Overestimating the potential upside of every new sign of tech progress is as common as downplaying the downsides. It's easy to let our imaginations run wild with how any new development is going to change everything practically overnight. The unforeseen technical roadblocks that inevitably spring up are only one reason for this consistent miscalculation. Human nature is simply out of sync with the nature of technological development. We see progress as linear, a straight line of improvement. In reality, this is only true with mature technologies that have already been developed and deployed. [...]
      Before the predictable progress phase, there are two previous phases: struggle and then breakthrough. This fits the axiom of Bill Gates, "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." We expect linear progress, but what we get are years of setbacks and maturation. Then the right technologies combine or a critical mass is reached and boom, it takes off vertically for a while, surprising us again, until it reaches the mature phase and levels off. Our minds see tech progress as a straight diagonal line, but it's usually more of an S-shape.

Deep Thinking / Garry Kasparov

The willingness to keep trying new things - different methods, uncomfortable tasks - when you are already an expert at something is what separates good from great. Focusing on your strengths is required for peak performance, but improving your weaknesses has the potential for the greatest gains. This is true for athletes, executives, and entire companies. Leaving your comfort zone involves risk, however, and when you are already doing well the temptation to stick with the status quo can be overwhelming, leading to stagnation.

Deep Thinking / Garry Kasparov

"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

Michael Jordan

      The gains in life expectancy we've witnessed over the past 120 years, and those to come, could be wiped out for a generation unless we address the greatest threat to our lives: other life-forms that seek to prey on us. It doesn't matter if we live for decades upon decades longer if a pandemic quickly snuffs out hundreds of millions of lives - negating and even rolling back the gains in average lifespan we will have achieved. Global warming is a long-term, critical issue to deal with, but one could also argue that, at least within our lifetimes, infections are our greatest threat.

Lifespan / David Sinclair / 2019

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

This Be The Verse / Philip Larkin

"What day is it?" asked the Pooh.
"It's today," squeeked Piglet.
"My favourite day," said Pooh.

At Facebook, figuring it out is a way of life. The company got its start with a bunch of Harvard undergraduates who knew how to code but had almost no experience with anything else. They figured it out. Each new wave of employees followed the same path. Some took too long and were pushed out. The rest got comfortable with the notion that experience was not helpful. At Facebook, the winners were people who could solve any problem they encountered. The downside of this model is that it encourages employees to circumvent anything inconvenient or hard to fix.

Zucked / Roger McNamee

In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all of its moments - which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves. Unlike your experiencing self - which is absorbed in the moment - your remembering self is attempting to recognize not only the peaks of joy and valleys of misery but also how the story works out as a whole. That is profoundly affected by how things ultimately turn out. Why would a football fan let a few flubbed minutes at the end of the game ruin three hours of bliss? Because a football game is a story. And in stories, endings matter.

Being Mortal / Atul Gawande

      Elementary introductions to computers explain them as TOM, the Totally Obedient Moron - an inspired acronym that captures the essence of all computer programs to date: They have no idea what they are doing or why. So it won't help to give AIs more and more predetermined functionalities in the hope that these will eventually constitute Generality - the elusive G in AGI. We are aiming for the opposite, a DATA: a Disobedient Autonomous Thinking Application.

Possible Minds / John Brockman | David Deutsch: Beyond Reward and Punishment