Join 📚 Josh Beckman's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Josh's read, .
In The Real World of Technology, Ursula Franklin describes such a practice as a "holistic technology," one in which a single person understands and has the skills and autonomy to carry out every step of the process, closely related to the idea of artisanal labor.
How Infrastructure Works
Deb Chachra
These constraints create better decisions both because constraints drive innovation, and because removing constraints drives overly simplistic magical thinking such as spreadsheets that show tripling Engineering this quarter will triple Product velocity. Planning with sequenced constraints feels unnatural at first, but it’s worth the initial discomfort.
How to Plan as an Engineering Executive.
Irrational Exuberance
The **Lance Armstrong problem** Did we get the AI to be **actually safe** or **good at hiding its dangerous actions?**
When dealing with an intelligent agent, it’s hard to tell the difference between “behaving well” and “*appearing* to behave well.”
When professional cycling was cracking down on performance-enhancing drugs, Lance Armstrong was very successful and seemed to be unusually “clean.” It later came out that he had been using drugs with an unusually sophisticated operation for concealing them.
How We Could Stumble Into AI Catastrophe
Cold Takes
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise