@nt

I’m anxiously motivated to spend a lot of my time reading and thinking because, at 31, my neural plasticity likely tapered and will gradually start deteriorating - meaning my brain will begin crystallising and new things will be harder and harder to learn. I spent last night teaching a couple in their early 60s how to use AI, and I found it fascinating how much their intuition relied on phone/print/and tv-era technology. They could rationalise AI quite well, but their intuition felt almost “locked” in some sense. They were nevertheless very intelligent and self aware, so we even reflected on this after spending a few hours jamming with AI tools. I think we under appreciate that our own mind follows a biological “explore/exploit” cycle - where the first half of our life is spent building our mental models of the world, and the second on utilising and largely relying on existing knowledge at the cost of further acquisition.

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