December-January 2023 Link Incubator, rtheory.xyz
Here’s your monthly dose of treats, goodies, ideas, pieces of research, principles, models, and other random stuff curated by Robert
Follow the white rabbit 🐇
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1 Writings
These are my favourite articles I read in 2022, that I think you should read too
Dullness and distraction in creative work may arise from the same causes as in meditation
A hard quest is high-risk and operationally complex, with a low chance of success. Reversing aging, going to Mars, curing cancer, building a supersonic plane, creating AGI, or founding a new country — these are all hard quests, and most players attempting these quests will fail.
2.1 Meta-Science / Statistics
"Intelligence contributes 48–90 times more than grit [perseverance of effort] to educational success and 13 times more to job-market success."
Sam Altman’s blog: https://blog.samaltman.com/successful-people
2.2 Psychology / Biology / Genetics
Are dogs general intelligence? question via Geogrge Hotz
Apple Silently Launched A New Sleep Feature With NightWare That Can Actually Stop Nightmares
2.3 Technology / AI
Here’s how you used Zoom in 2022
Every tech product you use came out between 2000-2010. Nothing was built from 2010-2020. The culture was so broken. PMs, MBAs, SJWs, and entitlement. But the culture is changing. Wild things will be built in the next 10 years. Are you in or out?
2.4 Politics / Religion / Culture
Neurotheology: The relationship between brain and religion
A decade of contactless payments on London’s public transport
‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’ (2014)
2.5 Tools
#141: Intellectual Exoskeletons — Andy Matuschak
This conversation was as comprehensive as it was insightful: 2 hours in length, producing an 18,000-word transcript containing 56 links to books, articles, videos and other sources.
Twitter is shutting down Revue
Everyprompt: “Everyprompt is a pretty good playground for large language models like GPT-3”
If I had 1000 slightly dumb clones of me as "research assistants", how would I use them to get back extra hours in the day and learn faster/improve the quality of my work?
The phrase 'good design is invisible' has been coming to mind a lot as I watch all the Twitter clones (& also the new Twitter management). How hard could it be to clone and improve on Twitter? Apparently 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘺 𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥 (at least for the sort of people who do it).
Microsoft and OpenAI Working on ChatGPT-Powered Bing in Challenge to Google
Other places
(͡ ͡° ͜ つ ͡͡°) Telegram/Discord group for me to save & share random stuff that might be useful.
👾 some YouTube video essays
— Robert
Thank you for reading!
How’re you and yours doing this week? Any major changes to your status quo, or are things fairly locked-in and predictable at the moment? I respond to every email I get—consider sending me a message.