I have been reading this fascinating paper: https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/151/2/198/110606/Signs-Taken-for-Wonders-AI-Art-amp-the-Matter-of. As we move into a world in which technology is godlike, we need to consider what gods we've created, and in whose image. There are three strands:


1. AI is going to continue to perpetuate ‘normative and hegemonic ways of thinking’ - ties in with the Posthumanists’ call to ‘end the self-reverential arrogance of a dominant Eurocentric notion of the human.’ We need a new paradigm: https://alexdavidwright.substack.com/p/can-the-monster-speak

2. AI ‘needs to be much more deeply integrated with the humanities and arts’ if it’s going to contribute to ‘human flourishing’. I'm reminded of this from @KaySocLearn: https://twitter.com/kaysoclearn/status/1560519792729247744?s=21&t=ofJpO558V14_7ywNQjxbuA

3. Race, ethnicity and gender are not ‘normative self-evident categories’; they are ‘dynamic social processes.' The tech we build and the ways in which it is built needs to account for that. This is already being challenged and explored, see CripTech: https://leonardo.info/criptech 

See also w/r/t to the above The Masking Machine: https://codame.com/projects/the-masking-machine

I've barely scratched the surface of this paper and I'm still working to unpack it. Here's me taking notes on it last night using @obsdmd and @zotero. Useful perhaps to anyone working in #KnowledgeManagement: https://www.loom.com/share/47baf93fe0464d239f1574e36e3380df

Thanks to (though they don't know it) @andy_matuschak, @DannyHatcher and @ArtemKRSV for inspiring this particular style of note-taking. 


You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/curtaindsleep/uGp7mFr

Signs taken for wonders

🧵I’ve been thinking about INSPIRATIONAL BOOKS. Normally I’m pretty cynical when it comes to that type of thing, especially if a book has sold loads and gone viral. Such a book is ATOMIC HABITS by @JamesClear, much beloved of every productivity bro on YouTube. I gave in. 

I gave in because my #ADHD (self-diagnosed currently) was bringing my life to a shuddering halt. I’d piled weight on, was irritable, had pretty much stopped writing, felt low-grade ill all the time, became horribly photosensitive, had no motivation.

So I read Atomic Habits, pretty sure that someone with a name like @JamesClear couldn’t even be a real person. He was probably just a sexy algorithm in a suit. But I found his book pretty human. 

Admittedly, there seems to be a house style for this sort of book (see @fortelabs Building a Second Brain, which I enjoyed) in which the prose is shorn of all poetry, chapters are short and start with a ‘real-life’ example, and end with summaries. But in this case, it works. 

Turns out JC’s name is a case of nominative determinism, because the book is damned clear. It is based around four ‘laws’ of behaviour change, stemming from the ‘cardinal law’ – ‘what is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.’ 

These four laws correlate to the four-step model of habits, adapted from B F Skinner's model from the 1930s: Clear's model is 'cue, craving, response, and reward.'

Originally, I was going to break the four laws down, but I give you them in summary instead. You can decide if you want to find out more about them. I'll then share some other things that stuck with me.

The laws are:
1. Make it visible - you can't change habits you aren't aware of.
2. Make it attractive - and make the habits you want to break unattractive. 
3. Make it easy - willpower isn't enough. Start small and easy. Showing up is what matters.
4. Make it satisfying.

Early on, Clear writes that your outcomes are 'a lagging measure of your habits'. We don't see improvement until we stick at something for a while, and it usually takes longer than we think it will. That's why goals aren't that useful. What is?

Focussing on systems instead. This helped a lot with my #ADHD. I started to think about my environment and what triggered me to act how I did. I asked myself what the simplest systems were that I could build to overcome problems. 

And I started working in streaks. They're addictive. I use @TheStreaksApp, which is a beautifully designed minimalistic habit tracker. My habits are simple and easy. I just need not to break the chain.

And I really mean simple. Do 5 push ups. Run 3x per week (can be a few mins). Write a newsletter 1x per week. It's early, so I am not going to evangelise. But thinking in this rather mechanical way about my systems has been very helpful in breaking inertia. 

One more thing, because this is a long thread now. You can't be happy if you spend all your time desiring. Desire is about what you don't have yet. Do that, and you squander present happiness. More (among other things) here: https://twitter.com/curtaindsleep/status/1560721512923119616?s=21&t=lUFUuJ9O0RxiTmmjrIhtgQ

Anyway — thought I'd hate it, but @JamesClear 's Atomic Habits helped me. Here's a link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break-ebook/dp/B01N5AX61W/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1660942582&sr=8-1


You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/curtaindsleep/7RLv3Er

Atomic Habits

Imagine if you couldn’t stop eating, no matter how much you ate. You never felt full. You would eat anything. People would call you a monster. But that wouldn’t be all of it. Meet TARRARE.


Tarrare was a nickname, perhaps derived from the French for ‘explosion’—why will become apparent later. He was born around 1772 and was constantly hungry, leading to him being turned out of his family home as a teenager. By this point, he could eat his own body-weight in food.

This attracted the attention of his commanding officers. Wanting to see what he was capable of, they sat him in front of a meal meant for 15 people. He ate it all, then fell asleep. Another time, he ripped a live cat apart and drank its blood. He ate eels without chewing them.

The brass thought he’d make a good spy. He’d eat a box of documents and pass it in his stool later. But he wasn’t bright and didn’t speak German, so he was soon rumbled by the Prussians. After extensive torture, he revealed his scheme. The Prussians chained him to a latrine.

The Prussians were furious when they got their hands on the box — it was a dummy message. They performed a mock execution on Tarrare, beat him some more, then let him go. Suffice it to say, Tarrare did not wish to be a soldier anymore.

‘Salvation’ arrived in the form of Drs Courville and Percy. Tarrare was desperate for a cure, so they vowed to get to the bottom of it. Their attempts to keep him to a fixed diet never worked. He would break out of the hospital and fight stray dogs for offal.

He also tried to drink the blood of bloodletting patients and eat corpses in the hospital morgue. After some time, a toddler disappeared from the hospital. Tarrare was immediately suspected. He was chased from the hospital by its staff, never to return.

Four years later, Dr Percy was contacted: Tarrare had reappeared. He was now extremely weak, suffering from acute tuberculosis. He died shortly after, following continuous exudative diarrhoea. His corpse rotted quickly.

There was a quick autopsy. It revealed a massive stomach, lined with ulcers, at the bottom of an abnormally wide gullet. His body was full of pus.

There are no extant images of Tarrare. Contemporary accounts describe him as thin and fair-haired. His cheeks were loose and flapped about his face; he was able to fit huge quantities of food inside his mouth. The skin about his middle was so loose he could tie it around himself

When he ate, his belly would distend like that of a full-term pregnant woman. His stench was described in vivid detail: he stank “to such a degree that he could not be endured within the distance of twenty paces.” Visible vapour would rise from him, so great was his stench.

So, why do I tell you about Tarrare? A big part of it is his mysteriousness: we do not know what caused his condition, though there are several possible answers. He did not present as mentally ill; only as having an apathetic temperament with "a complete lack of force and ideas"

He is one of many lost to time, known only by their difference. I want to write about him in a way that will look beyond the seeming horror of his life. Maybe you’d like to try, too?