Friday Fodder #33
What's Trending? What's Transcendent?
It’s been a rare slow week. Pi day passed uneventfully and hardly anything else was irrational.
Yeah, that was a bad joke. It happened. Enjoy the vernal equinox!
On to the reading!
Timely
The Model Is The Product - Agents and ‘agentic’ is all the rage right now. Here’s a brilliant argument about why RL isn’t done and how the models themselves are still going to be the big innovation for awhile to come.
Why MAGA Is Furious With Amy Coney Barrett - A look at the ongoing fight in the conservative legal world between Originalism (a la Scalia) and common-good constitutionalism, proving that the power of Originalism is the ability to push back against the activist tendencies of both the left and right.
The AI Crisis In Higher Education - Just you wait, an AI might be able to write a B- paper right now, but within a year or two it will one-shot a PhD level analysis. Real human learning is slow, it’s personal, and it’s a development.
The Mainstreaming of Loserdom - Somewhere along the way, we turned self-care and focus on betterment into some sort of other thing. We’ve given ourselves excuses to lay around the house and do nothing - because we’re healing, because it’s fun, whatever. We need more.
Timeless
The Dead Planet Theory - The bar is so low. Not only can you just do things, but just doing things puts you ahead of most of the population! So just do that. And find other people that just do things too.
Most Externalities Are Solved With Technology, Not Coordination - The tragedy of the commons is one of the timeless tropes recycled in climate activism. Here’s some brilliant examples of why coordination - usually via government - is never the complete answer. The world needs more technology.
The End of Our Extremely Online Era - I am really hoping for this too. People are starving.
On Eccentricity - The online mimesis makes us all try to be the same. We’re a flattened population and, ironically, the people that often stand out are not following the trends. Do your own thing.
Books
The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks - There is no book better to understand software and managing software projects. Brooks’ famous law says “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later”. Another version is “nine women can’t make a baby in a month.” While this book is about software in particular, there are tons of abstractions here that work in our modern world because it all runs on software. There’s No Silver Bullet. The Second System Effect (“this time we’ll do it right!”). It’s technical writing, but it’s easy to digest and still as relevant as it was in 1975.
Tweets
Some good ones, so you don’t need to scroll!
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The world is amazing. Cheers!