Strategies for discovering new valuable ideas
Plus: Why we need AI literacy, how worldview affects explanations, and why more computing power isn't enough for AGI – Digest for the week of May 26th.
In this digest:
Ignore the new releases, read these books instead – When overwhelmed by new options, it pays to find older, proven alternatives.
Broaden your range to improve your thinking – Explore fields that are different from yours to increase your repertoire of mental models.
This is why we need AI literacy – Texas professor fails entire class after ChatGPT told him it wrote their assignments.
Thiel vs. Gladwell: How worldview affects explanations – All observations are theory-laden.
Bigger doesn’t mean smarter – In nature, bigger brains don’t necessary mean smarter creatures. Does this apply to artificial brains, too?
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Ignore the new releases, read these books instead
Value-based pricing advocate Jonathan Stark tweeted a practical example of opportunity cost: Should you spend ten hours… Reading some popular new book that everyone is talking about? Or Re-reading a book that completely changed your life many years ago?
Broaden your range to improve your thinking
I was revisiting my recent posts, and I noticed that the theme of “sharpening your thinking” appeared several times. A way to improve one’s mental prowess is to accumulate an arsenal of mental models and lessons learned. David Chapman shares sound advice on how to do that in his essay
This is why we need AI literacy
Last week, a Texas A&M University-Commerce professor failed his entire class on account of having used ChatGPT to complete their essays. How did he know? He asked ChatGPT if it authored those essays—and the AI said yes. The school eventually reverted
Thiel vs. Gladwell – How worldview affects explanations
In Zero to One, investor Peter Thiel admonishes against overrating the power of chance and underrating the importance of planning: Malcolm Gladwell says you can’t understand Bill Gates’s success without understanding his fortunate personal context: he grew up in a good family, went to a private school equipped with a compute…
Bigger doesn’t mean smarter
In What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly argues that the relentless increase in artificial brains’ size doesn’t necessarily mean machines will become smarter or sentient. To make his case, Kelly looks for parallels in the organic world, a recurring theme throughout the book. Consider the brain of a sperm whale. With an average of 8 kilograms, a sperm whale’…