[The following was copied and pasted from GPT-4o after I gave it the transcription of a 2 minute ramble I had on my morning walk and asked it to turn it into a 1000 word blog post]

When I listen to music, I often find myself in two main modes of engagement: exploration and exploitation. Each mode brings its own kind of excitement, and both are essential to my experience as a music lover. It's fascinating how these two modes complement each other, providing a balance between the thrill of discovery and the comfort of the familiar. Music has this powerful ability to take us on new journeys, yet at the same time, remind us of memories we've stored deep in our minds.

The first mode I enter when listening to music is exploration. This phase is all about searching for something new—whether it’s a song, an artist, or even a genre I haven’t heard of yet. There’s something exhilarating about finding a new track, especially when it comes from an artist I already love or from a completely unfamiliar one. In that moment, it’s like being handed a key to a brand-new world of sound. The anticipation of what that world holds is thrilling. You never know exactly what you’re going to find, and that uncertainty adds to the excitement. It’s a feeling of venturing into the unknown, and the possibilities seem endless.

As I immerse myself in the new music, I listen with heightened attention, eager to uncover the layers and details that make the song special. It’s like opening a gift, savoring each note, each lyric, trying to understand what makes it click. Over time, the novelty may wear off after many listens, but that initial thrill of discovery is something that keeps me coming back to the exploration mode. It feels deeply connected to a human instinct—our desire to find and experience new things.

This instinct for exploration isn’t unique to music. It’s something people have always craved across cultures and throughout history. It reminds me of the explorers of the past, like Lewis and Clark, who set off from places like my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, over 200 years ago to venture into the uncharted West. There’s a certain parallel between the exploration of physical landscapes and the exploration of music. In both cases, people are driven by curiosity and the desire to experience something they’ve never encountered before. Whether we’re discovering new territories or new songs, it’s the unknown that sparks excitement and wonder.

Of course, exploration is only one half of the equation when it comes to music listening. The other mode I often find myself in is what I like to call exploitation. In this phase, I’m not searching for something new. Instead, I’m enjoying the music I already know and love. Here, the term “exploitation” doesn’t carry the negative connotations it sometimes does. In this context, it’s about taking full advantage of the songs I’ve already discovered and reaping the rewards of the joy and pleasure they bring.

During the exploitation phase, I don’t want to wade through unfamiliar or unappealing tracks in search of a hidden gem. Instead, I’m content to play my favorite songs, the ones I know will bring me happiness. These songs have become reliable sources of positive emotions. They trigger the pleasure centers in my brain, evoking feelings of comfort, nostalgia, or pure enjoyment. It’s like pulling out a box of treasures—each song is a jewel that shines in its own way, reminding me of why I fell in love with it in the first place.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about this mode of listening. It’s less about the rush of discovery and more about the reassurance of the familiar. I’m able to sit back and fully appreciate the music, knowing exactly what to expect. There’s no pressure to evaluate or decide whether I like a song. I already know I do. And that allows me to engage with the music on a deeper, more personal level.

Interestingly, exploitation isn’t always a static experience. Sometimes, it overlaps with exploration in surprising ways. For instance, while revisiting old favorites, I might stumble upon a song I used to love but had forgotten about. When that happens, it’s almost like rediscovering it all over again. Hearing an old song after a long time can instantly transport me back to the moment I first discovered it. The memories come flooding back, and with them, all the emotions tied to that time. It’s a unique experience, blending the comfort of the known with the excitement of rediscovery.

Everyone knows that feeling when an old song unexpectedly comes on, and it takes you back in time. It’s a reminder of how music is not just a soundtrack to our lives, but also a time machine that can bring us back to specific moments. This interplay between the past and the present is one of the reasons I love the exploitation mode. It allows me to revisit not just the songs, but also the experiences and emotions that accompanied them.

In many ways, the exploration and exploitation modes of music listening are two sides of the same coin. Exploration is about seeking out the new, while exploitation is about enjoying what you’ve already found. Both modes are important and offer different kinds of fulfillment. Sometimes, I’m in the mood for the thrill of discovery, ready to dive into unfamiliar sounds. Other times, I want the comfort of my favorite songs, the ones that feel like old friends. Both bring me happiness, and I can’t imagine one without the other.

Ultimately, music listening is a deeply personal experience, and the balance between exploration and exploitation is unique to each person. For me, the key is knowing when to shift between the two. There are times when I crave novelty, and there are times when I need the familiar. Both phases serve their purpose, and both are equally rewarding in their own way.

In the end, I think this duality reflects a broader truth about life. We are always balancing the desire to discover new things with the need to appreciate and enjoy what we already have. Music, with its ability to both challenge and comfort us, mirrors this balance beautifully. Whether I’m exploring new sounds or exploiting my old favorites, I’m reminded of the richness and diversity that music brings to my life. It’s a never-ending journey, and I’m grateful for both the new discoveries and the old, cherished songs that make the ride worthwhile.

[The following was copied and pasted from GPT-4o after I gave it the transcription of a 1 minute ramble I had on my morning walk and asked it to turn it into a 300 word blog post]

On Twitter, I’ve noticed that my replies get far more likes and views than my original tweets. It feels like I’m stuck in "algorithmic purgatory," where the system pushes me to react to others instead of sharing my own ideas.

Twitter seems to value engagement over creativity. My replies always outperform my original thoughts, which makes me feel like Twitter encourages reacting rather than creating. This has led me to reply more, even though I don’t want to become just another "reply guy."

The platform keeps me hooked by making fast replies more visible. The quicker I respond, the more attention I get. But this also stops me from thinking up and sharing original ideas. Twitter should be a place for creativity, but the algorithm only seems to care if people engage with my replies, not my original content.

This system has made me more reactive. Instead of creating, I feel pushed to respond to whatever’s popular. It’s frustrating because I want to share new ideas, but replies are what get noticed.

Even though I’m aware of this, it’s hard to change. Like many, I adapt to the environment I’m in, and Twitter’s setup makes it hard not to reply constantly. I feel stuck in this loop—wanting to create but being drawn into reacting instead.

[The following was copied and pasted from GPT-4o when I gave it the transcription of a 30 second ramble I had walking to the gym and asked it to turn it into a 500 word blog post]

Planning for the future, especially when you're trying to save money, can be challenging and often feels counterintuitive. Consider, for example, a construction project. It's well-known that projects tend to run over budget, often by about 20%. If you're trying to prepare for this possibility and want to set aside an additional 20% for any potential overages, the question becomes: how much of the total project budget should you actually plan for?

Many people might instinctively think the answer is 80%. They assume that if they save 20%, they should just subtract that amount from 100%, leaving 80%. However, this is a common mistake that stems from a misunderstanding of percentages and fractions. If you were to stop at 80%, thinking that you've saved 20%, you'd actually be setting aside 25% for overages, not 20%. This happens because 20% of 80 is one-fourth, or 25%. So, by budgeting only 80%, you end up with more money set aside than intended.

To illustrate this more clearly, think of it this way: the correct amount you should budget for is actually closer to 83.33%. If you allocate 83.33% of your budget for the project, then 20% of that 83.33% is exactly the amount you'll save for overages, aligning perfectly with your goal. It may seem strange or unintuitive, but when you work through the numbers, the logic becomes clearer. Imagine you have a total project amount of 6 units. If you save 1 unit (which is 20% of 5 units), you're left with 5 units for your project, and the 1 unit saved represents the 20% overage amount perfectly.

So, when thinking about budgeting in this way, it's easy to see why many people make mistakes. The math involves fractions that don't immediately make sense. However, once you look closely at the numbers, you begin to understand the truth. This example from construction management demonstrates a common mathematical misunderstanding, where simple calculations can lead to significant differences in planning and saving. Recognizing these small but crucial details can make all the difference when preparing for the unexpected.

[The following was copied and pasted from GPT-4o when I gave it the transcription of a one minute ramble I had walking to the gym and asked it to turn it into a 1000 word blog post]

When we observe the universe, there’s a tendency to focus on what we know, on the predictable, on the well-trodden paths that science has meticulously mapped out for us. But often, the universe throws a curveball—a moment or a phenomenon that defies our expectations, and in those moments, we find a deeper beauty and a richer understanding. One such example is the way sunlight interacts with clouds, a phenomenon that might seem ordinary at first glance, but reveals a fascinating complexity upon closer inspection. This interaction is not just a simple matter of light traveling through space; it’s a dance of photons, bending, refracting, and creating illusions that challenge our understanding of the natural world.

Consider the way sunlight appears to curve around the edges of clouds. At first, it seems like an optical illusion—a trick of the eye. But there’s more to this phenomenon than meets the eye. When sunlight reaches the edge of a cloud, it encounters a boundary between two different mediums—air and the water droplets within the cloud. This boundary causes the light to bend, a process known as refraction. As light passes from one medium to another, its speed changes, causing the light to change direction. This bending is subtle, yet it’s enough to make the light appear as though it’s curving around the cloud.

This bending of light is governed by the principles of diffraction and refraction, where the change in the light’s speed as it moves from one medium to another causes it to deviate from its original path. The degree of bending depends on the wavelength of the light and the angle at which it strikes the boundary between the two mediums. The result is a subtle yet perceptible curving of light around the cloud, creating an ethereal halo or a bright outline that seems to defy the expectation that light should always travel in straight lines.

Yet, despite this apparent curving, if we were to zoom in on the process, we would see that the light is still traveling in straight lines. This is the paradox at the heart of this phenomenon—the light appears to curve, but it is actually following a series of straight paths, each one bending slightly as it crosses the boundary between air and cloud. It’s a reminder that what we perceive isn’t always a straightforward reflection of reality. Our minds are wired to seek patterns, to find order in chaos, and sometimes this leads us to see things that aren’t there, or to miss the subtle complexities that are.

This phenomenon is a perfect example of how the universe often defies our expectations. We’re used to thinking of light as something that moves in straight lines, something predictable and constant. But in reality, light is as dynamic and complex as the universe itself. It interacts with its surroundings in ways that can be surprising, even counterintuitive. And in those moments when our expectations are challenged, we have an opportunity to learn something new, to see the world in a different light—literally and figuratively.

The beauty of the universe lies not just in its order, but in its ability to surprise us, to show us things that we didn’t expect. It’s in those moments of surprise, when our understanding is challenged, that we grow, that we deepen our understanding of the world around us. The phenomenon of sunlight curving around clouds is just one example of this. It’s a reminder that the universe is full of wonders, many of which are hidden in plain sight, waiting for us to notice them, to question them, to explore them.

The more we explore these unexpected phenomena, the more we realize that the universe is not just a static, predictable place. It’s dynamic, full of surprises, and infinitely complex. Every time we think we have it figured out, it throws something new at us, something that challenges our understanding and forces us to think in new ways. And that’s what makes the study of the universe so fascinating. It’s not just about learning facts and figures; it’s about opening our minds to the possibilities, to the unexpected, to the things that don’t fit neatly into our preconceived notions of how the world works.

In a way, the universe is like a great puzzle, with pieces that don’t always fit together in the way we expect them to. But it’s in the process of trying to fit those pieces together, of trying to understand the unexpected, that we gain new insights, that we see the world in a new way. The bending of sunlight around clouds is just one small piece of that puzzle, but it’s a piece that can teach us a lot about the nature of light, of clouds, and of the universe itself.

So next time you see sunlight streaming through the clouds, take a moment to appreciate the complexity of what you’re seeing. It’s not just light traveling in a straight line; it’s light interacting with the world in a way that’s both simple and complex, both predictable and surprising. It’s a reminder that the universe is full of surprises, and that the most interesting things often happen when our expectations are challenged, when we see something that doesn’t quite fit with what we thought we knew.

And in those moments, when we’re faced with the unexpected, we have a choice. We can either dismiss it as an anomaly, something that doesn’t matter, or we can embrace it, explore it, and see what it can teach us. Because it’s in those moments of surprise, of unexpected beauty, that we find the true magic of the universe. It’s in those moments that we realize just how much there is left to learn, and how exciting that journey of discovery can be.

I’ve always loved reading book summaries.

Even if the summary of a book emphasized things that were different from what I thought was important when I read it, I still love seeing someone else’s perspective. 

So I’m always thankful of the virtuous people that freely share their book summaries online – and one of the best that I’ve found at it is Blas Moros, who publishes on his site blas.com. I could never read as many books as Blas has. Just as impressive, he seems to always capture the "most important" and wisdom-packed parts of a book; put succinctly - he don't miss much.

Five years ago, I had a lot of free time and wanted to learn as much as I could, so I decided to create a system that would help me digest this mountain of highlighted information. On 2/14/19:

• I went through all the books that Blas had reviewed up until that point
  

• Downloaded PDFs of each of their highlights separately

• Merged 125 PDFs together into a single, mega-highlight PDF

• It can be found here: Link

• Can be found here: Link
• It's from 5/31/19
• I’m sure there is some Blas-induced bias in the original highlights, just like I'm sure that there’s Cory-bias in my Hi^2
• The hashtags here is me trying to organize the highlights of highlights better into topics

I would normally stop there since that's more enough to organize and ultimately understand; yet in this case, I still had over 100 pages of information! So I decided to dive a little deeper:

• Made a Hi^3 version (highlights of highlights of highlights) which groups them by book then by tagged topic

• Can be found here: Link

• It's from 6/4/19 and is 81 pages long

• The tags here are more specific and tried to be more accurate within each book for each Hi^3 (but still has some errors obviously)

• Made a Hi^4 version (you get the picture) which groups the highlights by tagged topic across books

• Can be found here: Link

• It's from 6/5/19 and is 79 pages long

• The network graph at the top is what I used to decide the story, as these meta topics ended up being the “most important” (central) when graphed, as evidenced by their bubble size and text size
  

• For the graph, the nodes are topics and the connections are highlights of the same topic within the same book (Node A (highlight topic A) and Node B (highlight topic B) are connected by connection C (are in the same book C) - not a perfect reason but a way to connect topics (nodes) across books (connections)

• You can kind of see the shape of the story in the How 3 (EQ, character, and leadership) - What 2 (learning and lifehacks) - How 1 (simplicity) - Why 1 (love)

• Influenced by Simon Sinek’s “Why-How-What” framework, I made a variation that starts and ends with why – why 5, how 3, what 2, how 1, why 1

• 1, 1, 2, 3, 5... Fibonacci-hive assemble!

• Finally I made a Hi^5 version but IMO it was a step too far and I should’ve just stopped at the highlights grouped by tagged topic (the Hi^3 version)

• Not sharing it, as there was nothing really new

• It's from 12/2/20 and is 85 pages long

• Gets too lost in the thick of things

…and that's mostly where the research stopped.

In the end, I didn’t do much with all that glorious highlighted information. Yeah I revisited the Hi^4 version a couple of times and shared it with Blas (he thought it was cool), but I didn't do much else with it. I do love the network graph of the topics and have looked at it a bunch of random times – I find it beautiful.

Recently, I asked Blas if he minded if I shared the project with others, provided he is fine with it. At the very least, I feel like I learned a ton from the research project and hope others can as well.

Have fun getting lost in The Rabbit Hole.