Don't ask others to change you
Change comes from within
Who is the artificial intelligence?
Something I have said frequently to people is that if you rely 100% on artificial intelligence, you are the artificial intelligence.
Recently it has become quite common on platforms like 𝕏 for people to hold an opinion, ask the AI on that platform “Grok” a loaded question, and then declare victory when the AI says, “You are correct,” in answer to the query, “Grok, tell them I’m correct.”
I sometimes use AI tools to do research but it is important to validate what is being told to you if you ask an AI to retrieve any information for you. One great example of this was a time I asked ChatGPT to show me some papers that supported a hypothesis, and it did exactly that. Only when I verified the papers it turned out that the citations it came up with were all hallucinations and didn’t actually exist. AI will do what you tell it to do, even if it is simply making up the answer.
When I was young I remember being frustrated with all the studying I needed to do and I said in passing that it would be great if there was technology that could just upload information into my head (a bit like in the Matrix). I remember my uncle saying to me, “Yea but if you could do that all you’d have is a bunch of stupid people with a load of information in their heads that they don’t understand.” Seems like my uncle predicted the future because although the information is not being uploaded directly to their heads, there are a lot of quite stupid people who just regurgitate information it took them 3 seconds to find and have no actual understanding of it.
Learning is more than having access to information. You have to spend enough time understanding the information that is in front of you before can interpret the significance of that information and how it can be applied in the real world. You can’t get an AI to do that for you any more than you can get anything else to do something for you.
Change comes from within.
Diet and weight
If someone tells me they are “on a diet,” and what they mean by that is that they are making a temporary change to their lifestyle in order to reduce their bodyweight, then alarm bells start ringing in my head. Some people have great success with diets like this where they will lose weight and keep the weight off, but the VAST majority of people who I have encountered with this attitude either give up before they hit their goal weight, or, stop the diet right after they hit their goal weight and go right back to where they started.
The problem with this is that these people are seeing a diet as a period they need to suffer through in order to reach a target weight. Once they hit that target weight they consider the task to be complete and the diet to be over. These people do not need a “diet.” They need a sustainable lifestyle change that will allow them to stay at a stable weight long term. There are lots of ways to do this, but the decision needs to come from within and follow a plan rather than just doing something because a coach/book told you to suffer through something for a certain period of time. That’s not sustainable.
As I mentioned in my article last week, I did a weight cut for a karate tournament once. I HATED it. The main reason I hated it was because it was completely unsustainable. You can’t be in a permanent state of deprivation and distress if you want to lose weight and keep the weight off. I lost my weight for the tournament, then gained the weight back after. While training at that club I needed to control my weight because lifting a certain amount of weight was required to pass grading tests. I needed to bench press my body weight plus 30kg for one test, in addition to being light on my feet enough to fight for extended periods of time. (I eventually got to the point I could bench press 120 kg (265 lbs) at a body weight of 80 kg (176 lbs). That made benching 110 kg followed by having to fight 10 guys more manageable).
When I had a goal weight I needed to stay at and a goal weight I needed to lift my lifestyle needed to reflect that. I needed to keep eating to keep my stamina going but if I ate too much I’d gain weight. I weighed myself daily and adjusted what I ate day to day based on this. The decision to stay at 80 kg and be both strong and fast while doing so was very much a conscious decision and I needed to constantly work on myself.
But priorities change over time and we focus on different things.
Choosing to be better
Although I still love doing karate, the focus of my training changed quite a bit in 2020 when I took up running. I didn’t just take up a bit of jogging here and there. I really threw myself into running and it’s been a passion of mine ever since.
Running has taught me a lot of things, but one of the most important things it has taught me is to be honest with myself about how things play out.
I’ve been in tournaments where I’ve been absolutely smashed by very strong opponents. I’ve also been in tournaments where I’ve smashed people. I’ve also performed both well and poorly at kata tournaments, but in all cases judges have looked at my technique and decided that I’m better/worse in comparison to an opponent.
Comparing yourself to others is fine. But that is only really a snapshot of what is going on on the day. But when it comes to running, the competition is literally just you, the distance, and the time. Even if you are running with people, or competing against other runners, the whole thing is literally, “I moved X distance, in Y time, on Z course.” And there’s nothing more honest than that.
Nobody can run for you. You do everything based on your own power. There are also no additional points for style when it comes to running. Nice form generally makes you faster but you don’t get penalized if you “run weird” and there is no time benefit based on aesthetics. Basically, you just need to put the work in if you want to get better at moving from point A to point B in less time.
There are of course ways to cheat. And that’s what I’ll get into in the next section.
Just do it for me (borrowed strength)
At the beginning of this article I mentioned people just throwing things at AI and using the information they receive without checking it. You could (on some levels) call AI a performance enhancer. The people who do that certainly are ‘performing’ in a way they would not have been able to before AI became widespread. But it’s all borrowed ‘strength’ and does not indicate any sort of knowledge possessed by the person doing it.
In this article I also talked about diet. Recently there has been more and more discussion about this weight loss drug, Ozempic. I’m not the kind of person who thinks that pharmaceutical interventions are a bad thing. There are lots of cases where pharmaceutical interventions are the best thing for someone in order to improve their health outcomes. But I do have some concerns when it comes to “unnecessary” interventions, especially if those interventions lead to people becoming dependent on that pharmaceutical. There’s a certain element of borrowed strength in this case as well, which might become evident if someone stops taking the drug and suddenly starts gaining a lot of weight.
When it comes to sports, I think we all know that performance enhancing drugs exist. I am not a fan of people who use performance enhancing drugs. Mostly because it’s just flat out cheating. I train in order to improve myself. That’s my decision. The older I get the less I care about being “the best” on any given day. But some people are willing to use performance enhancing drugs to give themselves an unfair advantage over opponents for the sake of fame and fortune. And there are people who have become wildly successful by cheating…which honestly, boils my blood.
Be careful what you wish for
Going back to AI for a minute, I mentioned earlier that when I asked AI to bring me some papers showing a result, it did so. But what it brought me was just a useless AI hallucination that looked kind of convincing but didn’t stand up to any level of scrutiny. AI seems to act like a genie that takes everything very literally and can sometimes lead you to places that it is not good for you to to.
I’m not sure if my readers know about Synthol. Synthol is a what is known as a ‘site enhancement oil’ that is injected into muscles in order to increase their size. You don’t get stronger by using synthol but it will increase the size of the muscles you inject it into. This can be seen almost as the equivalent of saying to an AI “give me bigger muscles.” I believe it is used sparingly by some bodybuilders to give them a bit of an aesthetic advantage when things need “evening out” before a competition, but there are some people that 100% rely on it and end up looking like misshapen ballon animals (covered in infections) as a result. But they do have bigger muscles so they got what they asked for.
Synthol is probably one of the least respectable forms of “cheating” to get the body you think you want, but there are other procedures out there that are done by “professionals” but aren’t much less ridiculous. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good looking set of ab implants.
These are just two examples, but there are many more. I won’t go into everything today for the sake of brevity.
“What’s next?”
There are a lot of people out there in life that believe that if they just have something, or do something, or look a certain way that they will be happy. They think it’s all about the destination. But let me tell you, most of the time it isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
Sometimes you spend so long building up to a goal that when you actually achieve it you don’t know what to do with yourself. Sometimes you can just be satisfied, but more often than not there is a “what’s next?”
When I look at those guys who inject synthol into themselves or have ab implants put in, I very much doubt they are happy with the result. I was much heavier in the past than I am now, and when I was losing weight I thought it was going to be awesome if I ended up with six pack abs. But after achieving a pretty decent physique, I don’t think I felt any different.
I feel less good if I gain weight and start losing the definition I do have…but my live didn’t change to any great degree when the appearance of my abdominal muscles improved…so why would it be life changing for anyone else?
On an exercise front, when I started running I wanted to run a marathon. Then I ran a marathon. Then I ran a 70 km. Then I ran more marathons and more ultras. Then I broke triple digits and ran 118 km. Then I decided that I’d be fulfilled and finished if I ran 100 miles. So I ran 100 miles. I think I can probably do it again in a better time. I achieved my goal and it just made more goals. That’s cool…I guess.
I enjoy pursuing goals. Having done something gives me a sense of achievement, but I don’t think there has ever been a single instance where I have done something and I’ve said, “OK. I’m satisfied now.” Achieving something has only ever led to a “meh” or a desire to go further.
So when I see people who just have other people become something or do something through borrowed strength, flat out cheating, or simply having something done 100% for them, I have to wonder what happens to them psychologically. I’ve been through the honeymoon phase of achieving goals many times and I know that they don’t last long.
I’d suggest that people be very careful what they wish for and consider the price they have to pay to get there.
Final thoughts and take home messages
Many of us are are living in a world of convenience. We have a lot of tools at our disposal that can make things easy for us, but it is important to remember that they are just tools and should not be relied upon 100%. If you do rely on them 100% you may end up either losing an edge or just looking very foolish afterwards.
The level of convenience has gotten to the point that we can simply ask a computer to do work for us, or ask a doctor to give us a treatment where we can lose weight with zero effort. “Muscles” can come out of a syringe full of poison and you can get a six pack without ever having to do a sit-up (for the right price of course).
To me, things are always worth more if you put in the effort to achieve them. It’s often the case that the more you have, the more you want, so it’s probably a good idea to achieve things through your own effort. I know that if I want to run further I need to work harder. But if someone just “wished” to be better looking and someone gave it to them, the honeymoon period might be over soon and they will need to ask for another favor to get to the next honeymoon phase.
Be careful what you wish for. Stay on the grind.
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Anthony
Cover photo:
When I was working full time in education I used to get really annoyed by mission statements that said something referring to students 'achieving their potential' (in a particular timeframe). I don't think those people understood about human potential; they just wanted to create tick boxes.