Musings on AI....................

To be honest, I am writing this post for an audience of one (me), with the purpose of clarifying for myself how to make sense of this space, and if it does help you make sense of this disruption, it is a side benefit.

Through human existence, revolutionary change has been a constant, and even when that change has been an advance for humanity, it has always come with pain for those that the change renders obsolete and unanticipated side costs. At the risk of overreach, I will argue that every major disruptive change has gone through four phases: a period of hope and hype, where the change is viewed as big, but it is unclear how and in what form it will be delivered, a period of build-up, where a subset of people (with more belief in the change and more willingness to take risks) start investing and building products to make the change happen, a period of business building, where the change is monetized and businesses form, and a recalibration, where the change works its way through the economy and society, in both good ways (increased productivity and welfare, new businesses) and bad ways (displacement and damage).

-Aswath Damodaran, from this edition

Maybe.......................

 

To think independently of other human beings is impossible, and if it were possible it would be undesirable.  Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social.  Everything you think is a response to what someone else has thought and said.  And when people commend someone for "thinking for herself" they usually mean "ceasing to sound like people I dislike and starting to sound more like people I approve of." . . .

. . . it should remind us that all of us at various times in our lives believe true things for poor reasons, and false things for good reasons, and that whatever we think we know, whether we're right or wrong, arises from our interactions with other human beings.  Thinking independently, solitarily, "for ourselves," is not an option.

-Alan Jacobs, How To Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

On the importance of sensing problems...

 

Silent acquiescence is the enemy. The key is to get people talking.
Once that happens, you may be surprised at how things can turn around.

-Michael Wade, from this edition

Eric Barker..........................

 

...................embraces Albert Camus.

Camus defines “The Absurd” as the tension between the human desire for meaning and the universe’s refusal to provide any. Meaning is not waiting for you like an unclaimed bag at a sad regional airport. It’s not included in your welcome kit at birth. The universe just shrugs and says, “lol, no.”

A worthy aim......................

 

    Try this:  Write down what you want your obituary to say, then figure out how to live up to it.

-Morgan Housel

More wisdom...........................

 

..................................from Nicholas Bate:

AI versus EI........................

 

Innovate. Break the rules, or at least use them to the human advantage. Be unpredictable in the best possible ways. Look up from that screen. Be a human.

-Kurt Harden, as he ponders Michael Wade's latest substack

Wisdom.............................

 

When I think I am getting too caught up in daily events, I do two things: First, I wait 24 hours (or at least overnight) before starting to form an opinion. Second, I try to think like a historian and put myself 50 or 100 years in the future and frame the disagreement that way.

-Kurt Harden

On problem solving..................

Walking, on its own, is already great for your brain. It gets the blood flowing, lowers stress hormones, and makes you look like one of those mysterious, deep thinkers who stride purposefully through parks. But when you pair walking with my powerful “What If” hack, your perambulations transform into something far more powerful.

Here’s how it works:

1.   Start walking. This is the easy part.

2.   Instead of spiraling into despair about your unsolvable problem, introduce a single, magical question: “What if?”

That’s it. Those two words are the key.

-Hugh Gallagher, from here

Never gave this much thought before...........

 

.........................but the difference between tradition and convention is worth pondering.

Worth pondering..............

 News and social media are a drag on happiness. If I had to describe the economy using one word, I would use “strong.” If I had to describe the consumer in one word I would use “anxious.”

-Michael Batnick, from this post

possession......................

 You may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power.

-Arthur Schopenhauer, as quoted here

hard lessons...............................

 More than any of the other early presidents, George Washington learned in early life the pain of loss, humiliation, and hardship.  It is axiomatic among military historians that commanders learn more from defeat than from victory, but this is especially true of Washington.  He had been taught many hard lessons and would have two decades in which to mull them over before he fought again. Reviewing is experiences, he could have distilled them into some general maxims along these lines:

      -Know yourself, and know those who you are fighting.  This is a more complex proposition than it may seem, as it requires introspection, strategic thinking, and reliable intelligence.

     -Study terrain, and make it your friend.

     -As circumstances change, be ready to change views and abandon assumptions.  Listen to dissenters and know how to weigh alternatives.

-Thomas E. Ricks:  First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

A question not asked very often............

 Everyone remembers the children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. You know, this porridge is too hot, this one is too cold, this one is just right.

Well, pain kinda works in the same way. Too much pain will lead to trauma and helplessness. Too little pain will lead to entitlement and selfishness.

But just the right amount of pain and struggle: that’s what allows us to feel a sense of accomplishment and meaning in our lives, which then builds up our sense of autonomy and self-worth—the bedrock of a mentally healthy and happy person.

So, how do you define the Goldilocks Zone of Pain? How do you know how much pain is “just right?”

-Mark Manson, from here

Thinking about..........................

...........the interplay of style and substance. 

Reflect, relive, ponder, and refine...........

      We must labor to make certain that our memories of past experiences, whether good or bad, are accurate if they are to serve us and to make the future better than the past.  We must reflect on our past, reliving the moments, pondering the lessons, and refining out current conduct based on the lessons of our personal history.  If we have manipulated the truth of the past, if we have tended to blame others rather than ourselves, then we are seeking an escape from reality, and we will be destined to repeat past errors and relive present difficulties.

-Jim Rohn, as culled from The Five Major Pieces To The Life Puzzle

preparation for freedom.........................

     Let us begin by asking the question of principle, namely, what should a lover of liberty wish to see done in the schools?  I think the ideal but somewhat Utopian answer would be that the pupils should be qualified as far as possible to form a reasonable judgment on controversial questions in regard to which they are likely to have to act.  This would require, on one hand, a training in judicial habits of thought; and, on the other hand, access to impartial supplies of knowledge.  In that way the pupil would be prepared for genuine freedom of choice on becoming adult.  We cannot give freedom to the child. but we can give him a preparation for freedom; and this is what education ought to do. 

     This, however, is not the theory of education which has prevailed in most parts of the world.

-Bertrand Russell, from his essay on John Stuart Mill

consider...........................

 Whenever you are invited to a meeting, consider whether it is an opportunity or a trap.

-Michael Wade, #348 from here

Continuing education.........................

 Spend the day profitably?   Spend it pondering these quotes.

for ourselves.............................

 What the patterns of an artist's progress show is the human capacity to find meaning and to make lasting work not by planning it but by remaining open to the possibilities they see inside and around themselves.  This argues against forcing predetermined expectations and goals onto our experience of life and for an alert way of being, open to noticing and responding to the future as it emerges.   We think ourselves efficient when we squeeze our lives into schedules, itineraries, and plans, asking of apps that they tell us what to do, where to go next.  But what we lose is the freedom to notice for ourselves, to filter and reflect for ourselves, to craft our unique sense of who we are and what we wish to make of our lives.

-Margaret Heffernan, Uncharted:  How To Navigate The Future