Cate Hall

What if skill is just a different kind of luck?

Oh noooo

@ChrisLloyd__ Glad to hear you’re feeling better!

@catehall might be of interest to you

I burnt out in September and didn't recover fully until January Feels good to be returning to near-peak capacity For me it wwasn't the number of hours that burnt me out; it was the demands of my work

There's a certain genre of article I can't get enough but find hard to name. It's typically a numbered list of life advice, maxims, practical tips, principles, and so forth. Done well, it's a marvelous compression of wisdom, both quirky and universal. Here are some of my favorite collections. Are there others that should be on this list? (I'm planning to write my own soon; it'd be cool if more people did this!) 103 bits of advice by @kevin2kelly kk.org/thetechnium/10… Principles by @nabeelqu nabeelqu.co/principles 50 things I know by Sasha Chapin sashachapin.substack.com/p/50-things-i-… 50 things I know by @catehall usefulfictions.substack.com/p/50-things-i-… Observations on People, the World, and Everything Else by @mariogabriele generalist.com/p/observations… talking points by @visakanv visakanv.com/blog/talking-p… 28 Pieces of Life Advice by @david_perell perell.com/note/28-pieces…

@gorilla_wrfre one of the only people i've ever blocked just because i couldn't stand his tweets even accidentally ending up on my TL. really disgusting person.

how is eigenrobot so consistently dumb like he's not even dumb in a faux-clever way like most of the tech right he genuinely just has a catturd-level view of the world

@Aella_Girl @AmandaAskell came here to recommend this

@AmandaAskell It's an absolutely surreal experience. Prob you've seen but reposting here: open.substack.com/pub/aella/p/pe…

I've increasingly seen content written about me that's asserted very confidently but is also completely made up. We all know it's cheap to bullshit on the internet but it's weird to experience it first hand. Anyway, I just hope internet fiction fools a few but doesn't stick 🤷🏼‍♀️

@AlecStapp @slatestarcodex has a few, including the Goddess of Everything Else, Samsara, and Being John Rawls

@catehall Mesmerizing. What other pieces of writing would you put in this tier?

Natalie's piece today is genuinely one of the best things I've read in my whole life. I asked her to post it here so I could RT it.

The House just passed a Farm Bill that includes multiple provisions I advocated for to ensure more humane treatment of animals.

Imagine a 19-year-old scrolling TikTok. She watches a creator list five "signs you have undiagnosed anxiety." She recognizes three in herself. By the end of the week, she's describing herself as anxious to her friends. A month later, she's avoiding situations she used to handle fine. What went wrong? In a new paper by my PhD student Dasha Sandra, titled "Why mental health awareness can harm: Converging explanations for a societal problem", we argue that well-meaning mental health awareness can backfire, and we identify how. Four separate literatures (concept creep, nocebo effects, prevalence inflation, and illness self-labeling) have been circling the same problem from different angles. We show they converge on three mechanisms: 1.Awareness lowers the threshold for what counts as a disorder. 2. It trains people to scan their inner lives for symptoms and reinterpret normal distress as pathology. 3. Once someone adopts an illness identity, they behave in ways that confirm and deepen it. The evidence is wide. Learning that loneliness is harmful makes solitude feel worse. Learning that stress is harmful worsens well-being and performance. Awareness videos about fake conditions like "wind turbine syndrome" produce real headaches. Trigger warnings raise anticipatory anxiety without reducing distress. This does not mean awareness should stop. It means awareness can have unintended consequences, including manufacturing the suffering it tries to prevent. Inoculating people against these mechanisms works, and we already have evidence it does. Link to paper: michael-inzlicht.squarespace.com/s/The-psycholo…

has claude been down all day for anyone else, or am I specifically cursed?

Just filmed Warm Intro Pod with @MishraChai and it was an extremely good interview, he’s just starting but I think he will be big some day! (I was not encouraged to post this)

It’s literally incredible in that it’s borderline impossible and therefore costless for them to approve. But it will no doubt drive share prices higher for the IPO (benefitting him enormously!) because of the breathless coverage.

> ask if it’s correlation or causation > he laughs, it’s a real association, sir > it’s correlation

@deanwball Lucius Caviola at Cambridge Digital Minds probably has the most encyclopedic knowledge of anyone in the world, I would start with their website & newsletter

Who are the best thinkers on AI rights? I do not mean “who is the most prominent person who has expressed broad support for AI rights?,” but rather “who has done the best work elaborating on the details of what ‘AI rights’ should or could entail?”

This is why Anthropic must win

@wickemu @RuxandraTeslo @ArtirKel Yes with respect to the user-internalized harms, no with respect to the social harms.

@Miles_McCulloch @RuxandraTeslo Thank you for saying so, I really appreciate it!!

@catehall @RuxandraTeslo Apologies, you were right. It is normalized by users. I feel foolish now >_<

@clarejtbirch Awesome context

so the context here makes this an even better story bowie spent much of the 60s/his early career trying to do the current cool thing—mod and I think beats stuff, some humour/comedy stuff—and it was all pretty terrible. boring, soulless, etc. it really wasn’t until he started to forge his own path and lean into unique identities that he produced great art and reached the success he did. his ability to constantly reinvent himself, find new inspiration, create create create—hallmarks of the great creative mind, which was totally wasted on trying to fit the mold of the moment the mod stuff did lead to some great young bowie looks though

if you're feeling like a failure consider the feedback on David Bowie's failed 1965 BBC audition "a singer devoid of personality." "group has nothing to recommend it." "lack of dynamics, of drive and of personality." "not outstanding in any way."

@Miles_McCulloch @RuxandraTeslo wait, what? you can just go look at the actual study instead of relying on a vague, non-probative statement in a pop news story

@RuxandraTeslo @catehall The lead author told the BBC "Alcohol is the most harmful drug because it's so widely used." bbc.com/news/uk-116602…

@ArtirKel @RuxandraTeslo By similar logic, shouldn't the "druggy drug" users be selected for particularly dysfunctional relationships to substances?

That's also true! And I wonder what proportion of that is a function of availability, ie if one could just get ketamine at corner stores and alcohol was banned, I bet people would be k holing left and right. I see alcohol as an indicator of something deeper, it just happens to be the easier to reach substance