Jason Shen

I remember after GPT-3 came out, I was with my tech-obsessed friends and we were like, hey, let’s read the GPT-3 research paper together. That provoked so many interesting ideas for me. And then when I went back to my parents’ house during the holidays — this was December 2020 — I started thinking about the diaries again. And I actually tweeted

... See more

1. The argument is that accountings of history are not accurate, and can never be accurate, thanks to the narrative fallacy . By its nature, narrative necessarily compresses reality into some coherent tale, meaning that accountings of history tend to overemphasise intention and action, instead of the more plausible ‘random actions by actors in a compl

... See more

In fact, people with extreme traits can often structure their lives in such a way that they can trade on the ways they’re exceptional, leaving no persistent reason to address some particular deficit they have. And, generally, people are savvy enough to hide their dysfunction. People will disappoint you, eventually.

Gladwell: I get attracted to stories that strike me as having potential. Outliers began, for example, with the chapter on the Jewish lawyers. I was talking to someone whose father was one of those lawyers, and she made this observation: “They are all like my dad. They are all from the Bronx, and their parents were all in the garment industry. They... See more

More recently I’ve kept repeating to myself, don’t abandon your vision . Decisiveness is knowing myself well enough to take the plunge, then the rest is all faith.

A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.

Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and... See more