u/bubugugu

I might not feeling the most positive these days the more I learn how our society works, but personally I am looking forward to passing away one day because it will be so peaceful. There will be nothing to worry about.

One thing I’ve realized is that we are too avoidant of the idea of death. The amount people spend on trying to extend their lives and to stay youthful. The idea of heaven or reincarnation. The things we do to delude ourselves our lives will continue forever. We try so so hard to find meanings or purpose in our meaningless lives.

Most of us will not be in a position to make a dent or impact in history or society. Most of us are just another being born involuntarily, and then somehow we have to find a way to survive. It’s all a bit absurd 😂

Whenever I see people around me, sometimes I picture all of us disappearing one day, so maybe we should just relax a bit and be kind to each other during this short journey together.

I am more than half way into the book, and I have to admit this book is really amazing.

The core idea is that humans are the only animals that know they're going to die, and we can't handle it. We're split beings: a mind that can imagine forever, stuck inside a body that ages and rots. Becker thinks living with that knowledge head-on would be unbearable. So almost everything we do is secretly an attempt to deny death and feel like our life matters in a way that lasts.

Basically we treat everything on top of our physical body as symbolic e.g. our identity, cultural and religious beliefs, idols, etc, and we anchor our worth, significance, protection and anxiety relief on these things. An illusion to the fact that we are not immortal. We all die and perish one day.

I see my parents based their worth on me and my brother. They are so scared if we don't succeed or not stay in touch with them. We are their worth, purpose and protection.

People based their worth on titles, money, status, nationality, cultural, tribe and of course religion. Look at all these people being so obsessed with soccer in the world cup right now. Becker argues all of these are distractions and illusions! A powerful one because people literally kill each other over it.

I have spent so so so many years dreaded with existential anxiety. Constantly asking what am I here for? What's my purpose? What's my goal? What things should excite me enough to get me out of bed? The reason why I struggle so much is because ultimately these virtual goals and purpose are all made up. We keep chasing them, keep getting more of them, but they are infinite because they are not real. Even the one of the original concepts of money was invented/made up because some English king needed it to recruit an army and use it collect taxes. And yet people treat money like oxygen.

Reading this book felt like escaping Plato's cave. Becker has done a wonderful job enlightening us.

Most people treat AI as a convenient black box. Ask it something, it answers, you move on. But we’re sleepwalking into something bigger. I think Whoever controls the infrastructure of knowledge controls how people perceive reality.

The Church held that position for centuries through controlling scripture. The printing press broke that monopoly by distributing interpretive power. AI is doing the opposite recentralizing it into a handful of corporations with no democratic accountability.

“AI says X” is structurally identical to “studies show X” you’re invoking an authority you can’t directly access. Except with a study you can theoretically trace the source. With AI the chain is opaque by design. And it delivers wrong answers and right answers with identical confidence. There’s no texture to signal doubt.

AI isn’t neutral, it’s being heavily calibrated. In the west, the models are trained to be more “ethical” maybe more liberal and always try to give you a more “balance” take on things. Chinese AI simply doesn’t allow you to access to anything that put the CCP is a bad light.

The more you rely on AI in domains where you lack expertise, the less capable you become of evaluating whether to trust it. AI works best for people who already know enough to catch its errors the opposite of how most people use it.

OpenAI said 10% of our entire population has already started using chatgpt. Regardless of the accuracy of this number, I feel like we are slowly entering into a mass hallucination / blind reliance on these AI models.

We’re not just offloading cognitive effort. We’re handing the dial over who shapes how billions of people understand reality to a small group of unelected, largely unregulated private individuals.

Most people treat AI as a convenient black box. Ask it something, it answers, you move on. But we’re sleepwalking into something bigger. I think Whoever controls the infrastructure of knowledge controls how people perceive reality.

The Church held that position for centuries through controlling scripture. The printing press broke that monopoly by distributing interpretive power. AI is doing the opposite recentralizing it into a handful of corporations with no democratic accountability.

“AI says X” is structurally identical to “studies show X” you’re invoking an authority you can’t directly access. Except with a study you can theoretically trace the source. With AI the chain is opaque by design. And it delivers wrong answers and right answers with identical confidence. There’s no texture to signal doubt.

AI isn’t neutral, it’s being heavily calibrated. In the west, the models are trained to be more “ethical” maybe more liberal and always try to give you a more “balance” take on things. Chinese AI simply doesn’t allow you to access to anything that put the CCP is a bad light.

The more you rely on AI in domains where you lack expertise, the less capable you become of evaluating whether to trust it. AI works best for people who already know enough to catch its errors the opposite of how most people use it.

Imagine the next generation of people growing up and being shaped by these AI. I can’t help but feel nervous and scared for the future.

OpenAI said 10% of our entire population has already started using chatgpt. Regardless of the accuracy of this number, I feel like we are slowly entering into a mass hallucination / blind reliance on these AI models.

We’re not just offloading cognitive effort. We’re handing the dial over who shapes how billions of people understand reality to a small group of unelected, largely unregulated private individuals.

I am probably being stupid here but I was curious to see if I can request a new test link after I've passed the test. Does anyone know if requesting a new link will disregards my previous test?

I’ve recently finished David Graeber’s Debt the last 5000 years and dawn of everything. I am completely mind blown. Please share your book suggestions that explains how the world works. I am open to anything!

Edit: really grateful for all the suggestions here. All these books are going to keep me busy for a long time 😃

Does anyone feel like that?

I’ve just spent like almost four hours with someone talking about all kinds of topic. Conversations went great, we talked about a lot of personal stuff, we were laughing, etc.

I walked her to her car and said I would like to see her again. She then said she is not interested.

That’s crazy right? At this point I don’t even what compatibility feels like if it’s not being able to enjoy each company for four hours.

I think I am done for a while. People or my parents can complain about me not trying, but I think there’s something wrong with the dating culture. The constant swiping and matching and meeting up and opening up to new people, and then not seeing each other ever again is too much.

Looking to connect with age 30+ people. Summer is coming, and I keep thinking it would be nice to have some people to hang out at the beach in the evenings with drinks and snack, and just chill.

A bit about me: work in tech, grew up in the Asia, lived in the UK for a while, ended up in Vancouver. Somewhere in between everywhere culturally, which I'm sure some of you get. I read a lot: anthropology, history, sci-fi and spend probably too much time thinking about how societies work and why people do what they do. Also into photography and investing.

I like relationships that grow, and people who are intentional and genuinely curious and care about each other! This is very very important to me.

I'm an introvert so I prefer 2-4 ppl small group than big group hangouts. I'm a good texter if that's your thing too. DMs open! tell me something you've been thinking about lately.