Gordon
@gordon.bsky.social
3.1K followers 980 following 2.2K posts
Everything around me was someone’s lifework.
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gordon.bsky.social
self-certifying data… over http
gordon.bsky.social
IMO it is critical that we develop open source agents / user-controlled agents / agents with incentive to act in our interests. Otherwise it’s just wireheading with extra steps.
gordon.bsky.social
And if you stay passive, the default is that you’ll get wireheaded by slop (Facebook Vibes, Tiktok, etc. Agency barbell.
gordon.bsky.social
I think we’re going to start seeing stark divergences in outcomes between people who are power users of intelligence amplification tools (Obsidian, Readwise, AI, Agents…) and people who reject them. The amplification effect used to be like 2x. Now with agents it’s more like 10x w lots of headroom.
Reposted by Gordon
jfg.land
I've called the process of designing a system from an inspiration set "story interpolation" (middling term, admittedly). I love to use this slide from a talk Tarn gave at Northwestern's Progression Mechanics to illustrate the concept
A slide from Tarn Adam's talk at Northwestern's Progression Mechanics, giving a systemic diagram to the sentence "A flock of sparrows landed and ate most of the pill bugs, but one managed to survive to lay some eggs."
Reposted by Gordon
catacalypto.bsky.social
I have a theory that when designing a social simulation / generator, it can be useful to keep in mind a story you’d like your system to be able to organically generate. not every system should generate the same story but I have a short list of high-salience interesting stories I reach for. (1/2)
gordon.bsky.social
This talk is absolutely tremendous. AI, cellular automata, how to define intelligence, how life emerges from building blocks, symbiogenesis… Incredible. overcast.fm/+AAhjRoBRgM0
Blaise Agüera y Arcas: What is Intelligence? — Long Now
overcast.fm
Reposted by Gordon
jakelazaroff.com
i like making little web apps for myself/family/friends. the most annoying parts — the parts that drastically increase the scope, from "a bunch of HTML, CSS & JS files" to "a web server and database" — are auth+persistence. so i am very excited about atproto including a user-owned solution for both.
Reposted by Gordon
virginia.alertbutnotalarmed.com
I made something! Monomarks.at is an open social bookmarking tool along the lines of Pinboard or Delicious, and it's based on ATProto, because I was inspired by @danabra.mov's widely-read post. Log in with your Bluesky account to save bookmarks and browse links posted by the people you follow. 😎
Monomarks: open social bookmarking
Open social bookmarks
Monomarks.at
gordon.bsky.social
Awesome! If it's Fair Source, I'm all in. Sustainable business AND open source? Yes please.
gordon.bsky.social
*opens up NPC expansion slot, installs zoomer chip*
Reposted by Gordon
dame.is
dame @dame.is · 2d
"AI-coded projects are not going to be maintainable" is cope
gordon.bsky.social
“You can’t do just one thing.”
(Kauffman, Systems 1)
gordon.bsky.social
how many layers of hyperreality are you on my dude?
gordon.bsky.social
What is it about social media that encourages clinging to views? Something about there is a large invisible unsympathetic audience waiting to pounce. Constant threat of status loss.
gordon.bsky.social
“And what bhikkhus is clinging? There are these four kinds of clinging: clinging to sensual pleasures, clinging to views, clinging to rules and vows, clinging to a doctrine of self. This is called clinging.”
gordon.bsky.social
I think Elm makes this clearer because it can't cheat.

fn(state) -> [ui, effects]
gordon.bsky.social
this too is intelligence. intelligence is getting information and doing something about it, for the purpose of survival
Reposted by Gordon
timkellogg.me
[2023] this is a great blog post defining agency from the perspective of cybernetics: it receives and responds to feedback

i love it. very simple and clean. yes, it’s a little unsatisfying bc now thermostats are agents, but it’s very crisp
gordon.bsky.social
I think it’s right from both a practical and theoretical perspective. We know from cybernetics that feedback is all you need for agency to emerge. newsletter.squishy.computer/p/feedback-i...
Feedback is all you need
...for LLMs to gain agency.
newsletter.squishy.computer
gordon.bsky.social
I think it’s right from both a practical and theoretical perspective. We know from cybernetics that feedback is all you need for agency to emerge. newsletter.squishy.computer/p/feedback-i...
Feedback is all you need
...for LLMs to gain agency.
newsletter.squishy.computer
gordon.bsky.social
an organism is a hyperdimensional reflection of its environment
ftmaestre.bsky.social
In #drylands, plants don’t grow randomly — they self-organize into disordered hyperuniform patterns that help them use water wisely & endure extreme aridity. A beautiful hidden logic of nature, revealed in a new @pnas.org study doi.org/10.1073/pnas... including #Maestrelab alumni