February 23, 2025 • 57 mins
Hello dear show notes readers!
In this episode of Unqualified Advice we discuss our recent experiences writing code for building websites and apps with Cursor. In short, we're having a blast working with these new tools and have a few tips for those just getting started. We've recommended it before, but it's worth repeating Nat Eliason's Course Build Your Own Life Coach is a great course for beginners wanting to get started. And here is a demo of GumLoop from Greg Isenberg's channel on YouTube that impressed us both.
In the back-half of the episode, Dan stumbles across Nietzsche’s Modern Vices and we try to determine our views on overwork, curiosity, and sympathy.
Books & Influences Mentioned
-
The Machiavellians, defenders of freedom by James Burnham: Recommended as a read on political freedom and preference falsification.
-
Boom by Bern Hobart: Suggested for its fresh perspective on economic and innovation booms.
-
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman: Referenced when discussing modern media, communication, and information overload.
-
Abduction by John E. Mack: Mentioned in the context of case studies on alien abductions, altered states of consciousness, and The Telepathy Tapes.
-
Nietzsche’s Ideas: The discussion on modern vices is heavily inspired by Nietzsche’s critique of overwork, vague curiosity, and universal sympathy
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Current Events
02:56 Navigating Bureaucracy and Organizational Dynamics
05:37 Leadership Styles: Wartime vs. Peacetime CEOs
08:29 Embracing Change and Future Planning
11:17 Exploring New Skills and Content Creation
14:00 Technical Challenges and Innovations in Development
21:37 Exploring Competitors and AI Tools
26:31 Building in Public: Branding and Messaging
30:57 Modern Vices: Overwork, Curiosity, and Sympathy
39:58 Navigating Organizational Changes with Compassion
45:24 Exploring the Concept of Booms in Society
50:13 AI and Contextual Understanding
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Just don't get too comfortable.
(00:02):
Find a way to install the discomfort.
That's where all the gold is.
Sean, we are now in February.
Welcome.
(00:23):
Welcome.
I feel a little taxed today.
How about you?
Tariff joke.
are you alluding to something?
Oh, yeah.
Our poor friends in Canada and Mexico,
Yeah, which I guess there's nothing really happening.
(00:44):
As yet, as of, you know, 1.22, yeah, on Saturday, central standard time.
So, you know, we'll see how Monday turns out.
Do you think customs agents walk around being like FUBAR?
I mean, you gotta, well, I don't think they've, my understanding is that there's not beena lot of clear guidance.
So I would think that without clear guidance, you would operate in a business as usualmode, correct?
(01:10):
Because.
Yes, I would want written directives before I change tact in a very strong way.
you can say that in a meeting, but here's my procedure, my operating procedure, and mycontract says that I need to follow this policy, otherwise I am subject to termination.
So update that, then we can talk.
I don't know.
(01:30):
Have you worked in one of these places?
Like I have experience with where, you know, like the founder, true owner of the businessis there's a reason why they are at the top.
And it's a lot of it is due to ideation and creativity and networks and all that kind ofstuff.
But with that comes a bunch of baggage or awake in the water.
(01:55):
or that sort of thing, right?
And as the organization grows and gets more professionalized, in comes the COO, in comesthe expertise to try to streamline and channel energies in the direction that the business
needs to go in as it matures, right?
And then you end up in this conference room where you are getting told to do two differentthings by two different people.
(02:19):
Then you're like, wait, I know which one outranks which, but I don't know what I was.
Can I get it written down, please?
What am supposed to do tomorrow?
Right?
And I feel like there's probably a lot of people in the federal government feeling thatway right now.
Yeah, I can only speak from a perspective of having worked in really more mature companiesprofessionally.
(02:40):
So we're much more, you know, in the late stage bureaucracy federal government stage whereI feel like.
The business you work in is bigger than some governments on earth.
Yeah.
yes, yes.
So we have, you know, just a ginormous policy manual that dictates how we are supposed toperform our activities, not dictates exactly, provides guidelines and structures.
(03:04):
And then we have to, from that central policy at a local level, create local policies toalign that in the ways that work with our local business systems and customs and laws and
et cetera.
So.
everything is just a big coordination problem.
At the end of the day.
why I'm saying like, if I'm a customs agent, like I haven't received a new standard workinstruction.
(03:25):
So you know what?
last time I deviated from my standard work instruction, I got written up.
So I'm not doing that.
and that's why we have those controls kind of in place and why we.
as ineffective as they are in like really practical in a real practical sense of whathappens day to day They do provide a lot of, you know, cover for saying, Hey, we taught
(03:50):
you to do it this way per this procedure.
And you sent the temperature 20 degrees too high and scrapped this product.
You know, there's it gives you.
Yeah.
It gives you, it gives you the tool for.
making sure that people do it the way that it's supposed to.
then, but the problem is if you want to change the definition of what, you know, what it'ssupposed to be, it, heaven helped you.
(04:13):
Heaven helped you.
So I think, I.
I think this draws upon a distinction that has been made, I don't know.
I don't know where I got it.
It's wartime CEO versus peacetime CEO.
And I think there's a direct corollary between almost like peacetime or like professionalgeneral versus a general patent or general MacArthur.
(04:38):
both those generals probably would be fired under peacetime quickly.
They wouldn't have even made it to general.
but under wartime, they, they needed that creativity, that spunk, the leadership, thedrive towards into the unknown.
don't know.
Something like that.
yeah, I can see that.
Yeah, because peace time generally, you're kind of getting the troops ready and preparedand just maintaining status.
(05:01):
Well, but then when.
just, you're, mostly measuring for not messing up versus like.
times are unknown or bleak or whatever and the risk tolerance band widens out quiteconsiderably.
Something like that.
Yeah, I can see that.
I'm trying to think of other famous generals I know and I can't, like I'm having a hardtime pulling names out of the air.
(05:25):
So I'm gonna just sit here and nod along and be like, yeah, generals, all right.
okay, so doesn't need to be general.
So think about the particular CEOs, right?
Like Bill Gates versus Palmer, a Bezos versus Jassy, I don't know.
(05:46):
And then, you know, a lot of this has to do with like founders versus professional CEOstoo.
I guess that's the distinction I'm drawing upon here.
I understand what you mean.
Pichai is very different than Larry Page
Because they're just trying to not screw up the thing that's already existing before them,right?
(06:10):
They don't have ownership over it.
Hmm?
That's what makes Satya Nadella so incredible.
Yeah.
Bucked the trend.
yeah, I think he's been good for them.
Yeah, I mean, was, so that video you sent me regarding Gum Loop?
(06:34):
Yes, interesting.
I'll try to remember, put it in the show notes because I thought it was an interestingwatch, but it reminded me so much of Microsoft's Power Automate.
with a little prettier user interface and a, you know, a, basically a chat bot layer on itto help you use it.
like Microsoft's not that far off from that.
(06:55):
I don't think if they don't already have it, like I haven't, I haven't been in powerautomate in six months.
And I'm like, after watching them, like I need to go back in because if I can now usecopilot and do this, it works and I can actually, Ooh, robo.
position.
Like, I mean, yeah, I was like.
(07:15):
sitting there thinking like I've always wanted.
I've always thought I'd be able to like use an executive assistant and but now you couldactually probably have one or get close to one.
exactly.
Or also, or also like go and talk to like the engineering team where half their day isthis really mundane, um, maintenance work of, like the database system.
And it's just, Oh, we have a new part number.
(07:35):
have to go get all the fields matching the right thing.
We got to go do all these boxes and it's very programmatic.
It's it's.
We have it scripted in many ways where it is down to a handful of clicks in certaininstances, but it's still.
could be where it just happens.
Like they don't even need to intervene because all the information exists.
They're just making sure it's getting transferred from one system appropriately intoanother.
(07:59):
Yep.
And that's, you know, 10, 20 % of their jobs.
So if we could come up with a way to like automate that out and say, Hey, I just gave you20 % of your work week back.
Let's take on a new project.
That would be really awesome.
It would be.
Yeah.
So that's, it's been getting, it's, I'm, it.
(08:19):
2025, man, it's gonna be a ride.
It already is.
it started off.
It started off definitely on a pivot, right?
If you have your ear to the ground, think most people still are just like ostriches in thesand or whatever, but, and I don't mean that in a bad, like most people are just living
their lives.
(08:40):
for those that have their ear to the ground.
It is hard not to see a drastically different future in the very near term, not like 20years away.
And you know what has inspired me to think about doing a lot this year?
Oddly enough, is some home improvements.
I figure, why not go ahead and spend some cash?
(09:03):
You
And reload for 2026 because I feel like it's going to be just wild.
that's where my head's kind of at, in terms of seeing what, how everybody's reacting.
Yeah.
there's been stuff I've been wanting to do.
like, you know, I'm, kinda wanting to get defensive.
Why not go ahead and just do some stuff that I've been wanting to do anyway.
(09:27):
And.
You know, invest in, invest in some, some joy.
Yeah, exactly.
Just don't get too comfortable.
Find a way to install the discomfort.
That's where all the gold is.
Yes, no, absolutely no.
I've just, you know, it's one of those things like, you know, this might be a good year toactually just get a few things done that we've been kind of putting off.
(09:53):
So.
I think that's cool.
You and I were also discussing a bit of a pivot or shift or new tangent that we would bothlike to go in for 2025.
yes.
Which was how, what are we going to do with our focus here, essentially, correct?
Yeah.
I mean, not just the podcast, but kind of like, our, the sharing that we do.
(10:20):
Right now it's just the podcast, but like, if we were to, you know, put a bow on thisproject a little bit, then it would include a website, probably a bit of a blog to get a
bit of summaries going that are more, I don't know, descriptive than show notes and,
Yeah, just having like the actual real estate on the internet for us, I think would begood.
(10:45):
Yeah, for me, it's, it's, it's, I want to develop some new skills around implement, aroundhow to use all these tools that are coming out.
I want to be relevant in five years still in the workforce.
And I think learning how to use these AI tools is a good way to do that.
And for me, like building like a little, you know, website for unqualified advice andagain, like other content we create and share, like I have, know, I have a blog, that I
(11:13):
occasionally post.
And you know, maybe maybe somehow putting that feed in the stream so to speak and kind ofhaving a channel I guess for better lack of a better word
Or, or even if you don't wrap it up into the same thing, like I, you know, I think whenyou and I were talking about this a little bit earlier, I was like, our social profiles
or, know, it doesn't need to be wrapped up into this thing.
(11:34):
It can still be about us.
And even us as individuals can have, you know, separate properties in different places,but like having a more.
Going back to like professionals versus or like the professionalism that gets you from oneto something versus the creativity and sort of insanity that gets you from zero to one.
(11:58):
I think we've done a good job of having fun with zero to one and now we need to like pushon that ceiling a bit more and going back to like you were mentioning your writing and
Substack, you could keep that whole channel open.
It could be completely.
that channel.
a process.
want something to like, a, you know, like I'm thinking of a sort of a backend for us whereyou were mentioning like, you know, maybe we get a text message or email that says like,
(12:25):
what are three things that you've consumed this week that were good?
What were, what a blah, blah.
And that way we sort of like get ideas down and written and saved in a place that can helpgenerate more ideas for us to talk about.
Same thing.
I'm thinking about these sort of engines of
capture and creativity and to help spawn, you know, the writings that you want to keep upwith and do and all that kind of stuff.
(12:49):
Okay, yeah, I get that, I dig that.
I guess I was thinking in a different, that question from a different angle, but yeah,exactly.
It sounds to me like a fun goal to try to grow kind of an audience for the content we'recreating in the skills that are required to do so.
We can, I think, build some pretty cool stuff online.
(13:09):
That's kind of fun and showing how we're tracking and going about doing that.
That also those skills apply in, so many other places.
It's where I can see that, I could show in a future employer that I can do this here.
Then it's like, see, I can come in and do that for you as well.
Or some, or, know, hopefully then take those skills to my workplace.
(13:31):
Yes, exactly.
and I think it just, it's a way to, it's just, it's a
For me, it's a way to scratch a creative itch that is, yeah, that is kind of buildingsomething.
And again, also, yeah, it's like you said, a tool to help us kind of drive this action andhelp hold ourselves accountable, which was the idea behind that, you know, weekly blast
(13:51):
email of, know, what, what's on your mind?
What, how, how'd you, uh, press towards your goals?
Um,
I'm frankly really impressed that we basically every single time we sit down, we getsomewhere with what we want to talk about.
Even when we both start off going like, well, what are we going to talk about today?
I think it's wonderful.
I really do.
but like, you know, a little bit more.
(14:12):
We started recording like, we don't want to, we want to talk about this.
And then I somehow a joke turned into a tangent and then it took us five minutes to getback here.
Ten minutes to get back here, but yeah.
it's a good hobby.
It's it gives me joy.
It's a, it's a fun outlet.
Um, it's good therapy.
I don't know.
It's, it's a lot of things.
Uh, it's a lot of things.
(14:34):
Well, let's get into a little bit more of the nitty gritty.
like, just this morning, you've been playing around with cursor, right?
Are there any things that have popped out to you, different things that you're changingabout your process?
Are you just like blowing stuff up and starting over again?
How do you feel about how it's going?
So I spent, I probably spent, trying to just kind of build an initial like layout for whatI, I didn't really know what I was starting at the time.
(15:01):
So I kind of didn't have a plan.
I was just like, let me understand how to get a page up.
And then I was like, okay, now I have this basic, you know, canvas up.
Let me say, okay, what if I want to make this a webpage for the book, for the, for thepodcast and how would I do that?
And started to try to incorporate some different things and different ideas.
Um, but I had started from kind of, um, you know, had a little bit of a framework alreadyin place and was trying to then build it into it.
(15:26):
And so I just, after, I don't know, four or six hours of, of plunking away at that, notgetting it to quite do what I want and having just number of technical difficulties with
things that I didn't quite understand.
But as I like query, uh, queried the, uh, AI assistant about it, I don't know which one Iwas using at the time.
I think it was probably Claude.
(15:46):
don't know.
I was like, I think maybe I, I, the, fundamental building blocks of the way, the way thisinitial site was structured are wrong for what I want to do.
So I blew it up, just threw it all in a folder said, I can come back to you if I ever needyou.
but I don't think I'm ever going to need you and create a new folder and just, I, allthat's in it are right now are two markdown files.
(16:11):
a to do and a read me and I start out with a very basic description of what I wanted inthe to do and read me.
And I've built them out to several hundred lines at I think three, two, 300 lines in theto do and at least, and a read me kind of like detailing, like all the different pages
that I want independently and then what they do and how they interact.
(16:33):
And I'm trying to basically build the framework of the query.
The initial query, what I'm trying to do is build everything of the initial query that Iwant to say, okay, Claude, here's my idea for a website or, know, cursor.
Here's my idea for website.
How do I start?
What do I build?
You know, and let it help me even get started from that front.
just.
to love Unit 4.
(16:54):
You really are.
Dear listeners, Sean is like skipping ahead not because he is like flipping through thepages faster than everyone else.
He's literally coming up with solutions ahead of time.
So he's off to the races here.
And just a little bit of tightening up on...
(17:17):
or a little bit of illumination I think is just gonna like spawn more from you.
It's really cool.
Okay.
Well, my plan is this afternoon after we get off to sit here and try to kind of.
At least save this draft of the to do, maybe make a backup of it, but kind of startactually working on attacking it and seeing how far I can get.
(17:40):
yeah.
afternoon, I'm going to say, go ask about using cursor rules and then create one more fileand call it dot cursor rules.
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
I'm making a note on this.
Give me one second.
Because I don't want to forget this because I will.
(18:02):
All right, cursor rules.
Yep.
So you want to implement some cursor rules.
This is like something to play with in addition to your readme, right?
These are going to be, your readme is going to be like your PRD or roadmap.
And then the cursor rules is going to be the constraints that are sort of given to the AIcoder assistant every single time.
(18:24):
So like, do you want all the code commented out?
Do you want to always use this particular framework?
and not that framework or do you always want this sort of spacing used or you know whatmean like the nitty-gritty keeping the AI like inside of these bounds and
(18:49):
so much sense with how my playing with
getting out of bounds you've probably been.
Jeep.
No, also, no, I wasn't saying with playing with GPT on trying to get image, imagegeneration, right.
For like cover art.
I, find that I like, I'm, if I lose specificity or lose context on like a specific detail,like in a followup, it, it, it, it slightly changes.
(19:16):
It's like, no, we lost that.
You have to keep the, know, the, I need that border to be 10 by 10 or whatever.
Mm-hmm.
And I told you that last time.
Yeah.
Yes.
So when you're implementing these rules, you're going to create a file.
It's going to be .cursor rules in the root directory of your project.
And then open up your web browser and go to cursor.directory.
(19:37):
And there's going to be a whole crap load of examples of cursor rules for differentdisciplines or different technologies, right?
Whether that's like iOS development or React apps or SuperBase.
you name it, someone's written some rules.
And so you can kind of copy and paste what you need and then go through the entire ruleset and delete what is irrelevant to your project.
(20:03):
Yeah, and then you've got your to do, you've got your read me and you've got your cursorrules.
You're basically after the races at that point.
Okay.
Okay.
Excellent.
is that a tip from unit four?
Is that, w where does that come from?
Okay.
All right.
I might just go ahead and take a poke at some of those videos here this afternoon before Isit down.
(20:24):
Like it's not, there's all the videos in it are probably only what 45 minutes an hour orno, they'd not get longer as they go.
this is, this is unit five, the capstone.
Um, you know, unified is much longer, considerably longer.
Yeah.
Way more complicated.
And I, that's a good thing.
Like it's, it's got all the things that I'm looking to put into the thing I want to build.
(20:47):
So yeah, I'm only four videos in and there's lots to go.
So.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Yeah, I've been enjoying, I've just been enjoying playing with it.
I upgraded to pro on cursor pretty quickly because I burned through the initial credits.
And now I'm like, is the $20 a month level going to be enough or am I going to need to goto 40?
(21:10):
Please take my money if so.
Yeah.
However, I have now signed up for enough tools where I'm like, I need these things tostart making me money.
It's all fun and games, but now I at least need to cover my costs.
No, absolutely.
Well, yeah, I don't mind.
I'll, I'll, I'll happily pay for 20 bucks a month for cursor for indefinitely, for, aslong as I'm playing with it, just as a, as a little toy, it's, fun.
(21:37):
It's a fun toy enough.
Like I'll, pay that for.
Honestly, for like Xbox, Xbox live or something.
I pay more for that than, you know, use it less some months.
So most months, any months.
But yeah, like what are some of the examples of other things that you've ended up kind ofsigning up for?
(21:57):
Any things you would avoid or say don't bother wasting your time with or I didn't, I gotout of it.
well, I'm, I have been exploring possible competitors, so I want to see how they're doingit now.
What weaknesses they may have.
I'm kind of like probing around.
so that costs a good deal.
You know, it's easy to drop or it's easy to, yeah, all of a sudden 250 bucks is kind ofblown up.
(22:25):
Yeah.
Pretty quick.
what
else.
There are other things that I've played with that haven't committed to.
There was one that came across my radar, I think just through Googling called MindSera,M-I-N-D-S-E-R-A.com.
And it's like a AI journaling app.
(22:45):
And the reason I was Googling it is also competitors.
I was thinking like, maybe I could build something like that.
And I wanted to see what else was out there.
Moral of the story, there's lots of competitors already.
But MindSera seems to, I haven't played with many of the others yet, but anyway, I thinkit's interesting because you could use it as like morning pages or daily diary sort of
(23:07):
thing.
And then it is aiming to get insights out of it for you.
like.
I think the practice of writing every single day like that is by itself completely amazingfor your brain and your mental health.
But if that journal could go back and talk to you and say like, here are some stoicprinciples that may, that have helped others and may help you based on what you wrote, or
(23:37):
here is a CBT technique that helps people.
catastrophize less or any number of things like that.
I mean, it's edging close and it's like close, it's not therapy, it's close to, it'sgiving, it's handing you tools, which I think is just kind of incredible.
(23:59):
And then you can also,
These are premium features that I haven't really played with, you're supposedly be able tolike chat with your journal.
So imagine that you've got two years of journal in this app.
You could just chat with it.
Like who was I on June of 2023, right?
And can you enter all this like auditory like over audio or do you have to type it out?
(24:22):
How is, what's the, what are the,
If you pay, you can talk to it and then it'll transcribe.
The free version, I think, is it's type only.
you know, if MindSera, M-I-N-D-S-E-R-A, I believe.
So anyway, yeah, just kind of poking around, trying to see where I might insert myself,you know?
(24:47):
Yeah, why not?
Right?
Um, like that, what you said, like it sounds really interesting because, uh, um, like itactually was exactly very much something I've been wanting, uh, this week I was during my
commute.
I had a couple of days where I just had like all these thoughts and it's like, Oh, I needto write that down.
(25:09):
I want get to work, write that down.
I get to work, write that down.
I get to work.
And by the time I got there, I got like two of them.
And then like people were in my office and like, was like,
I didn't get to those other things.
Like if I had a, you know, an AI tool that I could transcribe that to, and then put itinto my workflow, you know, a little commute buddy for lack of better term.
(25:32):
Yeah, that's part of it.
And I think the magic with AI here is, well, I mean, the leveling up magic is reallyincredible.
They're like questioning you, getting more details out of you, and then giving you helpfuladvice and tips.
But the...
I pulled, I pulled up MindSera I don't necessarily want the mental health aspect quite asmuch, but I mean, I guess that would, that's not a bad thing, but just the, the,
(25:55):
being able to take unstructured just like I've thrown words at you and like make them intosomething for later.
That's pretty cool.
because there's a lot of unstructured data in my life and I'm looking forward to more ofit being structured.
think I could really capitalize on things more.
I mean, life is just unstructured data, mostly.
(26:16):
It's what you do with it.
Well, I think that's why some people go further than others.
so if we're taking this baby in a direction of kind of building these things out andseeing what we do along with that.
what does that mean to you?
(26:37):
Wait, what does what mean to me?
Well, I mean, so like we're talking about, you know, we're talking about like kind ofpivoting, not pivoting, but like taking the focus of what we're doing here into kind of
building in public.
Right.
So it, so, okay.
So, so is it, you know, we'd also talked about wanting to talk about branding and, and,and creating something central around that.
So, is there any of those discussions you want to have here on air?
(26:59):
We can do it on air.
And I will start with saying that like I have deep concerns and not much direction toapply to our branding or messaging because I kind of like our exploratory, like who knows
where it goes.
It's really hard to let that go, but every single piece of advice would tell you that youneed to focus on your message and sort of like get that.
(27:29):
message slash all tangential messages and stick with it rather than like jump around.
I think there's truth to that.
Um, because yeah, we, do have a lot of areas we've covered and talked about, I thinkthings that are interesting, but I do think, being more centrally focused and themed, I
(27:49):
think is, is not a bad idea.
But, but then is it, so is it adding specific elements into, these discussions every weekor sharing certain things, or, is it, you know, setting some goals for a specific project
that we can, we can talk about, you know, how we did that and, you know, people can thengo to the website and see the results type of thing.
(28:10):
There's probably no good answer or right answer, obviously.
Well, yeah, that's kind of what I ended up concluding was like, there's no right answerjust because like the path, the, the fastest to travel path includes.
honing a message and staying on message doesn't mean that that's the path we need to take.
(28:31):
Maybe we have an extremely broad and curious message and we want to stick with that andnot be beholden to being narrowed down and because of that our build will be harder and
longer but our souls will be more fed along the way.
fine with that.
I like that.
(28:52):
also I was going to say, you know, I was thinking to, Mr.
Beast's advice, make a hundred episodes and come talk to me.
So, you know, so we're only at, you know, 22, 23 right now.
so, you know, we, got, we're, we're still, think.
I, I, yeah, I think it's, I think it's okay to still be in exploratory mode at this pointand develop, and maybe it always is an exploratory mode.
(29:19):
That's what the point of the podcast is.
the, we're exploring and that's why we are continually giving Unqualified Advice.
We're exploring new areas and we are not experts in these things, but we're exploring themand exploring them with, you know, you our listeners and viewers
trying to be out front and encouraging others to be out front.
You don't even have to follow us.
(29:39):
Be out front.
I feel like that is, that's being out front.
can only compete against yourself, right?
So I'm not trying to be like, well, Elon Musk is already there, so no one is actually outfront anymore.
No, no, no, no.
We all have our own things.
And I want you, you, Mr.
Individual, to push yourself, be out front for yourself, right?
(30:02):
I don't know.
That's how I feel.
I it.
I see what you mean.
I like that definition about front better than my definition about front to be quitefrank.
OK.
as a note, I've been using Kurt, not cursor, obsidian.
I'm exclusively in obsidian now.
have you been having any experience with it?
(30:23):
Not really.
I'm still just completely disorganized.
know if I...
I want like an AI just to like look at my computer and be like, here, here, I organizedeverything for you.
Look at every file.
don't care.
Just organize me.
I
My work and personal life are so disjointed and competing.
(30:47):
I don't know, I don't know how, I always get lost trying to organize myself.
Yeah, that's a problem.
Isn't it?
It's like you're getting lost in just the organization part.
All right, should we pivot to like another arena?
I think so, today.
discuss this one.
(31:08):
Nietzsche describes three modern vices.
One, overwork.
To be constantly busy is self-negation.
It betrays a will to forget oneself.
Two, curiosity.
Vague curiosity about everything without deep obsessions goes nowhere.
(31:29):
Sympathy.
Sympathy for all equals a refusal to rank good and bad.
I like.
was provocative and interesting, so that's why I wrote it down.
this framework and all right, so point number two immediately takes my mind back toAmusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman and talking about as we got the, as modern
(31:55):
society came around and had the ability to send teletypes and pass just written messages.
That's great.
But what does a man in Texas need to know of a man going on and of a man in Denver's life?
Like it doesn't, it doesn't give you any information.
You might be curious, but there's, can't do anything with that information.
you see these things and hear people, you know, talking about them and you get, you spendmental energy to go find out what what's going on.
(32:17):
And then you realize, I don't care about that.
Or that's, you know, a waste of my time or, or you get.
Yeah.
You're just, you're just beaming photons into your eyeballs and it's, that's it.
Then the dopamine drip.
Yeah, Yeah, so that one definitely resonated with me right away.
(32:37):
I think...
Without deep obsession goes nowhere.
Vague curiosity without deep obsession goes nowhere.
So yeah, you can't be deeply obsessed, obsessed about everything, right?
So you have to selectively curate your interests, I suppose, and spend the time dedicatingsome time to actually explore those interests.
(33:02):
How do you, how do you, how do you solve this modern vice or how do you prevent yourselffrom, from suffering from this modern vice?
Yeah, cultivate interests and try.
I think this is where like you're supposed to be like vaguely curious when you're young,right?
Everything, you can be curious about everything, but then you should be honing that in asyou travel down the timeline.
(33:26):
And then.
I feel like there's like an obvious push.
No, he wants you to have deep curiosity, focused curiosity.
yeah, it's, it's about having the, the duality of, of, of your right brain and your leftbrain, your, your, right brain perceiving everything in your left brain getting focused,
(33:48):
right?
It might be, I might be flipping those two around.
Apologize if I am Dr.
McGillchrist.
But,
If you're listening.
If you're listening or Tom Morgan, if you're listening for that matter, I have a betterchance at that one.
Maybe.
yeah, but so you have, know, one side of your brain that's there to help focus oneverything and be generally aware of yourself, of your place in the surroundings.
(34:15):
And you have another side of your brain that's there to focus and, and try to rationallymake sure that everything is.
you know, working in a little bit better and communicating correctly.
And I'm not summarizing this at all correctly or well.
Um, but you know, you can have one side of the brain kind of get over dominant indifferent ways and that can lead to, you know, different good things or bad things,
(34:35):
depending upon, upon what happens.
So, you know, if you're, if you go and go completely just just looking at outer space andjust being vaguely curious, not ever focusing on anything like.
I think in Nietzsche's sense here, it's kind of unfulfilling, but in like a more.
In a more biological and survival sense, that's what gets you killed because you're notlooking at you're actually paying attention to the dangers you get this how you get
(35:00):
whacked.
So I don't know.
That's an interesting point.
Yeah.
There's so many things that are of our modern life that are against our evolution.
That's just one of many.
That's why I love exploring some of the way our minds work and how they've evolved.
(35:22):
It's helped me.
It's helped me feel, I don't know, it's helped me change my perception in some ways andfeel better about not beating myself up as much about shit as I used to.
For what it's worth, I don't know.
no, I was built this way.
But my world is another way.
Yeah, yeah.
And also then not getting sucked into the certain loops that I'm like, shit, this is justa loop.
(35:44):
Yeah, I keep going.
I always go back to like the knowledge of power thing.
It's like the evolutionary biology stuff makes me more and more inoculated against thethings that are constantly crashing upon my shore, if you will.
Right?
It's not perfect, but it's better than not knowing.
(36:05):
The only other thing I was gonna add is like this, I feel like a particular pushback,especially if you don't think about this deeply, the vague curiosity about everything
without deep obsessions goes nowhere.
And it's like, well, shouldn't you be curious about all the people you meet?
And I'd be like, yes, affirmative.
But that's not vague.
(36:25):
That is a deep obsession with the curiosity of the people around you.
around you, vague curiosity is being kind of curious about everybody on the internet thatyou're never actually going to meet or interact with.
But you see a little text line with AI bot three, four, eight, three, and you care what itsays.
Like that's, that's a vague curiosity about everything that's not healthy.
(36:47):
All right, which one do you want to tech next, overwork or sympathy?
let's save sympathy.
I think that one deserves to be last.
Overwork to be constantly busy is self negation.
It betrays a will to forget oneself.
So this is like avoidance.
to be unable to sit with oneself?
(37:07):
To be so afraid of your own mind that you can't be with oneself?
I would also say it's the, you were not your emotions.
And when you're constantly busy, were constantly under surge or no, or under attack ofyour emotions.
(37:31):
you, your motor, like being in some sense, think busy is an emotion.
you get, you get wrapped up in that emotion and I think it's addictive.
Like for some people it's addictive.
mm-hmm.
Yeah.
get, and they get dopamine from that in a way or something that like that.
So the being constantly.
Yeah.
Like they're, they're, they're, they're seeking that constant busyness, but the problem isin that they don't realize they have other emotions too.
(37:53):
Right.
And so they can't forget that part of themselves and then like, then see the othersoutside of it.
or they're being busy because they believe that they are in service of others when in factthat constituency that they are trying to serve would rather have them not their business.
Yeah.
(38:13):
Or, or, or rather have that person take time for themselves and, and, hey, you've been,you helped me, but like you're the, you know,
But you need to go sit in the sauna for 20 minutes and just like be you.
haircut.
You need a, I think, I think that's what Queer Eye is all about.
Right.
And on some episodes, if you've ever seen that show, like they have, there's a certainpeople they go, go with it or who are, you that work very hard and do a very poor job of
(38:39):
taking care of themselves.
Um, in a lot of situations.
Um, yeah, no, but who knew, Nietzsche would have gotten me to Queer Eye.
Uh, I didn't see that one coming this morning when I woke up.
Yeah.
All right, sympathy, you ready?
Yeah.
Sympathy.
Sympathy for all is a refusal to rank good and bad.
and then you're like, it's definitely Nietzsche.
(39:01):
So sympathy, sympathy for all equals a refusal to rank good and bad.
Yes.
And also, it sympathy or is it empathy?
guess.
No, think, well, I think empathy is trying to like understand the other, whereas sympathyis feeling bad for the other.
(39:21):
yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that could be good because at times people deserve sympathy, but often I feel like itis not what the person you're giving sympathy to even desires.
So this is very true.
I saw this this week,
(39:43):
yeah.
Do you want to talk about that more?
Is that off limits?
I'll talk about it.
don't know if I'll leave it in.
I'll talk about it though.
so yeah, so unfortunately this weekend, at where I work, we've been going through someorganizational changes, which means that there are some people that used to be employed
with us that no longer are.
(40:04):
And, unfortunately, sometimes I have to be involved in some decisions and this quote,sympathy, sympathy for all these is it refusals to rank good and bad.
Is I think very true because, you know, as managers, when you sit around and haveconversations and you're trying to understand what you're doing.
(40:27):
you know, you'll say something and somebody like surprised, that, that name, that person.
And it's like, yes, you're saying that because you're sympathetic to their situation.
You see them as a person and I have to sit here and say, I'm looking.
six, 12 months down the line, what do I need this team to develop into?
And what are the building blocks I need?
Cause we're not going to be fully structured now.
(40:48):
So what are the building blocks I'm going to have to rebuild to get to that point?
And,
Yeah, I so I think Nietzsche is spot on here.
I don't have anything better to say about it than that, I think.
Okay, since
also, think, I will say, think telling everybody on, their team that they're great andthey're equal constantly is also a disservice and an unkindness.
(41:12):
I think there is kindness and honesty and saying, Hey, yeah, so and so is the best on theteam at this.
And I need you to go take a class and get better at that.
Or, you don't have to call them specifically terrible or be mean about it, but you can letthem know that there are.
There are.
levels of performance and ability.
(41:34):
yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So yeah, it does.
want to keep your top performers, then you cannot abide by poor performers.
and you cannot.
here I think is like a very similar, he's trying to say similar things.
It's like, it's not, it's, the world of equality doesn't exist and it never has and itnever will.
(41:54):
There will be differences.
And frankly, we should probably spend a lot of time celebrating those differences becausethat's what makes the world a beautiful place.
But when it comes to measuring a person's ability to execute whatever, whether that is thepole vault or a memo,
there are distinctions and people are better than others and we should try to elevate theones that do better at the things that they perform well on and find space for the people
(42:24):
who are doing something that maybe they don't perform great at but create space room andlike experimentation or whatever to get them towards something that they might perform
better at.
Yeah.
I think, I think that that's right.
so sympathy being a vice because like, so the, his, his argument here is that overworkcuriosity and sympathy are the three vices of modern life.
(42:51):
And I dig, I dig.
Like I feel, I feel you look on social media and you see a lot of people who are, youknow, posting productivity porn and trying to say how, how, yeah, how busy they are and
being always on top and always on the go.
Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, exactly.
(43:13):
Or saying, you need to be, you know, always looking at what's going on on
on social media and being aware of the latest thing.
And I think also we saw this playing out in the last several years, sympathy, trying to beoverly sympathetic for everybody, not saying, hey, they're a real person, sure, great, but
(43:38):
they also are a mugger.
And we need to be able to have degradations.
Yeah.
Yes.
So I can see these elements playing out.
Not in everybody, you I'm just saying like you see them happening a lot on social mediaspecifically.
go find out if this is real, just open up Twitter or something.
(44:01):
You'll figure it out in a few seconds.
No, that was good.
I'm glad that caught your eye.
I did not expect to re I did not expect that to resonate with me when I first glanced atit.
was like, okay.
Okay.
But then I was like, no, actually this is a spot on.
I don't know why I'm surprised.
(44:23):
you've been coming at coming in hot with Nietzsche and Jung lately.
I mean, Gene Jung Well, wait for it.
There's going to be some Machiavelli coming too.
are you reading The Prince or something?
What's going on?
I'm gonna reread The Prince after I finish this book called The Machiavellians.
Machiavellians.
I just picked it up.
(44:43):
Andreessen, for better or worse.
He recommended it.
So there's two books I got from him.
This one, public truths and public lies.
So it's like preference falsification, which I think we've seen a lot of people hidingtheir actual views from one another.
(45:03):
And then this book, this guy, this professor is, I think he's a Duke and that's what hisresearch is on.
It's like what happens to societies when that particular behavior gets too big.
You know, we're always gonna hide certain things about ourselves, right?
But like when it becomes way too popular or normalized to like toe the party line or hideyour true preferences, what happens to like society, countries, whatever.
(45:30):
I think that's an interesting question that I don't know anything about and wanna read thebook.
And then the Machiavellians, I don't know, it's like political freedom or something likethat.
I don't know.
I'm wondering if I'm gonna like have a hard time getting through it, but.
I was curious, so I went ahead and bought it.
While we're on books, this one I want you to read.
(45:51):
I desperately want you to read it.
It's called Boom by Bern Hobart.
I have been, that's been on my radar.
Boom by Bern Hobart has been on my radar.
He writes The Diff right?
Okay, yes.
Made me think about things completely differently and going back like radical, like what,what I, I'm this year I'm doing radical acceptance and aspiring, aspiring optimism,
(46:21):
optimism right there.
even in the face of chaos, right?
Or, and uncertainty.
It's like optimism.
I'm just really digging it because it's like it's basically saying booms in the economy.
Well, I shouldn't say that it's not just economy booms generally whether that's like Thehive mind or the economy or some other thing booms are part and parcel with innovation If
(46:45):
we are advancing we will have booms and booms are good, even though it can leave a path ofdestruction behind The booms built out all the fiber optic cable in the country and then
most of it was dark
unused until 20 years later it was like super important that all that stuff had alreadybeen laid.
The United States has some of the best freight rail on on the face of the planet becauseof railroad booms.
(47:11):
All the railroads basically went bust all at the same time because of overbuilding.
The Manhattan Project was a boom.
Yeah it was.
And then there are like follow on booms.
So the Manhattan Project creates the Apollo Project.
Right.
And so he spins these tales and paints this picture through history and I think it's superfascinating.
(47:39):
I've really been enjoying listening to it and it's not terribly long.
I've been listening to it and then kind of like going back and like,
say, I already put it in my queue in my library.
So I've acquired it.
It will be consumed is all I can say.
Okay.
that one I'm excited for.
The other two, I feel like are, I'm self-assigned to homework.
(48:03):
I'm like, don't, Andreesen went like so, his pivot was so, yeah, I'm like, I need tounderstand more.
That's all.
And I felt like those are the two books that, yeah.
I mean, that's also why I kind of wanted to do Sovereign Individual, right?
(48:24):
And where are, have you finished it?
Are you halfway done, 60 %?
I've been listening to it and I think I have two hours and something left.
Out of what 18 or that's a long book.
% done with it.
I may, you know what, next time let's make a point to just wherever we're at, we're gonnagive our final thoughts and be done with it.
(48:46):
wanna be, because I'm also, because I can't take it, I'm mixing in two other things at thesame time.
And.
Yeah, okay.
So next time we talk, next time we record, let's just do it.
Let's get it out.
Otherwise, we're both doing ourselves a disservice by him delaying it.
like I've been working in Super Communicators uh, which is I'm really digging so far.
(49:08):
Yeah.
Charles doing, um, and then, uh, uh, abduction by John E Mack medical doctor, um,following up on the heels of our discussion around the telepathy tapes.
Uh, I listened to Tom, Morgan on Bill Brewster and he went off on his getting in thefascination of abductions and it's.
ironic because the guy, somebody who I recommended, Telepathy Tapes to recommended thisbook to me about abductions.
(49:34):
So I took it as a sign and I'm working my way through that and it is a fascinatingoverlap.
and that's all I'm going to say for now.
And this is a medical doctor from where?
Harvard.
What time frame was this book written in?
he's interviewing people in the book in the mid nineties and I had a 20th anniversary,25th anniversary, think like late nineties when it was released early two thousands.
(49:58):
Wow, okay.
So it was before internet easy cameras.
Mm hmm.
Yes.
And a lot of the experiences are dating back to the 70s because he's interviewing peoplefrom, you know, different age groups.
So it's kind of a covering a range of experiences of, know, according to the book, he'sinterviewed hundreds of people who claim to have had abduction experiences and he's doing
(50:26):
hypnotic regression with them to kind of go back and understand the experiences.
And he's
the woo was strong.
a collection of case studies of specific stories and it's interesting to see thesimilarities and subtle differences between them.
also, again, how it relates to the telepathy tapes.
(50:48):
I'm not positive, but I'm thinking there's eventually going to be a case study exploringthat level of consciousness, I think.
I'm not positive, yeah, there's a lot of telepathic communication going on so far in thefirst three, four case studies I've gotten through.
And if you're into that sort of thing and if you liked the X-Files growing up or you everlistened to Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell or George Noory you might check it out.
(51:15):
Otherwise, you know, probably just leave it to me.
Ha ha ha ha!
I'll give that a qualified review so far.
Well, I think the other thing is this is such a...
Did you buy it or I mean it's like very freely available via PDF.
(51:35):
you did mention that to me.
Yeah, OK.
I'm just wondering like I'm probably not going to.
a lot of audio books free on Spotify for you audio book listeners out there.
If you have a Spotify account, don't sleep on that.
If you are out of audible credits.
Search there first to see if it's just free.
I was just thinking that since it's very available via PDF, I'm going to download it,upload it to a specific GPT, and then go on a walk and just ask it questions.
(52:00):
Well now that's interesting.
That sounds like a fun way to do that.
You say a specific GPT, do not want to tell us which GPT that is?
No, no, I mean like making one that then is just like you upload the PDF and that's likebasically it doesn't that's not all it knows but it knows that that is in the context
window the entire time.
I got you.
Okay, that makes sense.
(52:21):
That makes sense.
Okay.
so like the projects in, and, yeah, in chat GPT.
Okay.
I follow that.
Yeah.
I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm learning.
I'm learning all about context and how to keep things in, in, in the space of when you're,when you're trying to get these tools to do something, you have to, we're coming back to
this, but you have, you have to keep that fresh in its mind.
(52:44):
It has a reasoning capability, but not a great memory is I guess the way I'd put it.
big problem.
That's gonna be the, I think, I hope that's like the next big leap.
I...
Because if your context window could be like, years long, right?
(53:04):
Be amazing.
I wonder how much data you need for the type of context window you're talking about too.
Like how, because it's not as though I need it to be HD video, right?
Like the, the data set itself of the context is actually relatively small, probably only agig or two.
(53:24):
so how, like, can you, could you somehow hack a context when you're your own that is likebuilding up this, like, here's my ongoing.
reference database of things I want you to think about in this project and just have thatslowly building as you're, as you're continuing to use your application that you build on
(53:45):
it.
It's building that context, putting it in the background and then always referencing it.
Or, you know, you can say, Hey, check the context window for, for the, don't know.
I don't know enough.
That's yeah, I don't.
couldn't you just do that right now?
Like, I don't know why we like, I'm thinking about how you would do it with like thetools, the tools we're seeing in like cursor, even that, that gum loop thing.
(54:06):
looking at how that, how that operated and when, and would loop out and spit out,information into data files and then pull it in.
built this prompt and you're reusing the prompt over and over and over over again.
yeah, guess it's not really the same as context.
No, different in the context.
Like that's fine.
I can, it's actually a whole heck of a lot cheaper to just have a new, new chat enteredevery single time with a four page long prompt in order to get what I want.
(54:28):
Right.
Versus the like, I've uploaded a book and I've had 18 conversations with this book and Iwould like to continue having more without it completely shitting the bed and not having
context anymore.
Right.
Cause I wanted to retain my
interrogation of that material or something.
(54:49):
And how it processed what it said about it.
That's interesting.
Because why isn't that just the list of your questions?
You know what I mean?
which again, isn't very much space, but you're, it's like just building a.
Well, then you've just got a one-sided conversation, right?
Just because the answers were generated by AI doesn't mean they were of no conversationalworth, right?
(55:13):
And like it needs to understand the logic at which it, it arose that answer for thefollow-up question, right?
It's about maintaining the, the, the logic tree to how it answered the question.
So if you ask a follow-up, then it can say, well, yes, you, you know, I interpreted thatway.
And then if we think about it, it needs to understand that logic tree, I guess in some, insome way, I don't know.
I'm making wild guesses here and talking about things I have no right to talk about.
(55:35):
I, you know, within three months, I think we will know more.
Because we will have experienced it.
It won't be like in a white paper.
It'll be real life.
That's true.
yeah, later this afternoon, I might know more.
Yeah, you are going to know more.
Yeah, I'm excited for your afternoon.
Sounds fun.
Yeah, yeah, Jamie's out having fun and I'm gonna sit here and be good and play on thecomputer.
(56:01):
Yeah, as boys do.
Yeah, likewise.
Thanks everybody for tuning in to Unqualified Advice,
We'll see you next time.
Thanks for, I don't know why I always struggle over the end, Dan.
Do you got anything better than I do?
for tuning in.
We love you all.
We appreciate you.
And if you can find us on the Twitter's mailing at slow VSM for Sean and at Daniel Hatkefor me, send us some DMs.
Just don't get too comfortable.
(00:02):
Find a way to install the discomfort.
That's where all the gold is.
Sean, we are now in February.
Welcome.
(00:23):
Welcome.
I feel a little taxed today.
How about you?
Tariff joke.
are you alluding to something?
Oh, yeah.
Our poor friends in Canada and Mexico,
Yeah, which I guess there's nothing really happening.
(00:44):
As yet, as of, you know, 1.22, yeah, on Saturday, central standard time.
So, you know, we'll see how Monday turns out.
Do you think customs agents walk around being like FUBAR?
I mean, you gotta, well, I don't think they've, my understanding is that there's not beena lot of clear guidance.
So I would think that without clear guidance, you would operate in a business as usualmode, correct?
(01:10):
Because.
Yes, I would want written directives before I change tact in a very strong way.
you can say that in a meeting, but here's my procedure, my operating procedure, and mycontract says that I need to follow this policy, otherwise I am subject to termination.
So update that, then we can talk.
I don't know.
(01:30):
Have you worked in one of these places?
Like I have experience with where, you know, like the founder, true owner of the businessis there's a reason why they are at the top.
And it's a lot of it is due to ideation and creativity and networks and all that kind ofstuff.
But with that comes a bunch of baggage or awake in the water.
(01:55):
or that sort of thing, right?
And as the organization grows and gets more professionalized, in comes the COO, in comesthe expertise to try to streamline and channel energies in the direction that the business
needs to go in as it matures, right?
And then you end up in this conference room where you are getting told to do two differentthings by two different people.
(02:19):
Then you're like, wait, I know which one outranks which, but I don't know what I was.
Can I get it written down, please?
What am supposed to do tomorrow?
Right?
And I feel like there's probably a lot of people in the federal government feeling thatway right now.
Yeah, I can only speak from a perspective of having worked in really more mature companiesprofessionally.
(02:40):
So we're much more, you know, in the late stage bureaucracy federal government stage whereI feel like.
The business you work in is bigger than some governments on earth.
Yeah.
yes, yes.
So we have, you know, just a ginormous policy manual that dictates how we are supposed toperform our activities, not dictates exactly, provides guidelines and structures.
(03:04):
And then we have to, from that central policy at a local level, create local policies toalign that in the ways that work with our local business systems and customs and laws and
et cetera.
So.
everything is just a big coordination problem.
At the end of the day.
why I'm saying like, if I'm a customs agent, like I haven't received a new standard workinstruction.
(03:25):
So you know what?
last time I deviated from my standard work instruction, I got written up.
So I'm not doing that.
and that's why we have those controls kind of in place and why we.
as ineffective as they are in like really practical in a real practical sense of whathappens day to day They do provide a lot of, you know, cover for saying, Hey, we taught
(03:50):
you to do it this way per this procedure.
And you sent the temperature 20 degrees too high and scrapped this product.
You know, there's it gives you.
Yeah.
It gives you, it gives you the tool for.
making sure that people do it the way that it's supposed to.
then, but the problem is if you want to change the definition of what, you know, what it'ssupposed to be, it, heaven helped you.
(04:13):
Heaven helped you.
So I think, I.
I think this draws upon a distinction that has been made, I don't know.
I don't know where I got it.
It's wartime CEO versus peacetime CEO.
And I think there's a direct corollary between almost like peacetime or like professionalgeneral versus a general patent or general MacArthur.
(04:38):
both those generals probably would be fired under peacetime quickly.
They wouldn't have even made it to general.
but under wartime, they, they needed that creativity, that spunk, the leadership, thedrive towards into the unknown.
don't know.
Something like that.
yeah, I can see that.
Yeah, because peace time generally, you're kind of getting the troops ready and preparedand just maintaining status.
(05:01):
Well, but then when.
just, you're, mostly measuring for not messing up versus like.
times are unknown or bleak or whatever and the risk tolerance band widens out quiteconsiderably.
Something like that.
Yeah, I can see that.
I'm trying to think of other famous generals I know and I can't, like I'm having a hardtime pulling names out of the air.
(05:25):
So I'm gonna just sit here and nod along and be like, yeah, generals, all right.
okay, so doesn't need to be general.
So think about the particular CEOs, right?
Like Bill Gates versus Palmer, a Bezos versus Jassy, I don't know.
(05:46):
And then, you know, a lot of this has to do with like founders versus professional CEOstoo.
I guess that's the distinction I'm drawing upon here.
I understand what you mean.
Pichai is very different than Larry Page
Because they're just trying to not screw up the thing that's already existing before them,right?
(06:10):
They don't have ownership over it.
Hmm?
That's what makes Satya Nadella so incredible.
Yeah.
Bucked the trend.
yeah, I think he's been good for them.
Yeah, I mean, was, so that video you sent me regarding Gum Loop?
(06:34):
Yes, interesting.
I'll try to remember, put it in the show notes because I thought it was an interestingwatch, but it reminded me so much of Microsoft's Power Automate.
with a little prettier user interface and a, you know, a, basically a chat bot layer on itto help you use it.
like Microsoft's not that far off from that.
(06:55):
I don't think if they don't already have it, like I haven't, I haven't been in powerautomate in six months.
And I'm like, after watching them, like I need to go back in because if I can now usecopilot and do this, it works and I can actually, Ooh, robo.
position.
Like, I mean, yeah, I was like.
(07:15):
sitting there thinking like I've always wanted.
I've always thought I'd be able to like use an executive assistant and but now you couldactually probably have one or get close to one.
exactly.
Or also, or also like go and talk to like the engineering team where half their day isthis really mundane, um, maintenance work of, like the database system.
And it's just, Oh, we have a new part number.
(07:35):
have to go get all the fields matching the right thing.
We got to go do all these boxes and it's very programmatic.
It's it's.
We have it scripted in many ways where it is down to a handful of clicks in certaininstances, but it's still.
could be where it just happens.
Like they don't even need to intervene because all the information exists.
They're just making sure it's getting transferred from one system appropriately intoanother.
(07:59):
Yep.
And that's, you know, 10, 20 % of their jobs.
So if we could come up with a way to like automate that out and say, Hey, I just gave you20 % of your work week back.
Let's take on a new project.
That would be really awesome.
It would be.
Yeah.
So that's, it's been getting, it's, I'm, it.
(08:19):
2025, man, it's gonna be a ride.
It already is.
it started off.
It started off definitely on a pivot, right?
If you have your ear to the ground, think most people still are just like ostriches in thesand or whatever, but, and I don't mean that in a bad, like most people are just living
their lives.
(08:40):
for those that have their ear to the ground.
It is hard not to see a drastically different future in the very near term, not like 20years away.
And you know what has inspired me to think about doing a lot this year?
Oddly enough, is some home improvements.
I figure, why not go ahead and spend some cash?
(09:03):
You
And reload for 2026 because I feel like it's going to be just wild.
that's where my head's kind of at, in terms of seeing what, how everybody's reacting.
Yeah.
there's been stuff I've been wanting to do.
like, you know, I'm, kinda wanting to get defensive.
Why not go ahead and just do some stuff that I've been wanting to do anyway.
(09:27):
And.
You know, invest in, invest in some, some joy.
Yeah, exactly.
Just don't get too comfortable.
Find a way to install the discomfort.
That's where all the gold is.
Yes, no, absolutely no.
I've just, you know, it's one of those things like, you know, this might be a good year toactually just get a few things done that we've been kind of putting off.
(09:53):
So.
I think that's cool.
You and I were also discussing a bit of a pivot or shift or new tangent that we would bothlike to go in for 2025.
yes.
Which was how, what are we going to do with our focus here, essentially, correct?
Yeah.
I mean, not just the podcast, but kind of like, our, the sharing that we do.
(10:20):
Right now it's just the podcast, but like, if we were to, you know, put a bow on thisproject a little bit, then it would include a website, probably a bit of a blog to get a
bit of summaries going that are more, I don't know, descriptive than show notes and,
Yeah, just having like the actual real estate on the internet for us, I think would begood.
(10:45):
Yeah, for me, it's, it's, it's, I want to develop some new skills around implement, aroundhow to use all these tools that are coming out.
I want to be relevant in five years still in the workforce.
And I think learning how to use these AI tools is a good way to do that.
And for me, like building like a little, you know, website for unqualified advice andagain, like other content we create and share, like I have, know, I have a blog, that I
(11:13):
occasionally post.
And you know, maybe maybe somehow putting that feed in the stream so to speak and kind ofhaving a channel I guess for better lack of a better word
Or, or even if you don't wrap it up into the same thing, like I, you know, I think whenyou and I were talking about this a little bit earlier, I was like, our social profiles
or, know, it doesn't need to be wrapped up into this thing.
(11:34):
It can still be about us.
And even us as individuals can have, you know, separate properties in different places,but like having a more.
Going back to like professionals versus or like the professionalism that gets you from oneto something versus the creativity and sort of insanity that gets you from zero to one.
(11:58):
I think we've done a good job of having fun with zero to one and now we need to like pushon that ceiling a bit more and going back to like you were mentioning your writing and
Substack, you could keep that whole channel open.
It could be completely.
that channel.
a process.
want something to like, a, you know, like I'm thinking of a sort of a backend for us whereyou were mentioning like, you know, maybe we get a text message or email that says like,
(12:25):
what are three things that you've consumed this week that were good?
What were, what a blah, blah.
And that way we sort of like get ideas down and written and saved in a place that can helpgenerate more ideas for us to talk about.
Same thing.
I'm thinking about these sort of engines of
capture and creativity and to help spawn, you know, the writings that you want to keep upwith and do and all that kind of stuff.
(12:49):
Okay, yeah, I get that, I dig that.
I guess I was thinking in a different, that question from a different angle, but yeah,exactly.
It sounds to me like a fun goal to try to grow kind of an audience for the content we'recreating in the skills that are required to do so.
We can, I think, build some pretty cool stuff online.
(13:09):
That's kind of fun and showing how we're tracking and going about doing that.
That also those skills apply in, so many other places.
It's where I can see that, I could show in a future employer that I can do this here.
Then it's like, see, I can come in and do that for you as well.
Or some, or, know, hopefully then take those skills to my workplace.
(13:31):
Yes, exactly.
and I think it just, it's a way to, it's just, it's a
For me, it's a way to scratch a creative itch that is, yeah, that is kind of buildingsomething.
And again, also, yeah, it's like you said, a tool to help us kind of drive this action andhelp hold ourselves accountable, which was the idea behind that, you know, weekly blast
(13:51):
email of, know, what, what's on your mind?
What, how, how'd you, uh, press towards your goals?
Um,
I'm frankly really impressed that we basically every single time we sit down, we getsomewhere with what we want to talk about.
Even when we both start off going like, well, what are we going to talk about today?
I think it's wonderful.
I really do.
but like, you know, a little bit more.
(14:12):
We started recording like, we don't want to, we want to talk about this.
And then I somehow a joke turned into a tangent and then it took us five minutes to getback here.
Ten minutes to get back here, but yeah.
it's a good hobby.
It's it gives me joy.
It's a, it's a fun outlet.
Um, it's good therapy.
I don't know.
It's, it's a lot of things.
Uh, it's a lot of things.
(14:34):
Well, let's get into a little bit more of the nitty gritty.
like, just this morning, you've been playing around with cursor, right?
Are there any things that have popped out to you, different things that you're changingabout your process?
Are you just like blowing stuff up and starting over again?
How do you feel about how it's going?
So I spent, I probably spent, trying to just kind of build an initial like layout for whatI, I didn't really know what I was starting at the time.
(15:01):
So I kind of didn't have a plan.
I was just like, let me understand how to get a page up.
And then I was like, okay, now I have this basic, you know, canvas up.
Let me say, okay, what if I want to make this a webpage for the book, for the, for thepodcast and how would I do that?
And started to try to incorporate some different things and different ideas.
Um, but I had started from kind of, um, you know, had a little bit of a framework alreadyin place and was trying to then build it into it.
(15:26):
And so I just, after, I don't know, four or six hours of, of plunking away at that, notgetting it to quite do what I want and having just number of technical difficulties with
things that I didn't quite understand.
But as I like query, uh, queried the, uh, AI assistant about it, I don't know which one Iwas using at the time.
I think it was probably Claude.
(15:46):
don't know.
I was like, I think maybe I, I, the, fundamental building blocks of the way, the way thisinitial site was structured are wrong for what I want to do.
So I blew it up, just threw it all in a folder said, I can come back to you if I ever needyou.
but I don't think I'm ever going to need you and create a new folder and just, I, allthat's in it are right now are two markdown files.
(16:11):
a to do and a read me and I start out with a very basic description of what I wanted inthe to do and read me.
And I've built them out to several hundred lines at I think three, two, 300 lines in theto do and at least, and a read me kind of like detailing, like all the different pages
that I want independently and then what they do and how they interact.
(16:33):
And I'm trying to basically build the framework of the query.
The initial query, what I'm trying to do is build everything of the initial query that Iwant to say, okay, Claude, here's my idea for a website or, know, cursor.
Here's my idea for website.
How do I start?
What do I build?
You know, and let it help me even get started from that front.
just.
to love Unit 4.
(16:54):
You really are.
Dear listeners, Sean is like skipping ahead not because he is like flipping through thepages faster than everyone else.
He's literally coming up with solutions ahead of time.
So he's off to the races here.
And just a little bit of tightening up on...
(17:17):
or a little bit of illumination I think is just gonna like spawn more from you.
It's really cool.
Okay.
Well, my plan is this afternoon after we get off to sit here and try to kind of.
At least save this draft of the to do, maybe make a backup of it, but kind of startactually working on attacking it and seeing how far I can get.
(17:40):
yeah.
afternoon, I'm going to say, go ask about using cursor rules and then create one more fileand call it dot cursor rules.
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
I'm making a note on this.
Give me one second.
Because I don't want to forget this because I will.
(18:02):
All right, cursor rules.
Yep.
So you want to implement some cursor rules.
This is like something to play with in addition to your readme, right?
These are going to be, your readme is going to be like your PRD or roadmap.
And then the cursor rules is going to be the constraints that are sort of given to the AIcoder assistant every single time.
(18:24):
So like, do you want all the code commented out?
Do you want to always use this particular framework?
and not that framework or do you always want this sort of spacing used or you know whatmean like the nitty-gritty keeping the AI like inside of these bounds and
(18:49):
so much sense with how my playing with
getting out of bounds you've probably been.
Jeep.
No, also, no, I wasn't saying with playing with GPT on trying to get image, imagegeneration, right.
For like cover art.
I, find that I like, I'm, if I lose specificity or lose context on like a specific detail,like in a followup, it, it, it, it slightly changes.
(19:16):
It's like, no, we lost that.
You have to keep the, know, the, I need that border to be 10 by 10 or whatever.
Mm-hmm.
And I told you that last time.
Yeah.
Yes.
So when you're implementing these rules, you're going to create a file.
It's going to be .cursor rules in the root directory of your project.
And then open up your web browser and go to cursor.directory.
(19:37):
And there's going to be a whole crap load of examples of cursor rules for differentdisciplines or different technologies, right?
Whether that's like iOS development or React apps or SuperBase.
you name it, someone's written some rules.
And so you can kind of copy and paste what you need and then go through the entire ruleset and delete what is irrelevant to your project.
(20:03):
Yeah, and then you've got your to do, you've got your read me and you've got your cursorrules.
You're basically after the races at that point.
Okay.
Okay.
Excellent.
is that a tip from unit four?
Is that, w where does that come from?
Okay.
All right.
I might just go ahead and take a poke at some of those videos here this afternoon before Isit down.
(20:24):
Like it's not, there's all the videos in it are probably only what 45 minutes an hour orno, they'd not get longer as they go.
this is, this is unit five, the capstone.
Um, you know, unified is much longer, considerably longer.
Yeah.
Way more complicated.
And I, that's a good thing.
Like it's, it's got all the things that I'm looking to put into the thing I want to build.
(20:47):
So yeah, I'm only four videos in and there's lots to go.
So.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Yeah, I've been enjoying, I've just been enjoying playing with it.
I upgraded to pro on cursor pretty quickly because I burned through the initial credits.
And now I'm like, is the $20 a month level going to be enough or am I going to need to goto 40?
(21:10):
Please take my money if so.
Yeah.
However, I have now signed up for enough tools where I'm like, I need these things tostart making me money.
It's all fun and games, but now I at least need to cover my costs.
No, absolutely.
Well, yeah, I don't mind.
I'll, I'll, I'll happily pay for 20 bucks a month for cursor for indefinitely, for, aslong as I'm playing with it, just as a, as a little toy, it's, fun.
(21:37):
It's a fun toy enough.
Like I'll, pay that for.
Honestly, for like Xbox, Xbox live or something.
I pay more for that than, you know, use it less some months.
So most months, any months.
But yeah, like what are some of the examples of other things that you've ended up kind ofsigning up for?
(21:57):
Any things you would avoid or say don't bother wasting your time with or I didn't, I gotout of it.
well, I'm, I have been exploring possible competitors, so I want to see how they're doingit now.
What weaknesses they may have.
I'm kind of like probing around.
so that costs a good deal.
You know, it's easy to drop or it's easy to, yeah, all of a sudden 250 bucks is kind ofblown up.
(22:25):
Yeah.
Pretty quick.
what
else.
There are other things that I've played with that haven't committed to.
There was one that came across my radar, I think just through Googling called MindSera,M-I-N-D-S-E-R-A.com.
And it's like a AI journaling app.
(22:45):
And the reason I was Googling it is also competitors.
I was thinking like, maybe I could build something like that.
And I wanted to see what else was out there.
Moral of the story, there's lots of competitors already.
But MindSera seems to, I haven't played with many of the others yet, but anyway, I thinkit's interesting because you could use it as like morning pages or daily diary sort of
(23:07):
thing.
And then it is aiming to get insights out of it for you.
like.
I think the practice of writing every single day like that is by itself completely amazingfor your brain and your mental health.
But if that journal could go back and talk to you and say like, here are some stoicprinciples that may, that have helped others and may help you based on what you wrote, or
(23:37):
here is a CBT technique that helps people.
catastrophize less or any number of things like that.
I mean, it's edging close and it's like close, it's not therapy, it's close to, it'sgiving, it's handing you tools, which I think is just kind of incredible.
(23:59):
And then you can also,
These are premium features that I haven't really played with, you're supposedly be able tolike chat with your journal.
So imagine that you've got two years of journal in this app.
You could just chat with it.
Like who was I on June of 2023, right?
And can you enter all this like auditory like over audio or do you have to type it out?
(24:22):
How is, what's the, what are the,
If you pay, you can talk to it and then it'll transcribe.
The free version, I think, is it's type only.
you know, if MindSera, M-I-N-D-S-E-R-A, I believe.
So anyway, yeah, just kind of poking around, trying to see where I might insert myself,you know?
(24:47):
Yeah, why not?
Right?
Um, like that, what you said, like it sounds really interesting because, uh, um, like itactually was exactly very much something I've been wanting, uh, this week I was during my
commute.
I had a couple of days where I just had like all these thoughts and it's like, Oh, I needto write that down.
(25:09):
I want get to work, write that down.
I get to work, write that down.
I get to work.
And by the time I got there, I got like two of them.
And then like people were in my office and like, was like,
I didn't get to those other things.
Like if I had a, you know, an AI tool that I could transcribe that to, and then put itinto my workflow, you know, a little commute buddy for lack of better term.
(25:32):
Yeah, that's part of it.
And I think the magic with AI here is, well, I mean, the leveling up magic is reallyincredible.
They're like questioning you, getting more details out of you, and then giving you helpfuladvice and tips.
But the...
I pulled, I pulled up MindSera I don't necessarily want the mental health aspect quite asmuch, but I mean, I guess that would, that's not a bad thing, but just the, the,
(25:55):
being able to take unstructured just like I've thrown words at you and like make them intosomething for later.
That's pretty cool.
because there's a lot of unstructured data in my life and I'm looking forward to more ofit being structured.
think I could really capitalize on things more.
I mean, life is just unstructured data, mostly.
(26:16):
It's what you do with it.
Well, I think that's why some people go further than others.
so if we're taking this baby in a direction of kind of building these things out andseeing what we do along with that.
what does that mean to you?
(26:37):
Wait, what does what mean to me?
Well, I mean, so like we're talking about, you know, we're talking about like kind ofpivoting, not pivoting, but like taking the focus of what we're doing here into kind of
building in public.
Right.
So it, so, okay.
So, so is it, you know, we'd also talked about wanting to talk about branding and, and,and creating something central around that.
So, is there any of those discussions you want to have here on air?
(26:59):
We can do it on air.
And I will start with saying that like I have deep concerns and not much direction toapply to our branding or messaging because I kind of like our exploratory, like who knows
where it goes.
It's really hard to let that go, but every single piece of advice would tell you that youneed to focus on your message and sort of like get that.
(27:29):
message slash all tangential messages and stick with it rather than like jump around.
I think there's truth to that.
Um, because yeah, we, do have a lot of areas we've covered and talked about, I thinkthings that are interesting, but I do think, being more centrally focused and themed, I
(27:49):
think is, is not a bad idea.
But, but then is it, so is it adding specific elements into, these discussions every weekor sharing certain things, or, is it, you know, setting some goals for a specific project
that we can, we can talk about, you know, how we did that and, you know, people can thengo to the website and see the results type of thing.
(28:10):
There's probably no good answer or right answer, obviously.
Well, yeah, that's kind of what I ended up concluding was like, there's no right answerjust because like the path, the, the fastest to travel path includes.
honing a message and staying on message doesn't mean that that's the path we need to take.
(28:31):
Maybe we have an extremely broad and curious message and we want to stick with that andnot be beholden to being narrowed down and because of that our build will be harder and
longer but our souls will be more fed along the way.
fine with that.
I like that.
(28:52):
also I was going to say, you know, I was thinking to, Mr.
Beast's advice, make a hundred episodes and come talk to me.
So, you know, so we're only at, you know, 22, 23 right now.
so, you know, we, got, we're, we're still, think.
I, I, yeah, I think it's, I think it's okay to still be in exploratory mode at this pointand develop, and maybe it always is an exploratory mode.
(29:19):
That's what the point of the podcast is.
the, we're exploring and that's why we are continually giving Unqualified Advice.
We're exploring new areas and we are not experts in these things, but we're exploring themand exploring them with, you know, you our listeners and viewers
trying to be out front and encouraging others to be out front.
You don't even have to follow us.
(29:39):
Be out front.
I feel like that is, that's being out front.
can only compete against yourself, right?
So I'm not trying to be like, well, Elon Musk is already there, so no one is actually outfront anymore.
No, no, no, no.
We all have our own things.
And I want you, you, Mr.
Individual, to push yourself, be out front for yourself, right?
(30:02):
I don't know.
That's how I feel.
I it.
I see what you mean.
I like that definition about front better than my definition about front to be quitefrank.
OK.
as a note, I've been using Kurt, not cursor, obsidian.
I'm exclusively in obsidian now.
have you been having any experience with it?
(30:23):
Not really.
I'm still just completely disorganized.
know if I...
I want like an AI just to like look at my computer and be like, here, here, I organizedeverything for you.
Look at every file.
don't care.
Just organize me.
I
My work and personal life are so disjointed and competing.
(30:47):
I don't know, I don't know how, I always get lost trying to organize myself.
Yeah, that's a problem.
Isn't it?
It's like you're getting lost in just the organization part.
All right, should we pivot to like another arena?
I think so, today.
discuss this one.
(31:08):
Nietzsche describes three modern vices.
One, overwork.
To be constantly busy is self-negation.
It betrays a will to forget oneself.
Two, curiosity.
Vague curiosity about everything without deep obsessions goes nowhere.
(31:29):
Sympathy.
Sympathy for all equals a refusal to rank good and bad.
I like.
was provocative and interesting, so that's why I wrote it down.
this framework and all right, so point number two immediately takes my mind back toAmusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman and talking about as we got the, as modern
(31:55):
society came around and had the ability to send teletypes and pass just written messages.
That's great.
But what does a man in Texas need to know of a man going on and of a man in Denver's life?
Like it doesn't, it doesn't give you any information.
You might be curious, but there's, can't do anything with that information.
you see these things and hear people, you know, talking about them and you get, you spendmental energy to go find out what what's going on.
(32:17):
And then you realize, I don't care about that.
Or that's, you know, a waste of my time or, or you get.
Yeah.
You're just, you're just beaming photons into your eyeballs and it's, that's it.
Then the dopamine drip.
Yeah, Yeah, so that one definitely resonated with me right away.
(32:37):
I think...
Without deep obsession goes nowhere.
Vague curiosity without deep obsession goes nowhere.
So yeah, you can't be deeply obsessed, obsessed about everything, right?
So you have to selectively curate your interests, I suppose, and spend the time dedicatingsome time to actually explore those interests.
(33:02):
How do you, how do you, how do you solve this modern vice or how do you prevent yourselffrom, from suffering from this modern vice?
Yeah, cultivate interests and try.
I think this is where like you're supposed to be like vaguely curious when you're young,right?
Everything, you can be curious about everything, but then you should be honing that in asyou travel down the timeline.
(33:26):
And then.
I feel like there's like an obvious push.
No, he wants you to have deep curiosity, focused curiosity.
yeah, it's, it's about having the, the duality of, of, of your right brain and your leftbrain, your, your, right brain perceiving everything in your left brain getting focused,
(33:48):
right?
It might be, I might be flipping those two around.
Apologize if I am Dr.
McGillchrist.
But,
If you're listening.
If you're listening or Tom Morgan, if you're listening for that matter, I have a betterchance at that one.
Maybe.
yeah, but so you have, know, one side of your brain that's there to help focus oneverything and be generally aware of yourself, of your place in the surroundings.
(34:15):
And you have another side of your brain that's there to focus and, and try to rationallymake sure that everything is.
you know, working in a little bit better and communicating correctly.
And I'm not summarizing this at all correctly or well.
Um, but you know, you can have one side of the brain kind of get over dominant indifferent ways and that can lead to, you know, different good things or bad things,
(34:35):
depending upon, upon what happens.
So, you know, if you're, if you go and go completely just just looking at outer space andjust being vaguely curious, not ever focusing on anything like.
I think in Nietzsche's sense here, it's kind of unfulfilling, but in like a more.
In a more biological and survival sense, that's what gets you killed because you're notlooking at you're actually paying attention to the dangers you get this how you get
(35:00):
whacked.
So I don't know.
That's an interesting point.
Yeah.
There's so many things that are of our modern life that are against our evolution.
That's just one of many.
That's why I love exploring some of the way our minds work and how they've evolved.
(35:22):
It's helped me.
It's helped me feel, I don't know, it's helped me change my perception in some ways andfeel better about not beating myself up as much about shit as I used to.
For what it's worth, I don't know.
no, I was built this way.
But my world is another way.
Yeah, yeah.
And also then not getting sucked into the certain loops that I'm like, shit, this is justa loop.
(35:44):
Yeah, I keep going.
I always go back to like the knowledge of power thing.
It's like the evolutionary biology stuff makes me more and more inoculated against thethings that are constantly crashing upon my shore, if you will.
Right?
It's not perfect, but it's better than not knowing.
(36:05):
The only other thing I was gonna add is like this, I feel like a particular pushback,especially if you don't think about this deeply, the vague curiosity about everything
without deep obsessions goes nowhere.
And it's like, well, shouldn't you be curious about all the people you meet?
And I'd be like, yes, affirmative.
But that's not vague.
(36:25):
That is a deep obsession with the curiosity of the people around you.
around you, vague curiosity is being kind of curious about everybody on the internet thatyou're never actually going to meet or interact with.
But you see a little text line with AI bot three, four, eight, three, and you care what itsays.
Like that's, that's a vague curiosity about everything that's not healthy.
(36:47):
All right, which one do you want to tech next, overwork or sympathy?
let's save sympathy.
I think that one deserves to be last.
Overwork to be constantly busy is self negation.
It betrays a will to forget oneself.
So this is like avoidance.
to be unable to sit with oneself?
(37:07):
To be so afraid of your own mind that you can't be with oneself?
I would also say it's the, you were not your emotions.
And when you're constantly busy, were constantly under surge or no, or under attack ofyour emotions.
(37:31):
you, your motor, like being in some sense, think busy is an emotion.
you get, you get wrapped up in that emotion and I think it's addictive.
Like for some people it's addictive.
mm-hmm.
Yeah.
get, and they get dopamine from that in a way or something that like that.
So the being constantly.
Yeah.
Like they're, they're, they're, they're seeking that constant busyness, but the problem isin that they don't realize they have other emotions too.
(37:53):
Right.
And so they can't forget that part of themselves and then like, then see the othersoutside of it.
or they're being busy because they believe that they are in service of others when in factthat constituency that they are trying to serve would rather have them not their business.
Yeah.
(38:13):
Or, or, or rather have that person take time for themselves and, and, hey, you've been,you helped me, but like you're the, you know,
But you need to go sit in the sauna for 20 minutes and just like be you.
haircut.
You need a, I think, I think that's what Queer Eye is all about.
Right.
And on some episodes, if you've ever seen that show, like they have, there's a certainpeople they go, go with it or who are, you that work very hard and do a very poor job of
(38:39):
taking care of themselves.
Um, in a lot of situations.
Um, yeah, no, but who knew, Nietzsche would have gotten me to Queer Eye.
Uh, I didn't see that one coming this morning when I woke up.
Yeah.
All right, sympathy, you ready?
Yeah.
Sympathy.
Sympathy for all is a refusal to rank good and bad.
and then you're like, it's definitely Nietzsche.
(39:01):
So sympathy, sympathy for all equals a refusal to rank good and bad.
Yes.
And also, it sympathy or is it empathy?
guess.
No, think, well, I think empathy is trying to like understand the other, whereas sympathyis feeling bad for the other.
(39:21):
yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that could be good because at times people deserve sympathy, but often I feel like itis not what the person you're giving sympathy to even desires.
So this is very true.
I saw this this week,
(39:43):
yeah.
Do you want to talk about that more?
Is that off limits?
I'll talk about it.
don't know if I'll leave it in.
I'll talk about it though.
so yeah, so unfortunately this weekend, at where I work, we've been going through someorganizational changes, which means that there are some people that used to be employed
with us that no longer are.
(40:04):
And, unfortunately, sometimes I have to be involved in some decisions and this quote,sympathy, sympathy for all these is it refusals to rank good and bad.
Is I think very true because, you know, as managers, when you sit around and haveconversations and you're trying to understand what you're doing.
(40:27):
you know, you'll say something and somebody like surprised, that, that name, that person.
And it's like, yes, you're saying that because you're sympathetic to their situation.
You see them as a person and I have to sit here and say, I'm looking.
six, 12 months down the line, what do I need this team to develop into?
And what are the building blocks I need?
Cause we're not going to be fully structured now.
(40:48):
So what are the building blocks I'm going to have to rebuild to get to that point?
And,
Yeah, I so I think Nietzsche is spot on here.
I don't have anything better to say about it than that, I think.
Okay, since
also, think, I will say, think telling everybody on, their team that they're great andthey're equal constantly is also a disservice and an unkindness.
(41:12):
I think there is kindness and honesty and saying, Hey, yeah, so and so is the best on theteam at this.
And I need you to go take a class and get better at that.
Or, you don't have to call them specifically terrible or be mean about it, but you can letthem know that there are.
There are.
levels of performance and ability.
(41:34):
yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So yeah, it does.
want to keep your top performers, then you cannot abide by poor performers.
and you cannot.
here I think is like a very similar, he's trying to say similar things.
It's like, it's not, it's, the world of equality doesn't exist and it never has and itnever will.
(41:54):
There will be differences.
And frankly, we should probably spend a lot of time celebrating those differences becausethat's what makes the world a beautiful place.
But when it comes to measuring a person's ability to execute whatever, whether that is thepole vault or a memo,
there are distinctions and people are better than others and we should try to elevate theones that do better at the things that they perform well on and find space for the people
(42:24):
who are doing something that maybe they don't perform great at but create space room andlike experimentation or whatever to get them towards something that they might perform
better at.
Yeah.
I think, I think that that's right.
so sympathy being a vice because like, so the, his, his argument here is that overworkcuriosity and sympathy are the three vices of modern life.
(42:51):
And I dig, I dig.
Like I feel, I feel you look on social media and you see a lot of people who are, youknow, posting productivity porn and trying to say how, how, yeah, how busy they are and
being always on top and always on the go.
Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, exactly.
(43:13):
Or saying, you need to be, you know, always looking at what's going on on
on social media and being aware of the latest thing.
And I think also we saw this playing out in the last several years, sympathy, trying to beoverly sympathetic for everybody, not saying, hey, they're a real person, sure, great, but
(43:38):
they also are a mugger.
And we need to be able to have degradations.
Yeah.
Yes.
So I can see these elements playing out.
Not in everybody, you I'm just saying like you see them happening a lot on social mediaspecifically.
go find out if this is real, just open up Twitter or something.
(44:01):
You'll figure it out in a few seconds.
No, that was good.
I'm glad that caught your eye.
I did not expect to re I did not expect that to resonate with me when I first glanced atit.
was like, okay.
Okay.
But then I was like, no, actually this is a spot on.
I don't know why I'm surprised.
(44:23):
you've been coming at coming in hot with Nietzsche and Jung lately.
I mean, Gene Jung Well, wait for it.
There's going to be some Machiavelli coming too.
are you reading The Prince or something?
What's going on?
I'm gonna reread The Prince after I finish this book called The Machiavellians.
Machiavellians.
I just picked it up.
(44:43):
Andreessen, for better or worse.
He recommended it.
So there's two books I got from him.
This one, public truths and public lies.
So it's like preference falsification, which I think we've seen a lot of people hidingtheir actual views from one another.
(45:03):
And then this book, this guy, this professor is, I think he's a Duke and that's what hisresearch is on.
It's like what happens to societies when that particular behavior gets too big.
You know, we're always gonna hide certain things about ourselves, right?
But like when it becomes way too popular or normalized to like toe the party line or hideyour true preferences, what happens to like society, countries, whatever.
(45:30):
I think that's an interesting question that I don't know anything about and wanna read thebook.
And then the Machiavellians, I don't know, it's like political freedom or something likethat.
I don't know.
I'm wondering if I'm gonna like have a hard time getting through it, but.
I was curious, so I went ahead and bought it.
While we're on books, this one I want you to read.
(45:51):
I desperately want you to read it.
It's called Boom by Bern Hobart.
I have been, that's been on my radar.
Boom by Bern Hobart has been on my radar.
He writes The Diff right?
Okay, yes.
Made me think about things completely differently and going back like radical, like what,what I, I'm this year I'm doing radical acceptance and aspiring, aspiring optimism,
(46:21):
optimism right there.
even in the face of chaos, right?
Or, and uncertainty.
It's like optimism.
I'm just really digging it because it's like it's basically saying booms in the economy.
Well, I shouldn't say that it's not just economy booms generally whether that's like Thehive mind or the economy or some other thing booms are part and parcel with innovation If
(46:45):
we are advancing we will have booms and booms are good, even though it can leave a path ofdestruction behind The booms built out all the fiber optic cable in the country and then
most of it was dark
unused until 20 years later it was like super important that all that stuff had alreadybeen laid.
The United States has some of the best freight rail on on the face of the planet becauseof railroad booms.
(47:11):
All the railroads basically went bust all at the same time because of overbuilding.
The Manhattan Project was a boom.
Yeah it was.
And then there are like follow on booms.
So the Manhattan Project creates the Apollo Project.
Right.
And so he spins these tales and paints this picture through history and I think it's superfascinating.
(47:39):
I've really been enjoying listening to it and it's not terribly long.
I've been listening to it and then kind of like going back and like,
say, I already put it in my queue in my library.
So I've acquired it.
It will be consumed is all I can say.
Okay.
that one I'm excited for.
The other two, I feel like are, I'm self-assigned to homework.
(48:03):
I'm like, don't, Andreesen went like so, his pivot was so, yeah, I'm like, I need tounderstand more.
That's all.
And I felt like those are the two books that, yeah.
I mean, that's also why I kind of wanted to do Sovereign Individual, right?
(48:24):
And where are, have you finished it?
Are you halfway done, 60 %?
I've been listening to it and I think I have two hours and something left.
Out of what 18 or that's a long book.
% done with it.
I may, you know what, next time let's make a point to just wherever we're at, we're gonnagive our final thoughts and be done with it.
(48:46):
wanna be, because I'm also, because I can't take it, I'm mixing in two other things at thesame time.
And.
Yeah, okay.
So next time we talk, next time we record, let's just do it.
Let's get it out.
Otherwise, we're both doing ourselves a disservice by him delaying it.
like I've been working in Super Communicators uh, which is I'm really digging so far.
(49:08):
Yeah.
Charles doing, um, and then, uh, uh, abduction by John E Mack medical doctor, um,following up on the heels of our discussion around the telepathy tapes.
Uh, I listened to Tom, Morgan on Bill Brewster and he went off on his getting in thefascination of abductions and it's.
ironic because the guy, somebody who I recommended, Telepathy Tapes to recommended thisbook to me about abductions.
(49:34):
So I took it as a sign and I'm working my way through that and it is a fascinatingoverlap.
and that's all I'm going to say for now.
And this is a medical doctor from where?
Harvard.
What time frame was this book written in?
he's interviewing people in the book in the mid nineties and I had a 20th anniversary,25th anniversary, think like late nineties when it was released early two thousands.
(49:58):
Wow, okay.
So it was before internet easy cameras.
Mm hmm.
Yes.
And a lot of the experiences are dating back to the 70s because he's interviewing peoplefrom, you know, different age groups.
So it's kind of a covering a range of experiences of, know, according to the book, he'sinterviewed hundreds of people who claim to have had abduction experiences and he's doing
(50:26):
hypnotic regression with them to kind of go back and understand the experiences.
And he's
the woo was strong.
a collection of case studies of specific stories and it's interesting to see thesimilarities and subtle differences between them.
also, again, how it relates to the telepathy tapes.
(50:48):
I'm not positive, but I'm thinking there's eventually going to be a case study exploringthat level of consciousness, I think.
I'm not positive, yeah, there's a lot of telepathic communication going on so far in thefirst three, four case studies I've gotten through.
And if you're into that sort of thing and if you liked the X-Files growing up or you everlistened to Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell or George Noory you might check it out.
(51:15):
Otherwise, you know, probably just leave it to me.
Ha ha ha ha!
I'll give that a qualified review so far.
Well, I think the other thing is this is such a...
Did you buy it or I mean it's like very freely available via PDF.
(51:35):
you did mention that to me.
Yeah, OK.
I'm just wondering like I'm probably not going to.
a lot of audio books free on Spotify for you audio book listeners out there.
If you have a Spotify account, don't sleep on that.
If you are out of audible credits.
Search there first to see if it's just free.
I was just thinking that since it's very available via PDF, I'm going to download it,upload it to a specific GPT, and then go on a walk and just ask it questions.
(52:00):
Well now that's interesting.
That sounds like a fun way to do that.
You say a specific GPT, do not want to tell us which GPT that is?
No, no, I mean like making one that then is just like you upload the PDF and that's likebasically it doesn't that's not all it knows but it knows that that is in the context
window the entire time.
I got you.
Okay, that makes sense.
(52:21):
That makes sense.
Okay.
so like the projects in, and, yeah, in chat GPT.
Okay.
I follow that.
Yeah.
I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm learning.
I'm learning all about context and how to keep things in, in, in the space of when you're,when you're trying to get these tools to do something, you have to, we're coming back to
this, but you have, you have to keep that fresh in its mind.
(52:44):
It has a reasoning capability, but not a great memory is I guess the way I'd put it.
big problem.
That's gonna be the, I think, I hope that's like the next big leap.
I...
Because if your context window could be like, years long, right?
(53:04):
Be amazing.
I wonder how much data you need for the type of context window you're talking about too.
Like how, because it's not as though I need it to be HD video, right?
Like the, the data set itself of the context is actually relatively small, probably only agig or two.
(53:24):
so how, like, can you, could you somehow hack a context when you're your own that is likebuilding up this, like, here's my ongoing.
reference database of things I want you to think about in this project and just have thatslowly building as you're, as you're continuing to use your application that you build on
(53:45):
it.
It's building that context, putting it in the background and then always referencing it.
Or, you know, you can say, Hey, check the context window for, for the, don't know.
I don't know enough.
That's yeah, I don't.
couldn't you just do that right now?
Like, I don't know why we like, I'm thinking about how you would do it with like thetools, the tools we're seeing in like cursor, even that, that gum loop thing.
(54:06):
looking at how that, how that operated and when, and would loop out and spit out,information into data files and then pull it in.
built this prompt and you're reusing the prompt over and over and over over again.
yeah, guess it's not really the same as context.
No, different in the context.
Like that's fine.
I can, it's actually a whole heck of a lot cheaper to just have a new, new chat enteredevery single time with a four page long prompt in order to get what I want.
(54:28):
Right.
Versus the like, I've uploaded a book and I've had 18 conversations with this book and Iwould like to continue having more without it completely shitting the bed and not having
context anymore.
Right.
Cause I wanted to retain my
interrogation of that material or something.
(54:49):
And how it processed what it said about it.
That's interesting.
Because why isn't that just the list of your questions?
You know what I mean?
which again, isn't very much space, but you're, it's like just building a.
Well, then you've just got a one-sided conversation, right?
Just because the answers were generated by AI doesn't mean they were of no conversationalworth, right?
(55:13):
And like it needs to understand the logic at which it, it arose that answer for thefollow-up question, right?
It's about maintaining the, the, the logic tree to how it answered the question.
So if you ask a follow-up, then it can say, well, yes, you, you know, I interpreted thatway.
And then if we think about it, it needs to understand that logic tree, I guess in some, insome way, I don't know.
I'm making wild guesses here and talking about things I have no right to talk about.
(55:35):
I, you know, within three months, I think we will know more.
Because we will have experienced it.
It won't be like in a white paper.
It'll be real life.
That's true.
yeah, later this afternoon, I might know more.
Yeah, you are going to know more.
Yeah, I'm excited for your afternoon.
Sounds fun.
Yeah, yeah, Jamie's out having fun and I'm gonna sit here and be good and play on thecomputer.
(56:01):
Yeah, as boys do.
Yeah, likewise.
Thanks everybody for tuning in to Unqualified Advice,
We'll see you next time.
Thanks for, I don't know why I always struggle over the end, Dan.
Do you got anything better than I do?
for tuning in.
We love you all.
We appreciate you.
And if you can find us on the Twitter's mailing at slow VSM for Sean and at Daniel Hatkefor me, send us some DMs.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd is a thought-provoking, opinionated, and topic-driven journey through the top sports stories of the day.