The better AI gets at doing our work for us, the more we outsource our thinking to it. Thus, as we make machines more humanlike, they make us more machinelike. Perhaps we should be less worried about AI becoming conscious, than about humanity becoming unconscious.

We all know “startups are hard,” but I think we tend to imagine that this difficulty is bounded, contained, modelable, a bit like running a marathon: yes, legs and lungs hurt, but that’s normal and appropriate, and we know the route, the distance, and that there’s a finish line. This is a kind of difficulty we can contend with without losing oursel... See more

Are we idealists or pragmatists? Do we have principles we hold dear, and a vision for the future we want to create? Or are we fumbling along, tinkering, finding what works, and forever allowing contact with reality to rearrange our mental furniture, make a mess on our conceptual floor, and occasionally punch so many holes in the walls that need to ... See more

95% of content consumption is procrastination disguised as productivity.

Most people waste hundreds of hours consuming “just-in-case” content because it’s “interesting.”

Instead, you should consume "just-in-time" to answer a question keeping you from moving forward.

Right now the Metalabel squad is in the throes of the creative process of something you’ll see in the Fall. We’re excited about what we’re working on but we’re also in the thick of it. We still don’t know where it will all lead.

Some days the not-knowing is agonizing. The first time I experienced the feeling came while building Kickstarter, and it o... See more