Wisereads Vol. 162 — Protocols by Andrew Huberman, Sunil Pai on the senior engineer death spiral, and more
Last week, we shared a special preview of David Kadavy's conclusion to the Getting Art Done series, Finish What Matters: Make Your Creativity Count. This week, we're sharing a preview from Andrew Huberman's long-awaited guide to the pillars of health, Protocols.
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Most highlighted Articles of the week
the senior engineer death spiral
PartyKit creator Sunil Pai has been caught more than once in what he calls the senior engineer death spiral: a new role, a big project, weeks of upbeat standups with nothing to show. His advice to avoid the spiral: "the thing to do is actually to drop a level. not to try to be a higher-level engineer, but to almost drop a level and simply become the greatest teammate for a while. you’re still responsible for your work, you’re just trying to get moving again."
How To Write With An LLM
An LLM makes a great copyeditor and a terrible ghostwriter, according to Thomas and Erin Ptacek, whose first rule is never to use a single word a model suggests. "Readers can detect LLM words in the parts per trillion. However much work you put into scuffing up and humanizing it, an LLM paragraph will register to much of your audience not as writing but as output."
In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?
A decade after choosing a segregated school for her daughter, Pulitzer winner Nikole Hannah-Jones considers the cost through the girl's eyes. "I explained our decision over and over, but my answers never satisfied her. 'But what did it do?' she’d ask. 'Putting me in this school didn’t change anything. I was not trying to be in this type of environment. It makes no sense.'"
Most highlighted YouTube Video of the week
Yann LeCun: Where Is Artificial Intelligence Heading?
At Sciences Po, Turing Award winner Yann LeCun explains why text alone will never yield human-level intelligence. "A four-year-old child has seen as much information through vision alone as the largest LLM has seen in all the text publicly available on the internet. That tells you we will never reach a human-level system by training on text alone."
Most highlighted Twitter Thread of the week
You're Already a Meat Proxy
"Meat proxy" started as a jab at people who forward AI output verbatim. The Rails Way author Obie Fernandez aims it at most engineering jobs: "If all you do for your paycheck is to fit into a process where other people decide what to do and then you transform those directions into software, then congrats you’re a 'meat proxy'... The only reason meat proxies still have jobs is inertia."
Most highlighted PDF of the week
Shall We Repeal the Laws of Economics - Part III
Oaktree Capital co-founder Howard Marks returns to his case against overriding markets, starting with America’s borrowing habit. "Thanks to the dollar's position as the world’s reserve currency, the U.S. has had what I call a 'golden credit card' on which there’s no credit limit, the bill never comes, and the interest rate is extremely low. But it uses the card unwisely."
Hand-picked book of the week
Protocols
Huberman Lab took off in the thick of the pandemic, when people were grasping for some control over their health. Now Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman has gathered the podcast's most grounded advice into his long-awaited debut, Protocols. The book covers seven areas: sleep; exercise; stress control; nutrition; light; focus, motivation, and learning; and personal growth. For each, Huberman shares practical, mostly free ways to feel healthier and more energetic, along with the science behind them.
"Our brains and bodies repurpose a lot of the same mechanisms to allow these systems to work in concert. Knowing some of the science behind each protocol affords you insights not just into how that protocol works, but how different protocols synergize. Practically speaking, that gives you a level of control over your health that simply learning 'do protocol A to get effect B' just can't provide. You can determine what works for your needs and your goals in the context of your life, without having to make the pursuit of health a singular focus."
Protocols is hot off the press, so if you enjoy the preview, you can pick up a full copy wherever you get your books.
Handpicked RSS feed of the week
Dear Head of Mine
Book editor Sean deLone writes Dear Head of Mine, a weekly newsletter on publishing, talent spotting, and taste. From Cultivate Good Taste, Please: "Having taste is defined by risk. Whether it is indie films, experimental literature, high fashion, or a brand-new sound, there is far more uncertainty when you’re sticking your neck out for something that isn’t obvious."