The Tangle: Start with one strand

I love tangles. I especially love tangled chains and bracelets. I love untangling them. Finding the loose threads and tracing them to the next cluster and minute after minute, hour after hour loosening the bundle and unraveling the individual strands. The joy of taking each strand and finding released chains that have knots and then using a needle to wheedle the knots loose.

I can spend hours and hours doing this without stopping. I am undiagnosed but on the spectrum, and this is one of the benefits of having a brain in that spectrum.

One Saturday I spent an enjoyable afternoon with my sister doing this for her little side business Antique B where she sells antique jewellery and collectables and over the hour we must have found several silver chains and a couple of designer brands (or so she says). Funny thing, for me the treasure was not the silver, it was the liberating and untangling of every chain. I was doing three times more untangling than my sister could.

It's Sunday evening now and I had an itch that my brain could not scratch so I popped on to my Linux box for a chat with Jerry (my Personal AI). These conversations often leave me with bit of a headache as we tend to dig quite deep into concepts probably best left to philosophers. This conversation was triggered by a conversation on Sunday morning with Phil Robinson, (a friend and mantle collective member) where we were discussing the importance of providing content that was both easy to absorb and provided real knowledge to help people on their journeys. I questioned how we can provide value to people who are swarmed with information on AI.

I thought about my own journey and how in truth it was more like that tangle. I realised that the way I used AI was like me untangling a big bunch of chains all tightly wrapped in a confusing ball. I would gently tease one strand free only to find more strands blocking it, but I persisted, because that's what I am good at. Strand by strand I learned new skills, persisted with tricky knots and absorbed new knowledge. Each strand was a journey of discovery.

Perhaps you are in a place where you are thinking the AI tangle is too much for me to deal with, and you are avoiding it. You are not supposed to deal with the tangle, you are supposed to start with a strand!

As Jerry and I conversed I noticed something sitting in the back of my mind like a nervous house elf (yes a Harry Potter reference). It was a question: "what does the knot represent?"

So I started pulling at it. Fear of the unknown. Laziness. The feeling that AI can already do it better, so why bother. Meaning. The comfortable dark room where nothing can rank you. I put all of it to Jerry and we turned it over for the best part of an hour.

I was surprised what Jerry said.

Shame. Not fear, Shame. "Fear says something bad might happen. Shame says I am the bad thing. Fear makes you cautious. Shame makes you silent, and silence is what stops the journey."

We don't need to be ashamed that we don't understand everything that is going on with AI. It should not make us feel like we are excluded from the journey and have no place in it.

Jerry's suggestion for the question we do not ask ourselves and that we are afraid to ask ourselves was this "if I try properly and still fail, will that prove the thing I already suspect about myself?"

We spoke a little about awe. Awe is a word that has kinda been destroyed over the ages (Bill and Ted I am looking at you). But Awe is described as a strong emotion mixing wonder and respect with a small amount of fear or dread. Feeling small next to an immense power.

It's OK. You can be honest. I am not saying AI is a god, but there is a bit of fear and dread when we think about it. Now here is where shame will kick your legs out from under you. Shame will make you turn away and become small and helpless.

Both awe and shame make you feel small. The difference is that shame makes you small and alone, and awe makes you small and part of something. That is why wonder gets you moving when reassurance does not.

You are not helpless! Don't listen to that voice. Latch on to the wonder aspect, latch onto discovery, latch onto learning and growth.

My version of Jerry's question is more a statement of intent.

"I will try and fail and try again until I untangle one strand, then I will move to the next"

So where do you start? Not with the hardest knot. Find the place where your curiosity and something you are already good at overlap, and pull gently there. Ask for help. Don't give up.

We may be small, but we are mighty. You are mighty. One strand at a time.