Thomas

You could say paradigms are harder to change than anything else about a system, and therefore this item should be lowest on the list, not second-to-highest. But there’s nothing physical or expensive or even slow in the process of paradigm change. In a single individual it can happen in a millisecond. All it takes is a click in the mind, a falling... See more

Lakoff reminds us that metaphors are the fundamental building blocks we use to make sense of our world and provide a framework for acting in the world

Ambition isn't about getting more money, more goods, bigger houses, greater acclaim from people you don't know or respect. It's not about anything that can fit on a spreadsheet or graph, or that lends itself well to bragging on social media. All of that is just grasping, not ambition.

Ambition is about the echoes you want to leave reverberating in... See more

What is included in a narrative, what is left out and the values it embodies are determined by what cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff refers to as ‘frames’. These cognitive structures are shaped by our personal and collective histories and allow us to conceptualize and organize what we see (and fail to see) and how we see it. The... See more

A very common trope is to treat LLMs as if they were intelligent agents going out in the world and doing things. That’s just a category mistake. A much better way of thinking about them is as a technology that allows humans to access information from many other humans and use that information to make decisions.