I read a lot. Like. A lot a lot.
And most of it is through an app called Readwise Reader. (Not an affiliate link. Possibly not even a recommendation. More on that maybe later?)
Without getting too deep down the rabbit hole, I think it’s the best currently available solution to the me-shaped set of problems, but I don’t find it delightful and I would abandon them the instant a better app came along.
Full disclosure for those who know me well. I’ll sometimes start with a provocative statement and all the reasons I know I shouldn’t do something only to arrive at: “but YOLO here we go anyway!”
This time, I think, that’s not the destination. This isn’t me secretly explaining why I’m going to start a MUD in the Year of our Holy Gashapon, 2026. Probably. Maybe. Almost certainly.
I like people. Here we must start before all else, because otherwise it might start to sound like I’m a misanthrope. I really truly do like people. I like chatting with my friends. I enjoy whiling away the hours in pleasant company.
I’m going to start living on minimum wage. Sort of. Not really. It’s complicated.
Some types of sophistication won’t make you enjoy the object more, they’ll make you enjoy it less. For example, wine snobs don’t enjoy wine twice as much as you, they’re more keenly aware of how most wine isn’t good enough. Avoid sophistication that diminishes your enjoyment.
There’s basically two parts to a budget. There’s the part where you track things, and the part where you use it to make decisions. I’m decent at the first part. Awful at the second.
Some of the concepts and terminology I’m about to use, as well as the title of the blog post, were lifted directly from here.
Having said that, I think I’m going to end up at a very different final destination than the original poster. So, credit where credit is due, but don’t feel compelled to read the original to understand my point.
King Power is money. I think the original article would try to lump in other things, like status, but one of my foundational operational primitives is that all of those things are fungible with money.
The fundamental question: whether to prioritize security or fulfillment – to “run for office” or “build a rocket”.
We’re a couple days over one quarter of the way into the year, so I sat down and worked on a template for planning around my yearly theme.
Part of a yearly theme is not to plan too hard. There’s a reason it’s not a yearly goal or, so help me, new years resolution. But I thought having some sort of light framework for checkin and intention setting would be useful, so that’s what I’m working towards.
My thoughts on working with AI have evolved a lot over the last year or so that I’ve been actively using them.
I’ve gone from “this is an interesting toy, but it doesn’t seem very useful” to “wow, people are using this all the time and it gets important things wrong” to “actually if you’re smart about how you use it this can do some really useful things” to “I’m using this more and more every day, it seems unlikely that’s going to change.”
“What a week, huh?”
“Lemon, it’s Wednesday.”
— 30 Rock, S4E2 “Into the Crevasse”
Without exception, the smartest people I know are all in agreement that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is on the way in the next three years. That could mean a lot of things. Good things. Bad things. I think it’s reasonable to assume nobody can predict what the world will look like beyond that horizon.
Kurzweil’s Singularity is finally near.
The society I happen to have been born into is based on consumption. It tells me that my worth is measured in my economic contributions. That I will be judged by the clothes I wear, the car I drive, the establishments I frequent.
“The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle.”
Or,
“No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”
-Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
Nearing the end of the year, I’m starting to think about next year’s theme. But before I get into that, I think it’s worth reviewing how this year’s theme went.