It can’t be underestimated the (miracle?) to be able to go to a McDonald’s in Barstow and Cleveland, and it tastes the same. But that doesn’t mean we asked for it. When you see a McDonald’s at every corner, you can begin to believe this is what people want. Perhaps the better way to think about it is: it’s what’s there. While good taste takes time to acquire, I think it’s clear the masses have better taste than we see.
I’ve been on record, and I believe Claude by Anthropic is a much better product than Chat GPT with Open AI. The concerns that arise from AI are indeed crucial and need careful consideration regarding how it is made. What are the deep insecurities of humans that we are afraid to ask that AI will tell us? Perhaps more worrisome is what bad actors will do (and what will this enable for the good ones?) What biases are we imprinting in the system? Even scarier to think about, what are the blind spots we can’t see?
Every piece of technology solves problems while simultaneously creating new ones. Automobile accidents didn’t exist before automobiles, but that didn’t stop us from producing them.
Running from the tech is not an option. So what are we going to do to create the best type of AI? What do we want it to do? Which problems are we trying to solve? Who should regulate? Who can? Where are we trying to go? How do we set the guardrails? I found this discussion so fascinating and think its worth a listen.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tetragrammaton-with-rick-rubin/id1671669052?i=1000711127134
Remember, if you don’t have AI working for you, soon you will be working for AI.
A useful framing:
Your problem is ___________. You might have rigid boundaries, you might critize too harshly, you may be too passive, or quiet…perhaps a better way to look at this is why. Why are you the way you are? And one answer is when I was a kid I had to do this to survive. But now you are not a child, you’re an adult. We can honor why we make the choices to survive and we can also have permission to make different choices now.
If you don’t know the reference, it is a wall on left field at Fenway Park in Boston. And the temptation when you’re a competitor is to try and hit over it. Of course, most that try don’t succeed. But the temptation is always there for us. We see a mountain, we want to climb it. And that pull for risk, adventure, to try something that may never been done before—it’s there in all of us. (It may not always be wise and prudent and just might cost you an out.)
It is worth pointing out that much of the information today isn’t new but repeated. While a re-tweet is technically a new tweet, its the same tweet republished. Multiplied millions of times, our psyches can be tricked into thinking, “Wow, look how much I have missed.” But that isn’t an accurate lens. Hitting the repeat button isn’t new information; it is amplified information. It’s an important distinction.
Establishing culture is much more difficult than following it. For example, trying to write a show’s pilot is much more difficult than starting season 10. The jokes, the characters, and the overall themes have already been established. You just need to follow the formula. However, making that formula takes way more guts to establish.
It isn’t just with sitcoms. Nine years of blogs is much easier to write today because an identity has been established—day one of a new job instead of a retirement party. The first day of school is much more difficult for a new teacher than a veteran.
Because “this is how we do things around here.” Setting that tone isn’t written in the policy and procedures manual. We get to make up these invisible rules (if we are fortunate enough to not follow someone else’s).
It was assumed that money emerged from the world of bartering despite the evidence. Once we assumed one “fact,” more “facts” emerged. But this is a missed thought experiment. We can make “assumptions” that can lead us to more “assumptions.” And when we do this however, we can now leave room to be surprised. Your train of thought is only as good as your starting point.
We can mourn for the things we don’t have. And it can be tough when we think we are entitled to specific outcomes. Safety, security, affection…for example, are things all humans deserve. Except we don’t always get those things. Again, we can be sad that the thing we think we deserve doesn’t work out. But a better alternative is to look at things you do have. Celebrate them. If you don’t have the family you think you deserve, make one. If you don’t have the career you think you have earned, create it. And on and on. Focusing on the things you can control is a much more productive use of energy than focusing on the things you cannot.
In the end, specific outcomes are tied to our expectations of the world.
Which means they can be moved. The person setting boundaries is often seen as the villain. But boundaries don’t just show what is acceptable behavior–what we consider normal around here–they also define what isn’t allowed.
Boundaries vary based on context and relationship. The boundaries for an 8-year-old are different from those of an adult. A parent requiring their teenager to come home by curfew isn’t being controlling–they’re establishing safety. But to the teenager, it feels unfair.
A world with boundaries can feel restrictive to some individuals. Toxic individuals see any boundary as an infringement on their personal freedom. They can’t comprehend that their actions affect others. To them, being asked to consider consequences feels like oppression rather than basic consideration.
Dysfunction occurs when no one holds any type of boundary. Without them, chaos ensues because anything goes becomes the standard. What’s interesting is that the boundary-holder often gets portrayed as the bad guy, even when they’re preventing problems others refuse to see.
Perhaps some boundaries can be negotiated. They may occasionally be unreasonable. Boundaries can evolve and change as relationships and circumstances do. But someone has to be willing to establish them in the first place. (The absence of boundaries is much more dangerous than setting them in the wrong spot.)
If you choose to hold boundaries, don’t expect to be praised for it. Expect to be misunderstood. You won’t get credit for preventing problems that never happen because of your boundaries–in fact, you might get blamed for being “difficult.” Best advice: You’re not the problem. You’re often the solution to problems others refuse to acknowledge.
Life cycles depend on the stickiness of an idea to begin with. For instance, even though slavery ended, Jim Crow laws continued. So did redlining and caste systems. Racism didn’t die—just the outright treatment of owning another human. So much focus goes into changing one policy or another. But rarely does policy change the hearts of the people. The tricky part of managing a democracy is that everyone has a voice, even when we don’t agree with them, even when their take is despicable. The shortcut here is to censor. Perhaps a better path is questioning why someone draws these types of conclusions. No one is born racist. You become a racist over time, over many decisions.
Of course, this isn’t just racism. Xenophobia, homophobia, sexism…again, these are all ideas that stick in our culture. Why do ideas like this continue to hang around in 2025? The stories we tell do indeed persist because of the stories we tell. “How things are done around here” truly is a power we can’t negotiate in each individual life.
But not all hope is lost. As I mentioned above, slavery was legal until one day it wasn’t. We got rid of “Us vs. Them” and stopped scapegoating—in other words, we stopped fooling ourselves in what story (often market-related) we were telling and began to tell a better one.
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