Sean Abrahams

Stories run the world. Builder, engineer, optimist. LLAP.

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

@DeryaTR_ Beautiful, nicely done.

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

@dhh I felt this way about Steve Jobs. I wondered why he wasn't expressing more enthusiasm for the amazing products he was introducing. That said, Craig Federighi brought it the first time I saw him in an Apple presentation.

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

Explanation: Hit cmd+space in Mac OS to show launcher. Type "calc" intending to launch calculator app. Press enter. Calendar app is launched instead. 🤔

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

Happening to anyone else?

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

@jasonfried @tomisparker Let's hope it does. I just reached out to Basecamp support a few weeks ago with the same request.

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

@tallhamn Have you tried streaming yet? https://t.co/mmBhiSscRc

[Rohan Paul @rohanpaul_ai]

2025 vs 2026 from Chinese Spring Festival Gala shows speed of progress.

In 2025 they basically just stood.

In 2026, the robots transformed them into kung fu warriors, doing backflips, drunken fist, and nunchaku with seamless, pinpoint precision

[Anders K. Hvelplund @Falliblemusings]

I used to think Sapiens was a great book. Sweeping, provocative, the kind of book that makes you feel like you finally understand the big picture of human history. It's on every CEO's bookshelf, assigned in universities, praised as a masterwork of synthesis. Yuval Noah Harari is treated as one of the serious thinkers of our time.

But something nagged at me. Some passages felt off. Claims that human rights are just figments of our collective imagination, not real things, just stories we tell ourselves. That nations, laws, money, justice, doesn't exist outside our heads. That meaning itself is a delusion we've invented to cope. That we're far more powerful than ever before but not happier. That hunter-gatherers had it better because they had no dishes to wash, no carpets to vacuum, no nappies to change, no bills to pay.

That sounded depressing to me, but was perhaps just the realistic scientific worldview? What it meant to see the world clearly, without comforting illusions.

Then I read The Beginning of Infinity by @DavidDeutschOxf. Deutsch has a concept he calls 'bad philosophy.' Not philosophy that's merely false, but philosophy that actively prevents the growth of knowledge. Ideas that close doors rather than open them. That makes problems seem unsolvable by design.
After soaking in Deutsch's framework (it's dense, a bit like digesting a delicious whale), it becomes clear: Harari's books are riddled with bad philosophy. They're smuggling nihilism in under the guise of scientific objectivity. Some examples:

On meaning: "Human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose... any meaning that people inscribe to their lives is just a delusion."

On human rights: "There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings."

On free will: "Humans are now hackable animals. The idea that humans have this soul or spirit and they have free will, that's over."

On progress: "We thought we were saving time; instead we revved up the treadmill of life to ten times its former speed." The Agricultural Revolution? "History's biggest fraud." We didn't domesticate wheat, "it domesticated us."

On our cosmic significance: "If planet Earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual. Human subjectivity would not be missed."

On the future: "Those who fail in the struggle against irrelevance would constitute a new 'useless class.'" Homo sapiens will likely "disappear in a century or two."

This is bad philosophy. It tells us our problems are cosmically insignificant, our solutions are illusions, and that progress is neither desirable nor within our control. It's also perfect nonsense. No one would ever go back to being hunter-gatherers. Would you rather worry about your kid spending too much time on Roblox, or face the 50% chance she won't reach puberty?

And our so-called "fictions"? They ended slavery. They gave women equal rights. They solved hunger. They eradicated smallpox. They turned sand into computer chips. They got us to the moon, and hopefully soon, to Mars and beyond. These "fictions" are already reshaping the universe, and over time they may become the most potent force in it.

Now compare Deutsch:
"Humans, people and knowledge are not only objectively significant: they are by far the most significant phenomena in nature."

"Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow."

"Problems are soluble, and each particular evil is a problem that can be solved."

"We are only just scratching the surface, and shall never be doing anything else. If unlimited progress really is going to happen, not only are we now at almost the very beginning of it, we always shall be."

Where Harari sees a species of deluded apes stumbling toward obsolescence, Deutsch sees universal explainers, the only entities we know of capable of creating explanatory knowledge, solving problems, and potentially seeding the universe with intelligence.

The difference isn't academic. Ideas shape action. If you believe life is meaningless, progress is a trap, and humans are hackable animals with no free will, how does that affect what you build? What you fight for? What you teach your children?

Harari's books sell because they flatter a fashionable pessimism. They let readers feel sophisticated for seeing through the "delusions" everyone else lives by. That smug cynicism is corrosive. And it's everywhere: in schools, in media, in bestselling books. More than half of young adults now say they feel little to no purpose or meaning in life. This is what happens when you teach an entire generation bad philosophy. Less progress, less health, less wealth. Less flourishing. And ultimately, a higher chance that civilization and consciousness go extinct.

Fortunately, there's another equally well-written, but much truer, account of homo sapiens, appropriately titled 'The Beginning of Infinity'. And this one smuggles no despair in by the backdoor. But let's give Harari credit where it's due. He is right about one thing: if planet Earth blew up tomorrow, we wouldn't be missed. Because there'd be no one left to miss us, just a careless universe, blindly obeying physical laws. We are the only ones who can miss, but we're not going to. We're going to aim, hit, and keep going.

Full credit for the amazing meme to @Ben__Jeff

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

@stratechery They should take a note from F1 and let the viewer be the producer. Have the main feed produced if they like but give you the ability to switch to whatever camera you want (without the commentary).

[Kunal Shah @kunalb11]

In our mythology, Lakshmi never stays where there is chaos.
She gravitates toward spaces of order, discipline, and creative energy —
a poetic way of expressing a scientific truth:
prosperity is concentrated, directed energy.

Economies grow when a society learns to channel energy into structure —
trust, institutions, craft, innovation.
They decline when energy scatters and disorder spreads —
when entropy takes over.

Mahalakshmi isn’t just a symbol of wealth;
she is the reminder that
prosperity appears wherever human energy aligns, compounds, and resists entropy.
And she quietly leaves where everything collapses into noise.

Physics, economics, and mythology might speak different languages,
but they describe the same principle:
to create wealth is to keep entropy at bay.

(Random morning musings edited with help of ChatGPT)

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

@bryan_johnson Most people will not understand how hard this is. 283 watts for 30 minutes is impressive.

[Paul Harper Mastodon [email protected] @pauljamesharper]

@nawBitbot @stewartbrand The whole BBC Series of 'How Buildings Learn' is free on YouTube. Here is Episode One to get you started. https://t.co/KOIVqbP3Ai

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

@pauljamesharper @jasonfried @nawBitbot @stewartbrand Thank you for sharing this. What a beautiful series. The content, pacing, writing, music, presentation. All so refreshing in contrast to today’s media. Thank you Stewart for creating it.

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

@3_by_7 @aorumbayev @dhh My notes on getting wifi working on my 11-inch MBP: https://t.co/JORCJw77Qt

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

@bryan_johnson Given all of your other therapies and protocol, do you expect this therapy to be less effective than the pre-print results? It seems like everything else you're doing should produce lower toxins, waste products, and old misfolded and glycated proteins and immune complexes.

[Dwarkesh Patel @dwarkesh_sp]

The @gwern interview.

0:00:00 – Anonymity
0:01:09 – Automating Steve Jobs
0:04:38 – Isaac Newton's theory of progress
0:06:36 – Grand theory of intelligence
0:10:39 – Seeing scaling early
0:21:04 – AGI Timelines
0:22:54 – What to do in remaining 3 years until AGI
0:26:29 – Influencing the shoggoth with writing
0:30:50 – Human vs artificial intelligence
0:33:52 – Rabbit holes
0:38:48 – Hearing impairment
0:43:00 – Wikipedia editing
0:47:43 – Gwern dot net
0:50:20 – Counterfactual careers
0:54:30 – Borges & literature
1:01:32 – Gwern's process
1:19:17 - Gwern's finances
1:25:05 - Random

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

@dhh @stratechery Reminds me of free speech. The fix isn't in depriving the world of ideas. It's in creating an educated society such that bad ideas naturally fail. Hopefully that's not too optimistic an idea.

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

@bryan_johnson any gyms in LA (east side) that you know of that have a /dd program?

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

One AI product I hope we see soon: Truly personalized newsfeeds. You tell your personal AI what your goals and interests are. It generates your newsfeed from sources all over the internet. It’s your algorithm not *the* algorithm with all of its conflicting interests.

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

Update: It's not a panacea but still extremely valuable. It tunes you in to how your thoughts, emotions, and stresses manifest in unexpected ways.

[Sean Abrahams @seanabrahams]

I picked up this book 9 months ago and put it down as it seemed woo-woo. Picked it up again yesterday and it worked immediately. Pain almost entirely disappeared. Remaining pain continues to dissipate. Still in shock. _Read it_ if you suffer from any type of chronic pain.

[Patrick Collison @patrickc]

Another person just told me that they had their RSI cured by Sarno's techniques: https://t.co/RGGfCxVHy7. While it sounds like preposterous woo, it has worked in 4/4 cases of people I personally know trying it. (One account: https://t.co/8ie9NkJfWF.)