Tag Archives: quotes

Advice for everyone, and no one

A frustrating if not comical aspect of social media are lists and advice that are so banal they actually hurt to watch or read. I just saw a content creator give her “Top 3 tips for getting back on track with your credit.”

This was to:

1. First create a budget. Stick to it. And update it regularly.

2. Make cutbacks to save at least 3 months worth of monthly income.

3. Only spend what you already have.

The worst part of this ‘great advice’ is that it was sponsored by a bank. This was basically a paid advertisement from a savings bank, spewing trite and wasting our time and attention.

Here’s my advice to quit smoking: Don’t buy cigarettes.

Here’s my advice to lose weight: Eat less, exercise more.

Here’s my advice to get more sleep: Go to bed earlier.

Here is my advice to giving advice: State the obvious and you’ll always be right!

…But the advice won’t be taken, because that’s not really advice. It’s hopes and dreams. It’s laudable, wishful thinking. It’s not actionable for anyone who the advice is directed at. I’m reminded of a Derek Sivers quote, “If information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

I don’t know too many billionaires with perfect abs, and facts disguised as advice won’t get you there either.

Idiots, cruelty, and kindness

Sometimes I hear something and I think, ‘I wish I said that’. This video ends that way. It doesn’t start that way, I almost stopped listening, but I’m glad I waited past the comedy to get to the real message.

“Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being.”

And so,

“…the kindest person in the room is often the smartest.”

Prove your intelligence. Be kind.

Asimov’s Robot Visions

I’m listening to Isaac Asimov’s book, Robot Visions on Audible. Short stories that center around his Three Laws of Robotics (Asimov’s 3 Laws).

• The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

• The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

• The Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These short stories all focus on ways that these laws can go wrong, or perhaps awry is the better term. There are a few things that make these stories insightful but they are also very dated. The early ones were written in the 1940’s and the conventions of the time, including conversational language and sexist undertones, are blatantly exposed as ‘olde’.

It also seems that Asimov made 2 assumptions worth thinking about: First that all robots and Artificial Intelligence would be constructed with the 3 laws at the core of all intelligence built into these machines. Many, many science fiction stories that followed also use these laws. However creators of Large Language Models like Chat GPT are struggling to figure out what guard rails to put on their AI to prevent it from acting maliciously when meeting sometimes scrupulous human requests.

Secondly, a few of the stories include a Robopsychologist, that’s right, a person (always female) who is an expert in the psychology of robots. There would be psychologists whose sole purpose would be to get inside the minds of robots.

Asimov was openly concerned with AI, specifically robots, acting badly, endangering humans, and even following our instructors too literally and with undesirable consequences. But he thought his 3 laws was a good start. Perhaps they are but they are just a start. And with new AI’s coming out with more computing power, more training, and less restrictions, I think Asimov’s concerns may prove prophetic.

The guard rails are off and there is no telling what unexpected consequences and results we will see in the coming months and years.

The task of education today

This quote was shared with us in our Principals meeting yesterday:

“This is the task of education today: to confront the almost unimaginable design challenge of building an education system that provides for the re-creation of civilization during a world system transition. This challenge brings us face to face with the importance of education for humanity and the basic questions that structure education as a human endeavor.” ~Zachary Stein

One of our Assistant Superintendent’s added, “We are trying to build a utopian society in triage conditions.”

There is no doubt that it is much harder to be an educator today than it was when I started my career over 25 years ago. And as we navigate ‘building an education system that provides for the re-creation of civilization during a world system transition,’ we are bound to struggle a bit. How do we mark assignments that are written or co-written by AI? What skills are going to be needed for the top jobs of 2030? How different will that be for 2040?

Ultimately we want to support the education of students who will become kind, contributing citizens. But how do we do this in a world where Truth seems arbitrary to the sources you get it from, and politicians, religion, and corporations are all pushing conflicting information and agendas? I think this goes beyond just working on competencies like critical thinking. It requires mental gymnastics that most adults struggle with.

Meanwhile, the majority of school schedules still put students into blocks of time based on the subjects they are learning. “Let’s think critically, and do challenging problems, but only in this one narrow field of study.” We aren’t meeting the design challenges we face today if that’s what we continue to do.

More than ever students, future citizens, need to understand complex issues from multiple perspectives. They need to understand nuance, and navigate when to defend an idea, when to compromise, and when to avoid engagement altogether. They need to be prepared to say “I don’t know,” and then do the hard work of finding out, when the accuracy of information is incomplete or even suspect. They need to be prepared to say, “I was wrong,” and “I am sorry,” and also be prepared to stick to their convictions and defend ideas that aren’t always the accepted norm.

That’s not the future I prepared students for 25 years ago. It is indeed an ‘almost unimaginable design challenge‘, and as we navigate new challenges we have to recognize that mistakes will be made… but not changing is far scarier than trying.

The enemy of knowledge

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” ~ Stephen Hawking

The illusion of knowledge is more ignorant that just being ignorant. This idea is more relevant today than any time in history. Examples:

1. Every religion starts with the premise that their religion shares true knowledge and all the other religions share illusions. So every devout religious person loves their own illusions, or at the very least believes anyone of a different faith lives in an illusion of ignorance.

2. Anyone who believes in a flat earth, or thinks no one ever landed on the moon lives in an illusion of knowledge. They perceive themselves as more knowledgeable than scientists, experts, and even general employees in the flight and space industry.

3. AI is already generating incredibly persuasive deep fakes and while we used to use a discerning eye to catch a lie, soon we will need to be more discerning to catch the truth. The illusion of knowledge will be more rampant than actual, factual knowledge.

We are moving from an era of knowledge seekers to an era of illusions and ignorance.

The truth is out there… it’s just a lot harder to find, and even harder to defend.

Error correction

“When you tolerate an error, you rob yourself of learning.

When you ruminate on an error, you rob yourself of happiness.

Notice it, improve it, and move on from it.” ~ James Clear

I really like this quote. It is very insightful. We don’t learn unless we make an effort to adapt, or improve after a failure or an error. But perseverating on our errors isn’t healthy.

Notice, improve, and move on. But how many of us can easily do this?

How many of us repeat mistakes? How many of us spend too much time ruminating and don’t move on? How many of us spend more time worrying about our errors and less time celebrating our successes?

Notice, improve, and move on.

There would be far less learning if we spent more time avoiding mistakes. There would be less improvement, and less to move on from. And so while we are learning from our errors, we need to remember to feel good about the learning we’ve done, and the journey we are on.

Staying consistent

There have been a lot of reasons why my fitness routine has been challenging this year. It seem that I haven’t had a full month where there has been anything routine about my daily routine. I was just back in Toronto for my dad’s memorial and in 8 days I slept in 5 different places. I also ended the trip with a cold and spent the weekend recovering. I’m still not 100%, but I’m not coughing and I’ll wear a mask and get back to work this morning.

That said, I slept in a bit and I’m writing this as I pedal on my stationary bike at about 80% of my normal speed. The way I feel, I don’t think I’d go any faster if I wasn’t tapping these words into my phone. Just 3 days ago I was using speech-to-text to do my writing on an elliptical… This is not a normal thing to try and simultaneously hit two of my daily goals at once, but I’m making it work at a time when doing otherwise would make things harder for me.

It would be easy to skip something. It would take no effort on a day like this to give myself a pass. But I already did that Saturday and Sunday when I felt like crap. I haven’t skipped 3 days of exercise in over 3 years, and I’m not going to start now. So I’m muscling through, sweating far more than usual, while my output is lower than usual. But here is the point I didn’t know this post would be about that I realize now: It’s the days you just show up and totally don’t want to that matter the most.

Consistency isn’t about your regular routine. Your regular routine is a habit, it’s hard to make but once you’ve made it the effort is actually quite low. Consistency is getting you butt in gear and active, doing what needs to be done, when you really don’t want to. When you really aren’t up to it or in the mood or think you have time for it. Or when your routine gets disrupted and you have to go out of your way to follow through. Like being on an elliptical at a hotel at 9:30pm when my alarm is set for 3am, or sweating buckets on my stationary bike at the tail end of a cold, and simultaneously writing these words. This is harder than my normal workout. This is the grunt work. This is what it takes to be consistent.

We aren’t demonstrating consistency when everything is going smoothly, we have to demonstrate it when there is a disruption and and we still follow through.

The hard work of being consistent comes from actively doing what needs to be done when there is nothing consistent happening around you.

I’m going to make that into a poster and put it on my home gym wall.

Reasons and reasoning

This is a humorous ‘contrived platitude’ that I shared on Facebook 8 years ago. It came up as a memory and I wanted to share it again:

Things definitely do not always happen for a reason, but we are reason makers and sometimes we seek meaning where there is none. Belief systems are designed around the justification of reasons, around faith as opposed to evidence. So are things like tarot card readings, conspiracy theories, superstitious habits, and lucky charms and rituals. Truth is bent, patterns are found where there are no patterns, and narratives are created to justify and satisfy, and even ‘prove’ that coincidences are actually consequences and that reasons are founded in good reasoning.

Sometimes these fabricated reasons help us. “Everything happens for a reason” can help soften an unexpected tragedy… help us find meaning in a meaningless loss of health, life, or limb. We can muster strength and purpose in times of hardship. But other times it’s nothing more than ignorance. People follow doctrines and justify their beliefs even when they are harmful to others. This is somehow done in the name of love. “We are looking out for what’s best for you, for us, for our community”… A fabricated reason. A justification. A delusion.

There is a big difference between finding a reason and good reasoning. That doesn’t mean that seeking out a reason for something is necessarily bad, it just means that sometimes the reasons you think are important or useful may not be so. It’s easy for us to rationalize anything to fit our belief system, but if that’s what we are doing we really aren’t being rational… we are rationalizing not reasoning. There is a difference between making sense of the world and making things up to make sense of the world; a deference between making up reasons and using good reasoning skills. True wisdom is knowing the difference.

Moving from autopilot to copilot

Three minutes into this video Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, is asked, “Why do you think the moment for AI (Artificial Intelligence) is now?”

After mentioning that AI is already mainstream, and used in search, news aggregation and social media recommendations (like the next videos on Facebook & TikTok, etc), he states,

“Today’s generation of AI is all autopilot. In fact, it is a black box that is dictating in fact how our attention is focused. Whereas going forward, the thing that’s most exciting about this generation of AI is perhaps we move from autopilot to copilot, where we actually prompt it.”

This is a fascinating point. When you order something on Amazon, their next purchase recommendation is automated by AI, so is your next video on Instagram Reels, YouTube, and TikTok. We don’t fully understand the decision-making behind this ‘intelligence’, except when it goes wrong. Even then it’s a bit of a black box of calculations that aren’t always clear or understood. In essence, we are already heavily influenced by AI. The difference with LLM’s – Large Language Models – like Chat GPT is that we prompt it. We get to copilot. We get to create with it, and have it co-create art, email messages, books, computer code, to do lists, schoolwork/homework, and even plan our vacations.

I really like the metaphor of moving from autopilot to copilot. It is empowering and creates a future of opportunities. AI isn’t new, but what we can do with it now is quite new… and exciting!

——

The full video Microsoft & OpenAI CEOs: Dawn of the AI Wars | The Circuit with Emily Chang is worth watching:

The mischaracterization of the Metaverse

“The Metaverse is already here.” That’s the insight that never really occurred to me until I heard Mustafa Suleyman, Google’s Deep Mind Co-founder, on The Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett.

“You know, the last three years people have been talking about Metaverse, Metaverse, Metaverse. And the mischaracterization of the Metaverse was that it’s over there. It was this like virtual world that we would all bop around in and talk to each other as these little characters, but that was totally wrong. That was a complete miss-framing. The Metaverse is already here. It’s the digital space that exists in parallel time to our everyday life. It’s the conversation that you will have on Twitter or, you know, the video that you’ll post on YouTube, or this podcast that will go out and connect with other people. It’s that meta-space of interaction, you know, and I use meta to mean ‘beyond this space’, not just that weird other, ‘over there’, space that people seem to point to.”

We are already in the Metaverse, I’m in the same room as my daughter right now. She’s watching a movie, I’m writing on my phone. We are entered into parallel universes, physically together but disconnected. We are both in spaces, on screens, beyond the physical space we are in.

Before hearing this quote, I thought of the Metaverse as something in the future, like the ‘fitless humans‘ from the movie WALL•E.

We are already there. We have iPads babysit (or at least occupy the attention of) our kids. We rage about stupid things on Twitter and YouTube. We share content with people we have never met, and they share content with us. We are influenced by influencers. We buy things from virtual stores. We play games with people in different time zones.

The Metaverse is already here creating parallel experiences to the ones we physically experience… It’s not something we are heading towards. We are already living a good part of our lives, ‘in spaces beyond the physical space we are in‘. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest through the trees, or in this case the spaces beyond our screens.