Weekly Sparks: 2025-05
Bits of Inspiration to Wind Down Your Week (#4)
This Week’s Sparks
A curated selection of the week’s most striking quotes.
“The universe appears to be as evenly mixed as the milk in a well-stirred cup of coffee”
— Charlie Wood, Link
“Describing the objects of your desires in a neutral fashion is a way to help you put some cognitive distance between you and your passions (in the Stoic sense of negative, unhealthy emotions), an approach that is used even today in cognitive behavioral therapy.”
— Massimo Pigliucci, Link
“Systems change, and user experience and the network effect often defeat brands. Plan accordingly.”
— Seth Godin, Link
“Donald Trump’s return to office means a sharp turn for the US on climate policy, and we’re seeing that start to play out very quickly.”
— Casey Crownhart
“Trump’s wave of executive orders is designed to be performatively malicious.”
— Tom Nichols
“We're trying to understand minds that process information differently from ours. Our psychological concepts - boundaries around self, intention, values - evolved to model human and animal behavior. Applying them to LLMs risks both anthropomorphizing too much and missing alien forms of cognition and awareness.”
— Jan Kulveit, Link
“Viva la open source. Viva, even, la quasi-open source. But when it comes to democratic versus authoritarian development of AI, I know where my allegiance lies. And it’s at home.”
— Alex Wilhelm, Link
“The genie is out of the bottle and is now out of control.”
— Terry Sejnowski, Link
“Technology advantage is temporary. Interface lock-in is forever.”
— Greg Isenberg
Timeless Sparks
Profound ideas and reflections from history’s greatest minds to bring depth and perspective to your week.
“The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.”
— David Ogilvy
“It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.”
— Søren Kierkegaard
“No psychic value can disappear without being replaced by another of equivalent intensity.”
— Carl Jung
Big Questions
Thought-provoking questions to explore life, the universe, and everything.
If desires can be “neutralized” through language, to what extent is identity just a construct of the words we use?
If every pursuit leads us through its opposite, is contradiction not a flaw but the mechanism of progress?
If control is always temporary, is power just the illusion of holding back the inevitable?
