Author Archives: Jasper John MacKay

Quote, Unquote

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Before I publish this letter, I retype the whole thing from start to finish. It means I take the draft that lives in my Notes app on the left half of my screen while I retype the whole thing into the Google Docs on the right side of my screen. It’s a final check to catch infelicities. More importantly, by simulating the experience of a reader, it’s another way to see if the whole essay stands together.
~ Dan Wang via his 2025 letter

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Quote, Unquote

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The first person I’m introduced to is a woman who looks like Daryl Hannah’s android in Blade Runner, beaming in on a TV screen. A bleach-haired goth, Amanda Askell is a philosophy PhD who did her dissertation at NYU on moral uncertainty. She was one of the first 10 employees, and her actual job has been to give Claude a personality. She’s Scottish and enjoys bagpipe music.
~ Joe Hagan via Vanity Fair.

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Quote, Unquote

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In trying to construct a society that maximized talent, James Conant and his peers were governed by the common assumptions of the era: Intelligence, that highest human trait, can be measured by standardized tests and the ability to do well in school from ages 15 to 18. Universities should serve as society’s primary sorting system, segregating the smart from the not smart. Intelligence is randomly distributed across the population, so sorting by intelligence will yield a broad-based leadership class.
~ David Brooks

via How the Ivy League Broke America
published by The Atlantic

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