Microblog

I haven’t been using any social media for the past couple of weeks. My daily screentime is around 1-2 hours.

I’m reminded of how destructive these technologies can be to clarity of mind.

It’s like I’ve returned to my ‘baseline level’. A reminder of how I want to stay.

I sat on Sunday, in the Waterstones reading through the London Review of Books, flicking through magazines, immersed in a Sci-fi series, and I’m deeply content. Attention, immersion, absorption - this to me is synonymous with happiness.

I know how I get this. Through reading, writing, long walks, nature, quality time with friends and family. Not by participating in digital platforms, which are insanely addictive.

A reminder to step back and look at my media diet. If you’re scrolling, its probably not a good place to be.

Tweet by Balaji that has been on my mind : AI doesn’t do it end-to-end. It does it middle-to-middle. The new bottlenecks are prompting and verifying.

Intelligence has become cheap Prompting = agency Verification = regulated industries

To survive in an post AI world, you either need crazy agency to create something yourself, or be part of a community where your role will be in verification (I’m thinking as a radiologist who might become a medicolegal wrapper around a sufficiently capable AI system)

I went to an amazing lecture/talk yesterday hosted by the adventures in awareness society - with Shamil Chanderia.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an excellent speaker in a while.

I think the lecture has been recorded, but the topics he covered :

• Your brain constructs your model of reality (Bayesian brain / predictive processing) ala Anil Seth
• A model of meditation/psychedelics that integrates this scientific understanding
• The self model ala Thomas Metzinger
• A model for attention/awareness
• The role of meditation in ‘deconstructing’ the world model, and then reconstructing

I think I need to watch the recorded lecture again! One epistemological stance that I’d like to explore was that he said that it is ‘stories’ all the way down’, and that there are good and bad stories. How do we actively guide the reconstruction process? Which stories are good/bad…

Reading about Friction. Digital services give the illusion that they are reducing friction, but they are really outsourcing it to somewhere else.

Oncall shift today.

Thinking about my media diet. It’s good to peroidically take time off of the major social media platforms and look where no-one else is looking. Usually this is in books/print/obscure media.

Just back from Charleston/Lindy hop dance class. Dancing literally takes me from a 7-8 in mood to an 11. I love dancing! After the class, I spend the evening dancing/cooking in the kitchen, and then some youtube standup to wind down.

Everytime I step outside the flat, there is always something. On my way through Kings Cross, I think there must have been a famous tiktoker/rapper/music person, because the whole square was full (people literally climbing up on the traffic lights) to watch the show going on.

I feel so energised in cities.

Father’s day - went back home and spent a slow day with the family. Shared meals, gossiping, listening to music and doing nothing.

I’ve been trying to write by hand more, its slow, its private and its often incoherent, but I feel more generative in that medium. I look out the window, the clear blue sky still bright at 9pm, and I relax into the sound of the rustling leaves in the wind.

Unwinding today by listening to Pico Iyer talk about home.. Spoilers: its not the place, but the people and the habits you carry there with you.

Just testing out this new automated microblog tweet thing.

Candle and slow jazz in the evening. Norah Jones whilst reading Project Hail Mary (Rereading).

Cool breeze. I spent the day walking- sitting in cafes, reading magazines (Never too Small- an architecture magazine -special edition on Japan!).

Life is good.

Created a mac application/exe that I can quickly write these short microblog posts with. Fun!

Just launched my new microblog section! 🎉

This is where I’ll share quick thoughts, updates, and interesting finds. Basically twitter for me, but without a firehose of information pointed at my brain.

I have so many passing thoughts that just aren’t deep or refined enough to be blog posts, so this is a good starting point/garden to cultivate ideas