Perspectives

Daily Reads:

Rewatched Jim Rohn’s masterclass in goal-setting. With 100 days to go to the end of 2023, I thought it was a good time to recast what the next few years of my life might be.

Jerry Seinfeld’s "All Awards Are Stupid" was entertaining, and perceptive view of not just Hollywood but of much corporate ‘awards’.

Alex Waterhouse-Hayward is still with us, writing, photographing, sharing. And I love the way he writes, this time about his writing mentors

QOTD:

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
– Stephen King

Music:

The Hot Sardines version of Bei Mir Bist du Schoen

A day spent in the big smoke, meeting people, having conversations. Very little reading, and a lot of food for thought, along with some food with company 🙂

Daily Reads:

Some practical instructions from Seth Godin on using ChatGPT4

Steven Pressfield is a friend, and fan, of Seth Godin too. "This might not work"

Sam Altman essay from 5 years ago on "how to be successful"

QOTD:

“It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin – music, sculpture, writing, painting – and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen.” -William S Burroughs.

Music:

Vivaldi: Complete Cello Concertos

Most of my reading today was from the Journals of Anais Nin. Her descriptions of the human frailty, of her relationships with June & Henry Miller, and the destruction they wrought on each other in the creative spirit is breathtaking. All other reading pales in comparison, I think 🙂

Daily Reads:

"Extreme determination on strategy, yoked together with extreme flexibility on the means and timing of action" is how Otto von Bismarck managed to get control of the Prussian Empire. Darius Foroux’s article Strategic Opportunism has a link to the book by Richard Koch titled Unreasonable Success.

Josh Bersin writes about the HR Hackathon that PagerDuty hosted internally. The slides of ideas and a brief overview and winners is here The lessons are worthwhile for anyone considering running an internal hackathon.

A fun story about Douglas Adams’ taken hostage at a hotel to finish writing his book So Long and Thanks For The Fish.

QOTD:

And in the modern economy, think about customers in their social context. If you can move the needle on improving their social experience, you are in line for substantial rewards. – Roger Martin

Music:

Bei mir bist du schön-New Orleans Dixielandband

Daily Reads:

Colin Powell doesn’t waste a half-second to answer the question on the definition of good leadership.
Arlo Guthrie does a memorable homily in the midst of performing Amazing Grace. This doesn’t count as a today’s music, although it could be!

Weathering Software Winter is a talk from 2022 at Handmade Seattle. I like the thoughtfulness of this talk, particularly about how Devinie describes software we take for granted that was never designed to leave the West’s shores.

QOTD:

For people seeking to make a difference, it begins with helping other people make a difference.
– Seth Godin

Amen, brother.

Music:

Vivaldi Violin Concerto Opus 11 & 12

Daily Reads:

Ethan Mollick synthesises the findings of a new paper on the implications of AI augmentation by consultants in Centaurs and cybords on the jagged frontier. Falling asleep at the wheel is a major risk, and the levelling of skills is a massive upside.

In this 2013 opinion piece in the New York Times titled When Deviants Do Good, Tina Rosenberg explains an effective alternative to the seagull style of outside help for local problems.

QOTD:

No problem stays solved in a dynamic environment.
– Russell Ackoff

Music:

Australia is holding a referendum to change the constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia. Singer songwriter Paul Kelly has a new single If Not Now. I first learnt about Vincent Lingiari’s fight for his people from PK’s song "From Little Things Big Things Grow"

[! Warning]
This is my reading links from today. There may not be anything interesting for you 🙂

I learnt how to create a callout block and that there are 12 distinct callout types in Obsidian! Here, I’m using ‘Warning’. This may not render in WordPress.

Daily Reads:

Erik Schon has put together a collection of Wardley Maps for inspiration. It’s time to review how they are built, and to use them for a project I’m about to propose, the one that I watched today by random was this talk called "Saving Your Business" by Cory Foy This write up is a lot more interesting for practical application

A recommendation from John Naughton to read this New Yorker piece on "The Transformative, Alarming Power of Gene Editing" by Dana Goodyear

From Sahil Bloom’s newsletter: Reverse Engineering Your Ideal Life at 80! Dr. Peter Attiah describes the Centenarian Decathlon as “the ten most important physical tasks you will want to be able to do for the rest of your life.”

[!Quote]
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."
– Arthur Schopenhauer

Music:

Mark Knopfler Live at Madison Square Garden, 2019

Daily Reads:

I like how Dan Reich has explored the differences between a SaaS business and a Consumer Packaged Goods sector.

Amelia Wattenberger created an app that highlights sentences by how abstract or concrete they are. An interesting application of ChatGPT tokens.

Rob Walker always has thoughtful ideas on how to pay attention. I wish I had thought of this myself 😅 Make a short recording of a sound you would miss if you could never hear it again.

Roger Martin has sage advice on the stupid – and dangerous cost reduction projects

Seth Godin: The MVP and Fear. Why not think of the SVA (Smallest Viable Audience) that you can delight instead?

QOTD:

"Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is." – Ernest Hemingway

Music:

Isto covers Hank Williams’ Honky Tonkin’

Daily Reads:

Stowe Boyd argues that diversity has to begin right at the beginning of the recruitment process.

I’ve continued reading [[Furr – The Upside of Uncertainty]] & [[Seneca On the Shortness of Life]], and started the first skim through [[The Journals of Anais Nin]]. Digital reading will commence when I’m ready to stare at screens 🙂

QOTD:

We are going to the moon. That is not very far. Man has so much farther to go within himself. – Anais Nin

Music:

John Prine at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco, 2017

Daily Reads:

37 Signals have a new product called once.com and their launch copy makes for interesting reading.

Tom Nolles voices aloud what’s been on my mind about "Digital Transformations". I’ve noticed a spate of self-congratulatory posts from people I know claiming success or ‘great progress towards success’. The reality is about as far as the moon is from earth.

More Ben Werdmuller: Who actually makes money (or not) from AI?. I hadn’t heard the term effective accelerationism or e/acc before: Technocapital can usher in the next evolution of consciousness, creating unthinkable next-generation lifeforms and silicon-based awareness.

Adam Mastroianni: Let’s build a fleet and change the world

Cory Doctorow essay in Wired based on his new book: Tech Exceptionalism

QOTD:

Stories surround and penetrate us; they bind us together. – Madeline Ashby

Music:

Elle & Toni – The Big Rock Candy Mountain

Daily Reads:

Jim Nielsen’s observation about the double standards between software and LLM‘s is spot-on.

Ted Gioia: Why is music getting sadder? as measured by songs in the minor key.

I attended Sydney Uni’s Sydney Ideas talk on Disinformation this evening. Tried my hand at speed-note taking. The Talk will be hosted online at some point, and somewhere around here. These are my notes.

Live note-taking at an event. Expect errors and omissions.

Host: Farz Edraki
Joanne Gray, Sydney Uni
Micah Goldwater, Sydney Uni
Lee McIntyre, Research Fellow at Boston University

What makes disinformation influential & problematic?

1. Distinction between misinformation & disinformation
   Misinformation is accidental. Disinformation is a lie, an intentional falsehood, for the benefit of the person dishing it out.
   People lied before, and didn’t have an audience. Now, lies can get halfway around the world before truth can get its shoes on.

2. Psychological processes

   • MG:
     Narrative provide explanations. Our brains look for the patterns, and disinformation provides a compelling yet incorrect view of the world. We know very little about the world.

3. What roles platforms play in distributing mis/disinformation?

   • Joanne Gray
     Economic logic of platforms for
     Design features for individual users
     Collective endorsement of information that is seen on FB. Everyone believes it therefore it must be true.

4. Amplifiers
   Pipeline of disinformation: Dis-informers > Amplifiers > Believers
   Cracking down on amplifiers provides the biggest solution.

   Question: role of ActivityPub/Mastodon

5. MG (missed this question)

   • lost control of their lives, conspiracy theories offer a way of taking back control (narratives provide explanation – heroes, victims, villians)
   • Example of Qld school shooter

6. Follow up question (also missed this one 🙁 )

   • specific demographics that are susceptible to

7. Nuanced cultural context

   • Denialism caused by disinformation. Weaponised information usually has a
   • Information re vaccines with 5G microchips came from Russian in early 2020.
   • Lies are free but the truth is behind a paywall
   • Russians had a competing vaccine – Sputnik5 was a vaccine

8. What did the platforms do about the misinformation?

   • Platforms don’t have obligations, an American set of values (innovation is good, regulation is bad, self-regulation)
   • "Absolute" Free-speech ideology – you can’t stop free speech.
   • Right to free speech <> right to amplification. (Free speech is about speaking truth to power without fear of persecution)
   • We don’t need to take the US position on free speech

9. What can be done about spread of disinformation?

   • Pre-bunking! Can you get ahead of the spread, and warn people about the motivation? Seems to be more effective than stopping spread of disinformation
   • However, can’t be scaled, or be anticipated.
   • De-bunking (afterwards)
   • Pre-bunking works on the primacy effect – discredit the liar before people hear the lie.

10. 10 steps that individuals can do to to fight against disinformation

    • Goal of disinfomation is to make you feel helpless.
    • Understand what’s going can help
    • Use the word "disinformation" where it applies. It is a war. Don’t share the story if you can’t know it is true.
    • Write to the advertisers instead!

11. Policy regulation

    • Legislation that civil society gets better access to the data that is currently black boxes
    • Obligation is reactionary – to bad content. Shift to make the companies responsibility to protect or prevent people from being exposed to harmful content/ disinformation
    • Platforms are the gatekeepers, must be made responsible

12. Australian Fed bills in progress.

    • Fear of ‘free speech infringement’

"You cannot change someone’s mind. Be kind, respectful, protect the relationship"

QOTD:

True progress towards peace looks like a collaborative world where we consider ourselves to have kinship with everyone of all religions, skin tones, and nationalities, and where every human being’s life has inherent value. It looks like building foreign policy for the benefit of all people, not the people of one nation. It looks like true, vibrant democracy. It doesn’t look like performative flag-waving, drone strikes, religious intolerance, homogeneity, or surveillance campaigns. – Ben Werdmuller:

Music:

Mary Gauthier – Mercy Now