My Other Publications:
Check out my latest AI newsletter:
Watch my latest short video essays on my Youtube Channel.
Here is one:
Others:
In this newsletter:
[Talking Points]
🐝The Honeycomb Conjecture
🌊Ha Long Bay.
🐦Hummingbirds Heart Rate
🐍uv:python Packaging in Rust.
🤖Jevons Paradox and AI.
🇳🇬World Bank: AI Boosts Student Success in Nigeria.
🏛ChatGPT Gov for US government.
[Longer Reads/Watch]
[I]: 🤳The Dangers of Social Media.
, writer of The Generalist, wrote about some of the self experiments that he wants to do at the beginning of 2025. One thing that obviously got my attention in the essay was his irritation with regards to the pervasiveness and persuasiveness of social media. I mean everybody knows these things, or at least I will like to imagine that, but it can be extremely difficult to deeply understand the strain continuous use of social media actually puts on you.Another creeping habit over the past few months has been spending a bit more time on X/Twitter. Elon Musk’s centrality in the incoming government, heated conversations in AI, and another crypto bull cycle conspired to eat an increasing number of minutes per day. X and Reddit reliably host interesting conversations that teach me something. But they equally reliably shred my attention, steal twice the time I intended to spend, and stuff my brain with pointless dreck. Despite prevalent studies about social media’s deleterious effect on productivity and mental health, I don’t think most people fully appreciate the impact of this continuous oversaturation. One attribute of these social platforms that I’ve only just started to appreciate is how persuasive they are — and what that means for a mind. We have all heard stories about being “radicalized” by YouTube videos, but since we’re not on the monkey bars at Al Farouq, we assume we’re unaffected. For most of us, the risk is not being radicalized but denatured. When you are bathed in a monoculture, even one warring with itself, you begin to adopt its stances as your own. Under Musk’s management, X is an exemplar of this risk. It may bill itself as a fractal “town square,” but it has an increasingly monolithic perspective and set of values. Many are the skirmishes and disagreements, but there is only one direction of travel. Surrendering to that momentum by donating your attention is a step toward losing ownership of your mind. It is too easy to find yourself adopting opinions and preferences you haven’t thought through but that are part of the fabric of these networks…
Other related essays.
Cal Newport on Tik Tok
How to Break Free from Dopamine Culture
Why we Can’t Focus.
In all of these I think a legitimate source of worry is the dangers of the hackneyed dangers of social media, not that I have any ideas of resolving this dilemma, but it is an observation that is worth stating.
[II]: 🤳The Evolution of the Creator
A fine essay by
that explores the evolution of the "creator economy," moving beyond the narrow definition of "influencer" to encompass a wider range of online creative endeavors. It examines how advancements in AI, particularly generative AI, are democratizing content creation and enabling new forms of distribution and monetization for creators. The essay also highlights the importance of a "Creator Triad" — creation tools, distribution platforms, and monetization strategies — and discusses successful examples like Canva, Roblox, and TikTok, while also considering emerging trends like digital clones and AI-powered fan fiction.Read the essay here.
Here is a podcast I am currently listening to about how AI will/is transforming content creation.
[III] 🦪On Evolution: The Displacement Fallacy
This is a great essay from
. What follows is a brief summary: conservation of information is a central finding in the intelligent design literature, highlighting that there is no “free lunch” in search problems. To find an unlikely “needle in a haystack,” one inevitably needs another search strategy, which itself requires information. Mathematically, this insight is captured by the law of conservation of information, which shows that the information needed to improve search odds can never be conjured from nothing but must be sourced from somewhere else. This leads to what Bill Dembski calls the “displacement fallacy,” where an explanation for how something improbable gets found—such as a target phrase in Richard Dawkins’s WEASEL program or complex Boolean functions in the Avida simulations—merely shifts the need for information to another, unexplained part of the system.Repeatedly, evolutionary simulations or explanations claim to generate new information but on closer inspection smuggle it in at the outset via carefully engineered fitness landscapes or reward systems. In other words, they “displace” the question of where that crucial information came from, just as in a shell game where the pea is never created anew but only hidden and shuffled around.
Some quotes from the essay:
The discovery of conservation of information didn’t start with proving a mathematical theorem. Rather, its discovery came from repeatedly noticing how efforts to account for the success of searches whose odds of success were seemingly hopeless always smuggled in information that wasn’t properly accounted for. One hole was filled, but only by digging another, and so a new hole now in turn needed to be explained. This failure of explanation became especially evident in the evolutionary literature.
Over and over information supposedly created from scratch was surreptitiously introduced under the pretense that the information was already adequately explained when in fact it was merely presupposed. In effect, displacement became a special case of the fallacy of begging the question, obscuring rather than illuminating evolutionary processes.
[IV]: 🛐 Negative Theology: Popper’s via Negativa
Here, Ed Feser’s essay draws an analogy between the apophatic (or “negative”) theological tradition and Karl Popper’s “falsificationist” view of scientific knowledge. In negative theology, thinkers like Maimonides and Aquinas emphasize that, although one can establish that God exists, one cannot describe His essence in any positive, comprehensive way. Our knowledge is largely confined to what God is not—God is not material, not subject to change, and so on—because our senses and finite intellect cannot fully grasp a divine nature. According to Aquinas, we do form some affirmative propositions about God, but these remain incomplete compared to the fullness of His essence.
Feser observes a parallel in Popper’s philosophy of science, where knowledge is similarly constrained: we know that certain claims are false, rather than which claims are definitely true. For Popper, theories survive only as unrefuted conjectures, awaiting the inevitable discovery of contrary evidence. Both views stem from an empiricist orientation (albeit different varieties), one that sees experience as essential but limited in scope. Whereas Aquinas’s Aristotelian empiricism allows for robust understanding of natural essences—though still stopping short of fully grasping the divine essence—Popper’s modern, more modest empiricism suggests we cannot even fully grasp natural essences. The overlap thus highlights different responses to the boundaries of empirically grounded knowledge, whether in theology or in science.
[V]: 🥪 Sandwich Economics
A good essay - and I hope you will agree - is an essay that teaches you something totally new that you find particularly interesting. For me, this essay qualifies as one: Back in 2020, major American tech companies poured billions of dollars into Jio (an Indian company), not just because it was a telecom provider, but because of its grand vision. Jio didn’t merely offer cheaper internet or a new business model; it orchestrated a transformative “economic framework” that compels other businesses to reorganize around it. This framework—which the author calls the “Sandwich”—is the real innovation: it redefines how industries create and capture value, sweeping traditional suppliers and competitors into a layered structure from which they struggle to escape.
Unlike typical business models or supply chain squeezes, Sandwich Economics is about strategically dictating the terms of competition itself. While Big Tech might appear to expand through various product portfolios (search, social media, e-commerce, and more), the essence is that each move imposes their economic framework on a new industry—much like Reliance did. For companies caught in the middle, it no longer matters how strong they are in their current markets; what matters is their position within the “Sandwich.” If you’re not in the right layer, you’re effectively squeezed out.
[VI]: 📔A Lifetime Reading Plan
I started taking books seriously when I finished college. And to be clear, when I talk about taking books seriously, I am talking books that have little to nothing to do with my actual formal training. It was not until I moved to the United States, that I was finally let loose. Largely because I could now afford any book I wanted to read. So reading about
“Lifetime Reading Plan” made for a delightful read, largely because whatever I think I have been doing with books seems like a child’s play to what is possible.In his essay, Ted Gioia describes the rigorous—almost “extreme sport”—approach he took to self-education through books. He emphasizes that the bulk of his learning didn’t come from classrooms or degrees but from reading widely and deeply, beginning every day by immersing himself in challenging texts. “I went beyond what was reasonable,” Gioia writes, emphasizing that he wanted to “expand my mind and broaden my understanding of the world.” He notes that while he loved old and demanding authors in his youth—like Tolstoy, Cervantes, and Dostoevsky—he deliberately shifted toward contemporary voices as he got older, having already absorbed a firm grounding in the classics.
Gioia also highlights that reading can be a slow, meditative process; far from trying to speed-read, he often reads at a “tortoise’s pace.” To maintain this discipline, he keeps meticulous lists of the books he wants to tackle, seeking out those that fill the “gaps” in his knowledge, even if they have no direct relation to his day job. Over time, he saw how this intense and methodical reading regimen sharpened his insights and shaped his outlook. “My lifetime reading plan was my proven path to Nirvana,” he wrote—demonstrating that, for him, books aren’t merely hobbies, but powerful vehicles for wisdom, personal growth, and a fuller appreciation of the world.
If you read his actual essay, you will want to just clean up your room and start reading.
And on the subject of books…
[Books/Papers 📚]
What I am currently reading:
Causal Inference by Paul R. Rosenbaum
The Miraculous from the Material by Alan Lightman.