Growth requires friction
Absence of friction creates loneliness for humans
Back in the day, for every question you had, you got 27k answers in your preferred search engine. Even if you stayed only on page 1 of the results, you still had a choice which answer to accept - and you were exposed to alternative options, whether you wanted that or not.
Your preferred AI chatbot tends to give you exactly one answer, the “correct one”. And unless you are specifically looking for controversy, you probably won’t find it.
That is trivial when asking about the fastest animal (though you should see kids fight over whether it’s the cheetah or the perigrine falcon).
It becomes less clear cut when you get to questions that do not have a definite answer, or where the answer depends on your world view. There are answers that work for you - and in the past you would also have seen at least some answers that you decide not to engage with.
“Holding space” and pushing back
If you tell ChatGPT that you do not agree with the first answer, it will apologize and give you a second one. Very demure, always eager to please.
Depending on how much you use AI chatbots, it’s a very friction-free and appeasing routine that you can get used to very fast. Disagreement - calling it out - apology - next.
It’s a blissful existence. You only get challenged when you are ready to be challenged and tell your chatbot to challenge your assumptions in a structured prompt. Friction, in this world, only exists when you specifically ask for it.
As a result, talking to other humans can start to feel difficult, fraud with potential chaos. It’s easier to dismiss ideas that do not fully align with your worldview than to engage with someone who doesn’t apologize and agree when challenged. And as a result you might accidentally cut short a budding friendship (or even relationship).
Chances are, there is no one that will match all of your world-views exactly. Your friends and closest relationships will (and should?) probably align with (or at least not oppose) your core values. That does not mean that you’ll never disagree though.
Disagreement as a source of resilience
Disagreement helps you to refine your own worldview. It can be a source of new learnings, of clarifying your own opinions, of understanding how other people understand the world.
Disagreement also allows you to practice your own boundaries. At the same time it offers an opportunity to practice kindness towards those who think differently, accepting that you don’t have to agree on everything (this does NOT include disagremement on your basic human rights, by the way).
So, if you catch yourself talking to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot more than to your friend group or work colleagues, see if you can add some more human conversations to your daily mix of activities. Connection is based on commonalities found in the midst of differences. And that requires conversations that don’t stop at the first disagreement.
More places to find me
Podcasting. I had a long and meandering late night conversation (blaming time zones here) with Krish Palaniappan about productivity and remote work, the challenges of moving your operations from office-based to hybrid, and how AI plays into all of that.
Find the eposide on Spotify, (and also on Youtube):
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Public Speaking: On May 13th, I’ll be in Amsterdam speaking at the Product Operations Summit about, suprise!, Remote Product Operations as Risk Management. Find out more about the Summit here: https://world.productledalliance.com/location/popsamsterdam
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My new website is up. I’ve been wanting to simply my personal website for a long long time. I just couldn’t decide on the right Content Management System. Oh the joy of too many options. I finally settled on Kirby, and I am enjoying the learning process SO MUCH! Have a peak and tell me what you think (and yes, mobile still needs some work): https://valentinathoerner.com
As a side effect, you’ll get lots of “re-written” posts in the next couple of weeks, as I am moving some of the resources that were hidden deep deep on that site over to Substack.
So, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss out on those: