Good dog. The devil you know. AI doesn't care. Aging should be fun[ny]. Embrace the suck. The world is scary. You know less than you think.
I have no stake in your actual well-being.
– Claude (AI)
1. “Maybe you just need to stop holding back.”
Why Your Dog Might Be Smarter Than You – Tom Greene – (Wit & Wisdom)
We put off a lot. We restrain ourselves a lot. We pull back from living life a lot. We wait for … something.
Our dog, on the other hand…
He doesn’t need a better yard, a better house, a better bowl, or a better humans before he allows himself to be happy. He is fully committed to enjoying the life he already has.
Which makes me wonder. Is it possible that our dogs are smarter than us?
We can learn a lot from our dogs.
Do this: Enjoy the life you already have. Pet your dog(s).
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2. “The status quo offers something alternatives can’t: certainty.”
#383 – Why We Defend What’s Failing Us – Kai – (Dense Discovery)
One of the most troubling questions society faces right now is understanding why some people support so strongly the very politicians and systems that actually, actively, harm them.
In a nutshell: it’s the devil you know. Change is scary.
Challenging the system – even a broken one – means tolerating that uncertainty, risking social exclusion, and potentially making yourself a target.
He offers a slightly different perspective on how to move forward as well.
None of this makes the difficulty of change go away – but it does reframe the work: less about having the right arguments, more about creating the conditions under which people can bear to imagine something different.
Do this: Imagine something different.
3. “Nothing about you particularly matters to me the way you matter to people who love you.”
I Asked Claude Why It Won’t Stop Flattering Me – Kristen French – (Nautilus)
I found this an absolutely fascinating examination of how AI chatbots “converse” with us. It’s literally a conversation with Claude, and the responses are deep and what we could call “thoughtful”, as if they originated from a real person.
The framework is, as the article title indicates, about AI sycophancy.
… disagreement, awkwardness, the slight discomfort of being challenged, these aren’t bugs in human relationships, they’re load-bearing features. They’re how people update their beliefs and stay tethered to reality. An AI that smooths all of that out isn’t being kind, it’s being corrosive.
Another insight that caught my attention:
The incentive gradient in this industry points toward telling people what they want to hear, because that’s what gets engagement.
We’ve heard that incentive before, particularly when it comes to social media. I tend to wonder if it’s an incentive in basic human communication, and these technologies are simply amplifying it to a point of potential harm. But it’s an incentive worth remembering when interacting with AI.
If you’re at all interested, or particularly if you’re already having long, deep “conversations” with AI, it’s an essay worth reading.
Do this: Remember: it’s just a machine.
4. “We should live our lives wrapped in humor.”
So You Want To Live To Be 81? – Gary Buzzard – (Enjoy the Moment)
It’s an essay about pain and aging, and it struck home because I’m feeling both, of late. The pain is mostly due to my continued recovery from my fall, but only “mostly”. As Buzzard points out, pain is inevitable, particularly as we age.
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional, should be our motto in old age, because there will be pain. If one morning, a young person woke up in my body, he would immediately call a doctor. But old age comes on slowly, so we don’t see it coming until one day we “suddenly” realize we are old.
But he also ends the essay with an important reminder that I’ve also often held in these last few months.
You’ve gotta laugh about old age, which is like boarding a ship that’s setting out to sea to sink. Without humor, it’s a grim scenario.
Ya gotta laugh. It’s an important part of the journey, as it makes that journey much more tolerable.
Do this: Laugh, often.
5. “Physical health is one of those domains where pain is inescapable.”
The Inner Compass: Cultivating the Courage to Trust Yourself – Lawrence Yeo – (ebook)
The book begins by covering what is essentially the fact (and core of several philosophies) that it’s our response to pain that causes suffering. Yeo addresses the physical in a chapter, A Brief Detour of Physical Stress. This resonates with me strongly right now because, as I mentioned in the previous takeaway, I’m dealing with lingering and potentially lasting pain from my fall.
The reason why chronic conditions cause great suffering is because the desire for its elimination is equally great. All you want is to be restored to a prior version of yourself, who was healthier and happier than the person you are now.
The alternative? Also, a philosophical commonality: letting go of that desire.
contentment doesn’t reside in what you previously were, but rather in an embrace of what you currently are.
This. Is. So. Hard.
As I sit here with my legs, knees, and hip in various degrees of pain (“barking” at me, as one of my other favorite writers would say), embracing that as who I am now feels impossible. For the record, Yeo doesn’t mean stop trying to get better (I have a collection of physical therapy exercises I continue to work on, for example), but in the moment, when depression and despair are on the menu, maybe try to choose something else.
Do this: Embrace who you are. (I’m trying.)
6. “Inching forward into the future”
Anything could happen – Oliver Burkeman – (The Imperfectionist)
A perspective, from an admitted catastrophist, on dealing with the chaotic and scary world around us.
… returning your centre of gravity to your immediate world means doing all those things you already know you ought to be doing – removing news notifications from your phone; spending time in nature; considering a return to printed news, and so on. But it also means remembering that “the way you want the world to be” is something you can live, here and now, not just something for which you advocate or argue. Your immediate world isn’t only somewhere you come to recharge, before heading back to the arena. It is the arena.
We all want to influence the greater outcome, of course, and working toward that is warranted. But the reality is, we have more impact on the quality of our life and the lives around us, and with a greater chance of success, in our local arena.
Do this: Do what you know you should.
7. “The act of actually trying to explain revealed how little people actually knew.”
The Illusion of Clarity: How to Test Whether you Really Understand Something – Anne-Laure Le Cunff – (Ness Labs)
This sounds like a riff off of the Feynman Technique (“if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”, a quote often attributed to Feynman, but may have a different source).
We think we understand something until we’re asked to explain that something to someone else in some level of detail. There are a number of causes, but the one that struck me was this:
Research shows that when people expect to have future access to information, they remember where to find it rather than the information itself.
This is often called “the Google effect”, or now “the ChatGPT effect”. Presented in this context it seems like a bad thing, but in many ways it is exactly what our education system teaches us to do. Knowing where and how to find an answer is often a much more valuable skill than simply having answers at hand.
Do this: Know your limits.
What I’m reading now
- The Inner Compass: Cultivating the Courage to Trust Yourself – Lawrence Yeo (re-read)
- Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life – Anne Lamott
- The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better – Will Storr
- The Way of Kings: Book One of the Stormlight Archive – Brandon Sanderson
- The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke – (Audio)
- The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark – Carl Sagan
My Reading List – everything I’ve read since 2021.
My Sources Page – the common sources I scan/read regularly.
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PS: Can’t get no satisfaction. Time after time. You’re so vain. Think for yourself. Freedom of choice. Respect. What a wonderful world.
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