fw🫀advice that actually worked for me - what happened to the future?
Ro.bert
here’s your weekly dose of treats 💌
a weekly list of goodies, ideas, pieces of research, principles, models, and other random stuff curated by Robert
fiery stuff I've been ingesting
1. Never Trust a Number - They’re shortcuts to understanding, and there are no shortcuts via Fake Journal Club: Teaching Critical Reading
Always check where your data came from and why it’s organized that way (the “metadata,” or data about the data). In fact, the exact data often doesn’t matter – what really matters is the metadata. I spend at least as much time thinking about where the data came from, how it was gathered, potential ways it could have been corrupted or misinterpreted, and how it’s organized and labeled as I do about the numbers themselves.
2. Before Edgar Wright and Wes Anderson, before Chuck Jones and Jackie Chan, there was Buster Keaton, one of the founding fathers of visual comedy. And nearly 100 years after he first appeared onscreen, we’re still learning from him. You can check Buster Keaton - The Art of the Gag and Jackie Chan’s Kung Fu is “Fake” and That’s Okay
3. Personality Traits of Special Forces Operators: Comparing Commandos, Candidates, and Controls
4. Artificial neural networks today are not conscious, according to Douglas Hofstadter
5. The Good Thing About Hard Things: Here’s the hard thing about easy things: if everyone can do something, there’s no advantage to doing it, but you still have to do it anyway just to keep up.
When everyone has the same plug-and-play tools, the profit flows away from the rebels, and towards the arms dealers, forcing rebels to devise new guerilla tactics to take back profits.
6. People who criticize “utilitarianism” are often actually criticizing something quite different, like coldness or expediency.
7. Pissing Blood: The Ketamine Time Bomb - apparently ketamine is now the fourth drug of choice for young people behind cannabis, ecstasy, and cocaine. You can briefly check Brain Changes Associated With Long-Term Ketamine Abuse, A Systematic Review // also, do your own research as I am simply outlining the worst.
8. Lex Fridman Library: this is a library of book recommendations of all guests of the Lex Fridman Podcast
9. Of all of the “dangers of AI” papers, this is most worrying: AI researchers building a tool to find new drugs to save lives realized it could do the opposite, generating new chemical warfare agents. Within 6 hours it invented deadly VX… and worse things
10. Sci-fi no more: Synchron implants mind-reading device in first US patient in paralysis trial
11. Sexual fetishes on the political compass, men and women.
12. The failed Ubermensch: Raskolnikov and Zarahustra
All I knew
And all I believed
Are crumbling images
That no longer comfort me
Raskolnikov
13. The rise of the solo capitalists
14. What happened to the future? And what does it mean to be contrarian? It does not mean simply doing the opposite of what the majority does – that’s just consensus thinking by a different guise, a minus sign before the conventional wisdom. The problems of reactive contrarianism are the same as those of following the herd. The most contrarian thing to do is to think independently.
15. Russia says it will quit the International Space Station after 2024. That’s a shame.
16. Is Everything Getting Old?
There’s been some fundamental change in the nature of aging, or of all of these roles, that either increases the relative importance of experience or reduces some of the costs of aging.
17. Advice That Actually Worked For Me
Get in the habit of Fermi estimation, looking up key quantities, and using upper and lower bounds. I’ve noticed a lot of the smartest people I know do this: they don’t take any claims at face value, and check for themselves whether they’re plausible. This means, e.g. when they hear a fact, they’ll look it up to assure themselves that it’s true, because often people cite things that are false or partial.
18. How influencers become brainwashed by their audiences
19. This is a real job: Meme Artist / Shitposter + Community Manager
20. usethekeyboard.com: a collection of keyboard shortcuts for Mac apps, Windows programs, and websites.
YouTube essays
Use peripheral vision to improve your productivity
tweets for thought
Footage of a 3 year old chimney sweep from the 1930's https://t.co/giabBy9S80
Evolution of an office desk (1980-2014). https://t.co/AehBtQiJnF
Something very strange is happening in this video.
Pretend Communists are paying to purchase ice cream that simulates murder of America's richest men.
Business celebrities, sacrificed as Girardin scapegoats to an envious, resentful mob.
Customers spend money to "rebel". https://t.co/sd43FGT6UI
war materials 🇺🇦
Where once the main sources of wealth were material assets such as gold mines, wheat fields and oil wells, today the main source of wealth is knowledge. And whereas you can seize oil fields by force, you cannot acquire knowledge that way. The profitability of conquest has declined as a result.
174th of February 2022: Achievements and Losses
“Just Wear A Diaper, Soldier!” - Advice From Russian Army Command Given From the Deep Rear
Peter Zeihan: The end of the old world order, and what happens next
As the war progress in Ukraine, do Americans still think it is a good idea to send 80 billion dollars of American tax money to Ukraine?
More Quiet On The Eastern Front: Russian Shelling Lessens In Ukraine’s Donbas Region
Many wondered: why during the Chechen wars many families opposed the war, while now almost nobody does? Well, one answer is that during the Chechen wars monetary compensations to families were negligible, while now the “coffin money” (гробовые) are quite good. You can buy a car.
Other places
(͡ ͡° ͜ つ ͡͡°) Telegram 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.