host @_humanprotocol | Angel & Advisor at large | prev: PG steward @ens_dao | @OptimismGov | @status | @ethBounties / @consensys | @schellingpoint_ | @0xliscon
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Joined November 2008
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a while ago I tweeted "you know what's going to truly get us from web2 to web3? therapy."
nitter.cf/Sim_Pop/status/1678362…
20K impressions - people felt that
I've been sitting with that idea ever since - it's finally becoming a thing (after a bit of procrastination because I was touching grass...) 🧵
It’s fear that makes everything feel scarce. We fear not having enough, not being enough, losing relevance, influence or opportunity…
Scarcity isn’t *always* about what we lack but what we’re afraid to lose.
Serving others means recognising that someone else’s gain doesn’t come at our expense + enough self-awareness to notice when fear is convincing us otherwise (which it will do - often)
SP 🔥 retweeted
People don’t fear change, they fear loss. Of what they know, of what is comfortable. Being comfortable with being uncomfortable is the sweet spot
SP 🔥 retweeted
Started reading Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” and I think this is interesting particularly re chapter on The Lazy Controller I just got to (spoiler: we’re inclined to conserve cognitive effort and our willingness to think depends on motivation/incentives)
Thinking requires effort and our minds are always negotiating how much of it we’re willing to spend from the mental energy bank.
Maybe AI’s strongest retention dynamic won’t be entertainment or indispensability but our growing preference not to expend the effort ourselves.
Not only because agents do said tasks reliably (will increasingly do so) but because they remove the cognitive and emotional burden of having to think, make a minutiae of decisions and manage uncertainty ourselves.
Also, dependency doesn't instantly come from indispensability, it can slowly start with the incremental loss of our willingness to do something ourselves.
Which then ofc brings up the question: are we outsourcing cognition to free up capacity for deeper/creative thinking or just outsourcing the need to think at all🙃
i've been talking to a lot of normal ppl outside of tech about personal agents & the convos have been incredibly fascinating, particularly w.r.t. to retention.
most consumer products typically have one of two types of retention, one is desire driven which is just pure dopamine (like insta, tiktok, games). they often don't even need notifications because you know there is a reward for your desire always waiting. the second is dependency driven, like emails, calendars, even credit cards & banking. most ppl have to do this, it's not something they necessarily desire (unless they are a sociopath).
the challenge with personal ai agents right now is that they occupy a weird third space where they aren't emotionally rewarding most of the time to become entertainment like the first category, & they're not reliable / indispensable enough to become pure infra. i.e. they fail, & there is a lot of friction. outside of pure research driven tasks, even one failure is often enough to not come back for the utility value prop.
which is why i think vertical agents that focus on making your life more interesting & entertaining are worth deep exploration still. & even very focused vertically integrated utility agents that work reliably will still be in demand. tons of ppl still think in jobs to be done when reaching for anything & with general purpose agents that's just not as crisp yet on what those critical jobs are.
SP 🔥 retweeted
We need to move away from what i call “launch slop”
Fast cuts, black and white, historical film, rocket ships. Clips of some
philosopher talking.
It was cool when founders fund did it. Now it looks like shit. Every YC company has the same video. We need a new aesthetic.
knowledge ≠ wisdom
I find AI to be extremely knowledgeable, and so exceptionally able to detect references to almost anything, but not very wise, and so it only makes the most surface-level judgements about what point some writing is making.
This is particularly true when it's analyzing writing that it just read for the first time, as opposed to analyzing writing that's already in its training data (along with lots of analysis of that writing by other people)
AI's knowledgeableness is easier to see than its limited wisdom; it's perhaps even the very definition of wisdom that it cannot be easily verified (as opposed to intelligence).
our most human trait and the one that tbh has kept us evolving is irrational optimism. mustn’t lose it…
SP 🔥 retweeted
Yubikeys are by far the faster and most secure way to do login and two factor authentication today, by FAR. It's true that UX along platforms does not make it easy, but the TLDR is:
- Get at least 2 new yubikeys, if you get three better.
- Check that the firmware is at least 5.7.x
- Set them to require PIN mandatory
- Disable the modes you are not gonna use like TOTP
- Use them with the FIDO2 mode enabled (that's basically putting a passkey inside a yubikey)
- This way, you have phishing resistant login and 2fa and no risk of cloud totp apps.
Yubikeys are great, but their customer support is not great, I would say if you have any question, let us know, we research them a lot from @opsek_io
You also have our guide here:
github.com/Opsek/Yubikeys-ch…
he truly is…
and he’s been doing this at the same level of energy and dedication for the past nine years. If you somehow don’t know how and why @austingriffith is a G, here’s some context…
youtu.be/Dt0MvChh97c?si=ibzH…
SP 🔥 retweeted
You shouldn't need special wallets or a PhD in applied cryptography to send funds privately onchain.
Payment requests with @0xprivacypools v2 make everyday financial transactions easy and private.
My doctor told me the other week, “I have learnt not to argue with you.” lol
What she means there is that I ask a lot of questions and if I am not comfortable with something or have doubts, I dmor and we discuss until I am satisfied. (I’m sure I’m her “favourite” patient…)
Makes me think more about our relationship with medical authority - medicine is remarkably good at identifying what’s statistically likely but that statistical probability isn’t the same as understanding the specific individual.
And for so many including a lot of friends stories I’ve heard, questioning expertise has become confused with rejecting it.
But then the greater the expertise, the greater the capacity for inquiry, not the greater the resistance to being questioned, no? Yes, I know they’re stretched etc so I am sure I am not making her life easier but tbh my priority here is…me.
Hormones are one example of how we still don’t fully understand individual biology. Their influence extends across cognition, mood, metabolism, immunity and physical health in both men and women.
But how often do we investigate their role beyond the usual age segments, reproductive milestones or textbook symptom profiles?
We seem to be more comfortable asking whether someone fits the statistical pattern for a hormonal condition than exploring whether hormonal changes could explain what they’re experiencing.
Yes, levels fluctuate and testing isn't always clinically informative etc. but the issue here is if drs remain curious when someone falls outside the expected demographics or symptom profile.
Ai has increased my research ability massively and it can identify patterns that can be missed but it also has limitations based on what it's trained on.
My personal aim with my “arguments” is that asking probing, reasonably well informed questions (with Ai help now) may not make medicine more accurate immediately but it can make it more curious for the benefit of the individual.
Started reading Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” and I think this is interesting particularly re chapter on The Lazy Controller I just got to (spoiler: we’re inclined to conserve cognitive effort and our willingness to think depends on motivation/incentives)
Thinking requires effort and our minds are always negotiating how much of it we’re willing to spend from the mental energy bank.
Maybe AI’s strongest retention dynamic won’t be entertainment or indispensability but our growing preference not to expend the effort ourselves.
Not only because agents do said tasks reliably (will increasingly do so) but because they remove the cognitive and emotional burden of having to think, make a minutiae of decisions and manage uncertainty ourselves.
Also, dependency doesn't instantly come from indispensability, it can slowly start with the incremental loss of our willingness to do something ourselves.
Which then ofc brings up the question: are we outsourcing cognition to free up capacity for deeper/creative thinking or just outsourcing the need to think at all🙃
i've been talking to a lot of normal ppl outside of tech about personal agents & the convos have been incredibly fascinating, particularly w.r.t. to retention.
most consumer products typically have one of two types of retention, one is desire driven which is just pure dopamine (like insta, tiktok, games). they often don't even need notifications because you know there is a reward for your desire always waiting. the second is dependency driven, like emails, calendars, even credit cards & banking. most ppl have to do this, it's not something they necessarily desire (unless they are a sociopath).
the challenge with personal ai agents right now is that they occupy a weird third space where they aren't emotionally rewarding most of the time to become entertainment like the first category, & they're not reliable / indispensable enough to become pure infra. i.e. they fail, & there is a lot of friction. outside of pure research driven tasks, even one failure is often enough to not come back for the utility value prop.
which is why i think vertical agents that focus on making your life more interesting & entertaining are worth deep exploration still. & even very focused vertically integrated utility agents that work reliably will still be in demand. tons of ppl still think in jobs to be done when reaching for anything & with general purpose agents that's just not as crisp yet on what those critical jobs are.
This episode with @DennisonBertram for the @_humanprotocol pod is essentially two good friends chatting about life - how we got to this place, what’s happening around us and really, what it’s all about in the end.
It reminded me of so many conversations I’ve had at dinners around the world and it truly is all about the friends we’ve made along the way and the richness they bring to our lives.
“You can be at inbox zero or you can be happy…”
youtu.be/79i2tSNt2uQ
Episode 15 is live - Inbox Zero & The Meaning of Life with @DennisonBertram
It's a wide-ranging and highly entertaining conversation that moves us from his pre-crypto life in robotics, political science, life in Prague, high level fashion photography and creative technology into the early days of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
We trace how a founder’s worldview was shaped by post-communist Europe, 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis and the personal side of years building in crypto.
Key arcs:
- why humans should stop doing computer work
- bureaucracy, passports and verification theater
- Prague after communism and why Bitcoin felt so real after 2008
- his main founder lesson: if it’s hard to use, it’s probably wrong
- what kids and mortality do to your sense of time and money
Full conversation:
youtu.be/79i2tSNt2uQ
open.spotify.com/episode/5Af…
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
SP 🔥 retweeted
wake up babe, every version of PHP for the past 17 years has two critical bugs and now 74.5% of the internet is broken lol. there's a patch coming out tomorrow but until then most of the internet has open backdoors that allow unauthorized remote code execution
