[newsletter]

Motivation pt. II: Stickytaping it all together and other things

6 Dec 2024

Hello,

Here’s everything since my last little missive to you:

New Articles:

Motivation pt. II: Stickytaping it all together

Excerpt: I needed to do a little refresher on motivation for another audience, so I’m going to subject you to it as well. It’s a messy subject, but at a high level, there are some interesting frameworks for understanding what makes people do things. This is part two of a two part series, where I’ll outline theories that try to make the mess all work together, with mixed success.

Main idea: We can think of motivations in terms of three things. There is the content: what things motivate us. Then there is the process: how things motivate us. And lastly, we have those things that maintain our motivation.

New Marginalia:

The abstract is troubling:

In 2021, a highly pathogenic influenza H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b virus was detected in North America that is capable of infecting a diversity of avian species, marine mammals, and humans. In 2024, clade 2.3.4.4b virus spread widely in dairy cattle in the US, causing a few mild human cases, but retaining specificity for avian receptors. Historically, this virus has caused up to 30% fatality in humans, so Lin et al. performed a genetic and structural analysis of the mutations necessary to fully switch host receptor recognition. A single glutamine to leucine mutation at residue 226 of the virus hemagglutinin was sufficient to enact the change from avian to human specificity. In nature, the occurrence of this single mutation could be an indicator of human pandemic risk.

See also this NYT post: “A Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be One of the Most Foreseeable Catastrophes in History”

Time to stock up? (h/t Tyler Cowan)

Link

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Where Geniuses Hide Today. I’m skeptical of anyone who reckons “Today’s Da Vinci is Elon Musk.”, but before the conclusions, the exploration is a good intro to the debate here.

Link

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A linkless internet. In creating anonymous summaries, AI flattens out the architectures of thought that unites the internet. Certainly anyone who uses AI for research while blogging (hem hem), knows you can’t get anything like the resolution that makes your research deep.

Link

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A taxonomy of modern ethical values. Here’s the summary of thinking—interesting:

1. A person is in a constant and unremitting evolutionary struggle, modern accoutrements notwithstanding.
2. We believe that the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.
3. We are in the middle of this. We are what you may call the educated elite. We are sympathetic to the points made by both sides above but are appalled by their excesses.
4. We are the same as the above except that we dropped acid and are now scheduling our trip to the Amazon to take ayahuasca. We are high-vibrational
5. We are totally turned off by the above. We also don’t have the pessimism that everybody else does. We actually like our jobs and like our phones.
6. Of everybody above, we are most upset with the last one. What bothers us more than anything is when the mass stops seeing themselves as the wretched of the earth and starts viewing themselves as satisfied consumers
7. We are repelled by all of the above — and we think that the confusion speaks for itself. We believe that these questions have been worked out a very long time ago in the ethical codes of the different religions of the world

Cute + fun. Which are you?

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Who can claim Aristotle?

for a writer whose thinking was so clear and, in many ways, modern, people with radically different stances have tried to claim him for their own.

See also this and then, to contrast this.

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I hope you found something interesting.

You can find links to all my previous missives here.

Warm regards,

Dorian | btrmt.

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