Our world is too dynamic to ever stop exploring.

I episode 1,062 of The Art of Manliness, The Art of Exploration — Why We Seek New Challenges and Search Out the Unknown, Brett McKay interviews Alex Hutchinson, author of The Explorer’s Gene.

They touch on the explore-exploit problem: when do you stop exploring new things and double down on what you know works?

I won’t get into the details, check out Alex’s book and Algorithms To Live By for a deep dive on the topic, but in short, the rational solution would be to progressively explore less and exploit more. The older we get, the less we should explore.

But while the math does not lie, there’s something uncomfortable with the idea of stopping to explore, isn’t there? Does being rational mean giving up on novelty and settle for eating the same meal at the same restaurant, listening to the same album, and re-watching the same movie?

Brett and Alex both agree that there must be more to it than the raw math, and offer two reasons for why one ought to keep exploring.

The first is that as our life expectancy increases, we can explore for many more years than our ancestors. I don’t like this explanation because it simply pushes the problem later in the future. That we can explore in our sixties does not address what to do in our eighties. Besides, one could argue that since we live longer we have more time to exploit and accrue benefits that way.

The second reason Brett and Alex offer for continuing to explore is that exploring simply feels good. Once you factor into the explore-exploit model the value you get from trying new things for the sake of it, mere exploitation becomes less attractive. Exploring is inherently valuable because it breaks monotony and gives us new experiences.

Here’s a third reason to add into the mix. We should keep exploring because the future does not resemble the past.

Explore-exploit assumes a static world. When nothing changes, finding a local maximum to exploit can indeed generate lots of value over time.

But our world is in constant flux. We live in a time where more and more is being created by more and more people thanks to technology liberating us from rote labor.

The more creativity, the more the future becomes unpredictable. The value landscape is fluid, the peak you find today might be greatly overshadowed tomorrow.

So, never stop exploring. Even the day before you die, keep exploring.

I’ll leave you with a quote often attributed to Mark Twain but that apparently comes from H. Jackson Brown, Jr. mother’s:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Originally published on giolodi.com on 2025/04/09.

The Rubber Duck Now Quacks Back

Rubber ducking in the age of AI.

Large language models (LLMs) are versatile tools. You can use them as artificial interns¹ to generate draft for you, feed them documents to summarize, proof read, and more. An LLM can generate a training plan for you, propose a travel itinerary, or help you adjust the tone of an important message you are writing.

Another way to put LLMs to work is for rubber ducking. But with a twist—the rubber duck quacks back!

Rubber ducking is a common practice among software developers. The name comes from The Pragmatic Programmers, where Dave Thomas recalls how a colleague used to work with a rubber duck on top his terminal and describe the problems he was stuck on to it.

When describing a coding problem out loud, “you must explicitly state things that you may take for granted when going through the code yourself.” This is often enough to generate insight into the problem and make progress. And this works in any creative field, not just programming.

Notice that it’s the act of describing the problem that is valuable. The result is the same whether you talk to a real person or to a rubber duck.

Talking to an inanimate object has the advantage of not distracting your colleagues. But there are times where describing a problem is not enough and you could benefit from a probing question or the push back.

So why not talk to an LLM?

With AI, rubber ducking takes on a new level. This digital rubber duck quacks back, can judge your idea, help you sharpen them, and suggest alternatives. All without disturbing your teammates.

With ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, we all have at our fingertips a squad of interactive rubber ducks that are smart, patient, and always available.

But no matter how refined they are, we need to remember that LLMs are far from error-proof. On top of that, many LLMs will do their best to please you, but when problem solving it’s criticism that you need most.

You wouldn’t ship the work your intern made without first looking over it, whether the intern is a human or a bot. Likewise, you cannot trust everything a toy duck tells you, whether is made of rubber or bits.

Remember Feynman’s words: “You are the easiest one to fool.” Don’t let an LLM tuned to please its user lull you into thinking you discovered the best solution.

Dave Thomas’ rubber duck never validate your ideas, it only gave you space to understand them. These digital rubber ducks might quack back, but of all the work we ought to delegate to AI, thinking remains our responsibility.

¹ — The article used DALL-E to show how much guidance a generative AI needs, and how many iterations are required to get to a satisfying result. Since then, image generation has leapfrogged both in prompt understanding and output quality. The intern has gotten much better, but it’s still an intern. AI has no initiative or genuine creativity. You need to tell it what to do.

Thanks to Alex Grebenyuk for the conversation that resulted in this post. In particular for the term “the rubber duck talks back.”

A training plan for cognitive fitness

To get smarter, you need to put in the reps.

Originally published on giolodi.com on 2025/04/06.

In two recent episodes of his podcast Deep Questions, Cal Newport shared a training plan for cognitive fitness.

The episodes are #345: Are We Getting Dumber? and #346: Getting Smarter in a Dumb World. I recommend watching them, but here’s an annotated summary.

Level 1: Maintaining cognitive fitness

These are the cognitive equivalent of daily movement, hydration, and sleep. The basics to counteract the effect social media, work chats, and…

Read

As Cal is fond of saying, “reading is calisthenics for the brain.” And while listening to books is valuable, it’s reading on paper that really trains your brain—see The Reader’s Brain for more details. It doesn’t matter what you read; anything goes, from pulp paperback fiction to dense idea books.

Pursue cognitively demanding hobbies

Whether it’s playing an instrument, learning a manual craft, or my recent favorite, solving twisty puzzles, engage in leisure activities that require concentration. This will keep you entertained in an active way, as opposed to the passive doomscrolling that shrinks your attention span.

Go on reflection walks

Walking has many positive effects for the body. You can double dip by using walking to train your concentration. Pick up a problem to reflect upon and focus on it during your walk. When you notice your attention wandered off, gently push it back on track. (See also How To Walk More Without Changing Your Schedule.)

Avoid stimuli stacking

Smartphones are so convenient to carry around and the social media apps so engaging that you can find yourself watching TV while scrolling on Instagram. This growing tendency damages our ability to focus, because the brain gets used to distractions. It also takes away from the experience: if you divide your attention between TV and Instagram, you’ll enjoy neither. I often fall into this with podcasts at lunchtime. I’ll eat while listening to something and get to the end of my meal without having enjoyed a single bite.

Level 2: Improving cognitive fitness

If you think of the exercises above as the equivalent of keeping your body in motion, getting enough rest, and following a healthy nutrition, then the following exercises are like following a training plan to compete in a triathlon. They are meant to take your cognitive fitness to the next level.

Dialectical reading

When interacting with ideas, intentionally seek opposite views. This exercise will force you to engage with ideas seriously, questioning your assumptions and criticizing the opposition. The goal is not to change your mind, it’s to put it through a rigorous exercise.

Become a connoisseur

Take your hobby up a notch by becoming a student of it. Dive deep into the history and the details to develop taste. This deeper level of engagement requires focus and dedication, which is a great exercise for the mind. It will also raise the quality bar you’ll accept for your inputs, another safeguard against the kind of leisure activity that degrades your focus.

Keep an ideas document

Moving from input to output is another method of interacting with ideas that benefits your cognition. Write about the ideas you care about as an exercise to deepen both your understanding and your thinking—for clear writing is clear thinking.

Focus interval training

How long can you engage with a problem without caving in to distractions? Can you stick with something for 90 minutes, without checking Slack, or your phone, or whichever quick fix for boredom you use? These are questions of focus endurance, a skill that can be systematically improved. Whatever your current level, aim for 10 minutes more over the next two weeks. Obviously, the interval can’t stretch indefinitely, but 90 minutes is a duration often recommended as the sweet spot between having enough time to make progress without depleting the brain’s fuel and stamina to the point where it can no longer perform.

Curate your digital diet

This final advice is more of a practice than an exercise to repeat. Think of it as the equivalent of eating the right food to fuel muscle recovery as part of your training plan. Today’s digital entertainment and information landscape is unfortunately optimized for shallowness and emotional engagement. As I wrote in The Sherlock Holmes Information Diet, “when fed a diet of trivial nonsense, our brains will never have the raw materials for producing deep thoughts.”

Cal’s exercise regimen for cognitive fitness came as a reaction to the provocative Financial Time piece by John Burn-Murdoch Have humans passed peak brain power? (paywalled). For what is worth, I agree with James Pethokoukis in thinking we are far from a peak. In fact, we might be at the beginning of a new climb thanks to more technological augmentation—but, this is just me prophesying.

Regardless of what some observational studies find about the cognitive prowess of their participants, we can all benefit from training our brain.

As a father, how well I can focus impacts both the quality of the time I spend with my kids and my ability to earn a living for them.

Cal’s exercises might not address the root causes of what can sometimes feel like an incurable distraction epidemic, but are a great way for individuals to strengthen their immune system against it. “All you need to do” is put in the reps.

DMs Are Great. So Is Dinner.

On balancing digital connection with real-world presence.

In Eating alone in the age of connection, reflects on the growing trend of people eating alone—or, rather, in the sole company of their smartphones.

The ritual of shared meals, long a touchstone of human connection, now competes with the distraction of screens. The smartphone is the silent, omnipresent companion.

But, Gloria argues, this comes at the expense of our quality of life:

The tradition of commensality—sharing meals together—has long been revered across cultures. It is more than just a means of sustenance; it’s a marker of community, a statement that life is richer when shared.

Sharing meals and drinks is a tradition that dates back many thousands of years.

In A History of the World in 6 Glasses, Tom Standage traces the ritual of sharing a drink as far back as the third millennium AD.

From the start, it seems that beer had an important function as a social drink. Sumerian depictions of beer from the third millennium BCE generally show two people drinking through straws from a shared vessel. By the Sumerian period, however, it was possible to filter the grains, chaff, and other debris from beer, and the advent of pottery meant it could just as easily have been served in individual cups. That beer drinkers are, nonetheless, so widely depicted using straws suggests that it was a ritual that persisted even when straws were no longer necessary.

The most likely explanation for this preference is that, unlike food, beverages can genuinely be shared. When several people drink beer from the same vessel, they are all consuming the same liquid; when cutting up a piece of meat, in contrast, some parts are usually deemed to be more desirable than others. As a result, sharing a drink with someone is a universal symbol of hospitality and friendship.

As our working environments become increasingly remote and distributed, it can be tempting to focus on online relationships, especially for introverts. After all, it’s more likely to find job opportunities and people with similar interests online.

The new online relationships can be deep, useful, and satisfying, but in growing them we shouldn’t neglect the offline relationships that ground us. We still need real, in-person connections.

And it’s the same technology that some attack as the culprit for the erosion of in-person connections that creates the opportunity to spend more time together. Take remote work, for example. If a company operates in a truly distributed way, employees have plenty of flexibility for coffee or lunch dates with friends

And while most job opportunities are likely to come from your online network, there’s much more that can come from nourishing offline relationships with people you can actually share a space with. Which is why, by the way, remote companies invest in bringing distributed teams together in the same location throughout the year.

Looking into a smartphone during a meal can keep you connected to faraway friends—which is wonderful, as long as it doesn’t disconnect you from those right in front of you. It’s all about finding the ratio that works for you.

When we use our time and devices intentionally, we can build strong online networks and deepen real-world bonds.

The Deutschian Dead End Is Wide Open

There is no dead end at the beginning of infinity.

Originally published on giolodi.com on 2025/03/28.

When I came across The Deutschian Dead End via Increments Podcast, I was intrigued. Critical rationalism and the work of David Deutsch are all about error correction. For someone to identify and correct errors in those theories would certainly represent an advancement in our understanding of how to foster the creation of new knowledge.

Alas, I found none of that in the essay.

I intended to write a step-by-step critique, but after listening to Vaden’s pushback on Increments and Brett Hall’s commentary, I don’t think that’s necessary.

But here’s something I want to add. A great part of the essay criticizes the behavior of a group of people Kasra, the author, refers to as “critical rationalists”. I haven’t had much exposure with this community, but from the way Kasra describes it I get the impression it is a mostly online group of folks that seem more interested in dunking on socials than in making progress.

That, to me, has little to do with the work of Popper and Deutsch.

If someone reads Conjecture and Refutation or The Beginning of Infinity and comes out of it thinking that Popper and Deutsch are authorities to be followed, they completely missed the point! The problem lies with the readers, not the authors.

Granted, an author might intentionally develop a theory prone to such misinterpretations, but that’s not the case.

David Deutsch and Karl Popper are anti-authority to the core.

David often refuses to give advice in interviews because he does not consider himself in a position to tell the listeners what to do. And Popper, in his Epistemology and the Problem of Peace lecture, warned the audience:

But I would also ask you not to believe anything that I suggest! Please do not believe a word! I know that that is asking too much, as I will speak only the truth, as well as I can. But I warn you: I know nothing, or almost nothing. We all know nothing or almost nothing. I conjecture that that is a basic fact of life. We know nothing, we can only conjecture: we guess.

One does not need to “follow” Deutsch or “believe” in Popper. They work in the realm of ideas, not ideologies.

That Kasra missed the crucial distinction between the ideas themselves and how some readers misinterpreted them puts the entire essay on shaky grounds. It seems more a vent than an effort to provide a critique.

As far as I’m convinced, David Deutsch’s work is no dead end. It remains the beginning of what could be infinity, waiting for someone to genuinely improve upon it.

Why is there an octopus on the cover of Antifragile?

Mischievous author confuses designers.

Originally published on giolodi.com on 2025/03/27.

The covers in one of the paperback reprints of Nassim Taleb’s Incerto series have neat designs featuring animals connected to the books.

• Fooled by Randomness has a black cat, for superstition.

• The Black Swan obviously has a black swan.

• The Bed of Procrustes has an owl, for wisdom.

• Antifragile has an octopus, for… ?!

Why is there an octopus on the cover of Antifragile?

Reddit user ‘NotTheAnts’ had a compelling conjecture:

Presumably because octopuses can regrow severed limbs…but doesn’t that make them robust, rather than antifragile?

If so, pretty ironic that the publishers committed the ontological error that the book chiefly warns against. Willing to be corrected though, maybe I’m missing something.

But the reason has more to do with Taleb being a character than the cover designers confusing—like many others do—robustness with antifragility.

Apparently, Taleb is a big fan of squid ink pasta and when the publisher asked for input on the cover, he replied “squid.”

So there you have it: Antifragile features an octopus because its author enjoys eating squid ink.

I guess when your book goes through as many reprints as Taleb’s has, you can afford to sneak in a nod to your favorite food on the cover.

He really loves squid ink pasta…

Work like Mycroft Holmes

Originally published on giolodi.com - 2025/03/12.

Here’s how Sherlock Holmes describes his brother Mycroft to the trusted Dr. Watson:

[Holmes:] “You would also be right in a sense if you said that occasionally he is the British government.”

[Watson:] “My dear Holmes!”

“I thought I might surprise you. Mycroft draws four hundred and fifty pounds a year, remains a subordinate, has no ambitions of any kind, will receive neither honour nor title, but remains the most indispensable man in the country.”

“But how?”

"Well, his position is unique. He has made it for himself. There has never been anything like it before, nor will be again.

– The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Notice the last paragraph. Mycroft’s position is unique. He has made it for himself. There never was and never will be anything like it.

Admittedly, Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft are works of fiction, figments of Sir Conan Doyle great imagination. We cannot draw real life lessons from them, but nothing stops us from being inspired.

When reading about Mycroft, I was reminded of Kevin Kelly in Excellent Advice for Living:

Don’t be the best. Be the only.

On the same wavelength was Naval Ravikant post on X:

Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.

Being the only, creating a unique position for yourself, is what I think of when describing the synergist engineer, someone with deep knowledge and in curated number of subjects, which they combine to offer one original and valuable service.

Be careful not to gloss over the “valuable service” part of the recipe. When thinking about being the only, at least in the context of work, what you offer has to be valuable. That is, people have to be willing to pay for it.

Your personal combination of interests and skills already makes you unique, but it might not necessarily make you valuable in the marketplace. Then again, many people have turned unique hobbies into businesses and now make a living on YouTube or by selling online.

Technology and progress expand the ways people can earn a living. This is the best time to take inspiration from the Holmes brothers and create a unique position for ourselves.

If you need more inspiration from Sherlock Holmes, see The Sherlock Holmes Information Diet.

The inspiration for this post came from listening to the Sherlock Holmes Short Stories podcast narrated by Hugh Bonneville. It’s a well produced podcast, on par with any audiobook, and lovely combo for a Sherlock Holmes and Downtown Abbey fan such as myself.

Problems are inevitable. Problems are soluble.

Originally published on giolodi.com - 2025/03/14.

Of all the ideas in David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity, “problems are inevitable; problems are soluble” stood out to me from the very first reading. It’s an observation on reality, a warning to stay vigilant, and a challenge to be bold and take action. Like all great wisdom, it’s simple to understand, yet the more you reflect on it the more depth you discover.

Problems are inevitable

From the book:

Problems are inevitable. We shall always be faced with the problem of how to plan for an unknowable future. We shall never be able to afford to sit back and hope for the best. Even if our civilization moves out into space in order to hedge its bets, as Rees and Hawking both rightly advise, a gamma-ray burst in our galactic vicinity would still wipe us all out. Such an event is thousands of times rarer than an asteroid collision, but when it does finally happen we shall have no defence against it without a great deal more scientific knowledge and an enormous increase in our wealth.

And later on:

In addition to threats, there will always be problems in the benign sense of the word: errors, gaps, inconsistencies and inadequacies in our knowledge that we wish to solve – including, not least, moral knowledge: knowledge about what to want, what to strive for.

Maybe I’m just lucky that most of my problems are first world problems — challenges instead of threats — but I find that framing gives license to focus entirely on solutions. There’s something reassuring about how David explains problems as an inevitable part of life. Maybe I’m just lucky that most of mine are first-world problems—challenges rather than threats—but that framing helps me to focus entirely on solutions.

When something is inevitable, all energy spent complaining about it is wasted. Take that option away, and all that’s left is to get serious and start working on it.

Understanding that problems are inevitable also puts them into perspective. Because when a problem is solved, a new problem arises:

A solution may be problem-free for a period, and in a parochial application, but there is no way of identifying in advance which problems will have such a solution. Hence there is no way, short of stasis, to avoid unforeseen problems arising from new solutions. But stasis is itself unsustainable, as witness every static society in history.

Problems are inevitable. The best you can hope for is to move toward ones that are more interesting to solve.

Problems are soluble

Again from The Beginning of Infinity:

Since the human ability to transform nature is limited only by the laws of physics, none of the endless stream of problems will ever constitute an impassable barrier. So a complementary and equally important truth about people and the physical world is that problems are soluble. By ‘soluble’ I mean that the right knowledge would solve them.

If recognizing that problems are inevitable is the spark to start searching for solutions, then knowing they are soluble is the fuel that keeps the search alive.

If the laws of physics permit it, it’s possible. The challenge is figuring out how, generating the wealth to make it real, or both.

The YouTube channel Kurzgesagt – In a nutshell has many videos exploring ideas that are theoretically possible but out of reach because we haven’t yet solved the technological problems to build them. Space elevators, Dyson swarms, Mars terraforming, and skyhooks , to name just a few.

David adds an important caveat: problems can be solved, but they won’t solve themselves.

It is not, of course, that we can possess knowledge just by wishing for it; but it is in principle accessible to us.

Also:

That problems are soluble does not mean that we already know their solutions, or can generate them to order. That would be akin to creationism.

With “problems are inevitable; problems are soluble,” David sums up some things all doers intuitively understand: Everything is figureoutable. Complaining and protesting are wasted effort. The only productive thing to do is to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Originally published on giolodi.com, 2025/03/01.

To never be bored, always have something to think deeply about.

To always have something to think deeply about, always be learning something new.

This is how author Louis L’Amour lived his life, particularly during his teens and twenties as he wandered around the world and educated himself by reading in the order of a 100 books a year.

As he wrote in Education of a Wandering Man:

The beauty of educating oneself as I was doing, or as anyone can do, is that there are no limits to what can be learned. All that is learned demands contemplation, and so one is never at a loss for something to do.

This is a cheap and effective antidote to boredom. One that will also strengthen the ability to focus so important to live an intentional life and to thrive in the knowledge economy.

Memento Mori. Tempus Edax Rerum.

Originally published on giolodi.com, 2025/03/05.

Two mantras on mortality from Ancient Rome that pair well together.

The first is Memento Mori, literary “remember to die,” but more commonly translated as “remember you must die.” It’s a recurring theme in Stoic philosophy, a filter function to prioritize and a way to ground oneself.

The second is Tempus Edax Rerum. It comes from the poet Ovid from the Metamorphoses book 15, verse 234 and can be translated to “time devours everything.”1

Both call to attention how ephemeral our existence is.

It might be tempting to interpret them as an excuse to slack. An invitation to nihilism. If nothing last, what’s the point in even trying?

On the contrary, they are a call to action. Time devours everything, so keep things into perspective, let go of the petty, and don’t think too grandly of yourself. Remember you must die, so don’t waste the precious little time you have.

You can hold them in your mind and look at them in both directions. Time devours everything, so remember that you, too, will die. Remember you must die; time, after all, devours everything.

Few things are as powerful as contemplating your own upcoming death to keep you present and focused.

Sooner or later, time will devour all the people and things you care about. Better make the most of them while you have the chance.