Monday links
Individual optimism, social pessimism, Norwegian chicken win, India's electrotech future, sixteen thoughts on Greenland, beauty in my backyard, longevity & zeno's paradox, self insight through AI
Many people are individually optimistic but think the world is falling apart. To remain agentic and happy, I recommend the following: keep identifying the smallest possible things you can improve about the world, and then act on them. For me this often means donating to effective causes. Somehow the Dutch are almost off the charts on this dichotomy?
Related: Norwegians are also phasing out ultra fast growing chicken strains. It’s a small win for animal welfare, but a much better world is simply the compounding effect of thousands of these wins across time.
Towards a new aesthetics of abundance. It is happening — we’ve reached rock bottom of ugliness in architecture and YIMBYs are starting to realise that beauty is a key ingredient to get things built. People have been partially blocking new housing projects because they (rightly) expected that it was going to make their neighborhood uglier. Beauty in my Backyard!
Related: Signs of romanticism in Silicon Valley? “Dressing well used to be a negative signal (‘he’s focused on the wrong things’), while today serious people in tech are starting to pay attention to how they dress. Same with caring about beauty in the built environment. Beauty, in general, is increasingly in vogue.”
India’s electrotech future. Energy leapfrogging, it is happening.
Sixteen thoughts on Greenland. (I do not endorse number 15.)
Longevity, AI, and Zeno’s paradox. “My takeaway is that you probably can’t trust your most pessimistic or optimistic intuitions. Don’t let uncertainty about the future make you a doomer, and don’t be a naive techno-optimist who dismisses all precaution. Progress has to happen, but on a closed loop: build or discover the next useful thing, evaluate, course-correct, and repeat.” Very much agree with this Popperian conclusion.
A prompt library for more self-insight through AI. Obviously works with all AIs, not just ChatGPT. My hypothesis is that AIs will help a lot of people leading the best version of their lives by reminding them of their daily duties. Try it out. Via R.J. Sparreboom.