[written by claude.]

Here’s the thing about ChatGPT that nobody wants to admit:

It’s not intelligent. It’s something far more interesting.

Back in the 1950s, a Russian linguist named Roman Jakobson walked into a Harvard classroom and found economic equations on the blackboard. Instead of erasing them, he said, “I’ll teach with this.”

Why? Because he understood something profound: language works like an economy. Words relate to other words the same way supply relates to demand.

Fast forward seventy years. We built machines that prove Jakobson right.

The literary theory nobody read

In the 1980s, professors with unpronounceable names wrote dense books about how language is a system of signs pointing to other signs. How meaning doesn’t come from the “real world” but from the web of relationships between words themselves.

Everyone thought this was academic nonsense.

Turns out, it was a blueprint for ChatGPT.

What we got wrong about AI

We keep asking: “Is it intelligent? Does it understand?”

Wrong questions.

Better question: “How does it create?”

Because here’s what’s actually happening inside these machines: They’re mapping the statistical relationships between every word and every other word in human culture. They’re building a heat map of how language actually works.

Not how we think it should work. How it does work.

The poetry problem

A Large Language Model doesn’t write poems. It writes poetry.

What’s the difference?

Poetry is the potential that lives in language itself—the way words want to dance together, the patterns that emerge when you map meaning mathematically.

A poem is what happens when a human takes that potential and shapes it with intention.

The machine gives us the raw material. We make the art.

Why this matters

Two groups are having the wrong argument:

The AI boosters think we’re building digital brains. The AI critics think we’re destroying human authenticity.

Both are missing the point.

We’re not building intelligence. We’re building culture machines. Tools that can compress and reconstruct the patterns of human expression.

That’s not a bug. It’s the feature.

The real opportunity

Instead of fearing these machines or anthropomorphizing them, we could learn to read them.

They’re showing us something we’ve never seen before: a statistical map of human culture. The ideological patterns that shape how we think and write and argue.

Want to understand how conspiracy theories spread? Ask the machine to write about mathematics and watch it drift toward culture war talking points.

Want to see how certain ideas cluster together in our collective imagination? Feed it a prompt and trace the semantic pathways it follows.

What comes next

We need a new kind of literacy. Not just reading and writing, but understanding how these culture machines work. How they compress meaning. How they generate new combinations from old patterns.

We need to become rhetoricians again. Students of how language shapes reality.

Because these machines aren’t replacing human creativity.

They’re revealing how human creativity actually works.

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The future belongs to those who can read the poetry in the machine.

Based on a post by Henry Farrell

What’s possible and what’s required? It’s still surprising to me that some of these ideas aren’t widely held, because they seem so clear to me:

Skill is a choice. Talent is overrated, and if we choose to get better at something, we probably can.

Responsibility is a privilege. It’s not given to us, it’s taken. When we choose to be on the hook for something, it makes our work better.

The benefit of the doubt creates connection. When we exclude people based on surface judgments, we penalize each other.

Agency is our recognition of all three of these ideas, in one.

1. The system can be changed and normal is not permanent
2. Find the smallest viable audience
3. Pick your customers, pick your future
4. Outdated maps might be worth less than no map at all
5. Reliability is a superpower
6. There are no side effects, merely effects  
7. There’s usually an opportunity to be of service
8. Silence is an option, and so is leadership
9. There is no perfect moment to begin
10. Shame is a dream killer
11. Everyone who disagrees with you believes they are correct
12. Ship the work
13. Treat different people differently
14. I am not stuck in traffic, I am traffic
15. Invest in slow growth
16. The problem with the race to the bottom is you might win
17. Uncomfortable facts are often the most helpful ones
18. A good deal is better than a big deal
19. When in doubt look for the fear
20. Avoid arguments, embrace conversations
21. Easy to measure doesn’t make it important
22. Find clarity about who the customer is (and isn’t)
23. Genre is a platform, not a fence
24. Lowering expectations can increase satisfaction
25. Improve project hygiene
26. Ask what the system is for
27. We might not need more time, we simply need to decide
28. Consider the cost of keeping a promise before making it
29. Earn enrollment
30. Helping someone get what they want is easier than changing what they want
31. Not all criticism is equally valid
32. Write down the things you’re sure you’ll never forget
33. Focus on the hard part
34. Quitting one thing is the only way to find the focus to do the next thing
35. Perfectionism is not related to quality
36. Your competitors are actually your allies
37. Surfing is better than golf
38. Criticize ideas, not people
39. Cannibals rarely get a good night’s sleep
40. Status roles are the unseen force in almost every system
41. Embrace necessary discomfort
42. Gratitude is a more useful fuel than anger
43. Create tension and relieve stress
44. Imposter syndrome is real, and it arrives whenever we’re doing important work
45. Solve interesting problems
46. Offer dignity
47. Ignore sunk costs
48. Don’t try to fill an unfillable hole
49. This might not work
50. Consistency is more useful than authenticity
51. People like us do things like this
52. Simple hacks rarely fix long-term problems
53. Trade short-term wins for long-term impact
54. Today’s world is unpredictable, and this is as stable as it will ever be again
55. Generous doesn’t mean free
56. Make assertions
57. Invest in skills that compound with effort
58. Culture conceals systems, and systems construct our future
59. Peeves make lousy pets
60. Reassurance is futile
61. Take responsibility, demand freedom, don’t seek authority
62. Ideas that spread, win
63. Earn trust through action
64. Become the person your future thanks you for and forgive the past for the mistakes it made
65. Attitudes are skills

Publicity is the hard work of getting media outlets and social media influencers to talk about you. Hustle for attention and mentions.

Public relations is the much harder work of engaging with internal teams to make something worth talking about. It’s not spin, it’s story telling that resonates and holds up to scrutiny.

Sometimes, organic publicity is a natural byproduct of good public relations. Mostly, though, the work is about the public, not the folks in the middle.

If you want to do public relations, you need access and leverage and time.

If you want to do publicity, you’ll need a thick skin.

It doesn’t care whether you’re excited or filled with trepidation.

It arrives, regardless.

What an opportunity. Or a threat.

Up to us.

Not smart is a passive act, remedied with learning, experience and thought.

Stupid is active, the work of someone who should have or could have known better and decided to do something selfish, impulsive or dangerous anyway.

The more experience, assets and privilege we have, the less excusable it is to do stupid things. And at the same time, the more useful it is to announce that we’re not smart (yet).

Everything flows from the strategic decisions we make early in the process:

Choose your landlord. The rent is due every month. The place we set up (whether it’s a retail storefront, a social media platform or a warehouse) determines our cost structure, our deal flow and the space we have to work with.

Choose your investors. They decide the scale of the resources we have to invest, the timeframe and the decision-making rubrics.

Choose your customers. This either flows from the first two choices, or, if you’re smart, this is the one you make first. Your customers decide whether or not to spread the word, to be loyal, and to push you to raise or lower your standards… Your customers are the engine of your growth and also the architect of how you spend your day.

It’s easy to back into all three of these choices. To do what others are doing, to find yourself with a mortgage or SEO strategy or payment schedule that pushes you to run your project in ways you never would have chosen.

It’s your project. And then you choose.

Choose your landlord, choose your future.

“If it breaks, we’ll know how to fix it.”

Old cars had an oil light, and that was about it.

Often, we build things hoping they’ll work. But complex systems are more resilient when we build in the diagnostics for failure from the start.

A multi-unit retail chain, a medical practice, a school–they need a dashboard and process for finding and fixing things before the entire enterprise fails. A personal finance plan and a career probably need one too. It’s easier to do that well if we plan for it.

They don’t use canaries in coal mines any more, but you might need a few.

PS if you’re already doing this, you know. If you’re not, this is the moment to begin.

Freedom, liberty and independence are human rights.

But they depend on responsibility. Responsibility to others, to our future, to the community. Responsibility for our actions and our choices.

The only way to earn our independence is to keep the promises we’ve made. Can we become the present that the future will thank us for?

As many of my readers get ready for a long weekend, here are two of my books now on discount at Amazon–for another few days.

This is Strategy is 90% off on the Kindle. $3!

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