the padded cell

#learning

24 August, 2025

Angry at the genie

…getting exactly what I wished for, eventually

A colleague mentioned he’d like a genie coach to practice first principles thinking, because we had talked about the cooking coach I made and have been using. So I decided to give it a try, whipped up a prompt, and gave it a spin.

I had a problem I’d been working on and wanted to see if there was another way of thinking about it. I also asked it to add behavioral economics as an angle because I’ve been interested in pulling in a more human angle to my thinking (still learning what that means).

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15 August, 2025

DIKW pyramid when working with genies

…classification of different types of understanding

Curtis shared the DIKW pyramid, that I hadn’t heard of, and said that he feels that the genies helps him process the first two layers much more quickly than he can alone, that it can somewhat help penetrate into knowledge but not much. Which allows him to spend less time in D/I (collection) and then more to then K/W (processing?)

The pyramid of knowledge with a base of data, the next layer built of information, then knowledge and finally wisdom at the peak.

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10 August, 2025

When everyone gets a genie

learning to handle expertise you didn't earn

We’ve always had to figure out who to trust for expertise, but until now, that access wasn’t universal. Used to be the bloke at the pub who ‘knew things,’ or that friend of a friend who could fix computers (me as a kid), or books if you had the patience. Rich people had their ‘real’ experts on call, though Bernie Madoff shows how well that could work out.

The internet changed things, sure. Suddenly you could reach out to actual experts, find communities, and learn from people across the world. But you still needed judgment, because you could also find a community that agreed the earth was flat, so, you know, mixed bag.

What hasn’t changed is we’ve always had to figure out who to trust. What’s changing is how we get our answers, and who gets to sound like an expert.

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blog 10 min read #thinking-out-loud, #ai, #genie, #learning