Siddharth

[The Rabbit Hole @TheRabbitHole]

“I vowed to destroy the Woke Mind Virus.”

— Elon Musk

[Tim Denning @Tim_Denning]

Chase asymmetric risks if you want to be wealthy.
Chase asymmetric risks if you want to be wealthy.
Chase asymmetric risks if you want to be wealthy.
Chase asymmetric risks if you want to be wealthy.
Chase asymmetric risks if you want to be wealthy.

[Robert Greene @RobertGreene]

Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers.

Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything.

Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

“When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear.”

— Edmund Burke

[Eric Jorgenson 📚 ☀️ @EricJorgenson]

Creating Urgency Even When There’s No Emergency

[Jota @jota_snchez]

Richard Feynman ganó el Nobel de Física y dijo algo que dejó huella:

"La mayoría de personas saben muchas cosas. Pero no saben pensar."

Feynman dio una clase magistral de 1 hora sobre física e imaginación.

Sus 12 lecciones de vida:

1. La imaginación le gana al conocimiento

[Tim Denning @Tim_Denning]

> Be Nikola Tesla
> Born at midnight during a lightning storm in Serbia.
> The midwife calls it a bad omen. His mother calls it a sign.
> Watches his older brother die in a horse riding accident as a child. Blames himself for years.
> Develops strange obsessions. Compulsions. Visions.
> Sees flashes of light before ideas appear. Doesn't know if this is genius or madness.
> Speaks 8 languages by adulthood.
> Has a photographic memory so precise he can run experiments inside his own mind. Full simulations. No paper. No lab. Just his brain.
> Enrolls in engineering school. Studies 20 hours a day.
> Professors write to his father warning he may die from overwork.
> Gets addicted to gambling. Loses his tuition. Loses everything. Drops out.
> Has a nervous breakdown.
> Recovers through sheer will.
> Talks his way into a job with Thomas Edison in Paris.
> Impresses everyone immediately.
> Edison's people send him to New York with a letter of recommendation.
> The letter says: "I know two great men. One is you. The other is this young man."
> Edison reads it. Gives Tesla a job.
> Tesla works for Edison for a year.
> Redesigns his entire DC motor system from scratch.
> Makes it dramatically more efficient.
> Edison promises him $50,000 if he pulls it off.
Tesla pulls it off.
> Edison laughs and says the $50,000 was a joke.
"You don't understand American humor, Tesla."
> Tesla quits on the spot.
> Spends the next year digging ditches to survive.
> A Nobel Prize winner digging ditches in Manhattan.
> Nobody knows who he is. He keeps thinking anyway.
> Develops alternating current. AC electricity.
> The system that will power the entire world.
> Partners with George Westinghouse.
> Edison declares war.
> Starts publicly electrocuting animals with AC current to prove it's dangerous. Elephants. Dogs. Horses.
> Calls it "Westinghousing." The press loves it.
> Tesla watches in silence.
> Lets the work speak.
> Wins the contract to harness Niagara Falls.
> Lights up the entire city of Buffalo, New York.
> The War of Currents is over.
> Tesla wins.
> Every single outlet in the world is his victory.
> Could stop there. Doesn't.
> Invents the radio. Files the patents.
> Marconi takes credit using Tesla's own patents.
> Gets the Nobel Prize for it.
> Tesla gets nothing.
> Invents the basis for radar. Gets nothing.
> Invents the bladeless turbine. Gets nothing.
> Invents the neon light. Gets nothing.
> Invents remote control. Demonstrates a remote-controlled boat in 1898.
> The US Navy thinks it's a trick.
> Too ahead of his time to be believed.
> Starts building a tower on Long Island.
> Wants to transmit electricity wirelessly across the entire planet.
> Free energy for every human being on earth.
> JP Morgan is his backer.
> JP Morgan finds out there's no way to put a meter on free energy.
> Pulls the funding immediately.
> Tower gets demolished. Dream dies.
> Tesla spirals.
> Moves into a series of smaller and smaller hotel rooms.
> Becomes obsessed with pigeons.
> Feeds them every day in Bryant Park.
> Falls in love with one specific white pigeon. Says she gives his life meaning.
> Dies alone in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel. January 7, 1943.
> No wife. No children. No money.
> The US government seizes all his research immediately upon his death.
> Calls it a matter of national security.
> He dies owing the hotel $2,000 in unpaid rent. They let him stay anyway. Because even the hotel staff knew who he was.
> Edison got the fame.
> Westinghouse got the money.
> Marconi got the Nobel Prize.
> Tesla got the hotel room.
> And yet. Every time you flip a light switch
> Tesla wins again.
> Every time a signal travels through the air. Tesla wins again.
> Every time a motor turns. Tesla wins again.
> He didn't just change the world.
> He built the invisible architecture the world runs on.
> And then died alone in a hotel room while the world forgot his name.

Tesla conquered nature itself. And nature didn't even say thank you.

Unbothered. Undefeated. Unchained.

Tesla was built different.

[Robert Greene @RobertGreene]

The brain is designed to learn through constant repetition and active, hands-on involvement. Through such practice and persistence, any skill can be mastered.

[Men of Purpose @Men_Of_Purpose]

Your brain needs pressure.

[Andrew Ng @AndrewYNg]

There will be no AI jobpocalypse.

The story that AI will lead to massive unemployment is stoking unnecessary fear. AI — like any other technology — does affect jobs, but telling overblown stories of large-scale unemployment is irresponsible and damaging. Let’s put a stop to it.

I’ve expressed skepticism about the jobpocalypse in previous posts. I’m glad to see that the popular press is now pushing back on this narrative. The image below features some recent headlines.

Software engineering is the sector most affected by AI tools, as coding agents race ahead. Yet hiring of software engineers remains strong! So while there are examples of AI taking away jobs, the trends strongly suggest the net job creation is vastly greater than the job destruction — just like earlier waves of technology. Further, despite all the exciting progress in AI, the U.S. unemployment rate remains a healthy 4.3%.

Why is the AI jobpocalypse narrative so popular? For one thing, frontier AI labs have a strong incentive to tell stories that make AI technology sound more powerful. At their most extreme, they promote science-fiction scenarios of AI “taking over” and causing human extinction. If a technology can replace many employees, surely that technology must be very valuable!

Also, a lot of SaaS software companies charge around $100-$1000 per user/year. But if an AI company can replace an employee who makes $100,000 — or make them 50% more productive — then charging even $10,000 starts to look reasonable. By anchoring not to typical SaaS prices but to salaries of employees, AI companies can charge a lot more.

Additionally, businesses have a strong incentive to talk about layoffs as if they were caused by AI. After all, talking about how they’re using AI to be far more productive with fewer staff makes them look smart. This is a better message than admitting they overhired during the pandemic when capital was abundant due to low interest rates and a massive government financial stimulus.

To be clear, I recognize that AI is causing a lot of people’s work to change. This is hard. This is stressful. (And to some, it can be fun.) I empathize with everyone affected. At the same time, this is very different from predicting a collapse of the job market.

Societies are capable of telling themselves stories for years that have little basis in reality and lead to poor society-wide decision making. For example, fears over nuclear plant safety led to under-investment in nuclear power. Fears of the “population bomb” in the 1960s led countries to implement harsh policies to reduce their populations. And worries about dietary fat led governments to promote unhealthy high-sugar diets for decades.

Now that mainstream media is openly skeptical about the jobpocalypse, I hope these stories will start to lose their teeth (much like fears of AI-driven human extinction have).

Contrary to the predictions of an AI jobpocalypse, I predict the opposite: There will be an AI jobapalooza! AI will lead to a lot more good AI engineering jobs, and I’m also optimistic about the future of the overall job market. What AI engineers do will be different from traditional software engineering, and many of these jobs will be in businesses other than traditional large employers of developers. In non-AI roles, too, the skills needed will change because of AI. That makes this a good time to encourage more people to become proficient in AI, and make sure they’re ready for the different but plentiful jobs of the future!

[Original text in The Batch newsletter.]

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

Elon Musk was right when he said:

“If you do something like read a lot of books and talk to a lot of people, you can learn almost anything.”

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

Action produces information.

[Tim Denning @Tim_Denning]

Being delusionally optimistic + extreme obsession is the highest form of intelligence there is.

[Z Fellows @zfellows]

Marc Andreessen (@pmarca): “The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.”

[Charly Wargnier @DataChaz]

i'm framing this @sama 👀

[Justin Skycak @justinskycak]

"Your lack of urgency is wasting your potential."

[Z Fellows @zfellows]

“People who really solved the problem, know exactly how they solved it, they know the little details.”

— Elon Musk

[Tim Denning @Tim_Denning]

Adopt the mindset that you can literally do anything you want in life and you will.

[Jaynit @jaynitx]

Elon Musk literally broke down his 5-step process for applying first-principles thinking to build anything:

[tetsuo @tetsuoai]

Andrej Karpathy: Pick almost anything. 10k hours of focused practice and you're an expert.

What's your 10k on?