Is There a Secret Sauce to Success?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The hard problem is how do you know what's going to be the next thing that no else is doing? Can't so my some of my advice to the young is I'm trying to work on project or place area where there's no name for what it is that you do. Where it takes some time. So like 10 years ago. If you were in this business right now, you'd be. Having trouble to explain to your mother what it was you do because you're saying well it's kind of like radio, but it's not quite radio is kind of like a TV interview with the TV. You got the documentary that's just an audio and now we call it a podcast

On his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly began to write down for his young adult children some things he had learned about life that he wished he had known earlier. To his surprise, Kelly had more to say than he thought, and kept adding to the advice over the years, compiling a life’s wisdom into the pages of his book: Excellent Advice for Living.

Shermer and Kelly discuss: protopian progress • ChatGPT • artificial intelligence; an existential threat? • evolution • cultural progress • self-driving cars • innovation • social media • putting an end to war • compound interest and the long term effect of small changes • why you don’t want to be a billionaire • beliefs and reason • setting unreasonable goals • persistence as key to success • probabilities and statistics, not algebra and calculus • investing: buy and hold • how to fully become yourself.

Kevin Kelly helped launch and edit Wired magazine. He has written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. His previous books include What Technology Wants, and The Inevitable, a New York Times bestseller. He is known for his technological optimism. Currently he is a Senior Maverick at Wired and lives in Pacifica, California.