Join Notes

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

What is it that causes some people to slide into unwanted habits and enables others to enjoy the compounding effects of good ones?

Atomic Habits

James Clear

When objects and activities involving objects are framed in informational terms, it becomes clear that randomness is the ultimate source of anything truly new. This may seem startling to those not familiar with the foundations of computer science, but the logic behind it is sound. Deterministic rules precisely determine outcomes; therefore, in the absence of some form of random input, outcomes are always predictable. Deterministic computers are so useful because they output the same answers every time they are given the same input. This is the opposite of creativity.

The Engine of Complexity

John Hollenbeck and John Mayfield

But in the end, the remarkable thing is that all these operations—individually as simple as they are—can somehow together manage to do such a good “human-like” job of generating text. It has to be emphasized again that (at least so far as we know) there’s no “ultimate theoretical reason” why anything like this should work. And in fact, as we’ll discuss, I think we have to view this as a—potentially surprising—scientific discovery: that somehow in a neural net like ChatGPT’s it’s possible to capture the essence of what human brains manage to do in generating language.

What Is ChatGPT Doing ... And Why Does It Work?

Stephen Wolfram

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