Got a story. The other day I can back from some exercise and made a protein shake. Took a moment to consider why. It's a routine from when I trained more and at the time it was worth doing to improve nutrition and recovery. On this specific day, I just went to the gym to move my body. But the habit of the shake remain, even through it likely did not contribute much. I say this because I've been eating and sleeping lousy and those are the first things to address. But this advanced optimization remained.

I remembered that I don't listen to music when I run. Because for me it is a crutch. If the music is hype, I run too fast. If it's the wrong song late in a run, I stop and maybe switch the song. Either way, it keeps me from pushing me. Pushing me that day and pushing me in general to grow.

AI is the ultimate crutch for me. It's pumping out exactly what I intended, I'm hype. It's missing the bit, I give up. The common denominator is that it's one more thing to keep me from thinking harder, pushing myself, basking in the discomfort. And I think that is the problem with tools. The more you lean on them, the more you atrophy in that realm.

There's something about friction that switches on the learning part of the brain. Education, more generally, growth is all about the right amount of friction or stimuli to promote growth. In the past, the friction was too high and on average people did not grow. But as the friction drops, the education doesn't proportionally increase. Because we like our crutches and cling to them.

To play devil's advocate, I use the socratic method in my chats and get a lot out of it, that I otherwise wouldn't have bothered to learn.