There's a fundamental mismatch between what AI can do and what most people want it to do. Most users treat AI as a confidence machine. They want answers delivered with certainty, tasks completed without friction, and validation that their existing thinking is sound. They optimize for feeling productive—for the satisfying sense that work is getting … Continue reading The AI Paradox: Why the People Who Need Challenge Least Are the Only Ones Seeking It
Tag: thinking
Why Fish Don’t Know They’re Wet
You know that David Foster Wallace speech about fish? Two young fish swimming along, older fish passes and says "Morning boys, how's the water?" The young fish swim on, then one turns to the other: "What the hell is water?" That's the point. We don't notice what we're swimming in. The Furniture We Sit In … Continue reading Why Fish Don’t Know They’re Wet
Finding Your Best Starting Point: A Simple Guide to Personal Growth
The Big Idea Instead of asking "What's wrong with me?" ask "Where should I start today?" This guide helps you pick the best place to focus your energy so you can grow and feel better. Step 1: Look at Four Areas of Your Life Think about these four parts of yourself: Your Body How tense … Continue reading Finding Your Best Starting Point: A Simple Guide to Personal Growth
Some Reflections on Twitter & WordPress: 2022
You may have noticed that I have been posting to cafebedouin less lately. It is partially because I have been more involved in using Twitter. Why? One thing I like about Twitter is that it is a larger, socially constructed version of the kind of thoughts that we have moment to moment. Reading the timeline … Continue reading Some Reflections on Twitter & WordPress: 2022
Seven Varieties of Stupidity
"1. Pure Stupidity...2. Ignorant stupidity...3. Fish-out-of-water stupidity...4. Rule-based stupidity...5. Overthinking stupidity...6. Emergent stupidity...7. Ego-driven stupidity...-Ian Leslie, "Seven Varieties of Stupidity." ianleslie.substack.com. May 21, 2022 It's a fun classification exercise. I'd say that 3 is a subset of 2, being in an unfamiliar environment is a variety of ignorance. However, if you think about the kinds … Continue reading Seven Varieties of Stupidity
The Top Idea In Your Mind
"I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That's the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they're allowed to drift freely. And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it's a … Continue reading The Top Idea In Your Mind
Online Techno-Polymath Guy
"I was discussing with Sam the “genre,” so to speak, of the Online Techno-Polymath Guy. You know this guy. He (and it’s usually a he) has his own website, probably hand-crafted in Kirby, Github, or WordPress, as well as a well-regarded, personable Twitter presence. He keeps track of everything he reads, writes pithy blog posts on esoteric subjects. … Continue reading Online Techno-Polymath Guy
The Understructure of Thought
Language imposes limitations. When we reason, we use language, whether symbolic or natural. But, our understanding, or, perhaps it is better to talk about it as an intuition, runs deeper than our reason. A common example can be found in a terms like "creepy", "janky", etc. We use these terms when there is uncertainty, when … Continue reading The Understructure of Thought
Meditation Without Meditating
"Over the past several decades, studies examining the potential for meditation to curb mental anguish and increase wellbeing have yielded promising, if complicated, results. For patients, complications can arise when meditation is marketed as a ‘happy pill, with no side effects’. This commodification and oversimplification is at the root of a conundrum for Jay Sanguinetti … Continue reading Meditation Without Meditating
Metaphor as Mental Model
"In 2011, Stanford researchers Paul Thibodeau and Lera Boroditsky published research that showed how the way we talk about crime changes our ideas about what to do about it. They asked two groups of students to read reports about crime in their area - one using a metaphor of crime as a ‘beast’ that was … Continue reading Metaphor as Mental Model
Preferring Pain to High Cognitive Effort
"Cognitive effort is described as aversive, and people will generally avoid it when possible. This aversion to effort is believed to arise from a cost–benefit analysis of the actions available. The comparison of cognitive effort against other primary aversive experiences, however, remains relatively unexplored. Here, we offered participants choices between performing a cognitively demanding task … Continue reading Preferring Pain to High Cognitive Effort
Destruction & Creation
"There are two ways in which we can develop and manipulate mental concepts to represent observed reality: we can start from a comprehensive whole and break it down to its particulars or we can start with the particulars and build towards a comprehensive whole.[28,24] Saying it another way, but in a related sense, we can … Continue reading Destruction & Creation
The Rule of Awkward Silence
"[T]he rule of awkward silence is simple: When faced with a challenging question, instead of answering, you pause and think deeply about how you want to answer. This is no short pause; rather, it involves taking several seconds (10, 20, or longer) to think things through before responding.If you're on the receiving end--and not used to … Continue reading The Rule of Awkward Silence
We Are All Confident Idiots
"An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge. This clutter is an unfortunate by-product of one of our greatest … Continue reading We Are All Confident Idiots
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