Field notes from the First Brain.
Page 11 of 38.
How to Visualize a Movie Before Shooting It
How to visualize a movie before shooting: pre-render the cut in your head. Map shots as nodes and the emotional cuts between them as edges, then externalize.
How to Think Long Term: Add Time to Your Graph
How to think long term: give every important node a trajectory. Ask what each thing is becoming over a decade, not what it is, and wire in your future self.
How to Use Biofeedback for ADHD: An Honest Playbook
How to use biofeedback for ADHD: turn invisible focus into a visible signal you can game. What the evidence supports, what it doesn't, and how to start cheaply.
How to Process Information Faster: High-Bandwidth Mind
How to process information faster: stop pushing input speed and increase compression. An organized First Brain chunks new data into patterns it already holds.
What Makes Math Beautiful? The Elegant Proof
What makes math beautiful? Elegance, economy, surprise, and deep connection, when a short proof reveals why something must be true and unites distant ideas.
Is Information Physical? Why Thinking Builds Your Brain
Is information physical? The deep question is open, but the practical answer is clear: in your head, learning physically rewires synapses, so thinking builds.
What to Do When Kids Are Bored? Let Them Be
What to do when kids are bored? Mostly, resist rescuing them. Boredom prompts a child to invent their own play and ideas, the opposite of reaching for a screen.
How to Use the OODA Loop When Speed Goes to Zero
How to use the OODA loop: observe, orient, decide, act, fast. When AI compresses the cycle to near-zero, orientation becomes the whole game. Here is how.
What Is the Overview Effect? Seeing the Whole at Once
What is the overview effect? The profound cognitive shift astronauts report on seeing Earth from space, a sudden sense of awe, fragility, and connection.
What Actually Happens When You Get a New Idea?
What happens when you get a new idea? Your brain connects two pieces of knowledge that were not linked before, and the aha moment is you noticing it.
What Skills Matter for Management in the AI Era?
What skills matter for management? People skills and judgment, the human core AI cannot automate, are rising in value as machines absorb the admin work.
Is Prompt Engineering a Real Job? An Honest Assessment
Is prompt engineering a real job? The standalone title is fading fast, but the underlying skill, clear thinking expressed precisely, matters more than ever.
Which Country Has the Smartest Citizens?
No country has innately smarter citizens. On education tests like PISA, Singapore leads, but that reflects schooling and investment, not genes.
When Is the Singularity? What the Predictions Actually Say
There is no agreed date for the singularity. Predictions range from 2045 to never, and the concept itself is contested. Here is what we actually know.
What Is T-Shaped Skills? And What Comes After the T
What is T-shaped skills? Deep expertise in one area plus broad knowledge across many. Not obsolete, but evolving toward multiple depths and connections.
What Is the Techno-Capital Singularity?
What is the techno-capital singularity? The accelerationist idea that technology and capital fuse into a self-accelerating intelligence beyond human control.
Where Can You Meet People Offline? A Practical Guide
The best places to meet people offline are recurring, shared-activity settings: classes, clubs, volunteering, sports, and third places with regulars.
The Reverse Turing Test for the Human Soul: How to Pass
How to pass a reverse Turing test: demonstrate live cross-disciplinary synthesis from lived experience, the one signal AI detectors and imitators cannot fake.
What Are Zero-Click Searches? And What They Cost You
What are zero-click searches? Searches answered on the results page itself, no link clicked. They are now the majority, and they quietly change how you think.
What Is Cognitive Dissonance? Holding the Contradiction
What is cognitive dissonance? The discomfort of holding two conflicting beliefs at once, usually rationalized away, but better used as a signal to think.
Why Am I Tired of Being Productive?
Being tired of productivity is a signal, not a flaw: tying your worth to output, chasing a finish line that moves, and under-resting all lead here.
What Is Transhumanism? Enhancing Beyond the Human
What is transhumanism? The movement affirming the use of technology to enhance human capacities and overcome biological limits like aging and disease.
How to Stay Calm Under Pressure: Train the Vagus Nerve
How to stay calm under pressure: train the vagal brake daily, then pull it in the moment with exhale-weighted breathing. Calm is what keeps the whole graph open.
Is Value Investing Dead? Or Just Deep Verification?
Is value investing dead? Its death recurs every cycle, but its core, deep verified knowledge of a business, is exactly what AI markets cannot commoditize.