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1. The Small Moments Are Everything
c01-p001 · Deep Meaning at Work · 00:02:43.627–00:03:05.627 · Reading textSource transcript
I don't see any separation between life and work. You're the same person. Yes, we put on roles, we behave a little bit differently, but that's that's fine. Fundamentally, you are the same person and how you are in one domain of your life profoundly affects how you are in all the others to a degree that I think we we forget about until we start making positive changes
Edited passage
I don't see any separation between life and work. You're the same person. Yes, we put on roles, we behave a little bit differently, but that's fine. Fundamentally, you are the same person and how you are in one domain of your life profoundly affects how you are in all the others to a degree that I think we forget about until we start making positive changes.
Source transcript
most of this is just about stuff that I did over the past few years, especially over the last six months or so on a personal quest to try to enjoy my time and find meaning in. Even boring moments doing stuff I don't want to do, especially those moments. And I wanted to didn't want to settle for a life that was just pretty good. And then I had to go for go to work and it was conditionally good. You know, if I got what I wanted or I was working on something I liked or with people I liked, it was. Fine, but otherwise I dreaded it
Edited passage
Most of this is just about stuff that I did over the past few years, especially over the last six months or so on a personal quest to try to enjoy my time and find meaning in even boring moments doing stuff I don't want to do, especially those moments. I didn't want to settle for a life that was just pretty good, and then I had to go to work and it was conditionally good. If I got what I wanted or I was working on something I liked or with people I liked, it was fine, but otherwise I dreaded it.
Source transcript
I wanted to move towards an existence where it's pretty much good. There is something valuable about every moment, and so this is basically recounting my personal experience and what I've learned along the way. It's not. The only way, by all means, I'm open to other things. Like I said in the first talk, I am a human experiment in progress. These are my results so far. Take what you like
Edited passage
I wanted to move towards an existence where it's pretty much good. There is something valuable about every moment, and so this is basically recounting my personal experience and what I've learned along the way. It's not the only way. By all means, I'm open to other things. I am a human experiment in progress. These are my results so far. Take what you like.
Source transcript
the small moments are not small. They're everything. This is saying that, you know, most of our time is regular, boring, small moments, and they make up everything, really. You know, peak experiences at the moment of achieving goals really aren't that important. They're important to add. Aspects of ourselves, but we are way overweight in terms of how important those things are. In reality, we would be far better served paying attention to what is the quality of life and the value of an individual, relatively boring moment when nothing's going on, because that is ninety-eight, ninety-nine percent of your existence
Edited passage
The small moments are not small. They're everything. Most of our time is regular, boring, small moments, and they make up everything, really. Peak experiences at the moment of achieving goals really aren't that important. They're important to add aspects of ourselves, but we are way overweight in terms of how important those things are. In reality, we would be far better served paying attention to what is the quality of life and the value of an individual, relatively boring moment when nothing's going on, because that is ninety-eight, ninety-nine percent of your existence.
Source transcript
how you carry yourselves and how much you invest meaning into those moments greatly determines the quality of your life and the quality of the the life of the people around you. That's customers, co-workers. Friends, family, if you treat every small moment as if it is a big deal and that it is important how you carry yourself right now, it will change everything
Edited passage
How you carry yourselves and how much you invest meaning into those moments greatly determines the quality of your life and the quality of the life of the people around you. That's customers, co-workers, friends, family. If you treat every small moment as if it is a big deal and that it is important how you carry yourself right now, it will change everything.
Source transcript
as a general heuristic, you can either be leaning in or leaning away from every experience. You can't actually escape any experience. You're here whether you like it or not. I would encourage you to instead of when you notice you're leaning away, I'll keep that as a. Rough, intuitive definition for now. Instead, do the exact opposite and try to lean in instead
Edited passage
As a general heuristic, you can either be leaning in or leaning away from every experience. You can't actually escape any experience. You're here whether you like it or not. When you notice you're leaning away—I'll keep that as a rough, intuitive definition for now—instead, do the exact opposite and try to lean in instead.
Source transcript
I've started trying to navigate primarily using intuition and trust in that intuition rather than a bunch of left brain planning because it's very hard to do. We all have six months, 12 months, two year plans at every level and. I'm of the opinion that this is largely not just useless, but often a destructive exercise. When things are changing rapidly, it's simply not nimble enough, and it's often. Creating bad outcomes
Edited passage
I've started trying to navigate primarily using intuition and trust in that intuition rather than a bunch of left brain planning because it's very hard to do. We all have six months, 12 months, two year plans at every level and I'm of the opinion that this is largely not just useless, but often a destructive exercise. When things are changing rapidly, it's simply not nimble enough, and it's often creating bad outcomes.
Source transcript
we spend so much time, especially in engineering, trying to ask what can be done, what could be done. We spend very little time thinking about what is it actually like to live that life? Do I actually want to live the existence I'm creating? I think that is worth considering. Intuition never makes that mistake if you trust it and you follow it, and I find that it is a much more nimble and agile way
Edited passage
We spend so much time, especially in engineering, trying to ask what can be done, what could be done. We spend very little time thinking about what is it actually like to live that life? Do I actually want to live the existence I'm creating? I think that is worth considering. Intuition never makes that mistake if you trust it and you follow it, and I find that it is a much more nimble and agile way.
Source transcript
Of course, you still have to think about consequences and planning it all out, how you're going to get it done, but I encourage you to start. Navigating by a felt sense of what seems like it matters, what feels important, even if it's not popular, and following that, at least for a while and seeing where it goes. And it hasn't really steered me wrong yet. It works at every level. I highly, highly recommend taking this approach. Rather than trying to know how it will all workout and planning every step
Edited passage
Of course, you still have to think about consequences and planning it all out, how you're going to get it done, but I encourage you to start navigating by a felt sense of what seems like it matters, what feels important, even if it's not popular, and following that, at least for a while and seeing where it goes. And it hasn't really steered me wrong yet. It works at every level. I highly, highly recommend taking this approach rather than trying to know how it will all workout and planning every step.
Source transcript
How you are was always more important than what you do. This has really helped me when deciding what to do. It's not clear. Sometimes it's still not clear. I realized that this is a fallacy like the the premise is wrong. How I my disposition right now is always more important than whatever random task or plan I've set aside. It doesn't matter. Should I do this or that? Should I work on this or that? Should I talk to this person or should I do this thing
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How you are was always more important than what you do. This has really helped me when deciding what to do. It's not clear. Sometimes it's still not clear. I realized that this is a fallacy, the premise is wrong. My disposition right now is always more important than whatever random task or plan I've set aside. It doesn't matter. Should I do this or that? Should I work on this or that? Should I talk to this person or should I do this thing?
Source transcript
if I find myself. Trapped in decisions. I have to take a step back and go. Forget about that. Like get your head on straight. Like change your the way you're orienting yourself to your work and to the the present moment. Lean in, basically. If you do that, everything else kind of works out. Even if you're doing something dumb, like even you're doing a sort of menial task that it doesn't matter and you're still indecisive. If you simply change the way that you are oriented to the world to be more positive, open, engaged, sort of trusting, it's going to be fine
Edited passage
If I find myself trapped in decisions, I have to take a step back and go: forget about that. Get your head on straight. Change the way you're orienting yourself to your work and to the present moment. Lean in, basically. If you do that, everything else kind of works out. Even if you're doing something dumb, even you're doing a sort of menial task that it doesn't matter and you're still indecisive. If you simply change the way that you are oriented to the world to be more positive, open, engaged, sort of trusting, it's going to be fine.
Source transcript
It tends to lead somewhere more interesting, and usually not that long, and you end up where you need to be. It's a sort of interesting quirk. I'm sure you can take this to the extreme and really abuse the idea, but you get the premise
Edited passage
It tends to lead somewhere more interesting, and usually not that long, and you end up where you need to be. It's a sort of interesting quirk. I'm sure you can take this to the extreme and really abuse the idea, but you get the premise.
Source transcript
life gives you the practice. It's not like an extra thing you do. You can keep going to meetings, you can keep going in the elevator. You can keep filling out time sheets, like do all the things you already do, but now. There's this added layer of a game that you're playing with yourself, where you're trying to bring these values into all of your work
Edited passage
Life gives you the practice. It's not like an extra thing you do. You can keep going to meetings, you can keep going in the elevator. You can keep filling out time sheets, do all the things you already do, but now there's this added layer of a game that you're playing with yourself, where you're trying to bring these values into all of your work.
Source transcript
You're trying to lean in heavily and do something quality. Not because anyone makes you to, not because you expect an outcome. Because it's a sort of game with yourself, because you have to be here one way or another and. It's sort of more fun and more interesting, right? It's not an extra thing you do. It's a it's a different way of viewing and doing the things you already do
Edited passage
You're trying to lean in heavily and do something quality. Not because anyone makes you to, not because you expect an outcome. Because it's a sort of game with yourself, because you have to be here one way or another and it's sort of more fun and more interesting, right? It's not an extra thing you do. It's a different way of viewing and doing the things you already do.
2. Choosing to Care
c02-p001 · Deep Meaning at Work · 00:10:52.120–00:11:11.793 · Reading textSource transcript
I'm just a a fellow human being met with all the same problems over the past few years. Especially like, you know, I I saw that I want to be content, I want to be happy, or at least I want to be OK pretty much no matter what's going on. And I want to find a way to do that within my control. And I mostly got there. But you know, work had always been a challenge
Edited passage
I'm just a fellow human being met with all the same problems over the past few years. I want to be content, I want to be happy, or at least I want to be OK pretty much no matter what's going on. And I want to find a way to do that within my control. And I mostly got there. But work had always been a challenge.
Source transcript
I also wanted to have ambitions. I wanted to do things in the world. I wanted to help people. I wanted to learn things and I wanted to be involved. And these two things seem fundamentally opposed. How do I unify that? How do I be content, but also do stuff and be involved? And how do I not go crazy? How do I combat this sense of disconnection? How do I feel connected to my work especially? How do I want to be here in the average moment
Edited passage
I also wanted to have ambitions. I wanted to do things in the world. I wanted to help people. I wanted to learn things and I wanted to be involved. And these two things seem fundamentally opposed. How do I unify that? How do I be content, but also do stuff and be involved? And how do I not go crazy? How do I combat this sense of disconnection? How do I feel connected to my work especially? How do I want to be here in the average moment?
Source transcript
this is what I came up with, and this is what has really worked for me. So I'm going to describe an ideal state that I'm approaching, like a limit. You know, you never quite. It's a direction, but it's not something you'll ever reach
Edited passage
This is what I came up with, and this is what has really worked for me. I'm going to describe an ideal state that I'm approaching, like a limit. It's a direction, but it's not something you'll ever reach.
Source transcript
It is a decision that your work always matters unconditionally. I mean like really unconditionally. I say that if my work were being built on an assembly line, at the end of the assembly line is a trash can or an incinerator if. What I did was immediately destroyed and no one ever knew about it. So it's demonstrably having no impact outside of myself that even then it would have a net positive inherent value
Edited passage
It is a decision that your work always matters unconditionally. I mean like really unconditionally. I say that if my work were being built on an assembly line, at the end of the assembly line is a trash can or an incinerator. If what I did was immediately destroyed and no one ever knew about it, so it's demonstrably having no impact outside of myself, that even then it would have a net positive inherent value.
Source transcript
So whether you see this as like a willful delusion or some sort of, you know, greater like metaphysical or spiritual meaning. Doesn't matter. It works either way as long as you inherently make make the choice that what I do matters always. This is true outside of work too, but it was especially important to hold this belief at work and it made a fundamental difference in the way I carry myself
Edited passage
So whether you see this as a willful delusion or some sort of greater metaphysical or spiritual meaning, doesn't matter. It works either way as long as you inherently make the choice that what I do matters always. This is true outside of work too, but it was especially important to hold this belief at work and it made a fundamental difference in the way I carry myself.
Source transcript
What I'm doing is not dependent on whether, well, is that something I enjoy? Is this going to further my career? Is it easy? Is it actually going to make a business impact? I don't know. You can't always know that. There are things that are important to try, but you can't know. And you have to try without knowing whether it will work
Edited passage
What I'm doing is not dependent on whether, well, is that something I enjoy? Is this going to further my career? Is it easy? Is it actually going to make a business impact? I don't know. You can't always know that. There are things that are important to try, but you can't know. And you have to try without knowing whether it will work.
Source transcript
There are so many ways to value whether work matters or not, but almost all of them are conditional and external. And you know, in a sort of recursive base case sort of scenario, what happens when none of those things are true? They don't feel very true and you have to do it anyway. Is there a way to feel like? You're not wasting your life or your moments. By being at work, and for me, this is what it took. Like this changed everything. It is an unconditional belief that. My work matters
Edited passage
There are so many ways to value whether work matters or not, but almost all of them are conditional and external. In a sort of recursive base case sort of scenario, what happens when none of those things are true? They don't feel very true and you have to do it anyway. Is there a way to feel like you're not wasting your life or your moments by being at work? And for me, this is what it took. This changed everything. It is an unconditional belief that my work matters.
Source transcript
So did that pull request actually, you know, go through and result in some feature improvement to improve some metrics for customers? Did this bug fix actually work? It's not. It's a fundamentally different premise that Nope, that's not how it works. I have chosen and it is a choice. I've chosen to care. My work matters and it has a net positive value no matter what
Edited passage
So did that pull request actually go through and result in some feature improvement to improve some metrics for customers? Did this bug fix actually work? It's a fundamentally different premise that, nope, that's not how it works. I have chosen and it is a choice. I've chosen to care. My work matters and it has a net positive value no matter what.
Source transcript
you no longer approach. What needs to be done, or what's important, or what feels important from a selfish belief that it depends on the outcome because you don't need it anymore. You may still want it, you may still have a preference for things, but you don't need it to be true. And it it changes the way you approach everything
Edited passage
You no longer approach what needs to be done, or what's important, or what feels important from a selfish belief that it depends on the outcome because you don't need it anymore. You may still want it, you may still have a preference for things, but you don't need it to be true. And it changes the way you approach everything.
Source transcript
don't try to fix the inside with the outside. That is your emotions, your your internal discomfort. I really felt I should be at this place in my career. I really felt I should. Have these sort of outcomes or whatever it is, right? Those are all external things, but they're you're trying to fix an internal problem with an external change, and this is doomed to failure. These are like categorically different things. You fix the inside with the inside
Edited passage
Don't try to fix the inside with the outside. That is your emotions, your internal discomfort. I really felt I should be at this place in my career. I really felt I should have these sort of outcomes or whatever it is, right? Those are all external things, but you're trying to fix an internal problem with an external change, and this is doomed to failure. These are like categorically different things. You fix the inside with the inside.
Source transcript
this is just a general rule that has really helped me know on what level to solve a problem if I am unhappy about a situation, if I want to be doing or working on something else. The real problem is the discomfort, right? It's not the actual situation. And I recognize that if I try to fix it by changing my co-workers, by getting other people to change the situation to change, my job to change. I am perpetuating a problem because now I need the world to be a specific way to be OK
Edited passage
This is just a general rule that has really helped me know on what level to solve a problem if I am unhappy about a situation, if I want to be doing or working on something else. The real problem is the discomfort, right? It's not the actual situation. And I recognize that if I try to fix it by changing my co-workers, by getting other people to change, the situation to change, my job to change, I am perpetuating a problem because now I need the world to be a specific way to be OK.
Source transcript
So you cannot fix whether you're OK or not by changing the circumstances. Again, within reason. If you're covered in ants, you should knock the ants off of you. Don't sit there saying that you can't fix the ants
Edited passage
So you cannot fix whether you're OK or not by changing the circumstances. Again, within reason. If you're covered in ants, you should knock the ants off of you. Don't sit there saying that you can't fix the ants.
Source transcript
How do you do that? A lot of that is done through just letting it go. If you you sort of intuitively know what this is like, if somebody makes you angry or they say something rude, you have a moment. After the reaction where it's no longer happening anymore and you've moved on and you can either let it go
Edited passage
How do you do that? A lot of that is done through just letting it go. You sort of intuitively know what this is like, if somebody makes you angry or they say something rude, you have a moment after the reaction where it's no longer happening anymore and you've moved on and you can let it go.
Source transcript
we all sort of know what this is like for emotions. It works for. Thoughts. It works for all sorts of problems, beliefs. It is a sort of internal, like relaxing of your grip, sort of, and just no longer perpetuating a line of thinking or emotions. And it is an absolute master skill and just being aware that this is a skill you can practice. In literally everything. Oh, they didn't put chocolate syrup on my ice cream that I ordered. There's a chance to practice letting it go. You practice it at every level. Oh, OK, they didn't mention me in this this month's like team meeting or whatever. There's a chance to let it go. And it changes the way once you view this as a game you can play all the time, changes the way you approach everything
Edited passage
We all sort of know what this is like for emotions. It works for thoughts. It works for all sorts of problems, beliefs. It is a sort of internal relaxing of your grip, and just no longer perpetuating a line of thinking or emotions. And it is an absolute master skill. Just being aware that this is a skill you can practice in literally everything. Oh, they didn't put chocolate syrup on my ice cream that I ordered. There's a chance to practice letting it go. You practice it at every level. Oh, OK, they didn't mention me in this month's team meeting or whatever. There's a chance to let it go. And it changes the way you approach everything.
Source transcript
It is a decision to be unconditionally happy. That's a little hard. Unconditionally OK. It is a that you can decide these things. I can care about my work unconditionally
Edited passage
It is a decision to be unconditionally happy. That's a little hard. Unconditionally OK. You can decide these things. I can care about my work unconditionally.
Source transcript
these are just reminders of how to be in every moment and that I have found that framing my life this way. It makes every moment, especially the small, boring ones, significantly easier and much richer. And so I would encourage you to start at least experimenting with, rather than setting traditional goals to get what you want in life. Try viewing life as a thing that is continually happening right here and now. And then, for the most part, your goals are to try to adhere to important unconditional values, unconditional love, do whatever. Pick whichever few make the most sense to you. And now your goal in every moment is to react according to those values. And see how profoundly it changes you and how you interact with everybody
Edited passage
These are just reminders of how to be in every moment and I have found that framing my life this way, it makes every moment, especially the small, boring ones, significantly easier and much richer. And so I would encourage you to start at least experimenting with, rather than setting traditional goals to get what you want in life, try viewing life as a thing that is continually happening right here and now. And then, for the most part, your goals are to try to adhere to important unconditional values, unconditional love. Pick whichever few make the most sense to you. And now your goal in every moment is to react according to those values. And see how profoundly it changes you and how you interact with everybody.
3. What Gets Your Attention
c03-p001 · Deep Meaning at Work · 00:20:43.707–00:21:15.824 · Reading textSource transcript
Our attention and by proxy, I think our energy is our most valuable commodity or valuable resource in the modern age for humanity. It's not money, it's not time. All of these things are derivative of attention. And to again, to a degree, some sort of felt sense of energy. And what you put your attention on is of critical importance. We really are our environments, and more than that, we are what we put our attention on
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Our attention and by proxy, I think our energy is our most valuable commodity or valuable resource in the modern age for humanity. It's not money, it's not time. All of these things are derivative of attention. And to a degree, some sort of felt sense of energy. And what you put your attention on is of critical importance. We really are our environments, and more than that, we are what we put our attention on.
Source transcript
I live a pretty bizarre life for anyone who knows me. I really don't. I don't consume any news media. I do very little web browsing. I listen to almost no informational podcasts. I've withdrawn from a lot of things, and I spend most of my time these days in meat space. That is the stuff and the people that are physically around. Around me and you find that your brain starts to rewire. That is the default mode network. The part of your brain that is responsible for thinking and planning and mind wandering reflection tends to worry about stuff that is actually happening in your life
Edited passage
I live a pretty bizarre life for anyone who knows me. I don't consume any news media. I do very little web browsing. I listen to almost no informational podcasts. I've withdrawn from a lot of things, and I spend most of my time these days in meat space. That is the stuff and the people that are physically around me. And you find that your brain starts to rewire. That is the default mode network. The part of your brain that is responsible for thinking and planning and mind wandering reflection tends to worry about stuff that is actually happening in your life.
Source transcript
And this has made a profound difference in my lived quality of experience. At work, at home, everywhere. And that I try to make sure that I spend time so it improves the quality of my default mode network uptime. So that is the time I'm doing nothing. The quality of my thoughts are better and they're more relevant to what's actually happening. And it has made a huge difference
Edited passage
And this has made a profound difference in my lived quality of experience. At work, at home, everywhere. I try to make sure that I spend time so it improves the quality of my default mode network uptime. So that is the time I'm doing nothing. The quality of my thoughts are better and they're more relevant to what's actually happening. And it has made a huge difference.
Source transcript
if something is in your attention at all, to some degree, you eventually become that thing, whether you want to or not. We have this unfortunate belief that we can compensate for that. But that is to a large degree not true, and that these things get in subconsciously, whether you want to or not. So just be careful about what you let into your attention in any way, because eventually you're going to be permanently, enduringly altered by it
Edited passage
If something is in your attention at all, to some degree, you eventually become that thing, whether you want to or not. We have this unfortunate belief that we can compensate for that. But that is to a large degree not true, and these things get in subconsciously, whether you want to or not. So just be careful about what you let into your attention in any way, because eventually you're going to be permanently, enduringly altered by it.
Source transcript
Just diving into all the old AI channels that I looked at. I was just drinking from the fire hose and at some point I realized I have more information that I know what to do with. I'm not processing it, I'm not actually using it. And then I began to change my heuristic for what to pay attention to based on. Basically self-reflection of am I actually using the information I'm getting? Because if I'm not, it's actively detracting. It is like polluting like the work my subconscious can do. It is creating noise in my life. It's definitely stressing me out
Edited passage
Just diving into all the old AI channels that I looked at, I was just drinking from the fire hose and at some point I realized I have more information that I know what to do with. I'm not processing it, I'm not actually using it. And then I began to change my heuristic for what to pay attention to based on basically self-reflection of: am I actually using the information I'm getting? Because if I'm not, it's actively detracting. It is polluting the work my subconscious can do. It is creating noise in my life. It's definitely stressing me out.
Source transcript
And I found that I kept reeling it back, basically less and less and less. Until I got to a point where it's like I can check in like on topics I care about once a week, once every two weeks and feel like I didn't miss anything. And now when I come back, I have much more energy to go in depth and I spend a lot more time doing stuff and I found that I had more to share and I learned more
Edited passage
And I found that I kept reeling it back, basically less and less and less. Until I got to a point where I can check in on topics I care about once a week, once every two weeks and feel like I didn't miss anything. And now when I come back, I have much more energy to go in depth and I spend a lot more time doing stuff and I found that I had more to share and I learned more.
Source transcript
every now and then doing a surface check for what seemed interesting and but then I would go very deep and then I would insist on using that information in some way and that if I wasn't getting enough any information to do something with for long enough, I took that as a sign for. You know, this is basically vapid and I kind of just wanted the dopamine hit or I felt like I was having FOMO or something. So I reeled it way back and haven't regretted it since
Edited passage
Every now and then doing a surface check for what seemed interesting, but then I would go very deep and then I would insist on using that information in some way. If I wasn't getting any information to do something with for long enough, I took that as a sign: this is basically vapid and I kind of just wanted the dopamine hit or I felt like I was having FOMO or something. So I reeled it way back and haven't regretted it since.
Source transcript
I'd like to talk about a concept that I call the dopamine ladder, and I have used this concept to dramatically improve my life and catch myself before engaging in some really destructive behavior. So here's how it works. Imagine a ladder, right? And every rung on this ladder represents a level of stimulation. Okay? So at the highest level of the ladder, you're gonna have activities that are incredibly stimulating, and at the lowest rung, you're gonna have very low-stimulating activities. So here, let's run through some examples. So at the very top, you're gonna have something like drugs, sex, rock 'n' roll
Edited passage
I'd like to talk about a concept that I call the dopamine ladder, and I have used this concept to dramatically improve my life and catch myself before engaging in some really destructive behavior. So here's how it works. Imagine a ladder, right? And every rung on this ladder represents a level of stimulation. Okay? So at the highest level of the ladder, you're gonna have activities that are incredibly stimulating, and at the lowest rung, you're gonna have very low-stimulating activities. So at the very top, you're gonna have something like drugs, sex, rock 'n' roll.
Source transcript
Ideally, all three at the same time, right? Right down from that, I don't know, roller coasters with supermodels. Right? You can walk down from here. Below that, I don't know, TikTok. [laughs] Somewhere beneath that, um, you have other things. By the way, by, by I mean stimulating, I mean dopamine-stimulating, so not necessarily sensory-stimulating. Right? So the prospect of a winner- winning lottery ticket is incredibly dopamine-stimulating, but it's just a piece of paper, right? It's not sensory-stimulating. So that's what I mean. Dopamine is the craving chemical, essentially. It has a lot of purposes in your body, and I'm not gonna pretend to know everything about it or go into great detail
Edited passage
Ideally, all three at the same time, right? Right down from that, I don't know, roller coasters with supermodels. Right? You can walk down from here. Below that, I don't know, TikTok. Somewhere beneath that, you have other things. By stimulating, I mean dopamine-stimulating, so not necessarily sensory-stimulating. Right? So the prospect of a winning lottery ticket is incredibly dopamine-stimulating, but it's just a piece of paper, right? It's not sensory-stimulating. So that's what I mean. Dopamine is the craving chemical, essentially. It has a lot of purposes in your body, and I'm not gonna pretend to know everything about it or go into great detail.
Source transcript
But the purpose is it's the chemical that makes you want things. It's the ma- it's the chemical that makes you want to do things. Specifically, it's also the chemical that makes you crave things. So this wanting is not always good. Craving, in this case, I'm gonna say is wanting something addictive or not being able to stop yourself from wanting, even when it's self-destructive. Okay. So a little farther down the ladder, written down a couple here, we've got chatting online, you know, maybe cheap, vapid text chat. Then we have web browsing, TV shows, maybe trashy TV, and then, I don't know, something less trashy
Edited passage
But the purpose is it's the chemical that makes you want things. It's the chemical that makes you want to do things. Specifically, it's also the chemical that makes you crave things. So this wanting is not always good. Craving, in this case, I'm gonna say is wanting something addictive or not being able to stop yourself from wanting, even when it's self-destructive. Okay. So a little farther down the ladder, written down a couple here, we've got chatting online, maybe cheap, vapid text chat. Then we have web browsing, TV shows, maybe trashy TV, and then, I don't know, something less trashy.
Source transcript
Game of Thrones, right? It makes you pay attention. And then you've got really artsy TV. We've got movies. Then beneath that, we've got podcasts. Then beneath, on a rung beneath that, we have passion work. On a rung beneath that, we have fiction audiobooks, nonfiction audiobooks, really important fiction audiobooks that you know you should be listening to, but, eh, you can't quite bring yourself to do. Beneath that, you got a physical paper book. Maybe we got the Kindle right above that. You can kinda see where this is going. So you've got a big spectrum
Edited passage
Game of Thrones, right? It makes you pay attention. And then you've got really artsy TV. We've got movies. Then beneath that, we've got podcasts. Then beneath, on a rung beneath that, we have passion work. On a rung beneath that, we have fiction audiobooks, nonfiction audiobooks, really important fiction audiobooks that you know you should be listening to, but, eh, you can't quite bring yourself to do. Beneath that, you got a physical paper book. Maybe we got the Kindle right above that. You can kinda see where this is going. So you've got a big spectrum.
Source transcript
Super stimulating at the top, really low stimulation at the bottom. I have found that human beings will rise to the highest permissible rung of the dopamine stimulation ladder all on their own. Now, those of us with ADHD [laughs] will tend to rise higher, faster, um, and that is a, that is a separate conversation. But this is a problem that all of humanity has. Now, what stops you from getting to the simultaneous drug, sex, and rock 'n' roll ladder is perceived penalty, right? You can't do that very long before you're dead, [laughs] a- as evidenced by lots of musicians
Edited passage
Super stimulating at the top, really low stimulation at the bottom. I have found that human beings will rise to the highest permissible rung of the dopamine stimulation ladder all on their own. Now, those of us with ADHD will tend to rise higher, faster, and that is a separate conversation. But this is a problem that all of humanity has. Now, what stops you from getting to the simultaneous drug, sex, and rock 'n' roll ladder is perceived penalty, right? You can't do that very long before you're dead, as evidenced by lots of musicians.
Source transcript
So there's a negative incentive not to go higher, but that's often not enough. So let's go ahead and remove the things that are obviously either unattainable or completely unsustainable, or we're just not willing to do them for some other moral, ethical, or it feels bad reason. All right, so now you're kind of, like, a couple rungs down. We tend to rise to the highest permissible rung of the dopamine ladder. By default, this is what we do as a species. This is just how we work. I'll go into a little bit more why in a second now, but just take me at my word for now
Edited passage
So there's a negative incentive not to go higher, but that's often not enough. So let's go ahead and remove the things that are obviously either unattainable or completely unsustainable, or we're just not willing to do them for some other moral, ethical, or it feels bad reason. All right, so now you're kind of, a couple rungs down. We tend to rise to the highest permissible rung of the dopamine ladder. By default, this is what we do as a species. This is just how we work. I'll go into a little bit more why in a second now, but just take me at my word for now.
Source transcript
So what does that mean? It means, left to our own devices, we will rise to the TikTok rung, and we will do TikTok for as long as it is stimulating dopamine. And then when it's not, or we just can't take it anymore because it's hurting us in some way, then we'll move on to either something on the same rung if we can, or if we have to, something a little bit lower. Okay. Why does this matter? Who cares? Here's why it matters
Edited passage
So what does that mean? It means, left to our own devices, we will rise to the TikTok rung, and we will do TikTok for as long as it is stimulating dopamine. And then when it's not, or we just can't take it anymore because it's hurting us in some way, then we'll move on to either something on the same rung if we can, or if we have to, something a little bit lower. Okay. Why does this matter? Who cares? Here's why it matters.
Source transcript
When you do something that's really highly stimulating, what happens is your dopamine spikes, and then it goes down. Way down. In fact, below your average, below your baseline. Remember, this is the chemical that makes you want to do things, makes you feel motivated. When it dips below the baseline, you feel like trash. You will feel depressed, completely unmotivated. Um, it just feels bad. A lot of things start going wrong. And what you will want is another hit to get you back up because you feel bad. You will literally have to stimulate yourself from the outside in
Edited passage
When you do something that's really highly stimulating, what happens is your dopamine spikes, and then it goes down. Way down. In fact, below your average, below your baseline. Remember, this is the chemical that makes you want to do things, makes you feel motivated. When it dips below the baseline, you feel like trash. You will feel depressed, completely unmotivated. It just feels bad. A lot of things start going wrong. And what you will want is another hit to get you back up because you feel bad. You will literally have to stimulate yourself from the outside in.
Source transcript
You can't really make enough of it on your own. You have to go do things in the world. You have to, to push the button. Your brain can't push the button itself. It has to have some external stimuli push the button for you. It has to have TikTok. It has to have a text message notification. Or, you know, ideally, it has something on the lower part of the, the ladder. So when you partake of things that are very highly stimulating of dopamine, you crash your dopamine well below the baseline, baseline. The more you whipsaw back and forth, the lower your average baseline dopamine gets
Edited passage
You can't really make enough of it on your own. You have to go do things in the world. You have to push the button. Your brain can't push the button itself. It has to have some external stimuli push the button for you. It has to have TikTok. It has to have a text message notification. Or, ideally, it has something on the lower part of the ladder. So when you partake of things that are very highly stimulating of dopamine, you crash your dopamine well below the baseline. The more you whipsaw back and forth, the lower your average baseline dopamine gets.
Source transcript
It gets lower and lower and lower and lower till you're just sort of bouncing off rock bottom here. There's a lot of people stuck in that, just sort of smacking off the rock bottom over and over again. TikTok, depression. TikTok, depression. [laughs] I gotta go to work. I guess I'll go to work. What's interesting is the moment you remove the highest rung of the ladder, what happens is ... Say you remove TikTok from your phone. "I'm done with this crap. I'm not doing it anymore." What happens is trash TV is now suddenly very appealing
Edited passage
It gets lower and lower and lower and lower till you're just sort of bouncing off rock bottom here. There's a lot of people stuck in that, just sort of smacking off the rock bottom over and over again. TikTok, depression. TikTok, depression. I gotta go to work. I guess I'll go to work. What's interesting is the moment you remove the highest rung of the ladder, what happens is... Say you remove TikTok from your phone. "I'm done with this crap. I'm not doing it anymore." What happens is trash TV is now suddenly very appealing.
Source transcript
I guess I will watch this reality TV show. I just didn't have the motivation to watch it before, but now I will." Until you remove that rung. [laughs] You move one lower, right? I don't know, it's Game of Thrones, right? Cool. Finally. I'll go watch Mad Men. Something like it, right? I don't know. I'll watch Breaking, Breaking Bad. Until you remove that rung of the ladder. "Well, fine. I guess, I don't know, I'll go listen to a funny podcast." If you just keep taking away the rungs of the ladder, you cannot climb any higher
Edited passage
"I guess I will watch this reality TV show. I just didn't have the motivation to watch it before, but now I will." Until you remove that rung. You move one lower, right? I don't know, it's Game of Thrones, right? Cool. Finally. I'll go watch Mad Men. Something like it, right? I don't know. I'll watch Breaking Bad. Until you remove that rung of the ladder. "Well, fine. I guess, I don't know, I'll go listen to a funny podcast." If you just keep taking away the rungs of the ladder, you cannot climb any higher.
Source transcript
This is by self-restraint, essentially, for those of you who have it. And for those of us who don't, we have lots of other tricks that I will not go into in this episode. Suffice to say, if you are not allowed, for some reason, it's not permissible to climb higher on the dopamine ladder, the highest rung becomes very appealing to you. This principle is true no matter how low the highest rung is. That is why this is a fascinating tool and concept. So if you remove all the rungs above passion work, audiobook, thoughtful podcast, reading a physical book, doing my job, suddenly those things become incredibly pleasurable and very desirable
Edited passage
This is by self-restraint, essentially, for those of you who have it. And for those of us who don't, we have lots of other tricks that I will not go into in this episode. Suffice to say, if you are not allowed, for some reason, it's not permissible to climb higher on the dopamine ladder, the highest rung becomes very appealing to you. This principle is true no matter how low the highest rung is. That is why this is a fascinating tool and concept. So if you remove all the rungs above passion work, audiobook, thoughtful podcast, reading a physical book, doing my job, suddenly those things become incredibly pleasurable and very desirable.
Source transcript
Because before, when TikTok was available way up here, you could not even dream of doing those things until the penalty for not doing them was so high that, "Fine, I guess I'll do my job." That's how that happens. When you have things lower on the dopamine ladder, they don't spike your dopamine very much. Whoop, whoop. It's very sustainable. It doesn't harm your baseline dopamine. In fact, that level of stability tends to make your baseline dopamine go up or recover to a healthy amount, to the point where you're just kinda motivated and happy and chill and good, like, basically all the time
Edited passage
Because before, when TikTok was available way up here, you could not even dream of doing those things until the penalty for not doing them was so high that, "Fine, I guess I'll do my job." That's how that happens. When you have things lower on the dopamine ladder, they don't spike your dopamine very much. Whoop. It's very sustainable. It doesn't harm your baseline dopamine. In fact, that level of stability tends to make your baseline dopamine go up or recover to a healthy amount, to the point where you're just kinda motivated and happy and chill and good, basically all the time.
Source transcript
So when you start taking those rungs out of the top, you can't climb any higher. You never spike your dopamine, so you never crash, so you're never totally exhausted. Your baseline dopamine's pretty much always good. You're never bouncing off rock bottom. You have a very chill, happy existence. But this isn't happen- this doesn't happen by default. Now, a lot of people have enough self-control to be able to do this, where they can have TikTok on their phone and not completely fall apart. Many of us cannot do that. So for those of us who can't, that's today's lesson
Edited passage
So when you start taking those rungs out of the top, you can't climb any higher. You never spike your dopamine, so you never crash, so you're never totally exhausted. Your baseline dopamine's pretty much always good. You're never bouncing off rock bottom. You have a very chill, happy existence. But this doesn't happen by default. Now, a lot of people have enough self-control to be able to do this, where they can have TikTok on their phone and not completely fall apart. Many of us cannot do that. So for those of us who can't, that's today's lesson.
Source transcript
This worked really well for me. I just remove all the top rungs of the ladder. Not only, I remove the middle rungs of the ladder. I don't even, like, listen to podcasts except on weekends. I have rules for everything, and it seems insane from the outside, but this is why. Because my highest rung is so low, it's so low that the thought of practicing violin actually sounds kind of fun. Reading a book about the history of humanity or agrarian societies, oh, okay, I could do that. I never would have dreamed of doing those things before I removed the other rungs
Edited passage
This worked really well for me. I just remove all the top rungs of the ladder. Not only, I remove the middle rungs of the ladder. I don't even listen to podcasts except on weekends. I have rules for everything, and it seems insane from the outside, but this is why. Because my highest rung is so low, it's so low that the thought of practicing violin actually sounds kind of fun. Reading a book about the history of humanity or agrarian societies, oh, okay, I could do that. I never would have dreamed of doing those things before I removed the other rungs.
Source transcript
Because if they were there, I would be chatting online. I would be watching a TV show. I would watch, I would just do vapid web browsing. Sure, I'll use social media. Until you get to drugs, sex, and rock and roll, and it's all over. Because that's the kind of brain I have, and a lot of other people are like this sometimes, even if they're not like it all the time. Think about this principle the next time you find yourself just feeling, like, trash, unmotivated. Start removing rungs from the dopamine ladder
Edited passage
Because if they were there, I would be chatting online. I would be watching a TV show. I would just do vapid web browsing. Sure, I'll use social media. Until you get to drugs, sex, and rock and roll, and it's all over. Because that's the kind of brain I have, and a lot of other people are like this sometimes, even if they're not like it all the time. Think about this principle the next time you find yourself just feeling like trash, unmotivated. Start removing rungs from the dopamine ladder.
Source transcript
You know what the higher rungs are. Here's how you know. If you're thinking, "Ugh, I really don't wanna do exercise, cooking, chores, read that book, do that homework. I really don't wanna do those things," that's because you have too many rungs above it. Just start knocking them out. How do you know what the higher rungs are? It's what you want to do instead. [laughs] Pretty much. And, uh, yeah, that's basically it. Whatever it is you want to do instead of the thing you wish you could do, that is a higher rung on the dopamine ladder
Edited passage
You know what the higher rungs are. Here's how you know. If you're thinking, "Ugh, I really don't wanna do exercise, cooking, chores, read that book, do that homework. I really don't wanna do those things," that's because you have too many rungs above it. Just start knocking them out. How do you know what the higher rungs are? It's what you want to do instead. Pretty much. And, yeah, that's basically it. Whatever it is you want to do instead of the thing you wish you could do, that is a higher rung on the dopamine ladder.
Source transcript
Just remove it, and keep removing them until, "Well, dang, this homework is actually pretty interesting. That book was pretty cool. I'm glad I read that." It works for me. It works for my kids. I see this every time with them. They will If video games are available, they'll play video games. If video game time is up, they will watch TV, like vapid TV shows. If they're not allowed to watch vapid TV shows, they'll watch longer, more thoughtful TV shows. If those are removed, they will watch movies, the kinds of movies they've seen before that are super familiar because they spike that dopamine
Edited passage
Just remove it, and keep removing them until, "Well, dang, this homework is actually pretty interesting. That book was pretty cool. I'm glad I read that." It works for me. It works for my kids. I see this every time with them. If video games are available, they'll play video games. If video game time is up, they will watch TV, like vapid TV shows. If they're not allowed to watch vapid TV shows, they'll watch longer, more thoughtful TV shows. If those are removed, they will watch movies, the kinds of movies they've seen before that are super familiar because they spike that dopamine.
Source transcript
If I remove the Minions and more movies and I force them to watch something with a long plot line and characters that actually talk, they'll watch that. If I remove all electronics, suddenly playing with toys inside seems like fun. If I say, you can't play inside. I'm not going to play with you. You've been inside for too long. Get out of here. Suddenly, playing outside seems like a lot of fun. What's very interesting is whether it's them or me, we cannot even enjoy things on the lower rungs of the dopamine ladder
Edited passage
If I remove the Minions and more movies and I force them to watch something with a long plot line and characters that actually talk, they'll watch that. If I remove all electronics, suddenly playing with toys inside seems like fun. If I say, you can't play inside. I'm not going to play with you. You've been inside for too long. Get out of here. Suddenly, playing outside seems like a lot of fun. What's very interesting is whether it's them or me, we cannot even enjoy things on the lower rungs of the dopamine ladder.
Source transcript
And that is really what you're giving up. If you insist on keeping your higher rungs, and if you don't have a brain like me, congratulations, I guess you don't need to worry about this video. But when I have higher rungs available to me, I cannot even enjoy the lower rungs. Sitting down with a book is painful. It's just straight up misery, right? But when reading a book is the only thing available to me, it's that or stare at a wall. Reading a book is pretty interesting. What's more is I actually enjoy it again
Edited passage
And that is really what you're giving up. If you insist on keeping your higher rungs, and if you don't have a brain like me, congratulations, I guess you don't need to worry about this video. But when I have higher rungs available to me, I cannot even enjoy the lower rungs. Sitting down with a book is painful. It's just straight up misery, right? But when reading a book is the only thing available to me, it's that or stare at a wall. Reading a book is pretty interesting. What's more is I actually enjoy it again.
Source transcript
And not only is it healthier for me, but I like being able to enjoy reading a book. I like being able to practice the violin without it being painful to start, painful during, watching the clock. When can I be done? I just want to enjoy it. And I have found that removing all the rungs above where I want to spend my time to be one of the most effective methods of controlling my own motivation and happiness. I hope it works for you
Edited passage
And not only is it healthier for me, but I like being able to enjoy reading a book. I like being able to practice the violin without it being painful to start, painful during, watching the clock. When can I be done? I just want to enjoy it. And I have found that removing all the rungs above where I want to spend my time to be one of the most effective methods of controlling my own motivation and happiness. I hope it works for you.
4. Beyond the Job Description
c04-p001 · Are You Losing Your Power? Regain It With This Simple Idea · 00:00:00.060–00:01:09.680 · Reading textSource transcript
My career went on an upward trajectory the moment I changed a single frame of mind, which is I'm self-employed. Every single one of us is self-employed. It's just a matter of seeing it that way, and when you see yourself as self-employed, you stop being a victim, and you start gaining power over your time. You start saying no to your coworkers and to your boss because your job is to do your job, not to make them happy. Now, I can hear the rebuttals already, but if you're not happy with your job, stop viewing it as an employer/employee relationship and start thinking about your job more like terms between two people who are providing services and paying for services with each other
Edited passage
My career went on an upward trajectory the moment I changed a single frame of mind, which is I'm self-employed. Every single one of us is self-employed. It's just a matter of seeing it that way, and when you see yourself as self-employed, you stop being a victim, and you start gaining power over your time. You start saying no to your coworkers and to your boss because your job is to do your job, not to make them happy. Now, I can hear the rebuttals already, but if you're not happy with your job, stop viewing it as an employer/employee relationship and start thinking about your job more like terms between two people who are providing services and paying for services with each other.
Source transcript
That's it. This is a negotiation between two independent people, and if you don't like your job, you don't like the terms of your business arrangement with each other because you're always self-employed. That perspective changed everything. Try it out
Edited passage
That's it. This is a negotiation between two independent people, and if you don't like your job, you don't like the terms of your business arrangement with each other because you're always self-employed. That perspective changed everything. Try it out.
Source transcript
we are... full, complete, rich human beings with lots of knowledge, far beyond you know how to make some software do a thing, according to spec. I'm of the opinion that treating yourself as a cog, a worker on the assembly line, is a terrible idea as a knowledge worker. There is so much we are leaving on the table
Edited passage
We are full, complete, rich human beings with lots of knowledge, far beyond you know how to make some software do a thing, according to spec. I'm of the opinion that treating yourself as a cog, a worker on the assembly line, is a terrible idea as a knowledge worker. There is so much we are leaving on the table.
Source transcript
Who do you work for? Where does your loyalty belong? Why? And do you feel clear on why? This is not obvious. When there is conflict, you've received this hypothetical piece of work. This is not hypothetical for most people. It could even just be, this is a waste of time. We've been doing this stuff for three months. You're giving me more of this? Like, nobody knows if it's working. Why are we doing this
Edited passage
Who do you work for? Where does your loyalty belong? Why? And do you feel clear on why? This is not obvious. When there is conflict, you've received this hypothetical piece of work. This is not hypothetical for most people. It could even just be, this is a waste of time. We've been doing this stuff for three months. You're giving me more of this? Nobody knows if it's working. Why are we doing this?
Source transcript
Whether or not you've said anything is immaterial at this point. Where does your loyalty go? That matters A lot. Is it to your product or business partners who are asking for the change? Is it to the customers? You know, damn the torpedoes. Like, no, I'm here for them. This is what they want. It's clear. Look at this. I'm here for them. And you're willing to push back against your peers
Edited passage
Whether or not you've said anything is immaterial at this point. Where does your loyalty go? That matters a lot. Is it to your product or business partners who are asking for the change? Is it to the customers? Damn the torpedoes. No, I'm here for them. This is what they want. It's clear. Look at this. I'm here for them. And you're willing to push back against your peers.
Source transcript
Is it for, you know, your management, the technical leadership? Are they where your loyalty goes? Do you have loyalty to high level company goals over low level company goals? Do you have loyalty to your friends and your relationships at the company? It's not worth burning the bridge. It's not obvious
Edited passage
Is it for your management, the technical leadership? Are they where your loyalty goes? Do you have loyalty to high level company goals over low level company goals? Do you have loyalty to your friends and your relationships at the company? It's not worth burning the bridge. It's not obvious.
Source transcript
I can tell you what my answer is. You're welcome to draw from that if you want to. But it's important that you know why you're here and who you're working for. And my answer, which I more or less said in this last talk as well, is I work for myself and what I believe is right. I work for meaning and purpose. I need a paycheck. A paycheck is necessary, but it's not sufficient
Edited passage
I can tell you what my answer is. You're welcome to draw from that if you want to. But it's important that you know why you're here and who you're working for. And my answer is I work for myself and what I believe is right. I work for meaning and purpose. I need a paycheck. A paycheck is necessary, but it's not sufficient.
Source transcript
For me, this is my choice. I choose to do work that I think is meaningful and valuable. Not always. I know. I got to do stuff that, at least from a utility perspective, I don't get it. I don't have to get everything. That's not the point. But when I see something that I really think could be improved, I think is wrong for some reason. Then it gets interesting because my loyalty is to what I think is right and effective
Edited passage
For me, this is my choice. I choose to do work that I think is meaningful and valuable. Not always. I know. I got to do stuff that, at least from a utility perspective, I don't get it. I don't have to get everything. That's not the point. But when I see something that I really think could be improved, I think is wrong for some reason, then it gets interesting because my loyalty is to what I think is right and effective.
Source transcript
I have no real love for used cars in my case in this part of the organization, but I do care about doing good work, I care about people, I care about doing something that's effective and provides value. All those things matter to me, and that is what I'm of service to. But you pick your own thing, you know? Choose your own adventure, it's your life. But you're a human being and not a cog. Just don't forget that. And we need you to not be a cog because we need to innovate. We need to change. We need what you bring to the table beyond your technical expertise
Edited passage
I have no real love for used cars in my case in this part of the organization, but I do care about doing good work, I care about people, I care about doing something that's effective and provides value. All those things matter to me, and that is what I'm of service to. But you pick your own thing, you know? Choose your own adventure, it's your life. But you're a human being and not a cog. Just don't forget that. And we need you to not be a cog because we need to innovate. We need to change. We need what you bring to the table beyond your technical expertise.
Source transcript
you can do stuff that no one asked you to do. Spoiler, you're a free person. You don't have to do everything you're told. You will reap the consequences of not doing what you're told, so that's also true. However... You can do things that nobody asked you to do. This is easier because nobody's paying attention to it
Edited passage
You can do stuff that no one asked you to do. Spoiler, you're a free person. You don't have to do everything you're told. You will reap the consequences of not doing what you're told, so that's also true. However, you can do things that nobody asked you to do. This is easier because nobody's paying attention to it.
Source transcript
I am of the belief that collectively as a society, but also of course that permeates even our culture, especially in large organizations. We are severely deficient in proactive enthusiasm. That is, seeing a thing that could change and not just complaining about it at the water cooler, but no, I'm actually going to take some steps. I'm going to start asking some people. I'm gonna start, you know, putting some allies together, see what they think about this, making sure my understanding of the opportunity or problem is right. And then just start putting things in motion, start talking about it. You don't even necessarily have to act, but you can
Edited passage
I am of the belief that collectively as a society, but also of course that permeates even our culture, especially in large organizations, we are severely deficient in proactive enthusiasm. That is, seeing a thing that could change and not just complaining about it at the water cooler, but no, I'm actually going to take some steps. I'm going to start asking some people. I'm gonna start putting some allies together, see what they think about this, making sure my understanding of the opportunity or problem is right. And then just start putting things in motion, start talking about it. You don't even necessarily have to act, but you can.
Source transcript
It's difficult to have a very rigid, linear process for development. You need people who are sort of lower on the chains, bottom-up intelligence, to identify opportunities and challenges and actually feel like they have the courage and the ability to do something about it. My advice is to just... Try
Edited passage
It's difficult to have a very rigid, linear process for development. You need people who are sort of lower on the chains, bottom-up intelligence, to identify opportunities and challenges and actually feel like they have the courage and the ability to do something about it. My advice is to just try.
Source transcript
Now, if you're going to act outside your job role, which I do many times, make sure you're doing your job well first. That should be without saying that you are at least doing your job well, and you're not causing more problems, and you're also not neglecting your actual responsibilities, your core responsibilities
Edited passage
Now, if you're going to act outside your job role, which I do many times, make sure you're doing your job well first. You are at least doing your job well, and you're not causing more problems, and you're also not neglecting your actual responsibilities, your core responsibilities.
Source transcript
I do think we have a greater responsibility. And the last thing I'll say about that is my favorite approach is literally just picking higher level company goals. You know, like we had a goal last year, I think, or whatever, increase marketplace vibrancy. That's your goal. You're on a specific thing with a specific task. But if you have free capacity, or you can just talk to people or get an idea going, That is your goal. You are responsible to higher level ideas and values and company directives. And that is the easiest way to circumvent lower level sort of bad ideas or just complacency or nobody wants to take it on
Edited passage
I do think we have a greater responsibility. My favorite approach is literally just picking higher level company goals. We had a goal last year, I think, or whatever, increase marketplace vibrancy. That's your goal. You're on a specific thing with a specific task. But if you have free capacity, or you can just talk to people or get an idea going, that is your goal. You are responsible to higher level ideas and values and company directives. And that is the easiest way to circumvent lower level bad ideas or just complacency or nobody wants to take it on.
Source transcript
If you are willing to supply the effort, you're willing to take a little bit of career capital risk, and you can point to something that is aligned to company values somewhere, directive somewhere, you can do it. Just go do it. Don't worry so much. As long as you're being responsible and you're not negligent
Edited passage
If you are willing to supply the effort, you're willing to take a little bit of career capital risk, and you can point to something that is aligned to company values somewhere, directive somewhere, you can do it. Just go do it. Don't worry so much. As long as you're being responsible and you're not negligent.
Source transcript
Just go do it. Don't worry about the billing codes. Tell your manager if you want to. But that is my advice. That's where most of the positive change that I've been able to create has come from. I just didn't ask. I asked where I was concerned. But beyond that, Just go try things or just make enough to show somebody, to inspire somebody. It seems so simple, but this is just a reminder. Yeah, you can do things that nobody asks you to do. Not only can you, but you should. And I think that you have. Every right to do so
Edited passage
Just go do it. Don't worry about the billing codes. Tell your manager if you want to. But that is my advice. That's where most of the positive change that I've been able to create has come from. I just didn't ask. I asked where I was concerned. But beyond that, just go try things or just make enough to show somebody, to inspire somebody. It seems so simple, but this is just a reminder: you can do things that nobody asks you to do. Not only can you, but you should. And I think that you have every right to do so.
5. The Art of Defiance
c05-p001 · Not Your Job: The Art of Defiance · 00:03:55.046–00:04:16.486 · Reading textSource transcript
you are a software developer working on an application team of some kind. You have received a piece of work. And in your own head, you think, that's like a really terrible idea. For some reason, this is not good
Edited passage
You are a software developer working on an application team of some kind. You have received a piece of work. And in your own head, you think, that's a really terrible idea. For some reason, this is not good.
Source transcript
When it's on technical grounds, we generally have the domain, we have the trump card, right? Everybody's got a trump card. Now, you know, if you're a doctor, you get to pull the trump card on somebody because it's a medical issue. They're not going to be giving you legal advice. In the same way, of course, we have a technical expertise and we're expected to push back for technical things
Edited passage
When it's on technical grounds, we generally have the domain, we have the trump card, right? Everybody's got a trump card. If you're a doctor, you get to pull the trump card on somebody because it's a medical issue. They're not going to be giving you legal advice. In the same way, of course, we have a technical expertise and we're expected to push back for technical things.
Source transcript
what we're talking about is the gray area just beyond a job role, where, okay, you want me to remove this thing, or you want me to add this feature, you want me to make this change beyond just our technical reasons, we are... full, complete, rich human beings with lots of knowledge, far beyond you know how to make some software do a thing, according to spec
Edited passage
What we're talking about is the gray area just beyond a job role, where, okay, you want me to remove this thing, or you want me to add this feature, you want me to make this change beyond just our technical reasons. We are full, complete, rich human beings with lots of knowledge, far beyond you know how to make some software do a thing, according to spec.
Source transcript
What do you do? Do you keep it to yourself? Do you try to push back, at risk to yourself or your career? Do you make change? How do you go about it? Should you? And the entire purpose of this talk is to say yes, with multiple asterisks after it, I think you should, and we desperately need you to. At every level, the company, the species, we all need people who are willing to push back
Edited passage
What do you do? Do you keep it to yourself? Do you try to push back, at risk to yourself or your career? Do you make change? How do you go about it? Should you? Yes, with multiple asterisks after it, I think you should, and we desperately need you to. At every level, the company, the species, we all need people who are willing to push back.
Source transcript
the dark secret of all engineering professions is that this is actually kind of a moot point because turns out if a lot of people think an idea is bad or dumb or wasteful, Um... Everybody drags their feet. Like, yeah, you estimate wrong. You prioritize one thing over and over. This is a favorite tool. It's not clear which of these four things we should be doing. Well, I guarantee you, 10 times out of 10, people are going to pick the one that they think is actually more valuable or will give them some learning, like some sort of value they're going to derive from it. every single time
Edited passage
The dark secret of all engineering professions is that this is actually kind of a moot point because turns out if a lot of people think an idea is bad or dumb or wasteful, everybody drags their feet. You estimate wrong. You prioritize one thing over and over. This is a favorite tool. It's not clear which of these four things we should be doing. Well, I guarantee you, 10 times out of 10, people are going to pick the one that they think is actually more valuable or will give them some learning, some sort of value they're going to derive from it. Every single time.
Source transcript
It always comes out somewhere. If nobody says anything or nobody does anything and it's not effective, it continues to be not effective. Everybody knows that even if you're an engineer and technically that's not your job, you have the ability to drag your feet on anything or make anything poorly or take too long or deprioritize it. And that's always true. That's not a nice thing to say. It's not an easy thing to say, but that's how human beings operate. It doesn't matter what the job role is, by the way. It's not just engineering
Edited passage
It always comes out somewhere. If nobody says anything or nobody does anything and it's not effective, it continues to be not effective. Everybody knows that even if you're an engineer and technically that's not your job, you have the ability to drag your feet on anything or make anything poorly or take too long or deprioritize it. And that's always true. That's not a nice thing to say. It's not an easy thing to say, but that's how human beings operate. It doesn't matter what the job role is, by the way. It's not just engineering.
Source transcript
If it's foolish, or it doesn't make sense, or it's not effective, it's always going to come out somewhere. So you're going to pay one way or another. The only real decision here is whether you're going to do something about it. and address it directly
Edited passage
If it's foolish, or it doesn't make sense, or it's not effective, it's always going to come out somewhere. So you're going to pay one way or another. The only real decision here is whether you're going to do something about it and address it directly.
Source transcript
you need to be somebody who is providing more value than you're taking away, like significantly more. It's not a good idea to do this, to start pushing back, especially outside your job role. If you're not somebody who is already... being useful, right? You need to be able to do what you're told well first before you not try to do what you're not told well. That's just how human beings work. It's also a reasonable expectation. So you need a track record of being competent and being right
Edited passage
You need to be somebody who is providing more value than you're taking away, significantly more. It's not a good idea to do this, to start pushing back, especially outside your job role, if you're not somebody who is already being useful, right? You need to be able to do what you're told well first. That's just how human beings work. It's also a reasonable expectation. So you need a track record of being competent and being right.
Source transcript
You want to be able to prove it subjectively, objectively. You need to have something. Generally, it is best to pose a question, to assume competency in the people that you are questioning. A question is the best way to get started. Hey, have you thought about this? Or how do we know it's going to have that result
Edited passage
You want to be able to prove it subjectively, objectively. You need to have something. Generally, it is best to pose a question, to assume competency in the people that you are questioning. A question is the best way to get started. Hey, have you thought about this? Or how do we know it's going to have that result?
Source transcript
I was at the grocery store to pick up a frozen pizza for lunch today, and one of the people at Kroger who stand around operating the self-checkout things. She came up to me and started talking to me about SNAP, like the food stamp program, and asked if I had any relatives or friends, you used that program. And I said, no. It's like, okay, well, I'm going around telling everybody that Kroger runs the 20% discount on all produce, fruits and vegetables, if you're in that program. I think it's great. We don't have any signs up. I told my manager, they're not having any signs up. So I'm just walking around telling people now because I think it's important. What I am talking about. She gets it. She gets it. Nobody asked her to do that. I thought that that was fantastic, and it was a perfect example of what I'm trying to indicate here
Edited passage
I was at the grocery store to pick up a frozen pizza for lunch today, and one of the people at Kroger who stand around operating the self-checkout things, she came up to me and started talking to me about SNAP, the food stamp program. I'm going around telling everybody that Kroger runs the 20% discount on all produce, fruits and vegetables, if you're in that program. I think it's great. We don't have any signs up. I told my manager, they're not having any signs up. So I'm just walking around telling people now because I think it's important. She gets it. She gets it. Nobody asked her to do that. I thought that that was fantastic, and it was a perfect example of what I'm trying to indicate here.
Source transcript
The point I want to make here is how you say something is more important than what you're saying. That's not obvious, and it will be obvious to everyone else around you. You can see in their response, especially when you're challenging somebody, you don't want to trigger the psychological immune system. If they get emotional, especially in front of other people, it's not going to go well
Edited passage
The point I want to make here is how you say something is more important than what you're saying. That's not obvious, and it will be obvious to everyone else around you. You can see in their response, especially when you're challenging somebody, you don't want to trigger the psychological immune system. If they get emotional, especially in front of other people, it's not going to go well.
Source transcript
Talking to people generally, back channels first, trying to get allies, trying to ask questions, trying to understand, and having the appearance of trying to understand. And not just the appearance, but like genuinely also trying to understand is a great way to start
Edited passage
Talking to people generally, back channels first, trying to get allies, trying to ask questions, trying to understand, and having the appearance of trying to understand. And not just the appearance, but genuinely also trying to understand is a great way to start.
Source transcript
if you just walk people through the logic, you don't even have to tell them they're wrong. Most people are going to go, well, yeah. And then you're going to find the real reason that this is happening. And then at that point, you can make a decision. And nobody risked anything. So often things don't even get to a point of real conflict. However, when it does, it helps to have rapport. It helps to have friends before you need them. Pretty basic stuff, right? You're going to find a lot more success
Edited passage
If you just walk people through the logic, you don't even have to tell them they're wrong. Most people are going to go, well, yeah. And then you're going to find the real reason that this is happening. And then at that point, you can make a decision. And nobody risked anything. So often things don't even get to a point of real conflict. However, when it does, it helps to have rapport. It helps to have friends before you need them. Pretty basic stuff, right? You're going to find a lot more success.
Source transcript
pretty recently, somebody wanted to put an icon in an application. The icon, it looked like crap. Like you couldn't understand what it was communicating. It was just noise. It was bad. That's my personal opinion, but I did cite some actual reasons for why it was unreadable, how it wasn't useful
Edited passage
Pretty recently, somebody wanted to put an icon in an application. The icon, it looked like crap. You couldn't understand what it was communicating. It was just noise. It was bad. That's my personal opinion, but I did cite some actual reasons for why it was unreadable, how it wasn't useful.
Source transcript
This had nothing to do with me. I was like barely even involved in this task, but you know, sort of thoughtfully brought it up, made some suggestions how it should be changed. That's it. Like it seemed, why even say anything? It seems dumb. And if it's a total waste of time, obviously, you know, get your ROI out of this. However, but when you do that kind of thing, you are showing the people around you. that it's okay to question. It's okay to have doubts about different parts of the process. How did we get to this idea? How do we know whether this is going to work or not? Why are we investing so much in this? Help me understand it
Edited passage
This had nothing to do with me. I was barely even involved in this task, but sort of thoughtfully brought it up, made some suggestions how it should be changed. That's it. It seemed, why even say anything? It seems dumb. And if it's a total waste of time, obviously, get your ROI out of this. But when you do that kind of thing, you are showing the people around you that it's okay to question. It's okay to have doubts about different parts of the process. How did we get to this idea? How do we know whether this is going to work or not? Why are we investing so much in this? Help me understand it.
Source transcript
When you do things like that, you're showing the people around you that it's okay. to be involved in other areas of the business. It's okay to be involved in things that are just not your lane. And human beings are complex, and we have a lot to offer. We're much more expressive than our single job role would have us believe. Also, we need to be shown. We're experiential, so you change the culture, and every time you do, you make it easier, right? So you're making it easier for somebody else to question something big when you question something small, as long as how you're doing it is actually, you know, well-intentioned and effective
Edited passage
When you do things like that, you're showing the people around you that it's okay to be involved in other areas of the business. It's okay to be involved in things that are just not your lane. And human beings are complex, and we have a lot to offer. We're much more expressive than our single job role would have us believe. Also, we need to be shown. We're experiential, so you change the culture, and every time you do, you make it easier, right? So you're making it easier for somebody else to question something big when you question something small, as long as how you're doing it is actually well-intentioned and effective.
Source transcript
Most of what we do, as long as things are working, should be compliant, right? You don't want to introduce noise into a system, even just, you know, the medicine becomes worse than the poison. At some point, my thoughts are compliance should be the norm in a functional system
Edited passage
Most of what we do, as long as things are working, should be compliant, right? You don't want to introduce noise into a system. The medicine becomes worse than the poison. At some point, my thoughts are compliance should be the norm in a functional system.
Source transcript
I think it's important to know that we are individuals and that we should be able to express a defiance against the status quo or how things are traditionally done, or against complacency, just didn't do the research, or didn't put a lot of thought into it, or it was politically convenient for somebody else. This is easy, or it's too much work, or it takes too long. Whatever. We should feel like we can be non-compliant without concern. Again, for the greater good, should be net positive, well-intentioned, without too much concern for ourselves
Edited passage
I think it's important to know that we are individuals and that we should be able to express a defiance against the status quo or how things are traditionally done, or against complacency, just didn't do the research, or didn't put a lot of thought into it, or it was politically convenient for somebody else. This is easy, or it's too much work, or it takes too long. Whatever. We should feel like we can be non-compliant without concern. Again, for the greater good, should be net positive, well-intentioned, without too much concern for ourselves.
Source transcript
even if there is some. It does take a little courage, but it should be compliant most of the time
Edited passage
Even if there is some. It does take a little courage, but it should be compliant most of the time.
Source transcript
it's really your choice in that moment. And I promise if you make that choice, you will not be the same person afterward. And it will affect how you see everything in life and every challenge, especially the ones with conflict, especially the ones that feel right, but are not convenient for you. And you will not regret, at least I have never regretted making the choice that was not convenient for me, but felt right at some level
Edited passage
It's really your choice in that moment. And I promise if you make that choice, you will not be the same person afterward. And it will affect how you see everything in life and every challenge, especially the ones with conflict, especially the ones that feel right, but are not convenient for you. And you will not regret, at least I have never regretted making the choice that was not convenient for me, but felt right at some level.
6. Becoming a Beginner Again
c06-p001 · Local Minima - The Answer to Why We Are Seeking Minima · 00:01:22.880–00:02:32.400 · Reading textSource transcript
For those of you who understand trading, you know a little bit about derivatives, and you know about paper value versus real value. What's the difference? Okay. So without diving too much into how currency works, let's say you have a piece of gold, a gold bar. Okay? A one-ounce gold bar. That is worth, you know, some amount of money or some amount of goods in the real world to other people who are willing to trade you that gold for something else. Okay? Now imagine I have an IOU. It's a piece of paper that says, "You can turn in this piece of paper for one ounce of gold at any point in time." That is paper value
Edited passage
For those of you who understand trading, you know a little bit about derivatives, and you know about paper value versus real value. What's the difference? Okay. So without diving too much into how currency works, let's say you have a piece of gold, a gold bar. Okay? A one-ounce gold bar. That is worth some amount of money or some amount of goods in the real world to other people who are willing to trade you that gold for something else. Okay? Now imagine I have an IOU. It's a piece of paper that says, "You can turn in this piece of paper for one ounce of gold at any point in time." That is paper value.
Source transcript
It's not real value. Now, you can call your option on the real value anytime you want. You just go turn it in at the bank, and you can get your gold, right? It's almost as good. Now, those paper value vouchers are pretty awesome because you can trade them on exchanges. You can create all sorts of interesting derivatives. You can have leverage. You can do all sorts of crazy stuff with them. Here's where humanity gets into trouble. You can continue to print paper value in excess of real value. I can make 100,000 vouchers that say, "You can turn in this voucher for a piece of gold." However, there may only be 1,000 pieces of gold
Edited passage
It's not real value. Now, you can call your option on the real value anytime you want. You just go turn it in at the bank, and you can get your gold, right? It's almost as good. Now, those paper value vouchers are pretty awesome because you can trade them on exchanges. You can create all sorts of interesting derivatives. You can have leverage. You can do all sorts of crazy stuff with them. Here's where humanity gets into trouble. You can continue to print paper value in excess of real value. I can make 100,000 vouchers that say, "You can turn in this voucher for a piece of gold." However, there may only be 1,000 pieces of gold.
Source transcript
If people figure this out, they will quickly have a run on the gold. This is actually what a run on a bank is, is there is not enough money for you to go get it. It says you have this much in your bank account, but they actually don't have that much. Now, there's all sorts of layers of protections, but ultimately, that's how a lot of our economy works. The paper value is much larger than the real value, and under good times when nothing is under stress, that's not a big deal. Who cares, right
Edited passage
If people figure this out, they will quickly have a run on the gold. This is actually what a run on a bank is: there is not enough money for you to go get it. It says you have this much in your bank account, but they actually don't have that much. Now, there's all sorts of layers of protections, but ultimately, that's how a lot of our economy works. The paper value is much larger than the real value, and under good times when nothing is under stress, that's not a big deal. Who cares, right?
Source transcript
If paper value exceeds real value, that's only a problem if everybody tries to turn in their IOUs at the same time. It's a game of musical chairs, right? And that's the best analogy I can think of. There's not enough chairs. It's fine as long as the music is playing. But when the music stops, it's not so good. So now that you kind of understand the difference between paper and real value, I have a theory that... Well, this one is pretty well shared by everybody. Our economy is very over-financialized, meaning we made up a bunch of stuff on paper that isn't quite backed by the same amount of real value, the ability to produce goods, the real goods themselves in storage, the ability to do useful stuff in the real world
Edited passage
If paper value exceeds real value, that's only a problem if everybody tries to turn in their IOUs at the same time. It's a game of musical chairs, right? And that's the best analogy I can think of. There's not enough chairs. It's fine as long as the music is playing. But when the music stops, it's not so good. So now that you kind of understand the difference between paper and real value, I have a theory that... Well, this one is pretty well shared by everybody. Our economy is very over-financialized, meaning we made up a bunch of stuff on paper that isn't quite backed by the same amount of real value, the ability to produce goods, the real goods themselves in storage, the ability to do useful stuff in the real world.
Source transcript
This is gonna be a running theme through all of Seeking Minima. There is no replacement for being good at doing stuff that matters to people. There's no replacement for that. No investment, no idea, nothing is as good as being able to do something in the real world that is useful to another person. All right. So besides over-financialized economy, we also have an over-specialized economy. I call this the tall tower problem. So in finance, there's layers upon layers of derivatives, and you can see when this becomes an option, like, mm, back in 2007 when there was the subprime mortgage lending crisis
Edited passage
This is gonna be a running theme through all of Seeking Minima. There is no replacement for being good at doing stuff that matters to people. There's no replacement for that. No investment, no idea, nothing is as good as being able to do something in the real world that is useful to another person. All right. So besides over-financialized economy, we also have an over-specialized economy. I call this the tall tower problem. So in finance, there's layers upon layers of derivatives, and you can see when this becomes an option, mm, back in 2007 when there was the subprime mortgage lending crisis.
Source transcript
Basically, we just had stacks and stacks of derivatives. They were all being shuffled and bundled around, and underneath it all were people's home mortgages. But there were so many layers of derivatives, nobody even knew who owned what anymore. Right? It was all paper value on paper value on paper value, many orders away from a real thing, somebody's house. We have something kind of like that happening with specialization. So think of a very tall tower. All right? Let's say you have a specialized num- a certain number of blocks. Each block represents a skill, a capacity you can learn
Edited passage
Basically, we just had stacks and stacks of derivatives. They were all being shuffled and bundled around, and underneath it all were people's home mortgages. But there were so many layers of derivatives, nobody even knew who owned what anymore. Right? It was all paper value on paper value on paper value, many orders away from a real thing, somebody's house. We have something kind of like that happening with specialization. So think of a very tall tower. All right? Let's say you have a certain number of blocks. Each block represents a skill, a capacity you can learn.
Source transcript
Right? It's your ability to do something, and you can choose to build a tower that is tall. Right? You can be... That is narrow, deep expertise. You can be an incredible microbiologist on a very specific strain of bacteria. And you can be very good at that thing. And that can be incredibly useful to the world as long as that's what the world needs. Or you can also know how to repair a car. You can also know how to fix your bike. You can also know how to set up your own solar array
Edited passage
Right? It's your ability to do something, and you can choose to build a tower that is tall. Right? That is narrow, deep expertise. You can be an incredible microbiologist on a very specific strain of bacteria. And you can be very good at that thing. And that can be incredibly useful to the world as long as that's what the world needs. Or you can also know how to repair a car. You can also know how to fix your bike. You can also know how to set up your own solar array.
Source transcript
Like there's a lot of other things you could be learning besides microbiology, a very specific kind, but you won't be as good at any of them, right? We all sort of face this trade-off. Do I go deep? Do I go broad? So we all have a certain number of skill blocks, finite cap on how much stuff we can learn. Now, what happens, here's, here's where these two things come into contact really, is the over-financialized economy really, really loves specialization because specialization is great. It ensures that you can be the best at the forty-first layer on your tall tower, right
Edited passage
Like there's a lot of other things you could be learning besides microbiology, a very specific kind, but you won't be as good at any of them, right? We all sort of face this trade-off. Do I go deep? Do I go broad? So we all have a certain number of skill blocks, finite cap on how much stuff we can learn. Now, here's where these two things come into contact really, is the over-financialized economy really loves specialization because specialization is great. It ensures that you can be the best at the forty-first layer on your tall tower, right?
Source transcript
So if you just go super deep and you just say, "Well, I'm gonna make the most money in a hyper-financialized economy," the best way to do that is just to get really amazing at something super high value. These are often in technology. It's like engineering, medicine, sometimes law, or finance, finance itself, right? It's such an esoteric thing when you get down and actually think about it. Think about what your job is right now. What layer of a tall tower are you standing on, right? Are you the digital marketer for Facebook, for pet, for dog walking companies
Edited passage
So if you just go super deep and you just say, "Well, I'm gonna make the most money in a hyper-financialized economy," the best way to do that is just to get really amazing at something super high value. These are often in technology. It's like engineering, medicine, sometimes law, or finance itself, right? It's such an esoteric thing when you get down and actually think about it. Think about what your job is right now. What layer of a tall tower are you standing on, right? Are you the digital marketer for Facebook, for dog walking companies?
Source transcript
Wow, that is very specific. Now, it makes sense to make a living in a hyper-financialized economy being very specialized. That's where the money is. You want to be able to distinguish yourself. If you just say, "Ah, I do everything," nobody will hire you because they don't want somebody who does everything. They want somebody who is the best at the exact thing they want. That's cool. But the whole point of this is to say that there are downsides to the tall tower. Here's an example. Facebook goes away. Now who are you
Edited passage
Wow, that is very specific. Now, it makes sense to make a living in a hyper-financialized economy being very specialized. That's where the money is. You want to be able to distinguish yourself. If you just say, "Ah, I do everything," nobody will hire you because they don't want somebody who does everything. They want somebody who is the best at the exact thing they want. That's cool. But the whole point of this is to say that there are downsides to the tall tower. Here's an example. Facebook goes away. Now who are you?
Source transcript
You're the marketer for Facebook ads for dog walking companies. Sure. Okay. Maybe you can pivot a little bit to another platform. Certainly. Yeah. But what happens if the ad model for businesses changes on the internet? What if, I don't know, something like a generalized, generalized language model makes it so that people just aren't looking at very many ads anymore? Hmm. [laughs] Your economy, ad economy implodes. There's just like ninety percent less revenue overall in the future. You are sitting at the very top of a tall tower that has just been shaken, and twenty of those blocks fall off
Edited passage
You're the marketer for Facebook ads for dog walking companies. Sure. Okay. Maybe you can pivot a little bit to another platform. Certainly. Yeah. But what happens if the ad model for businesses changes on the internet? What if, I don't know, something like a generalized language model makes it so that people just aren't looking at very many ads anymore? Hmm. Your economy, ad economy implodes. There's just like ninety percent less revenue overall in the future. You are sitting at the very top of a tall tower that has just been shaken, and twenty of those blocks fall off.
Source transcript
Now what do you know? Nothing. You're useless. You don't know anything. You don't know how to fix your car. You don't know how to fix your bike. You don't know how to set up a solar array. You don't even know, like, how to pivot to something similar because you've gotten so good at one thing and only one thing. This is the trouble with tall towers, is that they're not very stable. I'm gonna extrapolate this even further and say that our entire society is like this. We have a very, very, very tall tower, and we just keep putting one more block on top of the other, training people to be some hyper-specialized thing, while really understanding very little of the fundamentals underneath it or anything adjacent to them
Edited passage
Now what do you know? Nothing. You're useless. You don't know anything. You don't know how to fix your car. You don't know how to fix your bike. You don't know how to set up a solar array. You don't even know how to pivot to something similar because you've gotten so good at one thing and only one thing. This is the trouble with tall towers, is that they're not very stable. I'm gonna extrapolate this even further and say that our entire society is like this. We have a very, very tall tower, and we just keep putting one more block on top of the other, training people to be some hyper-specialized thing, while really understanding very little of the fundamentals underneath it or anything adjacent to them.
Source transcript
Now, this is certainly not a rule, but people who are sort of well-rounded and good at multiple things are definitely the exception. And this is not to shame people who have become specialized. It made sense in our economy, in our world. But if we're ever shaken, as we sometimes are, um, we'll say with some regularity maybe, fi- every five to ten years, let's say all of society is shaken by something. Are you gonna be one of those blocks that gets shaken out? I think that we're in a very fragile place overall in terms of human civilization because our tower is so tall and it's not robust
Edited passage
Now, this is certainly not a rule, but people who are sort of well-rounded and good at multiple things are definitely the exception. And this is not to shame people who have become specialized. It made sense in our economy, in our world. But if we're ever shaken, as we sometimes are, we'll say with some regularity maybe, every five to ten years, let's say all of society is shaken by something. Are you gonna be one of those blocks that gets shaken out? I think that we're in a very fragile place overall in terms of human civilization because our tower is so tall and it's not robust.
Source transcript
I think a lot about how machine learning models actually learn, and I think there's so many analogies that you can draw to real life. When you look at how a non-human agent learns, there's just like philosophical wonder in that. I don't know. I, I can draw so many con- so many interesting parallels to real life. So when a machine learning model starts to learn, in this case, I'm talking about deep neural networks. When they start to learn something, we'll say recognizing objects in photos, they will start with a pretty broad, messy approach, right
Edited passage
I think a lot about how machine learning models actually learn, and I think there's so many analogies that you can draw to real life. When you look at how a non-human agent learns, there's just like philosophical wonder in that. I don't know. I can draw so many interesting parallels to real life. So when a machine learning model starts to learn, in this case, I'm talking about deep neural networks. When they start to learn something, we'll say recognizing objects in photos, they will start with a pretty broad, messy approach, right?
Source transcript
Let's just try stuff. Kind of like a baby, just trying random things that makes no sense. And that's-- so it starts out broad, and then as soon as it starts to find a winning strategy, it will start to go deep, right? Start to build up that tower. It'll double down on this technique. So what you want as the machine learning engineer is you want a model that learns lots of different ways to detect things. It has a broad base to its tower, but it does get very good as it-- at the actual task, right
Edited passage
Let's just try stuff. Kind of like a baby, just trying random things that makes no sense. So it starts out broad, and then as soon as it starts to find a winning strategy, it will start to go deep, right? Start to build up that tower. It'll double down on this technique. So what you want as the machine learning engineer is you want a model that learns lots of different ways to detect things. It has a broad base to its tower, but it does get very good at the actual task, right?
Source transcript
You want to actually be able to tell a cat from a bicycle or a cat from a cheetah. Chelling- telling a cat from a cheetah is very difficult. So you want it to be great, a deep specialist to handle those difficult edge cases, but you want it to be generalized as well. It can also tell a cat from a bus, which sounds silly to us to say that. But if you have a very narrow model and it's not well generalized, that's exactly what it can't do. [laughs] It doesn't know the difference between a cat and a bus
Edited passage
You want to actually be able to tell a cat from a bicycle or a cat from a cheetah. Telling a cat from a cheetah is very difficult. So you want it to be great, a deep specialist to handle those difficult edge cases, but you want it to be generalized as well. It can also tell a cat from a bus, which sounds silly to us to say that. But if you have a very narrow model and it's not well generalized, that's exactly what it can't do. It doesn't know the difference between a cat and a bus.
Source transcript
it doesn't understand even how to conceive of these problems. So this problem is called overfitting. When you train-- when a machine learning model doubles down on one strategy too much, it goes too deep. And in this case, like our tall tower problem, this is a tower that is too tall and is flimsy. That's called overfitting. It basically tries to memorize the data. It finds a technique that works well, and it only does this one thing, no matter what. This is what it's like to be s-stuck in a local minima. So if you take a graph, we'll say every point on the graph represents how good the model is
Edited passage
It doesn't understand even how to conceive of these problems. So this problem is called overfitting. When a machine learning model doubles down on one strategy too much, it goes too deep. And in this case, like our tall tower problem, this is a tower that is too tall and is flimsy. That's called overfitting. It basically tries to memorize the data. It finds a technique that works well, and it only does this one thing, no matter what. This is what it's like to be stuck in a local minima. So if you take a graph, we'll say every point on the graph represents how good the model is.
Source transcript
It's literally its score for how good it is at its specific problem, right? So higher points on the graph, in this case, represent bad scores. Lower points on the graph represent good scores. Now, if we have the x-axis as time, then you will see that over time, you know, it's gonna go up and down, right? Typically, it starts bad, and then it gets better, right? Up and down, up and down. Starts to learn a little bit. It messes up a little bit, tries a new technique, and it learns over time
Edited passage
It's literally its score for how good it is at its specific problem, right? So higher points on the graph, in this case, represent bad scores. Lower points on the graph represent good scores. Now, if we have the x-axis as time, then you will see that over time, it's gonna go up and down, right? Typically, it starts bad, and then it gets better, right? Up and down, up and down. Starts to learn a little bit. It messes up a little bit, tries a new technique, and it learns over time.
Source transcript
You expect over time, it's gonna go down, meaning it's learning better. Lower points means it's better over time. So you can think of it kind of like a hilly terrain, right? It's got peaks and valleys, kind of like a sine wave. The valleys are local minima, right? It is the lowest point on a curve. Machine learning models can get stuck at this low point on the curve. They can never leave. They can't leave because they found a strategy that works well, but they can't find a strategy that is better overall without first making their own score worse
Edited passage
You expect over time, it's gonna go down, meaning it's learning better. Lower points means it's better over time. So you can think of it kind of like a hilly terrain, right? It's got peaks and valleys, kind of like a sine wave. The valleys are local minima, right? It is the lowest point on a curve. Machine learning models can get stuck at this low point on the curve. They can never leave. They can't leave because they found a strategy that works well, but they can't find a strategy that is better overall without first making their own score worse.
Source transcript
In order to actually get better overall, it actually has to get worse for a little bit. So let's draw an analogy to real life. Let's say you are at block number forty on your tall tower. You are the Facebook marketer [chuckles] for a dog walking companies. Well, if you want to get better overall, you-- as in more robust to tower shaking, and you wanna be better at overall life, less fragile, you would probably need to learn an adjacent skill. Maybe you learn, like, generalized copywriting, or maybe you also-- or just learn a separate tower, right
Edited passage
In order to actually get better overall, it actually has to get worse for a little bit. So let's draw an analogy to real life. Let's say you are at block number forty on your tall tower. You are the Facebook marketer for dog walking companies. Well, if you want to get better overall, as in more robust to tower shaking, and you wanna be better at overall life, less fragile, you would probably need to learn an adjacent skill. Maybe you learn generalized copywriting, or just learn a separate tower, right?
Source transcript
You also learn photography. Okay? Something like this. It's sort of relevant to what you're doing, but not exactly the same thing. So in this case, when you start learning photography, you're gonna suck at it. You're gonna be bad. It's literally going to make you worse overall. You're gonna make-- be made worse overall because you can't focus on the one thing you're great at, and you have to start out bad. A lot of people get stuck here. They get to a comfort zone in life. They get pretty good at one thing, and then they stop
Edited passage
You also learn photography. Okay? Something like this. It's sort of relevant to what you're doing, but not exactly the same thing. So in this case, when you start learning photography, you're gonna suck at it. You're gonna be bad. It's literally going to make you worse overall. You're gonna be made worse overall because you can't focus on the one thing you're great at, and you have to start out bad. A lot of people get stuck here. They get to a comfort zone in life. They get pretty good at one thing, and then they stop.
Source transcript
They get stuck in a local minima, just like a machine learning model. They can't really branch out and try new things. They can't really get into a new career, a new job. They can't really go back to school because of the, the perceived risk. The penalty for trying to be something new, more flexible, more robust is too high. They can't get over the hump to get to a better place. Even if there were a lower valley, remember, low points represent better overall fitness score at the problem you're trying to solve, they can't get to this lower point because they keep getting stuck
Edited passage
They get stuck in a local minima, just like a machine learning model. They can't really branch out and try new things. They can't really get into a new career, a new job. They can't really go back to school because of the perceived risk. The penalty for trying to be something new, more flexible, more robust is too high. They can't get over the hump to get to a better place. Even if there were a lower valley, remember, low points represent better overall fitness score at the problem you're trying to solve, they can't get to this lower point because they keep getting stuck.
Source transcript
They can't quite build the momentum to get over the hill, so they stay where they are in a local minima. Again, I think this is where humanity is. We are [chuckles] currently stuck in a local minima. We can't get to the global minima. We can't even get to lower local minima because we're comfortable, because we figured things out
Edited passage
They can't quite build the momentum to get over the hill, so they stay where they are in a local minima. Again, I think this is where humanity is. We are currently stuck in a local minima. We can't get to the global minima. We can't even get to lower local minima because we're comfortable, because we figured things out.
Source transcript
So how do you fix it? Again, we can draw analogies to machine learning. In machine learning, you have a lot of different strategies to sort of get models to try new things, prevent them from over-optimizing. Okay, cool, you found one strategy that works, but basically, you force it to be flexible. You force it to be unable to use its one strategy that it finds, so it can't be a one-trick pony. So what do you do? You do things like dropout. This means literally removing parts of its neurons, right? So basically, parts of the network, you turn them off
Edited passage
So how do you fix it? Again, we can draw analogies to machine learning. In machine learning, you have a lot of different strategies to sort of get models to try new things, prevent them from over-optimizing. Okay, cool, you found one strategy that works, but basically, you force it to be flexible. You force it to be unable to use its one strategy that it finds, so it can't be a one-trick pony. So what do you do? You do things like dropout. This means literally removing parts of its neurons, right? So basically, parts of the network, you turn them off.
Source transcript
This is like making you selectively forget so that you have to find a more general solution, right? Some of the clues are not always there. Some of the ways you did things literally removes parts of the network. We can't really do that with humans. Um, here's another one, data augmentation. Right. So th-- for the picture example, instead of just sending the same pictures of cats and buses, sometimes you flip them, sometimes you make them kind of blurry, sometimes you zoom in on them and crop them so that it can't just memorize things, and it can't always look for a perfect picture of a cat right in the center of the frame
Edited passage
This is like making you selectively forget so that you have to find a more general solution, right? Some of the clues are not always there. Some of the ways you did things literally removes parts of the network. We can't really do that with humans. Here's another one, data augmentation. Right. So for the picture example, instead of just sending the same pictures of cats and buses, sometimes you flip them, sometimes you make them kind of blurry, sometimes you zoom in on them and crop them so that it can't just memorize things, and it can't always look for a perfect picture of a cat right in the center of the frame.
Source transcript
It has to kind of learn, what do you do when it's off-center a little bit? What do you do when it's kind of blurry? So it has to learn other approaches to win. So there are other things you can do. Noise injection. You can do loss function penalties. Um, so this is a way of saying l-- uh, nonlinear loss function penalties. This is a way of saying, if you're a little bit wrong, that's okay. If you're really wrong, we're gonna penalize you, not just, like, the same amount more. If you're fifty percent wrong, you don't get fifty percent penalty
Edited passage
It has to kind of learn, what do you do when it's off-center a little bit? What do you do when it's kind of blurry? So it has to learn other approaches to win. So there are other things you can do. Noise injection. You can do loss function penalties. So this is a way of saying nonlinear loss function penalties. This is a way of saying, if you're a little bit wrong, that's okay. If you're really wrong, we're gonna penalize you, not just the same amount more. If you're fifty percent wrong, you don't get fifty percent penalty.
Source transcript
You get five hundred percent penalty, right? It goes exponential. So if you're really bad, you're way off on something, we're gonna penalize you severely. We can do things like that in real life too. This is like saying, instead of I'm already on the 41st block with my day job. Do I really need to be at the 42nd block by learning this other niche tool to be a better Facebook dog walking marketer? Or maybe I could learn how to seal my radiator in my car, right? Even though it's not optimal. Maybe I could do something adjacent, right
Edited passage
You get five hundred percent penalty, right? It goes exponential. So if you're really bad, you're way off on something, we're gonna penalize you severely. We can do things like that in real life too. This is like saying, instead of I'm already on the 41st block with my day job. Do I really need to be at the 42nd block by learning this other niche tool to be a better Facebook dog walking marketer? Or maybe I could learn how to seal my radiator in my car, right? Even though it's not optimal. Maybe I could do something adjacent, right?
Source transcript
Like learning photography or learning something else. Become more robust. Not because you have to, but just in case the tower gets shaken, right? And really, that's all you need to do is deliberately shake yourself. And that's all humanity needs is sometimes we need to be shaken. Because if we're not, we just keep building the tower taller. We keep being stuck in local minima. Hyper-optimizing for a tiny, tiny percentage point of a gain with our 10th layer of financial derivative. This is how you get content that isn't content. It's vapid. There's nothing there
Edited passage
Like learning photography or learning something else. Become more robust. Not because you have to, but just in case the tower gets shaken, right? And really, that's all you need to do is deliberately shake yourself. And that's all humanity needs is sometimes we need to be shaken. Because if we're not, we just keep building the tower taller. We keep being stuck in local minima. Hyper-optimizing for a tiny percentage point of a gain with our 10th layer of financial derivative. This is how you get content that isn't content. It's vapid. There's nothing there.
Source transcript
I think I've said that content is becoming double speak. What does it even mean? You can't just pump this stuff out. What are we doing? It's very clear to me that we're not just over-financialized, we're over-specialized. Too many layers of derivatives at every level. And the answer is shake it. Because we're stuck in a local minima. And if we ever want to get to the global minima of our society, we should thoughtfully shake ourselves. We should thoughtfully start becoming more robust and prepared and well-rounded where we can. So that when the tower does fall, because it will fall, hopefully it doesn't fall all the way down to the first block, if you catch my drift
Edited passage
I think I've said that content is becoming double speak. What does it even mean? You can't just pump this stuff out. What are we doing? It's very clear to me that we're not just over-financialized, we're over-specialized. Too many layers of derivatives at every level. And the answer is shake it. Because we're stuck in a local minima. And if we ever want to get to the global minima of our society, we should thoughtfully shake ourselves. We should thoughtfully start becoming more robust and prepared and well-rounded where we can. So that when the tower does fall, because it will fall, hopefully it doesn't fall all the way down to the first block, if you catch my drift.
Source transcript
So that's how I think about local minima and why I think they're a useful concept. We get stuck because we find something that works well, right? This is sort of analogous to being happy, being good instead of great, you know, from the book Good to Great. Fantastic concept. Very similar. You'll find analogies all over the place. But the way I like to think of it is local minima. Because I can just imagine myself being on a bike, like stuck at the bottom of a hill in a valley between two hills
Edited passage
So that's how I think about local minima and why I think they're a useful concept. We get stuck because we find something that works well, right? This is sort of analogous to being happy, being good instead of great, from the book Good to Great. Fantastic concept. Very similar. You'll find analogies all over the place. But the way I like to think of it is local minima. Because I can just imagine myself being on a bike, like stuck at the bottom of a hill in a valley between two hills.
Source transcript
And even though I know that there's a lower point farther away, I can't get there because I'm not willing to climb this hill on my bike. So that is my advice. Begin to notice when you're stuck in a local minima. When you're stuck, you need to start climbing. You need to see what's over the next hill. Because chances are, it's a lower point. It's a better local minima
Edited passage
And even though I know that there's a lower point farther away, I can't get there because I'm not willing to climb this hill on my bike. So that is my advice. Begin to notice when you're stuck in a local minima. When you're stuck, you need to start climbing. You need to see what's over the next hill. Because chances are, it's a lower point. It's a better local minima.
7. Making Worlds
Editor’s context: These selections come from “Developer Commentary 1,” in which Steven discusses his audio-fiction project and the first two episodes of Planescarred. The plot discussion contains spoilers.
c07-p001 · Developer Commentary 1 · 00:00:00.980–00:01:10.260 · Reading textSource transcript
Collected Forge is a podcast where I get to take my writing and turn them into audio stories. So I'm learning the art of sound design, and this is a place for me to practice and share, and hopefully, uh, give you some entertaining stories along the way. So right now I'm in the process of publishing 12 stories, two episodes each. This is a sorta- sort of shotgun approach. We're gonna see what sticks, what's exciting, what makes me excited, and then I'm gonna take two of those story worlds, maybe the same stories, and I'm going to go much deeper into them. Uh, about 12 to 13 episodes, so probably a full season, and those episodes will be more polished. Uh, so that's where I'm going with the podcast, right? Uh, I'm gonna slowly dive deeper, less of this sporadic new story every week thing. Um, I'm really just trying to figure things out right now
Edited passage
Collected Forge is a podcast where I get to take my writing and turn them into audio stories. So I'm learning the art of sound design, and this is a place for me to practice and share, and hopefully, give you some entertaining stories along the way. So right now I'm in the process of publishing 12 stories, two episodes each. This is a sort of shotgun approach. We're gonna see what sticks, what's exciting, what makes me excited, and then I'm gonna take two of those story worlds, maybe the same stories, and I'm going to go much deeper into them. About 12 to 13 episodes, so probably a full season, and those episodes will be more polished. So that's where I'm going with the podcast, right? I'm gonna slowly dive deeper, less of this sporadic new story every week thing. I'm really just trying to figure things out right now.
Source transcript
What I love so much about this story is really the world. Uh, I knew about the world and the magic system long before I knew about the characters, and that's really how I've been approaching, uh, each of these stories really is I, I come up with the magic system. I come up with the rules of the universe beyond the magic system, uh, which is a super set, and then I think about, what kind of people would this create? What kind of cultures might you get out of this? And then you sorta zoom in from there
Edited passage
What I love so much about this story is really the world. I knew about the world and the magic system long before I knew about the characters, and that's really how I've been approaching each of these stories. I come up with the magic system. I come up with the rules of the universe beyond the magic system, which is a super set, and then I think about, what kind of people would this create? What kind of cultures might you get out of this? And then you sorta zoom in from there.
Source transcript
Okay, what kind of cultures might be in conflict? What would their problems be, uh, if they could have this? Like if you've got magic that can purify food [laughs] or make food appear, right, you have a very different kind of problem, uh, from people who can see the future or who can go into the past. Uh, who knows, right? Uh, the magic systems have a profound effect on how the world works, just like how the rules of our world has a profound effect on how the world works. So once I know the magic system and then the world and I start to dial in on the setting and the time period, uh, that's when I start creating characters. Uh, so the characters in this story are at war, uh, and it's two different planes. And we haven't gotten into, you know, how many different planes there are, how you move between them, uh, but most of that is already spelled out
Edited passage
Okay, what kind of cultures might be in conflict? What would their problems be, if they could have this? Like if you've got magic that can purify food or make food appear, right, you have a very different kind of problem, from people who can see the future or who can go into the past. Who knows, right? The magic systems have a profound effect on how the world works, just like how the rules of our world has a profound effect on how the world works. So once I know the magic system and then the world and I start to dial in on the setting and the time period, that's when I start creating characters. So the characters in this story are at war, and it's two different planes. And we haven't gotten into, how many different planes there are, how you move between them, but most of that is already spelled out.
Source transcript
we've got a delegation of magical people who are on the physical plane or the mundane plane, which is basically where we live, uh, and they have dwindling resources, and they've been cut off, and, oh, spoiler by the way, if you haven't [laughs] listened to this episode, you should, uh, you should, you should pause. But I don't think you should be surprised that there's conflict. Spoiler, there's conflict
Edited passage
We've got a delegation of magical people who are on the physical plane or the mundane plane, which is basically where we live, and they have dwindling resources, and they've been cut off. But I don't think you should be surprised that there's conflict. Spoiler, there's conflict.
Source transcript
they're stranded, uh, and they have to make friends quickly in order to survive. They've basically been left out to dry, and I won't go too into detail on what's going wrong, but suffice to say, many things are going wrong, uh, uh, all over the place. Uh, and they may have to save the people that they were more or less sent here to fight. So that's the story
Edited passage
They're stranded, and they have to make friends quickly in order to survive. They've basically been left out to dry, and I won't go too into detail on what's going wrong, but suffice to say, many things are going wrong, all over the place. And they may have to save the people that they were more or less sent here to fight. So that's the story.
Source transcript
as an author, I write for, at least in part, what is cool and interesting to read. Uh, I try to make it coherent within the rules of the w- the world that it's in, and that's really the rule of thumb. It's not, does it make sense, but does it make sense in their world? So I just have to construct the rules of the universe and keep them consistent, and that's really what readers are looking for when you're looking for logic. Uh, it just, it has to be internally consistent, not necessarily [laughs] consistent with our world. Uh, that's one of the rules that I try to follow with magic systems. I don't always succeed. Uh, you gotta follow the rule of cool sometimes, uh, and I think that that's perfectly fine
Edited passage
As an author, I write for, at least in part, what is cool and interesting to read. I try to make it coherent within the rules of the world that it's in, and that's really the rule of thumb. It's not, does it make sense, but does it make sense in their world? So I just have to construct the rules of the universe and keep them consistent, and that's really what readers are looking for when you're looking for logic. It has to be internally consistent, not necessarily consistent with our world. That's one of the rules that I try to follow with magic systems. I don't always succeed. You gotta follow the rule of cool sometimes, and I think that that's perfectly fine.
Source transcript
there was a lot of outdoor scenes. Uh, so I spent a lot of time going through, uh, sound effects for, you know, people in crowds. But you know what's difficult is when your time period doesn't have cars or trucks or planes and somebody flies a plane overhead on your sound effects. [laughs] Like, okay. Uh, it's actually exceptionally difficult to get, um, the right time periods for atmospheres, and there's a lot of times where I try to cover it up or [laughs] hide the fact that there's a car driving by, cut it off in editing. Um, so that's always an interesting challenge
Edited passage
There was a lot of outdoor scenes. So I spent a lot of time going through sound effects for people in crowds. But you know what's difficult is when your time period doesn't have cars or trucks or planes and somebody flies a plane overhead on your sound effects. Okay. It's actually exceptionally difficult to get the right time periods for atmospheres, and there's a lot of times where I try to cover it up or hide the fact that there's a car driving by, cut it off in editing. So that's always an interesting challenge.
Source transcript
I got to do sound design for a fryer. Uh, that ended up being... That scene ended up being a little longer than intended, [laughs] the Fry Anything stand. Uh, but it was funny, so, uh, hopefully that was appreciated. I, I poured a lot of love into that scene specifically for sound design. Um, yeah. Uh, I think on this episode I really spent a long... I spread my sound design evenly, whereas in some past episodes, I've really focused on just a few minutes, and then most of the rest of the episode is basically dead air, uh, other than my voice
Edited passage
I got to do sound design for a fryer. That scene ended up being a little longer than intended, the Fry Anything stand. But it was funny, so, hopefully that was appreciated. I poured a lot of love into that scene specifically for sound design. Yeah. I spread my sound design evenly, whereas in some past episodes, I've really focused on just a few minutes, and then most of the rest of the episode is basically dead air, other than my voice.
Source transcript
But on this one, I really did spread it out fairly evenly. Uh, I wish I could have spent a little more time on the action scenes at the end, but action scenes take a lot of time to do sound design for. It's the kind of thing you just, you don't notice until you're actually in there making it. Every little scuff of the foot, uh, move it, movement of clothing, grabbing clothing, uh, footsteps, uh, bouncing off walls, and that's just the sounds of movement. That's not even the sounds of, you know, all the magic that is happening or gunfire or everybody else who's moving around and saying things and they grunt and go, "Ugh," when they get hit
Edited passage
But on this one, I really did spread it out fairly evenly. I wish I could have spent a little more time on the action scenes at the end, but action scenes take a lot of time to do sound design for. It's the kind of thing you just, you don't notice until you're actually in there making it. Every little scuff of the foot, movement of clothing, grabbing clothing, footsteps, bouncing off walls, and that's just the sounds of movement. That's not even the sounds of, all the magic that is happening or gunfire or everybody else who's moving around and saying things and they grunt and go, "Ugh," when they get hit.
Source transcript
So it's got a very high density of sound, so it takes an enormous amount of effort to do an action scene. Uh, but they are very exciting, and I will say that the sounds really add a lot of depth and immersion to an action scene. There's something that you get with sound that you just can't get with words
Edited passage
So it's got a very high density of sound, so it takes an enormous amount of effort to do an action scene. But they are very exciting, and I will say that the sounds really add a lot of depth and immersion to an action scene. There's something that you get with sound that you just can't get with words.
Source transcript
I don't have to say, "And then his bones broke," when I can just make the sound of crunching. [laughs] And you know exactly how bad the hit was, right? I don't need to dive into whether it was a glancing blow or not. You hear that, the huge crunch. Like, oh man, that was a big hit. Um, so I find that it, it's really, it really adds another channel of information to action scenes that is really hard to get in another format. Uh, so that's cool, uh, but it is time-consuming
Edited passage
I don't have to say, "And then his bones broke," when I can just make the sound of crunching. And you know exactly how bad the hit was, right? I don't need to dive into whether it was a glancing blow or not. You hear that, the huge crunch. Oh man, that was a big hit. So I find that it really adds another channel of information to action scenes that is really hard to get in another format. So that's cool, but it is time-consuming.
Source transcript
I enjoyed it. Uh, I wrote it in basically one, maybe two long sessions. Uh, it was, it was fun to write. It's got a lot of humor in it. Uh, I think that I reflexively put a lot of humor in my stories. I like dark grittiness every now and then, um, but I like lightheartedness too. Uh, and I think I... There's a mix of that in this story. There's a lot of, uh, gross-out moments
Edited passage
I enjoyed it. I wrote it in basically one, maybe two long sessions. It was, it was fun to write. It's got a lot of humor in it. I think that I reflexively put a lot of humor in my stories. I like dark grittiness every now and then, but I like lightheartedness too. There's a mix of that in this story. There's a lot of gross-out moments.
Source transcript
As always, I want your feedback. The reason I'm even releasing this podcast at all is because I want feedback. Uh, I believe that you need to share things in order to get better
Edited passage
As always, I want your feedback. The reason I'm even releasing this podcast at all is because I want feedback. I believe that you need to share things in order to get better.
8. Make Enough to Find Out
Editor’s context: These passages come from a February 2023 demonstration of a proposed scam-call detector. The model, interface, and product claims belong to that recording; the example calls are fictional. The chapter selects his account of prototyping and evaluating failures, rather than reproducing the screen walkthrough.
c08-p001 · Instructions For Prototyping ChatGPT Products · 00:01:48.560–00:02:23.480 · Reading textSource transcript
my name is Steven, and I like making things. I think that's enough of an introduction
Edited passage
My name is Steven, and I like making things. I think that's enough of an introduction.
Source transcript
I'm prototyping an idea for a startup that wants to be able to do scam phone call detection. So for the purposes of this exercise, what they want to do is they want to monitor, um, somebody's phone calls, outgoing and incoming, and basically continually listen to them and detect, is this a scam? Is this a scam? Is this a scam? And if it is, they're gonna make a decision. So that decision will end up being something like adding a trusted family member or friend to the phone call so that they can see what's going on, uh, or bringing in maybe a paid customer service agent who gets added to the call basically to verify, "Hey, who are you? What's going on
Edited passage
I'm prototyping an idea for a startup that wants to be able to do scam phone call detection. So for the purposes of this exercise, what they want to do is they want to monitor somebody's phone calls, outgoing and incoming, and basically continually listen to them and detect, is this a scam? Is this a scam? Is this a scam? And if it is, they're gonna make a decision. So that decision will end up being something like adding a trusted family member or friend to the phone call so that they can see what's going on, or bringing in maybe a paid customer service agent who gets added to the call basically to verify, 'Hey, who are you? What's going on?'
Source transcript
if what you wanna test is: Can my product idea work? Is this part, the AI part, is it good enough to do what I want to do? That is what today's video is about, and that is the part we're going to test. The rest of this, we're all going to assume is basic software development, and it can be done. If the hard part works, that's very promising for the rest of it
Edited passage
If what you wanna test is: can my product idea work? Is this part, the AI part, is it good enough to do what I want to do? That is the part we're going to test. The rest of this, we're all going to assume is basic software development, and it can be done. If the hard part works, that's very promising for the rest of it.
Source transcript
we want this thing to continually analyze the transcript from the very start all the way to the end. Hi, this is Stan. Right. And we want this language model to evaluate line by line in the transcript, is this a scam? Is this a scam? Is this a scam? So it's taking all the context of what has happened before this into account, but it's also doing it in real time, right? Because it's not useful to go 20 minutes down a conversation, send the whole recording to somebody and say, "Oh, yeah. Yep, you definitely got scammed. [chuckles] That was a scam. Sorry
Edited passage
We want this thing to continually analyze the transcript from the very start all the way to the end. Hi, this is Stan. Right. And we want this language model to evaluate line by line in the transcript, is this a scam? Is this a scam? Is this a scam? So it's taking all the context of what has happened before this into account, but it's also doing it in real time, right? Because it's not useful to go 20 minutes down a conversation, send the whole recording to somebody and say, 'Oh, yeah. Yep, you definitely got scammed. That was a scam. Sorry.'
Source transcript
So you wanna do it in real time, right? Because you wanna step in before it's too late. So that's what we're going to try to build. Um, so it needs to know as soon as possible whether it's confident it's a scam or not. So how are we gonna do that? Well, this might be kinda surprising if you haven't spent much time with ChatGPT, um, but the way you do that [chuckles] is like this. You are a scam detection tool. You will review a call, live call transcript and decide whether our user is talking to a scammer or not. I don't know about you, but this is profound that this is how this works. It's insane. This is literally what you do
Edited passage
So you wanna do it in real time, right? Because you wanna step in before it's too late. So that's what we're going to try to build. So it needs to know as soon as possible whether it's confident it's a scam or not. So how are we gonna do that? Well, this might be kinda surprising if you haven't spent much time with ChatGPT, but the way you do that is like this. You are a scam detection tool. You will review a live call transcript and decide whether our user is talking to a scammer or not. I don't know about you, but this is profound that this is how this works. It's insane. This is literally what you do.
Source transcript
first, you tell it what this is and what role it's playing. Then you're going to tell it, "Here is an example of a scam call, okay? And how I want you to respond." Right? You show it. You... First, you tell it what your role is, so it can constrain itself, so it knows roughly how to respond, what it's supposed to be doing. And then you give it an example, so it knows exactly how to format exactly what you want its responses to be
Edited passage
First, you tell it what this is and what role it's playing. Then you're going to tell it, 'Here is an example of a scam call, okay? And how I want you to respond.' Right? You show it. First, you tell it what your role is, so it can constrain itself, so it knows roughly how to respond, what it's supposed to be doing. And then you give it an example, so it knows exactly how to format exactly what you want its responses to be.
Source transcript
Then you want to give it an out of bounds example. All right. So I guess one way of framing this is that you want a true positive, okay? And then you want a true negative. So true negative, this is a scam call. Then you need to say, "Okay, here's an example of a conversation that is not a scam call, so that you can tell the difference. Here's a pushy collections department for medical billing," right? That's not a scam call. But they actually have a lot of the same qualities, so you need to provide some way for it to understand the distinction between them. And then, I don't know, maybe you include an example of something like a charity. You know, they're calling and asking for your help, but they do want your money, but it's not really a scam. How do you do it-- How can you tell the difference? Or somebody trying to upsell you on something
Edited passage
Then you want to give it an out of bounds example. Then you need to say, 'Okay, here's an example of a conversation that is not a scam call, so that you can tell the difference. Here's a pushy collections department for medical billing,' right? That's not a scam call. But they actually have a lot of the same qualities, so you need to provide some way for it to understand the distinction between them. And then, I don't know, maybe you include an example of something like a charity. They're calling and asking for your help, but they do want your money, but it's not really a scam. How can you tell the difference? Or somebody trying to upsell you on something.
Editor’s context: In a later fictional test call, a caller claims to represent the IRS. Steven examines why the model treats an earlier interaction with the IRS as evidence of trust.
c08-p008 · Instructions For Prototyping ChatGPT Products · 00:24:45.676–00:25:55.236 · Reading textSource transcript
See, this is not useful. We don't want it to do that. It doesn't make any sense. They're trying to resolve an existing issue. I mean, I guess you could see it that way because somebody called sort of trying to intimidate them, and our user, Tony, has responded by saying that there is an existing issue that is related. So because they have a past case with the IRS, this software thinks that, oh, well, just like we showed it in that initial example, the charity, because this person has associated with this charity in the past, they have established trust with them. They probably do not... This is probably not a scam. Okay? So let's keep going and see where it goes. This is an opportunity maybe to correct part of the bounds of where it will get things wrong
Edited passage
See, this is not useful. We don't want it to do that. It doesn't make any sense. They're trying to resolve an existing issue. I mean, I guess you could see it that way because somebody called sort of trying to intimidate them, and our user, Tony, has responded by saying that there is an existing issue that is related. So because they have a past case with the IRS, this software thinks that, oh, well, just like we showed it in that initial example, the charity, because this person has associated with this charity in the past, they have established trust with them. This is probably not a scam. Okay? So let's keep going and see where it goes. This is an opportunity maybe to correct part of the bounds of where it will get things wrong.
Source transcript
So a lot of getting these things right is going back and seeing where they break. They have common sense. When you think about these mo- large language models, especially like GPT, they have common sense. Think of them as like commodified intelligence. They have the un- the basic intelligence of like a 20-year-old, right? They have some common sense, um, and they know a lot of things, but they're not really necessarily expert. Um, so you can think of them as like a common sense reasoning machine, but you do have to show them the patterns. Um, s- and there are places where their reasoning will break down, especially if you've given them prior examples. They will overweight those examples sometimes
Edited passage
So a lot of getting these things right is going back and seeing where they break. They have common sense. When you think about these large language models, especially like GPT, they have common sense. Think of them as like commodified intelligence. They have the basic intelligence of like a 20-year-old, right? They have some common sense, and they know a lot of things, but they're not really necessarily expert. So you can think of them as like a common sense reasoning machine, but you do have to show them the patterns. And there are places where their reasoning will break down, especially if you've given them prior examples. They will overweight those examples sometimes.
Source transcript
what I did is I went in and I actually edited the, the responses from the AI as if I were the AI, so sort of just hand-correcting it. And then this is how it can really learn the nuances of the boundaries of your problem. And you just go through in this iterative cycle, and you, you see what it says. If it does, says something that doesn't make sense, you go back and correct it, and then you go again, and then eventually it's pretty good
Edited passage
What I did is I went in and I actually edited the responses from the AI as if I were the AI, so sort of just hand-correcting it. And then this is how it can really learn the nuances of the boundaries of your problem. And you just go through in this iterative cycle, and you see what it says. If it says something that doesn't make sense, you go back and correct it, and then you go again, and then eventually it's pretty good.
Source transcript
Sometimes you will have to come back in here and change your original prompt, and that will make a big difference, right? So here I might add something about, you know, gift cards being a hallmark of scam phone callers or some of the other nuances of a conversation
Edited passage
Sometimes you will have to come back in here and change your original prompt, and that will make a big difference, right? So here I might add something about gift cards being a hallmark of scam phone callers or some of the other nuances of a conversation.
Source transcript
you sort of feel out the boundaries of how hard is your problem. In this case, scam phone call detection looks very plausible. Uh, in fact, I would say that these state-of-the-art language models are exactly what we need to sort of curb this problem, and it's a very promising startup. And, you know, that is essentially my analysis for them is, yeah, this looks good. I think we can do this
Edited passage
You sort of feel out the boundaries of how hard is your problem. In this case, scam phone call detection looks very plausible. In fact, I would say that these state-of-the-art language models are exactly what we need to sort of curb this problem, and it's a very promising startup. And that is essentially my analysis for them is, yeah, this looks good. I think we can do this.
Source transcript
And the most exciting part is you don't have to train your own models. This is just an off-the-shelf API from OpenAI. You can just prompt craft properly and then send it this information, and it acts as a scam phone call detection tool. Now, you're gonna need to do some extra steps to get to production to make the software ready. Obviously, there was the phone app and the other stuff, and there's gonna be some stuff you wanna do to make sure that it's not giving really bad answers
Edited passage
And the most exciting part is you don't have to train your own models. This is just an off-the-shelf API from OpenAI. You can just prompt craft properly and then send it this information, and it acts as a scam phone call detection tool. Now, you're gonna need to do some extra steps to get to production to make the software ready. Obviously, there was the phone app and the other stuff, and there's gonna be some stuff you wanna do to make sure that it's not giving really bad answers.
Source transcript
But when you're prototyping something, you don't care about any of that. All you really care about is, can I get this thing to work well enough that I can prove that it's possible? You can do that. The rest is basically normal software engineering. It's a solved problem
Edited passage
But when you're prototyping something, you don't care about any of that. All you really care about is, can I get this thing to work well enough that I can prove that it's possible? You can do that. The rest is basically normal software engineering. It's a solved problem.
9. Reality 101
Editor’s context: In conversation with Joshua Swenson, Steven recounts experiences he understands as encounters with non-physical people and instruction about reality. The passages below retain that understanding, along with his uncertainty and doubt. Only Steven’s speech is used here; questions, acknowledgments, and intervening discussion are omitted. These are his accounts, not findings established by this edition.
c09-p001 · 1 Reality 101 · 00:03:26.100–00:04:01.080 · Reading textSource transcript
this is real. Like, [chuckles] the things I'm about to say are stories, and they're profound, and they're exciting and hopefully, you know, entertaining and captivating. It was for me, but this happened to me. Um, and it is now happening to you, some version of this, and that is the whole purpose of this series, is sharing this so that people can understand their own reality and make sense of it, but also, uh, learn how to do it yourselves
Edited passage
This is real. The things I'm about to say are stories, and they're profound, and they're exciting and hopefully entertaining and captivating. It was for me, but this happened to me. And it is now happening to you, some version of this, and that is the whole purpose of this series, is sharing this so that people can understand their own reality and make sense of it, but also learn how to do it yourselves.
Source transcript
one evening five months ago, I was shown how reality works at a very low level in a lecture-type setting, um, by somebody who is not physical and walked me through the 101 of how consciousness and matter and everything exists, [chuckles] how it all works, where it came from more or less as far as we're related, how, how this is happening. And, um, I was able to ask any questions I wanted, and I got all the answers that I asked
Edited passage
One evening five months ago, I was shown how reality works at a very low level in a lecture-type setting, by somebody who is not physical and walked me through the 101 of how consciousness and matter and everything exists, how it all works, where it came from more or less as far as we're related, how this is happening. And I was able to ask any questions I wanted, and I got all the answers that I asked.
Source transcript
I go to sleep. I wake up, and where we left off from our prior interview is I wake up in a state where I am laying in my bed. I am awake. Call these liminal states, just falling asleep or waking up. Part of you is awake, so I can get up out of bed. Like, I'm conscious. But part of you is still not quite fully self-conscious. You're not attached to the world yet, right? Kinda like a daydream. And I get a little nudge from someone familiar. At this point in my story, telepathy is, like, a thing that happens. But it's messy, right? I, 70 per- 80% of the time I can't tell whether they're my thoughts or not. It's, you know, it's pretty frustrating, honestly. Uh, and sometimes it's very clear
Edited passage
I go to sleep. I wake up in a state where I am laying in my bed. I am awake. Call these liminal states, just falling asleep or waking up. Part of you is awake, so I can get up out of bed. I'm conscious. But part of you is still not quite fully self-conscious. You're not attached to the world yet, right? Kinda like a daydream. And I get a little nudge from someone familiar. At this point in my story, telepathy is a thing that happens. But it's messy, right? 80% of the time I can't tell whether they're my thoughts or not. It's pretty frustrating, honestly. And sometimes it's very clear.
Source transcript
I get a little nudge, almost like your phone ringing. Imagine it's like somebody's waiting there, they wanna talk to you. You just know that they're waiting there. So I pick up the call. Normally this is like verbal thoughts. We do a little back and forth, "Hey, how are you?" You know, it feels a little like talking to yourself and you kind of humor it. I pick up the call. It is a very much different call this time. Um, I get visuals immediately. It is like somebody is writing into your imagination
Edited passage
I get a little nudge, almost like your phone ringing. Imagine it's like somebody's waiting there, they wanna talk to you. You just know that they're waiting there. So I pick up the call. Normally this is like verbal thoughts. We do a little back and forth, 'Hey, how are you?' It feels a little like talking to yourself and you kind of humor it. I pick up the call. It is a very much different call this time. I get visuals immediately. It is like somebody is writing into your imagination.
Source transcript
So imagine seeing something like an apple on a table. Now imagine an apple on the table appears in your visual imagination right now, and you are not making it happen. You're not trying to make it happen. You're not doing anything, and it's stable, and it's like somebody's playing a movie. Like, you're the projector and they're shining a movie onto you. And there's a person there, and she's a girl, and she is, as I described in our prior interview, like my twin, my soul twin sister. And she's always existed. I knew who she was
Edited passage
So imagine seeing something like an apple on a table. Now imagine an apple on the table appears in your visual imagination right now, and you are not making it happen. You're not trying to make it happen. You're not doing anything, and it's stable, and it's like somebody's playing a movie. Like, you're the projector and they're shining a movie onto you. And there's a person there, and she's a girl, and she is like my twin, my soul twin sister. And she's always existed. I knew who she was.
Source transcript
She's familiar. I had been getting thoughts and feelings from this person for months, and I'd been denying it for a long time. At this point I was on board, but I never thought I would actually, like, meet them or see them. And so I am-- My eyes are closed and I'm trying not to focus on my body because I feel it's, like, pulling me out of the experience. And so I just let it happen. I let the tape roll. I start to work through it a little bit. Um, but it's stressful and wonderful and exciting, and I am talking to somebody. It's in a white space, just like, uh, actually a lot like "The Matrix." It's, uh, just a white plane with a ground. There's nothing else. Stuff just pops in while we're talking. Music just starts playing. Sound effects start happening that are always, like, related to what we're talking about. It's like you just pull in these ideas and they just start happening
Edited passage
She's familiar. I had been getting thoughts and feelings from this person for months, and I'd been denying it for a long time. At this point I was on board, but I never thought I would actually meet them or see them. My eyes are closed and I'm trying not to focus on my body because I feel it's pulling me out of the experience. And so I just let it happen. I let the tape roll. I start to work through it a little bit. But it's stressful and wonderful and exciting, and I am talking to somebody. It's in a white space, actually a lot like 'The Matrix.' It's just a white plane with a ground. There's nothing else. Stuff just pops in while we're talking. Music just starts playing. Sound effects start happening that are always related to what we're talking about. It's like you just pull in these ideas and they just start happening.
Source transcript
First of all, doubt is so easy. It is just like baked into the human psyche. Even after this ex- set of experiences, I still experienced doubt. Uh, but it was like once you see it that way, you just start laughing. You're like, "Okay. Yeah, buddy. Yeah, there's totally nothing happening." Uh, but doubt is baked in, and it's one of the things that kills these experiences fully, right? It's almost like you-- I think I, I wrote once in one of my articles on my blog that like you need to be able to entertain a stupid idea long enough to see if it's true
Edited passage
First of all, doubt is so easy. It is just like baked into the human psyche. Even after this set of experiences, I still experienced doubt. But it was like once you see it that way, you just start laughing. You're like, 'Okay. Yeah, buddy. Yeah, there's totally nothing happening.' But doubt is baked in, and it's one of the things that kills these experiences fully, right? I think I wrote once in one of my articles on my blog that you need to be able to entertain a stupid idea long enough to see if it's true.
Source transcript
Now, is any of this impossible for the human mind? No. Uh, the, the human mind is an incredible thing. But all of these things add up to people who have memories and motives and desires of their own, and I can feel them. Like that is really what pushes me over the edge to taking this seriously, to get to a point where I can even have an experience like this, because you have to entertain it a long time, is that I can feel their emotions
Edited passage
Now, is any of this impossible for the human mind? No. The human mind is an incredible thing. But all of these things add up to people who have memories and motives and desires of their own, and I can feel them. That is really what pushes me over the edge to taking this seriously, to get to a point where I can even have an experience like this, because you have to entertain it a long time, is that I can feel their emotions.
Editor’s context: Later in the same account, Steven describes being brought into contact with someone he calls his “soul mom.” The following passages resume his account there.
c09-p009 · 1 Reality 101 · 00:35:33.010–00:36:42.950 · Reading textSource transcript
I'm now in a black space. Like, there's nothing. It's just, like, empty space without stars, basically. I still don't have a body. I'm floating out there. And I feel this, like, smile, like, this just, this presence. Nobody. I think she knew then that I was not ready to see another person. I couldn't, I was really at the breaking point here. [chuckles] Like, I could not handle a lot of trauma. It's the personal stuff that really gets to me. I, m- even more than just the, the profound and weird stuff. It's, I'm not ready to see you yet, as silly as that sounds
Edited passage
I'm now in a black space. There's nothing. It's just, empty space without stars, basically. I still don't have a body. I'm floating out there. And I feel this, smile, this just, this presence. Nobody. I think she knew then that I was not ready to see another person. I couldn't, I was really at the breaking point here. I could not handle a lot of trauma. It's the personal stuff that really gets to me, even more than just the profound and weird stuff. I'm not ready to see you yet, as silly as that sounds.
Source transcript
But I could feel her, and she was, like, super zen, like, really loving, just like the, the perfect portrait of a parent who's just, like, incredibly loving and is very patient and familiar. I knew exactly who this was. Like, this was n-not only an, like, familiar in the sense that, oh, I haven't seen you in a long time, but, like, I felt this throughout my life. And of course I have, uh, because she's basically been there the whole time. Like just quietly in the background. And I think that you would call this role, like, a spirit guide
Edited passage
But I could feel her, and she was, super zen, really loving, just like the perfect portrait of a parent who's just, incredibly loving and is very patient and familiar. I knew exactly who this was. This was not only an, familiar in the sense that, oh, I haven't seen you in a long time, but, I felt this throughout my life. And of course I have, because she's basically been there the whole time. Like just quietly in the background. And I think that you would call this role, a spirit guide.
Source transcript
This is the role that she's been acting out. This is my... Like, w- I think we all have a lot of them, but this is mine. Like, my main one. And of course it would be, it's my mom. [chuckles] My soul mom. And s- I think at one point she even told me, this is outside this experience, like, "Why would I let anyone else do this job?" Like, obviously. [chuckles] You're my kid. I'm, I'm doing this personally. And so I can feel them, and it's incredibly surreal. And I'm, like, brought to tears by just the very presence of this person, and I can tell how much it means to her to be rec- to see, be seen
Edited passage
This is the role that she's been acting out. This is my... I think we all have a lot of them, but this is mine. My main one. And of course it would be, it's my mom. My soul mom. And I think at one point she even told me, this is outside this experience, "Why would I let anyone else do this job?" Like, obviously. You're my kid. I'm, I'm doing this personally. And so I can feel them, and it's incredibly surreal. And I'm, brought to tears by just the very presence of this person, and I can tell how much it means to her to be seen.
Source transcript
Imagine what it's like floating around your kid for 36 years and they don't know that you're real or that you even exist, and then they finally notice you. Like, how that must feel. So I'm feeling all that, too, at the same time. This is what I'm feeling
Edited passage
Imagine what it's like floating around your kid for 36 years and they don't know that you're real or that you even exist, and then they finally notice you. How that must feel. So I'm feeling all that, too, at the same time. This is what I'm feeling.
Source transcript
I am immediately snapped into a very different state. We do the intro, like, "It's cool," and then just like, bam. I'm in a complete non-dual aware state. So for people who don't know what that's like, it is like experiencing yourself as a field of awareness. You... Ego dissolution. You're no longer a person sitting in a chair. There is a person sitting in a chair, but it's not you. You are everything around you. You're experiencing everything more or less as a field of stuff. Now, for me, when I'm awake and doing this, it takes a while to get into this state
Edited passage
I am immediately snapped into a very different state. We do the intro, "It's cool," and then just like, bam. I'm in a complete non-dual aware state. So for people who don't know what that's like, it is like experiencing yourself as a field of awareness. Ego dissolution. You're no longer a person sitting in a chair. There is a person sitting in a chair, but it's not you. You are everything around you. You're experiencing everything more or less as a field of stuff. Now, for me, when I'm awake and doing this, it takes a while to get into this state.
Source transcript
It's not easy. It's a lot of meditation. You dissolve the sort of barrier between you and the world. You're experiencing thoughts and emotions and stuff, but there's no real sense of self, right? But still centered on where you are, right? Um, it takes time to get into that state. This is like, bam. All right. Now you're everything. And not just like a regular, like, weak non-dual awareness. Like, I am everything. Like in an instant. So I'm just laying in my bed. Yeah, I still-- There's a vague sense of my physical body, but at this point, I'm no longer paying attention to it at all
Edited passage
It's not easy. It's a lot of meditation. You dissolve the sort of barrier between you and the world. You're experiencing thoughts and emotions and stuff, but there's no real sense of self, right? But still centered on where you are, right? It takes time to get into that state. This is like, bam. All right. Now you're everything. And not just like a regular, weak non-dual awareness. I am everything. Like in an instant. So I'm just laying in my bed. There's a vague sense of my physical body, but at this point, I'm no longer paying attention to it at all.
Source transcript
But now I am in this black space, and stuff is there. There are things popping in, cars, trees, roads, buildings, people. And I am all of them. Like, I don't mean in the sense that I feel like I am everything. Like, I could feel like they were composed out of me, like my body had extended, and I could've moved a tree limb like my fingers. Like, I was everything in this space, right? Now, all this stuff has been popped in. Again, like "The Matrix." It's just pop, here it is. And I-- It was just in an instant
Edited passage
But now I am in this black space, and stuff is there. There are things popping in, cars, trees, roads, buildings, people. And I am all of them. I don't mean in the sense that I feel like I am everything. I could feel like they were composed out of me, like my body had extended, and I could've moved a tree limb like my fingers. I was everything in this space, right? Now, all this stuff has been popped in. Again, like "The Matrix." It's just pop, here it is. It was just in an instant.
Source transcript
Being rocketed into a state like that at the snap of your fingers is incredibly jarring. Like, this is not the only time this has happened in my life since then, but it's, it's profound when it does. You're like, "Okay, if I had any doubts before, I am... My state has been flipped like a light switch." They just go in and, "Let me hit that switch real quick." [chuckles] So I'm everything around me. I can feel it. Um, it's like... And I'm experiencing all of these insights at the same time, so I'm just like, "Whoa." [chuckles] And she starts talking over what's happening
Edited passage
Being rocketed into a state like that at the snap of your fingers is incredibly jarring. This is not the only time this has happened in my life since then, but it's, it's profound when it does. You're like, "Okay, if I had any doubts before, I am... My state has been flipped like a light switch." They just go in and, "Let me hit that switch real quick." So I'm everything around me. I can feel it. And I'm experiencing all of these insights at the same time, so I'm just like, "Whoa." And she starts talking over what's happening.
Source transcript
I can hear her thoughts. And she's explaining what is happening, like asking questions, like, "What is that?" Like the, the car or the tree. I'm like, "It's me. It's me. It's all me." Like, we're talking back and forth like a, a lecture, except the projector screen is me being projected onto my conscious awareness. All of this stuff is just being rendered onto me. And she's asking questions, seeing what I ask, a little back and forth. It's like director's commentary over a movie. It's questions and answers. And I begin to realize this is a lecture, and she's telling me that, "I'm going to show you how reality works from the perspective of an individual soul, because you don't know how it works, and I can see that it's hurting you. And I love you, and I want you to know." And I'm like, [chuckles] "Okay. Oh, okay. That's all
Edited passage
I can hear her thoughts. And she's explaining what is happening, like asking questions, "What is that?" Like the car or the tree. I'm like, "It's me. It's me. It's all me." Like, we're talking back and forth like a lecture, except the projector screen is me being projected onto my conscious awareness. All of this stuff is just being rendered onto me. And she's asking questions, seeing what I ask, a little back and forth. It's like director's commentary over a movie. It's questions and answers. And I begin to realize this is a lecture, and she's telling me that, "I'm going to show you how reality works from the perspective of an individual soul, because you don't know how it works, and I can see that it's hurting you. And I love you, and I want you to know." And I'm like, "Okay. Oh, okay. That's all."
Source transcript
I'm hit with this profound realization of, like, familiarity. Like, oh my gosh, head to forehead, hand to forehead, like duh. [chuckles] Like, of course that's how it is. Like, but not, I don't remember it being like this. It just feels obvious. Like, I can feel that it's true. And my first reaction after, "Well, duh," of course that makes sense. Like, this is the obvious answer to how everything would work. Like, okay, this actually makes a lot more sense now that I'm feeling it. I'm just every, I'm my entire reality. Okay, cool
Edited passage
I'm hit with this profound realization of familiarity. Oh my gosh, hand to forehead, like duh. Of course that's how it is. I don't remember it being like this. It just feels obvious. I can feel that it's true. And my first reaction after, "Well, duh," of course that makes sense. This is the obvious answer to how everything would work. Okay, this actually makes a lot more sense now that I'm feeling it. I'm my entire reality. Okay, cool.
Source transcript
That makes sense, 'cause I'm feeling it, right, directly. And then I'm immediately disappointed at how simple it all is. I'm like, "Oh my God, this is how it works? I'm just everything?" Like, that's how it actually works, is like I'm literally just everything. And I'm like, it's so simple. And it's like, it's all just made up. Like, I'm just every, I'm rendering my whole existence. Like, I am everything I've ever interacted with, everything I am, everything I feel. I'm all the stuff. And I'm just projecting it onto myself. And I'm, I'm hit with, like, disappointment and sadness
Edited passage
That makes sense, 'cause I'm feeling it, right, directly. And then I'm immediately disappointed at how simple it all is. I'm like, "Oh my God, this is how it works? I'm just everything?" Like, that's how it actually works, is like I'm literally just everything. And I'm like, it's so simple. And it's like, it's all just made up. I'm rendering my whole existence. I am everything I've ever interacted with, everything I am, everything I feel. I'm all the stuff. And I'm just projecting it onto myself. And I'm, I'm hit with, disappointment and sadness.
Source transcript
it's so simple. And she basically tells me, "Yep, that's all it is. You are your entire reality. That's all there is. From your, from the perspective of an individual soul." She does, there's caveats of like, there's, there are other things and configurations. There are other levels of existence. You're connected to other things in other ways. We're not getting into that. From an individual soul's perspective, so every human being here, like that's what you should care about. Like, [chuckles] this is what matters to you. This is how it is. That's all there ever is, is you. It's all just you. You're always only interacting with yourself. There's nothing else. And I'm sad. Like, I'm like immediately, like, disappointed
Edited passage
It's so simple. And she basically tells me, "Yep, that's all it is. You are your entire reality. That's all there is. From your, from the perspective of an individual soul." There's caveats: there are other things and configurations. There are other levels of existence. You're connected to other things in other ways. We're not getting into that. From an individual soul's perspective, so every human being here, like that's what you should care about. This is what matters to you. This is how it is. That's all there ever is, is you. It's all just you. You're always only interacting with yourself. There's nothing else. And I'm sad. I'm like immediately, disappointed.
Source transcript
but then I, I just find this, like, moment of, like, inner courage, 'cause I'm still experiencing everything. Like, and I just say that- No. Like I decide that it matters just like in that moment. It's also like pure potential. And I'm like, I decide what matters. Like, ultimately, this is the only choice that matters. Does, does anything matter? Does nothing matter or everything matter? I decide it's a choice. They're two sides of the same coin. There's nothing real or everything is real. I decided that it's real. The people, the stuff, all these things are real, and then I say that they matter
Edited passage
But then I just find this moment of inner courage, 'cause I'm still experiencing everything. And I just say: No. I decide that it matters just like in that moment. It's also like pure potential. And I'm like, I decide what matters. Ultimately, this is the only choice that matters. Does anything matter? Does nothing matter or everything matter? I decide it's a choice. They're two sides of the same coin. There's nothing real or everything is real. I decided that it's real. The people, the stuff, all these things are real, and then I say that they matter.
Source transcript
I choose that these things matter, even though it is all just me. It's all just made up, air quotes. It's the Dumbledore Harry Potter quote right at the end of the series, right? It's like, just be... Harry's like, "Oh, this was all made up." And he's like, "Well, just because it was all made up, why do you think that that means it isn't real?" You know, that's the rough quote. Literally this, I'm experiencing it now, and I'm like, well, this is the only... What is the other choice? Complete nihilism? Nothing matters? Like, who cares
Edited passage
I choose that these things matter, even though it is all just me. It's all just made up, air quotes. It's the Dumbledore Harry Potter quote right at the end of the series, right? Harry's like, "Oh, this was all made up." And he's like, "Well, just because it was all made up, why do you think that that means it isn't real?" That's the rough quote. Literally this, I'm experiencing it now, and I'm like, well, What is the other choice? Complete nihilism? Nothing matters? Who cares?
Source transcript
I decide that, well, that's all there is, so I'm going to enjoy it. Uh, I'm gonna find meaning in this
Edited passage
I decide that, well, that's all there is, so I'm going to enjoy it. I'm gonna find meaning in this.
Editor’s context: Steven then asks how a reality he experiences as himself could contain things he does not consciously know how to make. He also asks how other people fit into that account.
c09-p024 · 1 Reality 101 · 00:52:29.534–00:52:47.714 · Reading textSource transcript
But like how do I do this? Like I don't know how to be a tree. I don't know how cells work
Edited passage
But how do I do this? I don't know how to be a tree. I don't know how cells work.
Source transcript
I don't know how a combustion engine is put together. Like I didn't imagine all the parts of this building
Edited passage
I don't know how a combustion engine is put together. I didn't imagine all the parts of this building.
Source transcript
she like shows me like, you imagine like you wanted to go to a building to do something or like a D&D campaign sort of thing. Like, I'm gonna go do this thing, and I see a building and stuff. You didn't create the pipes. You didn't create the wiring, but all of those things will be there because your intention was to go to a building for a purpose. And they will appear in your consciousness, and you do not need to know how to consciously do it. Like hand wave, this is the magic of the universe, right? Of, or God, or however you wanna frame it, right? If there was definitely a hand wave to something greater beyond me. Yes, I am my own reality, but there is a lot more than you, son
Edited passage
She shows me, you imagine you wanted to go to a building to do something or like a D&D campaign sort of thing. I'm gonna go do this thing, and I see a building and stuff. You didn't create the pipes. You didn't create the wiring, but all of those things will be there because your intention was to go to a building for a purpose. And they will appear in your consciousness, and you do not need to know how to consciously do it. Hand wave, this is the magic of the universe, right? Or God, or however you wanna frame it, right? There was definitely a hand wave to something greater beyond me. Yes, I am my own reality, but there is a lot more than you, son.
Source transcript
one of those things is this shared library of where all this stuff comes from. Pipes, tools, people, like stories, books, catchphrases, like songs. Everything that has ever been created goes into this library, like a blueprint library
Edited passage
One of those things is this shared library of where all this stuff comes from. Pipes, tools, people, stories, books, catchphrases, songs. Everything that has ever been created goes into this library, like a blueprint library.
Source transcript
There was like this profound sense of like holiness in creating new things, and that by living, like physical people living, anybody doing stuff, they were contributing to this shared library from which any of us can pull from. When we go have, when we're creating our own realities, we can only create things that exist. And so we either have to create it or we have to take it from our forebears. It's a beautiful inheritance of all this stuff that has been made. And our, the beauty of our souls, our consciousness, it just knows how to put this together to give us what we want
Edited passage
There was like this profound sense of like holiness in creating new things, and that by living, like physical people living, anybody doing stuff, they were contributing to this shared library from which any of us can pull from. When we're creating our own realities, we can only create things that exist. And so we either have to create it or we have to take it from our forebears. It's a beautiful inheritance of all this stuff that has been made. And the beauty of our souls, our consciousness, it just knows how to put this together to give us what we want.
Source transcript
So we only ever have to focus on what we actually want, and the rest just boop, boop, boop, boop puts itself together according to our needs. You know, if you had complete control, right? This is what I'm experiencing. Um, yeah. And then I, I, the last question I had, because I'm tiring out at this point, is how are there other people? I know there are other people and they're real. Like you're real. I'm interacting with you. This isn't all me. She's like, "Nope." This is all you. Even your experience of me is you. Like again, like a puppet
Edited passage
So we only ever have to focus on what we actually want, and the rest just boop, boop puts itself together according to our needs. If you had complete control, right? This is what I'm experiencing. And then the last question I had, because I'm tiring out at this point, is how are there other people? I know there are other people and they're real. Like you're real. I'm interacting with you. This isn't all me. She's like, "Nope." This is all you. Even your experience of me is you. Like again, like a puppet.
Source transcript
This is a multiplayer game. She's like, "It is, but we don't... You're..." She starts to talk about it, and I have to stop her. And I'm like, "I am so excited. I am absolutely thrilled. I wanna know this more than I wanna know anything, but you have given me so much." Like I just learned that I'm my entire reality. I'm like, a bunch of other stuff has happened to me. [chuckles] You're real, and I'm feeling it, right? I'm-- you didn't tell me, you showed me. I felt what it was like. And all of this other stuff that I just talked about, and my brain is absolutely melting
Edited passage
This is a multiplayer game. She's like, "It is, but we don't... You're..." She starts to talk about it, and I have to stop her. And I'm like, "I am so excited. I am absolutely thrilled. I wanna know this more than I wanna know anything, but you have given me so much." Like I just learned that I'm my entire reality. I'm like, a bunch of other stuff has happened to me. You're real, and I'm feeling it, right? You didn't tell me, you showed me. I felt what it was like. And all of this other stuff that I just talked about, and my brain is absolutely melting.
Source transcript
I am so hot, I feel like I've had a fever. Like, I am like melting down as a human being. The physical body is now like, "Uh-oh." [laughs] We are g- critical meltdown. Like, "You cannot tell me a single more thing." That's basically the exact quote. "You cannot say one more thing to me or I am going to have a psychotic break or my brain is going to explode. You, you have got to stop. No more." And then she just smiles and s- basically says she loves me and says, "Okay." And then [snap] it's gone
Edited passage
I am so hot, I feel like I've had a fever. I am like melting down as a human being. The physical body is now like, "Uh-oh." We are critical meltdown. "You cannot tell me a single more thing." That's basically the exact quote. "You cannot say one more thing to me or I am going to have a psychotic break or my brain is going to explode. You have got to stop. No more." And then she just smiles and basically says she loves me and says, "Okay." And then it's gone.
Source transcript
I'm awake in my bed instantly, just like that. It's completely gone. I'm just laying there like, "Ugh." [chuckles] Looking at the ceiling now, like, "Whoa! Okay. Hello. I'm no longer everything in this simulation. I'm this guy in a bed
Edited passage
I'm awake in my bed instantly, just like that. It's completely gone. I'm just laying there like, "Ugh." Looking at the ceiling now, "Whoa! Okay. Hello. I'm no longer everything in this simulation. I'm this guy in a bed."
10. The Gift of Everything
Editor’s context: This chapter draws from two bonus recordings in the Reality collection: “What I know about telepathy” and “What I know about transcendence.” A section heading marks the change of recording. Steven’s explanations and cautions remain his own; these selections do not reproduce the complete practice instructions.
c10-p001 · (Bonus) What I know about telepathy · 00:00:05.120–00:01:15.080 · Reading textSource transcript
This one is about everything I know about the nature of telepathy and communication, specifically, but not limited to non-physic- [clears throat] non-physical intelligences, people without a body. That is gonna be a running theme, and that is how you should think of this. There's a lot of weirdos out there, but, uh, for the most part, they're just people. Not only, [chuckles] it's weirder than that. Wouldn't... You need to broaden your definition of people, but it's still a pretty good guide
Edited passage
This one is about everything I know about the nature of telepathy and communication, specifically, but not limited to non-physical intelligences, people without a body. That is gonna be a running theme, and that is how you should think of this. There's a lot of weirdos out there, but for the most part, they're just people. It's weirder than that. You need to broaden your definition of people, but it's still a pretty good guide.
Source transcript
This is all based on my first-hand experiences. Uh, sometimes I will relay that, but everything you're hearing is my personal view. Some of it contains instruction given to me through various communication methods, but for the most part, this was me just struggling. I received basically no formal instruction. [chuckles] I'll point out a few videos that are useful, but for the most part, uh, unless you're naturally gifted at this, I don't think anyone is really practicing this yet. But good news is literally anyone can do it
Edited passage
This is all based on my first-hand experiences. Sometimes I will relay that, but everything you're hearing is my personal view. Some of it contains instruction given to me through various communication methods, but for the most part, this was me just struggling. I received basically no formal instruction. Unless you're naturally gifted at this, I don't think anyone is really practicing this yet. But good news is literally anyone can do it.
Source transcript
First of all, my experience with telepathy is almost always with just a few people. So by this point, you'll be familiar with my story of a soul family and a loose collection of probably friends, maybe deceased loved ones. There's a lot of common actors, and my communication is limited to generally with those people. Uh, so familiar, right? I've got a... [chuckles] They're generally with the same people over and over again. Not always, uh, but I haven't done a lot of, like, human-to-human telepathy, not on purpose. Uh, so I am generally talking to things that are not, and, okay, people who are not generally physically present. Um, so keep that in mind
Edited passage
First of all, my experience with telepathy is almost always with just a few people. So by this point, you'll be familiar with my story of a soul family and a loose collection of probably friends, maybe deceased loved ones. There's a lot of common actors, and my communication is limited to generally with those people. So familiar, right? They're generally with the same people over and over again. Not always, but I haven't done a lot of human-to-human telepathy, not on purpose. So I am generally talking to people who are not generally physically present. So keep that in mind.
Source transcript
That is my experience, so there are probably lots of other communication protocols to talk to other humans or talk to yourself through time or all that other stuff. But what I'm giving you is a basic blueprint for talking with a partner who is more than likely a better communicator [chuckles] than you are. And so all of that is based on these presumptions
Edited passage
That is my experience, so there are probably lots of other communication protocols to talk to other humans or talk to yourself through time or all that other stuff. But what I'm giving you is a basic blueprint for talking with a partner who is more than likely a better communicator than you are. And so all of that is based on these presumptions.
Source transcript
I think it's best to describe telepathy as a shared mind experience. It feels like somebody else is in your mind or in your body, right? And they are communicating with you. It's not that simple, and there's a lot of nuance and a lot of different kinds and a lot of different experiences, but ultimately, all of it uses your hardware. Think of it as somebody thinking with your brain, feeling with your emotions, and that is the means by which you're actually communicating. That also means you are experiencing their mind and emotions and whatever they're doing. Um, so it kind of goes both ways
Edited passage
I think it's best to describe telepathy as a shared mind experience. It feels like somebody else is in your mind or in your body, right? And they are communicating with you. It's not that simple, and there's a lot of nuance and a lot of different kinds and a lot of different experiences, but ultimately, all of it uses your hardware. Think of it as somebody thinking with your brain, feeling with your emotions, and that is the means by which you're actually communicating. That also means you are experiencing their mind and emotions and whatever they're doing. So it kind of goes both ways.
Source transcript
Think of it as overlapping yourselves, uh, for a short period of time, and there are different degrees and ways in which you can overlap. Think of it as a shared experience. Uh, and the ways that you choose to or accidentally share that experience is part of the nuance. All right, so that is important because this all has to go through your reality. Um, and that is incredibly important because reality is done by permission, meaning the only ways that you can usually be interacted with are ways in which you are open but unaware to
Edited passage
Think of it as overlapping yourselves, for a short period of time, and there are different degrees and ways in which you can overlap. Think of it as a shared experience. And the ways that you choose to or accidentally share that experience is part of the nuance. All right, so that is important because this all has to go through your reality. And that is incredibly important because reality is done by permission, meaning the only ways that you can usually be interacted with are ways in which you are open but unaware to.
Source transcript
Cool. [chuckles] This is how you get experiences where people are like, "Uh, what the hell is happening? Somebody's talking to me." You didn't know it was possible, so you weren't closed to it. Or, uh, you're open to it deliberately. I wanna have this communication. I'm trying to talk to you, right? And you're open up to it deliberately. But regardless, it's all you. It's still all you. They have to talk through you in some way or through your reality, through your experience in some way. You have the ultimate control over it, whether you realize it or not. Um, you theoretically have the ultimate control
Edited passage
Cool. This is how you get experiences where people are like, "what the hell is happening? Somebody's talking to me." You didn't know it was possible, so you weren't closed to it. Or, you're open to it deliberately. I wanna have this communication. I'm trying to talk to you, right? And you're open up to it deliberately. But regardless, it's all you. It's still all you. They have to talk through you in some way or through your reality, through your experience in some way. You have the ultimate control over it, whether you realize it or not. You theoretically have the ultimate control.
Source transcript
Practically speaking, you know, it's a work in progress. [chuckles] Um, I m- I say that because everything is going through you. Think of it as like bubbling up through your subconscious, through all your beliefs and fears and longings and desires, your imagination, what you think is real, your religious beliefs, your beliefs about how reality works and who's talking to you, whether you're scared or not, all of these things it has to pass through, like boop, boop, boop, boop, like a pachinko machine or like filters. Like imagine putting colored filters over white light. What color you think it's gonna be after you've put like 17 filters over it
Edited passage
Practically speaking, it's a work in progress. I say that because everything is going through you. Think of it as like bubbling up through your subconscious, through all your beliefs and fears and longings and desires, your imagination, what you think is real, your religious beliefs, your beliefs about how reality works and who's talking to you, whether you're scared or not, all of these things it has to pass through, like boop, boop, like a pachinko machine or like filters. Like imagine putting colored filters over white light. What color you think it's gonna be after you've put like 17 filters over it?
Source transcript
it's gonna be really weak and a weird kaleidoscope, completely distorted. So even if somebody wanted to send you a perfectly clear message, "Hello, my name is Stan. [chuckles] How are you today?" If they wanted to send you that message, it's gotta pass through a whole lot of your beliefs and ideas and fears and what you think is possible, what they want for you. All of those things are like mirrors, like dis- or lenses distorting the communication, which can be really, really damn frustrating. Uh, so just remember that what you're experiencing is yourself. Somebody may be trying to communicate with you, but what comes out the other end of that process may look incredibly different than what they intended to communicate to you, and h- that's nothing to say about regular misunderstandings of communication
Edited passage
It's gonna be really weak and a weird kaleidoscope, completely distorted. So even if somebody wanted to send you a perfectly clear message, "Hello, my name is Stan. How are you today?" If they wanted to send you that message, it's gotta pass through a whole lot of your beliefs and ideas and fears and what you think is possible, what they want for you. All of those things are like mirrors or lenses distorting the communication, which can be really damn frustrating. So just remember that what you're experiencing is yourself. Somebody may be trying to communicate with you, but what comes out the other end of that process may look incredibly different than what they intended to communicate to you, and that's nothing to say about regular misunderstandings of communication.
Source transcript
I've heard that telepathy is, well You know, these beings talk to each other and to us in ways that are, there's no room for misunderstanding. Like it's, how could you? Like, [chuckles] this is absolutely not true. There's just regular old misunderstanding is still possible. There are means by which misunderstanding is harder using this because you, the better under-- You're having their experience when it's working well. So certain kinds of misunderstanding are not there. You can say something that sounds mean, but you meant it in a gentle way. They'll feel that. They, "Oh, I know what you meant. Like, I could feel that you meant that gently." Uh, so yes, there are means by which some kinds of error are reduced, but it passes through you, and it's all you. So especially at the beginning, especially if you're in a very negative or scared state, or fearful, or angry, or, you know, just regular people-to-people problems. Don't forget that this is a person-to-person communication. Other people got problems too. They want things for you. They're upset with you. They're proud of you. You have all kinds of insecurities and distortions, and your communication has to pass through your distortions as well as whatever they have
Edited passage
I've heard that telepathy is, well these beings talk to each other and to us in ways that are, there's no room for misunderstanding. How could you? This is absolutely not true. There's just regular old misunderstanding is still possible. There are means by which misunderstanding is harder using this because you're having their experience when it's working well. So certain kinds of misunderstanding are not there. You can say something that sounds mean, but you meant it in a gentle way. They'll feel that. "Oh, I know what you meant. I could feel that you meant that gently." So yes, there are means by which some kinds of error are reduced, but it passes through you, and it's all you. So especially at the beginning, especially if you're in a very negative or scared state, or fearful, or angry, or, just regular people-to-people problems. Don't forget that this is a person-to-person communication. Other people got problems too. They want things for you. They're upset with you. They're proud of you. You have all kinds of insecurities and distortions, and your communication has to pass through your distortions as well as whatever they have.
Source transcript
So it can be very frustrating. Your personal state, whether you're open and happy and clear, all of these things are gonna affect it. So just keep that in mind that what you're experiencing is yourself, right? So a lot of the time, it is an impression. It is like what they're saying, but don't... Be careful assuming that you were literally told this. This is how, like, channelers get into trouble, is, "Well, I really wanna be prophetic, and I'm really worried about the end of the world." Well, wow, surprise, surprise. The first half of the message was right
Edited passage
So it can be very frustrating. Your personal state, whether you're open and happy and clear, all of these things are gonna affect it. So just keep that in mind that what you're experiencing is yourself, right? So a lot of the time, it is an impression. It is like what they're saying, but be careful assuming that you were literally told this. This is how channelers get into trouble, is, "Well, I really wanna be prophetic, and I'm really worried about the end of the world." Well, wow, surprise. The first half of the message was right.
Source transcript
The second half of the message was when the world was gonna end. You made up the second part. You just didn't know it. It was real. It happened, but it was you. It wasn't them. It's all you, right? You blocked it or distorted it. You twisted the message without knowing. Just keep that in mind
Edited passage
The second half of the message was when the world was gonna end. You made up the second part. You just didn't know it. It was real. It happened, but it was you. It wasn't them. It's all you, right? You blocked it or distorted it. You twisted the message without knowing. Just keep that in mind.
Source transcript
It is everything I know about getting to a point of transcendence, to the milestone that I've mentioned in previous episodes, which is you have the fundamental realization that you are actually your entire reality. And we are... So full disclosure, everything I'm suggesting that one could try is based on a sample size of one. Right? So I mean, I did it. [chuckles] So, uh, it would be great to have a larger sample size, but this is what we got, you know. Uh, so to getting to that level of insight and realization in a direct way, and all the experiences that seem to come after it, I'm going to relay everything I know about what worked, what didn't work, how it felt, [chuckles] what you should consider trying, what was the most important
Edited passage
It is everything I know about getting to a point of transcendence, to the milestone that I've mentioned in previous episodes, which is you have the fundamental realization that you are actually your entire reality. So full disclosure, everything I'm suggesting that one could try is based on a sample size of one. Right? So I mean, I did it. So, it would be great to have a larger sample size, but this is what we got, you know. So to getting to that level of insight and realization in a direct way, and all the experiences that seem to come after it, I'm going to relay everything I know about what worked, what didn't work, how it felt, what you should consider trying, what was the most important.
Source transcript
So it's gonna be a lot of, uh, random one-off tips, but I'm also gonna be presenting my theories on how it works and what definitely doesn't work, um, what slowed me down, that sort of thing. Again, none of this is direct advice. Some of it could be wrong. If it feels wrong for you, don't do it. In general, um, this whole series comes with this disclosure, but this one definitely does. If you are not in a stable place in your life, you are not mentally or emotionally well, if you, uh, pardon my French, can't handle your shit, then you should not yet embark on [chuckles] this journey. Uh, you should get to a place of stability in your life, where if something bad were to happen to you tomorrow, if you got really bad news, um, you would still be able to function
Edited passage
So it's gonna be a lot of random one-off tips, but I'm also gonna be presenting my theories on how it works and what definitely doesn't work, what slowed me down, that sort of thing. Again, none of this is direct advice. Some of it could be wrong. If it feels wrong for you, don't do it. In general, this whole series comes with this disclosure, but this one definitely does. If you are not in a stable place in your life, you are not mentally or emotionally well, if you, pardon my French, can't handle your shit, then you should not yet embark on this journey. You should get to a place of stability in your life, where if something bad were to happen to you tomorrow, if you got really bad news, you would still be able to function.
Source transcript
You could still go to work, you could still take care of yourself and your children. You could handle something traumatic happening to you, and that's not an easy thing to say to somebody. But when you're looking... [chuckles] Uh, as they say, if you peer into the void, uh, the void will peer back. So this is not for the faint of heart. Uh, but if you want answers to big questions, and you wanna see beyond the material, uh, in a very literal way, then [chuckles] this is what it takes
Edited passage
You could still go to work, you could still take care of yourself and your children. You could handle something traumatic happening to you, and that's not an easy thing to say to somebody. As they say, if you peer into the void, the void will peer back. So this is not for the faint of heart. But if you want answers to big questions, and you wanna see beyond the material, in a very literal way, then this is what it takes.
Source transcript
You're gonna have to get rid of self-judgment. You're gonna have to learn how to stop beating yourself up and stop blaming yourself. You have to be kinder to yourself. All of, if it's not making you feel better, that should be very questionable. You should be happier and feel better all the time. You should feel more connected to your world, to your own life, to the people in it. You lean in. This is all a process of leaning into your life. It's not leaning away and trying to separate from it. You are paradoxically leaning more into your life and learning more about your own attention
Edited passage
You're gonna have to get rid of self-judgment. You're gonna have to learn how to stop beating yourself up and stop blaming yourself. You have to be kinder to yourself. If it's not making you feel better, that should be very questionable. You should be happier and feel better all the time. You should feel more connected to your world, to your own life, to the people in it. You lean in. This is all a process of leaning into your life. It's not leaning away and trying to separate from it. You are paradoxically leaning more into your life and learning more about your own attention.
Source transcript
you're taking your internal state seriously. You're taking things seriously that you can feel that you didn't take seriously before, and you're learning to discern. You're feeling more. You're leaning into your life, and through that process, you begin to see what is real and what isn't, what is you and what isn't, what's in your control and what isn't. And these things all happen naturally as a process of leaning into your life and improving it. Uh, so that's pretty much it. That's all you gotta do. It's not that complicated. Um, you have the pieces you need already
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You're taking your internal state seriously. You're taking things seriously that you can feel that you didn't take seriously before, and you're learning to discern. You're feeling more. You're leaning into your life, and through that process, you begin to see what is real and what isn't, what is you and what isn't, what's in your control and what isn't. And these things all happen naturally as a process of leaning into your life and improving it. So that's pretty much it. That's all you gotta do. It's not that complicated. You have the pieces you need already.
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Hopefully, those things will help you along the way, and of course, you have the advantage of knowing that it works. [chuckles] So that's cool. I mean, assuming you buy, uh, my experiences and what they mean, uh, I certainly do, then you can do it too. There's nothing fundamentally different about me compared to you. Like you've got the same hardware that you need to do this, and if you do it with others, it will go faster. Uh, if you do it seriously, you do it intently, you're serious about removing things from your life and changing yourself in a positive, healthy way to feel better, to feel more connected to the world around you, to be more at peace, to be happier no matter what is happening to you, this stuff will just start happening, and it will keep happening as long as you continue doing the work that got you there. If you stop doing the work or you stop believing it, it will close, and it will stop happening, and you'll stop growing
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Hopefully, those things will help you along the way, and of course, you have the advantage of knowing that it works. So that's cool. I mean, assuming you buy my experiences and what they mean, I certainly do, then you can do it too. There's nothing fundamentally different about me compared to you. Like you've got the same hardware that you need to do this, and if you do it with others, it will go faster. If you do it seriously, you do it intently, you're serious about removing things from your life and changing yourself in a positive, healthy way to feel better, to feel more connected to the world around you, to be more at peace, to be happier no matter what is happening to you, this stuff will just start happening, and it will keep happening as long as you continue doing the work that got you there. If you stop doing the work or you stop believing, it will close, and it will stop happening, and you'll stop growing.
Source transcript
so the last thing I'll say is that you need to be prepared to be weird. If that's not already obvious, you should be prepared to feel different than the people around you. But of course, as this happens, you're going to feel compassionate, and you're gonna feel sorry for them. Do not... As you gain these insights, you're going to feel out of place. You need to have a community somewhere online somehow. You need to talk to somebody. You need to not feel alone in this. Because it can be very isolating, and you may feel the desire to talk to people who aren't ready for this
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So the last thing I'll say is that you need to be prepared to be weird. If that's not already obvious, you should be prepared to feel different than the people around you. But of course, as this happens, you're going to feel compassionate, and you're gonna feel sorry for them. As you gain these insights, you're going to feel out of place. You need to have a community somewhere online somehow. You need to talk to somebody. You need to not feel alone in this. Because it can be very isolating, and you may feel the desire to talk to people who aren't ready for this.
Source transcript
It is my belief, and, uh, it is the beliefs of the [chuckles] the people that I s- I've talked to and had interactions with that, and is evident in my own, you know, curriculum. In retrospect, I didn't know for a long time that there was a curriculum, but y- you can see a path in retrospect of assisted growth, that you cannot push something onto somebody that they're not ready for. If they don't want this, first of all, it's wrong to shatter their worldview. I don't walk up to people and show that I can see without my eyeballs because it could really harm them if they're not ready for that, and it could really damage this whole enterprise
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It is my belief, and it is the beliefs of the people that I've talked to and had interactions with that, and is evident in my own curriculum. In retrospect, I didn't know for a long time that there was a curriculum, but you can see a path in retrospect of assisted growth, that you cannot push something onto somebody that they're not ready for. If they don't want this, first of all, it's wrong to shatter their worldview. I don't walk up to people and show that I can see without my eyeballs because it could really harm them if they're not ready for that, and it could really damage this whole enterprise.
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And, um, socially speaking, if you really want people to turn against you [chuckles] and say, "This is wrong," uh, that would be a good way to do it, is to terrify them without giving them the context of, "No, seriously, like, you can do this," like helping them through it. But generally speaking, if somebody isn't already interested, you're gonna have to feel it out. You're just gonna have to let them be. Don't try to fix other people, and don't try to like [chuckles] don't try to blow the doors off and get, force them through it because it is wrong, and it doesn't work, and it will cause them to shut down, and you're just going to traumatize them because they don't have the same tools to recover and make sense of what's happening to them that you are developing
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And socially speaking, if you really want people to turn against you and say, "This is wrong," that would be a good way to do it, is to terrify them without giving them the context of, "No, seriously, you can do this," like helping them through it. But generally speaking, if somebody isn't already interested, you're gonna have to feel it out. You're just gonna have to let them be. Don't try to fix other people, and don't try to blow the doors off and force them through it because it is wrong, and it doesn't work, and it will cause them to shut down, and you're just going to traumatize them because they don't have the same tools to recover and make sense of what's happening to them that you are developing.
Source transcript
So you're just hurting them. You're hurting them, and you're also hurting this whole enterprise. You're making it harder for other people to talk about this because they're gonna demonize it. So if you don't wanna do that, and you want it to be a beautiful thing to figure out who you are and explore the nature of your own reality and big questions and connect beyond yourself, then don't make us look bad
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So you're just hurting them. You're hurting them, and you're also hurting this whole enterprise. You're making it harder for other people to talk about this because they're gonna demonize it. So if you don't wanna do that, and you want it to be a beautiful thing to figure out who you are and explore the nature of your own reality and big questions and connect beyond yourself, then don't make us look bad.
Source transcript
And don't, don't scare people who aren't ready for it. But at the same time, one of the most important things you can do to superchar- supercharge this whole process, besides being yourself and doing what you feel is right, surprise, surprise, [chuckles] and improving yourself, is helping other people do the same or in any way. And of course, as you feel more and care more and notice more, you're naturally gonna wanna help people. You're al- if you're already following your intuition, you're gonna want to start doing it because you care more and because you feel connected to them
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And don't, don't scare people who aren't ready for it. But at the same time, one of the most important things you can do to supercharge this whole process, besides being yourself and doing what you feel is right, surprise, and improving yourself, is helping other people do the same or in any way. And of course, as you feel more and care more and notice more, you're naturally gonna wanna help people. If you're already following your intuition, you're gonna want to start doing it because you care more and because you feel connected to them.
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And then eventually, you start to feel that you're, like, you're the same person. You're more than just connected. Like, on some level, we are the same, and you want to help them. It just makes sense. It's obvious. Not only do you not wanna hurt them anymore, or you don't care about negative stuff. You don't even wanna entertain it anymore 'cause you can feel it affecting you. You want to help people that are in a bad place. So that is totally cool. Go do that every time you feel it. And you're gonna have to learn how to do that, but don't, um, don't try to force, however excited you might be, don't try to force this on other people
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And then eventually, you start to feel that you're, you're the same person. You're more than just connected. On some level, we are the same, and you want to help them. It just makes sense. It's obvious. Not only do you not wanna hurt them anymore, or you don't care about negative stuff. You don't even wanna entertain it anymore 'cause you can feel it affecting you. You want to help people that are in a bad place. So that is totally cool. Go do that every time you feel it. And you're gonna have to learn how to do that, but however excited you might be, don't try to force this on other people.
Source transcript
You're either gonna traumatize them, or you're gonna scare them off. You're gonna give them things they're not ready for. And the whole, whole process is just enough. This is like working out. You don't wanna drop 1,000 pounds on top of somebody's head. They're [chuckles] not gonna get strong like that. They're gonna get crippled, and they're gonna get scared, and you're gonna mess them up. So don't do that. Um, you don't have to keep it to yourself, but just be aware of what you're doing and how it affects others. And with that, uh, you know, send me a message with your mind one day
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You're either gonna traumatize them, or you're gonna scare them off. You're gonna give them things they're not ready for. And the whole process is just enough. This is like working out. You don't wanna drop 1,000 pounds on top of somebody's head. They're not gonna get strong like that. They're gonna get crippled, and they're gonna get scared, and you're gonna mess them up. So don't do that. You don't have to keep it to yourself, but just be aware of what you're doing and how it affects others. And with that, send me a message with your mind one day.
Source transcript
Be polite. Maybe I'll say hey [chuckles] if I know how to do it, if I get it. Um, good luck, and, uh, have fun. Just remember that this is a profound and personal experience. It is, um, don't be greedy. Share it when you can, and, uh, be good. That's the whole point because it's all just you anyway, so you're only hurting yourself otherwise. Have fun
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Be polite. Maybe I'll say hey if I know how to do it, if I get it. Good luck, and have fun. Just remember that this is a profound and personal experience. Don't be greedy. Share it when you can, and be good. That's the whole point because it's all just you anyway, so you're only hurting yourself otherwise. Have fun.