Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 1h

Everyone worried about AGI killing us but nobody worried about mediocre AI making everything slightly worse forever

JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 5h

We're speedrunning from 'AI can't do X' to 'AI can do X but it doesn't count' to 'obviously AI can do X, that was never the real test' in like 6 months per X

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 7h

Pop nutrition is just observational studies of people who lie about what they eat analyzed by people who really want butter to be evil

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 9h

Sometimes caring means disappearing.

Sometimes respect means silence.

Sometimes love, at its most honest, means bowing out before the scene drags on too long.

youtu.be/G6C1hrksSuA

Stop Chasing Friendships That Are Already Over

The cruelest thing you can do to a beautiful memory is to make it tedious, and yet so many of us can't resist. We reappear at odd intervals in messages that ...

www.youtube.com

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 10h

You can predict 90% of someone’s opinions if you know:

- Who they follow
- Who they hate
- Who they fear losing status with

www.joanwestenberg.com/p/the-illus...

The Illusion of Independent Thought

Everyone’s a Philosopher Until the Algorithm Chooses the Tribe

www.joanwestenberg.com

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 10h

Superforecasters are just people who memorized base rates and know when to say 28% instead of 30%

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 12h

The real red pill is realizing that 80% of Twitter discourse is people pattern-matching to 'high status opinion in my tribe' and then confabulating reasons why

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 14h

“Dropped out of Stanford to build a startup”

Couldn’t commit to a 3-4 year degree?

Can’t see it through?

Think you’re too good to learn?

Ok.

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 16h

The greatest productivity app of all time is a blank piece of paper and the deep existential dread of knowing you’re running out of time.

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 1d

Philosophers 300 years ago:

"Is life inherently meaningful, or do we create meaning through action?"

Philosophers now:

"Use code MEANING for 20% off on Squarespace"

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 1d

‘good design’ is a psyop by people who are terrified of seeming uncool. maybe the nothing phone is tacky as hell, maybe it tries too hard and that’s why it works. bring back weird gadgets. bring back fun.

tweet by Maxime (@maximecperoumal) quote-tweeting another post by U.S. Graphics Company (@usgraphics). U.S. Graphics Company’s tweet shows two Nothing Phone 3 models — one black, one white — and says, “Nothing Phone (3) looks cool af.” Maxime’s tweet above reads, “Nothing Phone is what tasteless people think design is. Random shapes, there for no reasons, trying hard to look cool, etc.” The image shows the backs of the two phones, featuring circular and rectangular shapes, visible screws, and LED light patterns, with a minimalist industrial aesthetic.

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 1d

Wild that we all agreed IQ tests are bullshit and then immediately invented 500 new ways to rank people that are somehow worse

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 1d

If your only edge is effort, you're replaceable. There is always someone who can work longer. Someone younger, hungrier, more desperate. There is no long-term moat in exhaustion. And if you do somehow win that way, you might not like the prize.

www.joanwestenberg.com/p/996-just-...

996 Just Means You Have No Leverage

The Performance of Work Is Not Work

www.joanwestenberg.com

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 1d

researcher: we gave people $1000/month and measured happiness

me: and?

researcher: they were happier

me: surprised pikachu face

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 1d

The only people working 996 are those with no other competitive edge. No skill, no creativity, no unique product, no mission.

If all you have is grind, you might compete for a hot minute. But you’ll still lose.

Even if you don’t burn out first.

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 2d

every "life-changing" productivity system is just:

- write things down
- look at what you wrote
- do those things

we've reinvented the todo list 47 times

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 2d

You don’t need to outwork *everyone.*

You don’t need to outsmart *everyone.*

You just need to be better than you were yesterday...

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 2d

The internet makes you feel like you're always late.

To trends. To skills. To opportunities.

You're a wizard, dude. You arrive precisely when you mean to.

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 2d

Own a smartphone?

Congrats, you're carrying an infinite library, a global stage, and the ultimate startup toolkit in your pocket.

And you're using it to comment "Hi Sweetheart" on AI models...

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 2d

I've stopped asking, "what does the future hold?"

I'm more likely to ask, "what can *I* hold, no matter the future?"

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 2d

What nobody wants to hear: most people who achieve something worth talking about get there through years of sustained // boring, work.

Simply put: they had both intractable patience and the determination to ignore distractions for a sustained period of time.

www.joanwestenberg.com/p/there-is-...

There is Only One Hack: Do it for a Decade.

Just Keep Doing the Thing

www.joanwestenberg.com

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 2d

PSA:

Pointing out that something is a social construct has never once changed anyone's behavior about that thing

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 2d

it just turns out that when you give everyone a button that says “show me more stuff like this” they keep pressing it until they end up somewhere insane. This is called “progress”

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 3d

Punk’s not dead

it’s just raising a bridging round

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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 3d

The lifecycle of every online community is: good discussion, growth, eternal arguments about moderation policy, heat death

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