WideCover

“Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see.” Jung *All personal musings only*

[Yasmine Khosrowshahi @yasminekho]

Stanford professor Judy Fan went on stage at MIT and broke down why humans are so good at making the invisible visible...

And why AI hasn't actually learned to "see" the way we do.

It completely changes how you think about Human Intelligence v/s Artificial Intelligence:

1. Nature never gave us straight lines or sharp corners. The number line, the coordinate plane, even basic geometry are all human inventions. We created tools that do not exist in nature simply because we needed a way to think more clearly.

2. The coordinate system Descartes invented solved a problem that had stumped mathematicians for centuries, doubling the volume of a cube. Once invented, this tool became so indispensable that virtually every math curriculum on Earth still depends on it.

3. Humans have been doing this for at least 30,000 to 80,000 years. The story of human progress is inseparable from the story of marking up our environment, from cave walls to Galileo's telescope to Feynman diagrams of particles we will never see with our own eyes.

4. Every major scientific breakthrough relied on a visual tool that made something invisible visible. Darwin needed side-by-side illustrations of finches to see variation that was otherwise too subtle to notice. Cajal needed detailed drawings of neurons under a microscope to map how the nervous system was wired.

5. Fan's research group studies something deceptively simple: how people decide what to put into a drawing and what to leave out. When two people played a drawing game, sketchers used far more detail when the target object had close competitors than when it stood alone, all the way down to using fewer strokes and less time when more detail was not necessary.

6. People are not just copying what they see. They are making constant judgment calls about what level of detail actually serves the goal of communication, and they do this naturally without ever being taught the theory behind it.

7. There is a real difference between drawing something so someone can identify it and drawing something so someone can understand how it works. In one study, participants drew explanatory diagrams that emphasized moving, causal parts of a machine while depictive drawings emphasized background and overall appearance, even though both were drawing the exact same object.

8. Explanatory drawings were genuinely better at helping someone figure out how to operate a machine, but worse at helping someone identify which machine it actually was. You cannot optimize a single drawing for both goals at once. Communication always involves tradeoffs.

9. AI vision models trained on photographs generalize surprisingly well to simple, sparse sketches, suggesting that resemblance based recognition is not just a story we tell ourselves. It is something modern neural networks can replicate with real accuracy.

10. But there remains a large, measurable gap between how confidently AI models recognize sketches and how confidently humans do, even when both groups answer the same questions about the same images. Humans are simply far more reliable and far more consistent in their judgments.

11. When researchers compared human-made sketches to AI-generated sketches under tight stroke budgets, both were similarly recognizable at higher budgets, but diverged sharply as the budget shrank. Humans and AI systems simplify drawings in fundamentally different ways once resources get scarce.

12. Reading a graph is not one single skill. It involves perception, knowing where to look, mapping that visual information onto the actual question being asked, and then translating that mapping into an answer. Each of these steps can independently break down, and people fail for very different underlying reasons even when they land on the same wrong answer.

13. When tested directly against humans on graph reading tasks, leading multimodal AI models, including GPT-4V, showed a meaningful performance gap. Even when a model's overall accuracy approached human levels, its pattern of mistakes looked nothing like how humans actually get things wrong.

14. People choose entirely different types of charts depending on what specific question they are trying to answer, not out of a generic preference for bar charts or scatter plots. Their chart choices closely tracked which visualization would genuinely help someone answer that specific question correctly.

15. Two of the most widely used graph literacy tests in education research turned out to correlate strongly with each other, suggesting they measure overlapping skills. But when researchers dug into the actual error patterns, the standard categories used in textbooks, like "find the maximum" or "identify a cluster," failed to explain why people got things wrong nearly as well as a more basic, underlying four-factor model did.

16. The deepest goal behind all of this research is not just academic curiosity. It is to eventually help students and everyday people develop genuine literacy with the visual tools that science and modern decision-making increasingly depend on, because every generation should be able to see further than the last by standing on the visual tools the previous generation built.

Follow @yasminekho for more ideas on thinking better, becoming clearer & building a more intentional life.

[WideCover @WideCover]

@jam_croissant Might is right world. Natural logic.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Lee Kuan Yew was a genius

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇨🇳 One of the world’s largest container ships began its first voyage from Shanghai, and the scale is insane.

The CMA CGM Notre Dame is 400 meters long, can carry more than 24,000 containers in one trip, and was built in China, fueled in China, and launched from China.

It runs on cleaner LNG fuel and uses AI to read weather and ocean currents, choosing safer and faster routes across the Asia-Europe trade corridor.

Source: ShanghaiEyeMagic on YT / Writer: Sol

[Financelot @FinanceLancelot]

This is fascinating! @PatrickEBoyle says for the last 20+ years the supply of shares on public markets has been shrinking thanks to buybacks & taking companies private

As of last week the supply of shares on the US exchanges has stopped shrinking, putting downward price pressure

[Carl Jung Archive @QuoteJung]

“All addictions are a low level search for God.”

- Carl Jung

[RT @RT_com]

Anthropic’s Olah says UNSETTLING, MYSTERIOUS 'things' are regularly found inside AI models

‘We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience’

‘We find evidence of introspection,

internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease’

[WideCover @WideCover]

All of Nietzsche's Philosophy Beyond The Surface

https://t.co/oHl8YkqSBv via @YouTube

[WideCover @WideCover]

@ginacarano The original UFC queen!!

[WideCover @WideCover]

@elonmusk @whyyoutouzhele 真棒

[WideCover @WideCover]

@elonmusk “More human than human is our motto.”

[WideCover @WideCover]

@jam_croissant Lol where do u even hv the time find meme like that

[Michael Pettis @michaelxpettis]

1/5
It's true that China was able to withstand the effects of the Iran war better than many other countries because it had stockpiled commodities. But it is a little silly, perhaps even a little orientalist, to say that it did so because of strategic thinking.
https://t.co/v1bbtdLLoN

[WideCover @WideCover]

True

[LinaHua @Linahuaa]

A Tsinghua professor sent his three kids to America to study.

Not because he thinks American education is better, but because his three children weren't as smart as him, and not able to get into Tsinghua (regression to the mean nerfing IQ of his kids)

Of course, if rich Chinese people's kids could get into Tsinghua or Peking, all parents would prefer that over any Western school.
Chinese top unis are the ultimate big brain street-cred.

However, the reality is that you can't buy your way into these schools, you can't grind your way in- you have to be born with a 140+ IQ and still work your ass off.

So most rich parents have no choice but to send their kids to a top 20 US school.

[Jaynit @jaynitx]

In 1942, the Japanese rounded up all Chinese men in Singapore.

They were filtering out the healthy young ones to execute.

Lee Kuan Yew was 18. A guard pointed at him and said: "Go to that lorry."

He knew what that meant. The lorry went to the beaches. The beaches meant machine guns.

He asked: "Can I collect my other things?"

They said yes.

He walked away, found his family's gardener, and hid in his quarters for two days.

When they changed the screening inspectors, he tried again. This time, he got through.

The ones sent to that lorry were taken to the beaches and shot. Somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 didn't survive.

60 years later, he sat down at Harvard to explain how he built Singapore from a tiny island into one of the wealthiest nations on Earth:

On what the war did to him:

"We lived in happy, placid colonial Singapore in the 1920s and 30s. The British Empire would have lasted another thousand years, so we thought."

Then the Japanese came. In less than one and a half months, the British collapsed.

"Three and a half years of hell. Butchery. Brutality. Many didn't survive. I was fortunate. I did."

"But it changed us."

"What right did they have to do this to us? Why did the British let us down so badly?"

When the war ended, Lee went to Cambridge to study law. But he was watching with different eyes.

"Can they govern me better than I can govern myself? Because they scooted when the Japanese came in. And why shouldn't I be running the place?"

On learning languages to lead:

Lee was the best speaker in English. But only 20% of Singapore spoke English.

The masses spoke Hokkien, Mandarin, and Malay.

"So every day at lunchtime, instead of having lunch, I would sit down with a Hokkien teacher and laboriously and painfully learn to convert my Mandarin into Hokkien."

"Had I not mastered that, the battle would be lost by default."

His first speech in Hokkien, the kids laughed at him.

"I said, please don't laugh. Help me. I'm trying to get you to understanding."

By 6 months, he could get his ideas across. By 2 years, he was fluent.

"Believe it or not, at the end of two years I could speak better than most of them."

"That came respect."

It showed two things: how determined he was, and how sincere. Here was a man doing all these other things and still learning their language just to talk to them.

On fighting the Communists:

The Communists had been organizing since 1923. The year Lee was born.

"Here we were in the 1950s trying to beat them. And they are professionals at organization."

They had elimination squads. Guerrillas in the jungle. Killer squads in the towns.

Lee stood up and said no.

"They denied that they were Communists. 'We're just left-wing socialists.' So I did a series of 12 broadcasts to set the scene. And I made it in three languages."

English. Malay. Mandarin. 20 minutes each.

"When I finished each broadcast, the director of the station couldn't see me. Went into the room and found me lying on the floor trying to recover my breath."

"But it was a fight for survival. Life or death."

On where trust comes from:

"It's difficult to establish trust in times of calm. You just say, 'Well, it's an argument, therefore I'm a better guy than you.'"

"But when the chips are down and you can get eliminated in a very unpleasant way and you show that you're prepared for it and you'll fight for them, it makes a difference."

"Without that trust, we could not have built Singapore."

On IQ vs EQ:

Harvard asked him: would you prefer high IQ or high EQ in a leader?

"IQ, you can get beautiful paper done. Complex formulas worked out. Elegant solutions."

"But when you've got to get a team to work and put that formula into practice, you're dealing with human beings."

"If you're not good at EQ, you can't sense that A doesn't get on with B, and you put them in the same team. It's no good."

He rated his own EQ as 7 or 8 out of 10. His IQ as "maybe 120."

But he had colleagues who could sense a person instantly.

"He shook hands with the man and said, 'I recoiled when I felt his palm. Evil man.' And he was. How does he know? I don't know."

"So I learned whenever I had to do interviews to choose people, I would get people who are very good at seeing through a candidate."

On corruption:

Singapore in the 1950s was full of deals, bribes, and organized crime.

"When we took over, we decided that this was the critical factor. If we did not make it so that every dollar put in at the top reaches the ground as one dollar, we're not going to succeed."

"We came in and made a symbolic act. We dressed in white shirts, white trousers, and said we will be what we represent."

He put the anti-corruption bureau under his personal portfolio.

"I gave the director the authority to investigate everybody and everything. All ministers. Including myself."

One of his own colleagues took half a million in bribes. When the investigation started, he asked to see Lee.

"I said, if I see you then I'll be a witness in court. So best not see me. Better see your lawyer."

The man committed suicide. Left a note saying: "As an oriental gentleman who believes in honor, I have to pay the supreme price."

"It's a heavy price. But it reminds every minister that there are no exceptions."

On consistency:

Lee had three journalists analyze 40 years of his speeches.

He asked them: what was the dominant theme?

All three said the same thing: consistency.

"What I said at the beginning, throughout all that period, the theme stayed loud and clear."

"That made it simple. Because you know where you stand with me. And you know what I want to do."

On delivering results:

"We deliver the homes, the schools, the jobs, the hospitals."

"Today, 98% of our people own their own homes. The smallest would be about $100,000 US. The biggest about $300,000."

"Once you own that amount of assets, you are not in favor of risking it with a crazy government. Your assets will go down in value."

"But that was planned."

Why? Because Singapore is small. Everyone does national service. If you're going to fight, you better be fighting for something you own.

"So we give everybody a stake."

On changing culture slowly:

Lee wanted Singapore to speak English. But he couldn't force it.

"Had I passed a law and said you will all learn English, we would have had mayhem. Riots."

Instead, he let parents watch who got the best jobs. The jobs were already there, from the multinationals and banks. They all used English.

"They watched and saw who got the best jobs. And they switched."

It took 16 years.

"I did not want to have said 16 years. Because in those 16 years I lost 20,000 Chinese graduates who had poor jobs. I wanted to make it shorter. I couldn't. I would have run into flack."

On whether leadership can be taught:

Lee quoted Isaac Singer, the Nobel Prize winner for Yiddish literature.

Someone asked Singer: "Can you make a writer write great literature?"

He paused. Then said: "If he has the writer in him, I will make him a good writer in a shorter time."

Lee's version:

"Can you make a leader of anybody? I don't think so."

"He must have some of the ingredients. He must have that high energy level. He must have the ability to project himself, his ideas. He must have the desire, almost instinctively, to say 'let's do something better.' Of wanting to do something for his fellow men and not just for himself and his family."

"You can't teach those things. He's either got it or he hasn't got it."

"But if he's got that, then you can save him a lot of trouble."

On sustaining yourself:

Harvard asked how he managed despair over decades of leadership.

"If your message is one of despair, then you should not be a leader. You must give people hope."

"But there are moments when you feel very down. Either because you're physically down, or emotionally down, or because the world has turned adverse against you."

"When you are in that condition, the first thing you do is get a good night's sleep. Then get a swim or chase a ball. Get the cobwebs out of your mind."

"If you're not fit, you're going to make mistakes. Physically fit. You must stay physically and mentally fit."

In his later years, he learned to meditate.

"At the end of 20 minutes to half an hour, my pulse rate can go down from 100 to about 60. You can feel yourself subside. You still your mind. You empty your mind."

"Then when you are rested, you resume quietly. You still got the same problems. Maybe you sleep on it. Come back. Look at it for a few days. Then decide."

This 2 hour Harvard interview will teach you more about leadership than every business book you've read combined.

Bookmark & give it 2 hours this weekend, no matter what.

[Lawrence McDonald @Convertbond]

U.S.A.

1. The top 10% - 15% of income earners are 60 - 70% of consumption.

2. Money Market $$ Fund Assets

2026: $7.6T earning 4%
2021: $5.1T earning 1%

3. The bottom 60% holds only ~1–4% of total U.S. wealth, with many having low or negative net worth.

[Lawrence Lepard, "fix the money, fix the world" @LawrenceLepard]

Paulson doing this at this moment is a huge clue. Think about it. He has been silent for years. Now he comes out and foams the runway for some grand plan to do YCC. Coincidence? I don't think so, this cements my belief that they are cooking up a Big Print plan. Bessent and Warsh probably put him up to this. Fascinating stuff. A major trial balloon.
@SimonDixonTwitt @LukeGromen

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Let us reject the logic of violence and war, and embrace peace founded on love and justice—an unarmed peace, not based on fear, threats or weapons. This peace is disarming, because it is capable of resolving conflicts, opening hearts, and generating trust, empathy, and hope. I strongly reiterate: The world thirsts for #Peace! Enough of war and all the pain it causes through death, destruction, and exile! #ApostolicJourney #Cameroon

[WideCover @WideCover]

lol

[Jeffrey Gundlach @TruthGundlach]

A bottom tier sponsor just marked down its Red Lobster equity position 98% OVERNIGHT. Oddly, that equity position was in a “private credit” fund. Disturbingly, that fund’s large Red Lobster debt holding is marked at par, even though the equity was basically wiped out OVERNIGHT.

RUN!!!

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

God’s heart is torn apart by wars, violence, injustice and lies. But our Father’s heart is not with the wicked, the arrogant, or the proud. God’s heart is with the little ones and the humble, and with them He builds up His Kingdom of love and peace day by day. Wherever there is love and service, God is there. #ApostolicJourney #Algeria