“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
“Besides working at Anthropic my weekly “hobby” is reading and summarizing and analyzing research papers - exactly the kind of work that these agents had done for me. But they’d read more papers than I could read, and done a better job of holding them all in their head concurrently, and they had generated insights that I might have struggled with. And they had done it so, so quickly, never tiring.” – Jack Clark (20260119)
Curiosity is not a consumable—it is a network. The more you use, the easier it gets. Follow your curiosity both professionally and in life. It’s use it or lose it.
Simply put, be curious and have fun.
Most people are waiting for orders. Don’t be like that.
Previous:
- 5-1b4c Exponential growth feels flat in the beginning, precisely why it’s worth making an extraordinary effort to get it started. You can also follow the Fun Criterion (the latter likely exhausts the former). Consistency is the key.
- 5-1b4c1 When you are ‘self-disciplined’ your unconscious is likely not engaged, and you’re probably not solving any real problems.
- 5-1b4c1a Watch out if you need “self-discipline” — it might indicate that you aren’t solving any of your problems
- 5-1b4c3 The definition of fun is arbitrary and contingent depending on the individual. You can be ‘making an effort’ while having fun.
Related:
- 1-1c6a1b Your ability to detect surprises will get better, and you will never be short of them
- 5-1b1b1a Power-law curiosity - be professionally curious about a few topics and idly curious about many more
- Distribution economics and gatekeeping have always been the constraint. Creative talent never was. Podcast and Spotify proved there’s demand for long-form content.
Related Essays:
- How Popper would use LLMs
- We give the agent agency by clearly stating what should be solved