Neil

“inside us is what Hemingway called a “built-in, shockproof, shit detector.” How do we know something is shit? We watch the way the deep, honest part of our mind reacts to it.”

— A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

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LLMs accentuate my current strengths. To be too prideful to use them is like refusing to use spell check on grounds of principle

Those people who see clearly the necessity of changed thinking must themselves undertake the discipline of thinking in new ways and must persuade others to do so.

Most people don’t need more knowledge. They need a clear path. A simple system. A way to take action without getting overwhelmed or second-guessing every step.

A very common trope is to treat LLMs as if they were intelligent agents going out in the world and doing things. That’s just a category mistake. A much better way of thinking about them is as a technology that allows humans to access information from many other humans and use that information to make decisions. We have been doing this for as long a... See more

Creativity requires connecting the dots, and connecting the dots requires allowing time for my subconscious to consolidate my ideas and make associations. This means that, from time to time, I need to just stare out the window and do nothing.

This doesn’t feel productive, even though it is.

Too many people think freedom is the ability to do anything you want, instead of the discipline to not be a slave to your compulsions.