Jason Shen
@jasonshen
Exec coach helping founders and creative leaders rebound and reinvent so they do more of what matters most.
Jason Shen
IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?
It’s an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or... See more
It’s an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or... See more
Pearls Before Breakfast: Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out.
Make your version of a copy
This is an example of what’s called a “divergence test” (as opposed to a test like the Raven’s, which asks you to sort through a list of possibilities and converge on the right answer). It requires you to use your imagination and take your mind in as many different directions as possible. With a divergence test, obviously there isn’t a single right
... See moreMalcolm Gladwell • Outliers
Some people are stronger at converging than diverging
While I'm sympathetic to many already struggling creators who will find fewer commissions and opportunities, I also think the genie is out of the lamp on this one. While there are probably some legal, technological, and social mechanisms to slow the use of these tools—I've heard of calls to boycott AI generated art—we cannot stop their widespread
... See moreJason Shen • 131: How to Be Human in the Age of Generative AI
Third, I'm trying to learn more about how these Generative AI systems work more deeply and uncover their creative potential. You've seen my explorations with Midjourney through the cover images of many of the last few newsletters, including this one.
Jason Shen • 131: How to Be Human in the Age of Generative AI
Jim Simons on luck: "People underestimate its importance except when things go badly. Then they’re very happy to ascribe it to bad luck, which it may be, of course.
One has to recognize that luck plays a meaningful role in everyone’s lives. You get born to decent parents in a good part of the world, and you’re way ahead of the game.... See more
Frederik Christopher Gieschenx.comA remarkable investor comments on the importance of luck (versus skill)
Generative AI combines the encoding of vast corpuses of text and images—which act as training data—and a series of machine learning algorithms to turn text prompts into incredibly creative, intelligent, and useful visual and text responses.
I would rank this among the 3 most transformative pieces of technology I've encountered in my lifetime
... See moreJason Shen • 131: How to Be Human in the Age of Generative AI
The iterative process of recording a great track — patience, good ear, encouragement
Imagine being able to have a language conversation about anything with a computer. This is now possible and available to many people for the first time with ChatGPT. In this episode we take a look at the consequences and some interesting insights from Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman.