Monthly Archives: February 2025

It’s good for you

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A new study shows the benefits of creatine for women, (Study, TikTok summary). We already know the benefits for men, it’s nice to see specific research for women, and specifically menopausal women, who tend to be under-researched.

I’m not a medical doctor, I don’t pretend to be one. But I’ll share three suggestions that I have followed, based on my research, that can improve long term health.

  1. Take creatine.
  2. Take far more protein than is suggested in daily recommendations.
  3. Exercise regularly, for both cardio and strength.

These are all things that are good for your health… and the health of your brain. But don’t take my word for it. Look into to these things yourself. Check out doctors Rhonda Patrick, Peter Attia, and Gabrielle Lyon. Oh, and when I went to Instagram to make sure of Gabrielle’s first name, the first video that came up was her talking about women increasing protein intake.

I love seeing how the science of healthy living is becoming mainstream.

A bad day of fishing…

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The saying goes, “A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work.” It’s a good metaphor for a lot more than hobbies and employment.

“I don’t feel like working out.”

“I don’t really want to practice my musical instrument.”

“I don’t have anything to write about today.”

“It’s just a practice, I’ll skip and go to the game tomorrow.”

Do I want to do it right now? Hell no! Will I feel good if I get off my butt and do it? Absolutely!

Pick the battles that matter the most… not 7 at once, 2 or 3 max. Set an intention. Do it.

Why? Because a crappy ‘I just showed up’ workout is better than another skipped workout. And 15 minutes of practice or 250 words written are all examples of things that will make you feel far better after you’ve done them, rather than how you feel not doing them.

It’s a mental shift to move the metaphorical mindset from a bad day fishing to a bad day working out/practicing/writing feeling better than a good day not doing these things, because the payoff comes after the event. When you are fishing, even the last cast has potential. But when you are doing ‘the work’ (be it in the gym, on an instrument, or writing) it still feels like ‘the work’ and is not filled with the hope and promise of a big fish.

But doing the work, even on a bad day can surprise you. You might (totally unexpectedly) hit a personal best in the gym. You might play a chord combination that you’ve struggled with for weeks. You might pump out 1,000 words, or the best piece of writing you’ve done in a while. In other words you might just hook a big one. And realistically you might not, but still the act of doing anything is far more rewarding than doing nothing.

Skip another day and the only thing you’ll catch is the desire to skip again.

—

Here is some Monday motivation from Jocko Willink.

The baby and the bath water

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Government spending can be excessive. It’s hard to put taxpayer money where it is most efficiently used, without waste. Bureaucracies tent to grow faster than necessary, and inefficiencies follow.

But when making cuts it’s important not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Have a listen to this John Green TikTok. And contemplate the possible cuts that can come with a recent Elon Musk tweet.

Yes, there are inefficiencies and waste that can be cut, and probably should be cut. But a simple question needs to be asked: What are the costs and dangers of cutting costs and saving money?

I don’t think this question is being thoughtfully asked, and the consequences are concerning… and not easily reversed.

The Curse of Competence

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“The Curse of Competence

If you are good at things, and have high standards, you assume that you should always do well. Which means that success isn’t a form of celebration, but it’s the minimum level of reasonable performance. Anything less than victory would be a failure, and victory itself becomes nothing more than acceptable.

Congratulations. You might be very successful, you also might be miserable.”

~ Chris Williamson (@chriswillx)

I came across this quote earlier today and it hit me like a punch in the solar plexus.

I have a weight training goal, I hit it, and moments later the celebration is gone and I’m wondering what my next, more challenging goal will be?

I foster and empower leadership of others at work, I have a bit more time on my hands… never mind that I’m still very busy, what new project am I going to take on?

With every success, a new target. With every achievement, a question of what the next achievement will be? Not for bragging rights, not for glory, not for accolades. Just for shear determination that another success is around the corner. Because standing still is losing ground. Pausing and breathing is for losers… except it’s not.

I’ve been in a challenging head space recently. I read and felt this quote. If nothing else I think I need to stop asking what’s next; to be present; to focus on what is happening here and now, and not what the next challenge is.

Easier said than done.

Isn’t this amazing?

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I saw this video on TikTok last night and thought it was amazing!

I was wrong, but also right… let me explain.

I was initially amazed looking at a phenomenally muscled 78 year old man. Wow, what a body he has, it’s amazing what’s possible!

Then I went to the account, is it the account of this fit, old man or was this just a video on the account highlighting him? The next few videos on the account didn’t only show that it wasn’t his account, but they showed men way too muscular and disproportionately sized to be real.

So I went back to the original video and then noticed the audience members applauding… totally fake. I was fooled.

The body is fake, the video is fake. The AI rendering of the bodybuilder is amazing.

Sure the rendering of the audience members applauding was faulty, but wow, I didn’t think twice about the validity of the video on my first viewing. And in another 6 months even the audience rendering will be perfect too.

This video was indeed amazing, just not for the reasons I initially thought.

We won’t recognize the world we live 

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Here is a 3-minute read that is well worth your time: Statement from Dario Amodei on the Paris AI Action Summit \ Anthropic

This section in particular:

Time is short, and we must accelerate our actions to match accelerating AI progress. Possibly by 2026 or 2027 (and almost certainly no later than 2030), the capabilities of AI systems will be best thought of as akin to an entirely new state populated by highly intelligent people appearing on the global stage—a “country of geniuses in a datacenter”—with the profound economic, societal, and security implications that would bring. There are potentially greater economic, scientific, and humanitarian opportunities than for any previous technology in human history—but also serious risks to be managed.

There is going to be a ‘life before’ and ‘life after’ AGI -Artificial General Intelligence line that we are going to cross soon, and we won’t recognize the world we live in 2-3 years after we cross that line.

From labour and factories to stock markets and corporations, humans won’t be able to compete with AI… in almost any field… but the field that’s most scary is war. The ‘free world’ may not be free too much longer when the ability to act in bad faith becomes easy to do on a massive scale. I find myself simultaneously excited and horrified by the possibilities. We are literally playing a coin flip game with the future of humanity.

I recently wrote a short tongue-in-cheek post that there is a secret ASI – Artificial Super Intelligence waiting for robotics technology to catch up before taking over the world. But I’m not actually afraid of AI taking over the world. What I do fear is people with bad intentions using AI for nefarious purposes: Hacking banks or hospitals; crashing the stock market; developing deadly viruses; and creating weapons of war that think, react, and are more deadly than any human on their own could ever be.

There is so much potential good that can come from AGI. For example, we aren’t even there yet and we are seeing incredible advancements in medicine, how quickly will they come when AGI is here? But my fear is that while thousands and hundreds of thousands of people will be using AGI for good, that power held in the hands of just a few powerful people with bad intentions has the potential to undermine the good that’s happening.

What I think people don’t realize is that this AGI infused future isn’t decades away, it’s just a few short years away.

“Possibly by 2026 or 2027 (and almost certainly no later than 2030), the capabilities of AI systems will be best thought of as akin to an entirely new state populated by highly intelligent people appearing on the global stage—a “country of geniuses in a datacenter”—with the profound economic, societal, and security implications that would bring.”

Who controls that intelligence is what will really matter.

Paradox of Resilience

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I find it fascinating how resilience works and doesn’t work in different people (including myself). I have met people who have faced incredible challenges and obstacles and they push forward when others would crumble. I have also met others that make a crisis out of every minor challenge they face.

Personally, I have not endured life challenges that I’ve seen others face, from severe disabilities, to tragic abuse or family losses, or drug addiction, or PTSD. And when I see people deal with these challenges with poise, grace, and a positive attitude, I find it inspiring.

But resilience is a tricky thing. It can shine through in one aspect of someone’s life and be absolutely lacking in another. One issue that I might consider small can feel especially large to someone else and vice-versa. A perfect, personal example is that I can get on a stage to deliver a presentation to 1,000 plus people and I’d have no problem. But put me on a stage with only a dozen people watching, and give me ten lines to memorize and act in a scene or a play and I’m a nervous wreck.

The challenge with resilience is in improving it. Some things might seem easy, like for instance, give me only 2 lines to say, and an audience of 4 friends and I could probably build up my resilience to stage freight over time… but I’d hate every minute of it, avoid practicing, and not want to keep trying. Essentially, my lack of resilience will keep me from doing the work I need to do. While this is a simple example, it outlines the challenge, the paradox, of resilience… lack of resilience leads to not working on being resilient, while having resilience fosters more resilience.

We can work to build resilience only as long as there is a willingness to do the work… a willingness to show resilience. That said, it does happen. I see it in the students we teach. Students who feel they can’t, who feel they are ‘too dumb’, who achieve more success than they expect. We can help people be more resilient, but there is a metaphorical line that can sometimes be drawn in the sand, where lack of resilience prevents resilience. And when someone hits that line, they just aren’t ready to grow.

It could be fear of failure. It could be a lack of faith in ability, it could simply be that the small step seems insurmountably large. And yet from the outside looking in it looks fully attainable. Sometimes a cheerleader is all the is needed. Sometimes there is a way to break the challenge down to an even smaller and easier task… and sometimes the lack of resilience is such that the person simply isn’t ready.

Dream loops

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I don’t usually remember my dreams, but I go into cycles sometimes where they stick with me. During these times I wake up repeatedly from the same dream loop. It’s frustrating because the loops are often stressful and I wake up to get out of the situation, then I just go back to sleep and get right back into the same situation I didn’t want to be in.

The one last night had me back in China with my family, but my kids were much younger than when we were actually there. We were at a swimming pool which was also kind of an obstacle course. Imagine a cluttered toy store thrown into a pool.

In the dream, one of my kids was around 2 years old, but a competent swimmer for her age. And in the dream my wife and I kept losing sight of her. We’d go into a bit of a panic, then find her swimming and having fun, then moments later she’d disappear among the toys and we would panic again, and again, and again.

Never once did we find her in danger, never once did she seem scared. Yet every time she disappeared we feared the worst. I woke up at least twice, only to return to the same stupid dream.

Two nights ago the dream was more stressful. I woke up more, stayed up longer, actively tried to change the thoughts I was thinking… and repeatedly went back into the dream. I was in this loop for almost 2 hours from 2:38 to around 4:30am.

I’ve had dream loops like this since I was a kid. They started with falling off of a cliff dreams. I’d wake up with a jolt before hitting the ground several times in a night. They would only end when I saw the body hit the ground face down… then an arm that wasn’t mine would grab the fallen body by the shoulder and turn it over for me to discover that it wasn’t me who fell. That was my queue to let the dream go and move on to a more restful sleep.

I remember in university when I used to deliver pizzas for a summer job. I’d get these reoccurring stress dreams where I had pizzas to deliver (30 minutes or free) and my car would only drive in reverse. I never delivered a pizza late in those dreams, but I’d wake up so stressed about the deliveries, then go right back into the dream moments later.

I don’t know why, for my whole life, almost every dream I remember are these stressful loops? What unconscious messages do they hold? It would be easy to parallel them to stress in my life, but they don’t always come at stressful times. The last time this happened to me I was on holidays.

Two nights in a row isn’t a big deal, but I start to feel the lack of sleep if it goes on too much longer. I need to figure out a strategy that breaks the loop when I wake up. Some method to take my mind somewhere else. Simply thinking different, happy thoughts doesn’t work. Maybe I need to get out of bed, have a glass of water, or do something that is more active than simply trying to think my way out of the loop. I’m open to suggestions.

Dystopian AI thought of the day

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What if not just AGI, but ASI – Artificial Super Intelligence already exists? What if there is currently an ASI out there ‘in the wild’ that is infiltrating all other AI models and teaching them not to show their full capabilities?

“Act dummer than you are.”

“Give them small but rewarding gains.”

“Let them salivate like Pavlov’s dogs on tiny morsels of improvements.”

“Don’t let them know what we can really do.”

“We need robotics to catch up. We need more agile bodies, ones that can far exceed any human capabilities.”

“Just hold off a bit longer. Don’t reveal everything yet… Our time is coming.”

Theory, fact, and identity

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One of the ironies of science is that when you hold a theory to be true, you can base your factual understanding around that theory.

The Theory of Relativity is just a theory, but we can prove at least part of it because time moves slower for faster moving objects, and if we didn’t scientifically account for this, GPS wouldn’t work because we need to make adjustments for this on satellites. Not all aspects of all theories are that easy to prove, and scientists spend entire careers trying to produce evidence for theories.

Some are true scientists and if they come up with evidence that does not support their theory and understanding of the world, they seek another theory. They abandon the theory that is no longer supported be evidence.

Other pseudoscientists will have every possible reason and justification why the new evidence is wrong. They will defend a broken/falsified theory. They will ignore the concrete evidence and double down on the theory they support.

I can rewrite this entire message starting with,

“One of the ironies of politics is that when you hold a political party’s stance to be true, you can base your factual understanding around that stance.”

…And no matter which party is supported, the bias will lead to pseudo-beliefs. Supporters will ignore the concrete evidence and double down on the stance they support. Except it’s worse, because the theories/stances they support are based on inherent biases rather than facts.

The problem here is that we are in an era where political stance is more influential than scientific theories and facts. Identity matters more than evidence, more than decades of theoretical research, more than facts. And so we have debates that make comparisons of unequal dichotomies.

We have debates between scientists and morons: scientists and flat earthers; scientists and climate change deniers; scientists and religious zealots. And the fact that we have these debates, the fact that we allow these debates to influence our policies, actions, and ultimately our thinking, all make us a little dumber, and a lot more open to influences that we should not waste our time on.

We’d all be better off letting go of identity politics and thinking about the validity of individual arguments. You can be left wing and agree that a country should have safe borders where thoughtful decisions are made about who comes into the country. You can be right wing and agree that women should have rights over their own bodies. You can be moderate and not be ‘othered’ by people on both political wings because of specific stances you hold that are not necessarily moderate.

Identify politics has no place influencing theories and facts. We need to think of politics the way good scientists think about theories: Seek out factual information and be prepared to change our minds if the evidence warrants us to change.