Legend Essays

Misc.

• cognitivemedium.com/tat
  How tools expand the limits of cognition.
• http://how.complexsystems.fail/
  Nice reminder of a concept that is very important, and very boring to most.
• https://www.benkuhn.net/50pct/
  50% more productive by implementing interventions...

Gwern

• https://gwern.net/blog/2024/tools-for-thought-failure\ (Gwern)
  The goat talks about why second brains are stupid
• https://gwern.net/doc/science/1986-hamming
  Transcription of a goated lecture by Bell Labs scientist Richard W. Hamming. If you seek greatness you must read this
• https://gwern.net/blog/2023/good-writing (Poe's Law)

--

• https://blog.samaltman.com/productivity
  Related blog post by the twink before he became the wave. Pretty sure he's heard the hamming lecture.

SlateStarCodex

• https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learned-helplessness/
  The goat talking about cog-sec. very ironic essay.

"once you've seen enough contradictory studies and felt enough placebo washouts, your brain literally stops encoding "this might work" signals. it's protective but catastrophic."

• https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/15/the-cowpox-of-doubt/
  fun essay especially now that my understanding has deepened on the antiquated and seemingly silly systems of the world. (Foucault type beat, Strauss type beat, Violence & The Sacred type beat)

Claude: "the foucault/strauss/girard constellation really does crack open why those "silly" systems were often load-bearing social infrastructure disguised as superstition. like once you get that sacrificial violence literally prevents mimetic contagion from destroying communities, suddenly a lot of "barbaric" practices look more like sophisticated game theory"

• https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-trivial-inconveniences
  How policy and incentives shape everything, and why I care a lot about systems design.

PG

• https://paulgraham.com/wealth.html (Paul Graham)
  read this and it shaped my ass. nobody i show this seems to bite, or maybe arouse the interest to read it at all really, come to think of it
• https://paulgraham.com/vb.html (Paul Graham)
  it do be short

Ribbonfarm

• https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
  game theory, game theory, game theory, incentives, incentives, incentives

Ok so apparently this is a pop-culture phenomenon in certain circles, so much so that every LLM I ask about it gives me a snarky cynical answer as if they've heard it one million times before?

my rebuttal:

"i mean it seems like a fun toy model that's pretty accurate for the most part

It's more in like "yes this is the holy bible of facts that are ALWAYS true" where, well, if you approach it with that much wherewithal obviously it falls apart

it kind of feels similar to how everyone eye-rolls at Nietzsche, while his popularity is actually well earned"

• https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/01/16/on-the-design-of-escaped-realities/
  This is some fucking wordcel shit I hate. This is the kind of autistic philosophy that I detest.

It's a lot of wordcel-ing and suppositions where you take concepts and abstract the hell out of them basically and take the reader along for a journey, where yes, technically I suppose you could suppose that

In my notes I have:
"This article is too autist coded. I don’t like articles like this where someone gets so detached they start viewing and reducing an apple to a matrix of atoms.

Yes it’s true, but this frame and perspective of reality is not as insightful as you think it is.

You gain insight, but you don't necessarily learn more about the bigger picture."

Melting Asphalt

• https://meltingasphalt.com/ads-dont-work-that-way/
  Just very naive. It's right, but it doesn't fully finish the theory. It develops a theory of why marketing works but it throws out the known territory to be contrarian, and commits the sin of black-and-white thinking.