Episode 65: Artificial intelligence and Ancient Wisdom

00:00 Back From A Break
01:04 Big Question Today
02:28 Uncertainty Is Timeless
07:29 AI And Leadership Stakes
10:12 Slow Down For Wisdom
13:34 Two Camps On Intelligence
17:06 Tech Revolutions Repeat
21:36 Learning AI Without Hype
26:14 Happiness Beyond Tech
30:27 Guardrails And Global Rules
32:26 Enjoying the Drive
33:31 Route 66 Without GPS
34:08 Tucumcari and Human Connection
36:55 AI as the New GPS
39:55 Midlife Transitions and Values
46:00 Wisdom and Simple Happiness
53:57 Be Here Now
57:06 Closing Thoughts on Phronesis

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome to another episode of Resiliency Rounds with Anise and Jeremy, where uh we've taken a little bit of a break with the end of the school year for our kids and traveling. And uh and so we're coming back and and we're just reflecting on uh how how everything's going in our lives, and and we found that we're kind of at this inflection point, and we wanted to talk a little bit about that. So we were in Nicomachian Ethics. Uh we had just finished book six, and before we get into book, sorry, we were finishing, we finished book five, and we were about to get into book six, which is practical wisdom, uh phonesis, pronesis, phronesis. Yeah, phronesis, pretty good. And and as we were talking, you know, I I Anisha and I were are were just joking that I've I've been in all these rich conversations lately. And so we thought that it would be good to kind of talk about the state of the world. And our our question for today, and what we're gonna focus on, is is how do we navigate the modern uncertainty and complexity of the world around us? That's a big whopping question. I think it's not necessarily one that we'll have. Here's a step-by-step guide to how to navigate, but but I think we'll be able to kind of address different topics and our our thoughts around and share some of the conversations and what other where where we're seeing other other people at. So yeah, Anish, what what do you have to uh add to that?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Yeah, I think where we could start this conversation is you know, where we find ourselves today, the issues that surround us, and I think every human being right now who's kind of plugged into what's happening both domestically and internationally, what's happening with uh artificial intelligence finds themselves weirdly at a place where one cannot decide what the future holds and if the future is this kind of uncertain and this complex, how does then one orient oneself? Where do we turn to to get advice of what needs to be done next? What I've found is that this uncertainty and this complexity, though modern, right, though contemporary, this state that we are in of uncertainty, of complexity, is not a modern phenomenon. I don't believe it's a modern phenomenon. I think there have even in our lifetimes, there have been uncertainty. One of the big uncertainties was the advent of social media, how that's going to affect our lives. Prior to that, it was you know the dot-com surge. Prior to that, it was the internet, and all of these have kind of happened in our lifetime. The internet probably preceded our lifetime just a little bit, but we've been at the receiving end of that, and at each point of time, I feel like there was uncertainty, ambiguity, obviously a lot of complexity that most people didn't understand. It has led to the way we live our life today. In not it's not that we have been able to adapt to it as well as we think we have we could have adapted to it. What I mean to say by that is it has brought in a lot of problems, and there are a lot of society today that are related to it. But I feel like that what's happening today has happened before. And I'm sure if you were to go back, every time there has been some sort of revolution, be it the Industrial Revolution, the revolution of enlightenment, and all of those things, I think all of those times there was this uncertainty, this complete change in the landscape going forward, a lot of different new social ills that came about, and uh a loss of an old way of life. And humans have have persevered through it, some have done better than others, and and and I'm not talking about a material sense, I'm talking about in a philosophical spiritual grounding sense. Some people have done better than others, and I believe, based on what I have read in the conversations we have had, and the conversations that you are having right now, Jeremy, that what separates people who do well in the change and from those who don't do well is not the fact that you are succeeding materially in the way things are changing for you, that you're not that dot-com millionaire or now billionaire and now even trillionaire. I think those lives are still fraught with worry, stress, disappointment, anger, bad relationships. The ones who succeed are not necessarily materially better off, but they are philosophically more grounded, and that philosophical grounding or spiritual grounding is not modern, it is in fact still an ancient process that humans have been dealing with or understanding or resolving for you know hundreds of thousands of years. So I'm gonna pause there and send it back to you, Jeremy. But I would like to hear about these conversations and where are these conversations going in your scale. I know you've you you've mentioned things to me like artificial intelligence. I know that's a big conversation that you are having with folks. And can you shed some light on that?

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Yeah, happy to. And what I'm finding, I just want to reflect on what I just uh heard you share, which is also that the future is always uncertain, and it's always going to be more complex than what we currently think we're experiencing now, because we don't know what it is. And as technology comes in and plays a larger role as the political environments continue to go up and down and sideways and and question or you know, starts to create questions of our own kind of existence with celebrating 250 years of the United States and yet saying this is still in a young country, an early experiment that of democracy that we actually don't know how strong it really is. Uh, you know, that everything's been set up to be to be a strong system of democracy, and yet only time will tell. And that that is uncertainty, right? The future we don't know about. Um, and so over the years uh of just in our lifetime, just seeing the things that have come into play, and you mentioned the internet, I would say even the iPhone, these things have had dramatic impacts on the human race, and and some that you know you know, in from behavioral change to cognitive decline. And so as we're looking at AI, we're seeing the potential for cognitive decline on a rapid, at a rapid pace. So some of the conversations I'm having are around human-centered AI. And what does that mean? Uh, it uh other conversations I'm having are around AI implementation in organizations is failing at a very high level. And I think that the companies that understand how to use it and leverage it for strategy across an organization will be more successful than those who aren't. But this is like any other technology. So anytime you bring a new technology into an organization, the success rate of effectively implementing that is like less than 40%. And there's real stats out there. I'm just kind of sharing like old school change management. Yeah, the the MIT, there was a recent MIT study though that said that it was like, I don't know, some 85 to 95 percent of all AI implementations failing. Well, I was talking to a COO this past week, and he was telling me that he loves it, it's making him more organized. And he's like all the the folks in our in his company are a lot of them, not all of them, but many of them are using it and it's making them more effective with their time. I don't think that that's the intent necessarily, like that's great, and if it is just a tool for that, then I think we don't need to be afraid of our cognitive decline here. The reality is it's not. People are using it to get more information sent to them without you know at a faster pace and not actually processing them that information and making decisions from it. And and then at the end of the day, the COO shouldn't be using this necessarily just for himself, he should be looking at how are we using this across the organization to make us a to give us more of a competitive advantage. And I'm not sure that many organizations are doing that now. Where where does this come into play with complexity in modern day in actually going back to where philosophy actually comes into all this is part of it in Aristotle? When we get into book six, I mean, Aristotle talks about slowing down to gain wisdom and to make meaning and sense of the things around you so that you're not just so you're not just reactionary all the time, right? So we have a real opportunity as leaders, as humans, to start to ask the big questions like, what is happiness? What is a good life? Like these are the core of what we're talking about with the great conversation is what is a good life, right? And and I think that at a societal level, leadership really needs to step up. I don't think that the leader that there are leaders stepping up, and yet when it comes to AI, you know, moral AI or ethical AI, there needs to be some level of slowing down to say, just exactly how do we want to use this, right? The Pope just came out with a manifesto a couple weeks ago on this, basically saying that there needs to be some boundaries around this, and one of the co-founders of Anthropic, I think, was there, um agreeing with him. And so, if if in my thinking is if we slow down to actually say to to with a ground with the foundation of what does it mean to be human, I think that a lot of these questions around the in the grounding of of the great conversations come into this, where like AI, when I was just on a on a podcast uh a couple weeks ago, uh shrinks wrap, and I was I was basically saying that the manager might die, right? The death of a manager, that that might happen. You don't need AI can replace that, but like leadership is fundamentally human. And what what does that mean though? And so we have an opportunity, like, does that mean that everyone should be the if education needs to increase, expand, change, evolve? Is the fundamentals of education, like higher education, actually coming back to the great conversations, coming back to philosophy and grounding people in what does it mean to be a moral, ethical person who has um the you know the core virtues and that they're living by that and and directing their lives by that? Because I think what we're gonna find is that work is gonna change, and how you make money is gonna change, and how you spend your time is gonna change. So, what does that mean for us? Does that mean more TV, more screen time? I'll stop talking. That was uh quite quite a rant.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

That was that was great. Yeah, you you you summed up the problem really well, yeah. At the fundamental level, this is a competition between our intelligence and an intelligence that is outside of us. And I find folks are in two camps. There's a camp that has accepted the fact that intelligence, the foremost expression of intelligence is going to be silicone-based or whatever be the other future state of the material which is going to contain this, and and and it's not going to be organic, or maybe there's a combination of organic and silicone, I don't know, but at least it's not going to come from the side of a human. And then there's another camp that doesn't believe that to be the case, and believes that intelligence will continue to remain human. And now I don't know necessarily these two camps what they truly believe in. Now, what I mean to say is that what you tell somebody is different from the conversation you have inside with your own self. It's very hard to know for sure what the other person actually believes. The only person who knows what I actually believe is myself, and that too, if I'm a rational being, if I'm a psychotic individual, even I don't think I have the ability to introspect and know what I believe truly, let alone if I'm schizophrenic or whatever else. Now, if first of all, if I believe these that folks are rational folks and they're having these that their internal monologue is not available for me, that the reason why that creates a problem is obvious is because we say things sometimes so that stock prices are are not affected, so that you know the the tenor of the conversation in inside the company or outside of the company uh follows a certain line and it's not impacted. Our customers, our stakeholders, internal and external, are not are not impacted adversely. So things are said. And and that may not necessarily be in line with what we believe. And sometimes even what we believe changes on a day-to-day basis. Some days you are optimistic about a certain thing, some days one is pessimistic about a certain thing. You know, humans, we a lot of us do fall back on our feelings, and so it's very hard to know. Having said that, that's the that's the problem with being a social animal. I mean, whether AI is going to achieve the state of general intelligence that's going to be akin to what happens inside of our brains and then supersedes it in the future or not. It's not in my control. It's definitely not in any one individual's control. It may happen, it may not happen. Right? Look, you and me didn't sit one day and say, you know, wouldn't it be great if you had social media if you had a way for us to kind of connect with 500 random individuals and share photos and make them feel terrible about the life that they they seem to not be enjoying? Or we'll create these 10-second videos of influencers, and that's gonna be the dominant way that we're gonna consume content. When you know Socrates was first was famously against reading books. He thought that reading books is uh consuming knowledge without having an intermediary, without having a discussion, without having a discourse. And um he wanted people to meet and discuss important things rather than sit in a room somewhere and read. Turns out for the longest time, publishing books or publishing pamphlets, these are the ways to get to incite revolutions, right? And so that printing was the the social media of its time in a way. It's just now we cannot think of it that way. We don't have the stamina to read. As a matter of fact, I prefer somebody read something than just watch a 10-minute YouTube video on something, and and so where I was going with this was number one, these kind of technological changes have happened before. We just don't think of them as technological changes. Like the locomotive engine was akin to time travel, quite frankly. So was telegrams. I remember there was a time when we had pages, and I thought that was you know the that was the the frontier of technology and faxing, right? I mean, all of these things have revolutionized communication and brought the brought the world to a pinpoint, quite frankly. So technology has always existed. And and we have used this technology with the with the intent that it's going to make the world a better place. I don't think facts made the world a better place, paging didn't make the world a better place. I think books is probably arguable, but probably books did in a big way brought education to a lot of people, uh, made education more social, more democratic, and also allowed for ideas to spread uh far beyond the reach of the individual. Like the fact that we know Socrates exists is because Plato's works survived, simply put. So, yes, there's definite benefit to that, but for every book, like the Platonic works and the Bhagavad Gita, there are scores of books that have not added an iota to the human condition in any way, shape, or form. And I if and I I would be not surprised if it turns out that the ones that actually consequent have been consequential to the advancement of the human race, a mere drop in the ocean of all the slop that probably exists in books.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Same thing is true for research, same thing is true for science, same thing is true for technology. The stuff that really moves the needle is just is but a drop in the bucket, and I don't hold the iPhone to be in that drop, it is in the slop category that I put it. Agreed. I don't think that it is in the drop either. I think it's in the slop bucket, at least so far. And and so now again, uh I am in the same boat as my uh interlocutors because I cannot tell what's going on in someone's mind when someone says that they believe AI is slop. I don't know if they truly believe that, right? And so similarly, nobody truly knows what I say to myself. I I can tell you that there are times when it has amazed me, but I but I have spent time trying to understand how it works, right? How how generative AI works. And and the reason I did that was not because I am someone who was interested in technology. As a matter of fact, I was quite a Luddite, like I never learned coding and had no idea how from from The internet to blockchain technology. I had no idea how any of this works. I don't know how my mobile phone works. But when it came to AI, you know, back about two years ago, I remember you and me had a conversation about it too. There was a time when I was I was scared of it. I didn't know what to make of it. And because of the claims that people are making around me. And I I really spent the last two years learning about as much as I could about it. And a lot of my learning of AI has has come from the fact that things like books, things like the internet, things like the iPhone exist. That's why I've been able to get there's been a democratization of knowledge in a way. So yes, all of these technologies, if used the right way, can make us way better than we could if these technologies didn't exist. There's I have no business in knowing how generative AI works and you know about deep neural networks and what the architecture of it and how it learns. I have no business knowing this. But if not for the democratization, if not not if not for the technologies that exist, I wouldn't still know. And it has made me a sharper individual. But it has and it by the way, it also allayed my fears about it, right? About the technology. I've come to accept the technology for what it is. I know its flaws, I know the problems that exist. Having said that, I don't know where it's gonna go. It's obviously in the the few short years that I started reading about it, there's obviously been progress, but I understand the limitations of the technology in and of itself, but there are dangerous things that it can do because even the technology that it operates in under is though flawed, that technology is the underpinning of our modern society. I think there are parts of India and there are parts of Africa and there are parts of Asia in other parts in Asia where even if there is these modern systems fail, life will go on and they wouldn't even know the difference. There is some misery that technology does decrease in a in a big way. Simply put, hand hygiene, I would call that technology. Soap is a technology, quite frankly. Right? Antibiotics is technology, quite frankly. Vaccinations are technology. I think these things have kind of revolutionized the world, changed who we are many ways, shape, or form. And and I would count that way ahead of uh things like artificial intelligence and things. Now, what I hear is oh, you know, because of artificial intelligence, we'll be we'll be able to develop medicines that we have never thought of before. I've never I've not seen it yet. There is some stuff that's happening in in uh Google Deep Mind uh related to protein folding. It that it understands protein folding better than uh than we do. But I mean those things are marginal at this point, right? And it may change in the next maybe 10, 15, 20 years, maybe there's going to be uh a system by which uh excuse me a second, there may be a system by which you know it these things will lead to longevity or will will cure cancer, and all of those things may be true. But I don't know if it let that necessarily add to happiness because in order for it to become that drop in the bucket, as opposed to being slop, the the odds are stacked against this technology. But I haven't seen anything really truly groundbreaking, quite frankly. And I and it's not for the lack of trying, and I'm not the only one. I think everybody talks about this. The reason why they're worried everybody's worried about the AR bubble is because, like you said, the Stanford study, you know, 50% of the folks who have uh you know used the technology as it exists thus far, that's the caveat, have not necessarily seen some big gains in either productivity or innovation or any of that, right? So I I feel that there are whether this technology changes the world or not, I think there's another understanding that one needs to have is is that human happiness doesn't quite rest so much on these technologies. Like we were happy before the iPhone was existed was created. Someone created the iPhone and and and fooled us into believing that that is what will lead to happiness. That social media, someone fooled us that social media is our ticket to happiness, and someone is fooling us that artificial intelligence is our ticket to happiness, universal basic income, you won't have to worry about where your money comes from, everybody can be artists. You know, this these are this these are the ramblings of a simple mind that is trying to resolve you know world-changing, potentially world-changing, actually, I should take that back, potentially very profitable endeavors. Like, you know, you wouldn't you wouldn't let Steve Jobs run your social development program, right? I mean, if if Steve Jobs wrote a book on philosophy about you know what is it to lead a good life, no, you wouldn't read it.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

No, he didn't know. He was almost, yeah, yeah, it was almost like a curse of like his obsession.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Yeah, that's right. And do you think do you think these guys, like you know, what's his name? Uh Sam Altman and uh Amade, I think his name is. Do you think they know? No, and and all those psychologists and all the folks that they're employing, do you think they know? I mean, come on.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, there's so much there. I mean, one technology doesn't lead to happiness, it leads to convenience. But but happiness actually, it's the opposite. It's led to increased depression, anxiety, suicide rates. I I yeah, I mean, social media is is kind of a nightmare in terms of in terms of that. I mean, I was driving back from LA last night. I took my son, my younger son and his friend to a concert up there, and we were talking about reading books, and diff, and he's like, Yeah, I I just don't read. I'm like, there's a problem with that. He goes, Well, I I get my information in other ways. I'm like, exactly, like the in and maybe maybe you need to do both, um, or just sit down and read a book because it's slow, it's it, it requires you to use it, requires you to function differently to do that. Um a few weeks ago, we or a few months ago, a couple episodes ago, in resiliency rounds, we used the we were talking about the the the moral question of if your wife is or spouse is dying and you can break into a drugstore, would you go and get the drugs because the life saving the the drugs will save your wife's life, but you're breaking the law, right? And and this idea of a drop in a bucket got me thinking as we were talking about this. So AI might cure cancer. That is a significant contribution to humanity, but it's also a drop in the bucket. At what cost? So we cure cancer, but cognitive development is impacted for centuries to come. That we might have the cure for cancer, but no one's gonna be smart enough in a hundred years to do anything with it because we're all gonna be drinking Gatorade instead of water, and um thinking that processed foods is how we uh live a long life, right? So because because we're just gonna become well, everyone will be the idea of idiocracy is coming into play, and and so I I find it that's the weight of this is can't we just you could it could we slow down and use it for good and put it into places where it will benefit, but let's not just say it's the answer for everything and and that everyone should like we all have access to it now. I mean, there's there's part of this humanity and uh in AI summit that I went to is about like it should be democratized, like no one person should have power over what can be the outcomes of AI, kind of like like wicked, like the challenges of Wikipedia of everyone going in and defining their own page of what is what was said in Nicomachian ethics, like you're gonna get a lot of different answers there, right? And an AI is only as good as the information that it gets and is able to pull and is fed, right? So there's a lot of BS out there too that it might pull. And I think that there are some rail, you know, like there's some guardrails. I think what I'm suggesting is there needs to be clarity on what those guardrails are, um, and it needs to be on a global scale, it's not just country by country.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Yeah, you know, the the question about if it cures cancer and leads to cognitive decline, these claims that it can cure cancer are not as found as well founded as the observation that it lead to cognitive decline. So I'll give you, and we've probably seen this ourselves in our lives, and I'll give you an example of what that looks like, right? Like social media was supposed to cure social isolation, right? I don't need to even complete that statement, right? Yeah, right? Okay. Now I'll tell you the other thing. Um when is the last time, Jeremy? And this is coming from a personal example. So when is the last time you took a drive and just enjoyed the drive?

SPEAKER_00 33:04

So I'm good at this though, so I might be yeah, I might not be your your average person. Well, then great. Then then you and me both have an example. So yeah, uh yeah, like uh, like I I'm just trying to think about my week, but it was it was Friday. Yeah, it's Sunday. Yeah, great.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Tell me a little bit about that, right? What was what was great about it?

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Yeah, so I was I was all the way downtown uh for a meeting, and I know that there's traffic coming up the five, and so I was like, I'm taking the coast, I'm gonna take a nice slow drive down the coast. I'm not gonna hurry, I'm not gonna be frustrated with traffic, I'm just gonna look at the ocean and enjoy the fact that I'm in Southern California.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

Did you have your GPS on? Nope. That's see that what I was trying to get at is that's the key. So we took a trip down Route 66, so we went west from Oklahoma City and in New Mexico and came back. And we did it the old-fashioned way. We took um going up, so I'll take it too. Sorry, sorry, I take that back. So going up, I tried to program my GPS Google Maps to see if I can take the old Route 66. A lot of it is basically I-40 now, and we kept missing everything. It was, I was like, this is not what we're supposed to do. So we started deliberately getting off the I-40, going into these towns and coming out, and then finding ourselves back on I-40 somehow. When we made it to we we stopped at Tucumkari, which is uh the right in as you hit New U Mexico, and it is a town that it's like radiator springs from cars, you know. It the I-40 bypassed it, and the town is just dying. But what a spirit, man. These guys were uh they were these motels, you know, the old-timey motels, right? No, then there was not a single branded motel in there. Like the Blue Swallow Motel is very is very popular. They were booked, by the way. And there was a there was a motel ahead of that called the Roadrunner Motel. So we stayed there at the night, spent the night at the motel. I haven't it's been so long since I've had like genuine conversations with really salt of the earth people, real conversations, not rush. You're sitting there and you're talking, and you're talking, and you're talking, and you know, they're they're hugging you, they're you know, they're hanging, they're they're they're sweet to your kids, and you're having these beautiful conversations. And the town, it you could see the town was like it was decaying, but there were these people who was trying to put up a fight, and most of the people who were traveling through were folks who who were frequenting these motels and stuff were folks whose parents, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, they took them down Route 66 and they were reliving that with their grandkids, right? Uh, small restaurants. You can't imagine the how cost effective they were, the how great the food was, how nice the people were. But on the way back, so when we were there, one of the one of the rooms in the motel, there was a couple who was driving Route 66. They actually were making the whole trip from Chicago to LA and back. Or um, or were they making maybe from LA to Chicago? I'm sorry. But they had a book with them. The book is actually written by this guy who uh who goes down Route 66 almost a couple of times a year, and if there's any modification in there, he he puts it down. So it's just like an old-timey book, spiral bound. Uh, and she said, You need to get this book and buy the latest edition. So we said, Great. So we bought the latest edition and we decided that we are not gonna put the GPS on, we're gonna follow the maps in the book, and it took us by the old Route 66. Oh, the drive was beautiful. We were not paying attention to the GPS. We got lost a couple of times, we had to backtrack, make it, and it took us to parts that we would have otherwise not gone. Small towns, small cafes, had beautiful conversations, and it was the it was about 560 miles one way, and it was the best driving experience I've had in the US thus far. It's amazing. And I and I take I take my car and I go drive just for the heck of driving and come back, but this was just so different, yeah. And what I was trying to get at essentially is the GPS was created and put in everybody's car so that you never have to get lost again. You will explore places, you'll be confident when you get there, and you'll get back, and all of those things. And what has it done to travel? Yeah, I think AI is kind of like that. Yeah, it may it may it may solve. I don't know if it'll solve for cancer. It'll definitely make a PowerPoint presentation for you, and you know, without you having to do it. But what are you what are you leaving in the process?

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Yeah, I've I uh I mean I've driven cross-country three times. I think the last time was probably using GPS, it was very quick, but the first two times they use trip ticks. You go to triple A and they highlight what roads you're gonna take. Did we get lost? Absolutely. But but think about going back and saying it's actually getting back to I'm hungry, we should start looking for a place to eat. And then you start to figure out like you're not looking at your phone to say closest food near me or restaurant near me. You're exploring, and you end up then. I mean, you'll still explore, I guess, if you're looking up restaurants near you, but but to truly just you're not looking at reviews, you're not looking at anything, you just show up. Some are good, some are bad, but the all of it is experience, and it gets to the core of all of it, man. Which is you what we want to talk about, like what is life, like what is happiness, what is a good life.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

It's actually experiencing life, and it's not having something experience it for you, or or listen or reading someone else's reviews and uh thinking that your tastes are going to be exactly like that person's tastes, right? This whole three-star, four-star, five-star business on Google has just completely destroyed our ability to try something out or give a business a chance, give a human being a chance. You know, I yes, I I don't I really don't think that whatever this technology is, whatever it is, I think if there is something to learn to learn from this, is that we have done this before, we've been down this path before. It does not add to happiness at a human level. It does not. Yes, there are things that it can do, no question. There is there is a certain amount of convenience that it can solve for, but there is there is no ticket that it cuts to happiness. People have been happy before the locomotive, be happiness, you know, and they've been happy people post-locomotive, and there have been a lot of sad people post-locomotive, too. Yeah, I think we need to stop paying attention to people who say that convenience is your way to happiness.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

Yeah, yeah. It and so I I think this kind of segues into some of the conversations I've been having recently where my work is is evolving, right? So, like my background, I really like my practices. I we have like a leadership advisory, right? We come in and work at all levels of a leadership or of an organization, helping from CEOs down to first-line supervisors and leaders to really understand what leadership is, how to be a better leader and everything. And it's about expanding your perspective and making sense of complexity, right? So you should be driving complex complexity up to higher levels of seniority in the organization. That should be senior level roles who are managing complexity and and then pushing decision making down. Like that's that's kind of the work we've been doing. But I work a lot with one-on-one with leaders, and in the last few months, what I'm seeing is that I'm getting referrals to people who have been in every way successful, and they're usually in their 40s, maybe early 50s, and we'll and they're all they're all at these points where they're starting to question. And I guess this is the midlife crisis, maybe, right? But and this is how we started talking too a few years ago. Like, what where these folks are saying, I I some of them have been extremely successful and can retire now, but they're in their 40s, like what they don't necessarily want to retire. Uh, but they also might have started a family later in life because they were so committed to their work for so many years. So they start to question themselves, their actions, their choices, and saying, Well, well, I'm they're at these inflection points, they're transitions. It's uh either career transitions, life transitions, or they're actually trying to transform to be a better human. And and they're looking for guidance on that. And that can be in so a lot of the work like founded in philosophy and psychology and spirituality, all three of those come into starting to answer those questions where they're at, which is really by asking questions and reflecting on. You know, the first question I actually ask them is, Well, how do you define a good life? Well, one of the second questions I ask is, What do you value? And actually, in a conversation just on Friday, I'm shifting that now to what do you find valuable? Because we all actually share these core values that we've been told. Like core values are actually morally like those are morals, right? So values and morals are, I think, very similar. And so we actually say, Well, what is valuable? So I'm talking to men in their 40s who say, Well, I don't need to work anymore. I've got young kids, and I've they've been saying I value my my family, I value my friends, and if they truly value that, then why are they asking what's next in their career? Because they don't need to work anymore. So they find family time valuable, they find connection with others valuable. They also find self having a challenge valuable, having something that they can put their name on valuable. So it's it's okay. That that's okay. There's nothing, there's no judgment there. It's all about you just need let's be let's be honest with your value, your value, it's not your values here. It's it's how do you really what do you want to do and how do you want to spend your time? What do you find valuable for the use of your time? And and where does your ego come into play with all this, too? Because of course, with great success, you just want more and more and more of that. That is not what's going to lead you to happiness, though. And if you look at the you know, it it you're on your death. Bed, and you're saying, Well, I succeeded in becoming a trillionaire. Okay, well, where's that money? Like, are you using that money for good? Because if not, like, then what's the point to just accumulate? So these are the types of questions and conversations I'm having with actually people who are coming and paying for a different type of coaching. Uh, I don't call it life coaching, uh, but I'm I'm calling it like human potential and and saying like some of it's soul searching. I'm not a that that's not my thing, but but there are so many people out there, I think, in their in these transitional times right now. And as you see, tech you know, I uh one of the conversations I'll and I'll I will stop talking is the this gentleman has been so successful, he's in the Bay Area. If he takes 10 years off to raise his kids, he feels like he will no longer be of value. Like now is his time. People know him, he has these great successes. And and I had to, I I mean, I kind of pointed out that like that may that might be true. However, like the value you brought to be successful in the roles you were in were skills that are like you were clearly a good leader, you built teams, you understand how to find talent, like that doesn't change, right? Like you still have that as a as core competencies you can take with you 10 years from now. You're not going to be stale. Um, now maybe you're not stale on the latest and greatest AI technologies 10 years from now, but but there are things you can do to continue to educate yourself, but not actually be in the thick of it and live a good life, and then choose maybe to say, yeah, maybe I just want to open up a surf shop in Costa Rica.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

Yeah, yeah, I I think it's unfortunately being human is a pretty complex thing, and it's exponentially harder to simplify one's expectations, and in as one as one comes to a a situation where like the most simple things can bring the most pleasure, one of two things have to happen. And I haven't really tested this theory out as well, but bear with me here. Either things are just so bad that that a glass of water feels like heaven, you know, where you have to be probably you know lost in a desert, and the and the joy that you would get from drinking that sip of water would probably surpass any other joys that ever existed in the world, and but the amount of pain that you have to go through to get to that point of simple happiness coming from the most simple things. But the other way of looking at it is that immense progress in wisdom could get you there too. Now that's another journey, you know, that's also a journey of hardship and pain, a little bit different than getting lost in a desert. I I I feel that one does get lost in a desert and makes it. I think there's a lot of profound thought knowledge or wisdom that one would gain from that experience, but that'll be a there's a lot of price to pay for that. But I think there's another way to go through life and still come to those points of profound wisdom. And once I believe that once one gains that kind of wisdom, as one is walking towards that, I think one's life simplifies itself. You know, these conversations about how about how does one be happy, what's eudaimonia? The Aristotelian definition of of a of a happy life is a pretty complex definition. And yes, we are right now, we are in the thick of Nicomachean ethics, and so we got to give Aristotle his due and agree to his argument that the the best life is a life that has all of the good things in it, as one can accumulate. That's a very complex life. I think you know, Buddha probably has a different take on that, you know, the Gita has a different take on that. Actually, Socrates probably had a very different take on that. And I personally have a different take than than Aristotle. I I don't believe that that happiness is a complex endeavor, human happiness. Now but I'm also a conventional being. I do realize that I have wrapped my happiness in the pursuit of the common good, and that is a complex endeavor. Well, the reason for that is not that one would achieve it, it just gives you something to do, and something that one cannot achieve ever. You just keep pursuing it, and so so these conversations that you're having with these with your you know, with potential clients, folks who are having these conversations with you, I mean they're they are they're thinking about it the right way. Like the the whatever pursuit there is, it has to be a pursuit that that one is never going to achieve. There's no achieving it. Like a trillion dollars is still not an achievement because you someone could have a trillion plus one, and then you know, what does it mean at that point, right? It is something that is unachievable, and then something as objective as money is not what we are talking about here, but but whatever the common good is in whatever field that you are in, you know, that there are unachievable goals, but you keep walking toward it and trying to make the world a better place. But understanding that you're not gonna hit it, and also keeping your life simple at the same time, because if one wants to drive a Ferrari on their way to their not-for-profit and drop their kids off at a private school, right? And also have a six-pack to boot, like these are all things that add complexity, and and one will come in the way of the other. I can tell you quite frankly, a Ferrari comes in the way of the common good, yeah, right? And so I feel like the the wise man, though not simple in the sense that or woman, though not simple in the sense that they are roughshod, you know, live in a modest house and you know, and have nothing to do with the world, I I believe it's contrary to that. I think there is they could be they could be living right next door to you, but have will have a sense of simp of simplicity when it comes to their sense of happiness. Yeah. Now I'm not saying that if you can live in in Carlsbad, San Diego, or that you have now stepped away from the simple life. Because you don't have to live in in pecunious conditions just to show that you don't care about these things, you know that that becomes a perversion of what I'm trying to say. It is understanding that that is not the way that you get happy, but choosing to sleep in a soft bed doesn't rob you of happiness or doesn't rob you of the exalted state of wisdom either. Right? If a bed is soft, choose it. You don't have to sleep on a hard bed. Like if the chair is uncomfortable, get out of it. You don't have to suffer silently. There's no there is no real award for suffering silently. One should enjoy life, but one should understand that happiness doesn't come from that. One should be very simple in their you know, when I say should, I mean, this is what I've heard, right? I mean, I'm I'm I'm no one to give anybody any advice here. This is what I've heard is that happiness should be simple. That the simple man is or woman is the is you know has found happiness. If they are if they understand that, before that is the complex task of wisdom. And that complex task of wisdom could be like getting lost in a desert or actually choosing to learn from the examples of others, and that is the reason to read. That's the reason to have good conversations, turn off your GPS at times, you know, not use Claude, have a conversation with your neighbor, feel the poignancy of people who've been left behind by technology. Like Tucumkari, New Mexico is a living, breathing example of what happens when an interstate bypasses you, or an artificial intelligence bypasses your worth. There's something deeply human about that. Yes, and understanding that I think is is our way to move forward.

SPEAKER_00 54:20

I totally agree. Um yeah, the idea of simplicity, you you use a couple words in there, and I think actually that removing those words or understanding that those words are part of the the chase versus actually like happiness, assigning happiness to anything is is a false narrative, right? Like, if I had this, I'd be happy. If I can just get to that, I'll be happy. Happiness never arrives, happiness in in um where you find happiness is in the moment being truly present. And it in and therefore your you your word simplicity really resonates with me because it is nothing more than that. And happiness, of course, can come and go, but it comes and goes because of our cognitive intellectual thought process that is driving us and thinking about other things, thinking about what other people are thinking, thinking about what other people have, thinking about I need this or I I need to do more of X or Y, and I why haven't I accomplished this? And it's it's our cognition that's truly driving our unhappiness instead of just being true, we just being truly present in the moment right now. And there's plenty of, I mean, this gets more into the spiritual stuff, right? I mean, that's uh it's like Ram Ram Das, I think, is be you know, be here now, right? And and that that's not for everyone, but that but the concept of like intrinsically motivated versus extrinsically, and I've come to the decision that I made a lot of bad choices in my life, chasing all the wrong things, coming into being close to nearing 50. I've decided I like nice cars. Okay, it's not gonna make me happy. I'm not assigning happiness to it. I also not saying I can afford nice cars. I'm just acknowledging it's something that I like. If I'm driving one, great. If I'm not, it's not gonna make me happy or unhappy. There's a lot of things like this is a white privilege thing I just said. Just to be clear, right? Like, how many people in the world don't get to even lots of people like nice cars, right? Like actually, driving one is something that most people don't get to do. But I this idea of like, and that's the whole idea of what I mentioned slowing down. Like, how are you gonna find happiness if you're constantly racing? And you it and well, we've talked about this before, you may never arrive at happiness, right? I mean, it's you're on a path to a good life, you're on a path to a virtuous life, you're on a path to happiness. But who's to say you ever arrive? But if you're not fully present in the moment, you'll never know.

SPEAKER_01 57:27

Absolutely, man. I think there's a good place to stop. But this we used AI as an inflection point, I think we're humans are always at some sort of an inflection point. I mean, change is the only constant there is. But the folks who remain grounded through change come to understand the fact that you just stated there. You just have to be in the moment. You know, there's every moment there is change. They say, you know, I think this I forget who said it. Was it um one of the ancient Greeks, Armenides or somebody, said, you know, the no man enters the same river twice. You know, the man is changed, and the river is changed. So that's just how our life is, and just even understanding that is wisdom. We try to hold on to things the way they are, they're not gonna stay that way. Like Route 66, the only reason why driving down it means something is because it has changed, it's something else has taken its place and it's decaying and rotting and moving away. And one could try their best to hold on to it, and that's fine. But wisdom is in the fact that that's gonna go away, and so being present right now, this moment, is where happiness lies. Even that cannot be controlled. But I think this is a good place to probably end this, and then next time we meet, we'll talk about wisdom. A lot of practical wisdom of phronesis was discussed today, but not done through Aristotelian lens. But that's what it's about, it's about having incomplete knowledge, but despite having incomplete knowledge, being able to make the rec the next best decision. That is how uh what what I personally believe is phrenesis. We just see what Nicomarkean ethics has to say about that.

SPEAKER_00 59:26

Yeah, I look forward to talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 59:28

Thank you so much, Jeremy.

SPEAKER_00 59:30

Yeah, thank you.