Links for January 23, 2022
๐ง The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence โ Wait But Why
Tim Urban's multi-part essay on artificial intelligence has informed a lot of my own writing about technology, particularly this week's post "Humility in the Face of Progress."
His core argument, that progress compounds, invites readers to have the kind of humility I wrote about.
This patternโhuman progress moving quicker and quicker as time goes onโis what futurist Ray Kurzweil calls human historyโs Law of Accelerating Returns. This happens because more advanced societies have the ability to progress at a faster rate than less advanced societiesโbecause theyโre more advanced.
๐ง Choose Carefully โ Hidden Brain
Shankar Vedantam explores the subconscious factors that contribute to the decisions we make. If you liked my post on defaulting to progress, this is for you:
All of us make choices all the time, and we may think weโre making those choices freely. But psychologist Eric Johnson says thereโs an architecture behind the way choices are presented to us, and this invisible architecture can influence decisions both large and small.
๐ A Fun History Game

A new online game pulls random Wikipedia entries and asks you to place them in order. Link
Via Kottke.org
๐ฆ Tweets
@visakanv, who I quoted in yesterday's post, shares a great video of Vic Wooten discussing practicing recovering from wrong notes. A great complement to my post on the subject.
this is true regardless of how you choose to define success; whether we're talking abt climbing the corporate ladder or being an artist. I'm reminded of Vic Wooten talking about how he deliberately practices wrong notes (worth watching even if non-musical) https://t.co/5cywxUyepm
โ visa is doing final edits (99.9%) โ๐พ๐ (@visakanv) March 30, 2018
And I couldn't resist sharing this amazing squid:
A large strawberry squid, one of three caught on the last trawl of the Deep-See cruise. Photo: NOAA Fisheries pic.twitter.com/BB1RIPUa5Q
โ ๐๐ฉ๐จ๐ฅ๐จ๐ง๐ข๐ฌ ๐๐ฉ๐ก๐ซ๐จ๐๐ข๐ฌ๐ข๐ (@A_aphrodisia) December 2, 2021