Humans In The Loop

Here are eight imperatives—all of them drawing strength and sustenance from the humanities:

1. We need a way of defining and pursuing progress that doesn’t reduce that concept to something that only comes from a digital device.


2. We desperately need access to values and wisdom that aren’t corrupted by the relentless financial metrics and imposed

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To be lost is to be human

Feeling lost is a fundamental part of the human experience, a feeling that traces back to the dawn of history.

What I call temporal curiosity is the practice of actively directing our curiosity across time – past, present, future – to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, others, and the world around us.

Past curiosity. Directing our curiosity towards the past can help us understand our origins and learn from history. By exploring past experiences from... See more

In practice, that meant permission to stop , permission to play ( including to do work that still felt truly fun), and permission to go internal (get back in touch with her internal compass, goals, and sense of self). She was still working, she was just being a whole lot more mindful about where she was directing her energy.

You see it don’t you.

• “artificial” intelligence


• “imitation” crab

They put it right in the title and so we believed them and now we’re acting as if these dumb autocomplete fuckdongs are the next stevie hawkings.

Real crab still exists. People still eat it.

And if that’s true, then real intelligence exists too. People still have it. Let us use it

Part of the problem with the Lean Startup mindset is that it sees life and work as an optimization problem. The point is to help people live a good life, not just an efficient life. The goal is human flourishing, not convenience. The goal is a good future, not just a technically advanced future.

When someone responds in a way you didn’t expect, ask them, “What did you hear me say?” Most of the time, the other person heard something incorrect. Follow up with “I’m glad I asked; let me try that again.”

With more remote and hybrid work, I think we probably have to be more thoughtful about creating connections — to new people and new ideas. I don’t think it means we can’t do it, but perhaps we can’t rely on water-cooler or photocopier serendipity to the extent we might have in the past.

Perhaps we can use tactics like the “Monday Notes” NASA... See more

as humans, we tend to do whatever it takes and to use any justification to keep busy, even if the task is meaningless. In the words of the scientists behind the study: “Our research suggests that many purported goals that people pursue may be merely justifications to keep themselves busy.”