Friday Finds (GPT, Inflation, Elites, Nassim Taleb)

[Read in your browser here.]() Hi friends, ChatGPT has basically replaced Google for me. It's where I go whenever I have a question, and last night, I spent a few hours in conversation with it. One thing I've learned is the benefit of having subject-matter expertise when prompting ChatGPT. Most people say that GPT can only help beginners because the information it shares is superficial, and it's creations generic milquetoast. The worse you are at writing prompts for the AI, the more true that is. The more I use ChatGPT, the more I see that it rewards expertise, because the chatbot thrives on specificity. More specific requests generally yield better answers. If you ask it to simply critique your business plan, you'll get a generic answer. Of course. But you'll get a rich answer if you say something like this: "Give me four separate critiques of my business plan. One each from Clayton Christensen, Ben Thompson, Michael Porter, and Hamilton Helmer." Here's what I want to share this week: - Own It Mentality: A little mantra I've adopted to work with more integrity and be better to the people around me. [Here's my full essay](. - The Great Flattening: We're living through a Great Flattening. ​It seems like every company has adopted the same values, the same mission statements, and the same style of visual branding. Just look at logo design. It's become flat, bland, sterile, drab, and timid. [Here's my short video](). - Interview with Paul Millerd: Paul interviewed me about getting fired, interviewing [Neil deGrasse Tyson](), working with mentors, and building Write of Passage. If nothing else, this episode was a hoot because Paul's work is so spiritually aligned with mine. (Listen: [YouTube](=) | [Apple]( | [Spotify]() ​ Today's Finds Grade Inflation: For half a century, the average GPA at Harvard stayed constant at roughly 2.5. By 1960, it had climbed to 3.0. Today, it's up to 3.8. GPAs aren't rising because students have gotten so much smarter. It's because teachers have lowered their standards. One of my college professors admitted that he secretly inflates his students' grades because it's easier to dish out a few extra points than put up with a nagging student. If nudging somebody from a B to a B+ brings peace of mind by getting the complaining student out of their office faster, it's worth the decline in rigor. Humans who are incentivized to improve numbers on a screen will eventually fudge the data. The more one party fudges, the more other ones will be incentivized to do the same. Here's [a piece on grade inflation from The Harvard Crimson]() and a [website about the national trend](. Elite Overproduction: Peter Turchin presents a grim picture of America’s future in his book, [Ages of Discord](). Specifically, he blames “elite overproduction” for many of America’s challenges. He argues that there’s a surplus of smart, young Americans fighting for admission to the same elite colleges and graduates fighting for the same prestigious jobs. The number of people gunning for these elite schools and employers is rising much faster than the number of available slots. That’s partially why schooling and urban housing prices are rising so fast. All that competition, Turchin says, causes society to fracture and is one of the chief causes of political instability. For an explainer, I recommend [this Atlantic article]( or [this piece from Bloomberg’s Noah Smith](). ​[Nassim Taleb, on Christianity](=): Tom Holland's [Dominion]() laid the foundation for my essay, ["Why You're Christian,"]( and Nassim Taleb wrote the forward. It's free to read online and is worth reading in full for his critique of modern science. Contrary to the Biblical idea of imago dei, where every human is equal because they're made in the image of God, the enlightenment and the scientific revolution introduced the ideas of statistical differences and race disparities. Taleb writes: "Replacing the metaphor of Adam and Eve with Darwinian ideas led to 'evolutionary' differences not just between species, but within species." This kind of thinking generally leads to eugenics, which is why Taleb argues that the development of modern science has had sinister outcomes. ​[The Shape of Failure](=): Nassim Taleb explains the math behind cultivating serendipity in your life. By creating “convex” payoff functions for yourself (where the upside of success is greater than the downside of failure and failure cannot lead to ruin), you can systematically create opportunities for long-term gains. One example of an activity with a convex payoff function is cooking, which relies on trial and error. You start with something simple like avocados. Then, you experiment with them. Over time, you learn to add salt, onions, and coriander until you stumble upon guacamole (for a fraction of what it costs at Chipotle). But if you try something that doesn't work — if you fail at cooking — it's no problem. (You can just order Chipotle instead.) This attitude toward failure takes us out of the sphere of planning and into the sphere of experimentation. Experimenting, more than planning, leads to increased knowledge and greater progress. Have a creative week, [David Perell Logo 2x] Thanks for reading! If you’re serious about learning to write, [sign up for my 50 days of writing series.]() I’ll send you a series of emails about every aspect of the craft, from finding new ideas, to editing your writing, to building an email list. If you'd like to update your email settings, choose one of the options below. 1. [Click here]() to unsubscribe from Friday Finds only. 2. 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