Hank Green has an interesting take on the scientific method: We advance because scientists work to persuade others that they’re correct. Every paper, statistical analysis and experiment is nothing but an argument designed to persuade an intelligent critic.
The method of argument is determined by the audience–if they require double-blind studies and useful statistical models, then that’s what you’ll need to use to change their minds.
Priya Parker’s new book is about fighting. It’s useful to realize that signing up for listening to what works and then doing it more is an argument toward better.
Positive argument is the generous act of approaching someone on their terms to persuade them to move forward.
The upside of free market capitalism (and the marketing that goes with it) is that every product and every campaign is an argument. An argument to win over customers, to solve problems in a new and better way. Different cultures require different arguments, but that’s what we do to grow.
The most effective form of marketing isn’t an ad, it’s a better product.
And thus one of the key problems with monopolies: they don’t have to argue! The customer has no choice. The monopoly stops listening, innovating and working for improvement, because they don’t need to.
The same is true for democracy vs autocracy. The despot has no need to make an argument, so they don’t.
Find a place where positive arguments are welcome, and use them to make things better by making better things.
The folks at TryAI put Fable to the test in directing a music video.
The AI glitches show up from the start and continue. But it’s even more unsettling than this.
When AI tries to create and direct joyous human dancing, it fails. The dancers look like retired accountants at a wedding. The stiff awkwardness jumps out at us… and yet, if aliens were to compare this to footage of actual humans dancing, it probably seems very similar.
Throughout the video, each activity portrayed is directly related to the lyrics, awkward and, to be honest, stupid. Again, those aliens are wondering if celebrating this sort of time-wasting is the best we could do.
As I (re)watched it, I wondered what would happen if actual humans reshot this, frame by frame, move by move, with real people in it. It would probably come across as ironic, insightful and wickedly funny.
I expect two cultural shifts to come out of this era of awkward banality:
The nearest lightning was 1,200 miles away. At least that’s what the weather site reported.
When lightning is that unlikely, we don’t worry about it much.
It turns out that this is the best time to install a lightning arrestor on your home, though.
The urgency of the moment might be the push we need to take action, but if we rely on that, we’ve given up our agency to external events.
The media is hooked on selling us breaking news in whatever form they can discover–they need to break our rhythm and cajole us into clicking. But what they want and what we need might not be the same.
There are lots of things you can do, but it’s not clear you should.
OpenAI has virtually unlimited resources. And in addition to building a chat-based AI, they chose to launch pretty good image generation, a basketball, a meme video generator (since cancelled), an upcoming speaker that actually moves around your house, and a myriad of other tools, with new ones coming all the time. A short list includes: Operator, Deep Research, Scheduled Tasks, Projects, Canvas, Connectors, famous voices and Record Mode.
At the same time, Anthropic follows a slower (sort of boring) path.
It’s precisely the same choices every solo freelancer and small business faces, except with more zeroes.
At its peak, Yahoo had nearly 200 links on its home page. They were defeated by Google, which had two.
Three things:
The right words in the right sequence create information. Ideas that change our world.
The first kind of word salad allows the writer to hide. Fancy words, carefully juxtaposed, saying nothing. This can serve a valuable function for politicians, academics and bosses–but there’s no real information for the reader. It’s simply a collection of words pretending to be an idea.
The second kind of word salad is different. This is the reader’s choice. An idea that’s complex, frightening or brand new can be difficult to embrace. Dismissing it as word salad is the easiest way to maintain the status quo and move on.
The simple tell: Is anyone else getting the idea? If the emperor is actually wearing clothes, insisting that they’re naked doesn’t do you any good.
Important ideas often seem like word salad at first.
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