📚 Quinn's Highlights

Join 📚 Quinn's Highlights

A batch of the best highlights from what Quinn's read, .

While Algorithmic Decision-Making Does Suffer From Bias, It Offers the Potential for Unparalleled Transparency In the Decision-Making Process Summary: Algorithms offer a transparent and accountable way for decision making. They can detect bias and perpetuated patterns, but must be transparent, independently audited, and not proprietary or snake oil. Transcript: Speaker 1 And then the response comes back saying yes but if you're basing it on historical data then you're feeding in biases of the past which you're going to propagate into the future there Is a kind of new attitude about all this which is kind of orthogonal to these two axes which I personally find pretty compelling and it's come up in from a couple of different places independently I could drop a few names but let me just say that the attitude is that algorithms at their best offer a new way for decision making to be transparent and accountable that's at their best So you know if an algorithm is something that everyone understands how it works everyone understands why we are chose to use this algorithm how it was trained and it's something which Can be independently audited it's even something which could be tinkered with to see if it could be made more fair and more accurate that kind of algorithm could raise the standard of Decision making in many areas and let us detect bias where it crops up and also help us detect where historical patterns are being perpetuated and what we might do to fix that but the big But is they have to be transparent they have to be independently audited they can't be proprietary and opaque and hidden behind veils of intellectual property and they also can't just Be snake oil right so there is a lot of snake oil out there there's a lot of products being put out to market which have not in any sense been independently verified or validated and where Their users and customers frankly don't really know whether their results ought to be interpreted the way they ought to be interpreted and so there needs to be a lot more critical thinking Aimed at these

Glen Weyl & Cris Moore on Plurality, Governance, and Decentralized Society

COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

Psychologist Richard Wiseman created a study using waiters to identify what was the more effective method of creating a connection with strangers: mirroring or positive reinforcement. One group of waiters, using positive reinforcement, lavished praise and encouragement on patrons using words such as “great,” “no problem,” and “sure” in response to each order. The other group of waiters mirrored their customers simply by repeating their orders back to them. The results were stunning: the average tip of the waiters who mirrored was 70 percent more than of those who used positive reinforcement.

Never Split the Difference

Chris Voss and Tahl Raz

Having Grace For the Present Time and Letting Go of a Bleak Future That Has Not Yet Happened Summary: The weight of urgent responsibility and the fear of a bleak future can lead to burnout, but imagining a terminal diagnosis can bring about a sense of freedom and courage. Despite the potential for a bleak future, there are still beautiful moments to be cherished in the present. It is essential to celebrate life, bear witness to the beauty of existence, and keep the world in balance through small yet profound actions. Leaving space for grace and dreaming a way through the unknown are crucial. The Stockdale paradox highlights the importance of being ruthlessly realistic about short-term realities while remaining relentlessly optimistic about long-term possibilities. Although the current global situation is complex and challenging, maintaining a thread of hope and resilience is crucial as we navigate an uncertain future. Transcript: Speaker 1 I've noticed this in a lot of our colleagues and friends that the people I know that are sort of quote unquote fighting the good fight, right? They're out there in the front and in the public. They're out there drawing attention to critical issues, those kinds of things. They're often getting kind of spun up and burned out themselves, right? It's a lot to hold and to hold the urgency and the responsibility is more than most of our psyches and nervous systems can handle, right? And I thought, good Lord, if I had a terminal diagnosis, right? Like if I knew I had a year to live the classic kind of thought experiment, how would I act? And then the simple answer is that for most of us, we would be more free, we would be more courageous, we would be more truthful, we'd be more heartfelt, we'd be more adventurous, we'd Do all the things, right? Yeah, it's hard more. Yeah, it's hard to have lots and bucket lists and you name it, right? And I thought, okay, well, let's say that 30 years from now, we really are in that totally bleak wheels off situation. But I look out my window today and it's actually pretty beautiful. The sun is still coming up, the moon is setting, there's waves to be surf, there's powder skiing to be had, there's music to listen to or share, there's people, there's loved ones in our Lives. If we pissed away these days, ringing our hands about what might yet be but isn't, I mean, it's the old Mark Twain thing, it's like an old man and I've experienced a great many sorrows, Only some of which actually ever happened, you know, we're kind of in that neck of the woods and I sort of felt like, okay, so the simplest is for me, it's almost the hospice tour of the world And life, like about six months ago, I just kind of sat down the super intense urgency that I had been feeling for several years, including the writing of that last book where I was, you Know, like always looking for the solution, always looking for the way through, right? Where was the gap? Where was the seam and the clean, you know, climbing that crazy mountain that would go and that we can make it through? Because every single one of them that I tracked pinched out and it was almost always maulic, right? It was like, you basically, his fingerprints are everywhere where you're like, oh, fuck, that's hypothetically possible, but we're just not going to do it, are we? We're not going to do it because of a perverse incentives, we're not going to do it because if greed or, you know, all of the things, you're just like, fucking goddamn, why? We could, right? We absolutely could, but the statistically my gut sense on are we going to incredibly low given current conditions. So step one was like feed the holy, like celebrate life, shame on us while there is still goodness, truth and beauty in abundance, right? Not to be sucking the matter out of life and not to be putting those memories in the bank. And at the same time, we can never give up hoping because if we give up hope, then that adjacent possibility can never happen, like for certainness, nails in the coffin, if we just go into Despair and cynicism or even just hedonism, like fuck it while the room burns, you know, while room burns, I'm just going to party. Like those are unconscionable decisions. So can we use our feeding of the holy, the idea of like, I'm going to bear witness to the glory of creation, right? And the absolute heart-rending poinency of this human experience. Can I use that, right? In some tiny, small, you know, insignificant, but profound way, rich, really keep the world on its on its axis, right? As most indigenous cultures did, we pray, we make these offerings, we do these things so that the sun keeps rising, right? So that the rain keeps falling so that the crops grow, like can we participate in the wonder of that creative cycle while we are fortunate enough to still have that opportunity and choice. And then oh, by the way, leave space for grace, right? Because it has always happened that way. And funnily enough, this is this was also you've all just mentioned he type something maybe just about AI like a month ago. And he said, we have forever, all of human history, all of human civilization and culture is living in someone else's dream. You know, free markets was a concept, you know, like the democracy, civil rights, everything that we take as the mimetic norms of our reality someone dreamed them first. So the leaving space for grace is and how can we dream a way through that we cannot see from here? We cannot, because I at least I can't, I've looked, right? And most of the people I look up to have been looking. And if you really behind closed doors sit down with most of those folks, it's far grimmer than even the headlines encapsulate, right? But the reality is, is we are still amazingly adaptive, cunning little monkeys with opposable thumbs and brilliant prefrontal cortexes. So, so we can't see from here, what adaptations, what permutations, what mutations will happen around the bend. And this goes back to, you know, Jim Stockdale is Admiral Stockdale. He was the highest ranking POW in Vietnam. And he actually went on to be a vice presidential candidate at one point. But his the Stockdale paradox was he noticed that in those North Vietnamese POW camps that the pessimists didn't live, because they were like, ah, I'm fucked. You know, sure enough, they snuffed it. But the really interesting insight was the optimist didn't live either. Because what happened is they'd be like, we're going to get the boys home for Christmas or Easter or July the 4th. And those dates would come and go. And then they would just collapse, that they would lose all ability to maintain hope after their hope redemption came and went. And he said the paradox was the people who survived were ruthlessly realistic about short-term realities, while remaining relentlessly optimistic about the long-term possibility. I don't know when we're going to get out, but we're going to go home. Right. And that is to me, it's sort of all of us right now. We don't like would like we are in a massive, intersecting, chaotic and complex, tight spot. Right. And it's it's it's the confluence of every intentional and unintentional quality of our civilization to date. And we're just huddling off the cliff. No skid marks. Now, whether or not we can figure out how to turn into chitty, chitty bang bang, you know, and sprout wings or turn into a boat or do something else we can't see from here. And I wouldn't give it super long odds. We may just get subject into the trash compactor of history. Right. But it is on us. It's incumbent on us to maintain a thread of hope and resilience.

#11 - Jamie Wheal — Tackling the Meaning Crisis

Win-Win with Liv Boeree

...catch up on these, and many more highlights

Readwise.

Join 📚 Quinn's Highlights

A batch of the best highlights from what Quinn's read, .

LEARN

EXPLORE

CONTACT