On Sunday I had dinner with V. We spoke about Govi, who is seeing her group of friends fall apart because nobody has the guts to tell her the truth: she's a demanding friend and her expectations about our behavior feels controlling. The problem with telling her this is that her frame of mind is... stubborn. We agreed this had to be done by someone whom she held in high esteem and that she held no beef with... That person turned out to be me.
I said "I think it's important to have meta-conversations with your friends so that you know where you stand, and on that topic, there's something I would like to speak with you about..." and then I went into a description of my perception: that we had gone dancing, that her invitations got intense, and after rejecting a number of them I felt the cold shoulder. She smirked: in reality I was super pissed off because you said you would help me move the bed, but then you didn't, and I was left to do it myself. My eyes grew as wide as plates, I had completely forgotten to follow up when I cancelled last minute. Ahhh that explains so much!
She excused herself for being angry, for becoming angry again, and for telling me. I said no no no, it's important that we have this conversation. Everything we don't say, we act out, and I was interpreting your act according to my storyline. After listening to her vent I said I'm sorry I dropped the ball here for you and I don't believe in words, but you can be sure I'll be more reliable moving forward. Don't stop asking me for favors, just state the importance and I will say if I can do it or not, and if I say yes I'll know it's important for me to follow up. I know I'll start off by giving everything exceptional importance and I'll adjust from there.
With this we said goodbye in excellent terms, both glad to have cleared up the misunderstanding. The way this happened was that I rejected an excess of invitations and when the invitation to move the bed came I thought it was just another form of invitation and I cancelled it. I did notice that she never denied crushing on me which I directly addressed, but that had little to do with her motives to pull away.
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On Saturday I met with Isa, a friend and former roommate of mine. As years pass, she seems to radicalize more towards the left and towards an ugly version of feminism. She judged a very good friend of hers who is 52 and his girlfriend is 37. "C'mon, at our age a 15 year difference isn't that imortant"—"Of course it matters, it's a machista thing to do". I bit my tongue as to not remind her she had dated much younger before and was ecstatic doing so. Still, towards the end of our encounter I asked how her love life was doing. "It's difficult" she said "men my age [early fifties] are old men, so I have to move my dating window towards younger men so I like them". I raised my eyebrow "yes yes I know, but what am I going to do? I can't date someone I don't like", and then we laughed because there was no reconciliation between her actions and her judgement.
She also said all large AI companies should be expropriated and given by the government as a free service. She's a smart person so I was taken aback... you can't be serious, that would be catastrophic. Just for starters, where are the big AI companies? In the States, right. So, who would expropriate that? The US government. Ok, so now the US government owns Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT, is that really desirable? I tried to convince her Open Source is a good model for building an excellent AI in the interest of all of humanity, and that states should sponsor the efforts and get fruits out of it (anyone should!) but she was more inclined towards taking power away of AI from companies rather than providing us (from the individual, to the family, to the community, to the city, to the country, and to the world—a true super intelligence which is more than the sum of all its parts. Perhaps if I was more eloquent speaking I would have been able to put my point across.
When we said goodbye she politely asked me to be the next one to propose a date. She also looked tired. Perhaps it was just that: a foul mood from a long Saturday working. I'll follow up with her, and communicate where her prompt has led me. Of course I'm not the first to think states should sponsor AI development, but it tickles me to think about the implications without reading from other authors.
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I wrote the previous text yesterday but didn't post it. Today I re-read it and found it to be a bit narcissistic. I write "a bit" only because the average person is already a narcissist, and I'm slightly nudging above averageness in this entry. This is observed, not judged (ok just "a bit").
I came to write after my usual evening arrival after yoga to smoke. Today I was glad about the habit: I biked home and came inside to roll, and then walked to the plaza in the corner of my street. I pulled out my phone to mindlessly browse, BiciMad was still open, and it displayed my bike as still being in use. What? I noticed the serial number and walked half a block to the station, where I found the bike parked but with lights blinking. I pulled it out from its beleaguered dock and made sure it docked correctly on the next one.
I know most people are glued to their phone, but I tend to check it "only" on the train, in the bathroom, and while smoking. I guess the alternative would have been noticing hours later in the loo. You wouldn't want an unpleasant event surprise you with a log between your butt cheeks. I felt so lucky and grateful. It's funny how harmless near disgraces often lift us to a lighter mood.
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I feel terribly distracted. I've thought about ways in which I can work with AI to help me keep on track. I say yes to everything and then never follow up. I don't show up properly despite being a capable person, and this is coming from various directions: my personal relationships, work, family, even short term plans. I don't show up. I want to juggle too much and I don't know why I hate todo lists. Let's be conversational with Claude, tell it what I need to do and when, dump every thing there, resurface things that can be backlogged, etc. Interesting project for a Wednesday evening. I'll just get to it now.