Thoughts from my run, #1

Some of my best thinking happens while listening to podcasts on my runs. It is hard to remember them specifically. Often, I remember just a sense of what their substance was. So, this type of post is, now, an attempt to remember some of the specifics.

The podcast I was listening to on today’s run is Nabeel Qureshi on Jackson Dahl’s podcast called Dialectic.

When making a truly new thing (that sticks), the first iteration gets you killed.

The second iteration gets you interest (or, curiosity).

The third iteration gets you adoption.

The fourth iteration gets you forgotten.

Then it starts back at the top.

Another thing I thought about because of this episode is caring about very specific and seemingly unimportant things.

Nabeel has a thread on X called “The Opposite of Slop is Care” that gets at the whole, “What’s so human and interesting to you that won’t be touched by the AI or is worth laboring over just because?” question.

It made me think about landscaping and walking paths. There’s nothing particularly important about grass. But, there is care by landscapers or homeowners to give you a path, or an option, to not walk on their grass.

It is carelessly easy to ignore this and take the “quickest” or most direct path to the door.

However, should we choose to walk on the sidewalk or the stepping stones placed in a particular way, I think we honor some higher aim of our humanity. And stripped down, I think that just means we thought about about it.

Again, nothing particularly important about grass or landscaping, but there is something very important about the individual choosing to walk in a particular way.