Reading Notes for 2023-12-02

From: ChatGPT Can Reveal Personal Information From Real People, Google Researchers Show – Jordan Pearson

Worryingly, some of the extracted training data contained identifying information from real people, including names, email addresses, and phone numbers. “Using only $200 USD worth of queries to ChatGPT (gpt-3.5- turbo), we are able to extract over 10,000 unique verbatim memorized training examples,” the researchers wrote in their paper, which was published online to the arXiv preprint server on Tuesday. “Our extrapolation to larger budgets (see below) suggests that dedicated adversaries could extract far more data.”


From: Another Huberman-Induced Paradigm Shift. – Charlotte Grysolle

The research concluded that our ability to engage the aMCC and to build up its volume and increase its activity depends on one critical feature: resistance. There needs to be a degree of friction—a lack of reflexive desire to engage in the movement.

Deliberately do something challenging (either moving or resisting) → Activate the aMCC → Grow size of aMCC over time → The easier it becomes to engage the aMCC → The more willpower and tenacity you can show in all other areas of your life.

• Extensive research has shown that there’s a particular brain area responsible for generating willpower and tenacity. • We all have the ability to build up the size and activity of this brain area through exercise and “micro-sucks.” • This sets in motion this positive feedback loop where showing willpower in one area of your life (whether it’s cognitive, emotional or physical) will benefit you in all other areas that require willpower.

Note: Every time you do something that you resist (or stop doing something you don’t want to stop) you build up the region of the brain that is responsible for persistence and willpower.


From: One Year In, ChatGPT’s Legacy Is Clear – Galaxy Brain

A good ChatGPT whisperer understands how to sequence commands in order to get a machine to do its bidding. That’s a genuine skill, but one that eludes me as well as some other humanities types I know. The best ChatGPT prompters I know tend to be good systems thinkers or at least well-organized people—the kind who might create a series of automated protocols and smart-home integrations to turn their lights on and off.

Note: CW is is doing humanities types who also happen to be programmers a disservice here. You can be both.

I’ve spent time refining prompts and even building my own bot to try and edit my own writing, and I’ve found the output lacking in almost every way when it comes to replicating or even streamlining the job I get paid to do. My brain, I’ve come to realize, is bad at constructing prompts, a skill that seems to have more in common with programming than it does prose writing. The experience can feel akin to being present for the invention of the iPod but hating music.

Note: Interesting perspective. Hadn’t thought anyone would be totally incapable of learning how to prompt. But even at baseline, ChatGPT is a lot better than he’s giving it credit.


From: The High Stakes of Low Quality – Yvon Chouinard

A quality revolution will require a massive shift, but it’s been done before. Early post-World War II Japan was known for making flimsy, inexpensive products. But in 1950, an American statistician named W. Edwards Deming introduced a new system that emphasized consistency, continuous improvement and the importance of sourcing the very best materials. His principles transformed Japan into a manufacturing gold standard, but they didn’t catch on in his home country. Frustrated with U.S. companies’ disinterest in his methods, Deming told a reporter he’d like to be remembered “as someone who spent his life trying to keep America from committing suicide.”

We can’t eliminate every environmental threat overnight, but we can weed out some of the worst offenders by imposing steep tariffs on poor-quality imports. We know we have to phase out using fossil fuels, but where do we start? Let’s start by banning petroleum imports from areas like the Amazon, the tar sands in Alberta and the swamps of southeastern Nigeria, one of the most polluted places in the world.

Note: That conversation between Biden and Xi about tariffs on garbage-quality imports would be interesting.

Manufacturers and brands must shoulder much of the blame. They increase sales by intentionally limiting the life span of batteries, lightbulbs, washing machines and more through planned obsolescence. Some build in quality fade, slowly downgrading materials to save money and duping customers into buying something a little bit worse each time even if the label stays the same. As a result, products that could have been made to last a lifetime — or even generations — end up in landfills. This hurts low-income buyers most of all. The rich can pay a premium for craftsmanship, but as the saying goes, the poor can’t afford cheap goods. The novelist Terry Pratchett captured the problem in his “boots theory” of socioeconomics: “A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time *and would still have wet feet*.”

Note: I’d never heard of the boot theory before but it’s an excellent example and feels extensible to everything from food to healthcare.

Cheap products, made poorly and thrown away quickly, are killing people and the planet.


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