In the modern world we're all stuck in a fast-thinking loop.
In the modern world we're all stuck in a fast-thinking loop. It keeps on ratcheting up. This will get worse in an era of AI. The importance of stillness and reflection will become incre...
Topic: stuck
145 mentions · 36 chunks · 31 episodes
24.5× distinctiveness vs baseline
?
How much more common this term is here than in ordinary English. Higher values mean the topic is more characteristic of this corpus.
2.0x burst in 2025 Q3
?
Peak quarter intensity across the topic's active span. Higher values mean attention was concentrated into a shorter stretch rather than spread evenly over time.
Topic summary
?
A short read on the topic's time range, peak episode, and strongest associations. Use it as the quick orientation before drilling into examples.
- stuck appears in 36 chunks across 31 episodes, from 2024-05-06 to 2026-04-06.
- Its densest episode is Bits and Bobs 2/18/25 (2025-02-18), with 2 observations on this topic.
- Semantically it travels with local maxima, react, and principal agent, while by chunk count it sits between gilded turd and Radagast; its yearly rank moved from #113 in 2024 to #42 in 2026.
Over time
?
Raw mentions over time. Use this to see absolute attention, not relative rank among all topics.
Observations
?
The primary evidence view for this topic. Sort it chronologically when you want concrete examples behind the larger pattern.
Trying to think too many steps ahead gets you stuck in compounding loops of uncertainty.
Trying to think too many steps ahead gets you stuck in compounding loops of uncertainty. Just execute: guess and check. Take an action and see how the universe responds. Not simulation, action. Thinkin...
A dystopia in a maximal antisocial LLM world:
A dystopia in a maximal antisocial LLM world: We'll all be stuck in our own hyper personalized bubble only able to talk to others mediated by LLMs, all of which work for one overlord with goals not aligned with you...
You get stuck in gravity wells even if you can see them.
You get stuck in gravity wells even if you can see them. Transparency doesn't help you avoid gravity wells. Everyone falls into gravity wells by default. Escaping ...
Going for more scale incrementally makes sense, but gets you stuck in local maxima.
Going for more scale incrementally makes sense, but gets you stuck in local maxima. Going for less scale than today almost never does. Companies walk up the scale ladder until they're trapped with a local maxima. The...
Today there's two camps: pro tech and anti tech.
...What about tech as it should exist? Acknowledging where tech has gotten lost or stuck or diverged from its ideals, while pointing a way for it to regain them.
There are positive and negative flavors of what is called "stickiness".
...oduct and so they don't want to leave it. Negative: the user gets more and more stuck and can't leave the product. Sometimes the two sides are related; as in a user storing more data in a system and building their workflows around it. ...
Emergent infinities are often worse than intentional ones.
...tional ones. The latter are what you want to want. The social infinities we get stuck in are often the emergent ones.
Riffing a bit more on the idea of retconning a platform to understand its throughline.
...d its throughline. What are the things that were originally surprising but that stuck? Then tell a plausible story where they weren't just random. You're mining the collective insight of all of the humans who touched the system. Every ...
Infinities are large catchment basins.
...e they're so large. Pick the one that you believe in most, because you will get stuck in one.
A similar trap early movers get stuck in: AOL-ing yourself.
A similar trap early movers get stuck in: AOL-ing yourself. A bet of being a proprietary walled garden with an early fast and powerful start, but going up against an open system. Leaning ...
Venkat Rao's The Gramsci Gap has stuck with me.
Venkat Rao's The Gramsci Gap has stuck with me. The famous Gramsci quote feels inescapably true today. "The old world is dying, the new one struggles to be born. Now is the time of monster...
If you think you've got it, you'll keep going.
If you think you've got it, you'll keep going. If you're stuck, you might be ready for a change. If you're in a crisis now, use it to change. The alternative is that you fall back into a dysfunctional homeostasis...
Theory X leadership styles can get stuck in a self-defeating trap.
Theory X leadership styles can get stuck in a self-defeating trap. As a reminder: Theory X assumes that people are by default lazy and incompetent. Theory Y assumes that people by default wi...
A requirement for building trust is that the parties believe they might interact again.
...n a way that they couldn't just teleport out of instantly. "Oh crap, I could be stuck in a room with them, and if they hate me that would be awkward, or maybe even dangerous!" An expectation of being in it for the long-haul leads to an...
If you're stuck in a dark room where you think there are likely a bunch of creepy crawlies, it's terrifying to turn on the lights!
If you're stuck in a dark room where you think there are likely a bunch of creepy crawlies, it's terrifying to turn on the lights!