Alex Wittenberg

The idea here isn't to write about one topic, one time. The idea is to take whatever you want to write about and write about it over and over again using different frameworks: you should write about it through an actionable lens, an analytical lens, an aspirational lens, and an anthropological lens (because each piece will yield a different result)... See more

“It’s convenience, and the way convenience is currently created by tech companies and accepted by most of us,” Horgan argued, “that is key to why we’ve ended up living in a world we all chose, but that nobody seems to want.”

What does it mean for a human being to be? (I realize this is starting to sound like a bad comedy sketch about philosophers lost in wild abstractions. I’m afraid that’s going to get worse for another couple of paragraphs before it gets better.) His answer is that our being is totally, utterly bound up with our finite time. So bound up, in fact, tha... See more

Societal pressures used to make it relatively easy to take time off: you couldn’t go shopping when the shops weren’t open, even if you wanted to, or work when the office was locked. Besides, you’d be much less likely to skip church, or Sunday lunch with the extended family, if you knew your absence would raise eyebrows. Now, though, the pressures a... See more

Self-managing: leadership is distributed amongst roles, not individuals.

Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided tha... See more

The dying world I spent so many years understanding on the other hand, despite the powerful normalcy field surrounding it, is in fact the less real world. The magical thinking that governs it is all the more powerful because those caught up in it are not even aware of it. 

The top five, Buffett says, should be those around which he organizes his time. But contrary to what the pilot might have been expecting to hear, the remaining twenty, Buffett allegedly explains, aren’t the second-tier priorities to which he should turn when he gets the chance. Far from it. In fact, they’re the ones he should actively avoid at all ... See more