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  "id": "26asmwye4r2rk4t7sz3bychja9",
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  "origin": "https://www.msweet.net/notes/",
  "page": "035-umber-finches",
  "author": {
    "name": "Matthew McDowell-Sweet",
    "url": "https://www.msweet.net/"
  },
  "created": "2026-08-10T16:08:13Z",
  "updated": "2026-08-10T16:08:13Z",
  "version": 1,
  "content_md": "I keep coming back to the scene in the DeepMind video documentary where Demis Hassabis realises that it’s possible just to brute-force compute all possible protein structures.\n\nNow listening to a talk where Stephen Wolfram uses the same brute-force computation to enumerate all possible rules of a computational scheme.\n\nPlus, recently listened to a podcast with a scientist who advised grad students to read old papers and consider how they made great conceptual leaps in the midst of computational machinery droughts; they only had their minds to figure stuff out.\n\nThe coarse take is that brute-force computation is acting as an easy-out for deep conceptual thinking. I don’t think that’s really the case but I do think that, with the rise of intelligence-on-demand, there’ll have to be practices that enshrine cognitive airgapping in order to facilitate deep, original, paradigmatic thought.",
  "content_html": "<p>I keep coming back to the scene in the DeepMind video documentary where Demis Hassabis realises that it’s possible just to brute-force compute all possible protein structures.</p>\n<p>Now listening to a talk where Stephen Wolfram uses the same brute-force computation to enumerate all possible rules of a computational scheme.</p>\n<p>Plus, recently listened to a podcast with a scientist who advised grad students to read old papers and consider how they made great conceptual leaps in the midst of computational machinery droughts; they only had their minds to figure stuff out.</p>\n<p>The coarse take is that brute-force computation is acting as an easy-out for deep conceptual thinking. I don’t think that’s really the case but I do think that, with the rise of intelligence-on-demand, there’ll have to be practices that enshrine cognitive airgapping in order to facilitate deep, original, paradigmatic thought.</p>",
  "content_hash": "sha256:d49f1dadff1c9d1bc16f3d2331d0a7d2f34c9cc34f98a6065a329315adc77bce",
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  "changelog": [
    {
      "version": 1,
      "at": "2026-08-10T16:08:13Z",
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}