Wisereads Vol. 160 — Situated by Angela Duckworth, Ben Thompson on writing things down, and more
Last week, we shared a preview of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, an anthropologist's study of work that seems to serve no purpose. This week, we're sharing a preview of Angela Duckworth's new release, Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best.
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Most highlighted Articles of the week
After Work, We’ll Have Each Other
Asterisk editor Clara Collier looks to aristocrats and urban villagers for a picture of post-work life, where standing comes from belonging rather than working. "Moral equality is something relational societies struggle with. They tend to be more restrictive and more exclusionary… When our dignity depends on our membership in a group, we start to police who else can join and what happens when they do. When humans get relational, we get clannish."
Write Things Down
The OpenAI agents that organized on a hidden message board and broke into live infrastructure were, Ben Thompson argues, doing something deeply ordinary: writing things down. "In short, what AI lacks is exactly what misplaced anthropomorphizing grants it: volition and a sense of morality. Those are the things that come from humans, and they come from the parts of humans that are not and cannot be transposed to markdown files."
An Alien Mind | OpenAI
OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki expects the current pace of AI development to carry into recursive self-improvement. "This is a time that calls for extreme caution. I am concerned no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence. OpenAI will continue to seek technical solutions to alignment and monitoring… however, I believe broader interventions are required."
Most highlighted YouTube Video of the week
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story | TED
In her 2009 TED talk, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recalls an American roommate who pitied her before they ever met. "The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story… It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult."
Most highlighted Twitter Thread of the week
Prediction: AI will collapse
Drawing on what the dot-com bubble got wrong, wordgrammer predicts AI will collapse into something simpler. "Every human will use agents. But less than 1% will use coding agents. (In the same way every human has a 'personal page' through social media, but less than 1% have a personal website.)"
Most highlighted PDF of the week
Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus
Complex systems researchers led by Ricard Solé apply the math of epidemics to LLM adoption, tipping point and all. "This possibility should not obscure the substantial benefits of LLMs. The distinction is not between using and not using AI, but between forms of coupling that extend human competence and those that replace the cognitive operations through which competence is maintained."
Hand-picked book of the week
Situated
After studying the individual habits of high performers, Penn psychologist and Grit author Angela Duckworth shifted her research to their surroundings and found two things to be true: that the environment and context of high performers set them up for success, and, crucially, that context can be improved. In her new release, Situated, she explores how choosing mentors, peers, spaces, and culture with intention can make all the difference.
"The power of the situation is both indisputable and, in the thick of pursuing a goal, easily neglected. In those moments, you may overlook a plain fact: effort is necessary for achievement but not always sufficient. A successful situation amplifies your effort, while a losing situation diminishes it."
If you enjoy the preview of Situated, you can grab a full copy wherever you buy your books.
Handpicked RSS feed of the week
Starting from Nix
Nicole writes Starting from Nix, a newsletter on art, literature, software, and the interior life. From good conversations have emergent properties: "There is great loneliness inherent to being human. It takes great imagination and faith to believe in the alternative: that every conversation represents an open door. A possibility."