Revealing Flourish or Tilt?
your Saturday roundup
Professionally, I focus on creating social benefit startups. In my Saturday morning emails I share what I’m learning and thinking. Topics range from better living and parenting to business and philosophy.
Revealing Myself to AI. AI’s promise includes becoming a therapist, teacher, and assistant for those who want it. In order to get those benefits, AI will need to know you well. That means sharing data—potentially a lot of it. I’ve been cautious: DuckDuckGo for search, Google apps for work, OpenAI for queries (and only recently giving permission to save history). And I’m careful to redact details and not say too many personal things. Where will all this data end up? Should we run local models, split queries, or stop worrying? I ask because opening up more often to people, rather than just AI, would help me.
On Tilt Leaders? We all know the concept of power corrupting. And you’ve heard about scientific studies that suggest that power blocks empathy. Newer to me is the concept that leaders may not just act recklessly because power changes them, but because the path to power often rewards risk-taking. Those who rise to the top tend to be the ones who bet big and win—again and again. Some of that is skill, but repeated success can create the illusion of invincibility, distorting one’s sense of risk. Take Napoleon, for example. After his daring victory at the Battle of Lodi, he later said, “From that moment, I no longer regarded myself as a mere general, but as a man called upon to decide the fate of peoples.” Winning didn’t just boost his confidence—it reshaped his entire identity. (As a side note, if you’ve ever wondered why so many historic aristocrats behaved recklessly, consider this: a shocking number were young, and many spent their lives at least half-drunk without access to clean drinking water.)
Seek Flourishing. Parents say they want their kids to be happy, but is that the right goal? At a conference, someone (whose name I wish I’d caught) made the case for flourishing instead. Positive psychology suggests five key elements:
Positive Emotion: Small moments of joy matter. Infuse them daily.
Engagement: Flow states make time disappear—find ways to get there.
Relationships: Deep, meaningful connections (10 or fewer) have the biggest effect size. In-person matters. Let go of toxic ones.
Meaning: What are you doing with your life? A cause, your kids or something else bigger than you.
Achievement: Set and reach goals, but don’t over-index on them. Achievement alone can lead you astray. The key is to feel you’re contributing.
Until next time,
Miles
Joanna Stern recently published this AI article in WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/chatgpt-claude-deepseek-ai-features-compared-c5e1483c?mod=tech_trendingnow_article_pos2.
She has apparently jumped in big time re personal info, even proprietary info shared with AI.
I had all the same privacy questions. Overall, I'm very concerned about privacy, period. Unwittingly, people reveal their whole lives on social media (or friends reveal it for them through their posts), or through surveys, article comments, etc.
Maybe privacy has been invaded so much by banks on mortgage applications, or this and that health organization buying another and then another until everyone knows your medical history, not to mention insurance companies, or employers doing background checks, and credit reporting agencies being hacked, etc, that it's too late to worry about AI and privacy. With our national defense so skinny and in such disrepair, we better pray we aren't successfully invaded because no one is safe from digital prying and control anymore. So again, maybe getting personal with AI is moot.