In Lauren Oyler’s essay about anxiety last week, she referenced a late 19th century diagnosis known as Americanitis , which described “the high-strung, nervous, active temperament of the American people.” Whether incited by advances in technology (causing loss of sleep, excessive worry) or capitalism (causing long work days, fast pace of life), the... See more

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Upstream Razor:

If somebody tells you something that goes against their incentives and identity – pay attention.

E.g. If someone tells you the worst part about living in their city or the worst part of their job – it’s usually signal rather than noise.

Why?

They’ve had to go against their identity to say it.

They’ve had to swim upstream.

Almost every popular idea, no matter how dumb, has at least one paper claiming it’s true, one scientist promoting it, or one expert willing to be paid to defend it. 

Yet, experts ARE important, and science truly IS one of the most powerful tools ever created for discovering the truth.

Being able to point to just one paper, one scientist, or one exper... See more

Margret Atwood in The Atlantic feeld Murdered by her Replica and compares the AI-copyright situation to the scifi-horror-classic The Stepford Wifes: "In that 1975 horror film, the human wives of Stepford, Connecticut, are having their identities copied and transferred to robotic replicas of themselves, minus any contrariness that their husbands fin... See more

“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end.”

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, ... See more