco is creating unprecedented wealth, which brings a strange energy. A research friend mentioned that people around them are already studying how to buy land and diversify assets into scarce resources. There's a feeling: you're either someone who owns lab equity, or you're not. There's a joke that San Franciscans don't know how to spend money; this strange energy comes from massive new wealth being created, but people don't know what to do with it. First-time rich? Let experienced rich kids teach you how to enjoy life.

*Super Rich Kids* — Frank Ocean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XCQNpjWmRE

A city that keeps crying wolf

My first impression of San Francisco was a sense of apocalyptic doom. Maybe researchers in the labs really have seen some kind of "Second Coming," and if so, their calls to slow down and emphasize safety are certainly justified. But I can't truly know. The only thing I know is how the apocalyptic doom makes *me* feel—not great!

I've already had quite a few nihilistic conversations, with vibes like: "If Mythos can wipe out everything in one go, or punch through everything, then what are we even doing here making software?" And "Will AI destroy our lives?" And "AI will cause massive inequality and bring a lot of pain to society."

My one-sentence take here is: Humans will always find other things to do, work will migrate to higher levels of abstraction, and new things will become valuable.

We are very bad at predicting what future society will look like. I think the anti-capitalists I read in college were angry in the wrong direction—imagine their reaction if they saw humans deriving joy from AI-generated fruit garbage videos, or the Italian brain rot of "Tung Tung Tung Sahur."

"The problem isn't that AI makes content stupid, [sniff], but that we enjoy this stupidity, treating it like a sacred garbage, a digital fetish object, [sniff], isn't it?"

From my friend Samir. His bio: not a researcher, but he has a "Fish Guy."

Anyone else have their own "something Guy"? Let me know.

A friend working at a lab pointed out that the GTM (go-to-market/sales/growth) team and the research team at the same company currently have completely different life experiences. That apocalyptic doom is balanced by something else: "Come hang out with the GTM team, have a beer, touch some grass." There's definitely something worth pondering in the pessimism of the model creators versus the optimism of the people closest to the technology being deployed. Time to Forward Deployed!

Reality has a surprising amount of detail: https://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail

Six years ago, when I was in college, I wrote about how AI would reshape social structures, titled *Polanyi and the Second Great Transformation* (no need for Pangram AI detection; Medium before 2023 was like an organic pasture for human writing).

Let me explain this reference: Karl Polanyi was an Austro-Hungarian economic sociologist, best known for his book *The Great Transformation*. Written in 1944, it critiques the rise of modern market capitalism in 19th-century England. So, the "First Great Transformation" refers to the shift to capitalism, and my 21-year-old self thought I was clever by calling AI the "Second" Great Transformation... you get it.

Polanyi's most famous concept is "The Double Movement," which describes a historical push-and-pull phenomenon: on one hand, free markets continuously expand; on the other, society generates counter-forces attempting to protect itself through regulation. The first movement is capitalist elites trying to expand free markets and commodify society; today, it's commodifying intelligence. The second counter-movement is people reacting to market-driven destruction and trying to protect society; today, it's anti-AI, anti-data center rhetoric.

Here's my naive college writing from when I was 21:

Polanyi explains that the development of machinery for production led to the "fictitious commodification" of labor (people) and land (nature). Although the Fourth Industrial Revolution is occurring within a market system, the arrival of mechanical minds brings a different threat: taking over work. As computers can perform more "human" cognitive tasks with greater efficiency, many ordinary people may lose their jobs.

Polanyi writes: "Nothing could have saved the common people of England from the impact of the Industrial Revolution. The blind faith in spontaneous progress had taken hold of people's minds..."

https://medium.com/@spenceryen/polanyi-and-the-second-great-transformation-6d6364b5d3c6

So now, thinking about it, maybe those who keep crying wolf do have a point. Blind faith in spontaneous progress may not end well. Polanyi's critique of market capitalism is this: for most of human history, economic activity was subordinate to social, cultural, and religious institutions. But later, market capitalism reversed this relationship, making society subordinate to the economy.

How do we ensure that society doesn't become subordinate to a nation of geniuses in data centers? As Ben Thompson accurately pointed out in his article on Anthropic's Mythos, the joke of the story "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" is that the wolf finally came.

But what would my inner capitalist think? Then invest in social, cultural, and religious institutions! If you have any good trade ideas, feel free to DM me your prospectus.

Obsession with math prodigies

In that Jenga scene in *The Big Short*, another favorite bit of mine is when Ryan Gosling points to the Chinese guy next to him and says, "That's my quant." This vibe has a strange similarity to the recent batch of hot founders being chased by investors—they are often the gifted kids who dominated math competitions as children.

Again, Ryan Gosling, responding to Steve Carell's skepticism:

"You're saying that if the default rate just gets to 8%, these bonds will collapse, and it's already at 4%? If it gets to 8%, it's the end of the world?" "Yeah, that's right." "Why is no one talking about this? Are you absolutely sure about this mathematical model?" "Look at him. That's my quant." "Your what?" "My quan-ti-ta-tive, my numbers expert. Look at him. Don't you notice something different about him? Look at his face." "That's pretty racist." "Look at his eyes. I'll give you a hint, his name is Yang! He won the national math competition in China, he doesn't even speak English! So yes, I am very sure about this mathematical model."

In some investors' eyes, the