Escape the algorithm
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The PARA Method – the best way to organize a folder that I’ve ever found.
Getting Things Done – Systematize the clutter in your brain and get things done – they call it work Zen for a reason.
An opinionated guide to using Anki correctly. – repetitive ways to improve learning.
Hollywood has changed dramatically, in obvious ways to those old enough to remember the old system. Stars used to be marketed as gods, their words uniquely valuable, their images curated completely. Now it’s different. The internet makes controlling an image impossible, competition from social media, news, and unlimited streaming means only a handful of stars can be marketed to everyone, and even then, they remain stars that started out before the era of fragmentation. Conspiracy theories nip at the margins — what was all that marketing covering up, exactly? And we’ve started to question the overarching narratives that we absorbed.
“Forever Young” (YouTube) – I’ve watched this video many times; it feels like lifetimes ago. Yet the people are still stars today. It’s because all the money spent branding these actors can’t be replicated in a fragmented ecosystem, so they’re still marketable.
George Clooney on Hollywood “elites” (X) – Plenty of conspiracy theories exist; here’s a grounded take.
We’ve all been raised by evil love stories – Be careful what you consume.
In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari says that symbols tie cultures together. Without them, we couldn’t unite into nations and tribes. Money is a symbol, national identity is a symbol, brands and institutions are a symbol. Symbols therefore are important, and the digital world rushes over us with new symbols and destroys old symbols. What does this mean?
Don’t get lost in the world of signs (X). – Want to avoid getting lost? Here is a very practical (and very short) strategy.
Things are getting weird (X) – Where is this all going and where is it going to go?
My review of Superman – the symbol is as important as the movie.
“the curve we’ve been riding just flattened into a long plateau.”(X) – a sensible look at what physics and energy teaches us about the future of AI.
“What would a human pretending to be an AI say?” Interesting read on the language used by chatbots, and how it is based on human language. “AIs are trained to predict the training data, not to learn unrelated abilities, so we should expect an AI asked to predict the thoughts of an AI to describe the thoughts of a human pretending to be an AI.”
“ChatGPT and the meaning of life” – a philosopher’s thoughts on a future of life without work, and what it means – both good and bad. “Grief, you don’t need me to tell you, is a complicated beast. You can grieve for something even when you know that, on balance, it’s good that it’s gone.”
Reading Wikipedia articles from other countries is a good way to escape local bias, because other countries lack the incentives to prop up narratives. French Wikipedia paints the American Revolution as a violent and treasonous riot that started when Britain required the colonies to pay for their own defense:
The American Revolution is a period of political changes after 1763 in the thirteen British colonies of North America, which gave rise to the American War of Independence against Great Britain, with the help of France. The founding episode of the American nation and the birth of the United States, the revolution was manifested by violence against the British authorities, a war against English troops and social unrest.
More here, and once it adds foreign languages, Grokipedia will likely be the same.
The comic book writer Grant Morrison understood that if you get to tell a Superman story, you’ve been entrusted with global symbols of justice and kindness and goodness which are important to people. He understood this power, and when he had the opportunity to write Superman, he bucked every existing trend (and his own ouevre), returning Superman to the ultimate paragon of virtue.
Like Grant Morrison, James Gunn understands the power of the Superman symbol. He treats this symbol with respect for its power to elevate others, creating a movie where Superman understands that— in his own words — kindness is punk rock. Kindness is the true act of defiance against a cynical, treacherous world.
Zach Snyder most definitely did not get it. He tarnished the symbol, creating a darker Superman for reasons that never made sense, were never entertaining, and which wasted the talents of Henry Cavill. So it’s refreshing to see – and hope – that this marks a return to symbols and a franchise that inspires rather than drains, that shows real people rather than marketable archetypes, and that stands on its own morality rather than mirroring whatever is most politically advantageous at any given moment.
More: The cameos are extraordinary, the actors playing Lex Luthor and Mr. Terrific turn in amazing, super watchable, A+ work. James Gunn makes Hawkgirl a badass, dials Guy Gardner up to ten, treats Lois Lane like the competent professional she is, and keeps Jimmy Olsen interesting. And in an amazing, beautiful detail, James Gunn makes Clark’s parents real, not flannel-wearing Abercrombie models. They’re normal, they’re pre-diabetic, and they’re not gorgeous or eloquent or filled with endless reservoirs of wisdom — what they are is honest and good and they hold Clark to the highest standards, expecting him to meet those standards of human decency no matter how powerful he is.
Are there plot holes? Yes, totally. Could the script use a little more tightening? Yep. Do the fight scenes need a bit more tension? Sure. But no one cares, because this is fun, it heals through inspiration and man oh man does it set up the potential for a great DC Universe. Marvel better watch out.
As Scott Adams says, our brains were not built to understand reality, our brains evolved for reproduction. Human brains don’t innately understand statistics and are designed for storytelling. People with widely different views (a Catholic and a Buddhist, say) can hang out together with no problem. In short, we don’t have a strong model on reality. So how can we tell who has the best model?
The only real way is to bet on it. Ask someone to make predictions, and see how good they are at making them. This gives you a better way to test someone’s model of reality than the story they tell you.
The website Kalshi allows you to track global predictions. Over time, presumably, we’ll learn just how good a wide number of thinkers who need to put actual money on the line are at understanding consensus reality. This may potentially allow you to “predict the future” based on current predictions by people with strong, proven maps of how reality actually is. We’ll also see if bad actors can manipulate reality by contributing heavily to prediction markets in their favor.
This is regulated, institutional-grade infrastructure for trading reality itself. Building on the foundation that Polymarket established globally, Kalshi brings prediction markets into the regulated US financial system.
It will remain to be seen, but if the predictions match the future, we might be seeing the best tool we have for predicting the future.
I’ve come to accept that we all live in information bubbles, that it’s hard to pierce those bubbles, and that it’s helpful when we get a chance to see outside our realities. But unfortunately, piercing through what we know is often a very painful experience.
One obstacle is that people get judgmental about people not like them. You hear this when people with money say that poor people should work harder or when poor people say the rich are all callous. The world outside always looks different.
Another obstacle is that the best way to get out of our information bubbles is to be kicked out of them, and that is exceedingly painful and not something I recommend. But occasionally a well-written, non-judgmental piece gives us the opportunity to widen our understanding, and when that happens, I think it’s good to pause for a moment and take the opportunity, because it’s better for everyone when people widen their information environments. So here are two excellent articles, and they’re eye-opening and a reminder don’t take anything for granted:
“Being poor” “Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won’t hear you say “I get free lunch” when you get to the cashier.”
“secretly poor” “I’ve invented headaches to beg off from dinners with friends at restaurants and broken water pipes to cover the fact that sometimes I can’t afford to host people at my place.”
Balaji Srinivasan outlines his ten predictions on the future and current state of AI in this article. Among his predictions, he states that AI isn’t taking jobs as much as allowing people to take on any job. I’ve seen this directly in my experiments at Heartwizard Games, where I’m leveraging AI to create engaging stories built on a city framework I’ve developed, with more experiments to come.
All respect to Balaji, but I think it’s too early to predict what this means for the job market. While AI currently acts as an amplifier and extends our ability to do multiple jobs, we don’t have enough data yet to understand whether we’re heading into an Accelerando scenario where jobs are no longer necessary. Our best way to predict what’s coming is to focus on what we can imagine, because if we can imagine it, it can eventually be built. Several science fiction stories (Accelerando, The Dancers at the Edge of Time, and the Culture series of Ian M. Banks) provide viewpoints where AI gains more agency, not less. And it seems to be happening faster than predicted.
Balaji also notes that AI is shaping up to be polytheistic, not monotheistic, meaning that instead of the single AI seen in science fiction, multiple AIs exist, each working differently. Maybe this will remain the case, but centralization is a strong force which we see in corporations, organizations and governments. In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari notes that there is an ongoing trend toward centralization, reinforced by our technology capacity to build myths encompassing larger, centralized cultures. Why then wouldn’t this apply here, when AI provides the ability to coordinate across much larger levels of complexity and distance?
Balaji is always worth reading. Full article here.
This author seems to think so, and after reading it I’m inclined to agree. I just rewatched Billy Madison, and let me tell you, there is a lot that doesn’t add up when you rewatch it as an adult. A quick primer: Billy Madison spends his days in perpetual drunk adolescence, the spoiled son of a hotel magnate who presides over a company with 61,000 jobs. When the hotel magnate makes the decision to hand over the CEO reigns to his VP, Billy Madison issues a challenge to his father: If Billy completes grades 1-12 in 24 weeks, then his father will give him control over the company.
Some points to consider:
Creating a comedy parody is hard. Not many people have done it, so we don’t have many examples to compare. But it does seem like Billy Madison is lampooning the idea in most comedies that the protagonist is the good guy who deserves to be right, simply by being the protagonist.
The central goal of Sandler, Herlihy, and director Tamra Davis in making Billy Madison in the way they did seems to be the complete and utter subversion of the idea of a lovable oddball triumphing over the odds.
Billy Madison is still funny. In fact, it’s funnier than I remembered, even though Adam Sandler makes it clear that it would be completely illogical if Billy Madison gets the company and treats him as the hero anyways.
It’s not easy to write comedy parodies. In fact, it’s done so rarely that we don’t have good experience for recognizing it when it happens. If Adam Sandler wrote Billy Madison as parody, he’s operating on a higher level than he let on. More here.
Should you learn to appreciate better culture? This interview insists you should. Some reasons: Because good culture shows people “how to be greater…than the forces that destroy them,” because good art shows that there is a value in ethical behavior, because it reveals life from “a position of solemn detachment.”
I think you can be an elitist without being a snob. You can think that some tastes are better than others, not just because they are more satisfying, but because they engage in a more creative and fulfilling way with the human soul, without condemning people who don’t have those tastes
You can disagree with his definition of what makes art good, but nonetheless his position is the definition of taste: He defines what makes good art, and then compares against that definition and is willing to tackle difficult work that approaches that problem.
Refining your taste is critical to protect against the dumb thinking encouraged by marketing algorithms. Their purpose is to sell, it’s not to enlighten or enrich.
But I have more work to do in establishing my tastes as completely as is articulated here. The full thing is worth reading.
This interview with a Brave Search designer explains why Brave Search is different from competitors like Google and DuckDuckGo. Brave Search is privacy first, and it is not built on top of search engines like Bing or Google (DuckDuckGo is built on Bing Search, for example).
Brave Search is not yet 100% independent either, but it can be, and it would continue to work even if all other search engines disappeared.
I’m not sure what to do with this information, other than noting that it’s unusual to have a search engine that doesn’t rely on the big tech companies.
In his essay “How I Read,” Rob Anderson offers advice on reading better and more deeply, which it’s important because “You can tell the difference between a smart person who reads and a smart person who doesn’t by how they express ideas, the references they make, and the chains of logic they follow.”
How does he read? First, he considers TV, movies and podcasts as supplements to deep learning which help him retain information – not the deep learning itself. He sets aside time to read, doesn’t commit to every book he reads, and finds time to fit reading throughout his day.
There are a lot of good nuggets here if you’re looking to change your reading habits.
You should write, not because it makes you rich or brings you site traffic. You should write because it enriches you. When you write, you generate questions, you pursue interesting curiosities, and you engage with that information. This process makes you a different person:
That’s the promise: you will live more curiously if you write. You will become a scientist, if not of the natural world than of whatever world you care about. More of that world will pop alive. You will see more when you look at it.
What an excellent piece of advice. The full thing is here.
Grognardia argues that nerd subcultures, which used to be hard to access, have been transformed into brands to be marketed and have thus lost their nerd appeal:
Nerd subcultures were once genuinely weird – offputting, insular, and proudly obscure. They were difficult to access and defiantly uncool and that very inaccessibility acted as a crucible, forging originality and independence. But the rise of the Internet, and especially social media. has flattened all subcultures.
He suggests a solution: Seek out content that isn’t optimized for algorithms and existing IP. More at grognardia.
It wasn’t Erol Otis (he designed the cover). It was John Dee, who came from a comics background and thus drew lean, muscular heroes and heroines. And as this article points out, he drew halflings really well:
Jeff liked to show Halflings in actions other than picking pockets or running scared. His Halflings were fighters first and thieves second, more inspired by the rules of Basic D&D than Advanced, and therefore came off as a more valuable addition to a party.
As a guy who loved the illustrations in the red book, this is a neat fact.
History tells us that the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer threw a woman down the stairs in a fit of anger that his thinking was interrupted when she insisted on talking in the hallway outside his door. The story is used repeatedly to help us understand Schopenhauer’s character.
The problem is, it’s not true. So how did it become accepted knowledge? This article traces the story from its origin, to its development, and finally to its acceptance as canon.
Schopenhauer lived a long time ago, this story is of interest mainly to people who follow philosophy. For modern readers, what’s interesting is how a dishonest myth gets shaped, which we can certainly apply to stories in our own times. More here.
Daniel Kahneman wrote Thinking Fast and Slow, a foundational text about the various ways humans make decisions. This post summarizes a few of his strategies for improving thinking. One stood out, because I think it would apply to better hiring decisions:
Delay Your Intuition: At 22, Kahneman redesigned the Israeli army’s interview system. The old way relied on gut feelings about recruits, and it failed badly. His fix: make interviewers score six specific traits separately, write each score down, then after completing all six scores, close their eyes and give an overall intuition. The interviewers revolted. “You’re turning us into robots,” one complained. But when they tested the new system, it worked dramatically better. That “close your eyes” instruction survived in the Israeli military for 50 years. Most people form an impression in seconds and spend the rest of their time confirming it. The best wait for all the information before letting their intuition speak.
Read the whole thing here.
Basement Whatever 