“His answer is, just put more interesting stuff in front of the camera. Make what's in front of the camera more interesting. And the equivalent of that, at least for me as a non-fiction writer, is doing interesting things. Go out in the world, do interesting things, or observe interesting things in real life and write about those things. Do experiments, et cetera. Anything that is analysis-based is relegated to the machines at this point. They're so good. AI, broadly speaking, LLMs being one manifestation of that are just too good. They're so good. So do interesting things and write about them.”
Cultivate courage through action and progressive resistance
“I think courage is learned. You have to practice it. And if you're not afraid, it's not courage, right? If someone's fearless, they're by definition not using courage. You have to be afraid of something. So you can edge yourself and you can edge kids into that. I don't think courage is a decision. I don't think courage is something you get from reading a book. I think you have to prove to yourself that you have it. And the only way your subconscious will believe it is if you are actually doing things that are uncomfortable. It is through action and progressive resistance that you develop courage.”
Alphabet holds a unique full-stack advantage in AI
“Alphabet is an interesting position to, in some respects, kind of own the full stack. Engineers aren't going to like that I'm using that term, but they have distribution. They have hardware in terms of TPUs. They have incredible unparalleled access to information. They've got Demis Hasimus and DeepMind internally. They've got the ability to spin things out like Waymo. There's just so much going on within Alphabet that I find it very fun and terrifying to take a close look at. And I say that also because it is completely unclear how exactly Google compensates for or plans for shifting to some type of ad revenue from AI generated responses.”
“In a world full of tool systems and AI, what human abilities or habits are becoming more valuable, not less? I would say the relational, the tactile, anything IRL in real life that can be extended also to, for instance, in my case, informational advantage, offline informational advantage. A lot of the LLMs are slicing and dicing the internet. One might argue all of them are doing that. And whether you are looking at longevity in professional terms, if you're looking at longevity in creative terms, I think putting on the lens of looking at what you can do in IRL that currently... allows me to have an informational advantage because none of that is online.”
Protect cognitive skills by limiting AI synthesis usage
“I would say any skill you want to preserve in your head, you should probably not use AI for. So I use AI for editing right now. You very quickly end up on a slippery slope. There are already scientists and researchers looking at the negative cognitive impacts of depending on AI, much like your ability to navigate is probably deteriorated since using Google Maps. In some respects, each individual is more enhanced, augmented using these tools. But if you do want to keep certain muscles strong and able, that's where I would hesitate. But if you lose it, it's a hell of a lot harder to reclaim it.”
Enforce zero-tolerance policies to maintain healthy communities
“Somebody walks into my house. This is a shoes-free house. Let's say somebody comes in tracking mud all over the place. That person's going to get dragged by their hair out and then they're never coming back in. Zero tolerance policy for broken windows. When these minor infractions are permitted, the Overton window, the broadness of what is now allowable behavior shifts. If you allow minor infractions, you're going to get moderate infractions. You allow those, you're going to get major infractions. From the very first days of the blog, the comments section has guidelines. If you're an asshole, we're going to boot you.”
Identify psychedelic red flags through adverse event knowledge
“Specific to clinicians or practitioners, ask them what types of adverse events they've seen. What are the most concerning adverse events that they've seen? A simpler way to put that is, how do you handle freak outs? What do you do when somebody really loses their shit? And if their answer is, people don't lose their shit, there aren't any adverse events, they're either lying, delusional, or very inexperienced. Maybe all three. Those are not mutually exclusive. So I find that to be a pretty quick, necessary but not sufficient way to use a particular line of questioning to separate seasoned practitioners who are honest from those who are neither of those things.”
