Using ChatGPT for Writing and Recommending Books - Ep. 2 with Nat Eliason

[00:00] Have you ever used it for [00:01] trying to figure out what it is that you're looking for oh no that's an interesting idea so being like i my favorite sci-fi books are the three body problem jurassic park and i don't know the martian who's an author that would be a that would be a really good intersection of those three we were [00:19] tour the other day for like book recommendations. This Machinehood book, that sounds super interesting. That's exactly the topic that I'm looking for. I might actually go buy that book. That sounds really good. That's partly the magic of ChatGPT is like [00:32] it misses a lot, but then sometimes it just comes up with something where you're like, that is absolutely perfect. And I never would have found that otherwise. [00:39] You can't write articles better than me, but it can maybe give ideas for a fiction outline better than I can do on my own. The other thing you can do is you can say like, what do you think should happen in this book name scene? [01:07] Nat, welcome to the show. [01:08] I'm excited to be here. Obviously, we've known each other for quite a while. You've gone through in that time, you've gone through a couple different like phases as a thinker, as a creator, as a writer. Yeah. [01:19] And I think when I met you, you were just coming out of the... [01:23] sort of like marketing growth kind of phase, and you're entering in your tools for thought and like roam phase.

[01:31] You've subsequently gone into crypto. You're writing a book about that, which is super exciting. Or you've written a book and it's coming out soon. And now you're into books. And I just... [01:41] I'm just very excited to have you on this show because I think you're just one of those people that thinks really deeply about how to use software to help you think for productivity purposes. I think you were one of the first people to discover Roam and really popularize it. You had that amazing Roam course. I did an interview with you on your Roam system. And I'm just like... [02:03] I actually owe that to our mutual friend, Adam, who originally turned me on another part of this Twitter gang. One of the first every employee, the first real every writer, Adam Kiesling. [02:17] And so, yeah, I just have a feeling that you have some interesting ways of thinking about this and interesting ways to use it to extend your mind and your creativity. And so I'm really excited to get to talk to you about it. Sweet. Yeah, I'm excited that you're doing this because I have found some good use cases for it and it has slowly trickled into being a daily driver. [02:38] phone home screen app, but I am also occasionally impressed by ideas other people have had. [02:45] for how to use it too. So it does feel like we're just very in the early days with [02:51] discovering, you know, how can we use this strange thing, which is fun. We haven't had a lot of tools like that in recent history. I sort of think all of the things that we thought, you know, in the note-taking days, like the Rome research or Evernotes of the world would do for us in terms of the second brain, like that's actually, a lot of it is actually happening. Like the bi-directional links was like, not it, this is it, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, these are true tools for thought

[03:21] that note-taking apps can never really be. [03:24] Totally. So let's dive in. Like, how do you use ChatGPT? Take us through some use cases. [03:30] So it looks like you're using it for getting book recommendations. I know you've been trying to write a sci-fi novel, and you're looking for some inspiration. So you went to ChatGPT and you wrote, Is there anyone today writing great near-term hard sci-fi science fiction without involving space like Michael Crichton? Like, [03:44] Why did you write that? Why did you originally go to Chachi Beteen the first place to ask that question? It's the kind of sci-fi that I find the most interesting. [03:51] And [03:53] And I was like, okay, well, you know, if I'm looking for more writers like this, [03:59] what would be a good place or who would I ask? [04:04] And the places I would normally ask would be, [04:07] Reddit, Twitter or Google. [04:09] And [04:11] I, [04:13] With Google, you've kind of got to open a few links and cross-reference between them. [04:18] And then like with Reddit, you might have to do the same thing. Twitter, you've got to wait for responses. Reddit, if you post a question, you have to wait for responses. This is just like much faster because I assumed the information was out there somewhere. [04:29] And it did a pretty good job. Right. And the nice thing is like, [04:32] You can always say, okay, cool, can you give... [04:36] Maybe five more. [04:37] and we'll go out. [04:38] and grab more of them. [04:41] I mean, the one thing that can be kind of disappointing is it feels like, okay, these first two. [04:47] It was just... [04:48] went to this article, right?

[04:51] like okay i probably could have just like gone to this article i bet it's the first article on google [04:55] All right. But it at least filtered it for contemporary ones. [05:01] That's a thing that... [05:03] uh if you googled for it there might be an answer if you [05:06] Someone has already created a list. [05:09] But for a lot of those kinds of queries, like for you, it's like, [05:12] that does not involve space. Like there's probably no list that's like specifically Michael Crichton [05:17] um michael creighton uh like writers uh who've written about things that don't involve space like i don't think that's a pre-existing thing [05:25] and [05:26] Yeah, sometimes if you're a creative person, you want to find examples that fit this one-of-one type category that cuts across lots of different categories. It cuts across lots of things that people may have composed into lists, but there isn't one list because like, [05:41] that that's so specific to you and what you like. And I think, um, [05:45] ChatGPT is really incredible for surfacing things like that because it can go through all the lists that have ever been composed and filter it automatically for this one-of-one category that you just came up with. [05:57] Yeah, and I also just don't trust Google results. And so I'm sometimes disappointed when it just uses Google results for the answers, because so like you were saying, I used to work in marketing, I specifically worked in search engine optimization. [06:10] And like most of the results on Google are not the best answers to a question. They're the ones that are like best engineered to be there. [06:16] Um, [06:17] And so it's hard to find actually good information. You used to be able to go to Reddit and find it, but even Reddit is being engineered now for SEO.

[06:26] There is a little bit of a like, okay, how do we surface good information, not just well-engineered information? [06:33] And I think it is at least a little bit better than just going off of search results. [06:40] And it certainly helps to filter them, right? Because that other list had, what, 10 people, but... [06:45] this one has filtered it down based on the criteria of like being alive and not talking about space too much. I think that's a good note for a tool like this. [06:56] Um, [06:57] It is sometimes nice that it uses web browsing, but when it does web browsing, it's going to [07:04] the results it gets are going to have a really big impact on the quality of the response it gets. [07:11] returns. And if you explicitly ask it not to use web browsing, you might get different results. [07:17] Um, the, [07:18] the trade-off there is like, [07:20] Thank you. [07:21] When it's not using web browsing, it's much more likely to hallucinate. So you may get it recommending authors or articles or books that don't exist. But it has the potential to be more creative because it's not being limited by the search terms it happens to use to find the answer to your question. [07:38] Yeah, and it looks like it didn't use search for the second set. [07:42] So I'd be curious to look at some of these authors. Have you heard of any of these? Did any of them sort of like ring a bell for you? [07:48] No. And so like what I might do is instead of going and searching for them, I would say, you know, [07:53] what are the best [07:55] known works from each of those five authors that fits

[08:03] Thank you. [08:04] Thank you. [08:06] And then just kind of see what it comes back with. Now it's browsing. So it's going to be pretty likely to probably find something real or say, hey, by the way, I made that person up. [08:15] Yeah. [08:17] Now, I love this. I love this for... [08:21] for this use case. It's like once you know what you're looking for, it can surface things that wouldn't you would never have found otherwise. Have you ever have you ever used it for [08:31] the previous step, which is like [08:33] trying to figure out what it is that you're looking for. [08:36] Um, so, Oh, no, that's interesting idea. So being like, I, my, my favorite sci-fi books are the three body problem. [08:44] Jurassic Park. [08:46] And [08:47] Uh, [08:49] I don't know, the Martian, right? Like, [08:51] who's an author that would be a really good intersection of those three. [08:55] That's a good idea. I haven't tried that. That's one of my favorite things to do because like I have I have all these lists of authors I like or quotes I like or whatever and I can just like. [09:04] take the list, paste it in and be like, what are the patterns here? And it just uncovers patterns of patterns in my taste that I never would have put words to before. [09:14] but once I have it, it's a really powerful tool to be like, no, no, that is what I like. I really like [09:21] emotionally resonant, like philosophical analytical writing. Um, [09:26] And I know that because of ChatGPT. [09:32] Okay, this result is coming back pretty interesting, actually.

[09:36] Like... [09:37] Right. So. [09:38] like I already know that the second one wasn't actually fitting what I looked for, right? Because like, [09:44] human attraction with the alien ecosystem. It's like, I'm not looking for space. Right? [09:48] Okay, but S.B. Divya, this MachineHood book, that sounds super interesting, right? Like, [09:53] That's exactly the topic that I'm looking for. [09:56] Thank you. [09:56] Um, [09:58] I might actually go buy that book. That sounds really good. [10:02] Have you read it? Have you even heard of that book? I've never heard of it. I think like that is, that's partly the magic of ChatGPT is like, [10:08] Um, [10:10] it misses a lot, but then sometimes it just comes up with something where you're like, that is absolutely perfect. And I never would have found that otherwise. [10:19] Okay, so you can't see this because it's on a different tab, but I'm looking at it on Amazon. This is how I know it's probably a good book. It's got a 4.2 rating. [10:29] Right. [10:30] So it's not like a 4.7, 4.8 mass market. Everybody just loves it. [10:35] only 600 ratings, right? So it's not super widespread, but it's an editor's pick on Amazon for best science fiction and fantasy. [10:44] And... [10:46] It the top endorsement is from Ken Liu. [10:51] who says it's zero dark 30 meets the social network. [10:56] And it got nominated for a Hugo Award. [10:59] This is like a perfect intersection of [11:03] Like, [11:04] Oh, wow. It was endorsed by Ray Kurzweil, too. Okay, like, this is a fantastic recommendation, right? I love that. I love that.

[11:14] You saw it here live, folks. [11:20] Yeah, I'm super curious, actually, like, [11:24] Um, [11:26] your evaluation criteria for whether or not a book is good [11:30] Like you just went through this whole list of things. Like, where does that come from? That's a good question. I mean, I think that, you know, there are multiple reasons to read a book. [11:41] Right? [11:43] One is [11:45] pure like [11:46] you know, popcorn, right? Like, I just, I just want to be entertained. I just want to have fun. I just want to like, [11:52] go on a little journey here. [11:54] And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, that's a great reason to read a book. And if that's what you are looking for, then you want-- [12:00] the 100,000 reviews, 4.7 stars, like... [12:06] you know, Oprah's Book Club, whatever, like you want those books, because those are like pretty much guaranteed to deliver that experience if you enjoy. [12:13] Um, [12:14] that type of story, right? [12:16] But if you want something that is, like, is not going to be a, like... [12:21] you know, [12:22] for lack of a better term, like cookie cutter, [12:25] plot, right? Like something kind of new and interesting or like there might be rough parts to it, but it's going to like [12:33] maybe expand a little bit of what you think of as like what you can do with a novel or it's going to introduce some interesting ideas, right? Like it's going to do something a little bit different. So you're not going to feel like, oh, yeah, I've liked. [12:43] done this before.

[12:45] then you kind of have to look for something that has, yeah, the like, [12:49] maybe the not great reviews, especially if it's a lot of like five stars and one stars, right? Like, [12:54] that's a really good sign. [12:57] or it's got incredible endorsements but then mediocre ratings right it's like okay so some like [13:03] smart literary people really liked this, but then a lot of like, mass market readers didn't like that might actually be a really good book. [13:09] Um, [13:10] Like those things to me are often really good signals, right? [13:14] um [13:15] Because it's the books that, like, don't really say anything, but are, like, wonderful junk food that get the... [13:22] best ratings usually. You see that with like nonfiction too. [13:27] So, yeah. [13:29] Um, [13:30] that it's like if I'm looking for that kind of experience, then that's the kind of like rating spread or whatnot that [13:36] So you're kind of like, if there's a love-hate dynamic with the crowdsourced reviews on Amazon, that's like a... [13:45] That's a book you want to look into because it's probably taking a real position. [13:51] Yeah. And if I think about some of the books that I have enjoyed most, [13:54] right like you know the anti-fragile or just like to live in general right very divisive person divisive writing style like a lot of people hate him a lot of people love him right but [14:05] uh it's like and but you know he's very opinionated it's interesting i mean another one of my favorite fiction books i read in the last like year or two [14:13] is this super...

[14:16] manic kind of dark novel called Stephen Florida. [14:21] And yeah, it's got 200... [14:25] reviews on Amazon with a 4.0 rating. [14:29] Um, [14:31] But... [14:32] it has a very strong endorsement on the cover from the author of A Little Life. [14:39] Right. Which is like, you know, [14:41] incredibly well-known, like, [14:44] literary fiction, right? So it's like there's a disconnect there. And it's a great book. [14:50] So... [14:51] But to your point, this would be an interesting way to use ChatGPT, right? To say, I mean, we could even try that, right? Like, let's just give it a go. [15:01] I really enjoy manic dark fiction like [15:07] Infinite Jest, Choke, and Steven Florida. [15:13] What... [15:14] um you might want to ask like how would you like how would you describe that or like you know like ask it from [15:21] Yeah. [15:23] How would you describe the overlap [15:27] How would you describe the [15:29] taste in books for someone who really likes [15:33] Infinite Jest. [15:36] choke [15:37] by club. [15:40] Stephen Ford, uh, [15:42] I don't have any other examples. My fiction bookshelf is at home.

[15:47] Oh, blood meridian. [15:54] I mean, that's a really good description. I really love that. Isn't it? Like that bottom one? Yeah. Intellectually challenging, offer unconventional narratives and don't shy away from darker, more complex themes. Like... [16:03] One of the things that I get from this actually, which is like so interesting is it's, [16:08] It's a huge part of how you write too. [16:11] Like, I'm not surprised that those are the kind of books you like because [16:16] Um, [16:17] I think a big part of your writing is like sort of challenging conventional narratives and offering an unconventional one. [16:24] um [16:26] And yeah, I think your writing is highly intellectual. [16:31] It's a really interesting... [16:34] It's a really interesting thing. [16:35] Yeah, this is super powerful, right? [16:38] a great way to expand your [16:41] Um, [16:44] Yeah, your readership. I also like, you know, honestly, that [16:48] sometimes these things, or whatever, an interesting way for me, another follow-up interesting question for me to ask would be like, who are some women who fit this team? Right? Or who are some like, [17:00] Asian writers or Indian writers or [17:03] uh russian writers or something who like fit this theme because it's like i mostly read american white guys and [17:10] like it's not like a deliberate choice it's just like what ends up coming in front of my view [17:16] Um, [17:17] But there are definitely

[17:18] like people with different backgrounds who like touch on this style too and so it'll be interesting it'd be an interesting way to like broaden that lens without doing it in kind of like the forest and tribes like checking the diversity box yeah no i like that i think um you know it's like okay first you get the words [17:35] You know, you get the dark, complex themes, like grittiness, all that kind of stuff, and then you get the. [17:42] I want you to expand this definition in this one dimension. I want to read writers that are not just white guys. Who else has done this? But it would be almost impossible to Google for that. What you'd need ordinarily is to ask someone else who has the same taste as you, but is slightly different in that dimension. And I think, yeah, you're right. You have to find that person. Say that again? [18:05] It's an empty, hard to find, but ChatGPT is that person. Yeah. [18:10] Totally. [18:12] Um, [18:14] Okay, I should show you something. I just want to see. So I guess like, have you read, you know, above it said Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Margaret Atwood, Tony Morrison. See, this is interesting. [18:31] Toni Morrison and [18:34] uh, [18:35] Octavia Butler have both been on my list to get to at some point. [18:40] And so it's like, it's kind of confirmation, right? Yeah. [18:43] like, um, [18:45] Margaret Atwood, obviously I know of her, but she hasn't been on my list as much.

[18:50] And then Joyce Carol Oates, I have like her [18:52] um [18:53] I have her short [18:56] short stories on my shelf at home. Lydia Davis is great. [19:00] I really, really, I love her short stories. They're really good. [19:05] Dude, I don't like reading short stories. [19:08] I don't know if that's weird. I was the same way. And then I read some Lydia Davis and Ted Chiang. And I was like, oh, I actually like short stories. [19:16] Okay, cool. [19:19] Cool. Well, yeah, let's move on. So you're using it to help you find new things that are sort of on the same vibe. [19:29] of things you like. [19:31] Yeah, what else are you using it for? [19:34] Okay, I mentioned this one. I just want to bring it up in case nobody else brings it up in these interviews. [19:40] It's so good for recipes. [19:43] So basically I was like, [19:45] I have a bunch of ground pork in my freezer because my friend gave me a quarter pig. [19:50] And I was like, OK, I want to make a stir fry. [19:53] or I just want to make something with this, like Asian style, [19:56] with rice i also have a bunch of green onions in the fridge so like give me a recipe [20:01] And [20:02] It did. [20:03] That's amazing. Look at... [20:05] Very simple stir fry. [20:07] And, you know, I changed some things out here. Like I just didn't use vegetable oil. I used like ghee instead. [20:13] but like this isn't a complex recipe it gives you all the instructions you don't have to [20:17] get through, you know, 2000 words of someone's life story to get to the recipe.

[20:22] Um, [20:23] And it's good. Like, you know, I've cooked this a couple of times now. It's a great recipe. But here's the really fun thing. OK, because like this is all I gave. Right. [20:31] Asian ground pork, good with rice. [20:33] green onions and it comes back with this the problem was i didn't have any hoisin sauce [20:39] So I said, I don't have poison sauce. Can you modify the recipe? [20:43] And it's like, yeah, no problem. And it replaced it with brown sugar, which is apparently a good substitute. [20:48] which I didn't realize. And then [20:52] you know, everything else is the same, but it's like, all right, cool. Like you've got this recipe. [20:57] It needs to be modified and it can just do it on the fly. And the thing I haven't tried [21:02] that I bet would work. [21:04] is if you take a picture of a recipe with your phone and upload it, [21:08] Thank you. [21:08] and say, hey, can you extract this recipe and then modify it to replace this ingredient because I don't have it? I bet it would work. I haven't tried that. [21:16] But if you're working with a cookbook, I'm sure it definitely, it definitely will. It's the vision stuff is so good and it's, it's so useful for stuff like that. [21:24] So, yeah, it's like if you've got stuff in your freezer that you haven't put to work yet or like you want to try new recipes but don't want to flip your cookbook. I mean, this is really, really powerful. [21:35] It's awesome. I love cooking with it. That's amazing. [21:39] I saw a sort of [21:43] If you scroll up on your sidebar, I think I saw something like recipe related in your custom GPT's. Is that, did I remember that right? [21:49] Bye. [21:50] Oh, no. Okay, so this is just something else I've been playing with is...

[21:54] on the like book notes. [21:56] So like, um, [21:59] Because I have, you know, like 300 of my book notes published on my site. So I've been trying to work on a custom GPT to like surface results from them. [22:06] Is it working? [22:09] It's close. It sometimes has this issue. Let's just see if it works. How do you... [22:15] Reduce anxiety. [22:20] Thank you. [22:22] Okay. [22:22] The way I have it set up is it looks through right now it's just going to the web version, but eventually I'll upload all of them so it'll just be able to search. [22:31] But what it does is it goes through, like, all of my 300 notes pages [22:35] finds them [22:36] and then pulls out the like relevant piece from that book and then links to that book. So you can be like, oh, this book seems to be talking about this idea. Like if I want to explore it further, like here's a great place to start. Fascinating. [22:49] Do you find yourself using this? [22:53] Thank you. [22:53] No. One, because it's not totally working yet, but two, because I want to make it part of my like [23:00] book influencer thing. [23:02] So basically I want to have this as something that people who follow me on TikTok and Instagram can like go use if they're ever looking for book recommendations. [23:11] Because people ask me all the time in my comments on videos, they're like, oh, can you recommend a book on XYZ? And it's like, I can't respond to all of them, but they can come here and they can plug in a question. [23:21] and it'll tell them every book I've read that touches on that topic.

[23:25] if they want to go like that's cool and it links them to like my notes on that books they can go see all the notes they can see my review of the book. Everything and look this is a pretty good result. I love that. Yeah, I and like the first thing that came to my mind was 10% happier. [23:40] But like, oh, deep work talks about anxiety, too. And like work clean is not one that I would have thought of, but it totally does. Now that it's mentioned that one thing you could do, which could be kind of fun is. [23:51] you could load into a GBT your list of books that you've read, like one sentence about what you liked or didn't like for each book, which would fit into one prompt. And then you could have ChatGBT recommend as you... [24:05] like based on even based on, it doesn't even have to be like a book that you've read. It could just be like a book that fits the taste that it knows you have. [24:15] That's a good point. I'd be really curious to know if that works. [24:19] So that's been a fun little project. [24:22] Um, [24:23] Let me see. There's a couple other little ones I wanted to quickly show you. Okay. Yeah. If you've got something, [24:29] So, okay, so if you have, like, [24:32] data that you just want formatted in a slightly different way. Like these are timestamps for a YouTube video. [24:37] pasting it in and saying, can you put brackets around the times and remove the spaces? It's like way faster than doing it yourself. [24:43] Thank you. [24:44] Which is like a silly thing, but it's helpful. [24:49] Um, [24:50] Yeah, I do think like chat GPT is like really good for

[24:55] There are all these things that we do in life that we're like, [25:00] we're doing subtle translations for. We're subtly transforming a piece of information that's in one format into another format. [25:06] And like, you know, [25:07] So computer language was developed or machine learning was developed in large part to do like actual translation between like English and French or like French and German or whatever. But I think it turns out once now that we have language models that work really well, that there's a lot of translation that needs to happen between English and English. And sometimes it's like between just like one format and another. Sometimes it's like there's a subtle way that people in tech talk, for example. [25:37] uh, [25:38] you know, piece of software you're building. And if you're not a tech person, you can't write that. But now you can. [25:42] And I think that's so powerful. [25:46] I agree. [25:47] Um, [25:50] Okay, another quick one. [25:51] bar bet type things it's really good for. So I was having this conversation with my friend Neil, and [26:00] It was like, [26:01] there there will be probably within our lifetime companies that build businesses around converting atmospheric co2 into like [26:08] stuff. [26:10] Because all you have to like if you just pull off the carbon [26:13] atom, then you can like use all those carbon atoms for like something else. Right. [26:18] And that would be like one way to try to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. [26:23] or maybe it'll just be profitable to do it. I don't know. Right.

[26:27] And so I was like, well, how much [26:29] air would you need to make a diamond for it? Like, could you have a business that just captures CO2 and then like poops out diamonds and oxygen? Yeah. [26:38] like on the like, [26:41] physics level, it should be possible, right? [26:44] But, you know, is it energy efficient? Whatever. And so it's like, well, how much air is it? And it just like does all the math. Right. Just like. [26:51] Really, really cool. [26:52] It walks you through every step. And dude, the volume of air is much smaller than I expected. It's a little less than a cubic meter. [26:59] Huh. [27:00] And so then I said, OK, well, how much CO2 does a person exhale in a day? [27:04] And then it gives you how much air you give out in a day. [27:08] about 10 cubic meters of CO2 for a day. [27:13] So you could make about... [27:16] 10 diamonds a day just by breathing just by breathing 10 one carat diamonds per day by breathing [27:24] Like, man, I mean, like, I'm working so hard now. Like, you know, like, I don't need to be working this hard. We're wasting all of this. I thought that was super interesting, right? Like, [27:35] I don't know what I was reading recently. [27:39] maybe it was an anthology of biology, [27:41] I think it was in Novocene. Yeah, I think it was in Novocene. [27:45] He was talking about how like, [27:47] we might eventually have diamond-based processors. [27:51] because it could, like it might just be a superior material for it, more efficient one. [27:56] uh yeah yeah interesting and

[27:59] And so if we were like, if we just have machines that pull carbon out of, [28:07] the CO2 in the air and then print [28:10] poop out diamond processors, [28:13] for like self-replicating machine or like that that's actually not that crazy of an idea physics wise. [28:19] Um, [28:20] It's kind of fun to think about. It's like a very where's my flying car type idea. Novocene is the book by Jim Lovelock, who's the guy, the guy, the hypothesis guy that sort of looks at the earth as like one living organism as opposed to many organisms. [28:35] Yeah. [28:36] That's a good one. That's great. [28:39] Okay. [28:40] Let me see if I have any other fun ones here. [28:46] Thank you. [28:48] I've used it for new stuff sometimes. [28:52] so so [28:55] That's how it is. I literally just... [28:57] I don't follow any new stuff. Like I just don't let it into my life, but sometimes I'll hear something mentioned by a couple of people. [29:03] But I don't want to go to New York Times or whatever. I don't want to go read a piece on it. So I'll just ask ChatGPT to summarize the information for me. I love that. [29:12] Um, [29:13] I honestly did that recently when I was I had to write a summary article of what happened to OpenAI Dev Day. And like I started by just being like, what happened? Even though I was there, it was really helpful, you know, because it just like puts it all into a format that makes it easy to be like, oh, yeah, that happened. I need to put that in there. [29:29] Yeah, I think it's really smart.

[29:31] on [29:33] - Thank you. [29:34] I can keep doing it. Let's keep going. Like, scroll up. If you don't mind, like, I would love to just like look through it and see if I can pick through anything that looks kind of interesting. And if you don't want to show us anything, like, you know, that's totally fine. [29:45] Yeah, totally. [29:48] It's great for writing. Yeah. How do you use it for writing? Do you have any examples of that? [29:54] Yeah. So I've been doing a lot. So I haven't found it very useful for nonfiction writing, to be honest. And [30:02] saying this with the utmost humility, I think it's just because I'm much better at it than it is. [30:08] And so, like, if I need something explained, it can be helpful. Like, you know, how, you know, how would I describe this thing or like, you know, so I can fact check myself, but like, [30:18] actually writing [30:20] I haven't found it very useful, but [30:24] With fiction writing, I found it more helpful just to sound like much weaker there. [30:28] And this is one good example, right? Which is like, [30:31] this emotion comes up kind of often, right? Like I feel a sinking feeling in my stomach. But you don't, you don't want to write that 10 times in a book, right? Or like 20 times in a book. And so it's really, really helpful for alternative ways to describe things. [30:45] Um, [30:46] And some of them are like, [30:50] a little contrived, right? [30:52] um a heavy sensation way to put down my insides are like so weird but um [30:59] you know, and even some of these can be modified to be better, right? Like I was stricken with nausea, or

[31:04] uh you know a pit formed in my stomach right uh stomach dropped right these are all like good alternatives [31:12] Um, [31:14] So it's very helpful for that. I've been using it for... [31:18] Thank you. [31:18] I don't know if I want to show this one on the chat, but... [31:21] I can describe it, right? Like, [31:24] Um, [31:26] Basically, like pasting in details on a scene in a novel, and then asking ChatGPT what questions it has about that scene. [31:38] is really helpful. What's helpful? We can just do one live quickly. [31:43] Yeah, let me just show you. [31:45] I'm working on an opening scene for a [31:50] I'll call it sci-fi novel. Let's see, I'm working on a... [31:57] sci-fi novel where [32:01] uh what happens we can even like um you know take a chapter of a book that you have that's like already a release book and just paste it in there if you have one available [32:12] Oh, yeah. I mean, we could just... [32:14] Um, [32:15] Okay, let's just take Fight Club, right? I'm working on a novel. [32:18] where [32:21] man disenfranchised with society. [32:27] And [32:28] slightly [32:29] Psychotic starts a secret. [32:34] underground.

[32:35] fighting club with other men as a dark form of [32:40] therapy. [32:42] his best friend turns out to be a [32:45] hallucinations, spoiler alert. [32:48] Oh, please. [32:49] In the opening scene, [32:56] He is flying home from a [32:59] business trip and discovers, I don't remember if it's still being seen or not, that his apartment [33:05] has exploded. [33:07] Thank you. [33:08] Thanks. [33:10] Thank you. [33:11] Amen. [33:12] And then you could like normally I would taste in five or six bullet points about like things that I think are going to happen in the scene. [33:18] Um, [33:20] But... [33:21] The other thing you can do is you can say like, [33:23] What do you think? [33:25] should happen in this [33:27] Right. And we should probably preface this by like chat GPT knows about fight club. So it may [33:32] Yeah, it's probably going to just pull in stuff from Fight Club. [33:37] But some of these questions are really good, right? Like what's his emotional response to seeing his apartment blown up, right? Like, [33:43] Is he secretly happy about it? Is he freaked out? Or like, what's the interiority? [33:47] Right. [33:48] Yeah, like, oh, yeah, okay, police and firefighters should be in the scene. Like, what does that interaction look like? [33:53] Um, [33:54] All these little things can be quite helpful. [33:58] if you hadn't thought about them. And what I usually find is when I do this, I'll ask it to give me like 10 responses.

[34:06] It usually does, right? Like, [34:08] It seems to be going towards 10 right now. [34:10] And one or two of them will be very helpful. [34:14] Like most of them won't. [34:16] but they'll occasionally have [34:20] Um, [34:21] some very helpful details in them. [34:24] Um, [34:25] It's also helpful for like [34:27] You can say, [34:32] Or, okay, [34:34] you could, like, if you had an idea for a story and you wanted to flesh it out, you can say something along the lines of, [34:40] I'm still working on [34:42] Flushing out the whole story. [34:45] Can you give me a [34:48] Joseph. [34:49] Campbell. [34:50] hero's journey outline of what this whole story could be. [34:55] Like. [34:59] And, you know, [35:01] I've found like [35:04] a couple interesting ways to do this. So one is to feed it a bunch of these story frameworks. [35:09] So feed it the hero's journey, feed it the seven parts story structure, feed it the [35:15] five or the nine-part story structure, feed it the three-act structure, feed it [35:18] five act structure, right? Like, you can give it a bunch of them and see what it comes up with. And you can regenerate each response a few times. [35:25] And then... [35:27] Like from that, you can make an outline. [35:29] or you can like apply whatever you like in it to your existing outline. And then you can feed that outline back in and say like,

[35:37] you know, what questions do you have about this outline or what holes do you see or like anything along those lines? [35:44] That's really interesting. So when you say feed it, like, are you putting all of those structures in at once? Are you starting in your chat? You're saying, I want to do Joseph Campbell's [35:52] uh you know hero's journey here's the here's the premise of my book like can you help me flesh it out into a hero's journey and then going on to the next one are you doing like [36:02] Here are a bunch of different structures. [36:04] I want you to flesh out this idea in all those different structures and doing it all at once. [36:10] I would probably do it all in this chat. So I would be like... [36:13] Okay, great. Hold on to that thought. Can you try again using this structure? [36:19] but don't carry over anything that you just thought of, you know, start from scratch, something like that. [36:24] But like, [36:25] This is a pretty good outlaw. Right. And like, again, it's probably pulling from Fight Club. [36:31] Um, [36:33] But... [36:33] It's not doing... [36:36] Um, [36:37] It's not doing a bad job. We could pull a pretty great story out of this. [36:43] This is fascinating. This is great too because I'm sort of in the beginning stages of fiction writing again and I've been wanting to outline because I do think the outlining is helpful for doing great plot-driven stuff, but... [36:56] I'm just not like an outline person. And this is cool for that. [37:01] And the thing I've found is like kind of like with non-fiction writing, it's not very good on its own. You have to give it a lot of your own creativity and guidance.

[37:10] But it can give you that extra like 10, 20%. [37:14] Um, [37:15] or it can like help speed up the process. [37:17] So it's been very, very helpful. I'm sort of curious, like, you know, even moving away from some of the like practical hands-on stuff, like, [37:24] for you [37:25] I think a lot of people... [37:28] tried ChatGPT and they're like, ah, like it doesn't give me the right answer or whatever. And they sort of get frustrated and move on. But it seems like you've managed to... [37:36] Um, [37:38] be okay with the fact that it's dumb sometimes, or maybe it's dumb a lot. And you've also managed to find lots of different places in your life where it can be useful, like, [37:47] Um, [37:49] Tell me about that. Tell me about the mindset that you have to learn to use this well. [37:55] yeah I mean [37:57] Before we go on, I should mention this use case in particular, the outlining, I actually got from our mutual friend Nathan Baugh, who talks a lot about storytelling and fiction writing on Twitter. So people are curious in this type of stuff, they should go follow him because he has a lot more... [38:12] resources on it and something we've talked about quite a bit but yeah that's a good question i mean [38:19] I think it's like any person, right? When you work with other people, you realize that they're good at some things and not good at other things. [38:27] And if you... [38:28] expect them to be amazing at everything, then you're just going to be [38:32] disappointed, right? [38:34] So, [38:35] I kind of just think about it that way. [38:38] in the sense that [38:39] Like right now, it's like a very eager...

[38:43] teenager with an internet connection. [38:46] right, is probably where I would put it. [38:49] And [38:51] like, [38:51] I'm better than a teenager at most... [38:55] intellectual things probably [38:57] but not everything. [38:59] right and certainly not at the things that i have never done before [39:03] So, yeah, it can't write articles better than me, but it can maybe... [39:08] give ideas for a fiction outline better than I can do on my own. [39:14] And it can certainly do these little things. [39:17] that I could do, but don't want to do. Right. The way you might outsource something to a VA. [39:22] Um, [39:24] And so I don't know, I think just like having that idea that this isn't, you know, it's not a god, right? Like we're still very early in its evolution. [39:33] Um, [39:35] And kind of like having that mentality is very helpful. [39:40] And being willing, I think also like, [39:43] I don't know. I mean, we all grew up in the era of [39:46] you know, having to install drivers on our Windows machine, like pop the disc out of the N64 and blow on it and pop it back in. Like it takes a few tries to get stuff to work. Not everything is an iPhone. [39:56] um, [39:57] or at least [39:58] It used to be that way. I feel like people are getting spoiled by technology now. [40:02] Back in our day. [40:05] You had to struggle with it. You didn't know if you were getting a virus or a real song from LimeWire. It was exciting. It gave you the gumption to explore new technologies, you know, not like the kids today.

[40:18] No, no. Ask Siri for everything. [40:22] No, this is wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time to show this to us. [40:28] Excited to get to chat with you once again about sort of tools for thought stuff. And I'm psyched for your book to come out, man. [40:35] Next one. Yeah. July. It's coming up soon. All right. Thank you. [40:43] yeah thanks dude