Cognitive Revolutions

This is an idea I'm still workshopping. In summary, new knowledge gets created or discovered over time, as long as people seek it. When that new knowledge is discovered, the means for communicating this new knowledge is poorly defined and crystallizes over time. The best example is language. It is one tool that really separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. As Yuval Noah Harari describes in Sapiens, the ability of humans to organize and take action based on things that are not real is not seen elsewhere. People go to war over trivial matters. The ancient Egyptians built pyramids to bury their pharaohs. Language is a cognitive tool. But we have different types of languages now. Languages to express different ideas concisely. Mathematics, musical notation, programming languages, football play calls, internet slang, etc. A new cognitive revolution is brewing - AI. There is a lot of talk about it positive and negative. The risks are real and AI is becoming more accessible. I think it is a democratizing tool. But democracies require participation. We've watched as people have used the internet to leverage themselves to abundance and influence. We've also seen people describe what it's like to be on the other end of that. AI promises to be much more and much faster. What happens when you don't partake in a cognitive revolution? I intended this as an article for my blog a few weeks ago. But I didn't think it was ready yet. I still don't. Hoping to connect the dots here over time.

muizz

Much of our seeming intelligence actually comes not from raw brainpower or a plethora of instincts, but rather from the accumulated repertoire of mental tools (e.g., integers), skills (differentiating right from left), concepts (fly wheels), and categories (basic color terms) that we inherit culturally from earlier generations.

Joseph Henrich • The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

ChatGPT Is Blowing Up Marriages as Spouses Use AI to Attack Their Partners

futurism.com

You cannot outsource your thinking to machines you don't understand

You cannot navigate an increasingly complex world without thinking about things that aren't designed for your understanding

Damned if you do… and if you don't

There is no alternative

for an idea to shape society it must be communicated. There are many technical challenges to communicating ideas, and one of the more important ones is applying a gears-level understanding of how people evaluate ideas.

Samo Burja • Intellectual Legitimacy | Samo Burja

⚡️This is the record of a species that discovered a cheat code and has no intention of ever giving it up. Inflation is not an accident. It is not a flaw. It is not mismanagement. It is a civilizational operating principle. And once you see it that... See more

SightBringer x.com

The biggest problem in shipping is plain English

Hrishi Olickel olickel.com

Amazing things happened when geolocation was democratized. What does the future hold when that happens with intelligence?

Excerpt: “When truly transformative technology becomes accessible, it's hard to imagine how things will change - only that they absolutely will. The release of GPS to consumers was a similar moment - it would have been hard to predict Uber, Doordash and the creation of the gig economy from that final piece being unlocked: accurate location finding and routing anywhere in the world.“

The DuPont Company's Chart Room

hagley.org

It is easy to take for granted the abundance of organized information we now have access to on demand.

DuPont created this room in 1919 and didn't share details about how they used it in public until 1950.

Names like Hunter, Cooper, Tanner become appealing as those professions become alien to us, more symbolic than real; after the collapse, our children will be named Recruiter, Codeninja, Webdev, out of the same abstract nostalgia

neoltitude x.com

This actually wouldn't surprise me

The mankind’s knowledge lasted better when it was printed on paper. 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible. https://t.co/38LFmpgnaS https://t.co/dtxUlX5hhn

@mikko

x.com

QT from below

A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100

Venkatesh Rao

ribbonfarm.com