Many of the jobs we do today would have looked like trifling wastes of time to people a few hundred years ago, but nobody is looking back at the past, wishing they were a lamplighter

When you’re willing to look cringe, a whole world of opportunity opens up. You realize you can’t please everyone so you stop trying. You just focus on winning your game. If you’re trying to make in on the internet, you’re playing a different game than 99% of people—so stop trying to play their game. When you focus on your game 100%, you’re free to ... See more

Not giving a fuck if you look cringe is a superpower for the great online game. Like Peter Parker getting bit by a spider, I had my superhero moment with the druggie days. And I’m glad it happened. But you don’t need to go down that path to realize this: internet embarrassment isn’t that bad. Stop living in fear of being called cringe. The fear is ... See more

👋 Welcome to Hot Tub Talks, a monthly whenever-I-feel-like-it newsletter inspired by the conversations I would have in a hot tub with my friends (you!)

“Instead of machines trying to convince humans that they are people, machines now hope to convince humans that they are really computers. CAPTCHAs [...] are reverse Turing tests in which the computer judges whether a user is a human.” https://t.co/wCK5pEuZod

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.

If you’re posting on social media or any platform with an algorithm, the real question is: do you work for the algorithm or are you committed to working for the people who want to go where you hope to take them?

The programmer Simon Willison has described the training for large language models as “money laundering for copyrighted data,” which I find a useful way to think about the appeal of generative-A.I. programs: they let you engage in something like plagiarism, but there’s no guilt associated with it because it’s not clear even to you that you’re copyi... See more

We are all products of what has come before us, but it’s by living our lives in interaction with others that we bring meaning into the world