The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 417 - FOBA

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Peter.

Pete: I feel like I might have unlocked a new fear.

Jen: A new fear?

Pete: Yeah. A new fear.

Jen: What is it?

Pete: I mean, you seem so excited by this. I don't know if we should be excited. Although, I guess it's always fun to get some more self-awareness about the things we're afraid of. This is a fear that I've uncovered, the more I play around with AI tools. And I'm calling it FOBA, F-O-B-A.

Jen: Okay, let me see if I can unlock this one. Fear of being nihilistic?

Pete: That's not it. Although, not bad. This one is fear of brain atrophy.

Jen: Oh.

Pete: And I want to talk to you about this fear I now have of my brain atrophying.

Jen: This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: Yep. That's all you have to say, "Yep,"...because my brain is atrophied and I have nothing else to say. No. So, what do I mean by brain atrophy? I guess what I mean is using my brain less, to the point where it stops being able to do the things that it has always been able to do, like come up with unique ideas or think in certain creative ways or help people solve particular problems. So I feel like as one experiments more and more with AI tools, no matter which one it is, there's this promise or this possibility of unlocking all this potential, because you can get rid of a bunch of friction on the things that you usually do in your day to day. It can promise to write this for you. And it can promise to put this document together for you. Some people use it to write their own emails. (Which I'm like, really?) You know, there's so many different ways to use it. And the more and more I think about possible applications, the more and more I go, at what cost and how do I avoid the temptation? Because it's real. To reduce so much friction from my life, mental friction, I stopped thinking in certain ways and my brain started to atrophy. And I was like, "Holy crap." You know, if it is like a muscle and we don't use it as much, it's going to atrophy. I don't want that. So, I am afraid of my brain atrophying. And I'm now thinking about and noodling on and asking people about ways that they use AI, and if there is any insights or ideas they have to avoid FOBA. Do you share this fear? Are you hopping on the FOBA bus with me?

Jen: Well, yes. Yes, I do. Pete, I know I said this months ago, but I really, really believe that AI is getting more and more stupid.

Pete: Say more.

Jen: I just have reached a point that it is not in my best interest to have a conversation or even to do problem solving with it, about things that I actually (I think this goes right along with what you're saying) have the capacity to figure out on my own with a journal and a pen.

Pete: Right.

Jen: Yeah. So like, I've just been frustrated to the point where I'm not using it for that anymore. And I am using it for skills and like taking some of my ideas and turning them into things that I don't know how to actually make without some assistance. But to your point, if there is something I can use my own noggin for and I don't actually need the assistance, I am getting things done better and more quickly not using that tool for that purpose. So, I am using it very differently now than I was several months ago.

Pete: Yeah. I feel like my use of it changes constantly. And so, one of the things I've discovered recently (well, I guess I experimented with recently) was for an opportunity. A while ago, I was like, you know, "What would a proposal look like for a leadership program based on twenty people," and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it came up with this sketch. And I was like, "That sucks." And then, I got frustrated. And I spent all this time talking back, almost arguing with it, to be like, "No. Do it differently." And it was like, this is actually adding more friction to my workflow. And one of the unlocks I had after that was...which, I know there's plenty of people out there that'll be like, "Obviously." But it was important for me to realize to use your noggin first. Come up with a, "This is not even my shitty first draft."

Jen: Right.

Pete: "This is like a pretty damn good draft, based on how I think these programs could look and run and based on the opportunity at hand. What am I missing? Or what else could I consider? Or how could you polish this?" And that is such a better interaction and gets me to such a better place. So one of the rules I've baked into my Claude Code now is to force this, because I'm a human and I get lazy. And sometimes, this happened like two days ago, I was like, "Oh, could you sketch out what an agenda could look like for a workshop about blah?" And it came back and was like, "I'll follow our rule, which is you send me the sketch first, Pete. Use your brain, basically. And then, I'll help you sharpen it." And I was like, "Touché. That's exactly what I asked you to do." I've asked it to tell me, when I forget, "You have to use your brain first," because of FOBA.

Jen: I might need to know a little more about how you built that skill. Because I've been having an opposite problem, where I keep asking it to function the same way. And it doesn't. It likes to go into the weeds in a way that is so annoying. So, I'll start out a conversation by saying, "I'm looking at a legal document. I need to understand what Clause Thirty Two means. Stay out of the weeds." And it'll be like, "Here's what Clause Thirty Two means. Have you ever considered what it might look like to blah, blah, blah?" And I'm like, "What? I just asked you, in layman's terms, what do these three sentences mean? I didn't ask you to talk to me about double checking whether or not the movers are coming on a certain day. Like, what are you talking about?" That's literally what it asked me. I was talking about a clause in my lease for my studio space. And then, it asked me, because this was about exiting the space, if I needed to double check whether or not the movers were booked. Like, what? Anyway, I digress. But maybe, I don't digress. It digresses. How about that? It digresses.

Pete: Yeah. I love it. So one way of tackling FOBA, to your point, is to use a journal and a pen. I like that. Another way I have sort of built that into my use of AI is to have that as almost a standing rule. If Pete comes to you and hasn't got (and I use a voice memo) a voice memo of his thoughts on the thing at hand first, then ask him for that. Some other ideas I heard...I heard this one actually I quite liked. I'll just throw a few more out there. One I quite liked, someone only allows themselves to use AI on a Friday, one day of the week. So all throughout the week, obviously you're coming up with ideas, and you're writing things down, and you're making a note of like, "Oh, maybe on Friday I could." But what he described to me happens is often you start solving the thing during the week. And it comes to Friday and you're like, "I don't actually need to."

Jen: I love that.

Pete: Or, "I've gotten to a place where the question I need to ask or the thing I needed to build for me is way different than what I thought it was on Monday." So I like this like standing rule of if you only use it once a week, it forces you a little more to use your brain.

Jen: I love that. So, Pete, we have talked on this show about Lamppost Effect. When you are trying to work something out, if you go and you talk to a lamppost, it's more helpful than just talking to yourself. And for a long time, I had sort of imposed this idea of Lamppost effect on Claude, where I was like, "Okay, talking to Claude is better than just talking to myself." However, in the last week, I've gotten a couple of messages that start thusly from my clients. Here's one I'm quoting directly. "Hey, Jen, I'm sure I know what you're going to say, but I want to ask anyway." And when I saw that, I was like, "Oh my god, this client asking me actually is Lamppost Effect." Because she has my opinion, my perspective, my point of view on her mind. And she's filtering the way she's asking her question and answering it for herself through, "What would Jen say?" But I can't answer, "What would Claude say?" It has no opinion. It has no history. It has no authentic point of view. So one of the reasons why I get so much value out of asking you questions, Pete, is because I understand your perspective and your history and how you see the world. Anyway, that really struck me this week as I have found more and more frustration with Claude.

Pete: That's curious. Yeah. I'm also not incentivized to have you continue the conversation, or incentivized to appease your every concern and make you sound like the smartest person in the world, because I'm scared...I don't know why they do that. Because it's scared of what might happen if we don't kiss the feet of the user of Claude? Now, I should say, this is not me saying AI is no good and I don't use it. I still use it literally every day. But the fear remains present with particular use cases. Like, I think about...I mean, I'm sure many of our listeners have had this experience. I've had this experience a lot recently, where I get an email and I'm like, "This sounds like a robot."

Jen: Oh, yes. Every day.

Pete: And I hate it. I hate it. I hate it as the receiver. It frustrates me for the person. Because I feel myself wanting to respond differently than if someone had sent me an imperfect human email. And I also think the FOBA of it all, this person, if you're outsourcing the way you write emails, your brain is going to stop functioning. Yes, email is annoying and we all get too much of it. I get that. But what is it actually? It's thinking. It's writing. It's communicating. It's wrestling with how to spell, how to lay things out. These are good human skills to have, people.

Jen: Yes, they are.

Pete: So, it's the use cases I get more worried or frustrated about. It's not that it doesn't have any value. Because, my god, it has considerable value. And I'm using it in ways that I couldn't have dreamed of many years ago. But I'm trying to think of it as like, you know, a cute little version of AI that I once came up with was like Amplifying Intention as opposed to Artificial Intelligence. And I feel like if you think about it that way, it's amplifying your own intention as opposed to replacing your ability to use your brain.

Jen: Yes. We shan't allow Claude to replace humans and what humans make. You know, it's funny, as more and more people have figured out how to use Claude, it has made my own social media usage go down. Because all that I'm looking at are so obviously AI-generated ideas. And I'm not talking about images. I'm talking about people typing a query into Claude, having it pop out a script, and then looking at a camera and reading it as if they're an expert on something.

Pete: No.

Jen: Oh my god. It makes me nuts, to the point where I'm like, "I can't even really look at this that much anymore." Which is good. And I've also seen some really creative people giving props to very creative and authentically human creations by commenting, "Claude could never." And I just love that. Claude could never.

Pete: That's fun. So, I guess this podcast is another version of us trying to tackle FOBA. I've been threatening to (all year, I know) write some more blogs on my blog, noodlescratchers.com, which is another way I've been thinking about how to tackle FOBA. I also feel like for those that are willing to wrestle with their own thoughts and ideas and embrace their own critical thinking, discernment, creative juices, I feel like the gap between those that do and those that default to what's essentially going to become the average, which is the Claude or the AI of it all, it's how you're going to differentiate yourself. I think, at the moment, it's by spending more time using your brain. Also, it's just way more fulfilling. My god.

Jen: Well, it's a joy to use your brain, really. That's what it's there for.

Pete: It's hard. But that's what makes it so fun at the end.

Jen: Wait, wait, wait. Pete, I'm going to use my noggin right now. Is the opposite of FOBA, JOBU? Fear of brain atrophy, it's opposite is joy of brain usage.

Pete: Yes, let's do it. JOBU. The joy of brain usage. Yeah, it's hard to use your brain. Yeah, the blank page sucks. Yeah, I've got to sit here for a few hours and write that proposal. And yes, AI can help me sharpen and polish it. But the joy of thinking and looking and finishing something, and you go, "Huh, my brain helped create that," is something to relish.

Jen: Yes, it really is. We are in such the early days of our relationship with AI. And I'm excited by the fact that we are having this sort of like flip-flop conversation style. Like, one week we are lauding its amazing potential. And then, the next week we're like, "This thing sucks." And then, the next week it's like, "I made this amazing thing using Claude Design."

Pete: This is my exact experience. Right? This is so funny. So, okay, let's go behind the curtain of one of Pete's use cases. I'm about to do a triathlon in the coming weekend. And this is like, I did a triathlon twelve months ago. We did an episode where we talked about the lessons from it. I enjoyed it, especially the training. And I was like, "I think I want to commit to doing more of this." Cut to, I'd have surgery like two months later on my throat to get my tonsils removed, which took a while to recover from. Then, I dislocated my shoulder earlier this year, which was a whole annoying process to go through. And somewhere in that process, I was like, "I'm determined to be able to swim again, even though my arm is in a sling." And so, I set this stupid goal of doing this particular triathlon in the Sunshine Coast in September. That was twelve weeks ago. And because I'm a very much an amateur and I have certain constraints on my time, but also because I was enjoying and I do enjoy playing around with different use cases of Claude, I asked Claude Code to essentially come up with like this world-class personalized triathlon coaching program for me. I had to do an intake form and it asked me all the questions that it needed to ask me. I gave it all the context I needed to give. I synced it up to my Garmin, so it could read my data. And I was like, "This is cool. Like, this is pretty crazy. This is, for me, a useful way to get more structure for coaching." I have always maintained that I don't think it would ever be as good in this context as a human coach. And I've like earmarked that for something I might do down the track. But I was curious as a use case, and also just because I wanted to train for this thing. As you would be unsurprised to know, I have been following this program.

Jen: I'm sure you have.

Pete: Like, religiously. Because I'm an Upholder. I literally have not missed one single session, based on it. Every Sunday it reads my Garmin data and says, "Okay, here's where we're at in the program. Here's what you need to do next." Anyway, for whatever reason, a week ago, I was like, "Look, this triathlon is coming up in a week. You know, I'm twelve weeks into this program. I'm curious, now that you've got a new model, could you rate the program you created and my adherence to it? Like, how set up for success am I for this triathlon? Because it's a double the distance I did twelve months ago, and I'm like getting a bit nervous about it." It did a bunch of analysis. It looked online. You know, I'm looking at what world-class triathlon programs look like. And it came back up. "I rate this program a four out of ten." And I was like, "You suck. What do you mean a four out of ten? You created this freaking program."

Jen: Oh my god.

Pete: And I am like now just sitting with that and going, "Yeah, I guess it serves you right, Pete, for trusting your training to an AI." It felt like it was doing the right thing. And it felt cool. And it was fun. And I learned a lot. And at the end of the day, it's like, "Yeah, you know, during the build phase of your program, you didn't actually build, you just kept doing the same thing." And I was like, "That's because you told me to."

Jen: Oh my god. This is absolutely hilarious. Wow. Yes. If you entrust your success to a robot, you're going to end up with a four out of ten.

Pete: Damn it. I mean, it looks great. It did all the right things. It was like syncing to my watch. I was like, "This is impressive." And at the end of the day, the program it created was a four out of ten. And I had that moment of, "This sucks. Why did I do this? I should have just contacted a human and got a real program."

Jen: Huh. Yeah. So Pete, I guess the moral of the story is it's time to say goodbye to the FOBA and hello to the JOBU.

Pete: I couldn't have said it more ridiculously myself. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.