Bit of a Tangent

This is part 1 of a new series on Mental Models - tips, tricks, and tools to add to your mental toolbox. In this episode we introduce the concept of a mental model but then quickly dive in to explanations of the most powerful models we’ve encountered. Join us and learn how to make better decisions (or know when a decision is not worth making), how to have more original and impactful ideas (and how to find the most promising ideas to work on out of the thousands you’ll soon have), and when tidying up your messy desk is just plain wrong (sorry, Marie Kondo!)

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Shownotes:

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The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts by Shane Parrish - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44245196-the-great-mental-models 

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models by Gabriel Weinberg - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41181911-super-thinking 

Feynman technique - https://fs.blog/2012/04/feynman-technique/ 

More Dakka by The Zvi - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z8usYeKX7dtTWsEnk/more-dakka 

Least recently used idea: read the book Algorithms To Live By by Brian Christian - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25666050-algorithms-to-live-by 

Eisenhower matrix - https://jamesclear.com/eisenhower-box 

Josh Wolfe on Shane Parrish’s podcast - https://fs.blog/josh-wolfe/ 

Eliezer Yudkowsky’s marvelous introduction to Bayes Theorem. Seriously, read this: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes 

Tim Urban’s WaitButWhy post on thinking from first principles like Elon Musk: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-sauce.html 

Deep Work by Cal Newport - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep-work 

So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13525945-so-good-they-can-t-ignore-you 

Keep Your Identity Small by Paul Graham - http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html 

Joscha Bach on the Singularity podcast: https://www.singularityweblog.com/joscha-bach/

This episode features the much-anticipated conversation with Bronwyn Williams on the topic of Universal Basic Income (UBI). Bronwyn is a futurist and trend analyst with a background in marketing and economics. Gianluca and Jared pick her brain about the economic viability of UBI, the influence of politics and big tech, and the trends in automation that will shape the future of humanity. Regardless of your fiscal intuitions or political leanings, this episode will equip you with the core arguments in the UBI debate and leave you with plenty of food for thought.

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Shownotes:

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Write to Bit of a Tangent at [email protected]

Tweet at Bit of a Tangent: https://twitter.com/podtangent

Follow Bit of a Tangent (incl. behind the scenes) on Instagram: www.instagram.com/podtangent

Bronwyn Williams on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bronwynwilliams

Bronwyn’s website: https://whatthefuturenow.com

Flux Trends: https://www.fluxtrends.com/

Apollo 42: http://apollo42.com/

Negative income tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

Alaskan oil dividend: nhttps://basicincometoday.com/the-complicated-politics-of-the-alaska-permanent-fund-dividend/5422

Andrew Yang and the proposed “Freedom Dividend”: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom-dividend/

Andrew Yang’s discussions about UBI with Sam Harris: https://samharris.org/podcasts/130-universal-basic-income/

Social credit system in China: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit-system-explained

Elon Musk on automation and UBI: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-automated-jobs-could-make-ubi-cash-handouts-necessary.html

Neuralink’s human-brain interface: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA77zsJ31nA

Humanity’s increasing prosperity (Steven Pinker): https://youtu.be/o5X2-i_poNU

On having a “Venezuela moment”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_Venezuela

Single-payer healthcare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_healthcare

Cost of bringing a drug to market: https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2017/10/16/the-cost-of-developing-drugs-is-insane-a-paper-that-argued-otherwise-was-insanely-bad/#2c8eb48d2d45

Swiss referendum on UBI: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36454060

Bronwyn’s book reviews: https://whatthefuturenow.com/category/reading-right-now/

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/396931.The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26195941-the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism

Death of the Gods by Carl Miller: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40504262-the-death-of-the-gods?ac=1&from_search=true

Ben Hunt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/epsilontheory

David Pearce on Twitter: https://twitter.com/webmasterdave

Slate Star Codex breakdown of UBI: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/08/01/squareallworthy-on-ubi-plans/

Bayesian Conspiracy (with David Spearman) on the economics of UBI vs. NIT: http://www.thebayesianconspiracy.com/2019/07/88-ubi-and-other-forms-of-evil-taxes/

This is part 2 of our series on free will! In this episode we reconcile how it is that we can feel like we have free will (even when we don’t), give an evolutionary argument for why this might be the case and show how knowing this makes us more compassionate people who are (paradoxically) better at achieving our goals. Along the way, we explain what a Bayesian Network is (and why you should care about yours), and give an introduction to some of the key ideas and concepts in the field of Reinforcement Learning (a subfield of AI) and how we can use these concepts to clarify our view of ourselves and the world!

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Shownotes:

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Dan Dennett essay on Sam Harris’s argument: https://samharris.org/reflections-on-free-will/

Sam Harris’s response to Dennett: https://samharris.org/free-will-and-free-will/ 

Sam Harris’s “Free Will: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13259270-free-will

Good primer on the Libet experiments that preempted decision making: https://youtu.be/OjCt-L0Ph5o

The original Libet publication [paywalled]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6640273

Details of more recent versions of the Libet experiments with 7 second preempting and some predictive capability: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMDuakmEEV4

A recent “debunking” of the Libet results: https://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/e2904

A popular article on the Libet experiments in the light of the new model: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-bereitschaftspotential/597736/

Radiolab Loops episode: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/radiolab-loops 

Litany of Gendlin on LessWrong: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Litany_of_Gendlin 

Julia Galef on Bayes Nets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFv5DvrLDCg 

Learn Bayes Nets post on LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tp4rEtQqRshPavZsr/learn-bayes-nets 

Compatibilism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/ 

A good introductory courses on reinforcement learning for those interested: https://www.theschool.ai/courses/move-37-course/ 

Video of RL agent walking on the back of its legs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdTBqBnqhaQ 

Sean Carroll’s podcast: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/ 

How to Win Friends and Influence Reality (episode 9 of Bit of a Tangent): https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/009-how-to-win-friends-and-influence-reality/id1470855694?i=1000446168718 

This is Part 1 of the series on Free Will. In this episode, Gianluca and Jared dispel the assumption that humans have Free Will by presenting the argument from Determinism—popularised by Sam Harris. They discuss the evidence from physics, neurology, and the famous Libet experiments; before laying the groundwork for later conversations about what this implies morally and societally. You have no choice but to listen.

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Shownotes:

Sam Harris’s “Free Will: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13259270-free-will

Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life (and some of his other fantastic shorts): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_Life_and_Others

Arrival, the film adaptation of Story of Your Life: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164

Principle of Least Action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_action

Chaos Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

Good primer on the Libet experiments that preempted decision making: https://youtu.be/OjCt-L0Ph5o

The original Libet publication [paywalled]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6640273

Details of more recent versions of the Libet experiments with 7 second preempting and some predictive capability: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMDuakmEEV4

A recent “debunking” of the Libet results: https://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/e2904

A popular article on the Libet experiments in the light of the new model: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-bereitschaftspotential/597736/

Great CGP Grey video on split brain experiments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8

Decent primer on Sperry’s split-brain experiments: https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roger-sperrys-split-brain-experiments-1959-1968

“Behave” by Robert Sopalsky: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31170723-behave

Jared and Gianluca try something new on this episode! We read passages from Robert Pirsig’s wonderful novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, reacting and discussing as we go! Along the way, we explored the limits of conceptual understanding (a.k.a. Shut up and taste the wine!), how the words we use to describe reality also end up defining it, limiting it or expanding it, and why cliches are so easy to dismiss and when they shouldn’t be (hint: your gran was right - there’s nothing a good night’s sleep won’t solve). We also discuss what it means to truly understand something, and how our intuitive sense of what is excellent can guide us to cook great food, write beautiful code, and be delightful people!

As a bonus, we drop some hints about an exciting upcoming episode, and at the end we each share the advice we’ve heard that has the highest impact with the fewest words!

Listener feedback can be recorded here: https://www.speakpipe.com/podtangent

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Shownotes:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/629.Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance 

The Stranger by Albert Camus: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49552.The_Stranger 

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/662.Atlas_Shrugged 

Fountainhead by Ayn Rand: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2122.The_Fountainhead 

The Philosopher’s Toolkit by Julian Baggini: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/192414.The_Philosophers_Toolkit 

Fermat’s Enigma by Simon Singh: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38412.Fermat_s_Enigma 

The Cook & The Chef - Elon Musk’s Secret Sauce by Tim Urban: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-sauce.html 

How To Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4865.How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People 

Michael Nielsen’s personal blog: http://michaelnielsen.org/ 

Venture Stories podcast with Michael Nielsen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-michael-nielsen-thinks-about-basically-everything/id1316769266?i=1000436484320 

Tyler Cowen on The high-return activity of raising others’ aspirations: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/10/high-return-activity-raising-others-aspirations.html

We’ve all heard about the importance of learning. We’ve all heard about the importance of learning how to learn. Well, on this episode Gianluca and Jared dive into both of these topics. They discuss the philosophies of learning they’ve encountered on their own journeys, and share several key tricks that they’ve found most helpful over the years! Along the way they discovered a new way to think about how to keep your knowledge up to date in an ever changing world!

Listener feedback can be recorded here: https://www.speakpipe.com/podtangent

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Shownotes:

This essay by Michael Nielsen is what spurred me to say we might need a follow up. It’s definitely worth a read: http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html 

Cultural evolution primer by Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/ 

Tim Urban’s Elon Musk blog posts: https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/03/elon-musk-post-series.html - the last post in the series changed Jared’s life https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-sauce.html

Poor Charlie’s Almanack: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/944652.Poor_Charlie_s_Almanack

Shane Parrish on Chauffeur knowledge: https://fs.blog/2015/09/two-types-of-knowledge/

The Sequences by Eliezer Yudkowski: https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality 

We’ve include some relevant essays from the sequences to today’s conversation below:

Taboo Your Words: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WBdvyyHLdxZSAMmoz/taboo-your-words

Cached Thoughts: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/pmHZDpak4NeRLLLCw/p/2MD3NMLBPCqPfnfre

Replace The Symbol with The Substance: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/SGB7Y5WERh4skwtnb/p/GKfPL6LQFgB49FEnv

Truly Part of You: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fg9fXrHpeaDD6pEPL/truly-part-of-you

Living By Your Own Strength: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dKGfNvjGjq4rqffyF/living-by-your-own-strength

Learning How to Learn course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/ 

Anki: https://apps.ankiweb.net/ 

r/medicalschoolanki decks: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/ 

Jared used https://www.brosencephalon.com/flashcards/ in his earlier years of medschool

Testing effect: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Testing_effect 

Deliberate practice: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Practice_(learning_method) 

Desirable difficulty: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Desirable_difficulty 

Method of Loci: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Method_of_loci 

Expecting Short Inferential Distances by Eliezer Yudkowski: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLqWn5LASfhhArZ7w/expecting-short-inferential-distances 

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24113.G_del_Escher_Bach 

Conversations with Tyler podcast: https://conversationswithtyler.com/

This is a discussion about why deep neural nets are unreasonably effective. Gianluca and Jared examine the relationships between neural architectures and the laws of physics that govern our Universe—exploring brains, human language, and linear functions. Nothing could have prepared them for the territories this episode expanded to, so strap yourself in!

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Shownotes:

AlphaGo beating Lee Sedol at Go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo_versus_Lee_Sedol

OpenAI Five: https://openai.com/blog/openai-five/

Taylor series/expansions video from 3Blue1Brown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d6DsjIBzJ4

Physicist Max Tegmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Tegmark

Tegmark’s great talk on connections between physics and deep learning (which formed much of the inspiration for this conversation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MdSE-N0bxs

Universal Approximation Theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_approximation_theorem

A refresher on “Map vs. Territory”: https://fs.blog/2015/11/map-and-territory/

Ada Lovelace (who worked on Babbage’s Analytical Engine): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

Manifolds and their topology: http://colah.github.io/posts/2014-03-NN-Manifolds-Topology/

Binary trees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_tree

Markov process: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MarkovProcess.html

OpenAIs GPT-2: https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/

Play with GPT-2 in your browser here: https://talktotransformer.com/

Lex Fridman’s MIT Artificial Intelligence podcast: https://lexfridman.com/ai/

The Scientific Odyssey podcast: https://thescientificodyssey.libsyn.com/

This week on Bit of A Tangent we discuss the little known but unbelievably important concept of ‘slack’ - what it is, why having too little of it can be deadly and how to get more of it!

We also discuss the difference between attention and awareness and how can help you live a more engaged life, a simple rule of thumb to know when you’re using your time on earth well, and a quick trick to train your mind to dive straight into deep focus when you need to!

Lastly, we discuss how we’ve set up our personal devices to get the most out of them while minimising distractions and as a bonus this episode we mention two other podcasts we’re loving at the moment!

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Shownotes:

Slack and the Sabbath sequence by Zvi on Lesswrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/HXkpm9b8o964jbQ89

Main Lesswrong post on ‘slack’: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/HXkpm9b8o964jbQ89/p/yLLkWMDbC9ZNKbjDG

Farnam Street Mental models: https://fs.blog/mental-models/ 

Lying by Sam Harris: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18869177-lying 

Jared’s essay on Algorithms: https://jaredtumiel.github.io/2019-08-11-use-algorithms/ 

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital-minimalism?ac=1&from_search=true 

The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25942786-the-mind-illuminated?ac=1&from_search=true 

Naval Ravikant’s tweetstorm (some ideas mentioned definitely came from here): https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936 

Deep work by Cal Newport:: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep-work?ac=1&from_search=true 

Stayfocused (android app): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stayfocused&hl=en_US 

StayFocusd - chrome website blocker:  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji 

David Epstein – Wide or Deep? - [Invest Like the Best, EP.133]https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/david-epstein-wide-or-deep-invest-like-the-best-ep-133/id1154105909?i=1000439925357 

Good One: A Podcast About Jokes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1203393721 

A deep-dive into the Flow state. Gianluca and Jared discuss the physiology and psychology of being in “the zone,” and the decades of research behind this state of optimal cognitive and physical performance. They also trade hypotheses about how and why the Flow state may have evolved, using the model of cultural evolution within hunter-gatherer tribes. 

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Shownotes:

Flow psychology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

6 components of Flow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)#Components

Free soloing (a perfect example of a high-risk flow activity): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7775622/

Anders Ericsson’s 10,000-hour theory: https://www.businessinsider.co.za/anders-ericsson-how-to-become-an-expert-at-anything-2016-6

[We couldn’t find the quote about abusing a tool]

Shower thoughts: https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/

Origins of the term “silver bullet”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet

An article discussing the McKinsey study on flow: https://hbr.org/2014/05/create-a-work-environment-that-fosters-flow

A brief primer on adrenaline, cortisol, and stress responses: https://www.livestrong.com/article/207432-adrenaline-cortisol/

Big 5 personality traits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

Neuroticism and Flow:

Csikszentmihalyi's Flow Model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Challenge_vs_skill.svg

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (the Father of Flow): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi

Carl Jung: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung

Flow state and life satisfaction: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beautiful-minds/201111/who-enters-flow

Hedonic adaptation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

The exploitation of Flow states in video game design: https://medium.com/@raydaz/the-applications-relevance-of-flow-state-design-in-video-games-1572dac0d2c

Scott Alexander’s SlateStarCodex post which inspired Gianluca’s “PhD Hunter” idea: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/

Nobody on earth can build a pencil from scratch: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/

This episode looks at how to disrupt social dynamics. Gianluca and Jared consider the properties of social modes and narratives, examine Don Hoffman’s theory of fictitious reality and its evolutionary origins, and discuss ways to overcome your social limits through psychological hacks like self-characterisation and frame shifting. 

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Shownotes:

The Seven Basic Plots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

The Hero’s Journey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

The Map is Not The Territory: https://fs.blog/2015/11/map-and-territory/

Sam Harris on the Illusion of Free Will: https://samharris.org/the-illusion-of-free-will/

Carl Sagan (a classical rationalist): https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage

Mandatory Eliezer Yudkowsky link: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/eliezer_yudkowsky

The Map is Not the Territory (on LessWrong.com): https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_map_is_not_the_territory

The “Infinite” Coastline Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox

Mental models: https://fs.blog/mental-models/

Intuitive (naïve) physics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_physics

Human’s bias towards negative thoughts and emotions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

Don Hoffman—Reality Isn’t—on the After On podcast: https://after-on.com/episodes/026

Friston’s Free Energy Principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle

Frame shift video with Tyrion (from Charisma on Command): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NQiHtbpa8s

Derren Brown: http://derrenbrown.co.uk/derren/

Derren’s interview on the Sam Harris podcast: https://samharris.org/podcasts/143-keys-mind/

Lying by Sam Harris (our favourite essay/book on honesty): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18869177-lying

The episode where we deep-dive on lying: https://www.podtangent.com/e/001-you-don-t-want-to-be-the-people-in-friends/

Information asymmetry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry

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Corrections:

Derren Brown was on the Sam Harris podcast, not the Tim Ferriss Show. See link above.