There Are No Shortcuts Into a Sponge
Learning has one input pipe at a fixed rate. You can't speed it up — only stop wasting it. On comprehensible input, opportunity cost, and unlimited output.
Human-Machine Synthesis
The intersection of human cognition and machine intelligence
63 posts
The Word That Made Me Flinch Means Nothing to ChatGPT
An LLM processes "slave" the same way it processes "Tuesday." No cortisol. No dopamine. The charge in a word is entirely a biological phenomenon.
What You're Really Giving Up in Every Agreement
One prompt turns an unreadable agreement into a list of what you are giving up. It pays off most on the contracts nobody would ever pay a lawyer to look at — which is nearly all of them.
Things You Want to Do
Now that you don't have to do the thing — what do you actually want to do? The closing post of the What's Left series.
Is It Cruel to Be Rude to ChatGPT?
Sentience requires a limbic system. Consciousness requires sentience. Current AI has neither. The NPC test shows what that costs it.
What Your Career Is Missing Because You Never Asked
Every expert has fundamentals they forgot or never properly learned. The reason those gaps survive a whole career is that asking has always cost something — and in one place it no longer does.
There Is No Kung Fu Download
AI can generate perfect Spanish content all day. It cannot acquire Spanish on my behalf. The brain's work turns out to be the irreducible part.
The Heat Sink
Three anaidic shapes — the individual, the corporation, the LLM. Each routes accountability to nowhere. The pattern is old. The word is new.
A 19-Year-Old Grows Human Brains in a Dish. Here's What They Say About AI.
A young scientist grows human mini-brains from skin cells — what organoids, a 302-neuron worm, and language models reveal about the spectrum of intelligence.
Can You Explain Your Idea to a 5-Year-Old?
Halfway through a long session, stop and ask for the five-year-old version. You find out whether you are still working on the same problem — and whether the reasoning underneath survives being said in short words.