Lina

We are starting to see what "AI will accelerate science" actually looks like. This Google paper describes novel discoveries being made by AI working with human co-scientists (something I think we have all been waiting to see), along with an early version of an AI scientist.

Just a reminder that AI is so challenging to figure out because it is genuinely capable of doing PhD-level work in some areas while messing up basic tasks in closely related areas. And the abilities of AI are growing but unevenly. This jagged frontier explains a lot of confusion

For ages written communication was easier in a words, as it’s hard to draw well and words take less bits. But that’s changing. If creating visuals (2D, 3D, video, immersive worlds incl. other senses) were so easy that you can do it instantly - how would we communicate?

Or is it just me, stepping away from my single profession box and suddenly finding myself in a sea of interconnected ideas from various fields?

Like, previously the same person could have covered several fields, but nowadays it’s too broad for one person to do it, so we still do T shaped specialisation and we need to connect with other Ts with whom we have overlap so that we have speedier exchange/translation of ideas.

We increasingly write to adjacent professions, not to the wide public. Wdyt? The world expands in complexity: gets more fragmented and still is very interconnected —> —> harder to universally translate between silos, and —> more benefit of translating between adjacent fields.

If you struggle to explain what you are doing these days, here's something that might help. I've struggled to make sense of my past 5 years. I mapped this out last night, and it felt good. I highly encourage the exercise, no matter how messy it may appear.

The hallmark of expertise is no longer how much you know. It's how well you synthesize. Information scarcity rewarded knowledge acquisition. Information abundance requires pattern recognition. It's not enough to collect facts. The future belongs to those who connect dots.

I'd love to read more about this (how to continuously balance focus with exploration, how to find the best spot to switch from exploring to exploiting) to improve my heuristics. Any recommendations?

Like instead of keeping a wide perspective and saying "yes" to random opportunities, it's now about relentlessly saying "no" to almost everything in order to keep focus. At the same time, I want to stay open for serendipitous insights. Tricky balance.

So after a year of open-ended exploration I'm starting to have a sense where I want to go and what's in/out. It's a bit disorienting to change gears, though - I need to switch to almost an opposite mode.

Feeling stuck? Is it actually being stuck, or rather recovering/healing from what happened before? We don't leave enough space for recovery in this fast-paced life and frequently label it wrong (and in a negative light).

"The strategy required to find a great opportunity (lots of saying yes and exploring widely) is different from the strategy required to make the most of a great opportunity (lots of saying no and remaining focused)." -@JamesClear

Maybe it's the "the more you know the more you don't know" thing. When you're on an open-ended exploration this not-knowing creates tension and you tend to look from that perspective instead of progress made or total knowledge already accumulated. 🤔

Like, I thought I'm in the current mindset for months now, a bit unsatisfied I'm not moving faster. Skimmed my notes, a month ago I was worried about another thing (that now feels "solved" many months ago) so my current state has formed this/last week, so fresh!

One of the best ways to see progress on gradual long-term changes is to have regular snapshots and compare them.

Overall, it seems it's a bit different way of operating than I'm used to. It would be nice to have a comprehensive primer how to think/work like a writer-philosopher. Like, a single condensed book on mindset and workflows. Does it already exist? 🤔

This probably would be easier if I worked with topics closer to my previous work. The farther I reach the harder it becomes, as it's more fuzzy area and I don't yet have strong stepping stones that I could use there.

Another thing I found unexpectedly hard with writing essays: having a shitty first draft and editing it many times to make it ok. Writing a business doc goes through the same process but it feels more natural when iterations happen with lots of other work/people around it.