Well, we've already made it a third of the way through the year. I'm wrapping up my honeymoon as I type this, and taking a break from work has been a nice refresh. It allows me to catch up on books and articles I've saved for later, and take a step back for a bit to refresh my perspective.

Recently, my preferred platform for media consumption has become Substack. I've just been gobbling up some great content on there! It's inspired me to sit back down at the old virtual writing desk, and take a stab at sharing some of what I've learned and found interesting recently with others who may fall in my digital bubble. In this post, I feel like writing about games, artificial intelligence, and compliments.

Learning about AI

Here is a set of learning resources that I've put together on artificial intelligence, that should be fairly easy to digest, even if you aren't super technical:

• One Useful Thing - Ethan Mollick's Blog on Practical Applications of AI in Learning and Business
• Schillace Laws - A set of rules for how to best work with large language models as a software developer, written by Sam Schillace, deputy CTO at Microsoft and creator of Google Docs.
• Prompt Engineering Guide - A lovely little site that goes in depth on different prompt engineering techniques with helpful examples.
• A16Z - Andreesen Horowitz is one of my favorite VC firms to follow. They have a lovely collection of thought leadership on AI.
• GitHub's Blog - I have long been a fan of GitHub's blog and R&D arm, GitHub Next. They have some fantastic material.

AI Pollution and the Tragedy of the Commons

If you haven't noticed the endless barrage of AI-generated images and "thought leadership" content on LinkedIn by now, you are either 1) not in the tech industry or tangential to it or 2) have been living under a rock. One of the more cringe-inducing features on LinkedIn that has recently fallen victim to this is the short-form "Answer a question" feature (you can do better LinkedIn).

Take this example for instance:

Now, it's impossible (although some say the inclusion of the word "delve," or the wrapping up of a blog post with "In conclusion," are telltale signs of using Chat-GPT) to know for sure if these responses are AI-generated or assisted. Either way, there's a lot more content like this floating around nowadays, because it's just so easy to create now with LLMs. What are getting ourselves into? Maybe we need to revisit introducing more "Dislike" actions, like Facebook considered almost a decade ago.

A lot of people think the rapid uptick in low-quality content generation enabled by generative AI will “kill” the internet or drastically change it. It probably will. What will we see next though? Humans are resilient and innovative, so I’m looking forward to the next version of it. Are humans capable of designing a platform that prevents the tragedy of the commons, which doesn’t rely on an economy of eyeballs and clicks? In 2004, Aaron Swartz wrote a blog post about information freedom. Can information be regulated? Is there a technical solution to this, or do we rely on a collective swing of society to have a conscious positive impact?

Knowledge Obsoletion

In 2014, Warren Berger claimed in his book “A More Beautiful Question” that posits that questions are now more powerful than answers, because questions lead to innovation, and information is now freely and widely accessible. His rationale, is that it is inevitable that human information would become stored in a database that we could all access.

The sheer amount of information humans rely on to take action now is far too great for any brain to hold. So for the last two or three decades, we've been heading towards a world in which we gain the vast amount of our information from databases. And now, more recently, a computer (e.g., Chat-GPT) tells us the best information collected from the best resources. While this can sound daunting to some, there there is a tremendous upside to this - reduced decision fatigue.

Lazarus Lake

I love Lazarus Lake’s approach to game design. He is something of a celebrity in the ultra-running community. He cropped up on my radar recently, after reading Frank Lantz's wonderfully eloquent piece on him. You should read it. Also, Lazarus Lake spoke on a podcast recently that is equally worth consuming. What I'm so enamored with is how he's bending seriousness, but not disregarding it. Lake's games remind me of Thorsten Brinkmann in some ways, blending ceremony with the peculiar. Lantz articulates it far better than I can, with the following quote:

"When they aren’t trying to manipulate you, most modern games are desperately trying to please you, carefully designed to capture and hold your attention, constantly trying to explain and justify themselves, and sweatily working to amuse and entertain you. When your game is a product every sharp edge is a flaw, a leak, an opportunity for the precious attention you are harvesting to escape back into the ether. Lake’s games are also carefully designed, they are full of closely-considered details that fit together to make a coherent whole, but the problem they are trying to solve is an entirely different one. They are not bowing and scraping to accommodate your needs while secretly plotting to hypnotize you into a state of passive thrall. Their parts fit together like the plants, rocks, and mud of a Tennessee mountain, and, like that mountain, they will happily, indifferently, shrug you off. And yet, somehow, the resulting experience expresses a deep level of respect and compassion." -Frank Lantz

Take some of these rules from Lazarus Lake's infamous Barkley Marathon that is organized each year and notoriously difficult to register for:

• The start time occurs between midnight and noon. However, racers are never told when the race will officially start. The only indication they receive for the start time is by Cantrell blowing a conch shell, which could come in the middle of the night, to signify that the race will start exactly one hour from that time.
• Once the hour is up, runners line up at the yellow gate at a campground within Frozen Head State Park. When Cantrell lights a cigarette, that starts the race along with the clock.
• The bib is very important in this race. It does not track the runner or splits; rather, each loop requires runners to make it to various points in the park. At those checkpoints are books that Cantrell has placed there. Your bib number is the page number you need to rip out of that book. Typically, nine to 11 books are placed in the woods, and if you are missing a page then you didn’t officially complete the loop.

I hope some day to design a game. It's... somewhere... on my bucket list. Not sure when I will, but when I do, I plan on drawing inspiration from Lazarus Lake.

Compliments

The other day I ran into a long-time friend of mine whom I rarely see (the older sister of one of my close high school friends). She shared with me that the mix CDs that I burnt for some of my friends, including her sister, made a lasting impression on her musical preferences, and she was thankful for that. It was very kind of her to share that with me, and it made my day. I sometimes forget how powerful and energizing a sincere compliment can be in the receiver's life. If you're reading this, thanks for that A.H.!

Picks

Here are some things I've found enjoyable recently:

• Book: "Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building" -Claire Hughes Johnson
• Song: "Agape" -Nicholas Britell (fun fact, he wrote the theme for Succession)
• TV: Succession (I've recently jumped into it, and am loving it! It's one of those series I knew would be good, but held off on watching for a while)

What's on my "to-read" list?

I've recently gone down quite a rabbit hole with Frank Lantz and intend to read "The Beauty of Games" in full here shortly. I also plan to read "Gravity's Rainbow," because I'm a bit obsessed with Thomas Pynchon's concept of temporal bandwidth.

Until next post,

John