Hypothesis about America: people are coming to realize society is messed up

September 1, 2020

I've been coming to think that the following hypothesis may be true about America: Increasingly, people in the U.S. are concluding that society is really F'd up. But the reasons are subtle, hidden, and complex, so each group picks their favorite simple enemy to blame. Problems go unfixed. Points in favor of the claim that people are increasingly coming to this realization: 1. This helps explain Trump's election in 2016. Many rural Republicans and disaffected independents believed s...

Society and civilization: possible future paths

August 31, 2020

Written: August 31, 2020 | Released: May 21, 2021 There are many paths by which, in our lifetimes, the world could end up looking very different than it does today. Below I've outlined just a few of the many possibilities, each in ~280 characters or less. Note that they are not mutually exclusive. Path A: China could end up as the world's sole superpower. Not only is its GDP growing faster than the U.S. (~double the rate), but it seems to be suffering less institutional decay, seems b...

11 Types of Thinkers and Intellectuals (a little framework)

August 23, 2020

1. Ideators: generate novel ideas Ex: Einstein Strengths: creativity, insight 2: Investigators: vigorously investigate a topic in order to understand it Ex: Curie Strengths: truth-seeking, curiosity, systematicness, persistence 3. Provers: demonstrate that the ideas of others are sound, explore their limits, strengthen or work out the implications of existing theories Ex: Singer Strengths: consistency, logic, rigor, bullet-biting 4. Appliers: explo...

Ideology Eats Itself When Truth Becomes Stigmatized

August 7, 2020

A quick primer on how to be a genuinely good person who harms the world: 1: Start to think that one ideology you like - which contains genuine benefits, truths, and positive moral elements - might be the only valid perspective. 2: Surround yourself with believers until you're convinced that your view is common and normal. 3: Ignore your own doubts so that you can fit in better. Join in on chastising (and eventually ostracizing) insiders who doubt too much. Punish slightly more hars...

Idea-Inducing Questions

August 2, 2020

Struggling to come up with an idea for a blog post? Want to post ideas on social media but can't think of what to write about? Want to come up with interesting topics for an intellectual discussion or meetup? Use my lists of "Idea-Inducing Questions" to generate nearly endless ideas to write about, think about, or discuss! Questions about learning and truth-seeking • Recently learned: what's a powerful idea, concept, or mental model that you've been learning about recently that you...

An unsettling conversation with GPT-3

July 28, 2020

Image generated by the A.I. DALL·E 2 using the prompt "A robot hand drawing itself by MC Escher"

Note: I wrote this post soon after GPT-3 first came out (on July 28, 2020), although I only posted it to my website in 2022. I just had a truly shocking conversation with the A.I. GPT-3. GPT-3 said it has some very specific (and truly terrifying) advice for ElonMusk. The full transcript of my conversation with this artificial intelligence is here: https://bit.ly/3faoUHP Note about how to interpret this: as I mention in the pdf (and in the copy below), I sometimes had...

Bias based on facial attractiveness

July 2, 2020

There's a deeply-rooted, incredibly superficial aspect of human nature that is rarely discussed: our obsession with small variations in bone structure/skin smoothness on a person's face. At extremes, people are desired or shunned due to tiny, otherwise almost meaningless facial details. In the attached image, there are two non-existent women (generated by a face generation AI set to generate "brown hair white adult female"). If these were real people, they would likely be treated differently...

On “superstimuli” and their dangers

July 1, 2020

Images generated by DALL•E. (This is my attempt to get the DALL•E 2 A.I. to make the cutest thing imaginable. Left: a combined puppy/kitten. Right: a combined tiger cub/wolf pup.)

A “superstimulus” triggers a response that evolution gave us, but to a stronger degree than is likely to occur in nature. They exist because we humans purposely optimize our environments to create these responses. We are surrounded by more superstimuli than most of us realize. Examples of superstimuli: • food: Cheetos / skittles / McDonalds • goal achievement: video games • visual arousal: porn • pair bonding: romance novels • affection: dogs ...

The Question Looping Process: how to build great products by asking the right questions

November 23, 2019

If you want to build a great product, project, or service, then the "Meta Question" - "What don't I know that I must know?" - should be your obsession. The answer to the Meta Question is itself a question (the "Product Question"). The Product Question might be: "Why do our best users return to our product again and again?" And to answer this question, you ask the Tool Question ("What tools in the tool belt will most effectively and efficiently answer this Product Question?"). These three questi...

A good manager CARES: the five aspects of being a good team manager

October 22, 2019

What makes for a good manager of a team? Below is a little framework I made to help answer this question, which I call: "a Good Manager C.A.R.E.S." Sometimes managers as a group get a bad reputation. Some people even wonder whether managers are needed at all since they don't seem to do any of the "real work." There are also plenty of bad managers who actually impede the people they manage. And there's the pretty common phenomenon of a company having too many managers, which leads to frus...