Hi friends,

I was initially reticent to using GPT for writing. Now, I use it every day — and I've compiled the lessons I've learned into a guide for you.

One major "aha" moment came from a conversation with a friend who told me that GPT is particularly useful for experts. I thought he was crazy. I thought GPT was a Gell-Mann Amnesia Trap, meaning that only people who don’t know anything about a subject would be impressed by its answers.

I bought into the Gell-Mann Amnesia argument at first, but have since changed my mind because knowing more about a subject gives you a deeper well of knowledge to to draw from when prompting GPT.

How I Write Podcast

This week's How I Write interview is with Derek Thompson. He was an actor growing up. Now he's a published author who writes at The Atlantic and incorporates lessons from Shakespeare into his columns.

Here are some of his writing maxims that stuck out:

1. Every great scene in theater is a fight. Think of your favorite scene from your favorite movie. Did the characters agree on everything? Nope. Writing comes alive when there's conflict hanging in the air.
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2. Ignore the A-holes. Find critics who are rooting for you and listen to them instead.
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3. Writing a first draft is like crawling through 1,000 mud pits of uncertainty, doubt, mental blockage, and un-inspiration so you can sprint for a few minutes in the clean fields of flow between them.

(Watch on YouTube | Listen on Spotify or Apple)

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Today's Finds

​Fiat Ruins Everything: In some ways, I have the ultimate endorsement for this book... I wrote the foreword. Over the years, Jimmy has persuaded me that the debasement of currency is corrupting society. When you divorce a currency from the fixed value of a commodity, like gold, you invite a whole host of problems. The negative consequences aren't just economic. They're also cultural. Morality changes every few years. Grade inflation runs rampant. The rock of faith is increasingly replaced by spiritual fads, which waver like a log in the ocean. I admire Jimmy because he's not an armchair pontificator. He has the technical and mathematical chops to back up his ideas. Here's a trailer for the book, and here's the website.

​Masters of the Word: A history of how shifts in communication have shaped society. One stand-out example is how the advent of radio led to a vertical spike in the number of despotic nations and overall totalitarianism. The eye and ear interpret information differently. The eye is calm and critical. The ear accepts and believes. That's why radio so inherently persuasive. The more powerful communication technologies become, the more people will fight wars over words instead of territory. Language, when wielded at scale, is among man's most powerful weapons.

​Reflections on Asperger’s Syndrome: Peter Thiel has long condemned the modern world for making it so difficult for people to follow through on their original ideas for want of social acceptance. He cites that social push-back as the reason that the lion's share of successful startup founders have Asperger’s. A severe case can obviously be debilitating. People with Asperger’s are unemployed at rates that far exceed the general population. But a lighter case may increase the chances of making a breakthrough innovation, and it's worth asking why that is. To that end, I find it amusing when people are surprised that wild innovators think wild thoughts. The idea that unusual things would be accomplished by unusual people seems entirely logical to me. Or, as Kanye once said: “You know, if you guys want these crazy ideas and these crazy stages, this crazy music and this crazy way of thinking, there's a chance it might come from a crazy person." What does Thiel's observation reveal about society? What does it say about who runs the world?

Why Jeff Bezos Dropped Physics: No matter how talented you are, your lack of genius in a particular area is often obvious. Jeff Bezos wanted to be a theoretical physicist. But one night, while studying quantum mechanics, he realized his brain wasn’t wired to process highly abstract concepts. Upon learning that he wasn’t smart enough to be a physicist, he switched to computer science. He tells the story in this short and hilarious YouTube video.

​Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design: Fun list of heuristics. Written for engineers, but applicable for just about everybody. Here are some of my favorites: (1) A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately. (2) Your best design efforts will inevitably wind up being useless in the final design. Learn to live with this disappointment. (3) If you want to have a maximum effect on the design of a new engineering system, learn to draw. Engineers always wind up designing the vehicle to look like the initial artist's concept (this is also why the best writers dictate corporate strategy).

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P.S. The next Write of Passage cohort starts on October 2nd, and I'd love to have you in the course. We aren't just about writing. We're about helping you do something meaningful with your work — where you can work on what you want, where you want, with who you want. If you feel like you're made for more than what you're currently doing, you will love the course.