A few ideas from the conversation that resonated with me. I listened to it on Eric Jorgenson’s YouTube channel. Quotes have been lightly edited for readability. Emphasis mine.
No entrepreneur is going to be replaced by an AI
“There’s no entrepreneur I’ve met who says, ‘Oh, AI is a bad thing.’ To an entrepreneur, it’s a tool. It’s an opportunity. Entrepreneurs are not scared of AI replacing them. No entrepreneur is going to be replaced by an AI. They might be replaced by another entrepreneur who uses AI better. They need to get good with AI just like they need to get good with any tool. Entrepreneurs are not afraid of AI replacing them any more than they were afraid of MacBooks replacing them, or AirPods replacing them, or self-driving cars replacing them. It’s just another opportunity.”
AI won’t replace software engineers. AI is going to let software engineers replace everybody else
“It’s not that AI is going to replace software engineers. AI is going to let software engineers replace everybody else. And I stand by that. Not because they’re writing software, but because software engineers are always using the latest tools. They’re structured, logical systems thinkers who are trying to build a system to solve a specific problem. And now, thanks to AI, they can solve more and more problems. They can make cars drive themselves. They can make robots walk around. They can make expert systems or AI systems that will make certain levels of decisions without humans having to be in the loop. That just gives software engineers amazing leverage.
So all the people saying that programming is dead, go learn art or the trades — they’re idiots. They’re just completely wrong. Software engineers are getting richer and more powerful than ever. The most recent proof of that just popped up with Mark Zuckerberg paying hundred-million-dollar packages to recruit individual machine learning engineers, because the most leveraged engineers are the ones building these AI systems. The ones below them are the ones using these AI systems. And even below them, everybody is affected by these engineers using these AI systems.”
The more you think about yourself, the less happy you are
“Depressed people are ruminating upon themselves. They’re really thinking about themselves. So not thinking about yourself is helpful. My simple tweet on this was: the more you think about yourself, the less happy you’re going to be. It’s that simple.”
“If I do things that are larger than myself, then I will be more okay with whatever the ultimate outcome is. For example, if I’m genuinely trying to make the world a better place, I wouldn’t take it personally if the world wouldn’t let me make it a better place. Because it’s not a personal mission.”
Keep your identity thin
“The thinner your identity, the more you can see reality, because identity is what often stands between you and seeing reality the way it is. It’s the ultimate motivated reasoning. When something contradicts your identity, you’re going to fight it. You’re going to fight it with your life.”
“You’ve got to keep your identity thin. You don’t want to choose your identity. Identity is what you can’t get away from. But any chosen identity is a straitjacket. It’s locking you in.“
It’s better to be in love than to be loved
“People want to be loved because that helps them get over their mortality. It makes them feel a little safer. But one thing I’ve realized for myself is that it’s better to be in love than to be loved. If somebody loves you too much — like your mom coming up and hugging you all the time, or some girl or guy is obsessed with you — it can get a little cloying. It feels like a burden. You almost don’t want that. But when you feel in love with somebody, that’s when you’re high. That’s when you’re elated. So it’s counterintuitive, but falling in love with someone or something is actually very beneficial to you. It does involve sacrifice. It involves risk. But people who give up on love in their lives — it’s kind of a sad life. You don’t have to love people necessarily. You can love the universe, God, animals, what have you. But everybody needs to find something in their life that they love more than themselves.”
Valentine’s Day should be happening all the time with the person you love
“Valentine’s Day should be happening all the time with the person you love, spontaneously and naturally — instead of February 14th, when everybody tries to get into the same overpriced restaurant and buys the same overpriced flowers and checks the same box. And if you don’t feel like doing it naturally, then that means there’s something wrong with your relationship that you should fix, or you should move on to another relationship. What’s not the correct answer is to do this falsehood of checking the box every year and kicking the can down the road, just wasting everybody’s time.”
“Real happiness is when you’re genuinely grateful with somebody else and you do something kind for them because you just want to. You have to create space for that in your life, and you have to create situations where you feel it authentically, for people to genuinely inspire that in you. I don’t want anything ritualistic. I never want a card. I never want a ritualistic gift. I don’t want a medal. I don’t want an award.”
Ah, now I have a word for it
“Anything we talk about, my guess is it will only resonate with somebody if they went through the experience themselves and they’re like, ‘Ah, now I have a word for it.’ Then they can attach a word for it, and that helps them remember it more later. But you can’t teach someone purely in the abstract, because they don’t know when it applies to their situation.”
The test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life
“The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life. That was one of my favorites for myself, because it’s a two-part test. One is choosing what to want, and then getting it. It’s not just, ‘Oh, I want to be a 6’8″ tall basketball player’ — it’s not going to happen. So you have to want the right things — things that are achievable, but kind of at the edge of your range of achievability, and where the process of achieving them won’t make you miserable. So you choose what to want, then you go and get what you want. If you chose the right things and you got it, that’s the only external valid signal that can determine whether you are intelligent or not.”
The real truths are heresies
“The real truths are heresies. They cannot be spoken, only discovered, whispered, and perhaps read.”
“Why are there so many forces working against truth? Because society has to stay together. Groups have to have consensus. And to have consensus, you have to have a shared set of beliefs that are false but make it easier to get along.”
“The guy I really admire is Schopenhauer, because he wrote so much harsh truth while he was alive and nobody liked him, but he knew he was telling the truth, so he didn’t care. And now he’s posthumously incredibly famous — or should be, anyway. Maybe I’ll write my real book and it gets published posthumously, because I do live in this world, and the world is super connected, and I have kids and all that. But that’s when I tell all the harsh truths.”
“When you get a truth that spreads, it’s cliché — it’s conventional wisdom. If you get a lie that spreads, that’s fake news. And then there are the truths that don’t spread. Those are actually the most interesting. The reason they don’t spread is because spread is a function of groups. To spread, there needs to be a group to spread within. So any truth that lowers group cohesion will not spread.”