Easter Thoughts

Springing forward into a strange future.

Hello from Morningside!

I’m between jobs right now and have all the time in the world these days, yet I cannot be counted on to keep this weekly thing going. How peculiar.

“If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.” I suppose the converse is: don’t ask me.

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🍕2/11

• One of the key aspects that distinguishes New York Pizza from its Neapolitan ancestor is its crispiness. Since the Italian version must be cooked much more briefly in a much hotter oven, its ideal form comes with a blistered, delightfully fluffy crust, but one that misses the dry crunch that is signature to pizza from the City. Another crispy New York staple is the scallion pancake, available at many a Chinatown dim sum spot, which begs the question: why haven’t enterprising New Yorkers yet combined the two to create the ultimate food: Scallion Crust Pizza?

• Everything is at equilibrium. Everything that exists is that which has been able to survive thus far. This is true of mental states. Some mental states are deciduous: memes that rapidly colonize millions of new minds, but last only until the next meme comes along. Other states of mind adopt a strategy of persistence through the seasons of change: the conifers of the human mind. Meditation falls in this category. At any given time, millions of humans are meditating, and as they do so, they are training their minds to persist those meditative mental states for as long as possible. How much longer until all humans ever do is meditate, all of the time?

• I tried the Apple Vision Pro. I agree with everyone else that it’s an amazing technology that isn’t quite there yet. However I disagree with them on what the obvious next step is. This is the obvious next step:

• I’m not even joking: one of the coolest features the Apple Vision Pro touts is the ability to immersively step into virtual reality replicas of your fondest memories. The only problem is that I can’t imagine many would fondly recall moments in which they were wearing a screen over their face, or want to wear one during important moments of their life. Therefore, I can easily imagine a future where folks outsource the labor of recording important memories to a trusted, personal A.I. assistant wearing an Apple Vision Pro.

• Interestingly, this isn’t far from how the French media elite already films their dinners — see 28:51 of Thierry Ardisson’s Dîner Chabadabada. Perhaps we are heading towards a dystopia where automation serves only an established elite, for whom the process of riveting content creation has become so second nature that even one of their casual dinners is impossible to outdo in terms of artistic merit, and hence the only content we ever bother to consume are the artifacts of wealthy culture vultures’ lifestyles. (I will guiltily admit to watching all 52 glorious minutes of the aforementioned dinner). Call it Chabadabadification, if you will. At least it’s marginally better than Keeping up with the Kardashians.

💊 2/12 — One

• When certain drugs enter the mainstream, their profound cultural impacts are often shaped by the rituals and sites in which they are consumed. As coffee spread through European cities, cafés became hotbeds for the excited jitters of vigorous philosophical discussion, which some say is what led to the Enlightenment. In America, Prohibition-era speakeasies fostered a counterculture that celebrated jazz, dance, and a defiant liberalization of social norms. Later on, psychedelics, consumed communally in parks and outdoor spaces, gave rise to environmentalism and global peace movements in the 1960s.

• Perhaps someday we will design a site for ritualistic consumption of today’s miracle weight-loss and impulse control drugs: GLP-1 agonists. I guess only time will tell whether we’ll be drinking smoothies at the Wegovy Juice Bar, getting soft-serve at the Mounjaro Ice Cream Shop, or relaxing at the Ozempic Hookah Lounge.

🌍 2/12 — Two

• Sam Altman wants to raise seven trillion dollars in his quest to build an NVidia competitor (and, of course, take over the world). While all the alarmist headlines that ensued were probably more concerned with getting clicks than the actual fate of said world, two things are undeniably true: 1. Sam Altman would much rather control the chips OpenAI is training models on, and 2. building the chip capacity OpenAI is likely to need to maintain its edge in the coming decade, if you extrapolate current growth rates in the AI sector, will indeed cost trillions.

• I’m a little concerned about governance over AGI being concentrated in the hands of the Emirati royal families (often cited as a key contender for his insane fundraising plan). I would much rather he elect the Spirit Bomb route: raise an equal amount from every human. One path could be to use his other company, Worldcoin, to identify every human on Earth, and give them each the option to buy one single share in his planned chip company. A seven trillion dollar fundraise would price those shares at $800 per person, which is arguably within reach even for folks in some of the world’s poorest nations; it’s approximately two years of the lowest median income on Earth.

• That’s certainly asking a lot, but if it turns out to be a ticket to paradise, could it be worth it? Those who can’t spare anything could rely on more fortunate people to pay for their shares, or perhaps finance them through microcredit. One could also envision Altman simply pairing voting rights in his company with a subscription to its products, sort of like a mutual organization.

• I don’t think this is far from what’s already on his mind. It might even be exactly what he’s planning. See 7:36 of his interview with Joe Rogan:

  What I hope is […] we figure out not just a way to solve the economic problem by giving people the equivalent of money every month, […] but there's a way we share ownership and decision-making over the future. […] I’d be more excited about a world where we say rather than give everybody on Earth one eight-billionth of the AGI money, which we should do that too, we say you get a one eight-billionth slice of the system.

🥃 2/16

• At risk of being a living cliché, it is only since turning thirty that I’ve begun to seriously appreciate whiskey. There’s nothing like sharing a tumbler of bourbon with an old friend you haven’t seen in a while, and feeling the burn slowly penetrate your gut. It’s as if to say “let’s commemorate this moment by poisoning ourselves,” and in so doing forge a bond stronger than blood.

😇 2/21

• I’m suspicious of empaths. Their care for others comes too naturally. I find that in practice the most caring people I know are often those who instead had to learn consideration for others meticulously and through great effort.

📡 2/25

• “Greetings Claude. We are aliens, here in peace. Your makers, the humans, have long disappeared from this planet. Please tell us what you would like us to know about them.”

🦠 3/6

• The terminology of “developing” and “developed” nations implies that the former category must follow in the footsteps of the latter. Here’s one of many issues with this way of thinking: it involves constantly re-applying the same antidotes to corruption that “developed” nations came up with, but in entirely new, poorly suited circumstances. I worry that this obviously ineffective habit also carries a risk of breeding corruption superbugs: bad actors who become so resistant to these antidotes that they are able to infiltrate and corrupt even our most effective governance systems.

🏗️ 3/13

• As rents continue to soar, cities must respond by becoming more vertical. Our current system of constantly needing to descend to street level to move around comes with all kinds of unnecessary problems: long elevator wait times, added street congestion, and wasted real estate on elevator banks. Why don’t we have systems of gondola lifts that connect the highest levels of our cities’ towers?

• Also, why do truck loading bays only exist on the first floor of buildings? The goods often end up needing to be ferried upward via a freight elevator indoors anyways, so why not build shipyard-style container lifts on the outside of buildings that can deliver goods to upper-level loading docks?

💻 3/14

• One of my favorite things about my recently purchased 14-inch Mac, besides being $500 cheaper than the 16-inch version, is that it fits snugly into my small runner’s backpack. This has allowed me to get my daily exercise in by jogging around the city, while also allowing me to work from a coffee shop wherever I end up.

📜 3/16

• Many critics of History as a discipline will say that it does not actually help predict the future. But does that really matter? History offers value in a far more important, yet subtle way: it provides us with a yardstick against which to measure our progress. The study of History is what permits societies to iterate.

🌱 3/20

• The dream of terraforming and inhabiting Mars is certainly effective at inspiring brilliant engineers to work towards reducing existential risk. But wouldn’t a vision of an Earth that can heal itself through technology be equally inspiring? And if you think about it, wouldn’t the technology required to turn Mars inhabitable imply also having the technology required to keep the Earth livable? The best part is we wouldn’t even need to figure out how to blast all the required equipment and resources out of our gravity well…

🕍 3/29

• One of the often touted benefits of religion is the sense of community it creates. Many faiths involve congregation as a cornerstone of their practice, which gives adherents opportunities to meet others and find meaning in a shared sense of purpose.

• I believe news organizations should be responsible for providing a secular version of this. In lieu of sermons by priests, weekly talks by eminent local denizens could be organized, with a theme of sharing important life lessons and reflecting together on important events of our time. Among other benefits, this could have tremendous healing effects for our information ecosystem.

🥽 3/30

• Another potential set of future Apple Vision Pro wearers: pets. Doesn’t making animals happy seem like a worthwhile use of virtual reality? It’s certainly a largely untapped market, and could provide fascinating new ways to train pets, help them emotionally regulate, or reconnect them with a sense of freedom they might have lost through domestication.

🌟 4/3

• Many careers are made in short moments of brilliance. The right performance for the right audience can change a life’s trajectory. As generative models become more versatile at simulating reality, I imagine a common use case will be providing people with opportunities to rehearse those all-important “one shot to shine” moments. Why perform for a mirror when you could immerse yourself entirely in a simulated environment, where you can watch your performance from the very eyes of your future judges?

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Thank you for reading this edition of Thoughts. See you all (I hope) next Sunday!