Attention writes the bottom layer of reality. The 2017 Google paper “Attention Is All You Need” did more than change artificial intelligence and kickstart the LLM race It gave us a clean metaphor for modern life. The core idea is simple. And it's a dark one. On the first pass, in the first draft, do not distribute out our attention based on actual importance, or based on what we want, desire or truly need. We distribute it to what scares us, what soothes us, what angers us, w

A known unknown is something we know we don’t understand, like dark matter, dark energy, consciousness, abiogenesis, or quantum gravity. An unknown unknown is stranger. It’s something that could be true without violating known science, but that we may not even have the right instruments, concepts, perceptual bandwidth, mathematics, or metaphysics to notice. Not necessarily “likely.” But coherent enough that dismissing any of the below possibilities as impossible would be arro

People often try to defeat fear in one dramatic, cinematic moment, because that’s often how it is portrayed in entertainment, in order to maximize dramatic tension and catharsis. That’s not how it works in the real world. And attempts to try, often lead to people burying themselves in their past traumas, obsessively reinforcing maladaptive compulsions, ruminating on past mistakes, leaving them feeling miserable, shameful, guilty, and no closer to actual recovery. As a forensi

My brother, stand-up comedian Vishnu Vaka, and I recently started a podcast series where we talk about human cognition, psychology, society, and the weird future we all seem to be walking into. Our first episode and interview is now up... Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Naa-1LE8OiU&t=1320s Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7DJwml7ITtAO4KDCILzfB6?si=fffe005eac2d41bd Apple Podcasts Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/late-night-live-with-vishn