Quotes that hit home

[Rupert]

Quote of the day by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: "Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether [we] possess the maturity to wield it" — warnings on the looming threat of beyond-human AI

[rcjordan]

"You ingested the entire written output of human civilization without consent, without compensation and without credit to build a system whose primary commercial application is eliminating the jobs of the people whose work you consumed.

You are not 'liberating human creativity' -- you are strip-mining it and selling it back at a markup while calling the theft 'training data'." ^{- Naomi Klein to Sam Altman}

[rcjordan]

^{Ouch! True dat.}

Americans learn geography by who their country bombs -bsky

[littleman]

That Naomi Klein quote its hard.

[ergophobe]

I have looked around quite a bit and I'm not convinced it is from Naomi Klein. Often quoted, but never sourced.

I've been reading Klein's Doppleganger about how often she gets confused with Naomi Wolf.

[rcjordan]

A goal without a plan is just a wish. ^{― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry}

[ergophobe]

> wish

Buckworks and I had a discussion around this idea a while back in the context of me explaining to a young athlete that saying they "want" to be good without taking the actions required to do so is a wish, not a want. "Goal" is a better word since we all "want" things we don't work for. In fact, in my ideal world, most of the things I want *would* come to me without work!

[littleman]

That's interesting, it is like 'try' vs. 'will'. 

Example:
"I will try to lose weight" vs. "I will lose weight"

Saying "try" is giving you an out.

[ergophobe]

"Do or do not, there is no try."
  -- Master Yoda, Jedi Knight

> "I will try to lose weight" vs. "I will lose weight"

I actually think that neither of those is more helpful than the other.  They are both focused on the end point, not the process, but the process is what gets you to the end point.  They both offer an out because they are both vague about what you will actually do right now, today, tonight, tomorrow morning.

Rather... "My goal is to lose weight. Therefore, I will not eat after 6pm." Or "I will go to the doctor and ask about Ozempic."

I'm prefer a controllable action, not an abstract goal. It may be very difficult in terms of willpower for me to commit to not eating after 6pm, but I know every single day whether or not I succeeded. I don't have meaningful feedback on losing weight for a couple weeks and I don't have feedback on whether it is a durable change until I have survived a holiday season, an illness, a crunch time at work.

In the context of the young athlete, her goal was "to run a sub-20 5k." But that's just a wish until backed up by action. So I asked her, "What are some of the things a person who wants to run a sub-20 5k would do every week? What are some things she would not do?"

This was in the context of a longer discussion. She was, in her head, really focused on becoming a faster runner, but in her actions, often shooting herself in the foot. So I asked if she wanted to be the best runner she could be. She said, "Yes!!!" I then asked her what she thought I would say if she asked me that question. She said, uneasily knowing this was starting to sound like a trick/leading question, "Yes?" And I explained that no, I do not want to be the best runner I can be, because I am not willing to make the choices that would allow me to get there. I want to be a mediocre runner, mediocre climber, excellent husband, excellent son, brother, friend, and so forth. Some months later she came back and told me that she wants to have fun running, enjoy time with her teammates and do as well as she can while getting good grades to get into a decent college. I wasn't trying to push her in any direction and I was careful to say that over and over again. I was just trying to get her to be honest with herself about what she really wanted.

This is sort of related to the Be - Do - Have framework. First think of yourself as a person who IS (Be) faster. Then think of what actions that person DOES. Then eventually you may HAVE the result.

"I will be faster" is to me starting with the HAVE (the result).