Friday's Too Good Not to Share: 3.17.23
I missed doing these.
The greatest gift I could ever give is to share with others - new ideas, new thoughts, new paradigms. These lead to shifts and shifts lead to change and change leads to growth.
Anyway, I've been ingesting some of the finest mental nutrients lately, and here's the best of it.
As always, pass the gift along if you get something from it.
Simon Sinek: Opens Up About His Struggle With Loneliness, Love & Dating! | Diary of a CEO E230
Probably one of the most consequential podcast episodes I've ever heard. Many know Simon Sinek from his work with "Start With Why." It's a book, a talk, and a way of being.
From someone who has been beyond successful and influential, it was surprising to hear about his struggles with loneliness and dating.
Now if that were all this episode was about, it wouldn't be that meaningful. Entertaining, yes, but that is not enough to create deep meaning for all of us.
In talking about himself and his new direction, Simon points out some gaps in how we hold space for other people when they're stuck in the mud. He also speaks to why some people feel more lonely now than ever.
I think his exploration of self gives us all a better language on how to approach mental health or mental fitness as he calls it.
Great listen. Take your time with this one. Watch here.
What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?
If you're looking for a great explainer on ChatGPT that is both easy to follow and helps you understand the technology better, look no further than this post from Stephen Wolfram (known as the creator of Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha).
The basic concept of ChatGPT is at some level rather simple. Start from a huge sample of human-created text from the web, books, etc. Then train a neural net to generate text that’s “like this”. And in particular, make it able to start from a “prompt” and then continue with text that’s “like what it’s been trained with”.
As we’ve seen, the actual neural net in ChatGPT is made up of very simple elements—though billions of them. And the basic operation of the neural net is also very simple, consisting essentially of passing input derived from the text it’s generated so far “once through its elements” (without any loops, etc.) for every new word (or part of a word) that it generates.
But the remarkable—and unexpected—thing is that this process can produce text that’s successfully “like” what’s out there on the web, in books, etc. And not only is it coherent human language, it also “says things” that “follow its prompt” making use of content it’s “read”. It doesn’t always say things that “globally make sense” (or correspond to correct computations)—because (without, for example, accessing the “computational superpowers” of Wolfram|Alpha) it’s just saying things that “sound right” based on what things “sounded like” in its training material.
Dive (very) deep here.
Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life
What does it mean to be an explorer in 2023?
Explorers seem like a relic of the past, a profession from history. Surely, no one could still be exploring today, right?
Good news, there are still people crossing the continents into the unknown not widely shared and bringing back those lessons learned to all of us. That is Wade Davis.
From his site, "Wade Davis is a Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. Between 2000 and 2013 he served as Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. Named by the NGS as one of the Explorers for the Millennium, he has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.”"
This talk is an adventure in itself.
Make sure you listen to learn more about voodoo and zombification (a terrifyingly real thing).
Full episode (podcast links included) and transcript here.
Leave today better than yesterday ✌️.
Also, I haven't shared new music in a while. Here are the 5 songs in rotation for me today:
- Kali Uchis, Don Toliver - Fantasy
- Jozzy - Alone
- Masego - Black Anime
- Sango - Rewind It
- KAYTRANADA ft. H.E.R. - Intimidated