reading, watching & listening to

creativity is not a scarce commodity

had to read this several times to grok it but applied to a real-life example.

It’s hard to design the perfect onboarding. but it’s easy to check: “Did the user reach ‘Aha!’ in 3 steps instead of 7?” or “Did 80% of users complete the flow?”

So the industry (and people) naturally get pulled into automated loops. this is why mid-training is powerful and dangerous. it can manufacture the appearance of discernment while dodging deeper unmeasurable criteria.

“They have learned to produce the appearance of discernment without ever developing the faculty itself.”

fascinating historical perspective.

our ancestors experienced day-to-day unpredictability (you could die from childbirth, starvation was a constant threat, etc…) but global stability (if your parents were peasants, you’d prob be a peasant).

modern humans inverted that - routine defines us but there is global instability (the world is constantly changing - technology, climate, politics)

other weird things about modern life:

• children teach their parents how to use tools that are critical to thriving in modern society, a complete inversion of the transmission of knowledge through generations.

• non-local social comparison - we compare ourselves to billions of people, not a few hundred in close proximity to us.

• we are distanced from nature, whereas for generations before survival was tied to understanding the natural world.