(Brain Ticklers, Ed. 50) The Half-Century Edition

Inspiresting links for April 2024 that [carnivas thinks] will tickle the brains [of his (purportedly) intelligent friends].

So: This newsletter hits the milestone of Five Zero. Unlike others, this is strictly monthly, which means this has been going on for more than 4 years now. Wow. From the early days of “tree falling, but sound is heard” scenario, this has indeed come a reasonably long way. Thank you, for those who have been part of this journey.

It would be a great favor for me if you could fill a super short survey (won’t take more than a few minutes, I promise) to get some reader feedback.

Though I don’t play to the gallery (unless you are my boss in the gallery, ha), I do intend to make some adjustments based on what you say. Will look forward to the responses.

On to the links now.

History (or its first draft)

• The US tried permanent Daylight Saving Time in the ’70s. People hated it.

• A neat review of Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes

• Are video games coming for the novel? Wow, this is an interesting evolution of story-telling, I think.

• China's Spamouflage has been massive and they're everywhere. But nobody looks at them except for researchers. Haha.

• In modern civil wars, typically, the conflict develops between people who think they are the "sons of the soil" and immigrants (who are the dominant group overall) from other parts of the country, helped by the state. Gives example of Lankan Civil War, where the Tamils in the North thought they were the sons of the soil, but the Sinhalese (dominant in the whole of Sri Lanka) were planted there by the Government. I haven't thought from this angle at all.

Society

• Interaction patterns are persistent across social media platforms and over time - from Usenet to now. Probably from Stone Age to now? Basically, we are all rude & toxic people, whatever the interaction patterns are. Don’t think so? Now just shut up. OK? (Hope you saw what I did).

• Shopify has been assigning employees a numerical score to represent their skill level. Only people whose scores increase in a given review period are eligible for raises. Wow! I wonder why no one thought of the ways this would gamify the entire company.

• Find out if you are conservative or liberal: Under normal conditions, conservatives show greater variety seeking than liberals (counter-intuitive to me). Yet, during crisis-induced threats, conservatives decrease their variety seeking, whereas liberals increase theirs. Can you figure why?

• Zomato pilots new service for last-mile deliveries across corporate parks. i.e., a guy who walks from the reception to your desk. Next step: Feed you like a parent while you watch YouTube videos.

• (Is there a) Need for Diversity in teams: Research has found that the relationships between demographic, job-related and cognitive diversity, and team performance are significant and positive, but insubstantial. Correlations were more positive when tasks were higher in complexity or required creativity and innovation, and when teams were working in contexts lower in collectivism and power distance.

• Today ‘neuro’ is the new robe of the modern monk. But, ‘Neuroscientists’ don’t know the mind at all

• Using artificial intelligence, middle and high school students have fabricated explicit images of female classmates and shared the doctored pictures. Sigh!

• The rise of the remote husband. She goes out to work, he stays at home (and logs on). (Not really “remote husband” - a domestic husband who does remote work).

• The "Emotional Support Animal" racket. Hilarious is the word. Guess this is a US only thing now, but I expect the Gen Zs to spread this across the world asap.

• Buying fake William Morris prints on Etsy and other early signs of epistemological collapse. Made me think quite some. I wonder if we should simply use AI to create anything beautiful instead of relying on humans. The true geniuses can spend time teaching the AI, I guess. For example: A master weaver of a few hundred years ago would have been only a designer now, right? Not really weaving things! Why shouldn't that apply to art? Let the genius artist provide the prompts and the AI create it with polish.

• East Asian management culture is not necessarily the best, even if it looks very intense and hard-working. I like the ending: Cross-country cultural differences are real (I have worked for Japanese, Korean, Indian, European, and American bosses/companies!), but they aren’t as impactful on business as people like to think. Humans are humans, and they can learn.

Interesting-Perspectives

• Robots, for all of their futuristic aura, are actually totems of the past. Their vision is always backwards facing, and this is especially true for Gen AI. (Kinda makes sense, right?)

• Historical analogies for large language models

• When is appearance a genuine qualification for a job? And even: should genuine qualifications always count, or can there be moral reasons for not counting them? Example: Even though there’s a sense in which being a man is a genuine qualification for the job; when a male doctor would be better able to minister to patients’ needs because their prejudices mean they’d trust him more and hence be more receptive to his advice. Woah! Mind-bending.

• If PMS is psychosomatic, this must be something around culture telling women they should feel bad around their periods; and women who are more susceptible to internalizing this to the degree they feel something real, might also be susceptible to internalizing other beliefs to the degree that they have a legitimately altered experience. Super-interesting!

• Clock time Vs Event time debate. Do you stick to a set schedule, or have a looser relationship to the clock? (I am a clock time person by default, but have been trying the event time for the past few months - more by circumstances, to be honest - and it has been a bumpy transition! Wish me luck to settle for a good balance of both, depending on the activity in question)

Science & Technology

• An HBR research says generative AI is being used as follows: Technical Assistance & Troubleshooting (23%), Content Creation & Editing (22%), Personal & Professional Support (17%), Learning & Education (15%), Creativity & Recreation (13%), Research, Analysis & Decision-Making (10%).

• If the Valley really wants to change, it needs to stop empowering those who have failed upwards just because they say the right things. Scathing.

• Enshittification kits Passkeys. Passkeys will fail in the hands of the general consumer population. We missed our golden chance to eliminate passwords through a desire to capture markets and promote hype.

• How bots, mercenaries, and table scalpers have turned the restaurant reservation system inside out. In New York, the neighborhood restaurant doesn’t have much room for neighbors anymore.

• Microbiome treatments are taking off. I am seriously looking for some fecal transplant to cure my bowel troubles. (Not).

• From the biggest detractor of crypto. AI can be kind of useful, but it isn't clear that a "kind of useful" tool justifies the harm. Related: Apparently from someone who is a doomer usually for tech: AI doesn’t have to be a job destroyer. It offers us the opportunity to extend expertise to a larger set of workers. (And build a new middle class, apparently).

• Timeline of the xz open source attack. Fascinating story of how the perpetrators took a slow approach to penetrate.

• NYTimes columnist spends a month hanging out with 18 A.I. companions. Very interesting.

• LPCAMM2 is a totally modular, repairable, upgradeable memory standard for laptops, using the latest LPDDR chips for maximum speed and efficiency. Will we have the 1990s vibe of local technicians "assembling" laptops (a la PCs)?

Perso-Dev

• Learning to coexist with the tension between your taste (aspirations, to be more clear) and skills. (We just don't apply the skills because we are afraid there is a gap; or give up on the skills before they can bridge the gap. I am afraid the former is higher, from what I have seen in myself and others too. It is easy to live in an illusion that your skills are a match to your taste/aspiration. And you don't want to put it to test, while deep down you know there is a gap, which may or may not be bridge-able).

• The art of asking smarter questions: Five techniques can drive great strategic decision-making

• A practical plan for when you feel overwhelmed

• Paul Graham's talk to school children on "How to start Google". Related: Advice from someone at the end of their career, for people who are just starting.

• Things you’d like to change can change faster than you think. Real progress needn't always be painful and slow. If you can become conscious of the “pro-symptom position” behind your procrastination, or imposter syndrome, or commitment-phobia, or addiction to distraction, or anything else – then change needn’t necessarily be difficult or slow. [Tim Ferriss question on how complicit are you in creating the situation you find yourself in]

• How to open pieces of narrative non-fiction writing, conference talks, and sticky jars?

• Exploration of Deep Honesty. (Pair this with Sam Harris's book on Lying - review by me). 

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