Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

LightNews

@paraschopra.com

55 followers 690 following 700 posts

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 1h

There are two modes of living - one where you live to appeal to others, the second is where you live to appeal to yourself.

Growth in life is when you start living a life that appeals to you, and find a way to make an income *within* it to sustain you.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 7h

Read it here: www.nei.nih.gov/about/goals...

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 7h

TIL about Project Prakash that cures treatable blindness in (older) children who can describe what they see, once they gain vision for the first time in their lives!

It's a fascinating testbed to answer many thought experiments such as what objects are and how do see them?

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 10h

Learning - beyond a point - can’t be made more efficient.

You can’t delegate or automate the struggle inherent in grappling with a difficult topic since that struggle is precisely what internalizing the subject entails.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 23h

Having low expectations in life is doubly wonderful.

First, wild success is low probability event in life, so you remain realistic.

Second, if you do hit the jackpot, you get such a thrill and dopamine hit which you’d never get if you had high expectations from the start.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 1d

Steal this idea.

An AI that watches you work and constantly reminds how to use an AI to do the same job better (quality and efficiency wise).

These days I need to remind myself that my speed and output is not blocked by tools but by my mindset.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 1d

It just struck me that the act of picking up phone repeatedly to check notifications is very similar to eye saccades (our unconscious activity that scans our visual field).

It's likely both processes are driven by the same impulse of scanning environment for gathering new info.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 2d

This verification is bit like general relativity predicting light bending around heavy masses, and once you observe it, you accept accept

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 2d

The way out of this, imo, is to aim for a mechanism that makes new predictions of the sort “do-this-and-you-will-feel-this”. Now if it turns out to be true (that you indeed feel what the mechanism predicts), you’re bound to accept that mechanism as the model for consciousness.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 2d

Science of consciousness is in a weird position.

We want a mechanism to explain it, but whatever mechanism we propose is obviously is just mechanism and we can always ask - wher the heck is consciousness?

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 2d

This is why emotional progress is a lifelong journey.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 2d

A really beautiful memoir!

This #book is a breezy read into the life of someone who lived a deeply curious and infinitely interesting life.

He’s an inspiration, and this book is perfect for bedtime reading as it’s easy and lively.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 2d

We are impacted by influences in our life that we don’t recognize for a long, long time - sometimes never.

Everything we come across - people, projects, problems - change us in ways we can only appreciate gradually.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 4d

The best kind of early stage entrepreneurs know that their *only* job is to discover an unmet need that a group of people are willing to pay for with their money or time.

Building products, writing code, hiring, raising funds - everything else is secondary.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 5d

What will be scarce in the AGI era?

that's what will make real returns 💸

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 5d

In the age of LLMs, smart people are getting smarter, while dumb people are getting dumber.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 6d

via docs.google.com/presentatio...

Advice for a young investigator in the first and last days of the Anthropocene

Advice for a (young) investigator in the first and last days of the Anthropocene Jascha Sohl-Dickstein Anthropic Title: Advice for a young investigator in the first and last days of the Anthropocene Abstract: Within just a few years, it is likely that we will create AI systems that outperform the...

docs.google.com

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 6d

Do you agree with this?

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 6d

AI slop is like greenhouse gas emissions.

For personal gain, everyone is polluting the Internet - classic tragedy of commons!

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 6d

You know this is true even for major life events.

Amputees readjust to their previous levels of happiness, and so do lottery winners.

this doesn’t mean happiness can’t be impacted; this just means the lever to it might not lie in achieving or losing things.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 6d

I think hedonic adaption is one of the deepest truths of life.

Its direct implication is that if you aren’t happy today, you won’t get happier in future when you acquire that shiny new trophy.

Seek reasons to be happy no matter where you’re in life!

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 7d

Good mental health is a lifelong journey.

Because we observe people’s behaviours, never their thoughts, it can appear that everyone else other than you has figured it out.

But the truth is that everyone is battling their inner demons almost all the time.

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 7d

What’s your personal benchmark for declaring that AGI has happened?

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 8d

It seems like most successful entities (people, companies) have one trick up their sleeves that they keep milking for all its worth

Apple with their iPhones, Darwin with his theory of natural selection, Picasso with his cubism

This shows how rare breakthrough success really is!

paraschopra.com @paraschopra.com · 8d

You should make notes on everything you learn.

First, the act of making notes forces your brain to understand the topic much better than passive reading.

Second, written notes allow you to stitch a web of ideas and discover new connections b/w previous thoughts and new ones.