I keep hearing the same thing. The new Large Language Models (like GPT-4) cause anxiety because Fear of job being replaced by LLM’s Fear of AI taking over the world and maybe killing us I don’t think that’s it. I think the anxiety is deeper. It’s existential. Consider, humanity has always been unique in its ability to wield the tool of language. This is our first great invention. This is what’s enabled everything we’ve achieved. Language has been uniquely ours. ...
This substack is about living the good life and indeed what exactly that means. This particular essay asserts that growth is requisite to living well. I don’t feel there is a need to defend this because it’s impossible to imagine life absent of growth from both physical and intellectual standpoints. Therefore, differences of opinion on this are a matter of degrees only. What do I mean by growth? At its core, growth is a reduction in the effort needed to achieve some goal. This reduction is achieved through broadening one’s horizon. Because I’m interested in how choices can improve one’s life, I am specifically focusing on intellectual growth, rather than physical. This is because physical growth is involuntary. ...
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash Time can go fast. Really it only goes slow when we are very much “living in the moment”. But even then, looking back, it seems to have gone fast. I never understood this cliche: “Spend the day as if it is your last”. We don’t. We cannot. It’s not a good idea. We have to spend the days as if it’s not our last because it probably isn’t. I get the point of the suggestion, but it’s pretty fucking weak in my opinion. ...
In the United States, there have been 658 thousand deaths attributed to Covid1. It’s a lot. For comparison, 38 thousand die each year in driving incidents. We lose from 20 to 60 thousand to the flu in a given year which makes Covid about 20x more deadly. In World War II 405 thousand died. In the Civil War - 655 thousand. One difference with war is the loss of primarily young men. About 1.8 percent of those lost to Covid are under 40 years old. Like many, Covid had me considering my own mortality. ...