The singularity: a misunderstood concept
The collapse of our world view is not the end of the world
Bottling Smoke
There’s a metaphor about trying to define concepts that are ineffable or elusive, things such as creativity and artistry, that likens the struggle to define to that of trying to bottle smoke. I…
Technology Flattening Natural Cycles
To flatten the physical evidence of natural cycles is a quieter ambition than conquering nature, and a more thorough one. The conqueror leaves a battlefield; the leveler leaves a smooth surface on…
The Reference Point Problem
"The limits of my experience are not the limits of what is possible." I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand how I think. Not just what I believe, but why I believe it. Over…
Three important steps in my maturation process
My father passed recently, and he was twice my age. I am approximately the same age that he was when I was born, and I am now “the old generation” - there’s no one left in the generation above me. At…
Embracing Dissonance
Oh how discomforting it is to fathom uncertainty or inconsistency. So much so, we are inclined to avoid acknowledging it. Every narrative, every theory, every framework for life or knowledge. When…
The Future Belongs To The Weird
or the gospel for those out of distribution If you were born in pre-modern times, the last thing you wanted to be was weird. Because the most likely outcome of being weird was dying an untimely and…
Reality has a surprising amount of detail
This means it’s really easy to get stuck. Stuck in your current way of seeing and thinking about things. Frames are made out of the details that seem important to you. The important details you…
becoming more fully yourself
Mandy Brown, Reading matters deeply : Reading isn’t about reaching empathic dead ends, or recruiting platitudes about how we must understand each other; it isn’t about the performance of social class…
My new TED talk on the 12 things that motivate everything we do
The 12 things that motivate everything you do. The post My new TED talk on the 12 things that motivate everything we do appeared first on Chris Bailey.
Wisdom vs. Intelligence
Wisdom is judgment proven efficacious over time. Present-day AI is intelligent, or close enough that arguing about it is a distinction without a difference, and it still isn't wise, because nothing…
Creating media with an uncooperative mind
This is the first of two parts on media creation. I’ll update this post with a link when the second one is out. “The students already come with an understanding of the grammar of visual storytelling,…
Nothing Is Needed
Some instrumental music you might have fun listening to while you read this; the music is produced by Suno AI but from my extremely long and complex prompt, just to see how much control over the…
Process psychosis
Creativity and output are more important than process. And that’s coming from someone whose entire living is based around the process of making things. I’ve noticed that in certain subsets of people…
What Is Your Life's Foundation?
Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on…
how to become a good writer
read more. write more. get feedback. repeat.
Out Of Control
Letting go of the illusion of control is not the same as letting go.
बिन मांगे मोती vs don’t ask don’t get
It was the Ribbonfarm guy that wrote, the opposite of a great truth is also a great truth. Kabir has said बीज मांगे मोती मिले मांगे मिले ना भीख That is, if you don’t ask you will be plowed with…
to an older emma
Write a letter to your older self dear emma, how are things these days? have you aged well? do you wake up every day knowing that the hard work i did back here payed off? it was always for you. it…
Hearing, Talking, and Listening
Hearing is not listening. You can hear and choose not to listen. But if you don’t hear, you can’t listen. Listening is an active process. Listening requires energy. Listening is a choice. Talking and…
cause and effect
An exploration of cause and effect.
The World They Sold Us
Making money is easy if you have no ethics.
-0026- Cognitive Dissonance(tm)
“This is the strange thing about life, when people are confronted, they all say that the truth is what they want but when the truth disagrees with them, they balk at it as if it were an unwanted…
I Spent Twenty Years Becoming Good at the Wrong Game
In February 2024, I defended my second dissertation and earned the highest academic degree Russia awards. By June, I knew I wanted out. Out of this kind of research, out of this academic system and…
if you can't find the needle, burn the haystack
I spent years being patient about the wrong things, waiting for my time to come. I kneel in front of the haystack, sifting, sifting, sifting. I sort each strand of hay with a devoted precision - did…
incurable graphomania by Anna Krivolapova
described as "14 stories of voyeurism, paranoia, defense contractors, Russian stewardesses, venomous WASPs, and more," not mentioning the author's obsession with physiognomy racism A tall girl with a…
Words Will Always Fail Our True Feelings
"The Dao that can be described in language is not the constant Dao; the name that can be given it is not its constant name" - Tao Te Ching Do you ever get the feeling you can never quite say what is…
Manifesto?
It does not matter why I am here because I know right from wrong and I know what love is. I am an animal and animals do not think about heaven and so, should I? Things exist and there is a truth…
Our Servants Will Do That For Us
Why the post-scarcity utopia is unlikely.
Good Ancestors
Moral collapse came long ago. Now, physical collapse is coming to this modern Western civilization that white male supremacy built. Every government—Left and Right—every agency, every organization,…
Just jump in.
You know that moment, your feet are in the water, it’s cold and you know jumping in will be uncomfortable. The waves start to splash higher to higher, each hit a reminder of how cold the water…
After the ecstasy
during the ecstasy, the lovely, the i-forgot-life-can-be-so-lively lovely
Basic Requirements of Originality
Murakami hit the nail on its head. There are three requirements for originality: 1) Unique and individual style immediately perceivable on first sight and hearing, 2) That style must update itself…
sturgeon’s law (slight return)
I think we're probably past Peak Poptimism already, myself, and driving hard into enantiodromia territory; the headlines are full of it, if you've eyes to see with.
Questions, Assumptions, and Trusting Your Backbrain
I never had any formal academic training in writing novels. I barely have any training in analyzing and interpreting literature—my last English course was my senior year in high school. When it comes…
David Harvie: The Falcon's Club
What do you do with a system that worked?The leadership literature is well supplied with accounts of systems that fail. Bad incentives, perverse metrics, cultures that eat their young: these are…
love
I think that parents teach their children how to love and be loved. Mine taught me that loving someone means sacrificing yourself for them. Being loved means carrying the weight of that sacrifice.…
Intent and Outcome Are Seldom Incidental
Your stated intent is what you announce. Your actual intent is what you trade for it. Outcomes reveal the difference.
Re: "Die Mad About AI" by Kristin McTiernan
The essay raises good points, but drops the ball.
Ode to engineering
An engineer is a great identity to assume. It’s the identity of a builder and a fixer.
The Invisible Cost of Responsibility
The series Eragon contains one of my favorite magic systems. For every action you take with magic, the amount of energy it requires from you is equivalent to the amount of energy it would be to do…
The Point
I’ve been struggling a bit with two seemingly contradictory views that I hold: I hugely value AI-generated code, 3D models, and even mockups of my kitchen redecoration. I intensely dislike…
A Thermodynamic Failure of the Soul
Mood: Tired. Just tired of it all. The air always tastes of exhausted ozone and venture capital these days. It's a cloying stench that's polluting the beautiful bedrock of society. Tech Bros are…
There are no lossless transformations of natural-language text (Sophie Alpert)
Some lovely bits from Sophie Alpert: Spending time on the writing process — on deciding what to emphasize and how to structure your ideas clearly — teaches you more about your topic. If you…
Questions: Genealogy
These are the questions I keep asking. I don't know which one is the question yet, maybe the relation between them is. A system (a surgery, a law, a grammar, a model) knows only what its procedural…
Commies and Commons
It is hard to talk about alternatives to capitalism without hints of socialism or communism. You could argue that economic systems are organized based on individuals (capitalism), collectives…
Is the Twenty-First Century a Creative Void?
Interesting though dense. The late 20th century had a “profusion” of new cultural ideas but now we are in a period of “creative emptiness”. That is bad because an inventive culture benefits us all…
On ‘scaling up’ and being the right size
I regularly encounter questions along the lines of “how do we scale things up? , in particular around projects related to free knowledge, FLOSS or citizen science. It has basically started from the…
It is that deep, mon ami
A counter for overthinking, "it is not that deep" has found a place in our culture. And I kind of like the saying, but as every trendy saying, it gets overused.