Pedro Carrión

“The map appears to us more real than the land.” — D.H. Lawrence Avoid confusing the map with the territory. The description of a thing is not the thing itself. Maps and Mental Models are useful, but not 100% accurate, so be aware of their limitations.

@realBigBrainAI He forgot LLMs can't count the number of 'r's in 'strawberry'.

Mathematician Terence Tao offers a counterintuitive take: AI doesn't look intelligent because our definition of intelligence was wrong all along. He argues that the entire history of AI has followed a predictable pattern: "The history of AI has been here's a task that only humans can do, like maybe it is read natural language or win at chess or solve a math problem, and then one by one someone finds some AI algorithm that also does that." But every time a machine cracks one of these "uniquely human" tasks, we move the goalposts. The solution never feels like real thinking: "You look at how it's done and it doesn't feel like intelligence. It's, oh, it was some trick. You just cobbled together these neural networks and you ran some algorithm, and we were looking for some elusive intelligent way of thinking, and we don't see it in the tools that actually solve our goals." Tao then flips the problem on its head. What if the issue isn't with the machines, but with us? "But maybe it's actually because intelligence is not what we think it is." He points to large language models as the clearest case. What they do sounds almost embarrassingly simple: "Large language models in particular become very successful, and a lot of what they're doing is just predicting the next token, clicking the next word in a sentence. And that doesn't sound like something which is intelligent." To show why this feels wrong, Tao draws a comparison to how we'd judge a human doing the same thing: "If you ask someone to improvise a speech and they have no preparation, and at every moment they're just saying the next word that comes to their mind, you don't think that this could actually work." And yet it works for LLMs. Which forces an uncomfortable possibility: "Maybe that's actually a lot of what humans do as well."

It's crazy that today you get rewarded for following the trend of thought. People aim at being average thinkers. critical thinking and freedom of thought needs a comeback at all costs

We don’t see the world as it is. We see it as we are.

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent, and original manner possible.” – Richard Feynman

One way to mess up a good thing is to try and increase the pace of its outcomes. Working out for 15 hours a day won’t make you healthier; it will get you injured. A lack of patience changes the outcome.

You need mental models and principles to make better decisions and eliminate mistakes. There's no other way.

I'm sure you'll never regret having a decision journal. It'll help you improve your decision-making skills massively!!

Not all decisions matter.

When you're making hard decisions, don't rely on intuition. Please don't. Instead you are going to estimate the most likely outcomes using probabilities, to then take a decision.

Western society is based on a "linear" way of thinking: Do this -> then, that -> outcome! It's not a bad system, but you can make better decisions with this one: Recognize this, now act -> then recognize that, now act -> outcome(success, most likely)!

. The most successful people are first-principle thinkers.

To make smart decisions you need to have “worldview anchors”. These are fundamental truths or mental models that guide you through the process. Otherwise you will be lost.

Few things are more important for making conscious decisions than a good night's sleep.

Confidence is the freedom to set your own standards and unshackle yourself from the need to prove yourself.

We fail to learn when we never fail.

Learning to make wise decisions is the skill that will catapult your life and business.

If you're stuck between decisions, choose the one with the fewer assumptions.

Take big decisions with courage, but with patience. Don't rush the process. Remember that life benefits those who play the long game.

Western society is based on a "linear" way of thinking: Do this -> then, that -> outcome It's not a bad system, but you can make better decisions with this one: Recognize this, now act -> then recognize that, now act -> outcome(success, most likely)

We should not attribute to malice some action that is more easily explained by stupidity.