Detoxing from Twitter

Twitter (X.com) is a dangerous place, especially for those of us building companies.

It seems like you get some alpha being on Twitter, seeing the news break every minute about Soham Parekh, another wrapper being launched, leaks of Zuck poaching Ilya, etc. And on second thought, I think there is some alpha in that.

I, someone who goes to Harvard and is studying neuroscience, can keep on top of a lot of the advances in machine learning, 240 character theses on AGI, etc. without actively working at a leading lab or company developing these technologies.

It means that in most conversations, I'm actually the most informed about ML. I have built my foundations in AI via research projects, online classes taught by David Silver, Andrew Ng, etc. back in high school, and reading my fair share of LessWrong. So sure, that was natural.

But, just 10 minutes of Twitter a day lets me apply this framework that I've built to all the latest and greatest happening around the world, and thereby "learn."

However, this is my fatal flaw.

I am finetuning my schemas by scrolling Twitter, but not actually forming new ones. Let me explain what I mean.

A schema is a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world. My prior work gave me the schemas for "neural networks," "reinforcement learning," and "model optimization."

Twitter then provides a jetstream of new data points that I configure into these existing boxes. A new paper? It's a small update to my "transformer architecture" schema. A funding announcement? It fits neatly into my "AI market dynamics" schema.

This makes sense. Neurons are more myelinated when they are used more. It's a positive feedback loop. We're myelinating our networks of pattern-matching, though, rather than critical thinking or analytical reasoning.

I'm getting better and faster at pattern-matching (oh, look, another slop company funded by so-and-so), but I'm not developing the first principles required to create a new picture entirely.

Hence why I'm going to quit. As Naval Ravikant has found through personal experience, Twitter is great for writing, but not for reading.

As for the immediacy of Twitter. It's instantaneous, unfiltered news, right?

Yes. I think if your goal is to stay updated about world events (let's say you are a professional forecaster on Polymarket), this is perfect for you to finetune your model. But, if your goal is to actually learn, you need novelty.

So, I'm going back to the books. I'll apply some elements of what I learned from Twitter, though (skim books - skip boring chapters), to ensure I get what I want out of them.