(Montage of clips from the episode)
00:39Melody: Okay. We’re going to test this. I guess this should work. Yeah. You want to talk your way to flip it? Okay.
00:47Melody: This is actually kind of fun because it feels more like a vlog to me. I guess it is a vlog. It’s my element.
00:57Henry: Your element? Yeah. Not mine.
01:00Melody: So we go this way. Okay. It’s a time stamp. Internet checkpoint. All right. We’re trying something new today, you guys. We’re walking. We’re walking.
Internet Checkpoint
01:11Melody: So this is what Henry calls a walking podcast.
01:13Henry: Walking podcast? Our sponsor. Cash. That’s a sauntercast. My friend told me.
01:18Melody: Well, it’s fun because I can actually just pause it and just show what it looks like. Our view. So I guess I’m used to holding the phone like this. Maybe do that. Maybe this is how you do it. The point five is nice. Maybe this is what we do, but we’re going to have to trade off because my arms.
01:33Henry: Yeah. So who knows. How long will we record this?
01:37Melody: Till we feel like it.
01:38Henry: Yeah. I am a little hungry.
01:40Melody: I feel like we do need to help people get into the episode more quickly. So maybe I do edit the first part.
01:49Henry: Yeah. Should we just start?
01:52Melody: Yeah, you can even start. And I sit down. Sit down.
01:57Henry: No, we can’t sit down.
02:00Melody: Yeah. Oh, look. See, someone was already sitting there. Sitting. Look at that. Someone already made a spot. Okay. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay, I guess I can try to sit here.
02:12Henry: Oh, is this the. This could be the intro.
02:16Melody: Intro. Okay.
02:18Henry: Welcome to Internet Checkpoint, episode two. Today is February, okay, the 24th. And it is 5:20 p.m. We’re seated on a park bench near Prospect Park.
02:35Melody: Yeah. Checkpoint. Checkpoint.
02:38Melody: I think the first thing we can do, if you wanted to just card what the AI news has been over the last two weeks. We’ll just use that to help figure out what we’re going to talk about this episode.
Two Weeks Offline
03:11Henry: I think the one thing I will mention is that since the last checkpoint, I’ve been on vacation the last two weeks. I thought I would have a lot of FOMO around Claude Code, and I thought that, I was in Japan for two weeks or Asia and I thought I would be using Claude the whole time.
03:25Henry: I actually was pretty much offline, not entirely offline, but I was not really coding. I was checking Twitter here and there, but I was surprised at how detached I was. I thought I would have a lot more FOMO, but I came back and everything was fine. So I’ll just say you don’t have to feel like there’s FOMO. You’ll be okay. It feels like if you’re just completely connected to the internet constantly, it’ll feel like everyone’s going a million miles an hour and that you’re missing out. But all to say, you’ll be okay. Do you have any thoughts on that?
03:44Melody: On that? Yeah. Well, you’re just saying how a lot of friends are telling you.
03:48Henry: Yeah, they’re like getting into it now. So there’s people that are obviously not in the space. They don’t know anything about Claude, they don’t even know it exists. And they’re obviously living their life. We’re still early.
04:00Henry: Do we need, I don’t think trying to tell people that they’re going to lose their job and they’re going to be in the permanent underclass is going to help anyone? In any way, anyway. So I think it’s cool to encourage people to use new tools, but I don’t think we need to scare them into using it.
04:16Melody: Yeah, this is an experiment. And doing this outside and, honestly, my arm is already a little tired.
04:26Henry: That’s fine. So I’ll see how long this lasts. Just go. You just go.
04:35Melody: Sure. Yeah. Well, all right. Henry, what did Claude say?
Open Claw and Maintainers
04:44Henry: The last two weeks. Let’s see. Well, I already mentioned OpenClaw, so I guess in the last two weeks has been an OpenClaw craze.
05:00Melody: Yeah. I saw, well, Peter, the founder creator, he got, the, joint, sniped by, so the right word, swooped up by, snatched up by OpenAI. And they’re making a foundation. So, foundation. It’s open source, but I don’t know the extent of what that relationship looks like. But he’s still working on it.
05:30Henry: Okay. Every day, which is interesting to Henry, who previously, who is very involved in the open source community and previously maintained a very large open source project.
05:42Melody: Yeah. He had a tweet a few days ago that was kind of like a call for maintainers.
05:58Henry: Yeah. And again, even that tweet went pretty big. And of course, all the responses are like, why don’t you use AI to review all the pull requests? And obviously someone could do that. But in the end you still need someone to review it. And it’s good or interesting that he himself would say that. Because you would think out of all the people in the world, he would be the most AI pilled.
06:22Melody: And he did have another tweet later. He sent like 50 agents to try to triage the PR.
06:22Henry: So obviously people have to actually review it. And then I think they’ve been working on mostly security because that’s the main concern people have, right? Not that it wasn’t secure before. I think in the sense that you need a lot more documentation and framing that this is a thing that you run on your computer, it could do anything.
06:46Melody: Yeah. And I think there’s some other more news about people are like, I think Google was like, not allowing you to use OpenClaw for the Gemini subscription.
07:00Henry: Yeah. But I’m interested because I feel like the future of open source in some sense is going to be shaped by whatever happens to this project. In terms of how do you maintain a project with one person but with a few volunteers? And then what does that look like when you’re literally getting a thousand issues a day?
07:20Melody: Yeah. I even vibe coded a dashboard to see it.
07:20Henry: Anyway, they tell you the rate of how many issues are getting opened and closed and whether it’s increasing or not. I know there’s a lot of good questions around how do you find who’s a good potential maintainer? How do you trust people? All the non-technical stuff that you can use AI and tech to help you with. But ultimately you need to make a decision.
What Is Open Source?
07:50Melody: Yeah. I think there’s going to be a number of people who have never heard of open source. But actually should we keep walking?
07:55Henry: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This is fun. It’s just like a random idea.
08:00Melody: Yeah. Henry. Mr. Open source, can you please elaborate on what open source is for the unacquainted?
08:24Henry: All right. My simple definition is you can look at, source as referring to source code. Which is just programming, the code that people write. Which I would say is similar to a recipe for if you’re cooking, but it’s like the recipe for making a program. And then open source is, I would say, as opposed to closed source. And if I’m going to use a recipe metaphor, then if you like the Coke formula, if it was closed, proprietary, people want to know about it. So then what if you purposely wanted people to know about it? That’s kind of like open source.
09:10Henry: And then, another analogy is Wikipedia. Most of us probably use it. All of the AI is trained on it. And it’s open not because it’s free, but also because anyone can also contribute. But there’s also, you could say, admins or maintainers. They can edit it. They have access to reject things or review things. And the same thing in open source, open source is more of a philosophy on how to organize or govern a project. And it seems increasingly important, because it’s open source AI, most of the software you use is open source. All the AI that trains, they’re training on code that was on GitHub or in different places.
Into the Snow
10:18Melody: What’s the motivation for open source, though? That’s a good question because that’s the technical foundation. Well, what do you think actually?
10:30Henry: It does seem philosophical. Or why do you think someone would do open source?
10:40Melody: It feels like when you think of technology as contributing to a larger body. As opposed to a competitive thing. So if you believe that we’re all trying to progress and build technology together, you open source it so that other people can look at the code and be able to use it and improve upon it.
11:00Henry: Yeah.
11:00Melody: I’m gonna showcase our view. Okay. We just walked. We’re in this slushy. We just walked to Grand Army Plaza, and now we’re walking over. Walking over?
11:10Henry: Yeah.
11:10Melody: Okay. I guess the other thing to mention is that today is the day after this really big blizzard. Storm. It is.
11:20Melody: So I think the city did a really good job. Oh my gosh. Oh, wow. It’s like it’s clear. The city did a really good job of clearing the snow, and then I almost just slipped.
11:40Melody: Wow. Look how pretty this is.
11:40Henry: See, this is like. It’s funny because this is part Henry style sauntercast. And part of my style, which is vlog.
11:50Melody: So we’re blending the two here, which I think is kind of fun.
11:50Henry: Yeah. It’s fun. But we don’t know what we’re doing.
11:58Melody: Well, look how pretty it is. I’m actually quite happy we’re here. I don’t think I would have come down. Oh, wow. Oh, my gosh, it’s so pretty. Wait, should we walk this way or. Wow. So pretty.
12:10Henry: Let’s see. Should we go there?
12:10Melody: Well, that’s so cute. Should we go? Okay, we’re going to choose if we go this way.
12:21Henry: I don’t know. This way. That’s why. You think this way? Yeah. Okay.
12:30Melody: Okay. That’s all right. Yeah. You’re saying, why do you think people would do open source? And it’s collaborative.
12:44Henry: Yeah, it feels like a more collaborative way of working. Yeah. But it feels very unique to the technology sector.
12:49Melody: Well that’s interesting right. Like why.
12:52Henry: I think that’s an important question. Why does it seem unique? The other industry, I guess if you want to call it that, I wouldn’t call it an industry, but it’s just science, right. Science is supposed to also be like open research.
13:08Melody: Oh, sorry. It’s so. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. Sauntercast. Wow. Beautiful.
13:17Henry: Okay. I think there’s going to be a lot of that. That’s okay. That’s part of it. It’s so pretty.
13:24Melody: Okay. This is beautiful. So, yeah, in the sciences, it should be open. And that’s why the journals and stuff, right? Once someone discovers something and they share with everyone, you can’t really prevent people from learning from it. Iterating and sharing it back.
13:40Henry: So the idea is truth and knowledge is shared with everybody. And I know people think science is this huge thing, but it’s also individual people. And I think it’s similar with open source.
The XKCD Dependency Comic
14:06Melody: I don’t know if you’ve seen that XKCD comic, which I call dependency? It’s like, think of a bunch of Jenga blocks on the bottom.
14:15Henry: Oh, my gosh, it’s so pretty. I’m so sorry. It’s so pretty.
14:20Melody: Okay. But, yeah, the dependency thing. You’ve shown me this because that’s basically what you are with Babel.
14:34Henry: It was a random dude that is the only person working on the project. Nobody knows how it works. And they’re doing it in their free time. And then maybe they retire and they have kids or something happens to them, and what are you going to do about it?
14:58Melody: Yeah. So I guess the difference is, with science, maybe also people emphasize too much about discovery. But it’s slippery.
15:05Henry: The issue in science has always been the replication. So be careful. The replication crisis thing where it’s hard to reproduce what people have done. So that maybe, I might say is similar to maintenance work. No one wants to do it, but it’s really important.
15:20Melody: So precisely. Like. Do that one looks treacherous when you go there.
15:30Henry: Well, that looks like we’re going to slip. Okay. Certainly. But I think we kind of have. I kind of do want to go down there just because I want to go through that. So. Yeah. Okay. Let’s just. Okay.
15:40Melody: This looks so easy. Wait. How do I not make this look, okay. Okay.
15:48Henry: So do you just keep all this in the sauntercast? Yeah. Why?
15:54Melody: Oh. Careful, careful, careful. I think it’s more fun.
15:57Henry: Yeah, I think so. I think I mentioned it last time. It helps me to remember that life is about being interrupted and being okay with it.
16:14Melody: Yeah. Henry, I think you might enjoy vlogging.
16:14Henry: Oh, yeah. I think it feels like a vlog. This is like a vlog, but I think yours is like an audio only vlog.
16:25Melody: No, it’s hard for me to do it if it’s just by myself. I see. Yeah. I’m not used to talking to camera by myself.
16:36Henry: Yeah. And then soon. Oh, okay.
16:40Melody: Well, you’ll get used to it. Yeah. Well, I think it’s more fun with other people. Yeah. Soon we’re going to switch this camera off to you. Okay.
16:50Henry: Oh, no, I’m already learning. I have to do this on the fly. Okay. Yeah, well, it’s not too hard.
17:00Melody: No, I know. Not physically.
17:05Melody: Oh, look how pretty this is. Oops. Gorgeous. Beautiful. Wow. That’s cool. Amazing. Literally obsessed.
17:10Melody: Oh, my gosh, it’s so pretty. Oh, they do it. Yeah. There’s all these snowmen. Yeah. I think it’s cool. Okay. Wow. Okay.
17:27Melody: So pretty. Okay. I think it’s going to be a little hard to try to multitask. All right.
”This Is Like Open Source”
18:00Henry: Wow. I should make a metaphor.
18:15Henry: This is like open source. This is, if everyone was, everything, it was for how beautiful things could be. The meme of the future. All open source.
18:15Melody: All right. Okay, so that’s open source. I could keep going forever.
18:18Henry: Yeah. Well, people contribute. There’s a million reasons.
18:22Melody: Yeah. But I feel like we caught the gist of it. Yeah.
18:27Henry: I’ll say one other aspect then. Okay. And maybe in relation to OpenClaw.
Free as in Speech
18:40Henry: Yeah, history is the one of the guys that started this thing called the free software movement, which is before. He had a printer that would not work. And they kept messing up and he’s like, I know how to program. Why can’t I modify the code of this printer? Because it’s proprietary. And it kind of radicalized him to be like, all software should be free. As in open, to modification, to reading it, all this stuff. And so it’s kind of a political statement to make.
19:01Henry: And people like to use the phrase free as in speech, not free as in beer. It’s not open source or free software in that it’s free as you don’t have to pay money. But it’s almost like a right that if you buy a phone or you buy a vacuum or whatever, you should be able to change the hardware and the software in the way that you want. And the company shouldn’t be able to prevent you from doing that. Because they’re trying to make money or they think they know better.
19:30Melody: So there’s like a freedom from the consumer. Yeah. And I think that’s related to open source too, right. It’s like we’re all stuck. One example is I’m using Facebook or Twitter and to the whims of the creators of that.
19:53Henry: There’s so many… what do you think the snowman has to think about open source?
20:00Melody: I don’t know. It’s a thumbs up. Yeah, a thumbs up.
20:00Henry: Was it hitchhiking?
20:05Melody: Yeah. Okay, so you’re saying, just another reason why open source is good. Not just because you want to collaborate with people, but it’s like freedom for people. For anyone that uses the thing that is made, a tool.
20:21Henry: And there’s another phrase people use called the right to repair. Speaking of, as a farmer, you buy this tractor and it doesn’t even work, and you can’t even fix it yourself. You have to go to them, or you buy a car.
20:43Melody: Like a car, right? Yeah. It’s just chilling. So I feel like if you’re forced to go somewhere to fix the thing, you shouldn’t have to be forced to go somewhere.
Everyone Building in the Snow
21:10Henry: Yeah. I also just think it’s promoting values that are good for us as a people. Humanity. And also, I think it also points to a different form of governance. That’s where it feels very philosophical. Like I even like to believe that not everything needs to be administered or governed by either the state or the market. Meaning government or companies. And there are areas or situations where people can govern themselves through rules and things that don’t need a third party.
22:00Melody: Exactly. Yeah. And it’s empowering. I think that’s really what it’s about. Yeah. 100%.
22:05Henry: One second. Interruptions but yeah. Everyone’s bringing their own little, see how beautiful it is when you can learn to, or you could just build whatever you want. This is it. This is like open source.
22:15Melody: Yeah. Is it free? The freedom?
22:18Henry: Well, I was like, no. It’s like, open. The raw materials. Right? To create whatever. Regulating. Oh, you have to use it in a certain way.
22:30Melody: So you can use it to build this bench. You can use it to build the snowman. It’s like a public source situation. Everyone benefits.
22:40Henry: Yeah. I like it all the different projects. The guy in the back is sliding down. It’s so fun.
22:48Melody: Oh, nice. I love Prospect Park. I think it’s why it’s so big. This part? Yeah. We love when community comes together.
23:00Henry: Yeah. And that’s what open source is. Yeah. I think that’s one of my big takeaways just from my move to New York. And probably because I’ve been meeting more open source people, like this guy. But I think you realize that technology doesn’t have to be married to a commercial sort of mindset or individualistic.
23:20Melody: Yes. I feel like the Silicon Valley mindset is very much like tech is only for commercial interests and values. And it doesn’t have to be that way. And it’s not that it’s necessarily bad. It’s just, I don’t think it’s a one-to-one relationship, which I think is the important thing.
Tragedy of the Commons
23:48Henry: No. See, and then this is why we can’t have nice things. Who is going to handle the poop? And why would you just leave the poop in the snow?
24:00Melody: Commons. Tragedy of the commons.
24:05Henry: So what happens? What’s the. Well, that’s why people say what happens with open source. It’s a commons. And everyone’s very selfish. And so we have to have the state come in or the market come in to solve all the problems.
24:17Melody: And I don’t think doing that is going to solve everything. Like you said it’s not that we shouldn’t be thinking. So absolute. So there’s room for multiple ways of doing things.
24:30Henry: Yeah. What do you think this umbrella means? What is. Oh, I think it means. There’s this. Okay. I guess it’s another thing that happens is, why did you build that? The question. In open source. Why does this thing exist?
24:55Melody: That’s good. Yeah. It gets people to question things.
25:05Melody: So pretty. Just observe. Yeah. I hope this is an interesting experiment for people.
200K Stars and Eternal September
25:15Melody: I guess we can use this. I was a little stand. Okay. Any last thoughts on open source? I feel like that’s helpful context and then, yeah, just to summarize.
25:49Melody: I feel like a lot of this is relevant right now to the last two weeks in tech. And OpenClaw is probably one of the fastest growing or is growing.
26:00Henry: Because I think it was 200,000 GitHub stars and it’s kind of like likes. In a month or something.
26:10Melody: Yeah. Crazy. If you compare it with any other big project, it’s straight up.
26:16Henry: So. Yeah. Exactly. Open to the right. Or just straight. Yeah. I’ll go online. Vertical line.
26:30Melody: And I think what happens with that project, open source has always been developer centric or coder centric. And this is like for a bit more people that aren’t professional programmers to experience it. And I think that’s good. Bring in people that you don’t need programming to be. I guess you can use or get GitHub by people that are only programmers, even though, yes, there’s the security issues and not knowing it.
27:11Henry: And I think that this is a problem. Open source is like even the word open source implies that open source is only about code. And so if we can incorporate other aspects, I think that would be cool. In your situation, what if there was open source design? Or what does that look like for someone to get involved in something that’s not writing code? Documentation, marketing, branding, etc.
27:31Melody: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like part of why this line is up into the right is it’s emblematic of this larger flash in the pan moment or whatever you want to call it. It’s just such a weird moment again, where everyone is now having access to GitHub, or to code because of Claude. Right? Was I using GitHub repos? I don’t even know what these things are called, but I use them, right? I just tell Claude to just do it. But did I ever engage with GitHub like this before? No. So part of the 200K whatever likes is that the TAM has opened up. The user base has, it’s not like of the existing developers this is a faster growing project. It’s simply that who can call themselves a developer has largely expanded. Right?
29:00Henry: Yeah. Even on that, I think there’s so many trade offs. I think at the same time, we don’t want to gatekeep things that we want to share with people. But then at the same time, when too many people that are new come into a community, people always say the eternal September thing.
29:19Melody: No. But basically?
29:20Henry: Basically, people from Usenet, like an old forum, every year, this month, everyone just starts joining in. They don’t know the culture, conventions, and it changes the community in a sense. Or changes it completely. And so maybe people go somewhere else. So I think on Reddit, say you have a really big subreddit. All these people come in then these, a small group of people might be like, oh, I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m gonna make a new one. And it just keeps happening. Smaller and smaller. Because it feels like it’s getting diluted and there’s not enough time for people to adapt. Both new people and old people.
30:01Henry: So I think a huge problem will be onboarding and offboarding. Which are all people problems.
30:05Melody: Well, yeah. That’s crazy. We can say this is a metaphor. The tree is the existing project and the vine is all the new people choking out the project?
30:20Henry: Oh, yeah. Like the Garden of Eden. Well, no, it’s just that we’re leeching off of the existing thing.
30:33Melody: Then that’s cool. Hey, give us a thumbs up, Henry. Okay. Nice.
30:40Henry: It’s like a tour through everyone’s creations. Yeah.
30:40Melody: All right. Ready? Do you have gloves? I had to put your other gloves on. Yeah. It’s going to be time soon to hand off.
30:52Henry: Hand off? Your hand off now? Yeah, maybe.
30:55Melody: Okay. You’re ready for this? I just have to be perfect. You just have to make sure you don’t. Yeah, you can look at it. Okay, let’s make sure that there is a covering. I think it’s fine.
31:05Henry: Okay. That’s the real lesson. You just have to. Yeah, exactly.
31:07Melody: Okay. All right. You tired? I just started. I’ve been holding it up. I know, I know, I know. Okay. Once you get too tired. I’ve been changing up the. Yeah. So you can kind of put it. Like we’re figuring this out. Okay. But yeah, to make sure it’s kind of pointed.
31:30Henry: Yeah. Okay. Is it, no. Well, good. Right. Okay. Yeah, I got it. All right.
31:38Melody: She’s like a robot. I’m sorry. We need, we were going to do it Insta360, but we were not prepared. We’re just vibing, you know?
31:45Henry: Yeah. I’m. We’re just vibing, okay? Just vibing through life.
31:46Melody: Vibing through life. Wasn’t that Brian Johnson tweet about. Oh yeah. What was it he said God was vibing. He thought God was vibe coding in the beginning. He just had a prompt or something. What was it?
32:04Henry: Yeah. I guess he was saying that the prompt was, quote unquote, simple.
32:10Melody: Zero. Okay. That’s fine. It’s your workout.
32:12Melody: Another one. There’s been a lot of people tweeting about Jesus these days. Yeah. They got Brian Johnson tweeting about how God was the original vibe coder. I think that’s what it was. Okay, then we got Elon Musk saying, I follow the teachings of Jesus. Or he said, you follow his, the creator or something.
32:12Henry: Yeah, I think something like that. No, he said, I follow the teachings of Jesus. Oh, wow.
32:13Melody: Yeah. Anyways, that’s another internet checkpoint moment. Yeah.
32:14Henry: It’s a day for the last. I know, I know, I know, but why don’t we do it. Okay, so then the other way to do it is like this.
32:17Melody: I said Chase coming out of the tree. Yeah. And then. Okay, you can hold it with that arm, or you can hold it with that arm.
32:20Henry: Okay. Yeah. And then you can also rest your. Yeah. Elbow.
32:22Melody: Oh, yeah. Oh. That’s better. Yeah. That’s all I wanted to do. Give me hands free.
32:25Henry: Oh, man. Wow. That is a face. Okay, now you have to press stop.
32:28Melody: Oh, yeah. This vlogger. Yeah. Okay. And then we got to go. Wow. That’s cool.
32:35Henry: It’s cool. Right?
32:37Melody: All right. Interesting. What else is going on? We started listing out the topics, and then we just started to go down one avenue on topics.
32:37Henry: Oh, yeah. The first topic was. Okay. We covered OpenClaw a little bit. We covered the fact that we talked about open source. We talked about the fact that he went to OpenAI.
32:50Melody: We didn’t say anything about it, but yeah. What was the other thing, it was like the beginning. I think one other thing big in AI news, there was, it was about, I think this time it was Google that wasn’t allowing you to use your sub to use OpenClaw.
32:59Henry: So Claude already did her. Is not OpenClaw. But yeah, it’s interesting. There’s the whole distillation stuff, but I don’t have anything.
33:00Melody: Okay, so I actually don’t know about this distillation thing, so we can talk about that for a minute. But highly controversial.
33:10Henry: Okay. Oh, and then we can talk about the meta superintelligence. Okay.
33:21Melody: What else? Which is also related to, I think. I don’t know, it’s just. Oh, is it slippery? Yeah. It’s okay. You could use your other hand, too.
Everything Was Fine
33:40Melody: I just want to make sure we do a little round up. If there’s other things I can look at my.
33:45Henry: I will say my biggest takeaway, like I said at the beginning, was, I thought I would have so much FOMO. And that I would be just plotting the last.
33:55Melody: Like I just didn’t. Yeah, that’s what I do here. I’m really tired.
34:02Henry: Like, I think in the last checkpoint, I was like, don’t arrest like, this person. Why? They gave it boobies. Oh, yeah. Right. Like why? I don’t know. Okay, maybe we cut that out.
34:18Melody: Okay. Do we stick with it if you want. You don’t have to keep going. I don’t know. It’s fine. Okay. That’s fine.
34:30Henry: Yeah, I think. Why did you think that you would feel it? While you were, I know you. Maybe you were feeling it earlier, but why, I guess.
34:40Melody: Well, a big part of even our last internet checkpoint was because we felt like everything was happening a million miles an hour, and I felt like my head was spinning every single day. I was on Twitter and blah, blah, blah, and I thought that two weeks away, everything would change. I needed to keep up and stuff.
35:02Melody: And then I went to Japan for two weeks. I skied, I was just two now and everything. And then I came back and everything was fine. Maybe in the margins, I did an hour of work in the evening, hour of work in the morning. Or just throughout the day. But never like, oh my gosh Carol, I wasn’t in my intense Claude-pilledness as I was before.
35:24Henry: Yeah, I think that was the topic of conversation with some of the folks there because they also are vibe coders and stuff, too. And I think there’s definitely a Twitter, everyone’s talking about ChatGPT psychosis. It’s like you could be in Twitter psychosis too. And I think the whole industry can tell you that you’re falling behind if you don’t figure this out, if you’re not working 24/7, you’re going to fall into this permanent underclass or whatever.
35:56Henry: Yeah. And it’s just like, I go this way. Oh, yeah. Not slippery. Okay.
36:05Henry: They were saying. But I think that they talked about it last time, right? Everyone makes it feel like things are just going to happen to you and you can’t do anything about it. And we just choosing to not have agency.
36:23Henry: Totally. Yeah. But I think it was just a big relief to come back and be like, actually things are just exactly the same. It’s always been that way.
36:36Melody: It’s always been like that. Yeah. It’s just interesting, the bubble we find ourselves in.
36:49Henry: Yes. So I think that is a huge learning for me and makes me feel more at peace with not having to Claude every single night, or Claude every single day for 12 hours a day, which I was in January and not taking care of myself.
37:05Melody: Right. So anyways, it’s Lunar New Year, you guys. New year. This is my official new year 2026. This is your new year, Lunar New Year.
37:25Henry: Obviously, because I didn’t have my stuff together.
37:25Melody: We’re looking at the snow. Yeah, there’s always another one.
37:30Melody: Oh, that path is cleared. Why don’t we take this path? Oh, okay. Yeah. And then we can start to walk back out of the park because it’s getting dark. Okay. And I’m getting hungry.
37:51Henry: Are you hungry?
37:51Melody: Yeah.
37:55Henry: Okay. Continue. Okay. So? So I’ll say that, in summary. The reason why you feel good about it is just the experience of not.
38:10Melody: You can use that. No. Okay. Yeah. Uncovering. Yeah. Yeah. Like that. Okay. The experience of being away and then everything was fine is like, that’s what people need to be like, oh, yeah. It’s just not like we’ve been through many technological disruptions in the past.
38:38Melody: And I think the media and everyone around you will freak you out into believing that whatever that current doom or narrative is. And I think it’s important for all of us to know that yes, you can get ahead, and yes, you can slip behind potentially. But actually everything will be okay. You have to. Yeah.
38:42Henry: I just think that you don’t have to, that the things that are still ultimately valuable will still be valuable. And I use, countries not on the blogging game.
39:00Melody: I don’t think I want to be on it. Yeah. Okay. You just want to saunter. Yeah. You don’t want to cast.
39:10Henry: Yeah. Or just audio? That’s right. Yeah. I want people want to visualize where we are instead of.
39:15Melody: Yeah, right. That looks crazy. Look at that on the right.
39:20Henry: Yeah, but then we can’t do this.
39:22Melody: That’s true. I know I have to look at the picture. Yeah. That’s cool. Some dinosaur. No, it’s like a giant bird.
39:27Melody: Anyways, I’m going through this beautiful park talking about. Talking about opening. Well, I guess it’s life. Life in this current technological moment. That is what internet checkpoint is. Yeah. The value of our lives.
Go Back to Just Being People
39:27Henry: Another thing I saw, I had a friend and I was tweeting about. All right, this is on this guy, but he said, I guess they’re all talking about how teachers and students and whether it’s cheating or using AI or how do we use it and saying if, or even sending emails, like, if I send an email through AI and then using AI to help you read it. Because it’s really long. Then it’s like both the AIs are doing something like, what are we doing?
39:47Henry: And then it’s like, funny. I don’t think it’s a real quote from Zizek, but it was like, if the teacher is automated by the AI and the student’s assignment is also automated, and then the robots are doing their thing. Then we can just talk to each other and learn. Get rid of the middleman.
40:07Melody: And it’s like, go back to just being people. And I think I’ve heard people say the same thing is like, maybe when you find out everything is fake, people want to seek what’s real. And maybe we’ll start meeting in person more, you know?
40:20Henry: Yeah. It’s like encouraging people to find community. And that’s a very positive notion.
40:29Melody: Yeah. I don’t want to believe that people don’t care about learning. They don’t care about the truth. They don’t care about trying to change the world or make themselves better, or their family or their friends. We’re just going to passively doom scroll our brain right ourselves away. It’s like. Yeah, I think ultimately you realize that it’s not good. And people want the opportunity to change. We just need to give them, or ourselves, you know, whether it’s imagination or inspiration.
40:53Henry: I think even, I know you were talking earlier, Alyssa. Yeah. Oh, that whole thing that happened, Alyssa Liu happened.
41:00Melody: That is a big deal. I freaking love her. There’s so much to talk about there. Yeah, there’s a lot. In relation to this. I’m already thinking about so much right now. Wait wait wait.
41:10Melody: No no, no. It’s inspiring to hear someone that first says that she’s willing to go through the pain. She does things on her own schedule. I know she’s in a certain position, but it’s just inspiring to hear someone, she doesn’t do the hustle culture, trying so hard. But obviously she cares about what she’s doing and she’s internally motivated.
41:37Melody: 100%. And also, we’re not trying to medicate ourselves or, I guess she cares about mental health and that sort of thing. So I just feel like that’s a cool role model, antidote to this kind of feeling.
42:00Henry: So mature at 20 years old.
42:02Melody: Yeah. Crazy. It’s crazy. She got it.
42:05Henry: The reason why I loved, first of all, even before I knew about what she was saying, I think I watched her skate and that. Yeah, I nearly cried watching her skate. And this was before I even understood her philosophy behind anything. Just you can see it.
42:19Melody: You could see it. Yeah. And then it’s like the pure joy. You could just. Sunset. And then something even thinking about.
Striving versus Being
42:19Melody: It’s really been a theme for this year. I remember I was going to do one of those Instagram, have you seen those? No. But essentially, did you see one? I had posted this tweet where it was like the difference between striving and being. Okay, so I think that’s the two. Oh that’s, I know okay. Yeah. Those are the two categories I’ve been thinking a lot about this year. Okay.
43:03Melody: I think what I’m trying to say is that so much of how we operate is often we’re striving towards these worldly ideals, but really we’re happiest or doing our best work when we’re simply just being and understanding what our nature is, our calling. And just trying to fulfill it to its uttermost. I don’t know, I’m not explaining it that well, but does that make sense to you?
43:33Henry: Yeah, I get it, but you’ve heard the word striver, like this person is such a striver. It’s like a derogatory way of calling someone.
43:40Melody: Is that just like a try hard? Yeah. Like trying too hard.
43:59Henry: And I just feel like striving implies contorting yourself. Towards, you’re kind of in an unnatural way. And it’s just not you. It’s like we’ve all been there, we’re trying to be something. You’re trying to fit yourself to that ideal.
44:25Melody: Exactly. Where it’s like being, human being, feels like, what does it mean to understand your calling, who you’re meant to be and just trying to lean into that? And recovering, I just feel like my whole journey has been a lot of striving versus being. It’s like trying to conform to, and I think that was kind of also her story too, where she had to, and it’s not even like she was striving per se, but she was told to strive, right? She had these somewhat abusive coaches. And I don’t know the full story. So I don’t want to fully speak on what had happened.
45:02Melody: But she’s really forced to conform to training and doing things in a very certain way. But really the unlock was when she did it her own way, right?
45:09Henry: Yeah, I heard that at least. I don’t know about the backstory, but it sounds like she got to choose her, the song, the outfit. Like everything.
45:20Melody: And then it’s like, cool. You have all that freedom. And then obviously you do well too. Exactly. And so you don’t have to try so hard. Yeah.
45:27Henry: Just trying to live life or whatever. Exactly. And so I think that’s what I hope for most people, how do we recover that sense of freedom and joy? How do we do the kind of work or work in a way where, or what was that term you shared?
Wu Wei
45:54Henry: Wu wei?
45:55Melody: Oh yeah. You want to explain that?
45:57Henry: Yeah, it’s Chinese, I guess, and from a Taoist view, but it means effortless effort. So it’s the same idea as you’re not trying, but you’re able to do things. And so I think anyone that is a master at their craft, an athlete, they practiced so hard so they can make it look effortless.
46:22Henry: Or I think an analogy people use is someone that can use a sword, a butcher or carver, sculpture creator. They know how to use it in a way that is elegant. And feels effortless. But they’ve also put in the work. So it’s not like you’re just sitting there doing nothing. You’re not passive per se, but I don’t think you’re going to have anxiety over your performance. And that’s what is allowing you to be so free.
46:55Henry: Like you said, everyone can see it, I think. And you only have to say anything inside your body. It kind of shows that you’re relaxed. You train your body in a way to naturally do that without needing to force this kind of regimented thing.
47:10Melody: Exactly. Yeah. It’s a balance. So that’s like I just described those categories as striving versus being. And I think it’s just learning to recover, everyone’s learning to recover how to just be.
47:27Henry: Well what does that look like for you? Because you’re saying that’s something that’s.
47:57Melody: Yeah I think. Or what is it looking like to. Yeah. I feel like leaning into the being portion. We should talk about that. Because we’re such in a mode of striving and doing. Work for people isn’t really about doing things because you feel like it, it’s because you’re getting paid. So it’s like, what is being?
48:27Henry: Yeah, even I don’t even know if we have to. Oh, yeah. Totally. Well, I think this is all related to, remember talking about just tweeting the shower thought type of thing?
48:41Melody: Oh, okay. I feel like it’s the intuition piece. Obviously have to train up your intuition. But I think for us to both train up and trust our intuition. And I think that’s how I’m thinking about it, where even when it comes to content, the ideas that I act upon. I think you’ve developed a certain sense and instincts to make it become second nature in a way.
Audience of One
49:16Melody: And then also just wanting to make stuff that I want to make just for the sake of making it. I think that’s the ultimate freedom. Not being. I think though. Okay. So this is the corollary. It’s the content you put out to attract an audience. That’s striving content to me when you’re like, I’m going to make this content to go viral. Or, I’m going to use this format.
49:41Henry: Yeah. Why? It’s so standardized.
49:45Melody: Because you know it works. Because it’s a. It doesn’t work. But I guess your point is that it changes you and it’s like, yeah, if you really want to make for yourself. It’s almost like making is helping you discover who you are. And exactly. If I stay in this format I’m not really exploring that.
50:05Melody: If the goal is to do that, I think that makes me like what we’re doing. We’re just doing it because we feel like it. In the way that we kind of feel inspired to do so. And then hopefully it makes it more fun. Because otherwise it would just be like, oh, am I doing this.
50:20Henry: Exactly. And this is the whole, what differentiates us in the age of AI, right? It’s like there’s formulaic. And then there’s this sort of intuitive, more spontaneous. And I think the best ideas are ones that come up because of our weird quirks and experiences.
50:46Melody: And then you were suppressing it normally. Right? We suppress it because we think, oh, well, this is the formula. And the thing is that’s what the AI is really good at, formulaic. And that’s not to say, I love pop music. And pop music is formulaic and we’re going to get really, really good pop music. And there’s room for that.
51:12Henry: But I still think, I always think about New Jeans. New Jeans is pushing the boundaries of K-pop. And it’s because the producers and whatever, their references are much broader. And they’re intuitively bringing in different things.
51:43Melody: And there’s obviously a lot of ideas here. But I think that is where this whole being concept. Right. I’m just trying to.
52:09Henry: And I’m kind of thinking of a different, I had a podcast with my other, author and she wrote a book called Strange Rites. And I really liked her definition of this contrast, which is similar, and she called it intuitional versus institutional.
52:31Melody: Yes. That’s exactly.
52:33Henry: So, yeah, she was referring to actually religion and church. The things that people, and it’s institutional, but there’s a similar spectrum as well. Obviously if you become too intuitional, it’s like you’re kind of in your own.
52:53Melody: Exactly. And then the other one is kind of sterile because it’s too pop down. So I feel like there’s a balance.
53:12Henry: That was the challenge. A friend of mine when I posted about striving versus being, she was like, well, it still says in Scripture that we should strive to be like God. It’s like, yeah, or we should strive to be. And it’s like the people in the church. We should strive to conform, to be excellent. And it says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. It’s like, yeah, there is a lot of it. But it’s both and. And it’s just we have all these categories.
53:38Melody: That’s a very tough thing as well. They can all become good and bad. They can all become idols. Like the things that we’re oh, this is it. This is the answer. It’s like, it depends. Right?
53:55Henry: Totally. So it’s a balance. But I think maybe the reason why push towards this concept of being more is just because we’re a society full of striving. Celebrates striving, tells us to strive constantly. Which is burning us all out.
54:03Melody: Yeah. I guess it’s weird because it’s like when it’s producing weird stuff. But we’re sorry. You’re all right. Well, even, or you can say no.
54:22Henry: I was just thinking, sometimes I feel like society pushes both at the same time in different ways. So it’s like, you see all these people grinding, but then you also see people just doing nothing. As a reaction to what’s happening. That’s how we cope.
54:35Melody: So the whole thing with, yeah, the opposite of striving is nothing. When really it should be, how do you come into being more? We’re still doing, it’s still doing, but in a different way.
54:41Henry: Yeah. When we’re talking about active waiting or patience. I even think about, right now we have Lent and then before, Advent. Those are all periods of waiting. But you’re also doing. Fasting. It’s funny because you’re actually doing by not doing something, by not eating or something. And that’s a form of helping you have a contrast with a normal day to day.
55:05Melody: I think that’s different than striving. Yes. Or. Yeah, 100%. And you can fast in a striving way, right?
55:10Henry: Even the Bible talks about, yeah, they’re complaining, oh, I’m fasting. You have to treat me better. Exactly.
55:18Melody: Yeah, yeah. That’s good. I don’t know. You just even, you see these rappers or artists and everyone, it’s just better when they’re doing their thing in uniquely their way.
55:43Melody: I got really Rick Rubin pilled when he has this whole thing about not caring about the audience. And his whole thing is about, you need to just make your stuff and your perspective is valuable because it’s your perspective. And I think a lot of people discount that. But yeah, again, that’s all we have in this age of AI is what we are uniquely experiencing. And that’s what all art is. Music. From your perspective, whether it’s movies or stories from your perspective. And you can still incorporate obviously influences. We’re not a solo island. But it’s just that balance of, oh, I saw something. Which is from someone else. And then you create your remake as a result.
Spotify Broke the Album
56:36Henry: Yeah. Let’s go back to what you’re talking about with the teachers and students. Because I have similar thoughts there and my thoughts are not fully formed. We can talk about or we can just.
56:48Melody: Yeah, I think what’s on my mind is. You’re saying that by. How slippery this looks, I’m gonna, it’s a good moment to pause. We just, we’re almost back. Exited the park. Almost. Yeah. Almost back. And I’m wondering where we should go.
57:00Henry: Should we go to Grand Army over there? Yeah. Yeah.
57:10Melody: Okay. Let’s see. My app is kind of. Okay. It’s been nice. Oh, nice. So we had a little loop. Okay, cool. Yeah. We’re gonna post this. Yeah, I can listen.
57:24Melody: Okay, well, maybe we’ll do it this way for now. Teachers. Oh, yeah. So I think what’s on my mind is that if the teachers are creating assignments and students are filling out assignments, this is the worst case scenario. Usually it’s, oh, they’re both using AI. And it feels like. So then we’re gone.
57:45Melody: And then you’re saying, cut out the middleman and go back to.
57:48Henry: It’s like half a joke. But yeah.
57:50Melody: So we go back to what, the Socratic.
58:09Henry: I don’t know. I usually try not to think of one size fits all solution. And so for some teachers or some sets of teachers and students, maybe they do need to just go back to talking. And some people are going to do the whole, there’s no phones or anything. And other people might be more open to using AI in a different way. I want you to use AI for this assignment.
58:32Melody: Yeah. I’ve been thinking about this. I think what’s interesting is, you’re either returning to an older form of teaching or the teaching now has to operate at a higher level of abstraction. Which is similar to the coding thing. Right?
58:50Henry: Exactly. But I think the other piece that I think about is, assignments and teaching have been mechanized. In all these ways. And so it’s pointing out how not useless, but how broken, maybe these systems were in the first place.
59:02Melody: Yeah. It was always what, I love using that phrasing, but things were always broken. But now they’re just revealed. So you could see it.
59:30Henry: Exactly. And it makes me think about, this was one conversation we had.
59:33Melody: Oh, no. Are you okay? I’m fine. Now I’m gonna slip too. I’m. Well, this is very slippery.
59:45Henry: So hard in a second. So I slipped really hard twice on my back and on my arm.
59:52Melody: Like, what’s it called? Yeah. Right here. It’s crazy. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Okay, let’s just be careful.
1:00:01Henry: Okay. So this is another thing we’re talking about.
1:00:05Melody: Okay. Oh, okay. There’s a few different ideas. Oops. Whoops. Okay. It says here. Oh is it okay.
1:00:22Melody: Well I think with Spotify. Oh just we’re talking about Suno okay. And how popular, it’s right there, which is the AI generated music and that’s happening all over China.
1:00:30Melody: Watch out. I don’t want to. Okay, let’s do the front facing. Should we just sit on a bench?
1:00:40Henry: Okay. Yeah. This is going to get cold though.
1:00:45Melody: Do you. Okay. Really quickly the snow thing. Right. So AI generated music, it’s all over Asia.
1:01:00Henry: Oh, it’s, reflection is so bad now. It’s all over.
1:01:10Melody: Okay. I think mine’s particularly bad because these are new glasses from Asia. But, yeah, AI generated music. And it’s all over Asia right now. We’re in the ski lodge, we’re in, say or whatever, literally hearing it all the time. And the models have gotten better. It’s gotten better in the last 3 to 6 months because I was in Asia in September or something already. Or October already. It’s gotten much better.
1:01:53Melody: Okay, so what was on my mind is that most people are okay with slop. Once you get good enough, or even now, it’s pretty good, all over China and Asia, they’re just listening to this.
1:02:24Melody: And the way that I described it was that Spotify introduced this, Spotify changed listening behavior. To allow this. So for a long time, music people were critiquing the fact that Spotify was very singles driven, right? They broke down the album. Most people listen to the top 5 or 10 tracks on the artist page. Not the actual album. People aren’t listening to albums anymore.
1:02:53Melody: Now you have genre playlists. So you have hip hop workout playlists or just playlists in general on any playlist. So people are really listening to music by the vibe or mood. And for a serious artist that’s just not how they’ve intended to create music.
1:03:19Henry: I think people have talked about it. It slowly removes, it’s abstracting, just like we’re talking about, everything is all about this. Before, the album is one thing. With the artist in the name of the artist and the album intertwined. But then once you separate the playlist from the artist, you don’t even know who it is, and eventually you just don’t care.
1:03:40Melody: And now AI is coming for Spotify as well. That’s how I see it. But I feel like it’s on Spotify to have, it’s their fault for introducing this behavior. They broke down the album into these atomic units. Recreated, regurgitated, into a playlist. And now people just want to.
1:04:04Melody: And the bifurcation now is what apparently at Spotify it’s background versus foreground. And that’s what Netflix is doing. Right? I feel like across all content. And this has been something percolating in my head is this idea of background versus foreground, especially in the age of AI.
1:04:23Melody: We’re going to have a lot of background. What AI is going to do is generate a lot of background stuff. We’re going to have a lot of good background TV, a lot of good background movies, a lot of good background music. AI generated podcasts, good background.
1:04:43Henry: Literally there’s the Epstein files. Oh, you heard of this? So they created a whole podcast using AI by uploading the Epstein files. Using Eleven Labs. And now it’s a top ten podcast.
1:05:08Melody: Wow. I see. Great background. It’d be like taking Wikipedia and then any information, I want to listen to it, I don’t want to read it. So we’re going to have a lot of great, I think AI is going to be really good for the great background stuff. And I think that quality of background is going to go up.
1:05:40Melody: But again, all of the streamers, it’s their fault. Netflix has been promoting background TV. Spotify has been promoting background music. And all of the true artists have felt lost in this ecosystem.
1:06:05Henry: Right. But now I think AI is really going to make that divide much clearer.
1:06:10Melody: Because isn’t it because they don’t care, because they get money, because you’re paying for this? So I don’t care if it was actually foreground or background, in a sense, as long as you’re using it.
1:06:19Henry: Yeah. And I think the purpose of foreground content for Netflix or the streamers is that it’s the stuff that gets you to subscribe, oh, because Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are coming out with this movie, a lot of people resub or newly sub to watch. Because they can tell, it’s the first thing that you watch after you subscribe.
1:06:38Melody: Oh. They know what they did. Oh, I see. So yeah.
”Foreground Will Never Be Replaced”
1:06:42Melody: Anyways, I feel like it might be a good thing that AI is allowing people not to focus on the slop. You no longer have to be a slop machine.
1:06:55Henry: Well, you can, I guess. You’re forced to, not you, because you no longer can. Because before you could efficiently.
1:07:02Melody: I see, I see. There was still money to be made in slop arbitrage.
1:07:06Henry: Just going for the background.
1:07:08Melody: I was going for background. Okay. So we can all focus on foreground. I see. And I feel so strongly that foreground will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be replaced by AI.
1:07:33Melody: The foreground stuff will be helped by AI, right? Ben Affleck talks about how AI can be useful in the creative process. But I actually started listening to the recent episode with Joe Rogan. Because I really like their takes. I think Ben Affleck has had a really realistic pulse on AI.
1:08:01Melody: And they talk about some moments in the Iron Claw or something like that. This movie. But how all the most human real moments are the ones that make the movie. And that’s something that AI could never pick up on. The actor saw it, his dad was an alcoholic. So he was able to exhibit those characteristics. And AI will never, ever be able to understand.
1:08:25Henry: I think it can maybe come up with some ideas, but in the end, the way it’s actually implemented, concretely. I’ll give an analogy to code. I think when you vibe code something, it will get you maybe 80%, 90% there. In whether it’s 1 minute or 1 hour or one day. But when you want to actually release something for people to use, that 20% left takes forever. Because you really want it to work. You use the app and then all these random things, those small things that work.
1:08:58Melody: So maybe in the movie it’s the same thing. Yeah, that overall idea, I’m sure you could come up with it. But you said it doesn’t feel, it doesn’t suffer. It doesn’t know what it’s like to have a dad that’s an alcoholic. It’s the subtle thing.
1:09:17Henry: Yeah. Subtle acting. I was saying, the actor pulling up the sheets over, it’s the way that the alcoholic dad would negotiate with you would be just doing small little.
1:09:40Melody: Yeah. The macro and micro things that AI can’t pick up on. But that’s the thing that fully communicates this person is an alcoholic or this person.
1:10:01Henry: Until someone points it out and then they train on it. But exactly. Those things, I think one thing you can do to know, there’s always something in the center. Usually there’s nothing happening in the background that’s the main thing because why would you train on video that’s random videos? Until they decide, oh, you should. I guess it just depends on what the signal is. And we’re going to keep finding new signal.
1:10:23Melody: I think with that, someone was like, the stuff that’s written or digitized is only, how much of the world is, how much is trained on?
1:10:30Henry: Even of all of the reference materials in print, the stuff that’s digital is only very small. 1% or something. Maybe it’s more 10% or something like that, but even still.
1:10:47Melody: There’s a video about it. I forgot. Big data hunters or something. They’re trying to find, there’s no data anymore. So they got to start going after people’s personal journals and then.
1:11:00Henry: Yeah. That’s what. Exactly.
Temporal Bandwidth
1:11:11Melody: So I’ll just say that’s the background foreground thing. That’s good. And Ben Affleck’s not afraid of AI. There’s so many people, true artists. I think you just understand that there’s no way the AI is ever going to be able to come for art. It’s just a belief. It’s all belief.
1:11:34Henry: I’ll say that the thing that won’t be different is just that it might be harder. In certain ways, to be an artist because you can’t get away, or you can’t do the background to get to the foreground. The entry points are much harder. Being a designer, being a software engineer. The ladder is less clear. The ladder just changes. The tools actually allow the college students in film school to create films that they never could have. Because they don’t have budget or whatever. Every young person who is in design, who is in software, the ladder just changes. And you just need to get creative about how the script has changed.
1:12:29Melody: And yes, the path is less clear. But the other thing that’s been on my mind is, if you work in technology, if you work in media, inherently these industries change every 10 to 20 years. Think about when TV came out. TV totally disrupted radio. And then you have internet. Even print versus, like the printing press itself. And then photography obviously changed everything as well. Art. The world, something that’s been on my mind is the world never moves at a pace that’s convenient. And to us, that’s why it’s reality. Reality doesn’t fit. We must learn to adapt constantly. And that is our job as humans. The only constant is change.
1:13:14Henry: So, yeah, that whole thing. But I mean, we can still acknowledge that, even though that is how it is and how it’s always going to be, I guess people always are afraid that, yeah, this time’s different or all this stuff and it’s like, that’s kind of why I keep thinking that we need to understand what has happened. In the past. The only reason why you think it’s so new is because you don’t know. You have nothing to compare to. Nothing to stand on. In order to understand where you are, you need two points. You can’t just be there. You’re lost. And so if you understand history somewhat, then you might be like, oh wow.
1:13:53Henry: It’s not the same thing. But the whole thing like history rhymes and it feels the same in certain ways. It’s not exactly the same. But maybe we can learn the lessons of what people have been dealing with in the past.
1:14:13Melody: And that’s why reading old books is really helpful. Not just because it’s not AI written, but because you simultaneously see that it’s the same but also different. And I feel like it gives you perspective.
1:14:38Melody: I think I shared this before, I really like this notion of, it’s like, it’s chronological. I think the word was, I’m forgetting it now, but basically. Oh, yeah. Temporal bandwidth. That was the word. How much time is in your mind of how you can, you know, bandwidth is how much you can fit. And so it’s like, I think because of social media, AI, the two week thing, our bandwidth is only like two weeks or one day or one second. But then when you read history, you can expand. Oh, wow, there’s more than just what’s happening at this moment online. You get out of life and it’s like, wow, it’s so complicated. There’s so much in two weeks and everything’s.
1:15:21Henry: Oh, okay. Yeah. Totally. I think the main thing is understanding that when we don’t understand something, our first instinct is to be afraid. And it’s natural. But that’s why we need community. That’s why we do understand our, I guess the people that came before us, that have talked about literally the same things for the last thousands of years.
1:15:50Henry: That’s why we have tradition. That’s how we have culture. Culture isn’t just, well, yeah, I mean, that’s just art. Art is about expressing what’s happening in this moment and that snapshot of how people were feeling and how they were dealing with it. Whatever there was about life and death and having kids and the things that are going on, war, all that stuff. That’s what art is about. And we’re talking about how it’s going to be gone. It’s like there’s no way. There’s going to be art that’s created because of this. So it’s like, again, we’re robbing ourselves of the opportunity to create art.
The Checkpoint
1:16:38Melody: Yeah. Good stuff. It’s getting cold.
1:16:42Henry: Yeah. You can start to walk. We really went in that way then.
1:17:00Melody: So I think. Yeah, it’s been two weeks since our last checkpoint. I think we talked about a few big things. We didn’t talk about some other AI news, like the distillation or the meta superintelligence and stuff, but I think there’s just, I think we understand that there has been a lot going on. That will continue to happen.
1:17:26Melody: And not like we’re going to just, I think people, there’s always going to be a new technology or something new to have FOMO about. And I think more than anything. Yeah. Back to talking about being an artist. The number one job as an artist is figuring out what’s happening, right?
1:17:55Henry: Well, no. Directing your attention. You can’t let people steal your attention. And I think the news media cycle is going to freak us out always and try to steal our attention and focus it somewhere. And really, going back to the being, you just have to focus on being. You just got to focus on the thing you’re doing. And just lock in, don’t get distracted by all the noise. Don’t succumb to the fear. Just keep learning.
1:18:11Melody: I don’t know, what’s your other encouragements for people?
1:18:15Henry: Single-minded for the, like? I don’t know, I think we had 500 people watch our last one.
1:18:23Melody: Oh really? That’s a decent amount of people. So for the 500 people, I mean in my mind this. Yeah, even 30 people is a lot. Because if you think about getting a talk at meet up, that’s like 30 people. So 500 people. That’s kind of what that is.
1:18:41Henry: Watch out for all this.
1:18:45Melody: Yeah. And the other, lost thought, audience of one. Maybe that should be the title.
1:18:50Henry: Yeah. So that’s it?
1:18:55Melody: Yeah. All right. Well, that concludes our Internet Checkpoint number two.
1:19:10Henry: Yes. I think we’re gonna do these on a semi-regular cadence. I feel like every two weeks is probably good.
1:19:15Melody: If you have questions or things that you have been ruminating about, things you’re nervous about or just want us to address on the upcoming episode, just drop them in the comments or DMs or email us and we’ll try our best to address them in the next one.
1:19:31Henry: Yep. All right. Goodbye. Don’t slip.
1:19:33Melody: I know this is so icy. Oh my gosh.
1:19:35Henry: Yeah. Oh yeah. Give us thoughts on how you like this kind of chaotic format.
1:19:37Melody: Oh yeah. Yeah I mean it’s fun for me. Yeah. So we’re just going to be, even if you give us feedback, we’re just going to do our own thing.
1:19:39Henry: Thing? Yeah. You just tell us what you know. I’m just kidding.
1:19:39Melody: Okay.