On a second topic, children need space to make mistakes. Creating an environment where your children are free to express themselves and practice trial and error is how competence develops. If you've got a camera recording all the time and uploading to social media that footage is forever. When trial and error results in permanence, they set the bar lower. Smothers the healthy development of risk vs reward competence. Policies in school and home need to minimize that data collection.

"Speed running the minefield" is a useful principle.

When learning new information creating a feedback loop with rapid response is useful. This helps you fine-tune quickly into proper technique. Learn to overcome unseen pitfalls.

In areas the consequences of mistake are not game ending, the faster you can make mistakes and extract information from them the better. This may be studying professional certifications. The sweet spot is getting somewhere around 60% correct. If you aren't making mistakes, stop studying that section and move to the next topic.

If designing software products, you can rapidly iterate. An error or a development in the wrong direction can be quickly changed. It's not the same as a factory assembly line that may require months and high costs to change. So, this benefits from speed run the minefield. Go out fast and hard, hit all the bumps, and put the lessons learned into improving the processes.

With that framework the best that can happen is a failure. Those are the things you get expensive information from.

Trim over the floor. Buy a cheap dust pan with a small broom or brush.

Problem with lining your sink is stray hairs go everywhere. Becomes a pain to dust them out of or around every surface. Hairs fall to the floor and you have to sweep that anyway. Now you have a liner to clean or discard. Simpler to go with the same option your hair cut stylist uses, let it go to the floor. Sweep it up. One and done.

Side mention to recommend discard in a waste bin. Hair can contribute to fatbergs in city sewers or clog up your home septic.

Continue on. Time spent plowing on feeds pattern recognition. Becomes comfortable. Always surprising how quickly the brain adapts to older language norms. Process reveals incredible words and ideas fallen out of favor. Even less so the content but form, genealogy work surprised me how quickly the brain adapts to reading handwriting even of the very old and less familiar varieties.

Welcome! My appreciations to whomever I picked up those ideas from. Happy to share useful framing.

Walking is underestimated.

To improve fitness all you need is to increase your activity levels a little beyond average. In crudely blunt language, can think of it as turning on a signal for your body to grow. "More" after turning on the signal does not grow faster, your body will send similar resources to repair after two working sets in good form as five. Less can be more. Only need progressive overload, one more rep than last workout, slightly more weight than last time. When going from untrained to starting out, you can turn on that signal to send nutrition to muscles to grow with very little effort. Just getting your heart rate above baseline going for a two mile walk every day is an awesome way to kick start the process without wasting effort with injury. Worth practicing set aside ego and take it easy.

When starting out you improve faster than at any other time in your fitness career. Can leverage this as a start small habit. The important thing is to create a system of exercise every day, nurture the habit. Suit up and drive to the gym and change your mind? Count that as a win. Do it again tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow you feel like going in and the workout is awesome. The important thing is maintaining the habit. Counting your wins maintains motivation.

Little habits over time are big changes. Roll a bad habit into a slightly better habit. Keep doing that. Smallest possible step putting force in the direction of change.

> "Small wonder that spell means both a story told, and a formula of power over living men." - Tolkien on fairy-stories

The human Operating System runs on storytelling. The framing you give your mind. The storytelling does not need to be true, to be useful. You have to give yourself a useful story or someone else will do so for you. Your parents. More commonly your peers, and instilled by what is most useful for a snake or a charlatan.

A bad story is a mental prison. Can keep you trapped in dependence, guilt, or resentment. You may have marveled at an elephant held in place by a tiny stake in the ground. The elephant is huge. It can move at any time but instead it stays put. You are that elephant when trapped in a mental prison, sticking to your lane and giving up before ever trying at all. Useful! Buy the product, consumer. You're bedazzled by the spell and sit obediently still, or worse smash up your neighborhood.

Trick is the mental prison has no lock. You can open the door and step out at any time. To write your own human Operating System is to give yourself a more useful story. Bruce Lee's quote is one example of an element that might be in that. If you look to sports teams, and military, they commonly have motto's or creed's to inspire. Those framings are pieces of a human operating system. They don't have to be true to leverage them to be useful. A more complete human operating system does not have to be elaborate but can more powerfully be a story for yourself that guides action.

In gradeschool you will find stories thrown over you like a yoke. Guiding. Controlling your behavior. Usually capped off by a fear of failure panicked and rushed headlong into signing a financial contract for a large student loan for continued years of the same. They don't teach you to author your own Operating System. Actual education begins once you begin picking up books on your own, outside the classroom.

ChatGPT is rolling over what people have said on the internet. Then regurgitating it using statistics on steroids. Lots and lots of steroids.

You're going to get an amalgam of what people in the training data have said.

To add an example, if you ask it go provide a recipe for chocolate chip cookies it's going to do a pretty good job with common information like this. If you have familiarity with what chocolate chip cookie recipes usually look like, you'll catch the error if it recommends adding large quantities of ginger and cardamom to the recipe. You need to have some basic understanding of what results should look like. The credibility of outputs provided is greatest for common information, becoming less credible or unavailable in the underlying training sets the more novel your request (you're not going to get great overview of how the Helion nuclear fusion reactor works).

> Its also tempting for people that does not understand the subject they are applying it to.

Oof. Bidding a contract from an actuaries view of risk and relevant parameters, against a financial industry sales team low ball bid. The long-term goes kaboom and everyone laments no one could see that coming.

The value in skill-stacking is the ability to see more parameters in your analysis. You can have equal credentials in your field as all of the other highly qualified candidates. The candidate who has a complimentary skill or two in their back pocket can see around corners the others can't. Useful understanding for personal development, and recruiting high-function teams.

ChatGPT does everything current technology does for us, faster.

You can use technology to learn anything. Turn it into a useful tool to produce things you already understood 10x faster. With guidance from ChatGPT cut down on time spent looking up information you already more or less know, and can spot-check easily. Learning a new thing is a process of practice, and fast feedback loops. ChatGPT can be used to speed up your feedback loops checking your work to speed up repetition. You can learn programming languages faster by getting repetitions in 10x faster when playing with personal projects, shaves off the time burn digging through forums to debug issues.

You may have noticed a limitation in technology is the more specialized knowledge the less available resources. Purchase a production line piece of equipment for your home business, you can find nothing about it online. Have to rely on finding rare printed documentation from other businesses or others with experience in closed networks. ChatGPT is no different. It hits walls when prompted with processes not yet discovered and discussed. You have to guide the tool through from first principles. Can't do that without understanding the tool.

You can also waste time or over indulge in fear and anger storytelling outrage, consuming sugar far junk food information. Faster than ever. This will be a deeper discussion of resulting algorithm psychosis. We've never had more tools for bad information at the same time as having better information than ever accessible. This speeds up divides in humanity. Exterior signals regarding how people spend their time. Can we live with one another? Deep thought philosophers can stay busy with.

A nail gun in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to build a house does not create finished homes faster. Using a tool without understanding the fundamentals turns to nonsense. Will there be cheating? Yep. Your peers will notice. You will always have peers that do the hard work.

The actions of people with broken arms have been awarded the medal of valor. You're never out of the fight.

You can always find the exception. In most cases you're dealing with a mental prison, a human operating system performing poorly usually assigned to you. Mental prisons can be walked out of. There's no lock at all. You can rewrite your human operating system replacing it with a more useful one.

A human operating system is a framing of how to see the world. Generally a story for yourself that guides behavior. A framing does not have to be true to be useful. A motto, creed, or affirmation for organizations usually use a storytelling structure because they're imprinting an operating system for behavior.

Consider the operating system used by Navy Seals to imprint the operating system of behavior. How would you behave if every day you woke up and read this outloud? You can sit down and think through what behaviors you prioritize. Write your own storytelling exercise to reinforce the traits of the person you would respect and admire. Maybe it's the simplest possible action. I went outside today and got a haircut. Tomorrow I talked to a person. The next, I applied for a job. Start with the smallest possible action. Then build up. Every day I take a bad habit, and roll it into a slightly better habit. That takes on a compounding return on investment of its own that carries you far.

Social media has allowed for faulty operating systems to spread easily. This is why it feels like we're surrounded by more people doing worse than ever. Humans are designed for scarcity. We're learning to develop the language to describe the ailments from too much information abundance. Learning about the nature of human operating systems is one of the levels up you can see clearly now.

> United States Navy SEAL

> In times of war or uncertainty there is a special breed of warrior ready to answer our Nation’s call. A common man with uncommon desire to succeed.

> Forged by adversity, he stands alongside America’s finest special operations forces to serve his country, the American people, and protect their way of life.

> I am that man.

> My Trident is a symbol of honor and heritage. Bestowed upon me by the heroes that have gone before, it embodies the trust of those I have sworn to protect. By wearing the Trident I accept the responsibility of my chosen profession and way of life. It is a privilege that I must earn every day.

> My loyalty to Country and Team is beyond reproach. I humbly serve as a guardian to my fellow Americans always ready to defend those who are unable to defend themselves. I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my actions. I voluntarily accept the inherent hazards of my profession, placing the welfare and security of others before my own.

> I serve with honor on and off the battlefield. The ability to control my emotions and my actions, regardless of circumstance, sets me apart from other men.

> Uncompromising integrity is my standard. My character and honor are steadfast. My word is my bond.

> We expect to lead and be led. In the absence of orders I will take charge, lead my teammates and accomplish the mission. I lead by example in all situations.

> I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity. My Nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies. If knocked down, I will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my teammates and to accomplish our mission. I am never out of the fight.

> We demand discipline. We expect innovation. The lives of my teammates and the success of our mission depend on me – my technical skill, tactical proficiency, and attention to detail. My training is never complete.

> We train for war and fight to win. I stand ready to bring the full spectrum of combat power to bear in order to achieve my mission and the goals established by my country. The execution of my duties will be swift and violent when required yet guided by the very principles that I serve to defend.

> Brave men have fought and died building the proud tradition and feared reputation that I am bound to uphold. In the worst of conditions, the legacy of my teammates steadies my resolve and silently guides my every deed. I will not fail.

Your autopilot central nervous system is powerful but repeats only what inputs you feed it. There exist buttons and lever control panels to influence the dumb system and make it smarter. While we're swimming in more good information than ever on the internet, it tends to be hiding below more distracting or bad information than ever. Huberman Lab's channel does a great job distilling available research into protocols, summary rules-of-thumb, for finding the buttons and levers.

Focus is a skill. You can improve it. Instead of resistance training with weights, the resistance training is with systems and habits. Artistotle starter pack.

Not particularly. Native Americans are the winning team.

The Romans arrived in Britain and killed everyone. Then ran towns and turned Britain into the jewel of the empire leaving behind a cultural and scientific tradition. The picts, the scotti, raided and killed everyone. Before settling and building trade routes to benefit of all. The Saxons arrived and killed everyone. Before settling in and building out trade, cultural and scientific advances of their own. The vikings arrived and killed everyone. Before making settlements supporting trade routes and intermingled into the resulting culture to come out of that.

We're all interspersed. The Native-Anglo-Scottish-Prussian-Somali of America. We're a pirate colony. There is no nation on earth we can not provide talent to be competitive against. There is no other country that have that same resiliency, they thrive competitively in one or two industries -- but not all. By also offering the greatest individual freedom of any country on earth that's a powerful draw to skim off the top 1% everywhere. They all come to risk and compete trying the pirate life. To come and kill and conquer in the most brutal competitive system. But then intermingle and blend in sharing cultural and scientific best-of mix.

Excluding anyone from the pirate ship is evil. We all benefit from contributions of the best-of from all peoples. This is the merit of diversity. The winning team takes the best from all and repurposes it to their own advantage.

The fur trade in 1700s America was the first to develop conservation regulations to protect their industry. This was spurred by observation in resource decline as prolific expansion transformed the frontiers. Populations rebounded and today those protocols developed have restored wildlife in parts of the US comparable to when the country first discovered. The consequence of less hunting and migratory trends to cities in the last few generations is that in the suburban to rural boundaries animal populations are growing rapidly.

It's an insult to pretend Native American's are incapable of sustainably running conservation programs. There is generational knowledge of maintaining wildlife populations there as well. We have a hundred years of strategy development. The doors to higher education are open to all. They can afford people education for top notch consulting of those programs without the hand-holding.

My argument is to return dignity. Insulting to treat adults like children to be protected and coddled in the world. Dependency is a mental prison of another design. The tyrannical mother of affluent families smother and control their children through such dependencies, resulting in stunted growth and infantile princelings.

Infantilization alive and well. Teach a man to fish and they'll never come back. Make a man dependent? They'll feed you forever.

If you think about it it's easier to go and have some kids, than wrestle with the thoughts behind so many words.

A prince in today's time period is unlikely to stand for her attitude either. The guys they're all competing for get other options. You get another Taylor Swift song, and lowered standards.

Nothing unusual or controversial about that anymore. Only attention seeking behavior trying to problem-launch to start-a-conversation that was started and settled before most of us today were born.

You are not your job. Your job is to find a better job.

With regard to the market value of skills: Good + Good + Good > Excellent. It is more valuable to stack skills than to be exceptional in one thing. Diminishing returns on investing additional time. You can get good in two new things faster than moving an excellent skill forward to the next level. The more skills you have the more parameters you're aware of. You may develop and have many peers who are excellent in an in demand skill. Each of them see the same set of parameters from that field to answer business questions. If you add another related skill that those peers don't have, you have an additional perspective that can see more parameters than those peers. Suddenly you can see around economic corners. Solve optimal solutions those peers couldn't see, because you have a broader set of tools. This is the argument for skill stacking.

Put the two together into one system. Your job is to find a better job. The purpose of where you currently work is to teach you a new skill. Once you are good on those skills, the next job is better if it teaches you a new skill and helps you get good in that too. You now have two Good + Good skills that help you land the next even better job. You pick the job that gives you Good + Good + Good. This is a ratchet that moves you up the market value ladder.

Another layer of that system I'll leave to you to think through is at each place you work add contacts to your social network. Plan to exit on good terms that keep doors open. Whether you personally like a person or not there's no reason to close the door. The world is large enough for everyone to succeed. Keep the network open and you can periodically catch up with them. Whenever you become aware of a job opening feed it out to your network. You want to build reciprocation where they reach out to you, too. Another ratchet to pull one another up the market value ladder.

Capping a long-term system are observations of the retired and the surprise arrival of early retirement wealth. You may have watched a family member retire and struggle with motivation and meaning afterward. It's not uncommon for founders of successful tech companies to experience a depression and crisis of meaning afterwards. That empty space is where the out of reach goal of 'someday' used to be. The secret of motivation is to have a system that always drops a new goal into that space as soon as you complete it. You can use the storytelling of 'Your job is to find a better job' to set up ideas and meaningful projects awaiting no matter your resources. The most fulfilled retired people I've met quit their work but continued working on hobbies and activities. Spending full time on outdoor sports, building household projects, picked up their musician career again. Had a personal business they shifted over to and never really stopped working. Only steered it to whatever they felt more fulfilling. They got a better job.

You can pick up the language by context of how words are used. No harder than keeping up with new language firehose put out through social media.

As extra reach, it's useful to have a printed copy of the dictionary from before the internet. This is the last anchor-point of widest accepted definition of language before it was easy to redefine what words mean from one week to the next. Printed copy provides a Rosetta stone for earlier texts not influenced by modern conceptions of what would be useful running afoul of what is.

History of romance novels and comic books as we know them today are interesting.

Publishers who kicked off the comic book industry designed them to market to a male audience, often illiterate, telling simple stories with archetypes based in familiar virtues, with emphasis on action and things. At the same time they also produced products marketing toward women. For matters of preference, this became the romance novel.

Women did not buy as many comic because they weren't being written from AB testing designed to cater toward womens interests. Men did not buy as many romance novels because they weren't being written from AB testing designed to cater toward mens interests. Two differing forms of media emerged from what sold in those demographics. The work in entertainment we see today trying to go back in time and hammer comic books into women, and romance novels into men, is in context a weird and counterintuitive pastime destined to inefficiently burn up investment.

There exists a romance novel that predates all of these tropes and recent history. The Romance period out of France. Where the printing press first brought affordable books to the public in the 1500s shortly thereafter you get a popular trend of romance novels.

I'd skip the fluff and go to the older works. Find the forgotten romance novels. You can find discoveries that lift the spirit and seed higher aspirations there. This is a powerful counter weight to modern tropes.

Unless you're truly looking for the smut variety of romance novel. Fan fiction world produces no shortage of that. Sort of a baser pursuit.

> not anyone can pay to have their writing published and publicized.

That frame is a mental prison. The door is unlocked. All you have to do is open it and step through. You can do so by writing your own narrative. An empowering personal story. Your operating system. You can discard a useless one. If you do not author your own, a fraud will assign one to you.

That's not my opinion.

Bad faith take. Manipulative frauds accuse you of the things they're engaged in. The mirror burns. Called out they go for the personal attack. Until everyone around them takes a step away and recognizes the fraud for what they are. This is when they move to a new community and continue their ways. Until burning those bridges, too.