A new, powerful definition of intelligence is emerging out of the AI field: “boundary intelligence.” I first came across it in this excellent piece To Know Is To Stage by Venkatesh Rao, which appropriately, was co-authored by an LLM. Let me step back and explain what boundary intelligence means (mixing my own words with paraphrasing…
I’ve noticed that psychedelic medicine has been on the rise in California and other parts of the U.S. over the last few years, and have heard reports from a handful of friends and acquaintances about the incredible results they’ve had from ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin. In our new home of Valle de Bravo, Mexico, I’ve…
I’ve suspected for years that the traditional concept of “goal-setting” was on its last legs. Every time I bring up “SMART goals,” I can see the light go out in my students’ eyes. An unmistakable feeling of dread and aversion fills the room, and the decline in energy and enthusiasm is palpable. They know they…
Two books I read recently helped me tremendously to understand what’s happening now with Artificial Intelligence: Prediction Machines and Power and Prediction (affiliate links) by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb. The authors are economists and professors at the University of Toronto, one of the leading institutions studying the economic impacts of AI. Their…
The conventional approach to intelligence has been to rely only on our own personal mental capabilities. We tend to assume that intelligence resides only in our skulls, the same way the computation of a computer is sealed inside its aluminum case. But in her book The Extended Mind (affiliate link) Annie Murphy Paul argues otherwise:…
We’ve been led to believe that we are at the precipice of an Artificial Intelligence explosion. Yet the progress in our digital assistants and self-driving cars seems to have stalled. Computers choke at even the simplest requests, and most of the digital world continues to be handcrafted by humans. But quietly, hidden in plain sight,…
If you’ve been around here for a while, you know I’m a big fan of what I call “personal growth.” But you may have wondered, “What the heck IS personal growth?” I’ve honestly struggled to define it: It’s not religion, though it often has a spiritual flavor It’s not philosophy, although it can easily get…
In 2006, inventor Ray Kurzweil released the book The Singularity Is Near (Amazon Affiliate Link), with a bold prediction that by the year 2049 we’d enter a “technological singularity.” Around that time, he argued, the pace of improvement in technology would become a runaway phenomenon that would transform all aspects of human civilization. The word “singularity”…
In Part I, I introduced Progressive Summarization, a method for easily creating highly discoverable notes. In Part II, I gave you examples and metaphors of the method in action. Part III included my top recommendations for how to perform it effectively. Part IV showed how to apply the technique to non-text media.
In Part V,
You enter your kitchen for a quick lunch: how is it exactly that your brain solves the problem “prepare lunch as efficiently as possible”? Your brain effortlessly, almost instantaneously “assembles” a diverse mix of problem-solving resources on the spot. These “resources” can include knowledge, tools, or structures, and can be: Mental: knowledge, experience, intuition Physical:…
Matthew Crawford’s book The World Beyond Your Head (Affiliate Link) is the most important book I’ve read in quite some time. It makes a sweeping argument about what it means to be an ethical, autonomous human in the digital age. Crawford draws a strong connection from the distractions buzzing on our phones, to the evolving…
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Forrest Bryant at Evernote HQ, for my first ever live on-camera interview, broadcasting on Facebook Live. The topic was habit formation and behavior change, two of my favorite topics. Check out the full blog post for a video recording of the interview, a written summary of…