cyrus

@cyrus

908 Following

5592 Followers

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While @july has never felt more optimistic about the future, I'm slowly veering in the opposite direction. A few people asked why, so I wrote this short essay. After years of working with century long time horizons, I'm noticing a shift in my optimism. I believe it partly stems from a paradox around unprecedented global connectivity alongside deepening fragmentation. It makes me wonder if our technological ingenuity can truly outpace our collective dysfunction when planetary challenges demand wisdom. https://cyrusclarke.substack.com/p/why-an-optimist-is-slowly-veering

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Currently sick, laid up in bed. but i keep seeing this "AI makes you dumb" line in response to the MIT Media Lab paper that came out recently and it's unbelievably incorrect: - The paper is about educational outcomes for 3 constrained groups (search-only, brain-only, LLM-only). if you read the paper, a finding is if students only used ChatGPT to write an essay, they became more lazy, relying solely on LLMs. not sure that's a shocking finding, but now it's in the literature. - A more important finding as suggested by the authors shows that well trained, non-lazy brains (brain-only participants when eventually allowed to use LLMs) showed a significant surge in activity when allowed to collaborate with LLM tools. - A more pressing finding is that unfettered LLM usage may lead to a "a likely decrease in learning skills". The flipside is that we will get much "better" at output (albeit in a state of hegemony). Do we care about that? I do - but the labour market likely won't. - The "using AI makes you dumb" line was widely reported by press and people who didn't read the paper ('cos why read a scientific paper when you can just make up an opinion based on your biases?). - As the main author at Media Lab knows full well that people don't read papers she literally made a website with an FAQ to allow laypeople to avoid misunderstandings. The first FAQ is that this paper does not suggest that using LLMs make us "dumber" - The authors knew this would attract such headlines. They even rushed it out as a pre-print to avoid being scooped and have this big news and cultural story. Academia is very much part of the attention economy especially with AI being a ripe topic for doom and gloom as well as awe inspiring hope. So expect more of this and please read things! Website: https://www.brainonllm.com/ Paper pre-print (non-peer reviewed): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872

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Tonight I’m thinking about Georgia O’Keeffe - the unexpected longevity queen She lived a long and healthy life, nearly reaching 100 years of age She was deeply connected to nature, passionate about healthy food and cooking + she spent a large part of her life at high altitudes in New Mexico There is research that suggests living at high altitudes increases cardiovascular health, possibly increasing life expectancy Or maybe she was just living a fulfilling and authentic life Maybe that’s the key 🌸

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I’d find a nicer serif tbh - look through Google fonts (free). Also monospace or fontpair.co for pairings also fwiw older people should be accustomed to serif as print was mostly serif - digital interfaces brought about more sans serif popularity 🤓

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(Unsolicited) Typeface in first is much better - fits your branding I’d look for a nice serif and use it consistently if possible :)

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@troopdegen.eth

New game alert: "Degen or Regen" 🎩🍄 A Tinder-style swiping game to vote on who the Degens and Regens of Farcaster are Swipe, vote, and let's see who's ready for Regen Summer... I just voted Degen on @jessepollak Word is Reggie is taking notes on who participates early…🍄 So... 🎩 or 🍄?

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At MIT Media Lab we continue to ask the important questions

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nice, though i'm rather partial to the hermit crab (had to dig this out from my time in Kenya)

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best door jingle in the world

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convenience isn't chic

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electric scooters are the ultimate character litmus test pH basic

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https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PAYfmG2aRbdb74mEp/a-deep-critique-of-ai-2027-s-bad-timeline-models

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@troopdegen.eth

🍄🌱 The garden gates are OPEN 🌱🍄 The regen channel is now open for everyone: optimists, degens, regens, meme makers, onchain dreamers, all welcome 🧚‍♀️✨ Join now and bring your vibes. bring your memes. bring your optimism. This is the beginning of Regen Summer🌻

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back to the lab today, counting down the days until i can touch grass again

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the same people say both all the time, but only one provokes people while the other is easily ignored

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@troopdegen.eth is your man 🍄

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last part is pretty much why i dont invite many people here unless they are interested in crypto. it's a shame as there are a lot of cool people i know that would be nice to have here but crypto has a habit of making everything it touches radioactive by association

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The notion of empire and colonialism wrt AI is incredibly apt. I haven't seen much talk about this book here, but it's all over my bluesky feed (go figure) As i seem to be surrounded by unbridled and unfounded AI optimism, I'm going to spend most of spare time in July digging more deeply into the other side. Will definitely read Empire of AI and wondering if there are any other recommendations?

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