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on-being-fruitful

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On Being Fruitful

stuff On working well and being satisfied

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article

Control the water, control the people. Today’s water is energy, social media, infrastructure. We’re coerced through convenience, not malice. There are many vectors for control—we don’t need to hand them over.

Hydraulic Despotism

article

If you control the water, you control the people: Karl Wittfogel’s theory of hydraulic civilisations gives us a tidy little insight I think is worth extracting. Today ‘water’ is many things: water, electricity, social media and it has some interesting implications. There are some better theories to get after this insight of ours, but better doesn’t mean interesting, and none sound nearly as sexy as Hydraulic Despotism. So I’m going to bring it back.
Control the water, control the people. Today’s water is energy, social media, infrastructure. We’re coerced through convenience, not malice. There are many vectors for control—we don’t need to hand them over.
Check it out

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connection digital-architecture on-being-fruitful on-culture on-ethics on-leadership on-politics-and-power wealth-architecture collective-architecture thought-architecture

audio

Stress isn’t poorly calibrated to modern life. It’s the energising force that allows us to perform. Optimal performance requires optimal stress. The difference between eustress and distress isn’t biological—it’s psychological. Controllability matters more than the stressor itself.

Stress is Good

audio

Everyone’s convinced stress is this outdated evolutionary technology—poorly calibrated to modern life, something to avoid at all costs. The story goes that it evolved to help us run from tigers, but now it’s just triggered by email notifications. This is nonsense. Stress is the only thing that gets us to perform at all. It’s the most valuable biological technology we have. This lecture walks through the Yerkes-Dodson Law—a simple, 100-year-old model that explains how stress actually works, why we need it, and how to use it well.
Stress isn’t poorly calibrated to modern life. It’s the energising force that allows us to perform. Optimal performance requires optimal stress. The difference between eustress and distress isn’t biological—it’s psychological. Controllability matters more than the stressor itself.
Check it out

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betterment gratification on-(un)happiness on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture

article

Human reasoning isn’t flawed, it’s a social tool we use in the wrong places. It’s about sharing and evaluating intuitive claims, not generating rational ones. AI is fundamentally this but crippled: without the grounded intuitions and social friction that makes it work.

AI Hallucination is just Man-Guessing

article

One time I was out drinking with some Swedish folks and they told me about the word killgissa. It means something like ‘man-guessing’, referring to when you sound like you know what you’re talking about but you’re actually just guessing. I reckon AI hallucination is just man-guessing, but on your behalf. To explain, I first have to convince you that human reason isn’t actually that reasonable. With any luck it’ll make you better at managing your own processes of reason and your AIs. Let’s see.
Human reasoning isn’t flawed, it’s a social tool we use in the wrong places. It’s about sharing and evaluating intuitive claims, not generating rational ones. AI is fundamentally this but crippled: without the grounded intuitions and social friction that makes it work.
Check it out

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betterment digital-architecture on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture thought-architecture wealth-architecture

article

System 1 vs System 2 is a useful shorthand, but our minds aren’t two-speed engines—they’re multi-process coalitions of specialised agents working in parallel and in series.

Beyond System 1 and System 2

article

Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2—our fast, intuitive autopilot versus slow, deliberative override—have become a shorthand for human thought. But thinkers from Evans and Sloman to Stanovich and Minsky remind us that cognition isn’t just a two-lane road. It’s a bustling coalition of specialised processes—heuristics, conflict-detectors, symbolic reasoners—all running in parallel or in nested hierarchies. Fast versus slow will do as a starting point, but the real story lies in the many flavours and layers of mind at work behind the scenes.
System 1 vs System 2 is a useful shorthand, but our minds aren’t two-speed engines—they’re multi-process coalitions of specialised agents working in parallel and in series.
Check it out

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betterment gratification on-(un)happiness on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture spiritual-architecture

article

The neuroscience confidence game trades content for cosmetic filler, making vacuous advice look smart.

The Neuroscience Con

article

I talk about something I call the “neuroscience confidence game” a lot, but I realised I hadn’t ever written an article I could easily link to to explain it. Some unfortunate soul on instagram, using this technique as their primary strategy, had me fall into their ad-targeting and I’m going to use them to illustrate, so that you can tease this kind of thing apart yourself.
The neuroscience confidence game trades content for cosmetic filler, making vacuous advice look smart.
Check it out

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betterment gratification on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture
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