This was originally posted on blogger.

I wrote in December 2020 on the topic of “cyborgs at the Harkness table”. The piece was meant to show how though our brains do a lot of valuable thinking, we’re almost always augmented by cognitive tools: the internet, a calculator, even a pen and paper. These tools help us record information, calculate, or access information that isn’t stored in our heads. I find it necessary to revisit this topic with the advent of large language models. In the near future, brilliant innovations – technologically and artistically – will come from AI. The greatest case of this is AI playing chess. AI defeated the world’s best human player, Gary Kasparov, in 1997. Since then, humans still play chess, but the game has changed. We no longer have to do research like we used to. We can consult chess algorithms, who innovate and develop strategies that world-class players can use. A human chess player’s job is to learn and deploy these strategies that may never have been invented without computers. How does this relate to cyborgs and the Harkness table? Well, before, computers were there to augment the cognitive brilliance of the human mind. The computer did the grunt work of information storage or retrieval; humans did the hard thinking. Now, or soon, artificial minds will be the greatest writers, musicians, literary critics, and philosophers. The cyborgs will no longer be needed at the Harkness table.

The podcast Conversations with Tyler has taught me how to ask better questions. Tyler asks questions that strike at someone’s individual experience, yet still illuminate broader problems. I won’t give examples, just go listen to almost any episode you’re interested in. He also doesn’t linger on questions, even if the answer is a little wishy-washy. That’s a great strategy. If someone hasn’t answered a question, they probably don’t know and are too shy to say so. And also, Tyler rarely lingers on topics that he wants to share his opinion on. He focuses the interview on the other person.

Speaking of questions, there are two types of questions I find vile for conversation. One is the first date question. These are questions that the other person has likely heard hundreds or thousands of times before, like “where did you grow up? what do your parents do? do you have any siblings?” Gosh, they’re hard to avoid, but it’s so worth it. If someone’s giving you a canned answer, they probably don’t find talking to you very interesting. The second kind of vile question is the uncle question. This is a question about the future that the person can’t possibly know the answer to. You go to a job interview, and after it a friend asks, “so you think you got the job?” You meet someone who’s asking you about what you do (for work), and then they say, “so, what’s next?” Or another form of the uncle question is a comparative – “do you like living in CA or NYC better?” “Do you think X partner is the one?” They’re loaded questions with a whole lot of factors. As tempting as it is to want to know the future, no one does. Asking about it doesn’t help (why not ask a Magic 8 Ball?). If you want to ask one of these vile questions, you should probably acknowledge how uncreative it is by saying, “I know you may have been asked this question a hundred times before, but… or, I know this question will probably stress you out and you, at the moment, have no good answer to it, but…” And then ask your question if you really feel the need.

I’ve been requested by a couple people to receive email notifications from these blogs. I’m honored by this question, because it means that you want to keep up-to-date on these musings. I have looked high and low for other free, easy-to-update blogging solutions (that can also be linked to a custom domain name) and Blogger doesn’t seem like a bad option for now. I’m also considering Notion, but that’s a whole thing. However, one alternative is to use an RSS reader, like this one here, and put in the information of this blog. Since RSS isn’t a common tool these days, that’s probably more trouble than it’s worth. But I thought I’d mention it. I also know there are some friends (shout-out my parents, Tynan, Shaurya, and Setu!), who check this website every now and then and catch up on old posts. I’m grateful for the readership.

I went to test for a scooter license today in Kaohsiung. Turns out you need to schedule these things in advance, so I was only able to take a 2-hour traffic safety course. I haven’t often had to sit in a chair and passively listen since I graduated from college. So this was a welcome experience. Part of it was done by a real instructor who went through the 8-section course that constitutes the actual test. Then there was a video about driving safely. It was actually a video about driving dangerously. There were doctors and parents and whatnot talking about scooter deaths, vegetablization, the impact on families, things like that. I found it worthwhile and the videos of traffic accidents rather gripping. I think I paid more attention than I would’ve for an analogous course in the US/UK. I considered it great Chinese practice – they spoke in crisp Mandarin, had Chinese subtitles, and was relevant content for my near-future. But after watching the video, I felt like not driving a scooter at all. With the high speeds and unprotected body, it seems like the most dangerous thing I can do in my day-to-day life. The most life-threatening thing in my life right now is riding a bicycle (I’m loathe to give that up). So although I may take this famous exam (appointment on October 17th!), you won’t find me driving too soon.

A final point. Phone numbers. They’re outdated, insecure, and stupid. In Taiwan especially, everyone uses LINE (which is a commercialized clunky software, but anyways). If I was president of the world for a day, I would have everyone register a public contact number. It’d be like a social security number, but actually something you could give out if you need to be contacted or identified. Banks, hotels, organizations could contact you for anything through it. It’d be encrypted and linked to your official national ID so no one could ever hack into it. And it could notify you through a variety of applications. Email is close to this, but don’t so many people have something like “pudgywudgy123” as they’re account name? And phone numbers – no, no, no. Foolish. People change phone numbers all the time. Same with zip codes and addresses. Some things are so simple yet so hard to get organized in society.

What’s the right structure for a blog post? What are the key ingredients? Does a blog post need to have a point? For me a) there is no right structure b) there are no key ingredients c) no.

I’ve been writing some longer pieces recently, and I find it extremely difficult. It’s one thing to have an idea and turn it into a blogpost. The standards here are very low. To me, the important part of blogging is that I write something in the first place. Basically whatever I write is better than nothing. For essays, however, it’s so crazily difficult to get stuck in an perfectionist trap. You write a bit, then think about how it could be phrased better, then write it again. Then you think about how the reader will read it, so you write it once more. Then you look at a whole finished page and decide that from the outset, the idea of the piece is bland and not even worth writing this way. It’s going to take another draft. Then do that for 5-10 pages and you have one essay, or one chapter of a book. I can understand writers getting writer’s block. I can understand people taking years to write a book that they’re proud of. And then it might be consumed by a reader within a week. At the same time, writing something great is one of the greatest gifts you can leave the world (along with recording great music). A friend I had in college was a big reader of political philosophy. He said when he looked at his shelf, with those works by Kant and Foucault and Bentham lined up, he could imagine their voices calling out to him, even hundreds of years after their passing. Soon with large language models, we will be able to pose original questions to AI imitating writers who are long dead. Is it immortality that I crave when writing? Or, how shy I am of sharing my pieces, is it just the act of representing myself in text that feels valuable?