Strong links, gamification, language, & more
Due to the current Substack - Twitter cold war, I can’t embed Tweets, so they’re included as images. You can click on the image to open it on Twitter.
Concept : Strong and weak link problems
It's useful to ask yourself: what type of problem am I facing? If it's strong link, do I have more room for experimentation? Am I trying and failing enough, or am I being needlessly risk averse? And if it's weak link, do I have enough safeguard systems in place? Have I accounted for all possible vulnerabilities?
Definitely check out the Twitter thread or full post below for more details and examples, such as how this relates to scientific research.
Statistic: VW diesel cars that cheated emissions tests increase infant mortality
Tweet: Borges on why English is a far finer language than his native Spanish
90 second clip from a 1977 interview with Jorge Luis Borges. Until now I've preferred English because of its simplicity and flexibility, this clip gave me two other things to appreciate about English:
1. It's both a Germanic and Latin language, and what that allows you to do
2. The flexibility of combining verbs and propositions (look up, look down, live down, live up to)
Video: The Tower Method for learning languages
A method that seems even more effective than simple spaced repetition (e.g. Anki).
It focuses on making you able to converse with native speakers as fast as possible, developed through trial and error when the video's author set himself the challenges of learning enough Italian to hold a phone conversation in 10 days, and later learning enough Spanish in 30 days to surprise visit a friend for their birthday and be able to talk with him and his friends and family in Spanish.
The level of fluency and fluidity achieved in such a short time is incredible, and approachable for anyone too! You only need to put in ~20 minutes per day.
Blog post: Book Review: From Oversight To Overkill
It talks about institutional review boards, which review medical research proposals and can veto, approve, or send you back with a list of requested revisions.
The blog post, and the book it's reviewing, walk you through how we got to where we are, and what harm they're helping to reduce versus what harm they're indirectly causing (spoiler: orders of magnitude more). Yet another example of how our brain prioritises focusing on negativity.
Podcast: The latest All-In Podcast episode
The All-In Podcast continues to be a great place for laymen to get diverse views on breaking news and new advances in technology. This week they talk about AutoGPTs, ideas on regulating AI, long term impacts on the entertainment industry, and more on the Bob Lee murder.
Book: Actionable Gamification by Yu-Kai Chou
Yu-Kai has developed a fascinating framework for categorising human motivation into 8 categories, the Octalysis framework.
For a quick taste test, I recommend his 17 minute TedX talk.
The full book is well worth the read for anyone, not just games industry people, that wants to motivate themselves, motivate their employees, and/or make their product more appealing as well as enjoyable to customers.
AI: gfodor develops new prompt to peek inside the mind of a large language model
The attached images:
Like with ChatGPT plugins, compressing to 'Shogtongue', and AutoGPTs, this continues the trend of showing us more and more of the less obvious capabilities of LLMs.
Health: Daily dead hang
What 3 minute daily habit improves your posture, decompresses your spine, and builds arm and grip strength? The dead hang. No need to move, just hold on and reap the benefits.
Entertainment: Wildfrost (video game)
This new deckbuilder roguelike looks charming and has some very interesting twists on the classic formula. Chiefly an asynchronous mode of combat where units attack at different speeds, and each card costs you one turn. Manipulating the timing of your and the enemies’ attacks is paramount, adding a new layer of strategizing.
For a taste test, I suggest Northernlion's first look at the game.
That's it! If you want, you can follow me on Twitter for RTs of many more interesting tweets, post some of your own finds below, and I'll see you again on the 29th of April!
Hi, is it possible to comment on individual items?