Which may be the feeling of human conception becoming real. The word becoming flesh.
Follow the master…
Will we have a world left?
“Have courage to use let agents use their understanding!”–that is the motto of enlightenment.
Ended up in Systems instead.
Chapter 12 from “Origins, Imitation, Conventions: Representation in the Visual Arts” (MIT Press, 2002). Ackerman explores how architectural conventions—plans, elevations, perspectives—are arbitrary inventions that work only when they mean the same thing to observer and maker. He traces the evolution of drawing instruments from quill pens to graphite, and how the rectangular format of paper itself shapes architectural representation.
To be at home is both wonderful and terribly unsettling for how calm one feels.
At least, when we are out of home, there is home to hope for. When we are at home, we lose all hope.
angels. mirrors. myself
Oh. How I love you.
“Technology is just a tool. AI can replicate, but can it yearn? Can an algorithm understand the weight of a glance between two people who can’t express their feelings? Can code capture the way memory distorts and reshapes our past? These are the questions that interest me, and I don’t think machines have the answers yet.”
This is beautiful.
The system prompt in A5 is interesting
Oh this is such a fun book.
The successful people who say they spend a lot of time resting work just as much as everyone else. They just sacrifice other parts of their lives for resting.
- Exercise before I eat
- Follow some religious fasting calendar (currently the Buddhist 六斋日）
- Light/no lunch. Larger dinner.
- No snacks, NO SNACKS!
- Red light for screens 2 hours after sunset.
- Warm lights until sleep.
- Get dressed and go out for a short walk when wake up.
I often think about personalization as collecting all this data and magically being given the perfect thing. True personalization is to have the space to change, customize, adapt, and grow the generative process behind things.
Oh wow.
This is so funny.
Woah, wow.
Claude recommended me a website that pointed to this website. It is kind of trippy because I feel like stepping into someone’s brain, whilst having no idea what they are talking about at all…
There are four legends concerning Prometheus:
According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed.
According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.
According to the third, his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, the gods forgotten, the eagles, he himself forgotten.
According to the fourth, every one grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.
There remained the inexplicable mass of rock.—The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.
If we really want to work, why not work?
If we really want to socialize, why not socialize?
“My answer to this question is something like this. Right now, we just focus on the research, and then the answer to that question will reveal itself. I think there will be lots of possible answers.”
Why don’t we treat our favorite books, ones supremely significant to us, as people treat the bible? Read it, discuss it, reread it, have it next to our deathbed?
Bad art adds. Great Art subtracts to domesticate the inspiration that is already there.
We make ourselves feel more free by having technology make important decisions for us, so that “we don’t have to think about it anymore.”
The good thing about knowing lots of history is to be able to find parallels in everything we do. The bad thing about knowing lots of mental models is to be able to find parallels in everything we do.
Feynmann
We all say we want elegance, beauty, and style in our lives. But we rarely do anything substantial towards that aim.
I often find the depiction of people in supposedly realistic old paintings (e.g. the Flemish Masters) quite unrealistic. I’m starting the wonder whether this is because people really looked liked that. Just that I don’t have the imagination and exposure to find it real.
We like the right kind of exotic. Just enough to make us feel adventured. Not enough to make us frustrated.
One of the best things that I have encountered.
The patterns of places live in me.
Artistic integrity lies in every decision. From the largest to the smallest. “To see a world in a grain of sand”. It’s every character and every line of code.
Writing, thinking, language, patterns, words, has been my obsession. They are my tools. Truth, Love, and Beauty, they are my eternity.
Before I knew how to code, I thought “code is creative” is bullshit.
The light.
And the unexamined life…
Heidegger
I like Architecture and Kant lol.
Might be one of the most striking books I’ve read.
This is amazing. I didn’t know something this amazing could come out of Harvard.
Don’t eat unless I’ve exercised beforehand.
Don’t pee unless I really feel like I have to.
Don’t stay in doors when I can stay out doors.
We are defined by what we don’t believe.
Borges, Borges, Borges… The first time you read it it feels trivial. The second time, interesting. The third time, profound.
Wow. This is so helpful. Better than language models. Much Better than man pages.
Incredibly fascinating video.
We are defined by what we choose not to do.
What a delightful little tool.
“One of the realizations we had about computers in the 60s was that they give rise to new and more powerful forms of arguments about many important issues via dynamic simulation. That is, instead of making the fairly dry claims that can be stated in prose and mathematical equations, the computer could carry out the implications of the claims to provide a better sense of whether the claims constituted a worthwhile model of reality.””
每一个公司都是创始人的心的照影
I’ve learned that it is easier to build what I am thinking in my mind out than to tell it to someone so we can build it together.
Nassim Taleb
From 21 years of schooling, I’ve learned how to exploit stupid rules in stupid games. Fortunately, I’ve learned also that there are certain games that are not worth playing, especially the ones where everyone is playing but no one is having fun.
It is easier to do big bad when I think I am doing big good.
To be happy, don’t do anything that makes me unhappy. Then do things that makes me happy.
I used to think quantity of information mattered. I would simply read more and more, and I was better than most at this. Perhaps I’ve grown up—or perhaps I’ve simply read enough—I’ve come to appreciate that a true sentence is worth more than a mediocre book.
From very young, I’ve always wanted to be older rather than stay young. Of course, being older is scary in its own way.
No matter how powerful Claude, GPT, and Gemini are, there are certain pieces of important information that one can only find on XiaoHongShu.
The world is strange.
Consistency is a vice except in Mathematics. In any other field (even Statistics) we can get too bogged down on consistency (of estimators, in this case). Life would be less fun if we stopped speaking in fear of contradicting ourselves. In fact, the world may be silent except for a few obstinate, fanatical, and (occasionally) utterly brilliant voices.
I’ve always found it difficult to store and organize things—knowledges, possessions, rules. I’ve come to believe that an artificial effort at preservation evil. I believe that Religion works so well because we inevitably violate the mandated rules, and that Privacy is important to help people break (too-restrictive) rules. I find spaced reptition abhorrent, detailed note-taking uninspiring. I can’t understand people who are sad when they forget (unimportant) things. When I finally something on my calendar, I celebrate. I try, as best as I can, let life wash over me with experience, perhaps because by nature I want to hold onto too many things—or maybe because all men come to understand that self-consciousness only disturbs good cosmic vibrations.
I think about Borges and “Funes, His Memory”, Nietzsche and the Library of Alexandria, Nassim Taleb and Via Negativa.
Fortunately, we learn the most when we are not being educated.
Productivity is about removing complexity to get closer to my work. Everything else are distractions appeasing to my primate self.