074. Kevin Kelly: Living with Technology

[00:00:00] I want to talk about it at the level of a, the will of a plant that wants and seeks

[00:00:07] out light.

[00:00:08] It kind of moves in the direction of light.

[00:00:11] So it's not conscious but there is a system's tendency.

[00:00:16] It's a system is built to favor light to favor a direction.

[00:00:22] And so what I'm saying about the tech name is that it's a system of technology and the

[00:00:26] tech name like any system anywhere biological or artificial has tendencies and it has built

[00:00:32] in strange attractors they call it.

[00:00:35] That will keep your journey to that are like physical, the just the natural things

[00:00:41] and are not conscious but the tech name has tendencies.

[00:00:45] I'm Eran Dror and this is Remake a podcast about design, systems and society.

[00:00:52] In each episode I talk to someone who's trying to change our lives for the better in some

[00:00:57] meaningful way.

[00:00:58] Whether through a new product, new venture or new way of looking at the world and I try

[00:01:04] to understand how they came to it what makes them tick and what we can learn from them.

[00:01:10] One of the most tragic aspects of the accelerating pace of change and rapid evolution of new

[00:01:15] technologies is that we as humanity have lost our elders.

[00:01:22] We begin to see the older generations as detached from the current world of innovation

[00:01:27] and have to discount advice and experiences gained in an age that feel so different from

[00:01:33] our own.

[00:01:35] Whereas prior generations could count on a world pretty similar to that of their ancestors.

[00:01:40] When we look to the future, pretty much the only thing we're sure of is that it's not

[00:01:45] going to look like the past or even the present.

[00:01:49] But we still yearn for some sage advice.

[00:01:53] At least I know I do.

[00:01:55] And wouldn't it be wonderful if we did have someone who could help us navigate a time

[00:01:59] of tremendous accelerating change?

[00:02:02] That's why I was excited to talk to Kevin Kelly.

[00:02:07] Kevin is perhaps the closest thing Silicon Valley has to such a sage.

[00:02:12] Someone who not only witnessed a tremendous rise of digital technology but thought about

[00:02:16] it deeply as it was happening and developed models for thinking about it.

[00:02:21] In 1993, Kevin co-founded the groundbreaking Wired magazine and served as its executive

[00:02:27] editor for its first seven years.

[00:02:30] In 1994, he wrote out of control the classic book on decentralized the emerging systems.

[00:02:38] In 2010, he published What Technology Wants, a robust theory of technology and the complex

[00:02:44] almost organic systems to drive it.

[00:02:48] And in 2017, he published a inevitable and New York Times and Wall Street Journal best

[00:02:53] seller about the inevitable trends driving technology.

[00:02:58] His latest book, Excellent Advice for Living, wisdom I wish I'd known earlier is an offering

[00:03:03] of 450 useful aphorisms or principles for living.

[00:03:07] He's devised over his life amidst the changes.

[00:03:12] We talk about how DIY culture shaped Kevin's worldview from a young age.

[00:03:18] What inspired Kevin to co-found Wired magazine?

[00:03:21] Why does Kevin claim technology has a sort of will of its own?

[00:03:27] What is his take on AI advances of today?

[00:03:31] What is some of Kevin's most counterintuitive advice around decision making and change?

[00:03:36] And how can we live fully before our time is up?

[00:03:41] My favorite piece of advice in the episode is about choosing a path of change.

[00:03:46] Without giving away the content, I'll just say I've brought up multiple times in conversations

[00:03:51] with friends about their dilemmas and when considering my own life decisions.

[00:03:57] This conversation is one of a dozen or so weekly conversations we already have lined up

[00:04:01] for you with designers, thinkers, makers, authors and entrepreneurs who are working to

[00:04:06] change our world for the better.

[00:04:09] So follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app or head over to remakepod.org to subscribe.

[00:04:16] And now let's jump right in with Kevin Kelly.

[00:04:20] Alright, I'm sitting here with Kevin Kelly.

[00:04:28] Kevin, welcome to the podcast.

[00:04:31] My pleasure.

[00:04:32] I'm glad to be here.

[00:04:33] Thank you for inviting me.

[00:04:34] So the first thing I like to do is connect us with the present moment.

[00:04:39] And so my first question is going to be what's it like to be Kevin Kelly in the world today?

[00:04:45] What's your daily life look like?

[00:04:46] What keeps you occupied?

[00:04:47] What's on your mind?

[00:04:48] Well, of course I've never been anywhere else.

[00:04:50] I don't really know how it compares but I have engineered my life basically to try and

[00:04:58] spend as much time as I can trying to do the things that only I can do.

[00:05:06] That's a really high bar and most of the time I'm not doing things that only I can do

[00:05:13] but I try to optimize those.

[00:05:16] A lot of the time that I'm doing things that I enjoy doing, then I'm good at doing but

[00:05:23] probably someone else could do too.

[00:05:25] So I do a piece of art every day.

[00:05:28] That's something that only I can do, meaning the art that I do.

[00:05:32] I try to write pretty often and when I do I try to write in a way that's just me, meaning

[00:05:40] that no one else is going to write it like that.

[00:05:43] To say it's sentence, that nobody else has ever said before, that's a goal.

[00:05:47] And at the same time I'm doing the daily stuff.

[00:05:50] Making out the garbage and dealing with leaks in the roof, not all those kinds of things

[00:05:56] which is I think I estimate easily 20% maybe more.

[00:06:02] Maybe 30% of my time is just maintenance, just responding to email, just doing all the

[00:06:07] things that have to be done.

[00:06:09] And the other good thing is that by a large every day is different.

[00:06:14] I don't really have that many routines and I'm a project based person so I have a bunch

[00:06:20] of projects that I'm working on.

[00:06:22] Sometimes they may be, it's expensive products, sometimes they may be a five-year project.

[00:06:26] I mean five years that it just takes before they're completely done.

[00:06:30] That mix of different durations and different time spans means that every day is a little

[00:06:39] different than the day before which is for me how I like it.

[00:06:44] I know some people really like routines but I'm not a routine person.

[00:06:48] Yeah, interesting.

[00:06:50] Is there anything that only you can do that you really hate doing?

[00:06:54] Oh, yeah so I eliminate those.

[00:06:58] Okay, so it's like, yeah, I outsource all to the other things that only I can do is email.

[00:07:05] I don't like doing no, that's almost that's a good question.

[00:07:09] I'm giving it a fair thought.

[00:07:12] No, I don't think there is and I don't think there would be

[00:07:18] is my other answer.

[00:07:19] I think that when you're doing things only you can do it feels very natural, it feels

[00:07:24] very good.

[00:07:25] There may be things that you don't want to spend all your life doing but here's the thing

[00:07:30] and this is one of the bits of advice from my book excellent advice for living which is

[00:07:34] that I have a little bit of a sort of a disagreement with the productivity people

[00:07:42] like David Allen which is that I think instead of trying to get through all the things

[00:07:49] that you have to do in a day faster, being more productive.

[00:07:54] I think it's much better to try and find things that you want to work on and ever stop

[00:07:59] working on.

[00:08:01] That's a good life.

[00:08:03] So to take us through the journey my question to you is what's something you learned

[00:08:10] in childhood or early in life that still drives our guides what you do today?

[00:08:16] Yeah.

[00:08:18] From a very early age I was what we now call a maker although I didn't have that term

[00:08:24] and it became early, do it yourself or the thing that kind of propelled me through life

[00:08:31] after high school was the whole earth catalog which was a Bible for do it yourself first.

[00:08:36] It was the internet before there was an internet and all through what's it going to that

[00:08:41] track I continued to make things and still am a maker every day today and now there's

[00:08:47] a term but I've been doing all my life and so this kind of a sense of the pleasure very

[00:08:53] early on of making things and doing it myself, of that kind of making me own version learning

[00:08:59] how to do something being a lifelong learner, solving the puzzle when you're trying to

[00:09:04] make something yourself and that kind of empowerment that you get by doing it yourself.

[00:09:10] So I built a house with a friend from scratch cutting down the trees and whatnot and I did

[00:09:18] that once but I'm not going to do it again, I'm not going to build a house again because

[00:09:24] I did it and I realized that my I can hire out those professionals to do it better but

[00:09:33] I did it once and I know enough about it and I know enough to help me hire it out.

[00:09:42] And it's not as if I have to do everything myself but just that having done it myself

[00:09:46] and being a maker gives me a power to make other things happen because I have had the experience.

[00:09:56] So from very early on all I'm saying is that I have been, I've learned the benefits of learning

[00:10:05] how to learn, learning new things, making things, doing it yourself.

[00:10:10] Not necessarily to do it myself but to know how to do it and then have to win over to it.

[00:10:16] Yeah, it's amazing and so for people my age you know what we know about the whole Earth

[00:10:22] catalog comes from Steve Jobs commencement address.

[00:10:27] I believe it was at Stanford where he said where he quotes the last, the last one stay hungry

[00:10:32] stay foolish.

[00:10:33] What didn't mean to you?

[00:10:35] Well as I said, the whole of Cala was started by Stuart Brand in 1969 just as I was graduating

[00:10:41] from high school and I saw when in 1970 I think it was, and it was like oh my gosh this

[00:10:48] is for me, this is talking to me.

[00:10:50] This is just everything about this is me but I was a kid, high school kid in New Jersey

[00:10:57] and I knew nothing.

[00:10:58] I desperately wanted to contribute because it was a user generated thing even though Stuart

[00:11:04] was at the helm, it was like the Internet.

[00:11:08] He would take user generated content people would submit things and he would say yes or

[00:11:12] no one would go in and so the whole thing was crowdsourced.

[00:11:17] And I desperately wanted to contribute and be part of it but I knew nothing.

[00:11:22] I just didn't know anything, I didn't know where to find out anything.

[00:11:26] So it was, so I kept reading as a reader and it was many years before I had something

[00:11:32] to contribute and in between that what I decided to do is to travel cheaply and remotely

[00:11:40] and intensely in Asia primarily.

[00:11:44] And so when I came back a decade later I was like the expert in traveling on a budget

[00:11:51] in Asia and I started to for the whole earth catalog to review travel books and other

[00:11:58] stuff and I finally had something to contribute and then once I got in I had more and more

[00:12:03] to say and learn more and more and so I became eventually higher to be one of the editors

[00:12:07] and then eventually I went up running the thing, being the publisher.

[00:12:11] And that perspective that Stuart had of two things that were remarkable.

[00:12:17] One was the kind of the do-it-yourself and here's the information at a time when there

[00:12:21] was no information so there was nowhere to go if you wanted to find out how to repair

[00:12:26] your own VW Beetle or if you wanted to build a house out of Straubail or if you wanted

[00:12:31] to do homeschooling or if you wanted to travel the world cheaply.

[00:12:36] And so there was no internet that the stuff wasn't at your local bookstore, it wasn't

[00:12:42] in your local library, it was nowhere except in a couple of little self published books

[00:12:47] and the whole earth catalog told you where to find those books.

[00:12:51] And this idea of being an amateur being informed and sharing information we'd recognize

[00:13:01] it now because it's blogs.

[00:13:04] Basically we were running blogs, blog posts of people and Wikipedia and so that was the

[00:13:11] one genius that Stuart had of the kind of access to tools and information as tool.

[00:13:19] The second thing that he introduced me too that I swallow was a whole systems approach.

[00:13:27] He was one of the very first people to think about talking about cybernetics

[00:13:31] in a real way and then bring in this idea of whole systems as a perspective because

[00:13:37] in the original whole earth catalog, in addition to nomadic travel and dwelling and crafts

[00:13:45] and ghouling and learning there was a section called understanding whole systems.

[00:13:51] And that was very profound because it, how I got involved in technology was this kind

[00:13:58] of whole systems view when we first started to do the telecommunications and understanding

[00:14:04] them as systems and understanding life and robotics and technology as a system.

[00:14:10] So that system's perspective was very important for me and it came from the whole earth catalog.

[00:14:16] Yeah, that's amazing.

[00:14:19] I put the tagline on the podcast, design systems and society because I think systems are

[00:14:26] in the core of everything we care about.

[00:14:28] And so in 1993, I believe you found it wired.

[00:14:33] I just want to say something about what wired meant to me.

[00:14:36] So I was a kid in Israel in my early teens and why it came out and we had access to it

[00:14:44] and it just opened a whole world of possibility.

[00:14:48] Israel is a pretty rigid country at the time.

[00:14:51] This was before a bean was assassinated but it's this very kind of nationalistic, rigid

[00:14:57] a little bit.

[00:14:58] It was before the Haikta boom and wired coming in and showing a different reality.

[00:15:03] A reality where anything is possible or hackers were doing incredible things and computing

[00:15:07] in biology and why have you and every issue was just a pleasure.

[00:15:12] They're so rich and thick.

[00:15:14] And so what was the idea behind wired?

[00:15:19] You started in how do you see that journey now?

[00:15:23] Yeah, one of the things just be clear.

[00:15:24] I was one of several co-founders and the primary people who were really driving it was a couple

[00:15:31] Louis Rosetta and Jamie Kaff and there were a couple other editors including John Battelle

[00:15:36] who were in the first crew, the first cycle which was almost exactly 30 years ago in

[00:15:42] this month.

[00:15:43] So it's been 30 years.

[00:15:45] And the original idea, there were a couple.

[00:15:49] The premise was to report on this digital revolution that was just beginning that I don't

[00:15:55] even live in for 10 years which is one of the reasons why we didn't talk a lot about

[00:15:59] the internet in the beginning because I was like I'm bored.

[00:16:01] I've been talking about this for 10 years already but it was just at the beginning of

[00:16:05] the web and that was really what kind of what propelled it.

[00:16:07] The second thing was Louis had this mandate which was the reason he sold me when he told

[00:16:12] me this was he had signed me up.

[00:16:13] I wanted to be part of this.

[00:16:14] He says, I want to make a magazine that feels like it's been mailed back from the future.

[00:16:21] It was written in the future and you're mailing it back so you were talking about you

[00:16:25] had language that you weren't really explaining.

[00:16:28] There was this feeling that had been mailed back from the future and I said yeah, sign me

[00:16:32] up.

[00:16:33] I'm on.

[00:16:34] I'm going to make that.

[00:16:35] And then we expanded it to the thing which was my term which was the future is kind of

[00:16:42] erupting unevenly.

[00:16:44] This was taking off at Gibson unevenly around the world and we were going to report on these

[00:16:49] eruptions as they happened in different places.

[00:16:53] As the future erupted here and there we were going to there and that was a premise to

[00:16:58] really be future focused and not so much tech but this future focused.

[00:17:05] The third element was maybe my main contribution was this radical optimism where we were

[00:17:15] acknowledging problems but the basic idea was other people are going to report on those

[00:17:19] we don't need to report on it.

[00:17:20] What we want to report on is a vision of the future that we want to go to and that's

[00:17:25] going to be more likely and it's probably what's where they want.

[00:17:29] It's more distinctive.

[00:17:30] There's less people doing it and nobody doing it.

[00:17:34] And so that kind of reporting on this emerging digital thing that we said look right now it's

[00:17:41] marginal but it's going to be mainstream.

[00:17:43] That was the belief that people laughed at.

[00:17:46] It was going to be mainstreamed as digital stuff.

[00:17:48] Secondly, we were going to report on the future and thirdly, we were going to be optimistic.

[00:17:54] So that was a sort of ingredients for the soup.

[00:17:59] No, I love that.

[00:18:01] There's really only two things in my life at the time that had that sense of optimism and

[00:18:07] I think it's Star Trek and Wired.

[00:18:11] And both of these things are still very precious because I think in order to keep up an optimistic

[00:18:21] mindset you have to see an example of optimism and a sense of kind of can-do which is rare

[00:18:27] in the world.

[00:18:28] And so thank you for that.

[00:18:31] You wrote too many books for us to really cover efficiently today and I want to spend

[00:18:35] most of our time on your latest book but I want to touch on a couple along the way.

[00:18:51] We're listening to Remake, a podcast about design systems and society.

[00:18:58] If you're listening on a podcast app you already know how to follow podcasts.

[00:19:04] So please follow this one.

[00:19:11] If you're listening in a browser just go to remakepod.org to find links to all the major podcast

[00:19:18] players where you can follow our show.

[00:19:33] In what technology wants, you described the concept of the technium and the concept of

[00:19:41] technology having a will of itself and I actually cited that in my thesis which was about

[00:19:47] AI safety and where are we going.

[00:19:50] And it's a really interesting radical concept that today starts to feel like maybe more

[00:19:58] self-evident but how did you come to this idea that technology has a will of itself,

[00:20:04] that it's not necessary.

[00:20:05] It's not our will that's determining the progress.

[00:20:09] So I need to just dial back a little bit the will of its own which is a very loaded

[00:20:14] word or mainly think that this is some kind of conscious will but I want to talk about

[00:20:20] it at the level of a plant that wants and seeks out light.

[00:20:28] It kind of moves in the direction of light so it's not conscious but there is a system's

[00:20:35] tendency it's a system is built to favor light to favor direction.

[00:20:42] And so what I'm saying about the technium is that it's a system of technology, it's

[00:20:46] not just a piece of technology it's the fact that to make a hammer you need to have

[00:20:51] a saw to make the handle to make the saw you need to have a handle to make the blade

[00:20:58] and so there's a codependency of all the technology we have today whereas for any one

[00:21:04] thing to make this pen requires machines, requires generators electricity requires plumbing

[00:21:11] to some extent requires chemicals to make the it's a very complicated thing.

[00:21:16] You and I for all our genius could never make this thing like this by ourselves we need

[00:21:24] to have a system so there's a system and I call that system the technium and the technium

[00:21:29] like any system anywhere biological or artificial has tendencies and it has built in strange

[00:21:36] attractors they call it that will keep your journey to that are like physical the

[00:21:41] just the natural things and those tendencies are not conscious but they're deeply

[00:21:49] baited in and I'm saying that the technium has tendencies and I got the idea from the

[00:21:55] critics of technology who say look there's tendencies in these systems they're not

[00:22:02] neutral they're not like they don't do anything you say they'll the favor the tend to do some

[00:22:08] things and other things and I'm saying yes that's absolutely correct that is true that

[00:22:13] there's there are tendencies and urgencies and biases that these systems tend to go towards

[00:22:23] but I say I differ from the critics and I said these tendencies are actually good they're

[00:22:27] take good things they want to move towards from generalization to specialization that's one

[00:22:33] tendency that you know we make there's a camera a general purpose camera then we make specialized

[00:22:39] versions of them that the general drift over time is that things specialize over time over time

[00:22:45] technologies become co-dependent on the mutualistic I call it so that some technology will never ever

[00:22:53] be touched by human it'll only be touched by other technologies around it

[00:22:58] and so we have a sort of sense of technologies need other technologies just like life needs

[00:23:03] other life and so that mutualism is something else that we see tendency running through it we see

[00:23:09] complexity things becoming more complex over time so those are examples of the tendencies

[00:23:17] in technology and what I'm saying about our own use of it is that we want to try to identify

[00:23:23] those tendencies and that we don't want to fight against them you want to work with them

[00:23:29] and one of the examples of that would be the tendency of digital technology the copy things

[00:23:36] it's built into the very nature of digital stuff to be replicated perfectly

[00:23:43] easily and so we have systems set up and they will copy things all the time right now we're being

[00:23:50] copied the things copying going through the wires going through the run of world going on we're

[00:23:55] making copies of this all the time and then if we try to make a system to prevent that from being

[00:24:03] copied copy protection that's going again the grain of what the technology wants and so

[00:24:12] what I preach is let's listen to what the technology wants and then work with it

[00:24:17] and then we come up to ideal AI and so AI is a system the very complicated system the most

[00:24:25] powerful system we've made what are its natural inherent

[00:24:30] tendencies that we're going to see on any planet where this technology is made it's going to

[00:24:33] it's not it's not about us it's about the fact that these technologies are physical and have

[00:24:39] physical things and so they're going to have biases and what are the biases in technology

[00:24:45] in AI and so there are biases and we're figuring it was out and it's not that they're wrong it's

[00:24:51] just that we have to work with them and in your previous book they inevitable name these

[00:24:58] different trends and cognizing is one of the key ones and you see a world where AI is

[00:25:07] in everything it's like electricity it powers everything it brings right right things alive

[00:25:13] it's this is now more timely than you know I guess it's a trend since the I think the 80s

[00:25:20] texty more and more capabilities but right now it's on everybody's mind because there's some amazing

[00:25:27] examples of this at least on the surface they seem really amazing with chat GPT and now

[00:25:33] and now Google is releasing their version and and so have you updated your view or at least for

[00:25:42] the kind of the next few years do you have an opinion of what we're going to see soon

[00:25:49] and how did that connect to the kind of cognizing trend that you're seeing

[00:25:53] yeah so I would say to one extent yeah this has been long anticipated and I would say one of

[00:26:01] the things I've been trying to emphasize the last five 10 years maybe is this idea that the best

[00:26:10] model for AI that we should have in our heads is that of a partner or even an intern for that matter

[00:26:17] just to someone who's something that's working with us the half that they have their own

[00:26:22] idiosyncricities and they're what I call dumb smart meaning they're incredibly smart in one

[00:26:28] area and completely I can idiot in another okay and so it's frustrating at times but this is

[00:26:33] the idea that there is this these partners or interns that are working with us and then we have

[00:26:39] to learn to work with us and this is the prompt tours and the image generators which is

[00:26:45] that some people are really good and they're good because they spent 10,000 hours already whispering

[00:26:50] to the AI and understanding how the AI's and how the different AI's working that's the second

[00:26:56] point I want to make about this is that I always insist that we talk about these as the plural

[00:27:00] AI's there's not just the AI's one thing is thousands of different species of AI all with their

[00:27:07] own characters and qualities and abilities and some of them we're going to be that much smarter than

[00:27:13] a grasshopper and that's all they need to be and others are going to be very complicated

[00:27:19] and it's a liability to have consciousness so we're not going to put consciousness in most of

[00:27:24] these because that's a liability we don't want we want them to focus on what they're doing

[00:27:29] we don't want them to be self-like to so that's this so those two two points are

[00:27:35] ongoing points but the new idea you're actually would have changed my the new idea that I had not

[00:27:42] thought about that the GPT barred and all these others are suggesting is that there's going to be a

[00:27:53] very we're being confronted in having a challenge and have to make progress in our understanding of

[00:27:59] truth itself how do we come how do we know whether something is true or not how do we decide individually

[00:28:07] and as a society what to give that banner of truth and how do we trust what's true and it's not

[00:28:18] just about the political polarization it's way beyond it it's this idea of when the chat says something

[00:28:26] that the capital of Portugal is Lisbon okay why should we trust it and how

[00:28:39] will we get to the point that we're trusting it and so what does the AI have to do

[00:28:45] hmm they able to earn our trust about being truthful and that's a big project that's

[00:28:53] and we haven't really insisted on that before like we have insisted oh because in your time says

[00:29:01] it's true and then they have a reputation a good reputation then we can say okay if they say it

[00:29:09] then I can believe it but what do we need from a machine to believe the machine so I recently

[00:29:18] profanity that right now we're choosing Wikipedia to judge whether the AI's are correct

[00:29:28] hello that's crazy but I'm saying 15 years is going to flip and we're going to be using AI

[00:29:34] to decide whether Wikipedia is correct and I think part of what we have to do with the AI is that

[00:29:40] they're going to need to go back to sources they're going to have to like read the source then read

[00:29:46] the source then read the sources sources I think just like how many down do they need to go so

[00:29:52] these are these kind of questions that we haven't really thought about before that we're going to

[00:29:57] need to think about now yeah I think that's fascinating and there's two areas that I'm a little bit

[00:30:03] familiar with that actually do this systematically one is history which I studied where historians

[00:30:10] are constantly looking at sources and trying to determine the truth from right right often conflicting

[00:30:15] sources and intelligence the world of intelligence is also lots of rumors lots of documents lots of

[00:30:23] sources how do you evaluate them and it would be interesting to see if there's anything that can be

[00:30:30] learned from how they do it that's you make a really good point I had to thought about that both

[00:30:35] the historians and the intelligent officers that that's their job yeah it would be interesting to

[00:30:42] see if there are they've ever seen is what is like a theory as systems of intelligence gathering

[00:30:47] that is like the other models are there yeah schools of thought is there is the super forecasters

[00:30:54] Philip Tetlock's work on people trying to forecast things and they've done these very systematic

[00:31:01] studies but I have to yeah that's a really good Phil Tetlock to see if they've looked at

[00:31:08] systems of analysts coming to truth yeah so anyway I think we're headed into this as a frontier

[00:31:15] and this was not predicted certain opportunity by me that this kind of this epistemological

[00:31:23] challenge is going to be a big thing we're going to be dealing with in the next decade

[00:31:29] yeah I think I think it's one of the most fascinating challenges and also one where if we solve

[00:31:35] it for AI that's going to make a huge difference for humanity because we've never had a truth engine

[00:31:42] before and so I wanted to talk about your recent book excellent advice for living with them I wish

[00:31:51] I'd known earlier and I'll just say it's a unique structure for you and in general and it contains

[00:31:57] 450 bits of advice life advice so how did that book come about why did you format it that way

[00:32:06] and what are some tidbits that you're especially or not tidbits but what are some bits of advice

[00:32:13] that you're especially the short story was um I think that really a very big advice give her even

[00:32:20] in my family I have three kids this is one of my bits of advice that I did not give which is that

[00:32:26] I think it's much more powerful to to rear and train through doing rather than saying so very early

[00:32:36] from my own experience said I'm learning more from what my parents do than what they say and so I

[00:32:42] assume that my kids were not paying attention to anything I said that they were paying attention

[00:32:46] to what we did how we were and so I didn't really later on very much advice with the kids growing up

[00:32:55] but I really did feel that there was things that I'm 70 71 that there were things that took me a

[00:33:02] long time to to understand that I wished I'd known earlier and so I should write these down

[00:33:08] say them there's another bit of advice in the book which says yes it's like um we it's not really

[00:33:17] we don't need to say it usually you do need to say it basically hmm I just don't need to be said

[00:33:23] need to be said and so I decided to write them down as a few other ideas for my son who's now

[00:33:29] a adult and you about 25 and when I did it was fun I found I could do I did 60 of them on my

[00:33:36] 60th birthday and I did the Irish thing of giving away something on your birthday give presents you

[00:33:41] don't get presents and I shared it online and among friends and it was a big hit people really liked

[00:33:47] it so at the next year next birthday decided to do more and then I did more and I found out that I

[00:33:54] had more to say and then in the end I um people really found a valuable that I wanted something

[00:34:00] handy to hand to them to a young person in the form and available and so I said this would work

[00:34:06] so what you get are little tweets they're very their tiny little sentences and most of my energy was

[00:34:14] spent in trying to reduce whole volumes whole essays whole books of advice into one tweet

[00:34:25] one little proverb like a biblical proverb like a maximum like an adage or a little lesson take

[00:34:31] a less lesson and reduce it to one sentence that you could remember and I do that because I was

[00:34:36] using these I was I would recall these myself and I found that you get school to have something in

[00:34:43] my head to repeat to myself an example of that would be if you know you owe something and you can't

[00:34:48] find it in your when you eventually do find it don't put it back where you found a bit put it back

[00:34:53] where you first looked for does it great yeah I always tell myself that and so having that a little

[00:35:00] bit reduced is helpful or if there's an argument or contentious issue that has two sides try to find

[00:35:07] the third side right after like there's always going to be a third side and the third side of the

[00:35:12] thing that kind of breaks it apart and they can pick up the book here and I'm just going to open

[00:35:15] up at random and here's the first thing I read and which I repeat to myself to succeed get other

[00:35:23] people to pay you to become wealthy help other people to succeed okay your behavior not your opinions

[00:35:30] will change the world that's what we're saying earlier to combat an adversary become their friend

[00:35:37] people can't remember where the three points from the speech which is absolutely true so just

[00:35:41] don't have more than three points in the if your goal does not have a schedule it's just a dream

[00:35:48] don't treat people as bad as they are treat them as good as you are

[00:35:53] well anyway there's just we're under the Egyptia these but things not need to be perfect

[00:36:00] to be wonderful especially weddings things don't need to be perfect to be beautiful and

[00:36:06] wonderful so you can have you don't you're wedding doesn't have to be perfect okay there's practical

[00:36:11] stuff too like for instance even the tropics it gets colder at night than you think

[00:36:16] the pack warmly it's my only experience throughout the world doesn't matter how hard it is you

[00:36:21] can get cool at night so that's what the book is about is career advice financial advice buying

[00:36:28] whole all the kind of stuff and trying to make it into a memorable format that would be practical

[00:36:37] and easy to recall nice so I try to down some some of these thoughts in the book and I'd love

[00:36:46] to read them out to you and see if you can elaborate quickly and then I have one final closing

[00:36:51] question and you write perhaps the most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give

[00:36:57] the more you get understanding this is the beginning of wisdom yeah it's weird it's very strange

[00:37:07] that the way to well is by giving stuff away and this has even practical implications which was

[00:37:20] in my one of my second books called The New Rules and New Economy which was Follow the Free

[00:37:25] which was that free was this viable business strategy that people at first thought it was ridiculous

[00:37:34] but here it is today and we're still using Google search for free but the idea was the default

[00:37:43] of humans it's a different different take it saying the defaults of humans is that they are good

[00:37:49] and are altruist and want to share and in fact our civilization is based and built on the fact

[00:37:56] that the default is cooperation and collaboration sharing of things and that that's how we've

[00:38:05] gotten as far as we've gotten it's to assume for the most part that people are going to behave well

[00:38:12] and that you can give stuff away and then come back and so that's something that's so

[00:38:19] here's the thing you can count on it that it's so reliable that you can count on it's cleared

[00:38:26] and in terms of trusting others I say that the getting cheated occasionally because you trusted someone

[00:38:33] is a small price it's small tax for getting the best out of everybody because they're going to

[00:38:39] treat you so well because you trusted them so yeah can you try to get cheated whatever but that's

[00:38:44] just a little tax for getting great having a civilization yeah you write about the difference between

[00:38:53] I can't do something and I'm learning to do something yeah yeah so I can't swim is embarrassing

[00:38:59] or I can't ride a bicycle or I can't do calculus or probability whatever it is

[00:39:06] and it's sort of it's a hurdle it's blockage it's a preventing growth but if you say I'm learning

[00:39:14] how to swim from learning how to do calculus if I'm learning how to ride a bicycle or to ski then

[00:39:24] first of all it's not embarrassing and secondly it's commendable and admirable and thirdly it'll help

[00:39:32] you get going in that direction and the difference between I get to it and I'm trying is a tiny little

[00:39:40] baby step yeah when I told people I was as learning to play the violin during covid they were like oh

[00:39:47] but the violin is such a hard instrument how could you your age play the violin it's not hard to

[00:39:54] play the violin badly it's very easy to play the violin and it's also not hard to slightly improve

[00:40:02] every time you play exactly that's a one point I make I don't think I ever made it an actual

[00:40:07] nothing I did yeah there's a piece of rice called there's no limit to better there is

[00:40:14] everything we have we can make better somehow or other and everybody's born

[00:40:20] and with different talents and abilities I will never be a professional athlete

[00:40:27] but I can get better in athletics always and so are we really want to judge where how far we've

[00:40:36] gone from where we started not from from the end goal and there's no limit to better we everything

[00:40:42] can be improved to some some degree so I've got two more whenever you can't decide which path

[00:40:51] stake pick the one that produces change yeah that's sort of what I've observed maybe it's I don't

[00:40:58] know if it's true for everybody but certainly true for me that I like to optimize learning

[00:41:05] and change so the change it's not just for this sake change the change is to

[00:41:14] help you continue to improve and it's to also help you arrive at where I think you want to

[00:41:22] arrive which was my advice on the last bit which is that your goal in life is to arrive so

[00:41:30] the day before you die you can say I fully become me and so this idea of fully becoming yourself

[00:41:39] wires change not just changing we want to improve but we can help that improvement process by

[00:41:48] constantly trying to change you doesn't mean you're going to change in an improvement direction

[00:41:53] you could get worse or you could shift somewhere else and get distracted that's penalty or the risk

[00:41:59] but you can't really prove unless you do change and so by forcing the change you have a higher

[00:42:06] chance of making improvement yeah and becoming fully yourself before you die that which was

[00:42:16] the last one you guessed correctly I have a final question which is our standard closing question

[00:42:24] so in his TED talk the philosopher Alinda Botan talks about the difference between a lecture

[00:42:30] and a sermon a lecture being a modern day dry way of delivering information and the listener can

[00:42:36] decide for themselves and a sermon is an urgent plea to change someone's life the grabbed

[00:42:43] them by the lapel and try to make them see the light and so my question to you is if you were

[00:42:50] giving an opportunity to deliver a short sermon what would it be about yeah that's a good question

[00:42:56] so I think I did a sermon in terms of a graphic novel called the silver cord which we worked on for

[00:43:03] 11 years and it was way too big it was about angels and robots but the sermon part was like the

[00:43:12] shaking of the people saying wake up was that the angels in heaven who are the disembodied virtual

[00:43:19] beings who are weeping when they see humans because we're squandering our very short

[00:43:26] experience in this embodied VR right because we have a very limited ride in our body and the

[00:43:35] thing about the bodies that we have is that bodies are the maximum this physical world is the maximum

[00:43:41] way to have impact in a virtual world really hard to kind of have impact on people but when you're

[00:43:48] in the body and you're all in bodies you have so many ways to leverage impact and have impact on

[00:43:57] the world and effect and yet we're squandering this very short ride that we have most people are not

[00:44:05] optimizing this ability to have an impact on others and around you in the world and so that's the

[00:44:12] that's the shaking of look it's a very short ride it's going to be over much sooner than you think

[00:44:17] wherever you might go next or have come from it's not as embodied and high leverage is this thing

[00:44:23] right here this version of it this simulation whatever it is it's like incredibly powerful

[00:44:31] experience where we can have incredible impact on the people around us because we're in physical

[00:44:36] bodies and all the hang-ups of that entails you got to make the most of it because it'll be over before

[00:44:43] you know it this is beautiful thanks Kevin I appreciate your time today great questions

[00:44:51] Aaron I appreciate your interest in the book excellent advice for living and I wish you the best

[00:45:00] in your own life in your own ride make the most of it

[00:45:04] you

[00:45:09] remake is produced by myself and Regina Rothstein research in editing by Louis Brady

[00:45:16] an audio engineering by Greg Coco Veos if you enjoyed the podcast please consider writing a

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[00:45:40] outcomes through repeated and rapid design interventions now until next time you well everyone and

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