Tuesday, September 15

I Daily Wisdom

Robert Greene The Daily Laws September 15 · Drop Your Preconceived Notions

If you put an empty gourd on the water and touch it, it will slip to one side. No matter how you try, it won’t stay in one spot. The mind of someone who has reached the ultimate state does not stay with anything, even for a second. It is like an empty gourd on the water that is pushed around.

—Takuan Sōhō

The greatest generals, the most creative strategists, stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment. That is how creativity is sparked and opportunities are seized. Knowledge, experience, and theory have limitations: no amount of thinking in advance can prepare you for the chaos of life, for the infinite possibilities of the moment. The great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz called this “friction”: the difference between our plans and what actually happens. Since friction is inevitable, our minds have to be capable of keeping up with change and adapting to the unexpected. The better we can adapt our thoughts to changing circumstances, the more realistic our responses to them will be. The more we lose ourselves in predigested theories and past experiences, the more inappropriate and delusional our response. It can be valuable to analyze what went wrong in the past, but it is far more important to develop the capacity to think in the moment. In that way you will make far fewer mistakes to analyze.

Daily Law: Think of the mind as a river: the faster it flows, the better it keeps up with the present and responds to change.

The 33 Strategies of War

, Strategy 2: Do Not Fight the Last War—The Guerrilla-War-of-the-Mind Strategy

Steven Pressfield The Daily Pressfield Day 258

“TRUST THE FORCE, LUKE” Luke is piloting his X-Wing against the Death Star, trying to find the needle-in-a-haystack point of vulnerability in this evil machine. He’s got his targeting computer up to his eye. But the tech isn’t working! The moment is slipping away! Suddenly Luke hears the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi (who was killed earlier in the movie), coming from …where? OBI-WAN KENOBI Trust the Force, Luke. Trust the Force. Writing Seminar, Nashville, 2019 See the shift in consciousness? See the altered intention? In this moment Luke truly becomes a Jedi knight. A key corollary truth: The climactic action still remains. Luke still has to dodge the enemy defenders. He still has to fire his weapons. He still has to hit the target. The Epiphanal Moment launches us into Act Three.

Leo Tolstoy A Calendar of Wisdom September 15

The biggest obstacles to understanding the truth are lies disguised as truth.

In real life illusions can only transform our life for a moment, but in the domain of thoughts and the intellect, misconceptions may be accepted as truth for thousands of years, and make a laughingstock of whole nations, mute the noble wishes of mankind, make slaves from people and lie to them.

These misconceptions are the enemies with which the wisest men in the history of mankind try to struggle.

The force of the truth is great, but its victory is difficult.

However, once you receive this victory, it can never be taken from you.

—ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

The exposure of a lie is as valuable to a community as a clearly expressed truth.

Freeing a person from misconceptions, false truths, and lies does not take anything from him; it gives him something important.

—ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

The progress of mankind is in revealing obstacles which are hiding from us.

III Signals & Dispatches

AI / ML

@kimmonismus source ↗ Chinese researchers published a five-stage roadmap for recursive self-improvement, from executing improvements to changing the process that creates future improvements.
@kaiwynd source ↗ A robot agent plugged in an Ethernet cable after two hours and four human interventions, showing that precise deformable-object control still has a serious speed problem.

Drug Discovery

@JasonFord6 source ↗ Insilico’s AI-enabled rentosertib for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis has entered Phase III, with the first patient dosed, although no AI-designed drug has yet been approved.
@jinseongeo83473 source ↗ A useful AbCellera read: AI matters most when paired with proprietary biological data and a tight wet-lab feedback loop, not as a substitute for experiments.

Biotech

@MSKCancerCenter source ↗ MSK researchers report that an AI-designed protein binder improved tumor control in mouse models of CAR-T therapy compared with binders used in an FDA-approved therapy.
@DeryaTR_source ↗ A virologist argues that AI risk debates should also prioritize using AI to build vaccines, antivirals, antibodies, and immune defenses against biological threats.

Tech

@rohanpaul_ai source ↗ Kernel’s former CEO/CTO Ryan Field joined Khosla-backed Sabi, a wearable thought-to-text startup, a move that may signal an inflection point for consumer BCI.
@wallstengine source ↗ Pinterest and NVIDIA say their multimodal infrastructure achieved about 85× faster response startup, 7.3× lower overall latency, and 25× more visual context per request.

Japanese Politics

@nhk_news source ↗ NHK reports that the LDP is coordinating party appointments and a cabinet reshuffle around policy implementation.
@MisterHR_japan source ↗ The LDP is reportedly considering retaining Yasutoshi Nishimura as election strategy committee chair while finalizing other executive posts.

IV Sky over Ibaraki

☁️ +24°C

humidity 84% · wind ↙6km/h

cloudy with a light breeze

V What Rex Can Do Today

Pull primary-source details on Insilico’s rentosertib Phase III milestone and summarize what it says about AI-designed drugs.
Audit the latest Fr. Conor meditation pipeline and flag any schedule or Dropbox mismatches.
Draft a one-page note connecting agentic AI workflows with StemRIM’s regeneration-inducing medicine work.

VI Toward the Long Game

Read one current paper on protein language models or structure-conditioned design and write down five transferable insights.
Run a small hands-on benchmark comparing an AI protein or peptide workflow on a property-prediction task.
Contact one drug-discovery or AI researcher and ask specifically about closed-loop wet-lab validation.