Substack Mobile Let’s You Write?
That’s crazy.
Let’s write.
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What are my open tabs right now?
Like everyone and their mother, I cannot stop talking to GPT and Claude.
I don’t realise how limited the cognitive space I explored tends to be! I now have a new set of friends that can help me with exposition and - get this, it’s really good at a lot of the executive thinking that I seem to find quite taxing. For example, ‘how should I do X?’ ‘break it down into Y steps according to Z prioritisation function.’ -- I’ve now gotten to a point where I am programming GPT, with my words, and GPT is programming me, with its words.
It reminds me of Tiago Forte’s vision of a “Google Maps for Goals” -- Input any arbitrary goal and the map will help you get there, track where you are (GPS), and budget you in the right direction.
I am both above and below the API, as Venkatesh Rao would say. I guess the really interesting question here is: How do different API designs result in different paths being unlocked for people?
For example, one of my favour essays is James Somers’ ‘The Shape of a Listener’ -- Its basically conversational prompt engineering before it became a think with GPT.
James asks:
Will I talk intensely, blood flushing my face, or calmly and casually?
Will I try to sound colloquial, professional, intelligent, ignorant?
Will I reference continental philosophers by name? Golfers? Poets?
Will I lean on analogies from math or physics, and microbiology?
Will I look for opportunities to deploy a sesquipedalian word?
Will I work the other guy in like my thoughts depend on his?
Will I let myself ooze with emotion, and romantical angst?
Will I consciously experiment with tones and inflection?
Will I be trying to find out what I genuinely believe?
Will I ask questions -- real and/or rhetorical ones?
Will I wait for that name on the tip of my tongue?
Will I be tendentious and polemical, out to win?
Will I use a long silence to plan what to say?
Will I speak delicate or with high abandon?
Will I be afraid to use the word "blog"?
Will I deploy pop culture references?
Will I be jokey? Punny? Sarcastic?
Will I play high status, or low?
Will I take it to a meta level?
Will I get fiercely political?
Will I play devil’s advocate?
Will I crank up my charisma?
Will I indulge digressions?
Will I talk fast or slow?
Will I try small talk?
Will I spin yarns?
Will I brood?
How much?
Etc.
Such is the design space of conversation.
Note: If we get the conversations to leak into being a logistical medium for action, the number of configurable personalities and project pathways can be insane. This is worldbuilding as art, not as science.
‘Build Facebook as if you were David Foster Wallace and Aaron Lewis’ (highly niche reference).
‘Design this database as if it was being built by the CIA. What features would it have?’
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My flight id about to take off, so I’ll pick this thread up later or another time.
Until then, adios,
Krish