Marcus Tullius Cicero developed Academic Skepticism, a philosophical approach to holding beliefs with confidence but without certainty, which he documented in his work Academica while facing personal and political crises in 45 BCE. The essay explains how Cicero's concept of probabilia offers a practical method for assessing ideas and making decisions, distinct from both performative doubt and rigid certainty, and contrasts genuine skepticism with modern science-denial movements that misuse the term.
Joy's Law states that most of the smartest people work for someone else, attributed to Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy. The principle reflects that knowledge is unevenly distributed and sticky, making it difficult for any single organization to access all relevant expertise, so successful companies must create ecosystems to leverage external talent and knowledge.
After 15 years of reading rather than writing, the author overcomes long-standing fears of public mistakes and inadequate expertise to begin technical writing. Prompted by AI-generated content saturation and equipped with new tools for learning, the author now views writing as a valuable process for testing understanding regardless of audience size.
A tracker monitoring release dates and training cutoffs for 20 AI models across 8 labs, showing how outdated models are at launch. Only 9 of 20 models have published cutoff dates, and web search tools cannot close the gap between training end and release. Users can verify cutoff dates by asking models directly.