420: Beauty of the Lonely Boys (Merlin Mann: Part 2)

Beauty of the Lonely Boys (Merlin Mann Part 2)

[00:00:00] Jeff: Hey everybody. This is Jeff Severns Gunzel. This is the Over Tired podcast. This is the second part of a two part conversation with Merlin Mann. Welcome back Merlin.

[00:00:11] Merlin: Thank you for having me, Jeff

[00:00:12] Jeff: so the Overtired, anybody who listens has noticed there are large gaps between episodes.

[00:00:17] Jeff: And in those off weeks, I was thinking I wanted to pick up on a conversation I’d had with Merlin we had started to have when you were on the on the podcast earlier this year about ChatGPT and it was to me a very interesting conversation as opposed to a very stale conversation and I think you and I are sort of kindred spirits and how we use this thing and so originally the idea was hey you guys mind if I just do like a one on one with Merlin about this so we did it. We did a first try at that. And it ended up being such a delightful, um, uh, opportunity to talk about a million things that weren’t ChatGPT that here we

[00:00:53] Merlin: Jeff, we got to talk about music and I was very, I was so, well, first of all, I was pleased because I don’t know where anybody sees anything [00:01:00] anymore, but, um, and you know, I was really hoping people would listen to it, but I didn’t want to be like too like meh, go listen to me talk, ramble for a long time.

[00:01:08] Merlin: But the people who did discover it and listen to it, uh, a few of them have contacted me and you to say that they enjoyed it. And I just wanted to say to our friends, uh, who especially enjoyed the music, thank you for enjoying that and for saying so. The music, the music talk, because we talked a fair amount about music.

[00:01:23] Jeff: Yeah, it was lovely to hear people kind of being excited about that. It was

[00:01:27] Merlin: This is my version of World War II, with all respect. Like, I don’t have anybody to talk to about what it’s like, you know, to be in the trenches. Well, you know, the trenches of 1994

[00:01:37] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. That’s all you got. 1994.

[00:01:40] Merlin: didn’t watch my friends die face down in the mud so that you could say shit about polvo.

[00:01:45] Jeff: There was a great, there’s a great Minneapolis band called More Ram. And this was in the 90s. And it was the singer of this band Hammerhead is a great band on Amphetamine Reptile local band here. But he had a song called She’s My Vietnam.[00:02:00]

[00:02:01] Merlin: Um, Trump told Howard Stern one time that venereal disease was his Vietnam.

[00:02:05] Jeff: Oh, shucks. Yeah, no. Yeah.

[00:02:08] Merlin: guess the Bonespurs didn’t bother him enough for but

[00:02:11] Jeff: Oh, oh,

[00:02:13] Merlin: Hey everybody, you’re listening to Overtired. It’s an alternate week episode where Jeff talks to Merlin Mann, which is a thing we’re gonna do from now on.

[00:02:18] Jeff: sounds great. Sounds great. Um,

[00:02:20] Merlin: neck of the woods? Good afternoon. Hello. Woo!

[00:02:24] A Collaborator, Not a Crutch

[00:02:24] Jeff: Um, I will tell you, I have, I have kind of an idea for how to get into this conversation so that we’re, we’re not just talking about ChatGPT, but I really, really want Um, and so, you know, I think it’s really important to have that conversation because I think that the, kind of the overarching themes of like curiosity of, of like, do we love this because, because of how we are?

[00:02:44] Jeff: Is it, what’s the difference between collaborating with this thing and just leaning into it or leaning on it? Jesus, I didn’t mean to go all Cheryl, you know, Sarah on you.

[00:02:51] Merlin: Oh, I know what you mean. These are these are great. These are great. Are these things just out of curiosity? You’re Um, wonderfully dogged about wanting to discuss this, which is great for me, but [00:03:00] these are things that, it sounds like these are things that you’re, you’re thinking about a lot. Is that true?

[00:03:03] Jeff: I think about it all the time, in part because, um, you know, I, so I’m, in my, in my work, I’m, I’m part of a member owned research and evaluation cooperative, and there are seven of us, and I do work a lot differently than, and everyone would agree, than everybody else that does this work, um, in our, in our organization.

[00:03:23] Jeff: And part of it is that a lot of what I do is, is building and is, is kind of creative in nature. So it’s the kind of stuff where it’s like, when you’re planning it, it’s the hardest shit to project plan, because it’s kind of like, I was going to build a deck this summer, I didn’t. But when I was going to build it, somebody said, you know how to build a deck?

[00:03:41] Jeff: And I said, I will when I’m done.

[00:03:44] Merlin: Right. Can I, can I ask, can I ask an early, early question just for my, um, so you guys, your group, your team of people works together. If you can say within, you know, privacy reasons, like what, um, what is the deliverable or what is the [00:04:00] product that people come to you to get? What is the thing that you, Produced for your clients.

[00:04:05] Jeff: Yeah. Okay. So we do something that’s called developmental evaluation. And the idea is like, rather than really dull, stupid, uh, done by Rand and other defense contractors, uh, program evaluation, um, we do this kind of evaluation where it’s like, you’re an organization, you’re often a small organization, but we’ve worked with some really large ones.

[00:04:25] Jeff: You’re trying to do a thing. And instead of So instead of being evaluators that are off at a distance, sort of looking at what you’re doing and then feeding back some report at the very end of the, of the

[00:04:33] Merlin: Like the classic Arthur, whatever it used to be, Arthur Anderson, DeLay, Touche, those kinds of, McKinsey.

[00:04:38] Jeff: Yeah. So we are like, we are kind of a critical friend working alongside these people, but we’re really focused on the stuff that they think they are, are doing well, or that the stuff that they have promised a funder they will do.

[00:04:52] Jeff: And we try to work between them and the funder. I’ll get to the deliverable in a second.

[00:04:56] Merlin: No, no, this is fast, because my wife works with, um, does a lot of [00:05:00] stuff with, uh, grants, where she has to like, you know, there’s all kinds of, um, Uh, not World Health Organization, what’s the big one that gives grants? I’m sorry I’m spacing out, but she has to like, yeah, there’s a lot of that putting stuff together where there’ll be like some kind of a mandate that’s stated or implied and you’ve got to show progress on these kinds of things and then there’s metrics and

[00:05:19] Jeff: Yes.

[00:05:20] Merlin: evaluations of the, of the scholars,

[00:05:22] Jeff: this stuff, right? And so like, what we’re always trying to do is if we can get between the funder and the organization and say to the funder and the organization, all right, you’ve promised these things, like, this is what you’ve told them you’re going to do to release the money.

[00:05:35] Jeff: But in reality, there are going to be moments where you’re like, fuck, why did we tell them we were going to do this? Because now that we’re in it, what really is working is this thing over here. We’re there to kind of like

[00:05:45] Merlin: where you commit, commit too early to

[00:05:47] Jeff: Yeah, you commit too early in part because you’re just trying to get that money, right?

[00:05:51] Jeff: Like, and, and so we’re there to kind of help between the funder and them to go to the funder and be like, hey, just so you know, we’ve interviewed like all these people that are kind of like the people these folks are trying [00:06:00] to like, help or the systems they’re trying to impact. We’re actually seeing that while they thought they were they were heading here, they’re heading over here.

[00:06:06] Jeff: And we actually think that’s like something you should really be supportive of.

[00:06:09] Merlin: And maybe you couldn’t even be in contact with those people until that first part happened. It’s like, it takes the doing of that thing to discover that what they need is food vouchers. Not, uh, tote bags or whatever.

[00:06:20] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. And honestly, like, if I’m being really, really frank, like, for me, the what, what I like to do in supporting people who are doing the work is to like, be a firewall from the people who like, let’s face it, most funders, most people giving grant money, they’re only at the table, because they have money.

[00:06:37] Jeff: They are at the table, because they have money. And you are the one doing all the work to Uh, suffering through all of this stuff, experiencing the pain of failure or of having kind of like aimed wrong, um,

[00:06:49] Merlin: some of it also could be in various ways managing expectations with different stakeholders.

[00:06:53] Jeff: Yes. Now, on the most, like, if we’re just looking at my work, and so I should say [00:07:00] deliverables are not like there’s a final deliverable. It’s like all along the way we’re doing, we’re like facilitating meaning making sessions with the, whether it’s with the funder or with the organization to kind of be like, this is what we’re learning as we observe your work and talk to the people that are, you know, your work is meant to help.

[00:07:14] Jeff: And, and, but let’s, but we’re not experts. So let’s like make some meaning together, figure out kind of like how to do this, the, The way that like,

[00:07:22] Merlin: Wow. For the, for the right kind of groups, that must be great. Like I have this cascade I think about in my life a lot, which is, you know, when I tend to think about new information or things in my life, and this is admittedly very oversimplified, but I tend to think about this cascade or this array of like, When new information comes into my life, like, how will this, how can this help me to think differently?

[00:07:43] Merlin: How can this help me to decide differently? How can this help me to do differently? And then, of course, like you’re implying here, on this meta level, and then is my ladder against the right wall? Like, how do, what are the checks that are in place for all those things? And, I’ve found that kind of stuff very challenging with, in this case, as you [00:08:00] said, the middle people between these organizations, and it’s sometimes tough to be the person who breaks the news about.

[00:08:07] Merlin: I’m going to speak a little bit in douche speech because it might be useful to our listeners. What if you just, how do you, how will you discover? that you’re not aligned on something you just assumed everybody was aligned on.

[00:08:19] Jeff: Yes.

[00:08:20] Merlin: And boy, it’s tough to be the one, especially if there’s representatives from both sides, like North and South Korea on either side of the blue line, where you’ve got to like break it to both of them that, you know, the bad news is that neither of you have your eye on the right ball right now.

[00:08:32] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:08:33] Merlin: And that, that’s, that’s, that’s gotta be tough. So it’s more like you’re integrated into the process of what they’re doing. It’s not like you just give them some brick of a report and come back five years later.

[00:08:41] Jeff: Right. Exactly. And, and there’s a, there is sort of a accepted premise at the start, which is not always something that the client remembers, that we are, we are focused with them on the emergent. And so we aren’t ever going to just stay in the gray zone, but we are going to definitely recognize that things emerge and those things should have a chance [00:09:00] to guide the work you’re doing.

[00:09:01] Merlin: God willing.

[00:09:02] Jeff: Yeah, God willing. So and

[00:09:04] Merlin: not so obvious when you say it, but in

[00:09:06] Jeff: I know, I know.

[00:09:07] Merlin: it’s, people are so resistant to that for all, all understandable reasons.

[00:09:11] Jeff: Yeah, so resistant. And then like, so if I’m being super concrete, oh my god, Merlin. Is my computer about to go again? Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Hold on. I’m back. Jesus.

[00:09:22] Merlin: Hey everybody, just so you know, Jeff won’t say it because he’s a gentleman, but earlier on, uh, we’d recorded a bit, and then Jeff said, Computer. I think the technical term is it shot the bed. And so we started over. So

[00:09:33] Jeff: it. Yeah,

[00:09:34] Merlin: you didn’t miss much

[00:09:35] Jeff: That’s right. Um, okay, so here’s like, I’ll just give you the most concrete thing,

[00:09:39] Merlin: because it could crash at any time. We should wrap this up.

[00:09:41] Jeff’s Jobby Job

[00:09:41] Jeff: This is, yeah, exactly. This is a little outside of what I just described. So, one of my projects right now is there’s an amazing organization here that is called, it’s called Foster Advocates, and it is in Minnesota, and they are made up of mostly ex Fosters, and they have done amazing work at getting legislation passed, all this stuff.

[00:09:59] Jeff: They went [00:10:00] around to all 87 counties in Minnesota and the tribal nations and held sessions where they talked and recorded conversations with fosters about like what rights they expect they should have, what rights they know they have and, and where they wonder what the hell rights do we have at all?

[00:10:16] Jeff: And they, they hired us and I’m sitting with 85 hours of audio and I go through with qualitative analysis

[00:10:23] Merlin: Okay.

[00:10:25] Jeff: for patterns. I look for the things that are the nuances that might be missing. We do the meaning making

[00:10:30] Merlin: Is it some, some of that, I’m guessing some of that is, um, probably Sort of concretely quantifiable and others are not like I just read this recent report about how Richard Stallman’s not a very good guy And they use this entire process of like this is the number of times that he said this particular objectionable thing Like you were like, but it’s also you also there’s right you’ve got to quantify Nobody nobody likes the tote bags or like 90 percent of people but like but That’s complicated because it also depends, what questions did you ask?

[00:10:59] Merlin: Did [00:11:00] you always ask in the same way? And then there’s the fuzzier, like, as young people would say, the vibe kind of thing, like, that you probably got to report on too, which is like, this part of the company, everybody’s happy that this thing works, they don’t even notice it runs so regular, but then there’s these other things.

[00:11:13] Merlin: There’s this kind of deep, there’s a shared disc, inchoate disquiet about the future of leadership here that we only discovered after we’d done this for a month.

[00:11:23] Jeff: Totally. And then inside of the issues, like the, the organization, which is like preparing this kind of bill of rights package for the state of Minnesota, the organization would be like, okay, so we know that one, one, one theme is like, when you age out of foster care, your credit, how are you going to have credit?

[00:11:37] Jeff: Because everything you need to do to succeed, you need to get an apartment, maybe you want, you know, whatever you want to do. And so we already know that Credit is an issue, but like, what comes up in the conversations is how many people’s like, parents, their biological parents kept using their name and social security number throughout the years that that child was in foster care.

[00:11:54] Jeff: So their credit is shot because of that. So

[00:11:56] Merlin: Oh dear. Oh dear.

[00:11:57] Jeff: that like,

[00:11:58] Merlin: They treated it like a burner phone.

[00:11:59] Jeff: [00:12:00] up. Yeah, and it can kind of rise up into this. So you can add that nuance to the issues. Anyway, that’s, that’s one version

[00:12:06] Merlin: And so, and so, I think it sounded like you were about to talk about how this works with your work, in ways others don’t do it?

[00:12:13] Jeff: Well, yeah, so I mean, I would just, I guess that the theme for me, and this is if we’re getting back to ChatGPT, is that like, I use it for a lot of things, and most people in my field just assume that it’s dangerous, that you would be leaning on it

[00:12:28] Merlin: Dangerous and unreliable.

[00:12:30] Jeff: unreliable, when in reality, like anything, it has everything to do with what, how you approach it, right?

[00:12:36] Jeff: But I will say, it also has a lot to do with your inherent sense of curiosity. And that is something that I think you’ve brought up. I remember listening, there was a reconciled Global Differences some time ago when John kind of interrogated you on your understanding of, of ChatGPT and AI. That was a delightful episode.

[00:12:54] Merlin: like, like so many of those conversations, it’s, it’s the implication that I’m not even allowed to ride on a bus unless I [00:13:00] understand diesel engines.

[00:13:01] Jeff: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:13:03] Merlin: Why don’t, why don’t you, why I would, I would simply learn everything about everything.

[00:13:07] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:13:09] Merlin: but no, no, really, really seriously, though, all I really want is like a chunk of code that will let me use CSS to hide this author on this one page.

[00:13:16] Merlin: And so, so John, John, I, John, of course, if you ask John, whom I love. He would never even give you a straight answer. But what I could gather from that would be, well, just simply start at the beginning and learn everything

[00:13:29] Jeff: Right, right, right.

[00:13:31] Merlin: Because if I know about it, and this is the thing, John’s a type, and he doesn’t want to admit this, he doesn’t know this, I’ve met John’s type before, and again, I want to stipulate that I love him.

[00:13:38] Merlin: He is a type where he is not aware a certain cataract that he has. This is true for almost all of this, but you notice it with John because he’s so lucid. John only talks about the things that he wants to talk about. And John only gets excited about the things he wants to get excited about. And he has this tick that even a lot of, or especially a lot of nerds have, which is my [00:14:00] deep and complete knowledge about something is what it is.

[00:14:04] Merlin: And your falling short of that is a problem. And the, but conversely, or inconversely, if that’s a word, your deep interest, I remember I heard a, I heard a friend of mine who I really respect a lot, white guy from Oakland, Podcast host who, um, who really loves hip hop, especially like Bay Area hip hop. He knows everything about all of those things, but if you start talking about comic books, he goes into like a mode.

[00:14:32] Jeff: Hmm.

[00:14:33] Merlin: he like, he goes like, oh yeah, you and your funny stories, or whatever, and it’s like, well, I don’t expect you to love comic books, but I do expect you to have the presence of mind and the class to realize that everybody’s different about that stuff. And it’s a bummer that you’re gonna miss the opportunity to learn about something.

[00:14:51] Merlin: Why does everybody else like this thing that I hate? Well, that’s an opportunity you’ve now lost, because you’ve been an asshole. But also, be careful because, like, [00:15:00] you are very close to becoming, uh, all I have is a hammer guy.

[00:15:03] Jeff: Mm hmm.

[00:15:04] Merlin: And so, like, if you are in curious about those things, or you wanna change it to the conversations, like you studied for the wrong blue book essay, and now you you wanna say, well, yeah, but I do know a lot about I didn’t read The Ambassadors, but I know everything about Moby Dick.

[00:15:17] Merlin: Can I take a different test? Well, that’s lame. Like, that’s, so it’s not a Siracusa thing, but you, it’s very related to this problem. I’m probably cutting you off, but like, that’s the problem here is, I don’t, I mean, yes, it would be nice to know how everything works, it would be nice to know everything. It is peculiar to me how under the microscope, even the most anodyne benign use of this stuff is, because it, it, it’s sort of like saying, well, like, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m looking at weird, you know.

[00:15:49] Merlin: Uh, porn from Thailand, but like, it’s for my work, and you’re like, ooh, you shouldn’t even look at that at all. It’s like, well no, like, there isn’t, I’m sorry I’m going on, but [00:16:00] like, and I don’t mean to get emotional about it, but it is a little frustrating sometimes when people who do all kinds of insane shit every fucking day with all sorts of tools, including computers, things that are unreliable, things that are stupid, but those are all normalized and they’re used to that.

[00:16:14] Merlin: They’re used to, we’re used to going to West Portal near our house, and the cellular is just not available for this one, two block area. I don’t get mad every time, like I’m used to that. Do you ever get frustrated with Google results? Sure, but you keep using Google. Well, then, can, is there any analogy to be found there?

[00:16:32] Merlin: Is there any analogy to be found, and I’m going to go check on this even if somebody else told me it’s right? Or is it possible there are some things where it really doesn’t matter that much whether it’s right, and you go into it knowing that?

[00:16:44] Jeff: Mm hmm.

[00:16:45] Merlin: That is a very frustrating prospect to people who think they know a lot about things.

[00:16:49] Jeff: There’s also the, the sort of thing about going, you know, to the very root, learning everything from, from sort of the bottom up, um, is, is a huge trap [00:17:00] for me because it’s a

[00:17:00] Merlin: It’s also deeply privileged. It’s a hugely privileged thing, and people don’t realize how privileged

[00:17:04] Jeff: Yeah, sure. Yeah. And, and for me, it’s a temptation that can become an obsession that will never see itself through. And so I have that temptation and have to stop myself off. When John, when John Siracusa talks about how to learn Unix, I

[00:17:21] Merlin: do! That’s the other thing is he won’t tell you! I’ll say to John, well, how do you pronounce your name? And he refuses to do it. He says, I did it in episode 35. Okay. Why are we talking about this? Or, or, but no, it’s not just him, but that is, like, a pretty common thing. It’s, it’s almost like there’s a library of code, and we’ve already covered that, so, like, why would we program around that?

[00:17:40] Merlin: Tch!

[00:17:41] Jeff: right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, so as much as I would love to learn Unix in that way, in the end of the day, what I really started needing to do was just figure out which command did this thing. And, and it’s super cool for me to go thumb through the what is the Unix

[00:17:56] Merlin: CD, CD, LS, PWD, like,

[00:17:59] Jeff: Yeah,

[00:17:59] Merlin: [00:18:00] I don’t get started.

[00:18:01] Jeff: Exactly. Exactly. Um, okay. So I, here’s, that was all kind of a riff on, on curiosity. And the reason I, I even started using that word was like, one of the reasons I actually don’t try to talk about ChatGPT with too many people is because what I find right away, and this may be unfair, but, and I may be too quick to judge this, what I find right away is there is not, there is not the base curiosity needed.

[00:18:25] Jeff: Um, So that we can actually have an interesting conversation. We’re just going to be talking. We’re just going to be rehashing the shit that I can, I can listen to on, on NPR. I can, you know, like whatever, like whatever the most sort of base,

[00:18:36] Merlin: What it, and like, and just, I mean, there is sort of a little bit of a step zero to this, which is like, it certainly doesn’t seem very cool. Like, it, it, it isn’t like, I don’t know, like, Pickleball. I, I don’t know that much about Pickleball, but everybody talks about Pickleball. People, people really like it, and like, eventually they, people might see the attraction of that.

[00:18:55] Merlin: Or whatever. It’s just that the way, whether or not you like, I, people like me kind of don’t [00:19:00] always love the way this, these questions are posed, but there’s that step zero of like, ugh. You know, I mean, again, it’s like asking people, like, nobody, nobody smokes their first cigarette thinking they’re going to die of emphysema, you know, but so, but there’s this part of you that’s like, well, why would he

[00:19:16] Jeff: that’d be a super dark turn. Why, why do you want to try it? Well, here’s the thing.

[00:19:20] Merlin: Well, you’ll die, but like, that’s not how life works. That’s not how human habits work. And that’s why I love the, I think, It’s easy enough for somebody to just turn this off at this point and go, God, curiosity about how math works. Well, no, but like, Jeff, I think you’re talking about at least a couple kinds of curiosity.

[00:19:38] Merlin: The kind that may be obvious and is worth being obvious is that, hey, I’m kind of curious, there’s this new thing, and like, what does it do? There’s the other kind of curiosity, which is like, I may not understand I may not be so close to the metal that I understand how, like, transistors or fabs or whatever.

[00:19:56] Merlin: I may not understand how the metal makes computer go, but I [00:20:00] am deeply curious about how it arrived at this particular way of looking at the question that I asked. And there is almost inevitably something for me to learn from that. And that’s it for today. I, if you, if anybody out there wants to go like, well, yeah, I mean, that’s the same thing as like looking at tea leaves or, you know, uh, slaughtering a chicken to see what the future’s going to be.

[00:20:18] Merlin: You can put value and purpose into anything, but I do believe that I am, I’m learning a lot about something. And a lot of times I’m not sure what it is that I’m learning about, but I’m definitely learning something. And the results continue to be extremely interesting. And that just makes me more curious.

[00:20:37] Merlin: And to your previous point, it’s, I really honestly don’t mean this. So, you know, it’s, in the critical way that it often sounds, but like, it’s not for everybody.

[00:20:45] Jeff: Right.

[00:20:46] Merlin: And

[00:20:47] Jeff: Right. Like that’s part of the curiosity problem. It’s like, you should, part of being curious is to assume immediately,

[00:20:52] Merlin: like imagine somebody’s like, Oh my gosh, my phone’s out of power and I can’t charge it and I got to go on this long flight. And you’re like, well, here’s a copy of the Power Broker and you’re like, [00:21:00] Oh, thanks. So there’s like a 1200 page book, like really, uh, but really I just want to charge my phone.

[00:21:05] Merlin: And you’re like, yeah, but this is a really good book and you should read it. And like, and, but you know, it’s a silly analogy, but you know what I’m saying? Like it’s, I actually. Ended up accidentally saying a lot of things I liked about this on the latest Dubai Friday, so forgive me if I repeat a little bit of this, but like, the way I look at it in some ways is that people, even people who are like using or are aware of LLMs, or in particular for me, ChatGPT, it’s, I think they treat it a little bit like a vending machine, where it’s like, Or, like, imagine a vending machine at an airport where you can buy a tooth, or like at a hotel where you can buy a toothbrush.

[00:21:43] Merlin: Like, or, or, there’s another vending machine where you can go and buy chips. Well, like, I don’t need to buy anything right now, so I don’t need any vending machines. Well, of course, there will be the day you realize you forgot your toothbrush, and you’ll pay 7 for a vending machine toothbrush, because you really want to brush your teeth.

[00:21:56] Merlin: That’s how life works. I don’t think it’s wholesome, [00:22:00] and this might be a straw man, if so, forgive me. I don’t think it’s wholesome to look at this as a vending machine. In, in, in one way it’s, I’ll explain in a minute, it’s useful to look at it as a vending machine. But if you think you’re going to walk up to this thing, hit a button and get a Coke.

[00:22:13] Merlin: You’re going to be disappointed, because that’s not really what this is for. In some versions of this, it’s not even very good at arithmetic. Oh my god, look how dumb this thing is, it’s a computer and it can’t do arithmetic. Well yeah, but we know enough to know that that’s not, I mean, okay, alright, alright, I’m fine.

[00:22:27] Merlin: But then on the other hand, that vending machine analogy works because there are people who act as though they’re asking a Coke machine whether they should get divorced.

[00:22:35] Jeff: Right.

[00:22:36] Merlin: we know Coke machines are good at is giving you a Coke. So if you want a Coke, that’s a good time to use a Coke machine. If you don’t drink Coke Or don’t have a credit card or a change, as we used to say, then you’re probably not going to interact with the machine.

[00:22:49] Merlin: But when you do, if you think about it, it’d be pretty weird to go to the machine, start hitting buttons, and ask it if I can get divorced. If I should get divorced and what I would say is, [00:23:00] well, okay, first of all, you didn’t even put any money in the machine, so you can’t even get a Coke. But is that really a good use of a Coke machine? And I think it’s cynical to do the equivalent of saying, I asked this thing if I could get, if I should get divorced and all it did was give me a Coke or it gave me like a Fanta when I’d ask for a divorce. And it’s like, that’s how it feels to me sometimes when, when people try to impugn this entire sector.

[00:23:28] Merlin: And I’m going to be the director of this huge growing piece of our future technology with this whole like, well, I didn’t have a use for it today and I’m pretty sure I don’t trust it and everything that comes out of it is bad and it stole everybody’s art. And like, it’s, then we’re getting into something that I call the phenomenon of everything is everything.

[00:23:45] Merlin: Well, can we just talk about like one part of that? Maybe let’s start with the part of, I need to disabuse you of the idea that this is a Coke machine. And if it is a Coke machine, don’t ask it for relationship advice. And I feel like that’s, [00:24:00] to me, that’s a good way to understand it. What if you understood this more as like, talking to a friend who doesn’t know everything?

[00:24:06] Merlin: Do you not talk to people if they’re sometimes incorrect? Do you not talk to people?

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[00:27:00] Thank you, Pika, for sponsoring Overtired. Very grateful. It’s a great service. And now back to my conversation with Merlin Mann.

[00:27:09] Because of How We Are

[00:27:09] Jeff: You said something. This was also I mean that I revisited that Reconcilable Differences, because it was such an interesting, it was kind of where I initially thought I really want to have Merlin on Overtired, which was the first time earlier this year. Um, but you said something there, and you said, I can immediately see the usefulness of this thing because of how I am.

[00:27:27] Jeff: And, and I’m wondering if you can kind of give me an example of, of something that is just a perfect example of what the usefulness is for you, and I know there’s lots of different ways, but and and how it is useful because

[00:27:40] Merlin: because of how I am.

[00:27:42] Jeff: does that mean?

[00:27:43] Merlin: Um, I think, is it cool to talk about this?

[00:27:48] Jeff: Yeah, please.

[00:27:49] Merlin: I can give you one. I mean, I’ll avoid all the prologue stuff, but like, I’ve been at ChatGPT for, I don’t know, I think over a year now. I’ve done some image generation stuff, but [00:28:00] ChatGPT is the one I’ve sort of imprinted on in the Conrad Lorenz sense, like this is my daddy.

[00:28:04] Merlin: Like this is the one I feel like I mostly understand. It just doesn’t make sense to me to run around and try 60 of these. You know, learning one, let me learn this one hammer before I buy more hammers or even try more hammers. Here’s one of the first ways is. A term I might be abusing or misusing, but is that I, for whatever reason, there’s a thing you can learn.

[00:28:28] Merlin: A consultant can come out and you’re gonna teach all the executives about lateral thinking. Or what some people, I think, erroneously call thinking outside the box. But, you know, There are, there’s, there, if you think of the world as, as these, these series of different kinds of grids or, uh, graphs or spreadsheets, you know, with two different kinds of things on it, like, I, without even being able to help myself have a kind of emotional synesthesia, where I very easily, easily slip into at least thinking about things that are related to the thing in a way that others don’t.[00:29:00]

[00:29:00] Merlin: Which on the one hand is what occasionally makes me funny. Honestly, part of being funny is being able to relate to unrelated things. Okay, so, like, I go into this thinking, like, I hear somebody speak in a certain cadence, and it makes me think of a line from The Simpsons. Or something a little bit more Like, really closer to the liberal arts in terms of like, well, that process that you just described sounds a lot like one of Hegel’s tripartite charts.

[00:29:27] Merlin: And like, not, not necessarily, not, not to brag or like say like, oh, listen to me, I read a book, but more a way of saying like, when you become widely read and learned at least about a handful of topics, you kind of can’t help but keep relating them to each other. So I just want to stipulate that that’s one thing that’s weird about me in a way that I think is unusual.

[00:29:45] Merlin: I’m a mess. Talking to me is a nightmare. But like, I can’t help but think laterally because that’s just how I think. I think maybe if you wanted to put that more negatively, one of my challenges, apart [00:30:00] from problems with authority in life, is that I am, I’m not good at thinking laterally. Unilaterally.

[00:30:06] Jeff: Hmm.

[00:30:07] Merlin: And that doesn’t mean I can’t stay on topic because I sure can, but I find it, I feel like it really just grinds it into the ground to when you’re sitting around with people and you go like, okay, well we’ve done, we’ve done one, and we’ve done two, and we’ve done three.

[00:30:18] Merlin: What do we th