Six Links That Make You Think #790

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Just Evil Enough, Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:

Cultural Bias In LLMs – Shav Vimalendiran. “My current take on AI is that Large Language Models work because language somehow contains the mechanism of understanding, and by analyzing relationships in language we somehow extract the deep structure of that understanding. Different cultures see the world differently (this is called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) – and often speak different languages. But it turns out that AIs think like Protestant Europeans.” (Alistair for Hugh). The Leviathan, The Hand, And The Maelstrom – Nathan Witkin – Arachne . “Long-form essay warning: This ‘essay on the new economics of discourse’ has one big conclusion: it’s the internet, stupid. There are just so many good lines in here, stating things we’ve talked about many times in interesting, chewy ways: ‘Platform companies have not only accumulated a vast captive audience for advertisers to pick off, like fish in a barrel. They have also tasked that audience with competing, at their own cost, to produce whichever media most effectively keeps them in that barrel’.” (Alistair for Mitch). Ruled By Numbers: How Data Dominates Every Facet Of Our Daily Lives – Noah Giansiracusa – Lit Hub . “How much do you really want to know about yourself, quantified, especially knowing that every datapoint you see is collected, parsed and processed by some company that may or may not have your best interests at heart.” (Hugh for Alistair).     Possible – Audrey Tang And Divya Siddarth On Outfitting Democracy For The AI Era – Reid Hoffman – LinkedIn . “Imagine if democracy, which feels painfully slow these days, was optimized to move faster than corruption?” (Hugh for Mitch). Last Call Before A.G – Found Footage From The Future – KNGMK – YouTube . “You need to watch this video on two levels: Level One: Pure content, entertainment and insight. It’s biting in a Black Mirror kind of way. Too many current and topical themes to explain. Just worth the watch and share. Level 2: How it’s made. No cast… no crew… just prompts. Sit with this.” (Mitch for Alistair). The Deepest Conversation I’ve Ever Had About Writing – Dana Gioia – How I Write – YouTube . “This is what the Internet was made for. How I Write is one of my favorite shows. I (admittedly) did not know who Dana Gioia is… but I not only made it through this (but truly enjoyed it!). The full three hours plus of this conversation, which is much more of a masterclass than a conversation, is the type of thinking you would hope to get from a writer’s retreat. This has it all: insight, depth, clarity and deep deep learning… just beautiful… I took a ton of notes.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on X, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

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