reading, watching & listening to

a really well done ELI5 explainer on AI training models. read this closely and you’ll learn a lot about how the incentives of the commercial web impact the quality of the training data.

“Most of the people I know working in AI—and I might have a biased sample size—are people who are inspired about fixing the world. They grew up on sci-fi, and they're from a really cool science fiction intellectual tradition that feels really modern, really American. I first got really caught up in that because, you know, in 2020 and stuff I was like, "Wow, the whole world is sad," and here everyone's really excited. Everyone's really happy, and everyone really wants to build America and really wants to make something great. But they are also fighting market forces. They're also just trying to stay alive.”

I read this in print (via Printernet’s exceptional curation). It beautifully captures the spirit of print. And Kai is a really good interviewer.

beautifully written.

This was illuminating. My notes:

Negative power is the way people have been control for most of human history.

Negative power means being controlled by prohibition or limitation, telling people you can’t do this or that. Today, people are controlled through positive power. Positive power tells you you can be whatever you want, you’re in charge, so you have no limitations. As long as you can put your head down, focus, grind, achieve your short term goals, set new ones and achieve those.

Authenticity is an ad campaign of neo-liberalism. It's a self absorbed nightmare. People now have to define themselves through themselves without any sort of help from the outside. Everyone is their own little personal project. Everything we learn is not just learning anymore. It's an investment in ourselves. Everything is about mentally optimizing yourself working, producing more efficiently with your mind.

Taste is not merely superficial preferences but a fundamental human experience linked to moral judgment and self-discovery.

The internet lacks the patience for difficulty and comprehension, resulting in a poor version of culture compared to what existed before.

Many people desire alternatives to the current internet and are frustrated with the lack of human curation.