Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Do you need an alarm clock?

An alarm clock enforces a somewhat unnatural behavior. It's an instrument of management and improvement, not authenticity and enjoyment.

Rephrasing Joe Hudson, you need to manage someone only if they won't do the desired action by themselves without your intervention. That begs the question: do you want to rely on people who need to be forced?

We use alarm clocks to manage ourselves. We force a predefined flow of events instead of letting the situation emerge. As a result, we create a little prison of rules and obligations where there's no place for authentic feelings.

However, how do you balance authenticity with external obligations? You have to collaborate and coordinate with people to achieve ambitious goals. For example, you can't build a company or even a building only by yourself.

So, how can you combine authenticity with coordination?

You can do it by reframing oppressive external obligations to a set of opportunity waypoints you can pursue to achieve desired outcomes.

When your alarm rings, it reminds you that there's a possibility to show up at a meeting, drive kids to school, or go for a morning run. You can take the opportunity, or you can leave it. It's up to you.

Authenticity doesn't die with rules and alarm clocks. It dies when you replace your heart with a set of stagnant regulations.

Can we own AI models collectively?

Another way to look at crypto is as it’s a way to own software collectively. While owning even simple software is fascinating, I think the real power is collectively owning an AI model. Imagine you greater GPT-10, put it on a blockchain, and exercise control over it using the liquid democracy process.

A lot of sci-fi is not digitized

It's crazy to believe you can't read and search short sci-fi stories by Asimov, Sheckley, and Bradbury.

I was trying to remember a short story by Issac Asimov today. ChatGPT didn't recognize it from my description. Google Bard failed as well. Here's the prompt:

Could you find a name of scifi short story about the kid was evaluated for ability to create recorded immersive imaginary experiences?

Some additional info about the plot:
- The kid was evaluated if he can be a professional creator of the experiences or dreams.
- The critical part of being a good creator of the dreams was to create images that remind the watcher multiple things at the time. For example, as part of the exam the kid recorded an experience of flying through the cloud that  reminded him of a pillow.
- The story ends with the the professor talking with the parents and explaining that creating immersive dreams is a great career path

Google Search failed. I was able to find it only using Google Books directly:

It only exists as a physical book that is out of print. So I bought a used copy of it from Amazon. The funny thing is I still don't know the story's name. I will learn it only when I receive the book and open it on page 154.