Author Archives: David Truss

Remembrance Day

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I shared this in 2019. This and my “Two Wolves” post that I first shared 18 years ago today say more about this day than anything I can pretend to write now. I hope you get as much out of reading the following post and my Two Wolves post as I got out of writing them.

~ With gratitude for all those who sacrificed so that I didn’t have to.

In Remembrance 2019

Both of my grandfathers are Jewish and they escaped Europe before World War II. One left Poland with his parents, siblings, and his uncle’s family. The rest of the family stayed because they were in the sweater business and didn’t know what they would do in a warm destination in the Caribbean? For some of them, wiped out in the 2nd German invasion of Poland, the answer would have been ‘lived’.

My other grandfather was in the Ukrainian show cavalry, much like the Canadian Royal Mounted Police Musical Riders, but he was too short and would stand on his stirrups during inspections. One day a guest inspector had them dismount and he did not pass the inspection, so he was going to be sent to the regular army. He bribed a doctor to say he had a medical condition and escaped to Italy, then in an adventure that I’ll share another time, he found his way to British Guyana, where my father was born, then to Barbados where my parents met.

We moved to Toronto when I was 9. As a young teenager, I still knew very little of the war, but my grandparents knew people less lucky than they were, who did not escape Europe. I remember that we were at a party once and many of my grandparents friends were there, including some that still had their tattoos from concentration camps. We were in an apartment party room, with about 50 to 60 people and as was usually the case we had more food than we could possibly eat. When my family cooked for a gathering, at the end of the night it was rare for us to not be dividing up as much food left behind as was eaten! We had an abundance of food that night and so it was shocking for me to hear the following story the next day.

The party was in full swing and it was time for everyone to forgo the snack table and start eating dinner. My aunt was behind one of my grandparent’s friends, who was a holocaust survivor from one of the concentration camps. In front of him was another person in line. The person in front of him added some chicken wings from a platter of wings that was still almost full, and as this person looked for more food he held his plate slightly behind him. My aunt watched the holocaust survivor take some wings off of the person in front’s plate and place them onto his plate in one quick motion. It happened so quickly she had to think about what she actually saw. Then she also saw the almost full platter of wings still on the table, available for all to have.

It was still upsetting for my aunt, even as she retold this story the next day. I still remember the story over 35 years later. What did this holocaust survivor endure that, even in a time of overabundance, he had this urge to steal food from another’s plate? What was he re-living? What other ways did his past haunt him?

When I watch videos of veterans today, and hear stories of those who fought in wars, many say they wake up every day thinking of the friends they lost. When I went to the War Museum in Dieppe, France,  I heard video accounts of a massacre, that bore valuable lessons for the Western Allies before their D-Day attack. And when I visited the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, Israel, I truly began to understand the horror of man’s inhumanity against man. I wrote a post that reflected on this visit titled ‘Two Wolves‘ that I still re-read and share every Remembrance Day. From that post, I will leave you this quote, followed by the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by Canadian World War I doctor, John McCrae:

“There are parts of History we should not forget. After all, World War One was the ‘war to end all wars’… And so I am writing this on Remembrance Day for a reason. Whether it be concentration camps and the Holocaust or Hiroshima and Nagasaki or genocide in Russia, Rwanda, or East Timor… or any tragic historical event worth remembering… we choose to remember so that we do not repeat our mistakes. We must want and hope that things can be better. We must see lessons learned, not resentment and mistrust. The past will repeat itself if we do not see ‘joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith’… faith that tomorrow can be better than today.”

Take time to remember those that served, those that suffered, and those that were lost, so that we can have the freedom and liberties we have today.

—–

In Flanders fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
~ John McCrae, May 3rd, 1915

In Flanders Fields

Thank you to Roy Henry Vickers for sharing his Poppy design, used as the feature image for this post. 

AI as ‘Journey Thief’… Continued

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In yesterday’s post, ‘Journey Thief‘ I focused on artificial intelligence stealing the learning journey of students. In a comment, Karen Flello said,

“I used to ask students how they would know if they liked a subject (topic, activity) if they had never tried it. Then we talked about how “in the real world” we use things in ways we never expected. And maybe they are right – maybe they will not use a particular skill again. But if they never had exposure, they would not have the opportunity to find out what they would use (or like, or want to know more about). And I agree that AI can rob us of the learning in service of producing something that earns a grade. We have not earned it – we have not learned it – and that is the sad part. AI should be a tool to help us. But “help” means we, in fact, are doing something in the first place. And prompting some other thing / person to do something for us does nothing for developing imagination, skill, or resilience. We just get better at asking something / someone else to do it for us. A whole new kind of dependence.”

And I replied,

“Great to hear from you Karen,
That idea of lack of developing imagination, and also dependence on AI to do the work (and ultimately the thinking) is one of the biggest fears I have with AI. I’m simultaneously excited about AI taking humanity to new insights and new heights, while also deeply concerned about how much it can steal from our own learning journeys.”

This got me thinking about recent developments in Mathematics. In the past couple weeks AI has been solving a significant number of problems and conjectures that have stumped the best mathematical minds for entire lifetimes. This is incredibly destabilizing for the field.  Imagine being one of the foremost experts on a mathematical problem, having dedicated years of schooling and even more years afterwards to solving an seemingly unsolvable problem… Then having an answer dumped out of a computer along with answers to several more difficult problems that others in your field have also committed their lives to solving. You’ve moved from expert seeking answers to expert checking the work of an AI. You’ve moved from researcher and publisher to AI grader. You’ve watched your life work solved, not by someone smarter than you but by a machine that will only get smarter still.

Math is the first of these high knowledge fields to be ‘solved’ by AI, what’s next? It seems physics is not far behind.

These insights and solutions will do a lot to improve the understanding of these fields, but for how long? Does a current PHD student in Math who saw a future in solving one of these problems now continue on with their future plans? Does a newly graduated undergrad even decide to continue on with a Math PHD? Does a high school student find excitement in delving into Math when they know that they’ll never solve a problem that AI won’t beat them to?

What happens to these fields in 20 years when all the joy of discovery is stolen by AI? Who in 20 years is going to have the desire to enter this field? I asked Google who the top mathematicians are today and it came up with a list including Terence Tao, Sir Andrew Wiles, Grigori Perelman, Marina Viazovsk, Sir Martin Hairier, and Edward Witten. Who replaces them in a generation when all the problems they seek to solve are already solved by AI?

We already live in a world where only a handful of people really understand how computer chips are made and could help to rebuild the technology if all of the knowledge was lost today. Imagine how few that number will be in 20 years when robots are building AI designed chips to further improve AI. Imagine how many fewer will get into fields like Math and Physics, much less computer programming, when the most they can do is get a tertiary understanding of the field.

Is AI going to rob us of the next Einstein or Newton? Will anyone in 50 years understand the universe as much as the brightest humans today do? …When AI is doing all the work for us?

Like Karen said, “We have not earned it – we have not learned it – and that is the sad part. AI should be a tool to help us. But “help” means we, in fact, are doing something in the first place.”

What work will be left in these fields for humans to do?

___

 

Consciousness and AI – REVISITED

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In my post, Consciousness and AI, I postulated that consciousness evolves only after organisms have idle time:

“I have a theory about consciousness being on a spectrum. That itself isn’t anything new but I think the factors that play into consciousness are: Basic needs, computational ‘processing’, and idleness. Consciousness comes from having more processing time than needed to meet basic needs, along with the inability for processing (early thinking) to be idle, and so for lack of a better word desires are created.

Think of a very simple organism when all of its needs are met. This isn’t a real thought process I’m going to share but rather a meta look at this simple organism: “I have enough heat, light, and food, what should I do with myself?”

  • Seek better food
  • Move closer to the heat or light source
  • Try different food
  • Join another organism that can help me
  • Find efficiencies
  • Find easier ways to move
  • Hunt

At first, these are not conscious decisions, they are only a choice of simple processes. But eventually, the desires grow. Think decisions that start like, “If I store more energy I can survive longer in times of famine.” And evolve to more of a desire not just for survival but for pleasure (for lack of a better word): “I like this food more than other kinds and want more of it.” …All stemming from having idle processing/thinking time.”

Well, now Google is giving AI some idle time. They are calling it dream time, but it’s essentially time for metacognition… thinking about what it has learned. See this TikTok by @parthknowsai:

Later on in my post I say,

“Our brains are answer-making machines. We ask a question and it answers, whether we want it to or not. If I say what does a purple elephant with yellow polkadots look like? You will inevitably think of what that looks like simply from reading the question. I think that is what happens at a very fundamental level of consciousness. When all needs are met the processors in the brain don’t suddenly stop and sit idle. Instead, the questions arise, “How do I get more food?”, “Where would be better for me to move to?” Eventually all needs are met, but the questions keep coming. At first based on simple desires, but more and more complex over generations and eons of time.

So why did I title this, ‘Consciousness and AI’? I think one of the missing ingredients in developing Artificial General (or Super) intelligence is that we are just giving AI’s tasks to complete and process at faster and faster times, and when the processing of these tasks are completed, the AI sits idle. An AI has no built in desire that an organic organism has to use that idle time to ask questions, to want something beyond completing the ‘basic needs’ tasks it is asked to do.

If we figure out a way to make AI curious, to have it desire to learn more, and to not let itself be idle, at that point it will be a very short path to AI being a lot smarter than us.”

And I  conclude:

“If it’s idle time and desires that bring about sentience, then figuring out how to make AI’s naturally curious will be the path to artificial general intelligence… Because they are already at a place where they have unused processing time, which is continuing to grow exponentially fast.”

If my prediction is correct, this sleep/dreaming/processing/distilling, (ultimately ‘free questioning’), time is going to accelerate the true intelligence of AI. And so we are going to see at the very least general, if not super intelligent, artificial intelligence much sooner than might be expected or predicted.

Death of the App?

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When AI allows anyone and everyone to create an APP for your phone when will people start to realize that no one wants 8 pages of apps? Do I need an app that is just an interval timer for working out, or will a website do? Do I really need a meditation app or just a playlist? What about (another) podcast, AI, appointment, parking, or fitness app?

Can I just read an article or input my data on a web page designed to work well on a phone, rather than being asked to open an app that I haven’t used in a month, and then having to log into that app before I can use it? Do I have to be asked… every… single… time… if I want to continue on a website or move to the app? Why is the download process necessary? I understand the challenge of not having data, but if I’m using a parking or appointment app, they are going to need data anyway, so the app is just an extra step, not an efficiency.

I think we are going to start to see some very clever websites evolving. At first the app will still be available, but it won’t actually be an app, it will be like a dedicated web browser opening a specific website. So, you’ll still get the icon on your phone if you want it, maybe because it’s easy to find that way, but pretty soon the only apps you’ll want on your phone are ones like banking and email, where security is important. Other than that, I predict a complete shift away from phone apps in the next 5 years… that is, if we are even interested in still carrying a phone with us in 5 years, but that’s a whole other thing to think about.

___
Related: Breaking the Fourth Wall (Vibe Coding)

The thinking that happens along the way

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Yesterday I re-watched an interview I did with Dean Shareski a couple years ago (and wrote about it). In that interview I lamented that social media and blogging are not what they used to be. I felt a bit of sadness thinking about how rich the conversations were that we had ‘back in the day’… When I’d post something on my Pair-a-Dimes blog and full conversations would happen in the comments and on Twitter, and how this would sometimes even inspire another blogger to write their own post… and this is one of those posts.

From Chris Kennedy’s blog post, Building Our Noticing Muscles:

“After my recent post about What We Notice, my friend Dean Shareski left a comment that challenged me to write some more on the topic. He wondered how much of our ability to notice the little things is inherent and how much is learned. He suggested that noticing, like delight, requires us to pause long enough to appreciate what might otherwise pass us by. And he wondered if we could actually build our noticing muscles.”

Later in the post, Chris wrote a section titled, “Thinking in Blog Posts”. It starts:

“Writing this blog has had a similar effect, although in a different way.

After more than 15 years of writing Culture of Yes, I often find myself thinking in blog posts. I will see something happening in a school, hear an interesting comment in a conversation or read something that makes me curious. I wonder about it. I want to know more. Sometimes I start connecting it to other things I have seen or experienced.

This post is a good example. It began with a comment I could easily have read, appreciated and moved past. Instead, it stuck with me. Many of these ideas go nowhere. They never become posts. And that is fine. The value is often in the thinking that happens along the way.”

Thanks to Chris, I now realize that it wasn’t so much the conversations themselves I enjoyed about the old days of blogging, it was the thinking that happened along the way. And that hasn’t disappeared for me, I just find it in different places. It took a post on ‘noticing’ to help me notice what I couldn’t see. I was stuck on the ideas of lost discussion on blogs, lost engagement on social media, and didn’t notice that I still find these things. I still have my thinking changed by friends, and bloggers like Chris and Dean. I still have my thinking changed on social media, but more likely on TikTok rather than on Twitter.

For years I’ve felt like we passed the golden years of blogging and something was missing. Now I can see that while things changed, I’m still finding ways to push my thinking, and inspire my writing. I feel like I’m seeing both the past and present with new eyes, noticing the differences without placing judgement that ‘things were better back in the day’.

Chris ends his post (well worth reading) thinking about schools and how we need to slow things down sometimes so that students can notice things too. I feel this. I read the post this morning, started ‘thinking in blog posts’ and wondering how to put these ideas together, but I needed time to let it brew in my brain, for me to notice the connections I wanted to share. And so this post became about the thinking along the way, and not just about the nostalgia of the old days of blogging.

I owe Chris and Dean gratitude for helping me to reframe my thinking, and notice that while the sharing, engagement and connections have changed, there are still many wonderful ways that my thinking is challenged. I need not feel remorse for the loss of the way things were… there are a lot a great ways to excite and inspire my thinking and blogging today.

WCT 3 – The trip inside the trip

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Part three in my West Coast Trail (WCT) dairy. So far I’ve shared: WCT 1 – The Sun Gods Smiled On Us, and WCT 2 – Fellow Hikers. Now I’m going to share a magical trip we did inside of our WCT trip. I mentioned that it was always our intent to spend one full day on the beach, a ‘rest’ day on the trail, but our timing wasn’t working until we decided to add one more day to the trip. From WCT -1:

Long Beach Wisdom

We arrived at Tsusiat falls on the 5th day, typical for people starting on the south end like us, and planning to spend just one more night on the trail. That’s when we remembered the wise words Kristen shared with us on Long Beach, near Tofino, just a few days before:

“I’ll give you my Retirement speech: Retirement allows you to be in the moment for as long as the moment lasts.”

We are both retired. We don’t have work to get back to. We can stay an extra day.

Creating The Time and Space

While the Tsusiat falls are beautiful, it’s a very busy campsite, and that’s not what we wanted for our day off.

That’s when a fellow hiker gave us some advice, instead of the 13km hike to the next suggested campsite, go an easy 8km to the Tsocowis campsite, which also has a waterfall, and is not very popular because it’s going too far for people starting in the north, and makes the last day too long for people going north like us.

To understand how special this day was, it is best framed by the start of the day, receiving gifts, watching whales, and connecting with amazing people. Re-read the Serendipity and Generosity section of WCT 1 to understand that before our ‘trip inside of a trip’ even started it was a special day.

What we planned for this day was a magic mushroom trip.

I had purchased, (legally from a Vancouver dispensary), a mushroom called Poseidon’s Finger, ‘a high-potency hybrid Psilocybin cubensis mushroom strain created by crossing Tidal Wave and Albino Penis Envy’. Users report, ‘intense visual distortions, warped perception, deep emotional introspection, and waves of euphoria.‘ I’m going to use these descriptions as heading for my experiences, but put them in the order of my experiences, although there were many overlapping moments.

But first: Our goal was to set up everything for the evening (our tent, food prep, purifying water, gathering firewood, etc), and make it so that we had an entire day free of any responsibility. We had successfully moved from a crowded beach to one that only had 4 of us on it, and we knew the other two campers, although on this day we did nothing more with them other than share an occasional greeting wave.

Our set-up was perfect, our setting was perfect, we just had to think about our dose now. I had only ever micro-dosed with Poseidon’s Finger before, so I wasn’t sure how strong they would be. I took a full package of 3.5 grams, which is a dose I’d taken of another mushroom, but as I discovered, Poseidon’s Finger was much more potent than anything I’d tried before. My buddy took a little less than me, but still quite a high dose.

Four hours later we made a joke that might not be funny now, but for us at the time it was gut-busting hilarious. My buddy said something like, “We took Poseidon’s finger right up to the elbow.” To which I responded, “Up to the elbow and it tickled our tonsils.” This was a four-plus hour trip and, throughout it, just when you thought you were coming down a new wave of euphoria or heightened visuals would hit you and remind you that Poseidon still had a grip on you. While I made jokes like, “OK, that’s enough, let me off this planet.” I never actually felt uncomfortable or scared. There were times when I felt things were out of my control, however I always felt safe… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

As I said, the day was already magical, we set up everything to make our environment as simple as possible, and the setting was a stunning beach with a waterfall nearby. All the conditions were perfect. We had a late lunch with the mushrooms because dried mushrooms on their own can be a bit hard on your stomach. Then we hung around our tent for a while.

 Warped Perception: Every time estimation from here on in is approximate, part of the warped perception we experienced was that the concept of time was inconceivable. Somewhere around 30-45 minutes after taking the mushrooms, I suggested walking over to the falls. We had already done this 3 minute walk to collect water earlier, but walking to the waterfall on mushrooms felt like a journey somewhere between 10 minutes and 3 days. Yes, that’s an exaggeration but my first instinct was to say ‘forever’… I felt like no matter how far I walked, the waterfall seemed continually far away.

At the waterfall there was a very large log lying on it’s side and it had about 25 feet of a flat groove that my buddy and I laid down on, about 6 feet apart, (he was about 6 feet below my feet, on the same flat section).

Waves of euphoria

The amount of laughing we did to start the journey was almost too much. I had tears pouring out of my eyes as pure joy overwhelmed me. I felt elated about being retired. I felt honoured to be doing this journey with my buddy. I thought of how lucky I am to have the incredible family that I do. I was delighted with the stunning surroundings. And I felt the gift of being alive! We laughed on and on for a very long time. I think we were at the waterfall for roughly 1.5 to 2 hours and during that time about 50-70% of the time we were laughing and joyous.

Intense visual distortions

The waterfall was absolutely stunning. On it’s own it was beautiful, but add the intense visuals of the mushrooms and it was out of this world. The rocks around the upper part of the falls were getting pixilated for lack of a better word. The brown tones shifted and danced. For a while I saw, on the right side of the falls, a face with the waterfall coming out of it’s mouth. But again, this wasn’t a stationary face, it was animated and the shifting tones gave it expression.

My buddy was having a completely different experience. He was seeing hexagons and geometric shapes, and when he shut his eyes very tight and re-opened them he felt like he changed channels and was watching a completely different version of the landscape. He told me to try too, but I couldn’t get myself to squeeze my eyes tight. When I tried, it felt like I was going to temporarily blink myself out of existence. This should probably be scary, it wasn’t… but it did feel like too much to try.

I should preface this with the fact that I’ve tried a heroes dose of a similar drug with a guide, and I’ve never been able to have an out of body experience. I don’t know if it’s a stubborn ego or what’s blocking me, but I can’t seem to do it. I tried a couple times on this trip. We were chatting and I could see the world distorting, and I’d say to my buddy, “I’m blinking out right now, if I don’t respond, don’t worry, I’m just not going to be here for a bit.” Then I’d let go, but somehow my body wouldn’t. During this time I said a number of times, “The world is unzipping!” – This felt like a very real experience, like reality was going to be unfastened and stripped away… but not like watching a zipper open up, rather being the zipper between this world and another. Disorienting and a bit uncomfortable but again, not scary.

One thing was very unsettling for me, and that was the horizon. We were on a beach with about 160º view of the open ocean. Turning around to face the ocean was destabilizing. The horizon didn’t seem real. The clouds seemed way too close, and too geometric to be real. I felt like I was looking at a hologram from the wrong angle and seeing a part of the matrix that I wasn’t supposed to be seeing. At one point I stood up to pee, but that statement sounds too sudden to be truly descriptive of the experience. First of all it felt like it took me 20 minutes just to talk myself into doing this monumental task, then another 10 to actually do it. Shifting from lying down to standing was almost too much to handle visually. I was relieved to lie back down.

Deep emotional introspection (Part 1 – The Tree)

At one point I looked over towards the near end of the beach and fixated on a single tree at the headland of the beach cove we were in.

I had a moment of time distortion and imagined a thousand years going by, and thought of the tree dying and falling into the ocean and the ocean eventually eroding away the land it sat on. I was overwhelmed by the beauty and thought of how sad it would be that no one in this distant future would be able to witness this beautiful scene that I was seeing right now.

Then I went really deep.

It occurred to me that this beautiful scene is only beautiful because a conscious mind looked at it. All over the universe there are profoundly beautiful things to see that nobody sees and thus there is no beauty in them at all. Without ego about my personal consciousness I realized that consciousness IS the purpose of the universe. There is no meaning, no appreciation of the sound of the waves, no sense of the warmth of the sun on my face, no beauty at all without consciousness. WE bring purpose and meaning to the universe. Thinking of this made most of my daily, trivial concerns seem comically insignificant, and I had a new appreciation for the beauty of the natural world.

Deep emotional introspection (Part 2 – The Post)

The clouds got more frequent, and combined with the proximity to the falls it started to get very cold. I was probably quite annoying with my complaints, the chill made me feel like life was leaving my body. Then after too long a wait, and much complaining, we finally went back to our campsite and crawled into our sleeping bags. I stayed like a wrapped mummy for a while but staring at the tent was boring so I leaned my upper body out of the tent to see the beautiful landscape. I could see the same headland tree, but from a different angle. I also had an upright post right in front of me.

The post morphed into a kind of totem. It didn’t change shape but I could see how an indigenous artist could find faces and shapes in the wood. Except for me none of the shapes were static. It wasn’t like Michelangelo seeing an angel in the marble and carving to set it free, but rather like a series of dancing shapes bringing the post alive.

Then I focused past the post and thought of the tree, time, and the importance of consciousness in the universe again. Except the post was there in front of me transcending my time warp. The post suddenly took on a feminine presence, like a symbol of Mother Earth. Then femininity. Then my wife. I thought of her standing up against all the challenges she ever faced, I saw her beauty and strength. I saw the gift she gave us of two beautiful and amazing daughters. All this love and joy overwhelmed me. I didn’t realize just how wonderful I felt until I felt blissful tears running down my face.

Integrating and Decompressing

Shortly after this I turned my phone on, we didn’t have reception, but I tried to make a video describing my introspection. The words wouldn’t come to me, they didn’t match the feeling.

I think I laid there, half in and half out of my tent for another 30 minutes to an hour. Fortunately, my friend willed himself to get up faster than me. He adjusted all the tie-downs on our tent, since rain was forecasted, then he started the fire. I literally was not capable of doing these things when he was.

He ate first then I boiled water and had my freeze dried dinner too. We sat by the fire until well after dark. We laughed a lot. And we sat in awe and appreciation of the environment we were in. The campsite we chose had an incredible fire pit that looked like a movie set.

We didn’t talk much. We were still high on life. The joy and laughter we had experienced throughout the day still resonated in us. It rained a little, but that didn’t dampen spirits. The fire was warm and our jackets were almost dry when we finally went to bed.

And to conclude a perfect day, it wasn’t until minutes after we were safely tucked in our sleeping bags that the rain began to downpour.

We couldn’t have asked for anything to have gone better.

A perfect trip. A perfect day.

The internal conflict of doing hard things

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I don’t want to do it. It’s going to be very hard… it’s going to suck.

I have to do it. I’m going to do everything in my power to be successful… it’s going to suck.

That’s the internal conflict of doing hard things.

The suck in ‘it’s going to suck’ is the part that makes it worth doing.

If it were easier, more enjoyable in the moment, it wouldn’t actually be hard. It also wouldn’t come with as great a sense of accomplishment. It wouldn’t be something as memorable. The internal conflict is real, it might even be necessary. Because if there wasn’t an element of ‘suck’, it wouldn’t be as rewarding. The trick is to embrace the suck, and to understand that it’s one of the hard parts of doing hard things.

That said, do hard things. Not because anyone is watching, not for anyone else but yourself. Recognize that the internal conflict is just part of doing hard things, not a reason to avoid it. And so that challenge you’ve been thinking of doing, or that goal you’ve talked about but haven’t acted on even though you really want to do it… The one that’s going to be hard, that you know will in some way suck getting to the end…

Start it. Do it. And know that the act of doing it is the reward, even though it’s also going to suck.

Intentional Inconvenience

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I used my Extended Health benefits beyond what was allowed without a Doctor’s note and it was denied. Fortunately, I have a doctor’s note, so I sent it in via snail mail… something I had previously done without issue. Months later I followed up with a phone call when I realized that the benefit still wasn’t approved. After waiting an inconsiderate amount of time to speak to a human, I was told that it would be better to use the health care company’s app and upload the doctor’s note, so that it’s attached to the claim. I did this, as instructed and was turned down again.

Today, after once again going through the automated phone tree of options, I was told by an automated voice that ‘My call was important’ and also that due to too many calls, please hang up and try again. Twice. The third time I was lucky enough to be put on hold. At this point I was offered an opportunity to hang up and be called back, but I chose to stay on the line. I didn’t want a callback when it was inconvenient and then have to go through this process again. Upon finally talking to a human almost 30 minutes later, she was able to see the unapproved benefits on my file. She then informed me that their automated system can not read the attachment uploads on the app, and so no one looked at my doctor’s note.

Here is a synopsis. Don’t mail in the doctor’s note like you used to, we won’t connect it to the benefit claim that needs it. Instead, use the app, which will allow you to upload the doctor’s note… so we can ignore it there too.

On top of that the app itself is inconvenient. It has a series of check boxes and boxes to fill, but interwoven are also tabs that are necessary to go to, to toggle or choose other options not on the original screen. Even after using it several times, I still end up trying to complete a claim only to be told that I’ve missed a toggle/tab (or two).

In this day and age, I doubt if this inconvenience isn’t at least somewhat intentional. I wonder how many people don’t get their (deserved) claims just because the process is designed such that you need to make a very inconvenient follow-up call to ensure payment? I wonder how many seniors and people with disabilities lose out on opportunities to claim benefits because the process is too challenging for them to navigate? We are intentionally inconvenienced because servicing our needs is not seen as the purpose, but as an expense… We are seen as the inconvenience.

Existential Threat

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From Zain Kahn’s ‘Superhuman newsletter‘:

Over 1,200 employees at frontier AI companies signed a letter warning of runaway development
“The open letter cautions that AI could advance “beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems,” and calls on the US government to deliberately pace progress at the international level, which would reduce competitive pressure on each lab. Signatories include chief scientists at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. The scale of the signatory list — spanning companies and roles — is a signal of how seriously insiders are taking the risk.”

I grew up believing that a super-intelligent AI would be created in a lab. The fear was that it would somehow escape into the ‘real world’ and only then could it dominate the world. The whole idea of some sort of firewall to protect us just evaporated when LLM’s were trained and unleashed on the internet. We completely bypassed any sort of protection or safety net that would allow human intervention in order to prevent a rogue AI from running wild.

Worse yet, we have unleashed AI into a world where any one person with ill-intent can use AI with nefarious intentions. I’ve said before,

“I don’t fear the famous scientist, I fear the rogue, unhappy misfit who uses incredible technological advancements for nefarious reasons. The same technology that can make our lives easier, and create tremendous good in the world, can also be used with bad intentions. But there are differences between someone using a revolver for bad reasons and someone using a nuclear bomb for bad reasons. The problem we face in the future is that access to the equivalent harm of a nuclear bomb (or worse) will be something more and more people have access to. I don’t think this is something we can stop, and so as amazing as the technology is that we see today, my fear is that it could also be what leads to our demise as a species.”

Now 1,200 AI employees are heeding a warning that AI could advance “beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems.” That’s just AI systems acting on their own. That doesn’t include the danger of humans using these complicated and little understood intelligent tools with bad intentions. Sure we need to worry about AI running amok, but I think the far greater existential threat is a rogue government, or even a rogue lone wolf angry at the world, using AI in ways that we won’t be able to stop. Think of a cascading virus either electronic or environmentally contagious beyond our ability to stop it. Not created by scientists, but by a brilliant incel who feels cheated by the world.

We don’t need to fear rogue AI nearly as much as we need to fear rogue individuals armed with a super-intelligent AI. This is what really scares me.

hand-phone meld

A stark contrast

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Today is Father’s Day. My father-in-law wanted to go to White Spot, a very BC, Canada restaurant, and so my wife, her sister and brother-in-law, and her parents went for lunch. I couldn’t help but notice families at two other tables, which offered a stark contrast in dynamics. Both tables had a person who looked like they were in their 50’s. The woman at one table was with her father, the man at the other table was with both elderly parents.

The woman was fully invested in conversation with her dad. She kept eye contact on him and leaned forward again and again to hear what her father was saying. The conversation seemed to flow, and they looked like they were having a wonderful meal.

The man at the other table was on his phone. He didn’t let it go, it was an extension of his left hand. Even when he spoke to his parents, he did not look away from it. He was typing full paragraphs into it at times, and he scrolled. And he scrolled and typed, scrolled and typed. Food arrived and he occasionally shovelled food into his mouth but his phone stayed glued to his left hand. I wasn’t watching all the time, but at no time when I looked did I see him making eye contact with his parents. The woman at the other table was always looking at her dad.

Back at the doom-scroller’s table, parents had finished their meal and their son was only about half finished his meal, still typing and scrolling as his parents waited. I had to get up to let my brother-in-law head to the bathroom and I looked over at this man’s phone. He was on Instagram. After desert his parents pulled their phones out as well, but I didn’t really pay attention for how long they had their phones out too. I can say with certainty the man never once let go of his phone during the meal. The last time I looked over, his dad was paying for the meal.

It was so stark that I had to make sure that I was paying attention to my own table, not to be too distracted by the entertainment of seeing this contrast play out in front of me. Put your phones away at meal time, if you struggle with this, don’t take your phone to the table. Your family deserves more.

Happy Father’s Day!