Emmett Shear
@eshear
Followers
112K
Following
103K
Media
2K
Statuses
35K
applied developmental cybernetics researcher
SF
Joined March 2007
That was easy. Have ppl never heard of swimming?
The remaining 2% will be emailing me their solutions once a week for the rest their lives….
43
337
17K
Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted. I had recently resigned from my role as CEO of Twitch due to the birth of my.
1K
2K
14K
I continue to believe one of the biggest issues in our built environments is failing to use enough passive heating and cooling mechanisms. Failing to use enough passive components generally! Stuff in motion is stuff that breaks and costs energy to run.
The Persian wind tower (بادگیر) or how a 700-year-old air conditioner could cool an environment up to 12°C with no electricity. [📹 Never Enough Architecture].
110
2K
14K
I am deeply pleased by this result, after ~72 very intense hours of work. Coming into OpenAI, I wasn’t sure what the right path would be. This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved. I’m glad to have been a part of the solution.
We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.
737
634
12K
Equally astonishing. Once we figure out the basics of something, the next 50 years tend to be wild.
It still blows my mind that these photos were taken in the same century
34
657
9K
We should legalize building apartments like these. For a family it’s far too small of course, but for a single person living in the big city? I would have absolutely preferred to save my money for other things.
163
364
8K
The frame of “applying to jobs” is spiritually humiliating because it makes the job into the subject and the applicant into the object. You’ve cast yourself as a dependent on the Jobs’ generosity. A victim to its judgement.
64
516
7K
In honor of the 10th anniversary of launching Twitch, I thought I’d share some of the lessons I learned along the way. Each of these insights could probably be expanded into an essay, of course. Like the ones you would want me to expand on in the future.
174
1K
7K
I got prescribed a drug you took once a day for ~120 days, preferably at the same hour. So I set an alarm on my phone, carried my pills with me everywhere, and took them. When my MD asked about compliance and I said I hadn’t missed any pills, they expressed significant surprise.
"The oral AIDS cure won't work because the people who still get AIDS will be too lazy to take it" is one of those things you just can't believe if you haven't lived certain places.
55
175
7K
“Burnout” is a particularly modern affliction, feeling simultaneously overwhelmed and paralyzed. I’ve found it’s best to think of burnout not as a disease but as a symptom, with many different etiologies. The big three: permanent on-call, broken steering, and mission doubt.
79
880
6K
Gall's Law is one of those statements that just keeps hitting harder and more deeply the more time I spend with it. At first it seemed false, then a truism, then an interesting insight, and now a foundational belief about the world.
89
792
6K
Growth mindset is just replying to yourself with “skill issue” every time something goes wrong.
55
799
5K
If you haven’t figured out the joke yet, *any* fixed benchmark will fall rapidly the instant it becomes an optimization target for the top labs. Correspondingly, no fixed benchmark is AGI. AGI is the ability to generalize to an adversarially chosen new benchmark.
ARC-AGI scores for past five years of OpenAI models (updated w/ release dates)
198
332
5K
My very favorite kind of vacation has become the kind where several families that have been friends for a decade+ get a house together somewhere beautiful, and then we just enjoy being together (meals, playing sports or games, chatting, going on walks).
54
135
5K
The real villain here is Google. Google found one of the very best business models of all time, skimming all the surplus profit off of the entire free open internet. This is the natural end state of that process.
129
371
5K
Reddit is going IPO as $RDDT, the first social media IPO in some time. As someone who spent some substantial time running a social media company, my takes on the Reddit IPO:.
122
296
5K
@soychotic testosterone and estrogen are "basically the same", so body builders can totally juice with estrogen right?
22
45
4K
This order is insanity. The LA fires and our governments response has radicalized me against our current government in CA in a whole new way.
Today, I signed an executive order prohibiting greedy land developers from ripping off LA wildfire victims with unsolicited, undervalued offers to buy their destroyed property. Make no mistake — this is a prosecutable crime.
189
114
4K
I like each of these bc they each compress a pretty complex counterargument into a single image that avoids getting lost in the details. Are there more?
140
277
4K
Minimalist reconstructions are not more accurate, they have their own assumptions (this is true not only of fossils but of models in general)
29
225
4K
An agent is defined by its Buddhi, Manas, Ahankara and Chitta. By which I mean, its loss function, context vector, boundary, and world model.
111
559
4K
Every time I see a beautiful view with massive floor-to-ceiling windows that flaunts itself constantly, it reminds me of the Zen View pattern from A Pattern Language. I remember how after 6 months with a floor-to-ceiling view of the bay it became invisible to me.
72
255
4K
There are crystal structures that simply won't form anymore, even though they did a few decades ago. Real life Ice-9? Could make an incredible sci-fi book.
96
313
3K
The jump between the second panel and the third holds the entire secret. The correct question is asked (why am I not?), and then artfully avoided by an associative switch to self judgement. There is some reason you’re not doing them, and but it’s hiding.
33
259
3K
Hope no one was trusting Google with anything important! YouTube videos or Blogger websites etc that are owned by inactive accounts will just get deleted…burning the commons. God forbid Google is still big 50 years from now…so much history lost to this.
163
534
3K
It’s so weird you can charge someone’s bank account with just their routing and account number, and it just does it. No approval required! I understand the historical reasons but it’s really wild it still works that way.
89
57
3K
Why is the northern coast of Africa so much smoother than the southern coast of Europe?.
102
35
3K
Random noise? Oh, you mean the part of the system whose dynamics are not described by your model of the world?.
88
229
3K
What’s funny is that things like Google flights being integrated into search is actually super anti-competitive, but distributing a free browser is mostly just super pro-consumer. So naturally the DOJ chooses the worst possible option…why???.
59
60
3K
Apropos the recent controversy: the word delve is rarely used in English. Except used by LLMs, and in formal register Nigerian English.
169
168
3K
bath: full body immersion other than head, can sit and relax.shower: water is in motion so actually useful for cleaning, you’re not lounging in your own runoff.solution: a heated micro river, but inside your house. Who is building this?.
182
66
3K
Some of my favorite writing is single author short story sci-fi collections. Why are they so rare?
103
142
3K
Can we collectively shame whoever is responsible for the writing style used for abstracts of academic papers? It’s like they do everything possible to avoid telling you the paper’s actual idea or the high level results. Like reading a clickbait article summary.
101
76
3K
TIL the 7th amendment only guarantees jury trials when the value at stake is over $20. The amendment was passed in 1791, and $20 in 1791 dollars is $670.85 today. It feels weird to have a hardcoded constant like that in your country's firmware that doesn't update.
72
53
2K
We have lived through something akin to The Great Renunciation, except instead of men renouncing interest in fashion it’s all of society renouncing interest in design. Buildings are boxes. Everything is in white or black. Mass degreebelization. (Reversal may be coming tho!).
When did humanity stop caring about little things like this? When did we stop caring to put beauty and personality even in the door handles?
127
179
2K
The worst part about having taken that job is now I have to constantly censor myself around making startup-or-AI-related jokes bc everyone will take it like some secret knowledge instead of a dumb joke.
116
53
2K
nothing destroys your ability to learn new lessons more thoroughly in the long run than repeatedly being very very right when literally everyone thought you were wrong.
102
125
2K
@kendrictonn The art is the Instagram post, the painting is memorabilia (like collecting Picasso paintbrushes or something).
6
16
2K
I'm beginning to think we need an entirely new base of personal computing devices and operating systems and software that are based around local or regional networking, with no global connectivity at all.
198
130
2K
@noampomsky Bullying someone by being verbally quicker is just as bad as bullying someone by being more cruel and aggressive or by using higher social status. Just a different form of power being abused.
14
133
2K
You don’t have to play Capitalism® your whole life but it’s definitely worth a few years, really deep game, good combo of strategy and luck and skill. Plus the points you get are redeemable for cool prizes.
51
131
2K
I think this is surprisingly good art made with AI. What are the very best examples of art that you think is actually good that an artist made using AI tools?.
141
46
2K
In October 2006 we started working on live video for the internet. That became Twitch. More than 16 years later, I'm now a father and ready to move to my next phase of life. I wrote a blog post, but the short version is: thank you so much to everyone who built this with me.
1
173
2K
No more effective way to destroy someone's ability to learn than to tell them the right answer every time they ask, on demand.
98
112
2K
This is the 3rd time I’ve had a @lyft accept my ride and claim they’ve “arrived” while driving away. When I call to ask they say “you have to cancel”. If I cancel, Lyft will blame me…if I don’t they run out the timer and claim I no showed. Lyft has no way to report this afaict.
168
39
2K
Advice my dad gave me that stuck with me: “consider your life as a series of 10-15 year projects”. The choices aren’t actually forever or never, although I know they sometimes feel that way.
47
132
2K
Thanks to being banned from Twitter for the weekend, read The Bhagavad Gita in my spare time instead. Very good!.
57
57
2K
When you keep getting surprised in the same direction, it’s time to stop giving ground grudgingly in the rearguard action and switch sides.
"This finding suggests that memory mechanisms may stem from fundamental cellular processes" 🤯🤯
49
102
2K
The future of making art favors taste over skill, and will continue to do so indefinitely until it is effectively 100% taste.
107
188
2K
One of the biggest surprises of my adult life has been “UFOs are real, and they are extraterrestrials” becoming widely accepted as probable truth among many of the smartest people I know.
340
85
2K
Twitter should have an asks-box, like tumblr. I get questions via DM that I might answer as a post, but probably wouldn’t answer as a DM. Eg….
86
44
2K
Reflecting on why I had such high consistency was interesting. There’s no way I’d have spontaneously remembered to take the pill at the same time without a system. I’m not particularly disciplined! I’d even say the opposite. I was surprised every evening when my alarm went off.
1
6
2K
Something that’s always bothered me about this argument. How would we tell the difference between “nothing was produced in this time period” and “we got worse at record-keeping”, or “someone deliberately burned the notes”?.
145
45
2K
I’m increasingly convinced we understand almost nothing about nutrition.
Results of my n=1 study on potassium supplementation and weight loss.
97
54
2K
The fantasy of the all-powerful slave has legs: the genie bound to grant wishes, the golem that defends, the spell that animates a broom to clean on its own, the Mr MeeSeeks box. They share a commonality: a deep intuition that this goes wrong somehow.
69
124
2K
How to do hard stuff:. write down a 1 page doc with your key assumptions, the hypothesis/goal you want to test, and your plan to do it. now read it with a maximally critical eye…does it make sense? are there gaps? iterate until you can’t find any. now go execute like crazy.
29
170
2K
What if we paid prisons a flat rate per inmate per year, much higher than the current amount, but in exchange the prison was on the hook for any recidivism? You get paid for the 4 year sentence, but if they go back to prison you’re on the hook from there. Seems more aligned.
290
51
2K
If you are a smart, diligent, and effective person, you are pretty much guaranteed that any problem you’re currently facing is really nasty and hard to fix. Bc otherwise you’d already have fixed it.
61
98
2K
@Duderichy This is my favorite animation!!! I have it bookmarked on my phone for parties. Such a whitepill on past 40 years.
68
282
2K
One of my favorite policy ideas is "25 at 25": every American inherits $25k when they turn 25 years old. At that point you've probably been in the workforce a few years, and you understand the world a little. This would everyone to take a risk on a venture or career.
162
79
2K
I’ve noticed this same trend whenever I look at new cars…what’s caused this convergent evolution? Is it really regulatory standards, or is this kind of hybrid SUV some optimal point in design space?
242
143
2K
1/ What is “product/market fit”? I’m not sure I can give you a definition. But maybe I can share what the subjective difference is in how it feels when you have it and when you don’t. Founding a startup is deciding to take on the burden of Sisyphus: pushing a boulder up a hill.
43
391
2K
@arithmoquine There is a fundamental issue with the continuum, if you really think about it.
44
45
2K
It might ruin the joke sometimes, but I would appreciate a version of trending on this app that featured the patient-zero tweet for whatever nonsense is currently trending. Like when everyone is posting about eggs on my timeline, show me “original 30 eggs tweet”.
46
59
2K
Even weirder, after animals emerge from hibernation they are often incredibly sleepy and immediately have to sleep!.
Most people don’t know this but we still don’t know how exactly anesthesia works . And part of that is because we don’t understand consciousness. Anesthesia is not a form of sleep. Brian waves are different
9
78
2K
18 law firms somehow miraculously have exactly identical wage scales that get updated in parallel?.Hey DOJ, I think there might be an antitrust opportunity here…any gunner of a federal prosecutor want to really make a mark?.
New salary scale for law firm associates at Cravath and 17 other large law firms. This is not a small amount of money.
72
67
2K
I recommend ambitious people specialize in learning new domains and new skills.
66
94
2K
much suffering is caused by people turning a "reduce variance" knob without realizing it controls the positive variance too.
69
142
2K
Welcome new followers. We have returned to our regularly scheduled programming where I post whatever idle thoughts or silly jokes come to mind, interspersed with occasional threads or interactive games.
55
40
2K
The replies to this thread blow my mind. People legit believe the state needs to protect them from bad haircuts by ensuring hair stylists meet training standards. I’ve never seen the nanny-state mind virus (timorus overprotectionis) on clearer display.
Should you need a license to cut hair?.
94
53
2K
Twitter Idea: set a maximum likes per post on the For You recommender. Anything more than 5k-10k likes is almost guaranteed to be engagement bait trash.
81
29
2K
The ur-woo belief is that mental states impact reality directly, and while I’ve come to believe that’s true it’s also a dangerous belief. The more woo stuff I engage with, the more important I find it is to stay grounded in my direct experience and careful about my inferences.
79
60
2K
I love recommending books to people, especially if they read them. For a book recommendation, reply below with three books you've read that you love and three words for each on why and I'll give you the fourth book you should read.
382
112
2K
You have 168 hours per week. For most, sleep takes 56 of those. A full time job is anyone 40. Food, grooming, exercise add another 18 if you’re reasonably efficient. Misc obligatory bullshit paperwork like taxes or errands, another 7. This leaves you with 47 hours!.
73
82
2K
The five growth strategies are high-touch sales, paid advertising, intrinsic virality, intrinsic influencer incentives (Twitch!), and platform hacks.
19
96
2K
Don’t worry the human brain is definitely immune to adversarial inputs, nothing to see here.
Concentric circles made up of tilted arcs appear to be spirals.
35
98
1K
Make something 10 people completely love, not something most people think is pretty good.
5
118
1K
New AI safety plan, involving San Francisco's water supply.
35
53
1K
A psychedelic drug is one that raises the temperature of your mind’s latent space. This effectively smooths the peaks and valleys, unifying what were separate regions of beliefspace into larger ones. Take a high enough dose and unify the whole shebang, no part is separate.
65
68
1K
One clear mark of intelligence is when someone is often surprised, but usually by particularly interesting bits of detail or nuance.
46
73
1K
If we do our job well, if we succeed as a civilization, one day people will look back at today and say, “the past was a place of so much suffering and pain”.
63
128
1K
This a beautiful proof that atoms must be conscious, actually.
Proof that consciousness doesn't exist:.- An atom isn't conscious. - Adding an atom to something that's not conscious doesn't make it conscious. - Therefore nothing is conscious.
152
45
1K
But I know that about myself and because I was carrying a cell phone I could have an alarm have the discipline for me. And because I love process design making myself a little process was fun and natural.
1
11
1K
I was told recently that I should stop posting on a topic until I've understood it more deeply and mastered the material. That seems to me to be backwards. It is exactly the material with which you are thinking the hardest and evolving your thoughts on which you should write.
92
80
1K
I'm trying to learn some difficult real math for the first time in a while and holy shit guys I see why everyone is raving about this AI thing now, this is a game changer.
84
35
1K
I'll be 40 years old soon. I thought I'd take a look back and see how I've spent it. Good memories, very few regrets.
63
46
1K
I find explaining any actually interesting idea usually requires explaining like 5 subsidiary ideas. If you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky it’s like 25 and either they’re ready for a three hour lecture or you’re not going to succeed.
75
93
1K
Twitter should have a Snooze Tweet button that pops a Tweet back up onto my timeline tomorrow.
30
44
1K