The trap of clickbait headlines, bad influences and AI.

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Oct 09, 2021

Saturday, October 09, 2021

Hello my wonderful readers! How's it going? Apologies for missing out on last Saturday. I hope you missed reading it as much as I missed writing. I was travelling last week(yes again!) so couldn't write anything. So it turned out to be a mini break for me from writing a blog. Anyways, let's get back to this beautiful habit of writing and reading.

Ever got stuck on a freeway highway for miles and miles? The traffic is not moving, but crawling. And when you arrive at the critical point, you realise that the wreck has already been cleared off the road for hours and the accident is not the reason for the traffic jam anymore. Then what is it? Alas! It's the people rubbernecking.

What were you doing while crossing the wreck? Even you slowed down and looked at the terrible and grotesque sight, didn't you? This is because we love seeing panic, trouble and our brain craves for it. This is the reason news agencies come up with the weirdest of headlines to catch your attention. They bring all the salacious headlines, the heinous crimes in front of you. Our brain is naturally exposed to the fcukest of all news that a million other things that would have happened at that particular time goes unnoticed. How many of you would have slowed down to see a beautiful sunset at that highway? None, I believe. Remember you are what you consume. Consider your mind like an empty glass. If you consume some shitty, troubling, painful news all day, your glass will be filled with dirty water. All the thoughts that you have during the day will filter through this water, making everything dirty. On the other hand, positive, constructive thoughts fill the glass with clean water. Make sure you consume good information in this world of over abundant information.

We try to guard a child against a bad influence and worry about the bad habits he might pick up from a bad company. It is equally important for us to stay away from the wrong influences. They say you are average of the 5 people you spend your time with. Make sure you pick the right set of people. It is essential to revitalize your companions often. You could chit chat with someone for a minute but not an hour. You could talk to someone for an hour but not a day. You could talk to someone for a day but not go on an extended vacation. Make sure you don't spend an hour with someone you can only talk to for about a minute. The person you are walking with determines the pace, both literally and figuratively. Trying to get away from people initially might be tough. They may try to bring you down not because you are wrong but because of their poor choices and bad decisions. Know that it's not going to be simple and easy. It is important to reappraise and reprioritize the people you spend time with. These are the relationships that nurture you. List down the 5 people you are close to and write down their habits, bank balance and average it out. Is it where you want to see yourself?

Will Artificial Intelligence take your job?

Naval Ravikant points it out in The Joe Rogan podcast that AI fears are overblown. There's no solution to this no problem. Automation has existed since the dawn of civilization. Automation actually gives the people to engage themselves in more creative tasks. Eventually every non creative task will be replaced by a robot. Because robots (as of now and not until 2-3 decades) are not capable of creative thinking. They are only good at stuff that we already know and execute it efficiently from 9 to 5. The only thing is how well are you able to retrain and reeducate your people about the new things to explore. It all depends on how quickly are we able to create new jobs. If I had told you 5-8 years ago that podcast could be a real job or playing games could be a job, streaming games could be a job or commentating on a game could be a job, you would have just laughed at me declaring me a psycho. But that's what it is today! People playing games on a youtube stream are earning 4x the money a shop owner would ever make in his entire life.

See you next Saturday, until then have a great weekend :)

Cheers!

Some things that you may find interesting-

Article: How to break a phone addiction

Must Watch: A scene from the movie Marriage Story

Song I am listening to: La Vie En Rose by Emily Watts

Thought of the week: It is important to reappraise and reprioritize the people you spend time with. These are the relationships that nurture you.

Thread: The Compound Effect

Here are the last three posts if you were too occupied to read them: