AI Pace of Change

Just over two months ago, I wrote about Perplexity’s R1 model and mentioned it was one of the three ‘defaults’ I use via Msty. I happened to send a link to the post to a friend today and noticed that I’ve actually swapped out all three models — my three go-to’s are now ChatGPT’s o3 (was o1), Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro (was Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking), and Perplexity’s Sonar Pro (was R1). Just wild how quickly this stuff changes — these upgrades are quite noticeable for me just as a user. Exciting times.

April 30, 2025 AI

Focusmate

I recently started using Focusmate again. It’s a tool to help you stay on task — you get paired with another user and turn your webcam on to ‘keep you honest’ and on task. I initially used it in 2019, back when I was between jobs and needed to focus on grinding out Leetcodes in preparation for interviews. Recently I ran across a thread where people were talking about it and decided to give it a shot again. I forgot how great it is! What I especially like is that they recently released a “Focus Now” feature, where you simply click you’re ‘ready’ to be paired with someone right away to start a 50-minute focus session (before, you needed to use a calendar to schedule coworking sessions). I really don’t enjoy having specific start times, so I much prefer this free-for-all feature.

Would recommend folks give it a shot — their free plan allows you to use it up to 3x per week, enough to figure out if you like it. I have been using it enough that I subscribed to their yearly plan that allows unlimited usages. I’m not sure it’s something I’ll use every day, but I do think of it as akin to the Pomodoro technique — a tool to return to at least every few months so that it feels like an asset you can turn to for increasing focus.

April 9, 2025

⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Anxious Generation by Haidt

I read this immediately after Free to Learn by Peter Gray. It’s interesting how much overlap there is in the two books on the subject of play, even though this one is published over a decade later. Indeed, Haidt mentions Gray as a source multiple times in Anxious Generation, but I’m not sure he necessarily adds much more to that side of the topic than Gray already went over. One thing that I thought was cool to include from this side though was data on how injury rates among boys dropped quite significantly during the 2010s. In 2012, they were the age range with the highest rate of unintentional injuries — a decade later, they were the lowest! That’s crazy.

Excerpt from Chapter 7, What Is Happening to Boys?

I thought the inclusion of statistics like this one was great — Haidt includes quite a few throughout the book, and they are well-sourced through the online supplement.

The second part of the ‘anxiety’ is online-based stuff, primarily social media, pornography, and (to a limited extent) gaming. The idea is that these products are particularly bad for children with developing brains. As someone that had a serious gaming habit as a teenager and young adult (one that I can still summon if I find a particularly good title), I think I’m on-board with this argument. The basic reforms that Haidt proposes I find to be quite reasonable — disallow phone use during school hours; no smartphones or social media before high school. It made me consider: would something like the first rule be a good idea for parents as well? If I’m going to be asking my child not to use a phone from wake-up to ~3pm, it seems reasonable that I could lead by example, especially since as an adult I use my phone for alot more than simply ‘utility’ needs like calls/texts before that time.

Overall, I thought this was a solid read, though I think less aspirational and clearly much more targeted towards parents / future parents than Free to Learn, which is why this gets 4 instead of 5 stars. Ultimately, though, it leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling: what will the authors of the future Anxious Generation-style book be writing about raising kids in the 2030s~40s?

April 8, 2025 Book Reviews

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Free to Learn by Gray

This was an awesome book. One of my favorite attributes of it is just how positive and optimistic it is — while it of course is motivated by the decreases in free play in recent decades, it only spends a little time on those, instead opting to talk at length about the promise of what more free play could enable.

The book really shifted my perspective on corporal punishment. In the past, my perception of the arguments against it were that it is somehow morally wrong to hit children, or that doing so might damage their upbringing. I haven’t historically and still do not buy this as a good argument. However, Free to Learn provides motivations that are completely orthogonal to these: primarily drawing on evidence that shows primitive cultures did not do such hitting, Gray links the motivation for that type of punishment in the first place to the Neolithic Revolution (and further, the Industrial Revolution). Needing kids to do specific things in a specific way is an attribute of the society that they are being brought up to live in, not some objective requirement of upbringing in general. I found this to be quite an intuitive explanation, and now I feel I’m more on the side of ‘avoid’ for the practice. I love when a book reverses a long-held opinion of mine like this.

I’m honestly not sure when I have felt this excited by a book’s thesis. Would highly recommend basically everyone read this, in particular those with some relationship to young children.

March 31, 2025 Book Reviews

⭐⭐⭐ The Technological Republic by Karp

I had been vaguely aware of these kinds of opinions being held by the Palantir guys for quite some time — I recall some sort of story on Karp back all the way when I originally was considering working at the company out of college (2015). In general, they’re are mostly preaching to the choir with me; I’m already generally sold on their views that we should spread democracy and that folks should be comfortable supporting the US government within the context of their work.

I found the book to be overall pretty disappointing, though. One thing is that it could have really used a professional co-author (or at least a heavier-handed editor) — the structure of Technological Republic is confused where in one chapter you’re hearing about how Silicon Valley initially developed, another it’s how universities decide how to teach history, and then in the next is an explanation of why Palantir gives new employees a book about improv. It makes Technological Republic feel authentic to the authors, but also more of just a collection of the different thoughts that Karp and Zamiska have rather than a cohesive work of art.

I did enjoy quite a few points made by the book. Perhaps the best point is that AI represents a capability / weapon on the level of the atomic bomb. I don’t know if I had really thought about it this way, but in general buy into the concept. Another is that the cultural shifts of the 1960s and 70s kicked off a change in how we teach history (or, in other words, indoctrinate our youth and ensure we have a cohesive culture). The latter in particular I’d like to learn more about; I’ve heard Closing of the American Mind deals with this, so perhaps I’ll pick that up next.

Ultimately I think that I wouldn’t recommend this unless you are pretty enmeshed in the culture wars and/or care about Silicon Valley. Otherwise, you probably get most of the vibe from the current cultural shift that the country seems to be going through.

March 10, 2025 Book Reviews

⭐⭐⭐ Kaput by Münchau

As a long-time reader of Münchau via UnHerd as well as via commentary on Hospodářské noviny, I had high expectations of Kaput. Unfortunately, I came away fairly disappointed.

For one, I think the book is far too short and doesn’t really go into much more depth than you could glean from a collection of the essays Münchau has previously put out on the web. But two, in the cases where he does go into more depth, the format is confused: sometimes, he repeats the same point only a few pages after making it; other times, he introduces so many concepts at once that it’s hard to keep them in your head.

The latter issue is particularly problematic: as a book that seems targeted to audiences not super familiar with the German context (which we can derive from the author’s explanation of basics of German history), I found it surprising that he didn’t spend more time “setting the stage.” The chapter on the structure of the banking system suffers probably most seriously from this: it seemed like honestly quite an interesting story that could be told in a fashion that is far easier to follow than Münchau accomplishes. At the end, I came away feeling like I understood his thesis in the chapter but could not support it based from the historical context he tried to draw upon on.

More positively, it was interesting to hear about the challenges Germany has faced and the parallels it bears to the US: the confused immigration system that seems to prioritize attracting low-wage labor over skilled labor, or the vision (and failure) of liberalization of Russia / China via trade. In some ways it was nice to hear that it’s not just us that are struggling with these issues.

But ultimately, I’m not sure who this book is for. It doesn’t feel like it’s for laypeople, those familiar with the basics of German politics, nor truly politically-engaged Germans. Would not recommend — you can get most of the value from talking with an LLM about the rough history of post-unification Germany and then reading a few of Münchau’s columns on Eurointelligence or UnHerd.

March 6, 2025 Book Reviews