David Pennington
@davidpennington
I write stuff. I’d like to write more stuff. Currently: reclaiming my brain.
David Pennington
dtpennington.com
Like everything else in modernity, people want instant results without putting in any sort of effort to earn them. And then they wonder why they’re empty inside, their life the product of an ongoing process to make everything ‘more efficient’ for the sake of efficiency. They listen to podcasts at 2x, guzzle down Soylent, abuse stimulants to speed-r... See more
Adam Singer • The rise of AI nihilism
the belief that you can do anything, including things you are blatantly not qualified for or straight up lying about— should be pathologized. It has many names (Dunning-Krueger, illusory superiority), but I suggest we call it blowhard syndrome as a neat parallel.
Stop Blowhard Syndrome
Emil Cioran never had a real job. ‘I avoided at any price the humiliation of a career,’ he observed toward the end of his life. ‘I preferred to live like a parasite [rather] than to destroy myself by keeping a job.’
Costica Bradatan • Learning to Be a Loser: A Philosopher’s Case for Doing Nothing
As soon as you start asking questions, you have an obligation to listen to the answers.
Ted Gioia • How to Read Plato
“Popular books such as What You Do Is Who You Are (2019) by the venture capitalist Ben Horowitz carry the implication that being and doing are synonymous. Busyness is a badge of honour, even a sign of moral superiority. Rest, in contrast, is often treated as if it’s passive and pointless. Indeed, I’ve noticed many people hardly think of rest as its
... See moreThe decline of polymathy... is a crisis of too much information.
Erik Hoel • Polymaths are back from the dead
The Zeitgeist Is Changing. A Strange, Romantic Backlash to the Tech Era Looms
Ross Barkantheguardian.com
“The new romanticism has arrived…Backlash is bubbling against tech’s dominance in everyday life, particularly the godlike algorithms - their true calculus still proprietary - that rule all of digital existence.”
Most of us have a hard limit on the number of focused sessions we can do each day.