#193 Sönke Ahrens -《卡片盒筆記》作者，寫下來的力量，AI 時代如何保持獨立思考

When I coach people, I usually recommend it's take it slowly take one note at a time because it can feel intimidating especially if you have a massed lot of notes in the past just do things differently from now look for a connection yeah set of custom and then put it there so it it feels less daunting with a set of custom I like to believe it's more in the way Julian describes traditional Chinese philosophy and that is that you do not start with a plan but you build up potential so you build up situation potential that if it has been built up enough it can tip a situation in your favor and you go with the momentum and you go with the energy you have been building up and as the set of custom it has a build in anti-conformation bias bias so to speak there's certainly a better way to put it we're getting more and more meta here You don't need to tell me how to do it. You have to let it spin out, please put the hand around the steering wheel. The car is a car that has a lot of systems and features. The car can be more clear about the test. It says, "One cannot think without writing." "There is no way to write things in action." "There is no way to make a car a car with a complex system." "Then use the simplest system to solve the problem." "Then you can start a new one and talk to the first person." I would like to tell you how to protect your test and not be affected by AI. You can only protect your test and test your system. When I asked him, when he asked me a question, he told me that he had seen a very gentle picture. The question came back to me and I thought it was the last question. Of course, this is the whole English. If you want to watch the video, you can find it on YouTube or Spotify. This time, it's very Taiwan-ish, so it's a lot of work. Before the show, I would like to share with you some quick stories. There is a video on the internet that you are watching every month. I will talk to you about this video. This video is about success. There are different questions about the test and the problem. I would like to share this video. I would like to talk to you about this video. I would like to share with you some quick stories. Writing is the representation of thought, but not as good, really. Because you can put way more things into a dialogue, then you're able to put in writing. And that's only a bad copy of what you have in your mind. And this is seen as like the ultimate thought. But if you look more closely, you realize or the thought we have in our mind are actually shaped by writing. And so putting writing more forward in the discussion changes a lot of things. And that also changes the way we think about the influence of technology and our surroundings. And so that may be curious, obviously, about how we can set up our surroundings better to improve thinking. And so it resonates with the set of customers. It's a different topic, of course. It's more of a practical application. But if you are interested and want to dive deeper into it, there is actually a whole philosophy underneath. Wow, interesting. So you kind of started with philosophy and then got into epistemology, like how to learn, be a better learner. Yeah, I was especially curious about how you come up with something genuinely new. Because there are no rules for coming up with something new. Because it's kind of the definition of something generally new that it breaks with the traditional way of thinking. And philosophy strives with something like that where you can't follow through certain steps. But of course, you can think a lot about how to remove friction, how to set things up. So it becomes more likely that something interesting can happen. And I also always was interested in practical applications. So when I read philosophy, I do have in my mind, "Okay, what does it actually mean for me and everyday life?" I think philosophy is especially an interesting topic to kind of implement the system. Because I feel like in philosophers, many instances of where different ideas are actually contradictions of each other. So to be able to visualize and organize those information and knowledge in very simple, you know, one idea per card type of way. Really helps you break down a philosophy. A squats are into many different ideas where you could potentially break it down and re-struct your recomposing the system. And that's why you're taking inspiration from different places, different cards. Yeah, I know we're not diving into the system right now, but you're striking a really good point. And that is something as simple as the rule that you only write one idea on one card. And it seems like, "Okay, yeah, you can do that." But if you think more deeply about that, it means exactly what you described. We usually have muddled thoughts in our heads, and we don't really notice they are muddled. But the moment we force ourselves to decompose them or we construct them and think, "Okay, what kind of elements are here at play?" And write them down, you gain clarity, and you realize where the gaps in your understandings are, because you now see in writing. Okay, this is my argument here, and this makes sense, this makes sense, then there is something happening. I haven't really described. And then here's the conclusion. But you need often to see your thinking before you realize where it's flawed and problematic. And then what you also said, it enables you to shuffle ideas around and build something new out of them, maybe integrate an idea from a completely other topic you've worked on. And so it makes the whole thinking process a little bit more playful, like you have building blocks that you can build something new out of them. It's forcing yourself to think in first principles, because you have to break it down to the most fundamental principles before you reconstruct them. Yeah, I think that's a good mental model to use. So is that kind of how you discovered Nicholas, who was work when you were studying philosophy, did you have a pain point you were trying to solve? I know you were in all of how many you wrote like 70 books, 400 papers, his productivity, and I guess we're just in all of like, wow, he did so much, how can I do that? Or did you have a pain point and as your study philosophy like, wow, there's so many different ideas, how do I? Yeah, good question. I didn't start with being impressed by this quantity of work. It was, he addressed a problem I thought about as a student a lot, and that's kind of the basic sociological problem, and that is. Okay, we're like 8 billion people on the earth, and we go to work every day, and everything works pretty well. I mean, there are a lot of things that go wrong, but when you consider how difficult it is to organize like five people in your family, to go on a trip, you realize what a remarkable thing it is that so many things go right every day on this planet, without having one person coordinating and telling you what to do. So everyone just acts like ants and follow their own ideas and follow their own desires and career paths, and in the end, it works surprisingly well. And no one really understands it. That's a most interesting part of it. So there's a field, sociology, who's trying to figure out how it works, even though it's completely based on human interaction, and that goes so much against our idea of we have to understand first how things work to make it work. And now we have something that works pretty well, but nobody really understands it, because it's a complex. So complexity is really his theme, and that is what systems theory kind of answers, and where it resonates with evolution theory and how things build up, without the need of having some central organization that has everything inside. Yeah, that was my pain point, trying to understand that complex systems. Wow, okay, so it wasn't even about philosophy, it was understanding complex systems. Yeah, it has a lot of philosophical implications, of course, and you see the limitations of philosophy, and where other forms of knowledge, production has the right. And Luman seems to have an answer, but in the back of my head I always thought it's too good, it's too neat, and something is missing. Really, I took it to be true. I think I thought, well, when we're at my daughter's thesis, I want to figure it out, what that is, what's nagging. And what I wanted to, not like here is why he's wrong, but here's maybe the part you couldn't get any further. So that brought me to his theory, and then of course he discovered, well, he's writing faster than you can read, so what's that about? And most people just said, well, he's a genius, so we don't have to think about how he's doing that. But when you ask him, he always said, well, I'm not doing it in L, it's all collaboration work with my central customer. Not his assistant, not AI, just a certain way of taking notes. And has that helped you a lot as you transitioned from academia to more independent writing? Did you have that system when you're in academia, or was that kind of later on? I've started it with my dissertation, with multiple thesis, but not so much to be incredibly productive, but to manage to get anything on paper. Because I struggle a lot with writer's blog and being anxious about having the perfect idea before I can write it down. The title cast allows you to just write a note and then add the note to something, and automatically, almost automatically, and something builds up. Right, I think the way we're describing almost automatically, it makes it sound very simple, but in my mind, I'm thinking, it's actually, you know, rich or fine, I like to say, right? It's really hard to break down complex ideas into simple ideas, because that requires thorough, true understanding to be able to do that. So when you say, like, right, it is, and theory, it sounds very alt-pantic and easy, but when you're reading a book, you're processing this idea. How do you actually break that down into that simple form is actually not simple, right? Yeah, I mean, that's where I think the fun is being thinking that, like Warren Buffett often says in this thing is, it's all very, very simple. It's totally yes. You buy something that's cheap and you sell it when it's expensive. I mean, you couldn't get simpler than that. But it's not easy to do, exactly. You can't make shortcuts. That's probably the thing. Maybe you have a muddled thought and try to have a shortcut to write about that. It will be a muddled outcome. So you have to go through the process of understanding the construction, reconstruction. It's simple, but not easy. I like that. Simple, but not easy. I realized you quoted Richard Feynman a lot in your book. I noticed that. I thought it was very interesting. Was he like a big inspiration of yours in many ways? I wouldn't say so. I mean, I briefly studied physics, then I went on a different path, but when you look, read his biographies. First of all, I think they're fun. And secondly, he stresses understanding so much. And he really points out the problems with at least the Western educational system, where it's a lot about knowing names for something instead of understanding all things work. Or being able to go and we take what you've heard and they're all teaching for the test problem. I mean, the Nobel Prize he got for is for formulas, which are really unusual, because they are so it isn't critic. They kind of make sense to him. And it was only possible because he didn't care too much about tradition. Yeah, this emphasis on understanding and how he talks about his father teaching him. I mean, you probably know this story has been reminded of when I walked through a park here in Taipei yesterday with all the bird watches. He was at school one day and he pointed out a bird to his fellow classmate and he said, well, do you know how the bird is called? No, I don't. Came home to his father and said, well, it was a bit embarrassing. He didn't teach me anything. I don't even know what the bird is called. And now I'm embarrassed in front of my schoolmates. And the father just said, well, in English, the bird is called that, in Japanese, that, in Korean, that, you can have all the names remembered of the bird in all languages. And you wouldn't know the thing about the bird itself, only what people call it. So let's see what the bird does. What kind of nest is he building? And why? And how does it look like? So again, it's a simple thing. But when you spend an hour in a classroom, you realize if you take an idea like that seriously, what make a huge difference. Yeah, were you referring to his memoir, "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman?" Yeah, yeah. What is your best take from it? So what you took from it that stayed with you? I think just his pure joy of learning and experiencing life. For example, like he was like kind of picking locks. Right. That was really funny. In a very serious environment. He just didn't care. He just wanted to have fun. And then when he was learning the drums, when he painted in all these weird places and joined the band, just completely immersed himself in any new experiences. And not for like, "Oh, not for a status, not for money, just for the pure joy and curiosity of learning." I think that's really what inspired me a lot when it inspired me to be like. But also, I think a lot of academics, when they referenced Richard Feynman, they talk about the Feynman technique, how the way he says, "It should understand a topic you have to be able to explain to a five-year-old." I think a lot of people resonate with that and people use that interview and whatnot. So I think just the way he thinks, the way he thinks about ideas, the way he really is able to break things down. Very complex physics into simple, six easy pieces, and that's why I'm referencing him kind of to bring it back to this system of like, "Yeah, simple ideas are not easy. They're very useful and fundamental building blocks of any knowledge base." Yeah, I totally agree. I do think that sometimes people misunderstand the Feynman technique. Oh, yeah? I think if someone can explain something to me like two or five-year-old, I understood it. Like, if Feynman explained physics to me, what he's explaining to me is someone who has no idea, is not the same as he would talk to a colleague. And I think some people mistake, "Oh, I understand that simple explanation." And so it's as good as the complex explanation he would give to your colleague. But he describes it from the standpoint of the teacher of being able to break it down so you can adjust your teaching to different levels of understanding. Got it. And you have that problem in philosophy sometimes, that you want to challenge students with texts or literature they don't yet understand. And then they heard about the Feynman technique. Why can't the author talk to me like a five-year-old? Well, no, that's an understanding. Sorry, you have to push yourself a little bit. You don't want to stay at the five-year-old level. So are you kind of saying that, for example, at the Alchem Drazer, the simplest idea is using you, right? I guess this is maybe two different things. When you explain something really simple, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best way, it's just the most simple form. There are more advanced levels of complexity, understanding. You can't actually explain everything to a five-year-old. It wouldn't make sense. Okay, so we can look at it from a teaching perspective. It's exactly correct. I think I've fallen into the camp of having this misunderstanding of it as well, so thank you for that. I don't think that's true. Speaking about books, I wonder if it's okay. We, you know, talk about books a little bit. You know, you read it in two books. I want to ask you about how your two books connect with each other. But before that, I want to ask if it's possible that you can maybe give me a few books that change your life. I had the most impact on your life. I thought about that. Actually, two movies or two movie directors came to mind. It's not books, it's movies. Because movies taught me a lot. I really couldn't learn from books, I think. Wow. Then two books came to mind. One is probably not very interesting for your audience because it just was the last missing piece from a doctoral thesis. And it came from an unexpected source. So I've written about philosophy of education and then I've somehow read a history book on the development of synthesizing proteins in the test tube. Very niche. It's only everything made sense. And for me that I remember sitting in a car and I had a thought apart the car and spent two hours just continue reading. Because yeah, that's probably what what the saying is. So inspiration comes to prepare mine. So something like that. That's same with books. So if you think a lot about something and you feel stuck and then the right book comes along, it can suddenly change everything and pieces fall into places. I like these moments. But let's not get into the details of synthesizing proteins in the test tube. Well, that sounds interesting, but maybe a different day. Okay, so that's one of the books. You said there is another one? Yes. I was reminded of that during a discussion with one of the team members who I'm shooting the course quiz. And when they discussed something in Chinese, I couldn't understand. I thought, okay, it's about my way of phrasing something or the lighting from the camera and stuff like that going wrong. But actually, they were discussing the contents and thinking about, oh, how would I add this idea? I read yesterday in my subtle casting. So they were starting to think in subtle cast in terms. And so a colleague read about Chinese philosophy and Western philosophy and how to combine these things. And she had this idea, well, I could put that together because there is a resonance. And I don't remember exactly what it was. I immediately made a connection in my mental, et cetera, with a book that taught me a little bit about the difference between Western and Chinese philosophy. And that's from a French philosopher's ennemies, trunks were Julian and he wrote a book on silent transformations and I hope you have five minutes. Oh yes, dive into that. Oh, let's do it. I can't wait. Because when I read or read Luma, or when I read this book on synthesizing proteins and the test, yet this immediate insight where you feel, okay, like flash off lot. You now suddenly know how things work. And then I read Julian's silent transformation book and I read it and he described how Western philosophy is usually obsessed with definitions and the intrinsic value of things and Chinese philosophy always was more interested in transformations. So modeled after the change of seasons and someone like Plata would say, well, summer is defined by a lot of sun and autumn is defined by harvest something like that. And in Chinese thought, as he describes it, I don't know if that's true, but as he describes it is more, yeah, I mean spring is slowly less winter and increasingly more summer. And summer is slowly retreat of the spring, but autumn is coming up. So there's this emphasis on change. It becomes funny when you look at Western philosophy texts where they try to define melting so no. So and discuss four hours and hours and hours. Well, is it is it still water? Yeah, exactly. Tizou's boat. But is it is it the same? By the way, the Wikipedia page on it's Tizou's ship, right? Yes, yes, yes. So the Wikipedia page on Tizou's ship has changed so much that not a single world, not a single world is still the same. Yeah, it's still the same page. I believe. But you can discuss that. That's such a funny example. Yeah, it's very matter. It's very matter. But it's also I think it's deep. So I read this silent transformation book and it's interesting, but it's not like this inside I have with other books. And I put it away. Then I realized what it's kind of stayed with me because I started to see where in the text I read or in philosophy books, I read problems that is cast that only exist because they are unable to think transformations, slow transformations, because they are still looking for definitions. And the distinguishing features between this and that. And I realized I'm not interested in that kind of discussion anymore. There are other problems that are much more interesting. And it took me another read of other books by him that I in hindsight realized, oh, the whole time I was expecting an inside like, oh, now I get it. And I didn't realize that reading the book is the prime example of a silent transformation that happened in the month, maybe even years after having read the book. That's so interesting. So I thought, yeah, okay, this is interesting because it's really experiential. It's not just to read something and you can check the books and understand this. It's sometimes things happen inside your mind in your perception of things without you realizing they are happening. It's later that it comes as an inside. And that, again, relates to the telecast because you write your individual notes and you add to that and you don't necessarily realize what you're actually working on because you didn't make a plan with a clear outcome. That as well, of course. But the interesting things often happen on this side. And then after a year or something, you see, well, I accumulated quite a lot of notes. So in this cluster, I haven't even realized that I kept coming back to it. And then you can take that cluster, think, okay, what kind of question am I discussing here? Maybe I want to write about that. First of all, it's probably more interesting than what you initially thought it's interesting. Secondly, you have all the material to work with. It sounds like page. This is the connection there. That is beautiful. How you connect it. One of your favorite books, Eastern Western philosophy, transformation, back to Zalaskin, and it all ties in so nicely. Yeah. Wow. That was beautiful. I love how you connected the different dots. Thank you. I couldn't have done it with Brazil, but Zal goes. You mentioned you have a mental to Zalaskin, and great. So there's like two copies of it. Yeah. Yeah. One of the more abstract high level. Yeah, perhaps. Yeah. It's a good point. I'm not sure it has been raised in any other interviews before. Sometimes people talk about Zalaskin as a second brain. Yes. Like it's a copy of your mind, but it's not exactly. It's a dialogue partner you're collaborating with. You only write down what's when you feel you need to discuss it. It's like a colleague you work with every day for years. So you kind of know each other's thoughts. So you don't have to do full text search every time you go into that. It's more internalized filter. So when I read something just without doing that intentionally in the back of my mind comes that disconnect to that or disconnect to that. Yeah, and that helps with filtering stuff in love. Yeah. I like how you said when it happens in the silence because when you're taking these, when you're doing these notes, essentially the system is taking care of all that transformation for you. And why you're just kind of dumping simple ideas one at time. And over time, the system starts to build up this, you know, a lot of this context. So then when you have this mental Zalaskin, it's more of the high level, the mental models, and they can dive deeper with this quality of yours. They have to dialogue and have all the context kind of built in. Yeah, exactly. They're ready for you. So I think that it's also something I got interested in because I read about history of science and history of laboratories. Because there too is a difference between what you think you're doing and what you actually do. And when you look at theories of scientific development, you often have neat theories. Yes. And there was a big change in the mid-20th century that people got more interested in empirical work on scientific developments and started to analyze the notebooks, the notebooks of laboratory work to be able to see the development of a thought. And that is usually very different to the way scientists describe the process of discovery in hindsight, because in hindsight, you think, yeah, I did this and I did that and then I put two things together. And in the logbook, it's something didn't work here. This didn't work. It keeps coming up with this error and the error is of course later the discovery, but they try to get rid of it and they just couldn't. It went on a path that is almost independent from what's going on in their head, but it's all going on in the machinery of the laboratory and in the logbooks. And yeah, and I think it's similar to the set of casting where you think on your path, but there is a tension sometimes and things build up in unexpected ways. And then you realize, okay, now I see, I see that it's different and you need this externalizing to have the chance to develop thoughts in unexpected ways, all like that. Yeah. But I think it's really interesting because we talked about having the second brain, listen, people will say, and this is actually further down. I had a mind to discuss, but I can pull this up a little bit sooner because I think this is very fascinating. I have a lot of friends people I work with and they love to use AI and sometimes I hate it because I'm like, bro, you're not even thinking, you're just like also roasting the thinking and you're not even like internalizing it. And then the stuff that comes out looks like, yeah, I can tell like, yeah, I wrote that because it's not refined. It's not nuanced. It doesn't address a lot of complex systems. And like you mentioned earlier, how spontaneous idea comes up. And I think like when you actually manually think through and organize information, it helps a lot to actually build the muscle to connect different dots. And that's where a lot of the inspiration, the ideas across different disciplines come together and form something unique. So in the zealous system, right, like, is there a balance of like, okay, I want to outsource this, I want to externalize it, but also I want to what parts do I keep in my mind that the most important and what part do I leverage the system? Yeah, it's a question that comes up a lot. And I think generally I have the same idea when you need to build muscle for your own thinking. And there are two ways of using AI and that is either you leverage what you have, or you handed over to AI. And I think the problem with handing it over or giving into the temptation of handing it over has a lot to do with a wrong mental model of how thinking works. Because it's seemingly paradoxically still put too much emphasis on the brain and the mind, because you think, well, I let AI write my text, I can still judge it, I can still go over it and do that. So just reacting on a point-to-point basis. So AI gives you something you react to it from what you have in your mind. And that puts a lot of pressure on the ability of your mind to edit, correct, prove, read, fact, track and do all these things. Asking the system from the pre-digital area, but it curiously, I think has an answer to the challenges as it is a truly personal support system where you don't rely on your brain alone to face the information flow coming in from the internet and AI. Because you accumulated notes of facts and ideas, you truly understand to be able to put in your own words over a lifetime, over the beginning of the days, the months, the years, but in the end, as a lifelong companion. And when you then read an AI-generated text, you have way more than just your brain and what it can hold in this very moment to judge what's coming in. You can look in yourself and question, how does this connect? Oh, and then you discover there's actually something I've written down that contradicts it. You have forgotten it because the brain can't hold that many information pieces at the same time. So I feel it's a huge support system to stay grounded in your own thinking and the temptation to hand things over to AI is greatly reduced. And then, of course, it is what you said about building the muscle. If you're just handing things over to AI, it's really like you're going to the gym and found a hack on letting the gym machines work on themselves. I mean, you probably feel good about that the first days when you can show off to your fellow gym member that you can lift so much more, but you probably look pretty stupid after a month or eight years. You have no gains. So what the title custom can do there is it kind of forces you through the difficulties of thinking because there's one golden rule I have and that is the permanent notes which are the building blocks of it all have to be written by yourself. You can filter a lot. You don't have to write everything down. Only a small amount of information, but what you decide to write down is something you have to write in your own words. So you can be sure that you only accumulate stuff you're able to explain in your own words and thereby building up like a counterweight to all the information coming in. I want to make this connection to AI, which I think is actually very interesting. I have engineering background, so I look into how AI works. You have these different nodes of data, text, and then these essentially these transformers are built. So whenever you ask chat GPT a question is essentially trying to predict that kind of it's a production machine that will come out next. So in some ways the other system is kind of like a human AI where you're putting small information nodes spreading across the entire knowledge graph. And what AI is doing is essentially at a more granular and at a bigger scale a faster level, but the kind of fundamental structure of it is very similar. You're dumping small data into this graph and then they're somehow interconnected. And we ask AI questions, they're able to come out with all this stuff because they're able to really quickly transform the information through different nodes and kind of parse to entire graphs of knowledge and be able to pull out things that, okay, this is really, this is really, this is really, and then boom, give you something that's seemingly thought through. But maybe on a human level, that's kind of what we're doing to drive the zealous system. That's kind of interesting. I think, yes, I mean there are similarities, but I think the differences are pretty striking as well. What you mentioned, I mean, on a completely different scale. And the connections you make yourself. So you make connections because you realize there is a connection. And it's not just prediction or association that you could be something interesting. It's more, you have two pieces of information and you have to make a decision. This is connected because and then because you explicit how two things are connected and that means your connection are built on reasoning. They are not built on association alone. So in many ways, it's inferior because it's just your tiny human brain, my tiny human brain, the limited amount of time we have to distill information that that's very, very small compared to what in LLM can do. But it's the only system that's completely revolve around your own thoughts. Yes, absolutely. So my favorite part is distilling information and writing it in your own words. Back in the day, when I read, I used to just highlight everything by highlighter. And after I read a book, I would go back and rewrite, retype out all the highlights into a note, like ever notes. And then I'll have all of those kind of listed just the raw text and then I'll write a paragraph like, okay, in my own words, what did I just read, what did I just learn. And very recently, I come to this exercise of trying to move my entire knowledge base of notion, ever know everything into the, the system. It was hard, it was hard to do. And I catch myself like still in that old like in that old like my own framework of like, okay, what notebook should be one book and then right instead of my you said breaking edges down. And I noticed like when I go through all my reading notes when I do in that migration that the ones where I was disciplined enough to write it in my own words. I read it and then immediately, yeah, pick up right where I left off, no than 10 years. And I'm like, bam, that is still internalized. And when I read it, I'm like, okay, I'm like reading my own mind. Yeah. But when there's a book where I'm just like, okay, I wrote the notes down. I'm just gonna, okay, onto the next. I'm like, what the, what is this? Did I read this? Did I read this? It's a huge difference. Yeah, it is a huge difference and there's a researcher on that and very clear data or that shows that that is exactly the effort that makes a difference. That's the difference between going to the gym and sitting on a machine or actually lifting a weight. So it's what researchers call a desirable difficulty. Oh, by the way, I am impressed by your migration. I wouldn't recommend doing this whole one big migration thing. So when I coach people, I usually recommend, take it slowly, take one note at a time. Because it can feel intimidating, especially if you have a master lot of notes in the past, just do things differently from now. And only add to your new system when you take a note in your hand anyway. So if you look things up, as you usually do, just sort it differently. So don't put it back in the old place, look for a connection, et cetera, custom and then put it there. So it feels less daunting. Yeah. Don't want to put on the audience. Yes. I know you mentioned learn how to process own notes, not just move them, right? So yes, indeed. And that migration failed horribly because I know just moving things into just, I just moved it to a different software. It somehow has to go through your mind where you make a decision on how it brings the thought forward you're working on or how it could answer partly a question, you have only a mind. I thought it was really interesting, you said these are both difficult, and that's really cool. And to think about the books that I did write my thoughts in my own words, maybe I spent 40 minutes writing the notes and just five minutes doing that. And that five minutes was 100 times more productive than that. 40 minutes, of course, it was needed both, right? But the point is that it only takes so little time for you to take a moment to internalize it. And then that becomes such a core, stronger memory point, stronger note. Yeah, it's like a small form of teaching, right? Oh, I mean, that's what Feynman always talks about. Yes, you need to teach a topic to understand it properly, right? Or to realize if you understood it properly. And I feel writing in my own words, it is like a daily practice of small teaching. Yeah, myself though, yeah, you know, for a fun thought experiment, what if when they someone took your hard drive in the server and completely deleted everything you have in your system, just just a thought, and you now lost everything you ever built in that system. But you still have your mental, the custom system. How would you then rebuild it or would you feel handicapped or are the mental models in your brain strong enough where you're like, okay, you can let go of the details, but you still have the big ideas. Well, it would be a loss. But I think I worked approach it step by step. I wouldn't try to rebuild it from the ground up. I think I would take it as a chance to take a step back and think, okay, what do I want to let go of? What questions do I not want to continue working on? And then the things I've decided to work on, I think I would start with just a few notes trying to explain my current understanding. So what's my best understanding of the topic right now and use these notes as like like the first branches of a tree, I can then hang more leaves onto it and expand on that, maybe branch out. But the idea is that when I account new information, it hopefully makes a difference to what I think about the topic currently. So I'm hoping for contradictions or I'm hoping for problems because they drive the set of custom, they drive writing new notes. Because when there is a contradiction, you need to think how to resolve it or realize that you were thinking about two different things and they just seem similar. So these are good problems to have. If it's just a confirmation of what you already have, it's not even worth writing down. So it helps you discover concepts as well. Yeah, I think it's different. Let's call it different driven. Very different to the mind, which is driven by pattern recognition, similarities, confirmation. You hear something, you feel, yeah, that's true, usually because that's exactly how you thought about it. Right, the confirmation bias. Now with the system, and this is me playing that advocate to want to challenge it a little bit, is there a world where, or a potential where, because we have such a strong system, tell us and that, it actually puts us in a box where our thinking is now in this structure. And it's really easy for it to kind of feed us back like a calling that knows us really well. That's back information that we were looking for. You're looking for that. That's why you found that. But does that keep that in the box where, hey, is it maybe harder to find inspiration and new discoveries with different ideas? Because of the system. Is there any potential or anything the risk is always there? In a literal sense, when you go with the analogue title, you are thinking in a box. You're not thinking outside of it. You literally put yourself into it. So, part is maybe a certain stance towards it in a certain way of approaching it. But I do feel there is a build in counterweight to confirmation bias. Because the alternative is, and that kind of goes back to Julian because he's written a book about the Western tendency to make plans and then see how to follow them through. When you start with a plan and you gain insight on your path, the insight kind of messes with your plan. So, there's a trade-off between being productive, meaning sticking with your plan, getting quickly to output or following insight, which messes with your plan, brings it back to square on. You have to rewrite the plan. So, there's a tension between productivity and insight. I like to believe it's more in the way Julian describes traditional Chinese philosophy. And that is that you do not start with a plan. But you build up potential. So, you build up situation potential that if it has been built up enough, it can tip a situation in your favor. And you go with the momentum and you go with the energy you have been building up. And as the set of custom, now it's a bit metaphorically, but if you want to be productive with the set of custom, you want to write new notes. And if you, what drives note-taking are problems, are contradictions, are things that do not fit because you have to explain on new notes. If it's a confirmation, it's almost not worth writing down, because you just have another note which says basically the same thing. It doesn't gain momentum. So, there is a built-in tendency to attract more counterintuitive, challenging ideas and thoughts, so that when I discover a problem now, it's almost like, "Oh, I don't have enough notes. I can write about that." Because even if I only able to state the problem, I feel I'm making progress because I've written five notes on explaining why things that look similar are actually different. And that can go into an article or lecture or can explain to someone the problem itself and then you can think together about a solution. So, you do feel there is a difference and it has a built-in anti-conformation bias, bias, so to speak. There's certainly a better way to put it. We're getting more and more meta here. I love that. So, in a way, it's almost like a disconfirmation bias. That's a new word. We can coin that today. Is it a new word? Disconfirmation bias? I don't even ever heard that. Check was AI. It's kind of like when you say that you're kind of setting up the situation instead of making a plan. It's like when you play chess. I think it's more like playing Go. Maybe chess is more thinking ahead and Go is more building potential. Oh, I love that. So, it sounds like you've spent some time studying Eastern philosophy as well. It sounds like you're transforming a little bit from studying a lot of Western to Eastern. Is there kind of a process there, or? Yeah, I'm actually an expert in any way, but I was always interested in the limitations of our current understanding. So, I approached the problems with Western philosophy in the beginning more from an internal standpoint. I was interested in people who try to push the borders and make explicit what only implicit limitations of our thinking were. So, we take a lot of things for granted. We don't speak explicitly about, like in the metaphor, with a fish in the water. You don't know anything about water to make yourself aware of the water. To make yourself aware of all the things you take so much for granted. You don't even have words for them. Like I said in the beginning was the complexity of modern society. We kind of take it for granted, but it's something to be curious about. What does it work that we sit here, and there are so many things working at the same time to make that possible. The problem is, Western thinking is so ubiquitous. Psychology is also a lot about when you talk about biases. Before having words for them, we weren't maybe not really aware of them. Being aware of your own confirmation bias is a way of becoming aware of limitations of your own mind, through reflection and hopefully being less prone to it. Let's come back to the movies that you learned. All right, well two directors came to mind. One is Japanese director, Courierdo, and the other one is from Iran. I was called Kiara Stami. And both taught me to take everyday life more seriously. More seriously. And I think when you look at the movies first, you also use to a lot of things happening on the screen that you feel there is something lacking until you change your perception, until you learn to look in the way they teach you looking at everyday life, at mundane situations. And you realize talking about ethics, for example, is often so detached from real life that you can answer moral question or ethical questions really only if you be very attentive to a situation, to the ambiguity, to the complexity of a person's life. And they approach their subjects with curiosity. They don't judge, they don't have a plan or an idea of thesis, and they want to prove they just take the people they show so seriously in their flaws, in their beauty, in their everyday actions that you learn to look differently. So I think understanding happiness, understanding love, understanding ethics has so much to do with a certain way of looking. And that's what these movies, I think, taught me. And I noticed that when I walked the streets of Taipei yesterday and thought about possible questions like that, and I saw an old couple which was just tender to each other. And I thought, that's kind of role model. I mean, that's, I don't need grand gestures or it would silly to ask them what's the greatest thing in your life because in this moment there was so much I thought, yeah, but I think that growing up like that together, that's amazing. Or guy who worked at a car wash and was so immersed in his work. And I don't even know if enjoyment is the right word, but there was a kind of mastery to it because you know he was focused on removing the stains and was pleased with a finished job well done. So that is what these movies look like. Situations that look mundane, you tend to glance over, but you become more attentive to them. And suddenly questions like what success, what is love, what is ethical behavior are rooted in these everyday situations. And you think it's more true to the life we lead. And it's not an escape, but it brings us into life itself. So I get the sense that you kind of move on from definitions and you're more into the actual that moment experience rather than like the definition and the type of success. Like becoming better in observation, being more open to understand what's going on. Definitions tend to put something up front. It's like a bed of pro-crossers, I think in Greek mythology. Everything that doesn't fit is being cut off. The bed, yeah. So definitions are obviously very helpful in research, but they usually come at the end. You can come up with a good definition if you have done the work before, but the work you need to do has so much to do with being attentive, taking in what you have missed before. And in the end, that's definition work to do, but don't stop with it. This reminds me of the idea that a lot of times people get stuck and find the right answers. But a lot of times what's more important is finding the right questions, the right problems. Exactly. So like what you said, seeing the car mechanic, the person washing the car or the old couple in Taipei, tender to each other. And we were to go up to them and be like, what I'm doing now, hey, what is your definition of success? How do you see yourself? So it's like change for you over the next few years, what is your highlight, what is your little life? That's completely pointless. At that moment, everything's perfect. And we have no business of interrupting their flow, what they're doing. So like finding that actually asks in the right question, a lot of time is more important than finding the right answers, because answers change. But when you have, I guess answers can change over time. But when you know what the right question to ask is, then it helps you start thinking about what's the right answer for this moment. Yeah, questions. Would you agree with questions? I totally agree. I think a lot of work in teaching in high education is about teaching, asking better questions. How do you ask better questions? You go there. Probably you need to immerse yourself into your topic to understand what the question is. I remember, I don't know if you know Cheryl Strait, who's written Wild. Oh, she wrote it on the notebook, right? That one. Yeah, on a long hike. Yeah, you were hiking in the US a lot as well, right? Yeah, I'm surprised you got it. So I don't remember the trail she was on, but it's one of the famous trails in California, right? I think so. Anyway, before she's written the book, she was writing anonymously a column like his self column answering readers question on a little obscure literature block. And I loved it. I didn't know who she was. Every answer was a little piece of literature. The questions were all over the place. And one of the question was just WTF. And then instead of just dismissing the question, she wrote a piece of literature on drug abuse, on a gross pause on all these kinds of difficulties that might resonate with someone who's asking that kind of someone to ask WTF. That was the question. So it's more about the WTF of life. And in the end, the last sentence was sweet pea loan asking better questions. I love that. Oh, man, have you read the book, the zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance? No, I have not. I got three copies because people keep really gifting it to me, but I still haven't read it. Okay, you weren't that interested or didn't really catch her. I think it's probably one of the first I pick up some day, I'm told why haven't I read earlier. Yeah, might be. Yeah, because part of it mentions about like the mechanic going through a motorcycle and looking for what's wrong. And just that complete immersiveness, complete flow and focus on the work you're working on is the difference between mechanic finding the issue and someone who just kind of going through the SOP. He says like, you know, when you, you're kind of when you work on a machine, you kind of build your personal problems into it as well, any product you build. And I'm going to tie this back to the system. I think it's very interesting. As you're kind of working through the system or the different systems you have anything you do, do you get that similar feeling of like complete immersiveness into finding the right questions, finding the connections, finding the insights, writing the best simple notes. Not enough, really, not enough. I know that feeling and that's because I also realize when it's missing for too long. I do get that sometimes when I'm in the settle cast and I feel one idea or sparks another and the question raises another question. I get that was teaching sometimes, but there is an envy for people who have a job where you get that on a regular basis. And I feel it's more likely when you have a mastery on something you craft where you work with material. And I think the settle cast is for me a little bit like putting a little bit craftiness into intellectual work would be a reason actually to use pen and paper more. Because there is something to it. It's more immersive if you have surroundings you interact with than just the computer screen. So it's a good reminder to use more analog systems actually. Someone told me, I think this might be Jeff Bezos, his idea that in meetings, he implements something where no one's allowed to use PowerPoints. I know if I should have heard of this story. He forced everyone to explain anything they want to explain on a whiteboard. Because he says if you can't explain on a whiteboard, you don't understand it. It's funny, it's often Silicon Valley guys most prone to use analog devices. Yeah, yeah. I think this thing is interesting. Bill Gates does this thing called Think Weeks. Sure, if you're maybe better heard of that right? Yeah, where he carries his facts full of books. He goes to the mountains for two weeks and just thinks and writes. I try doing this. I went to a cabin for a week and actually brought all my reading notes. And during that week, I'm okay, this is the time I'm going to migrate all my notes into this less consistent and just kind of spend time thinking and reading through all my notes. I don't think the migration was that successful, but I think the process of going back through my notes of 10, 15 years, my journals and reading the words I written, my own words was very helpful for me to kind of re-factored and re-structure, reorganize. Kind of like when you clean your house, you take out the drawer, dump everything out, clean it and put it back in. Do you go through similar exercises like Bill Gates or like given that you have this kind of very structured sound system? How often do you like kind of clean house to maintain it and like, or just, hey, let's put this system inside. Let me go into the mountains, the woods and just sit there or go into Mipassana and just sit there and think for like a week. I don't have these weeks, but that's maybe because my everyday work is surrounded around books, reading and writing. And I don't do the big cleaners, but I do them on a smaller scale on a regular basis. So I know this feeling of, you need sometimes to clean things up. Yeah. It can just be the desk or I might set a cast and I have like an overview page where I give myself an overview of entry points in different topics I'm working on. And that is where I sometimes take a step back and think, well, do I actually want to continue working on that or are there new problems I want to work on? And I can change on the starting page the entry points. So it keeps refreshing whenever I feel I'm a bit stark or I want to have a fresh mind. I would change that. The good thing is it doesn't change anything on the underlying structure. So no notes are being deleted. Ever? No, ever. Never. You never deleted a note from the permanent notes section. Never. Oh, God, it wouldn't make any sense. But that's why you need to separate them from others because when you write fleeting notes like just a reminder of birthday or to pick something up, you don't want to keep that forever. It just mess up with your system. One question I had is, are the permanent notes permanent? There's supposed to be, right, but also could they change and could you go back and can they contradict each other at some point? What do you do then? I usually would just add a note. Okay, but I would add it in a way that I see that there is a contradicting note. So I would add something on an existing note, like just a hint like all wrong, see mixed note. Okay, so you track that evolution. But I track the evolution and I feel if you write or especially if you teach, it helps the audience or the students to follow your thought process. So to say something like, so in the beginning it seems pretty obvious that it's like this. But then I discovered that and so I changed my assumption and that's usually I feel better than just saying what the outcome is. Right. And then trying to explain from there. Right. Makes sense. Yeah. Okay, so yeah, thank you so much for this wonderful discussion. I would like to do a quick summary of today and then I would love to read to add any last thoughts. You know, talk about the course. Maybe you thought of another book. I wanted to share it the rest of the time is all yours, but just a quickly recap. When we talk about today, we talk about your background. When we talked about this system of how we are able to really think deeply, think through ideas for ourselves, and able to internalize it and structure it enrich them over time. For our experiences and protocol knowledge and have them help you like in this silent transformation. Right. Kind of cook up these different ideas, help you find more insights. Whether you're a researcher, you're a creator, you are a student, any learner, that this system really helps you have that colleague that is able to have a dialogue with you with all the context that you discover in the past that you had thought through. And we also talk about how important it is of the simplicity, the simplicity of ideas. When we talk about simplicity of life, just being at a park with a partner, that is ultimately the ultimate form of success, simplicity and being immersed in that moment. And when you're able to have a lot of simple ideas in first principles, we're able to then rebuild it, reconstruct it, recompose it into new ideas, new products, new articles, new writings. So it's a very, very powerful system, as Nicolas said, one cannot think without writing, and without the systems really hard to come up with new ideas. And I especially love the part we talk about leveraging AI. Yeah, it's obviously, I'm sure you talk about this a lot too, in a lot of places. But something we touch on is I really liked is kind of using the system to protect yourself against keeping yourself intellectually honest and doing the what we call the desired difficulty. Such as being at the gym and actually lifting the weights to get the gains. So yeah, I think, you know, after reading a book, I learned a lot about the system, I haven't tried it myself, some learnings there as well. But especially talking to you today, I feel like we've gone a little bit deeper in a lot of these new ideas on using AI and how inspiration comes to the prepared minds. I like that part a lot too. And yeah, thank you so much. It was very, very insightful. And I also love how we talked about Western Eastern philosophy. I wasn't expecting that to be a topic, but I absolutely love that part. And it really shows that how such different ideas in such different contexts can actually be interconnected linked in so many different ways to help us come up with our own understanding, our own explanation of the world. And I've just come up with better answers, but actually find better questions, which is ultimately more important. So yeah, thank you for everything. Thank you for having me for the invitation and let me extend the thank you to to one because I feel very welcomed here. And shooting the course here in Taipei is, it's first of all a great chance to put all the experience of the last seven years. And the book came out into a more hands-on description that with the help of the team here, I think came out right in a structured way. So people know what they can take from that. And my experience working here is very different to my experience being a tourist here and in a very good way because you get so much more immersed in a country when you work with people and couldn't have been a better experience. And I really hope that, and I'm certain it does, shine through the outcome of this month's studio work we've done here together. And it works mostly from day on, except when I throw coffee over myself. You guys have been working hard on doing this course in Taiwan. I see the agenda of the course and it's very thorough. I love the part where you target specific people, knowledge workers, researchers, creators, learners. I think that's the nuances that really helps people not just go to the course and learn the knowledge that you have in your book, but having very practical ways of leveraging it, implementing it, and making it a habit. I think that's very powerful thing when you do it courses. So yeah, and I'm looking forward and hopefully can come back often because launched and got some feedback and maybe engage in some different form again here. I love you. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Well, it's a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I was in a restaurant for two or three years and I was not feeling it. I was talking to the audience and I started to talk to everyone. I really didn't like what I was doing. I knew a lot of fans and I was like, "I'm more into people who like me." I was like, "I'm not doing anything." When I was singing, I found that I don't have to be more into myself. When I was in the restaurant, I found that I was more into people who like me. When I was in a restaurant, I found that I was in a lot of people who like me because I was in a lot of people who like me. When I was in a restaurant, I found that I was more into people who like me.