nico λ

Spending time sharpening the axe is almost always worth it

You’re going to be renaming things, going to type definitions, finding references, etc a lot ; you should be fast at this. You should know all the major shortcuts in your editor. You should be a confident and fast typist. You should know your OS well. You should be proficient in the shell.... See more

We psychiatrists tend to start our first sessions with some variant of the question: “What would you like to change?” People often list negative goals: to be less depressed, stop using drugs, feel less anxious, etc. It’s a start, but we often need more. There is a helpful reframing found in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: no dead person’s goals.... See more

Both projects adopted a similar approach using biometrics, blockchains, crypto tokens ($WLD and $H, respectively), and Zero-knowledge proof (ZKP). They are both somewhat controversial—in my opinion for misguided reasons, rooted in a lack of understanding of ZKPs or ideological bias against biometrics and crypto. Both can be considered early-stage... See more

But I think perhaps the main element in Musk’s radicalization is simply the feedback loop of the internet - Musk has millions of fan-boys cheering on his every lurch to the right, every tweet about immigration or Anthony Fauci or the ‘woke mind virus’. He’s a transhumanist enslaved by his own machine, a wizard deceived by the demon algorithm which... See more

The point is rather that we should be highly suspicious of people and movements that depict themselves as escaping human nature's self-serving and competitive instincts or propose societal transformations that rely on our collective ability to escape them. And more generally, we should be sceptical of any narrative endorsed by those on the left or... See more

Reciprocal Narrowing— refers to how the brain adapts to new experiences and environments. When we are immersed in addiction, this cognitive narrowing obliterates our capacity to see multiple perspectives. We become singularly focused on the thing, or ‘object,’ we are after. As a result, we become increasingly dependent on securing this object in... See more

For all its chilled-out associations, the attempt to be here now is therefore still another instrumentalist attempt to use the present moment purely as a means to an end, in an effort to feel in control of your unfolding time. As usual, it doesn’t work. The self-consciousness you experience when you seek too effortfully to be “more in the moment”... See more

The personal development / productivity space is littered with conflicting advice of varying utility. It attracts the intellectually promiscuous. Commitment-phobic concept sluts endlessly dabble with frameworks and tools, hoping to someday reach a moment of certainty when they’ll finally take action…99% of self-help is escapism.