Field notes from the First Brain.
Field notes on the First Brain, networked thought, learning, and the future of intelligence, by the author of Building Your First Brain.
How AI Is Changing Human Language
Large language models and brain-computer interfaces are quietly rewriting the oldest human technology. Here is what is actually changing, and what is not.
How to Apply e/acc to Your Life? Accelerate Yourself
e/acc is a contested techno-optimist ideology. The defensible personal version: don't wait for AGI to save you, aggressively accelerate your own capability.
How Do Algorithms Radicalize People? Graph Hijacking
Feeds radicalize by densely connecting you to one extreme cluster while cutting your links to the moderating context. Here's the mechanism and the defense.
How to Ignore Smart Home Notifications? Cut and Filter
Don't rely on willpower against alerts engineered to grab you. Cut non-essential notifications at the source first, then train selective attention for the rest.
How to Do Async Work Properly? It Needs Autonomy
Async work runs on written clarity, documentation, and autonomy. It only works when people can self-direct and think clearly without constant real-time hand-holding.
What Is an Autotelic Personality? Joy of the Graph
An autotelic personality does things for their own sake and finds flow easily. It is also the only motivation that survives AI doing everything better.
Will Writing Survive Neural Implants? No More Drafts
Writing as a record may persist, but the draft, the scratchpad where we think by writing, is what a thought-speed interface threatens. The fix is internal.
How to Make a Mandalart Chart (and Go Beyond It)
A Mandalart is a 9-box grid that turns one big goal into 64 concrete actions. Here is how to make one, and why your mind needs more than a fixed grid.
How to Build Generational Wealth? Pass On Knowledge
Wealth that lasts isn't just capital, it's transferred knowledge. Money passes to heirs who lack the financial wisdom to keep it, and it disappears.
How Do Quarterbacks Memorize Playbooks? The System
Not by rote. Elite QBs learn the system, the concepts and naming logic, so each play is an understood instance of a pattern, then drill it into muscle memory.
Can Subvocalization Tech Bridge to Telepathy?
It is the most plausible near-term telepathy-like tech, but it reads deliberate inner speech, not raw thought, so it transmits words, not minds.
How to Be Naturally Charismatic? It's Not Extroversion
Charisma isn't being loud or born-with-it. It's presence, warmth, and adapting to the person in front of you, largely learnable behaviors centered on how others feel.
How to Memorize Dance Routines? Chain the Movement
Dancers don't recall steps one by one. They chunk the routine, drill it into muscle memory, and use music as cues so each move's momentum triggers the next.
How to Improve Cognitive Bandwidth? Don't Over-Offload
Raw working memory is fixed, but you expand effective bandwidth by building internal chunks. Over-offloading everything stops you building them, so capacity shrinks.
Why Do Day Traders Lose Money? The Bias Tax
Most day traders lose money because biological biases, overconfidence, loss aversion, and FOMO, get exploited by markets and machines faster than they learn.
How to Build Mental Endurance? Train Like a Muscle
Mental endurance is trainable like physical endurance: progressive hard focus at the edge of your capacity, plus real recovery. The friction is the training.
How Does Stress Affect Memory? Acute vs Chronic
It depends on dose and duration: moderate acute stress can aid encoding, high stress blocks retrieval, and chronic stress harms the memory system itself.
How to Develop Intuition? Feed the Pattern Machine
Intuition is fast, subconscious pattern recognition built from experience. You develop it through deep practice with feedback, and learn when to trust it.
How to Curate Information Effectively? Connect, Don't List
Real curation isn't making lists, it's revealing the connections between things. Filtering is now automated; the human value is judgment and meaning.
How Do Algorithms Control Karma? Reclaim the Loop
If karma is the loop of action and consequence, recommendation algorithms now sit inside it, shaping what you see, do, and become. Here is how to take it back.
How to Forget Useless Information? Stop Feeding It
You can't delete memories on command, and trying to suppress them backfires. The real way: stop reinforcing useless info and let natural forgetting prune it.
Why Do Video Calls Make Me Tired? Nonverbal Overload
Video calls exhaust you because your brain works overtime to read degraded social cues and watch itself. Mapping the meeting offloads the drain.
How to Be Original? Defend Your Weird Edges
Originality comes from your unique combination of inputs. Cultivate unusual experiences and defend your idiosyncrasies instead of sanding them off to fit in.
Does Technology Cause Memory Loss? What's Real
Not clinical memory loss or dementia, that's overstated. What's real is cognitive offloading: you remember less of what you let devices hold for you.
Can I Upload My Mind? The Map Problem, Explained
Not now, and maybe never as you imagine. You would first have to map your mind perfectly, which is astronomically hard, and a copy may not be you.