Daniel Wentsch

Third, and this is harder, you have to learn to metabolize feedback differently. When reality contradicts your model, it’s not a failure signal; it’s data. Neutral, immutable data. That's the whole point of making models in the first place, to test them against the world and update them. But you can only get that data by acting. The model serves

As one fun example, I read an article about a recent social media panic - an academic paper suggested that black plastic utensils could poison you because they were partially made with recycled e-waste. A compound called BDE-209 could leach from these utensils at such a high rate, the paper suggested, that it would approach the safe levels of

But it has proven very difficult to artificially satisfy even the most basic human pleasures. Who wants a birthday cake made with aspartame? Who would rather have a tanning bed than a sunny day? Who prefers to watch bots play chess? You can view high-res images of the Mona Lisa anytime you want, and yet people will still pay to fly to Paris and

For almost five years now, I’ve kept a note on my phone called my ineffable list. It’s a trick I learned from the writer Robin Sloan . Every time I come across something in the world that makes me pause—that has a little bit of that flavor of whatever it is that I like—I put it in my ineffable list.

I like the process of choosing the words I commit to posterity on the internet. I don’t just like it, I cherish it . That’s why, when I outsourced this task to AI in an attempt to be more productive, I was left unimpressed, and gradually, I stopped trying to use LLMs altogether.

What we make of our life—the sum total of thoughts, emotions, words, and actions that fill the brief interval between birth and death—is our one great creative masterpiece. The beauty and significance of a life well lived consists not in the works we leave behind, or in what history has to say about us. It comes from the quality of conscious

When we practice Tantra in Tibetan Buddhism, we imagine ourselves becoming the deity and embodying (and radiating) these awakened qualities of being. We use our imagination to cultivate — or more accurately reveal — our true awakened nature.

To put it simply, imagining yourself as your best self helps you become your best self.

While Vipassana