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What You Can't Say
20 hours ago
- Fashion, both in clothing and morality, is often invisible to those within it but can be arbitrary and dangerous, especially when moral fashions suppress truth.
- To discover what we cannot say, one can examine ideas that get people in trouble, historical shifts in acceptability, and the mechanisms by which taboos are created and enforced.
- A strategic approach to thinking freely involves keeping thoughts private, engaging with trusted friends, and using abstraction, metaphor, or humor to challenge taboos without direct confrontation.
- Critical self-awareness and questioning societal norms are essential to identify and resist the influence of contemporary moral fashions.
How to Think for Yourself
20 hours ago
- Independent-mindedness is essential in fields like science, investing, startups, and essay writing, where novelty and correctness are both required.
- Most jobs (e.g., administration) only require being correct, not novel; choosing the wrong type of work based on your innate mindset can lead to unhappiness.
- People often misjudge their own independence; schools don't measure it, and conventional-minded people may overestimate their originality.
- You can enhance independent-mindedness by avoiding awareness of conventional beliefs, surrounding yourself with independent thinkers, reading history, and cultivating skepticism.
- Independent-mindedness consists of three components: fastidiousness about truth, resistance to being told what to think, and curiosity, which can compensate for each other.
- Curiosity can be cultivated by indulging it and seeking topics that engage you; the motto should be 'do what you're curious about.'
Human Routers of Machine Words
20 hours ago
- Reading AI-generated content feels like a trick, evoking offense, sadness, and contempt for authors who use AI to write.
- Defending AI-assisted writing by claiming 'ideas are mine, writing is AI's' is flawed because ideas and writing are inseparable.
- Ideas are vague and nebulous; writing is the process that concretizes and refines them, revealing flaws and contradictions.
- Writing is the ultimate form of thinking, not a mere transcription of pre-formed ideas.
- AI-generated text shifts the burden of critical thinking to readers, who must verify coherence.
- The issue is not AI capability but the dishonesty and irresponsibility of humans who rely on AI to produce generic, unoriginal output.
Why I'm building a note taking app without AI
6 days ago
- Docket is a note-taking system for regular meetings, but it is not AI-based.
- Active note-taking means using your own brain to distill important notes rather than recording everything.
- Senior professionals distill key points in meetings; active note-taking helps capture those insights.
- AI cannot separate important points from noise or crystallize them in your mind at the moment of context.
- Active note-taking is a process for distilling and crystallizing important information when you have maximum context.
- Docket is built for people who value active note-taking, not for those who rely on AI transcription.
Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
14 days ago
- Reflections on increasing tendency to offload thinking to AI for decisions and queries.
- Ken Liu's story 'The Perfect Match' and real-life examples illustrate over-reliance on AI for decision-making.
- AI tools like search engines and advanced models save time but risk reducing autonomy and critical thinking.
- Personal anecdotes show value in independent thinking, such as discussing historical perspectives without immediate AI help.
- AI can enhance productivity by automating mundane tasks but may lead to lazy thinking, as seen in education.
- Balance needed between automating tasks for efficiency and maintaining personal agency in thinking and learning.

critical thinking

What You Can't Say

How to Think for Yourself

Human Routers of Machine Words

Why I'm building a note taking app without AI

Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?