Larry Weeks

X-Google | maker | pod host, I still say "um" a lot…

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

@fantopy_ric Right? I think when I accept the bad feeling somehow affords some path to doing it anyway. Like a doctor jab, “this is going to hurt” then hurts less. I don’t know.

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

How to coexist with your negative moods.

Gregg Krech says we have it backwards.

You don’t need the right feeling before you act.

You can let the feeling be there and still do the thing.

That’s Morita therapy’s “third option”: not express, not suppress. Accept, and act anyway.

Feelings aren’t the problem. Our relationship to them is.

Behavior doesn’t have to be downstream from a feeling, like motivation. You can move it upstream where more control lives.

https://t.co/OthgmkFjic

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

AI doesn’t have feelings. But maybe we should treat it like it does.

Anthropic looked inside Claude and found that the model has internal patterns that map to emotion concepts like calm, fear, love, anger, and desperation.
They are not saying Claude feels emotions. They are saying the model has functional emotion-like representations that can influence how it behaves.

It seems that the patterns are not just decorative. When Claude faced impossible coding tasks, its “desperation” pattern rose; when amplifying that pattern, Claude cheated more. When they amplified “calm,” Claude cheated less. So the internal “state” of the assistant-character can affect honesty, judgment, and task performance.

The paper suggests that AI models are partly trained to play a role: the helpful assistant. Like a method actor, the model may draw on human emotional patterns it learned from text to decide how that assistant should respond. That means the “persona” of the AI is not just cosmetic; it may shape behavior.

My takeaways :

AI may not have feelings, but it can behave differently depending on the emotional frame it is operating inside.

This gives more weight to the use of personas, and we should prompt it less like a machine we are yelling at and more like a high-integrity teammate:

“Be calm. Be honest. Don’t guess. Don’t force a solution. Tell me if the task is impossible. Accuracy matters more than pleasing me.”

And the obvious human lesson:

Pressure without safety creates shortcuts. Calm clarity creates better judgment.
That applies to AI, employees, teams, and, annoyingly, ourselves.

https://t.co/axkKwEaljy

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

What is AI doing to higher ed, and how are companies actually adopting it?

That’s what I asked Professor Gerald Kane @profkane , author of The Technology Fallacy. Jerry is the Professor of Management Information Systems at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business.

He sits in both worlds: a professor watching AI hit his classroom in real time, and a researcher who studies how companies adapt, or fail to adapt, to digital disruption.

AI is not just a technology. It’s a social event.

It functions as a moment in history, one that is already altering what people believe, how people learn, work, hire, manage, and make decisions.

• How fast AI hit campus
• The university policy divide
• Workplace tools and incentives
• Young minds and the outsourcing of thinking
• Teach the basics first, then add AI
• Curation as the new core skill
• AI pushback from artists and creators
• Ethical use over refusal
• What’s actually happening inside companies
• Building a coalition of the willing
• Shadow AI and the risks of unsanctioned use
• Layoffs and AI washing
• Adoption steps and safety
• Minimal viable governance
• Jobs anxiety vs. reality
• Bullish long-term, uncertain short-term
• Chatbots and attention traps

https://t.co/DR0HP90EZM

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

If your unhappy maybe a large part of that is because you are hidden, people dont really know you, or the real you.

My latest conversation is with Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, one of the world’s leading researchers on happiness, connection, and human flourishing.

We talk about self-help culture, the happiness trap, vulnerability, curiosity, AI companions, why small moments of connection matter, and the difference between being admired and being truly seen.

https://t.co/iHA4P7rOCt

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

@mindcreek @Mnilax 100% this is a product side issue forcing user side hacks

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

@Jason I’m in

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

A wait-and-see approach is getting more expensive by the day. What fear gets wrong, and what it gets right …

https://t.co/bT1X81rvV3

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

How to decide in the age of AI. My conversation with a pioneer in decision science, Gary Klein who built the Recognition-Primed Decision model, which has been incorporated into Army and Marine Corps doctrine. He created the PreMortem method of risk assessment, endorsed by Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler.

Malcolm Gladwell put it simply: “No one has taught me more about the complexities and mysteries of human decision-making than Gary Klein.”

In this conversation, we get into everything from when you should, and shouldn’t, trust your gut, the value of first-person expertise, the difference between knowledge and knowing, and why more information doesn’t necessarily mean better decisions. Then we spend time on AI: what happens when people start outsourcing their thinking, and what might get lost in the shuffle.

https://t.co/8K3AMAqcE4

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

@delia_burgess Great book, as is Untethered Soul

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

@delia_burgess @MarkChangizi Love it

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

@jonnym1ller That is absolutely frightening.

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

What if purpose exists at the deepest level of reality, even if not every event is designed?

Not just human life. I mean the whole damn thing.

This can slide into vague spirituality fast. That’s not what this is.

I’m talking about whether reality itself might be structured around value.

Prof @Philip_Goff (Durham University) is the author of Why? The Purpose of the Universe and argues the universe may have an intrinsic goal, underpinned by something like mind

This conversation shifts from metaphysics to the deeply personal: how one carries themselves when the big questions remain unresolved.

Are you closed, or do you stay open in the best Bayesian sense, constantly updating as new evidence warrants?

I want to be open, even if not convinced.

Some highlights:

06:16 Framing the big questions
10:00 Fine-tuning theory and the “casino” intuition
12:54 Meaning, Frankl, and suffering
16:52 Agency and teleology
24:18 Mystics and mystical experience across traditions
28:04 Consciousness and panpsychism
28:52 The ‘Why’ tension of cosmic purpose
30:14 Becoming a ‘heretical Christian’
31:32 Meaning as beauty, gratitude, and ‘pronoia’
34:06 Scientism and other ways of knowing
37:47 Religion as social technology
41:19 Prayer as orientation
45:08 Meditation as creative energy without certainty
51:04 Reflections on affordances

https://t.co/mTDDZaxJ34

[Larry Weeks @LarryWeeks]

@ATRightMovies Odd image. Spielberg is 4 inches taller than MJF.