Hey! It is raining here in Austin, Texas. I am listening to Arcade Fire and drinking a latte. Thought I would piece together a quick post with some recent recommendations that I feel are worth sharing. Hope you check them out, and if you do, hope you get value from them.
1. How to Think for Yourself – Paul Graham
A fantastic essay about evaluating ideas on your own terms.
“When you hear someone say something, stop and ask yourself “Is that true?” Don’t say it out loud. I’m not suggesting that you impose on everyone who talks to you the burden of proving what they say, but rather that you take upon yourself the burden of evaluating what they say.”
“For most people, degree of belief rushes unexamined toward the extremes: the unlikely becomes impossible, and the probable becomes certain.”
You will like it if you like thinking through first principles, considering the upsides and downsides to conformity and fitting in, and finding new ideas.
2. Why the Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid – Jonathan Haidt
A long essay about the fractured nature of America today, some causes, and some potential solutions.
“The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.
It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.”
This fits well with Derek Thompson’s recent essay ‘Why American Teens Are So Sad‘. In that Derek examines the evidence for why American teenagers are the saddest they’ve been for quite a while. Check out this awesome podcast with Derek Thompson and Jonathan Haidt where they discuss these two essays. You will like it if you like thinking about the problems of social media, ideal parenting strategies, and how our culture has lost the skill of healthy debate.
3. Why I Walk – Chris Arnade
Chris Arnade is a man who walks between 12 and 20 miles a day. He writes about his walks on his Substack, and this essay is about why he does this at all.
“Walking from my apartment to JFK, or my apartment to Shea Stadium, or my terminus walks from the end of a subway line back to my apartment. To be cliched, the beginning and ends of the walks didn’t really matter, but the fun is what and who I found in between.”
You will like it if you like urban design, thinking about pedestrian friendly cities, photography, and travel.
4. The Future of Artificial Intelligence – Making Sense Podcast
In this episode of Sam Harris’ podcast, Sam and Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Google and computer scientist) discuss the present state of AI research and the future implications of these systems. They ask, “are there things AI systems can learn that humans cannot master?” Systems that can find new applications of existing medicines that humans didn’t see, systems that can invent new materials our chemists and engineers haven’t thought of, systems that can devise new strategies for 2,000 year old human designed games, and systems that can diagnose our illnesses before any human doctor can. But also systems that may be used in more dystopian ways: to “predict” which prison inmates should be given more lenient sentences while neglecting others, can proof content and “accurately guess” if we will like it before we even get to see it, or may even be put in charge of the nuclear arsenals of conflicting governments. These systems are coming whether we want them or not, and this podcast is a short and practical view of the landscape. Most of us should be thinking about these things now.
You will like this if you are interested in AI or computer science, the intersection of technology and politics, you like hearing about the cutting edge of new tech, and how technology can affect our culture.
polymathematics 
Leave a comment