🤔 Be curious

“Be curious, not judgmental.” – Ted Lasso

When we stop asking questions, and begin forming opinions about ideas, events, people, etc., we close ourselves off from the opportunity to learn something new. What’s more, we rarely go back and reevaluate those opinions once they’ve formed; this is often to our detriment.

By following our curiosity, we’re able to experience a life that is full of the many wonders that exist in the world around us. this is arguably what it means to live a meaningful life. This week I want to share a few thoughts on curiosity, and why it’s a skill worth cultivating. I hope you’ll find something in the newsletter that helps you rekindle your inner sense of wonder 😊

Please note: this newsletter adheres to Daniel Miessler’s AI Influence Level (AIL) Zero

Curiosity is a skill you can cultivate; start training by intentionally exposing yourself to content that’s different from what you usually enjoy. You never know what interesting ideas, experiences, or people you’ll encounter along the way!

The rhythm of life is measured by novelty; cultivating a sense of curiosity inevitably exposes you to new ideas and experiences – which has been scientifically observed to generate stronger and longer-lasting memories.

Variety is the spice of life; in the Dune novels, “spice” is called “melange”. It’s an addictive, life-expanding drug; it’s also the french word for “variety”. Who knew that Frank Herbert had a sense of humor? 😂

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett. “Every innovation—technological, sociological, or otherwise—begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation.” I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this series; the magic system reminds me of what it feels like to hack Large Language Models.

Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari. “The tendency to create powerful things with unintended consequences started not with the invention of the steam engine or AI but with the invention of religion. Prophets and theologians have summoned powerful spirits that were supposed to bring love and joy but occasionally ended up flooding the world with blood.” I’ve always loved how punchy Harari’s writing is.

AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor. “Are things likely to improve over time? Unfortunately, we don’t think so. Many of its flaws are inherent. For example, predictive AI is attractive because automation makes decision-making more efficient, but efficiency is exactly what results in a lack of accountability.”

Ted Lasso. This is probably the second-or-third year in a row that my wife and I decided to re-watch the series; it’s filled with lots of humor and feel-good moments that everyone can enjoy. Plus – Ted embodies many of the behaviors and philosophies I aspire to adopt as a leader, which serve as a reminder of what great leadership looks like.

Alex Hormozi. Even if some of the concepts he shares might feel basic, almost anything feels obvious once you know the answer. And besides – I like the way he thinks about and delivers his content.

AI Investment Is Starting to Look Like a Slush Fund. “The standard practice of vendor financing . . . became another wretched bubble excess: as if Ford were loaning customers money to buy cars–and boats, jewels and houses, too.” By the way, have you seen the extension-cord-plugged-into-itself analogy for the OpenAI → Oracle → Nvidia → OpenAI vendor financing loop yet?

I’ve always admired how a security researcher can reverse engineer a piece of software and identify novel vulnerabilities or creates new exploit chains. As someone who has spent most of their career in Web Application security, I’ve often experienced a sense of awe when I watch someone trigger a remote code execution from heap corruption, or a clever stack-based buffer overflow. I work with quite a few people at Trail of Bits who can do exactly this, and it impresses me every time I get a chance to see such work up-close.

So, this week I decided to try generating a “zero to hero” lesson plan for learning reverse engineering and exploit development using Anthropic’s Claude Desktop. The lesson plan itself was prompted to go from Level 0 to Level 10, and some of what Claude generated seemed pretty reasonable. That said, some of what Claude generated was also batshit crazy. Here’s an excerpt for some of what it suggested at Level 10:

Yikes 😬 a little too “AGI in the post-human future” for me 😅 Anyway, I plan to cross-reference the saner parts of the lesson plan with my colleagues to see what they think, and rework the sections of content where the LLM clearly turned hallucinogenic.

So, what curiosity (or curiosities) are you exploring right now? What has surprised you so far in following your curiosity?

Let me know what you think.

– Keith