Adam Keys is Thinking

Julia Galef, The Scout Mindset:

The “self-belief” model of motivation assumes that if you acknowledge the possibility of failure, then you’ll be too demoralized or afraid to take risks. In that model, people who believe that failure is unthinkable are the ones who try the hardest to succeed. Yet in practice, things often seem to work the other way around—accepting the possibility of failure in advance is liberating. It makes you bold, not timid. It’s what gives you the courage to take the risks required to achieve something big.

One of the most impactful ways I’ve adapted my thinking over the years, if only modestly successfully, has been to fear failure less and accept small downsides more easily. There’s way more world out there for those willing to trip or even fall now and then.

Regarding Leó Szilárd, a theoretical physicist who first conceived of the possibilities of nuclear chain reactions, nuclear power, and nuclear weapons:

The bath was down the hall. “I remember that I went into my bath…around nine o’clock in the morning. There is no place as good to think as a bathtub. I would just soak there and think, and around twelve o’clock the maid would knock and say, ‘Are you all right, sir?’ Then I usually got out and made a few notes, dictated a few memoranda.”

— Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb

Shower thoughts, bath thoughts, lawn mowing thoughts. Great minds think alike, i.e., in similar repose.

LFG: looking for game. An ad-hoc scheme, often forum-esque, where strangers looking to play an online game that lacks matchmaking find each other and coordinate starting a game.

No matter how famous they get, the forward-thinking artists of today aren’t just looking for fans or passive consumers of their work, they’re looking for potential collaborators, or co-conspirators. These artists acknowledge that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that the experience of art is always a two-way street, incomplete without feedback. These artists hang out online and answer questions. They ask for reading recommendations. They chat with fans about the stuff they love.

– Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!

This is how I found so many of my online pals and past/future collaborators. The wonder of blogs, “web 2.0”, and then Twitter. We were out there posting, finding tribes, and, occasionally teammates.

Jim Nielsen, Blogging and Composting:

But as a byproduct of whatever you’re building you undoubtedly learned, observed, or cursed at something along the way.

And if you blog, you can make good use of that experience!

Show up (almost) every day, stack some drafts. Write down what you learned or what surprised you or what amazed you. Sooner than you know it, you’ve got a thing going. Maybe even a thesis or long-running schtick. Works for any kind of writing, not just blogs. 📈

Most fascinating game there is, keeping things from staying the way they are. – Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

The status quo is a hell of a thing. Path dependence makes this a challenging game.

The biggest challenge you could take on in life: change it for even the slightest better. A virtuous challenge too, in an Aristotelian virtues sense?

Rands in Repose, Seven Steps to Fixing Stalled To-Do Tasks:

The never-ending question you must ask regarding whatever productivity system you’ve built is, “Does this system make you more productive?”

The purpose of all this software is to get stuff done (make things), not to fiddle and shuffle tasks around! (This goes for individuals and teams, FWIW)

It reflects a sound understanding of the nature of AI — as an uncredited and formless modifier of other technologies. One whose presence is marked by familiar behaviors having slightly magical effects.

– Venkatesh Rao, Magic, Mundanity and Deep Protocolization

The whole magic & AI thing. The most 2023 of vibes!

Yet, it remains to be seen to what extent AI will yield entirely new media, modalities, and consumption levels or if it will merely modify technology we’re already familiar with.

Is generative AI the iPhone (entirely new media/modality/consumption), the iPhone camera (displaces and exceeds existing categories), or the ability to scan QR codes with your camera to reduce transactional friction (a game changer for some that quickly fades into the background)?

The Designer’s Designer’s Watch – A Look Back At Braun And The Rebirth Of A Few Classics

The Braun watches AW 10 and AW 50 embody simplicity. Just as do the clocks and electrical appliances made by Braun, they truly follow the “less is more” dogma that (arguably) stems from the Bauhaus school. Or, as Braun likes to put it: Less but better. Design has been at the core of the brand for seven decades, and its watches and clocks were designed by a team headed by two men: Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs.

✋🏻 “Less is more”: easy to say, hard to apply.

👍🏻 “Less but better”: easy to say, easy to tell when you’ve done the first part but missed on the second.

Anything you do that doesn’t make you money or help others better be something for your own damned amusement. – Austin Kleon

Efficiency is the enemy, Farnam Street:

It’s possible to make an organization more efficient without making it better. That’s what happens when you drive out slack. It’s also possible to make an organization a little less efficient and improve it enormously. In order to do that, you need to reintroduce enough slack to allow the organization to breathe, reinvent itself, and make necessary change.

The good stuff happens in the margins. The scribbles in books, the breath between notes, the five minutes before meetings start when folks are real. Driving a car for the sensation of driving fast, rather than driving fast to achieve the best possible time.

It’s the difference between enjoying a hobby and making a profession out of a hobby. Efficiency is the adversary of fun.

Filtered for ants and laws, Matt Webb:

Let’s say we could chat with ants. Could we trade with them? What would we want from them?

…

In short: people treat almost everything as people, at least a bit, including companies.

1. We could try to communicate with ants and then include them in capitalism. Would this raise all boats for humans (who currently do low-paying/low-prestige work) and the ants (what is good pay/prestige/standard of living for an ant, I don’t know!)?
2. We attribute person-like qualities to corporations. Infamously, in the case of Citizens United and more innocuously like attributing creativity to Apple, potential then hucksterism with Tesla, or declining design aesthetic with BMW.
3. If we bring ants into corporatism and personify them, there’s an opportunity for some futurist/dystopian sci-fi where a mysterious cadre of house cleaners/chore-doers conceal themselves via surveillance technology and financial engineering of shell corporations. Turns out, it’s just a mega-colony of ants.