I always said "working in data long enough makes you paranoid about literally anything". Now the whole world share my sufferings now, due to the GenAIs.
There is yet another saying in Chinese: "生於憂患，死於安樂" ("Born/Live in worries, die in peace"). It means one could only see the ending of his/her journey *because of* constant worry and hence planning ahead to mitigate those risks. And there is also a similar concept in politics as well, when it comes to democracy & freedom:
> "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. ... Only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity." - Wendell Phillips
So yeah, this is probably the inevitable cost to bear to live in the AI era.
I work as an analyst, your line about data made me laugh. There is a lot that can go wrong for sure. When I have a finding that I think is big, that is one of the first things that goes through my head. Yeah, but maybe this is wrong. Maybe the tracking wasn't right, or the model is a little off, or that formula I wrote doesn't work. So we triangulate, look at it a different way, etc.
While that does take some of the joy out of the spontaneity of discovery, it does add something valuable later on. When you have done the doubting, second guessing, and re-work and you have a more complete understanding of what you're looking at. That can be seriously satisfying.
Yeah, I have such mixed feelings on this. On one hand, finding that kind of nuance is figuring out the subtle patterns in the story is often the fun part; there's something to the research, to filling in the details, and to the sense of understanding that comes with finally piecing all of it together. On the other hand, it's hard to turn off, and it is rarely the skeptics that make the biggest dents (to say nothing of living the happiest lives). I remember feeling this last fall at dbt's conference. It's not that being an optimist - and being reckless, to some degree - makes you successful and happy, but the most successful and happiest people seem to be the optimists: https://benn.substack.com/p/in-the-air#:~:text=Once%20you%20see,for%20so%20long.
I'm noticing the over-thinkers in my circles are reckoning with a vigilance that cannot match pace with a zeitgeist that changes faster than our whims. The millennial mid-life crisis narrative is bubbling up,
"Am I good at the wrong game? Have the measures blinded me from the life I want to live? Is my life only in metacognition or can I not embody this moment for what it is?"
2. It does feel like we all got used to a certain pace, and what we were able to keep up with (and what we had a kind of professional responsibility to keep up with), which has now changed, and now nobody knows what to do. It's like there used to be only TV shows on network television and so you wanted to watch all the big ones everyone talked about, and now there are a 1,000 shows on Netflix and Hulu and Youtube, and we're all still trying to watch all of them because that's what we thought we're supposed to do.
I felt like I had a handle on the pacing until somewhere in the 2018-2020 era; when Peak Streaming hit, basically. And it's in the data - you just look at charts of game releases by year on Steam and realize oh, the # of releases has skyrocketed. Everyone wants to make stuff, and until that's balanced by making less stuff of higher quality, we continue to struggle to merely keep above water
well, unfortunately it is way too late for me.
I always said "working in data long enough makes you paranoid about literally anything". Now the whole world share my sufferings now, due to the GenAIs.
There is yet another saying in Chinese: "生於憂患，死於安樂" ("Born/Live in worries, die in peace"). It means one could only see the ending of his/her journey *because of* constant worry and hence planning ahead to mitigate those risks. And there is also a similar concept in politics as well, when it comes to democracy & freedom:
> "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. ... Only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity." - Wendell Phillips
So yeah, this is probably the inevitable cost to bear to live in the AI era.
I work as an analyst, your line about data made me laugh. There is a lot that can go wrong for sure. When I have a finding that I think is big, that is one of the first things that goes through my head. Yeah, but maybe this is wrong. Maybe the tracking wasn't right, or the model is a little off, or that formula I wrote doesn't work. So we triangulate, look at it a different way, etc.
While that does take some of the joy out of the spontaneity of discovery, it does add something valuable later on. When you have done the doubting, second guessing, and re-work and you have a more complete understanding of what you're looking at. That can be seriously satisfying.
Yeah, I have such mixed feelings on this. On one hand, finding that kind of nuance is figuring out the subtle patterns in the story is often the fun part; there's something to the research, to filling in the details, and to the sense of understanding that comes with finally piecing all of it together. On the other hand, it's hard to turn off, and it is rarely the skeptics that make the biggest dents (to say nothing of living the happiest lives). I remember feeling this last fall at dbt's conference. It's not that being an optimist - and being reckless, to some degree - makes you successful and happy, but the most successful and happiest people seem to be the optimists: https://benn.substack.com/p/in-the-air#:~:text=Once%20you%20see,for%20so%20long.
I'm noticing the over-thinkers in my circles are reckoning with a vigilance that cannot match pace with a zeitgeist that changes faster than our whims. The millennial mid-life crisis narrative is bubbling up,
"Am I good at the wrong game? Have the measures blinded me from the life I want to live? Is my life only in metacognition or can I not embody this moment for what it is?"
1. I feel attacked.
2. It does feel like we all got used to a certain pace, and what we were able to keep up with (and what we had a kind of professional responsibility to keep up with), which has now changed, and now nobody knows what to do. It's like there used to be only TV shows on network television and so you wanted to watch all the big ones everyone talked about, and now there are a 1,000 shows on Netflix and Hulu and Youtube, and we're all still trying to watch all of them because that's what we thought we're supposed to do.
That’s the surreal thing. The compulsion to grind through and keep up with all 1000 shows until we breakdown.
on one hand, exactly, and we need to free ourselves from these shows and blogs.
on the other hand, everyone needs to keep up with *this* blog.
I felt like I had a handle on the pacing until somewhere in the 2018-2020 era; when Peak Streaming hit, basically. And it's in the data - you just look at charts of game releases by year on Steam and realize oh, the # of releases has skyrocketed. Everyone wants to make stuff, and until that's balanced by making less stuff of higher quality, we continue to struggle to merely keep above water
This blog goes wild! Way to go Benn. Sometimes you need to pinch yourself to wake up so you can see the miracles.