This is the flip side of the "self-made man" narrative.
It allows one to disavow any sense of social reciprocity after becoming obscenely rich.
I was curious, so I looked through his Wikipedia page -- it says he donated $1m to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in 2009 (which helped his family move to USA when he was a child). Even the NYT article notes that "The gift is small, given Mr. Brin’s estimated $16 billion in personal wealth" :D
(this is like you making $1m annually and donating $62.50)
The way you articulated it, connected with a thought I've had (for over a year now):
AI is like oil, in that it's "burning" a resource that took geological timescales to accrue. Its value derives from the energy-dense and instantaneous act of combusting a fossil fuel, and in this particular part of the "terrain", it will be a local maximum for A Long Time.
Just like how it's taken absurdly long (still very much WIP) for human societies to prioritize weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels, I fear we are going to latch onto GenAI/LLMs pretty hard, and not let go.
From a certain perspective, these students are optimizing their Time, which is not an unwise strategy. If you've saved 3 hours by using an LLM, would it make sense to spend 1 hour checking those references by hand?
Of course, they're also cheating themselves out of an education, but few students have that Big Picture at their age.
It was a week-long silent meditation (Vipassana), focusing on "Mindful Awareness".
It was at a point in my life where I was able to do it (and I'm grateful), but I have a kid in kindergarten now, so it'd be hard to convince my wife that it's important enough that she should single-handedly manage for a week.
Overall, I think the major benefit for me, was that it bootstrapped this mental model:
* Our minds are constantly spawning processes, and "learning how to start + keep running a debug process" is an invaluable tool for gathering data.
* Once you've gathered a reasonable amount of data, you will start to spot patterns. One of the teachers at this retreat expressed it as "wisdom will arise"
I have a long way to go, but I'm grateful every day that I have this foundation.
In an ideal world, it'd be nice to do this again, to compare where I am today (IIRC, it's been ~8 years).
For what it's worth, I think recognizing patterns and then stepping away to say "execute this way, or choose another way" is a huge huge skill. Not all past patterns make sense for current/future situations!
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