The belief that "rationalists should win" is widely held in the rationalist community. So: does being a good rationalist actually help you win? Certainly in some domains, like engineering and science, which focus on quantification, systematization, and prediction. There, having a hyper-rational mindset is clearly an advantage. As for winning at life, which I will take that to mean leading to greater success in survival, evolution, and human flourishing, I don't think rationality helps very much.

It's a fact that men greatly outnumber women in software engineering. As for why, there is a fundamental disagreement between social constructivists and evolutionary psychologists.

Despite the obnoxious title, this a16z podcast was unusually insightful.

One big theme in the podcast can be summarized as an end of endings: a trend away from one story with a coherent, finite arc, towards something neverending. Amorphous TV shows like Lost, as well as Hollywood's discovery that a coherent franchise like Star Wars can be milked for many more dollars are examples of this. The stats backs it up: Hollywood moved from 10% of the hits of the 90s being sequels to 50% today, as can be seen in the box office data. Looking at TV shows through the same lens, each show is a one hour long movie, followed by tens of sequels. And successful franchises aim to immerse their fans (especially kids) into their universe with figurines, games, lunch boxes, bed sheets.

The end of endings also shows up in user interfaces, and is epitomized by the infinite scroller. Millions of souls fixate on the next pretty picture, the next baby picture, the next outrage. Entertainment that never ends!

This is interesting in the context of attention. In the realm of meditation, the challenge is to focus on something mundane, like your breath. In the realm of entertainment, the challenge is to snap out of an immersive world carefully constructed to consume your attention for as long as possible.

I recently enjoyed a podcast about intelligence, aliens and learning where Kevin Kelly was interviewed by Sam Harris. Here are some things I liked about it:

• Kelly makes a great argument that with text we already have no way of knowing what is true. We have to rely on the source. My fears of audio and video fake news are reduced.

• It's obvious that the world is changing quickly, which means lifelong learning is necessary. One thing I haven't systematically understood is how I learn best. How would you even figure that out?

• Chimpanzees are amazing at short term spatial memory, and do better than humans in these cognitive tasks on average.

• Currently, the best Chess players are human-computer hybrids. Harris claims that computers alone will eventually be better than these hybrids, but his claim that "the ape will just be adding noise" is unsubstantiated.

• About mid-way, the two discuss the analogy between AI and aliens. I haven't thought of this either. But I wondered how salient that analogy was given that we have a largely shared environment with whatever AIs we create. To the extent that the AIs truly are alien, I wonder how much of a unifying force these alien AIs could be for humanity.

• I strongly agreed with Kelly when he says that building machine systems enhances our self-understanding. Building VR rendering and head tracking systems, you benefit from some human visual perception basics. Human psychology is critical for building user interfaces. You need an understanding of how human hearing works to build good lossy audio compression.

• An interesting thought experiment that superscedes Asimov's laws of robotics: what if we built AGIs that were terribly worried about what people think. Then we reduce the machine menace problem to merely the evils of humanity.

I highly recommend two podcast episodes on the theme "how to argue", featuring Daryl Davis, the black friend of white supremacists. Mr. Davis is remarkably lucid in dealing with very difficult issues, and presents great tips for convincing the inconvincible.

1. Gather your information. Understand their position as well as you do your own. Expect to hear things you will disagree with and keep your cool.

2. Invite them. Have a conversation not a debate. Debates get people's guards up. Instead seek to understand them. People want to be heard and speak their mind freely without retaliation.

3. Look for commonality. You can find something in 5 minutes and then build on it. Look to other issues. Politics? As you find more commonality the differences matter less.

4. Talking is not fighting. When the talking stops the ground becomes fertile for violence (cf. Sam Harris). The longer you talk the more commonalities you can find.

5. Patience.

6. Make a good first impression. Be respectful.

7. Don't be condescending or insulting even when you hear things you don't like. Expect opinions that are ridiculous and facts that are wrong. Keep cool.

8. Don't explain somebody else's movement. Let them explain it and address the points that they themselves define. Let them finish and don't cut them off even though you probably know a lot about their ideas already.

"While you are actively learning about someone else you are passively teaching them about yourself." – Daryl Davis