Wouter Van Respaille

Learning

[Bosnian Football @BosniaNTBall]

Just end the torunament now. This is disgraceful! #FIFAWorldCup

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@Alan_Couzens I've been reading your Substack book. I'm currently at chapter 6, but I'm a bit confused about the heart rate zones. I'd like to set them on my Whoop and Garmin so I can take your content into account.

I'm specifically confused about Zones 0 and 1.

My AeT = 160bpm (1,7 mmol/l).
Zone 0 has a ceiling of ~AeT-10, so = ~150bpm. Same as the floor of zone 1. Since zone 0 is described as 'walking and yoga', I wonder if I can lower the ceiling. I understand I can just walk/do yoga at 120, but if I go higher (e.g., 135 bpm), I have a feeling I'm not in zone 0 anymore, according to the description.

Can I lower the floor in zone 1 or is there any other way to handle this?

Just to confirm, when you say the bulk of athletes train in zone 1, do you mean the narrow zone of ~AeT-10 and AeT? (only ~10bpm difference).

Additional question: my 'no man's land' doesn't exist, as there's 20 bpm between AeT and AnT. I'm assuming this will only matter when my curve widens?

Thanks for your book, really enjoying it!

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@davthewave Any thoughts on the possible quantum threat?

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@torfsrik Do we have a transcript available of what’s exactly been said or are people defending freedom of speech no matter the content?

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@PLoobuyck Is a transcript of what’s been said available somewhere?

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@DVanLangenhove Where can we find what’s been said during this lecture? @grok

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@techexe @adam3us What about satoshi’s wallet?

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

Or their second, or their third, ...

[Z Fellows @zfellows]

Cofounder of LinkedIn:

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@EylonALevy Love the optimism but I’m afraid that day isn’t soon

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

Is nobody checking the x-axis? 😅

[Han Wang @handotdev]

what I would be working on if I started another company today

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@BoWang87 There's no dichotomy

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

If these are the types of movies, Hollywood is safe. But indeed amazing quality, and it'll only get better.

[Rohan Paul @rohanpaul_ai]

We are crossing the threshold.

The Dor Brothers created this 100% AI short film in 1 day, and it’s at that annoying point where you can’t even spot the AI anymore. Insane quality.

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@Andercot @PaulRoundy1 It depends on what the definition of that "god" is. Is it just a creator? Or is it another type of entity that we can't define yet?

[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

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@KimDotcom @elonmusk Why?

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

I was inspired by this so I wanted to see if Claude Code can get into my Lutron home automation system.

- it found my Lutron controllers on the local wifi network
- checked for open ports, connected, got some metadata and identified the devices and their firmware
- searched the internet, found the pdf for my system
- instructed me on what button to press to pair and get the certificates
- it connected to the system and found all the home devices (lights, shades, HVAC temperature control, motion sensors etc.)
- it turned on and off my kitchen lights to check that things are working (lol!)

I am now vibe coding the home automation master command center, the potential is 🔥.And I'm throwing away the crappy, janky, slow Lutron iOS app I've been using so far. Insanely fun :D :D

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@morqon @nntaleb will enjoy this

[Boyan Slat @BoyanSlat]

We're currently stopping between 2 and 5% of all global plastic emissions.

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@cormachayden_ I’d keep nr 1, its knowledge creation

[Wouter Van Respaille @wvanrespaille]

@BellikOzan Exactly what happened during the chips race