Carragee Consulting

I’m doing an admittedly haphazard job trying to become informed about AI implications for my life and work. This non-linear approach is a good thing!

I’ve been binge listening to Morgan Housel for a few months and synthesizing his ideas with other thinkers and life lessons. Housel primarily writes about investing and personal finance, but almost always with an oblique approach. He brings in quotes, vignettes, historical references and lessons from adjacent fields.

In “Little Ways the World Works” Housel states that “if you find something that is true in more than one field, you’ve probably uncovered something particularly important…a fundamental and recurring driver of how the world works”. The second half of this podcast is a list of collected laws and insights from across disciplines that have profound implications, including the power of compounding.

In “The Power of Staying Put”, Housel delves into the power of time in careers, relationships, sports and, of course, money.

As I look at my own career its been very scattered across employers and projects, but also very focused on analytics, statistical methods and trying to understand human behavior across a variety of circumstances. If I recast the assemblage of jobs into a more coherent narrative I can start to see knowledge accumulate like layers of paint, providing more and more coverage and complexity.

The common thread across my work is that I like to go down rabbit holes, which is why the quote “it is better to read around your field, rather than in your field” resonated with me from Housel’s podcast.

My parents met because of theater. I grew up with a dad who both memorized a vast amount of poetry and worked as a management consultant and business executive for most of my childhood. He told us (his kids) proudly that he was probably the only student to ever submit one of his Harvard Business School assignments in iambic pentameter.

Why would you do that? Why would you make a school assignment harder by writing it like a Shakespearian sonnet?

One answer is that we turn things into games, we seek to amuse ourselves and play with problems to maintain focus and interest which gives our attention enough durability to make progress over time.

Curiosity + Time is a super power

I read a piece from Jonathan Boymal on Substack a few months ago about Wonder & Awe in education. When you plod through certification courses or degree programs based on a prescribed sequence and curriculum you don’t necessarily tap into the power of understanding you can achieve when you harness natural curiosity.

Looking at how researchers are diving into find applications for AI I see folks inventing experiments that fall into Boymals categories:

1. Conduct regular introspections.
2. Embrace the proliferation of wonder.
3. Adopt diverse ways of wondering.
4. Look for anomalies and puzzles.
5. Explore contrasting cases.
6. Entertain counterfactuals.