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šEntanglements Rule Everything Around Usš
š„Welcome to Volume #00123!š„
Iām Christian Champ. This is āÆļøThe Middle Way Newsletter āÆļø. It is a place where I write, explore, share, and invite you along for the journey.
If you enjoy the newsletter, please share it with your friends.
šEntanglements Rule Everything Around Usš
āHow does it taste?ā
āDelicious.ā
The answer came instantly and in unison.
Watching my kids make sticky rice, their current favorite food to eat and to make, got me thinking about entanglements.
It didnāt start in the kitchen. It didnāt start with anyone prodding them into doing it.
It started with a card game: Sushi Go.
That led to curiosity about sushi. That led to conversations with sushi chefs in Pittsburgh while visiting my mom. That led to wanting to eat sushi rice and turned into wanting to make their own sushi rice.
And then we gave them the constraint: If you want it, you make it.
Now we have sushi rice chefs in the house.
And sushi rice always tastes better when they make it themselves.
This is how entanglements work.
One connection leads to another. One experience unlocks the next. Small threads weave into something meaningful.
Zoom out, and you start to see it everywhere.
Life itself is one giant entanglement. Our bodies are layers of them. Our skills, relationships, and opportunities are all built through chains of interactions. The best ones are always with weddings, team wins, trips, and building something with colleagues. Always together. Always part of something larger and weaving it into the fabric of our lives.
Nothing meaningful happens in isolation.
Even making sushi rice is an entanglement.
Rice. Water. Heat. Timing. Cooling.
Get the relationships right, and it works.
Miss one piece and it falls apart.
Same with life.
Some entanglements elevate us.
They open flow. They create momentum. They expand whatās possible.
Others drain us.
They feel like stress, friction, chaos. Like youāre just trying to survive rather than create. Sometimes, if we do it enough times, it becomes flow. Other times we need to move on.
So the question becomes:
What are you entangled with?
And more importantly: What are you choosing to entangle yourself with next?
Because the game isnāt avoiding entanglements.
Itās designing and finding better ones.
š§ Things to Think Aboutš§
Kris Adelmessih on AI: Meaning More Trade-Offs That We Need To Price
We canāt escape AI radically altering many of the landscapes in our lives. Kris offers an idea to do what you are already doing, but do it faster or better.
We need to use AI as one more entanglement leading to the outcomes we want.
AI forces us to price even more tradeoffs, mostly in the form of explore/exploit problems. In other words, lots of tasks became easier, leaving diabolically hard ones to focus on, namely, āwhat should I be doing?ā
My answer is mostly to be doing more of what Iām doing faster. I admit this is incremental and Iām a little ashamed of that, but Iāve already told you I feel like Iām the American in 1920 who saw a car and thought, āI could use that to go buy food for my horseā.
If you do your work faster, you can do more work. I heard this is called Jevonās Paradox, which is some economic idea that caught fire like āBaumolās diseaseā or ānetwork effectsā or āEBITDAā.
Gemini defines Jevonās paradox:
The Jevons paradox is an economic observation that increased efficiency in using a resource tends to increase, rather than decrease, its total consumption. Proposed by William Stanley Jevons in 1865 regarding coal use, it occurs because higher efficiency lowers the cost of using the resource, driving higher demand that outweighs the initial savings.
Kevin Kelly on Uncertain Uncertainty
KK offers an interesting take on AI and the uncertain future we may face for some time, particularly on how AI and AGI are going to play out.
In other words, we have a sustained, extended period of uncertainty. Not just a few years, but a decade or more. As AI continues to progress, rather than resolving our perplexity, it expands it. So for the next 10-15 years we have perpetual, continuous, severe uncertainty. This is a burdensome weight because people hate uncertainty more than bad news.
We need to get good at changing our minds and remaining open in what might be The Age of Ambiguity, as Kevin calls it.
In our era of uncertain uncertainty, certainty will be the killer. In this era more downfalls will happen because of overconfidence than questioning. The key is to not get stuck on just one option. You have to become at ease holding multiple contradictory possibilities at once. (To prevent yourself from being swept away by the latest current and fashionable whim, this radical adaptability must be anchored on a steadfast set of unchangeable virtues, as corny as honesty, or as slick as generosity.) The strategy for prospering in prolonged uncertainty must be one of constant, agile recalibration.
In short, in our age of uncertainty, you have to get good at changing your mind.
Charles Eiseinstein on When Rituals Stop Working
What happens when we lose our rituals and no longer believe in what makes them powerful? What happens when ārealityā becomes whatever someone says it is? How do we create new rituals and maintain the ones that are powerful?
Rituals lose their power as the agreements beneath them unravel. These are agreements about what things mean, who or what is legitimate, and ultimately what is real. These agreements weave a story-of-the-world from which the ritual draws its power, and each diligent, ceremonial performance of it strengthens that story. A perfunctory performance, in contrast, weakens the story that gave it power. Thatās what happens when we routinely, thoughtlessly click āI agreeā every time we subscribe to a website or log onto wifi at a cafe. We are supposedly signing a contract every time we do that. In so doing, we cheapen the very idea of contract. That mouse-click becomes a ritual in the popular sense: a meaningless symbolic action, an āempty ritual.ā
š£Words of Wisdomš£
"When you lead your real job is to create more leaders not more followers." (Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living)
"Arguing inhibits our ability to learn how the other person sees the world. When we argue, we tend to trade conclusions ā the ābottom lineā" (Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, Difficult Conversations)
"Think about the implications of that for a sports task: a large range of solutions to perform the same task = more possibilities for adaptability to changing constraints!" (Rob Gray, The Advanced Ecological Approach to Skill Development)
"Don't be proud of your consumption. Be proud of what you've built. The family you've built, the friends you've found, the memories you have, the wisdom you've accumulated." (Morgan Housel, The Art of Spending Money)
"The human motor system can be seen as a permanent problem solver that functions within a continuous interaction with its environment. Living is learning but living is also changing." (The Athletic Skills Model)
"Look deep enough into any person and you will find something shining within." (Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore)
"You must be able to name for yourself why your work matters. And if you're a leader, you need to encourage everyone on your team to do the same." (Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality)
šThanks for Readingš
What entanglements do we currently have?
How can we entangle better or maybe just differently to see what happens next?
Namaste,
Christian
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themiddleway.substack.com
View all episodes
By Christian Champš„Welcome to Volume #00123!š„
Iām Christian Champ. This is āÆļøThe Middle Way Newsletter āÆļø. It is a place where I write, explore, share, and invite you along for the journey.
If you enjoy the newsletter, please share it with your friends.
šEntanglements Rule Everything Around Usš
āHow does it taste?ā
āDelicious.ā
The answer came instantly and in unison.
Watching my kids make sticky rice, their current favorite food to eat and to make, got me thinking about entanglements.
It didnāt start in the kitchen. It didnāt start with anyone prodding them into doing it.
It started with a card game: Sushi Go.
That led to curiosity about sushi. That led to conversations with sushi chefs in Pittsburgh while visiting my mom. That led to wanting to eat sushi rice and turned into wanting to make their own sushi rice.
And then we gave them the constraint: If you want it, you make it.
Now we have sushi rice chefs in the house.
And sushi rice always tastes better when they make it themselves.
This is how entanglements work.
One connection leads to another. One experience unlocks the next. Small threads weave into something meaningful.
Zoom out, and you start to see it everywhere.
Life itself is one giant entanglement. Our bodies are layers of them. Our skills, relationships, and opportunities are all built through chains of interactions. The best ones are always with weddings, team wins, trips, and building something with colleagues. Always together. Always part of something larger and weaving it into the fabric of our lives.
Nothing meaningful happens in isolation.
Even making sushi rice is an entanglement.
Rice. Water. Heat. Timing. Cooling.
Get the relationships right, and it works.
Miss one piece and it falls apart.
Same with life.
Some entanglements elevate us.
They open flow. They create momentum. They expand whatās possible.
Others drain us.
They feel like stress, friction, chaos. Like youāre just trying to survive rather than create. Sometimes, if we do it enough times, it becomes flow. Other times we need to move on.
So the question becomes:
What are you entangled with?
And more importantly: What are you choosing to entangle yourself with next?
Because the game isnāt avoiding entanglements.
Itās designing and finding better ones.
š§ Things to Think Aboutš§
Kris Adelmessih on AI: Meaning More Trade-Offs That We Need To Price
We canāt escape AI radically altering many of the landscapes in our lives. Kris offers an idea to do what you are already doing, but do it faster or better.
We need to use AI as one more entanglement leading to the outcomes we want.
AI forces us to price even more tradeoffs, mostly in the form of explore/exploit problems. In other words, lots of tasks became easier, leaving diabolically hard ones to focus on, namely, āwhat should I be doing?ā
My answer is mostly to be doing more of what Iām doing faster. I admit this is incremental and Iām a little ashamed of that, but Iāve already told you I feel like Iām the American in 1920 who saw a car and thought, āI could use that to go buy food for my horseā.
If you do your work faster, you can do more work. I heard this is called Jevonās Paradox, which is some economic idea that caught fire like āBaumolās diseaseā or ānetwork effectsā or āEBITDAā.
Gemini defines Jevonās paradox:
The Jevons paradox is an economic observation that increased efficiency in using a resource tends to increase, rather than decrease, its total consumption. Proposed by William Stanley Jevons in 1865 regarding coal use, it occurs because higher efficiency lowers the cost of using the resource, driving higher demand that outweighs the initial savings.
Kevin Kelly on Uncertain Uncertainty
KK offers an interesting take on AI and the uncertain future we may face for some time, particularly on how AI and AGI are going to play out.
In other words, we have a sustained, extended period of uncertainty. Not just a few years, but a decade or more. As AI continues to progress, rather than resolving our perplexity, it expands it. So for the next 10-15 years we have perpetual, continuous, severe uncertainty. This is a burdensome weight because people hate uncertainty more than bad news.
We need to get good at changing our minds and remaining open in what might be The Age of Ambiguity, as Kevin calls it.
In our era of uncertain uncertainty, certainty will be the killer. In this era more downfalls will happen because of overconfidence than questioning. The key is to not get stuck on just one option. You have to become at ease holding multiple contradictory possibilities at once. (To prevent yourself from being swept away by the latest current and fashionable whim, this radical adaptability must be anchored on a steadfast set of unchangeable virtues, as corny as honesty, or as slick as generosity.) The strategy for prospering in prolonged uncertainty must be one of constant, agile recalibration.
In short, in our age of uncertainty, you have to get good at changing your mind.
Charles Eiseinstein on When Rituals Stop Working
What happens when we lose our rituals and no longer believe in what makes them powerful? What happens when ārealityā becomes whatever someone says it is? How do we create new rituals and maintain the ones that are powerful?
Rituals lose their power as the agreements beneath them unravel. These are agreements about what things mean, who or what is legitimate, and ultimately what is real. These agreements weave a story-of-the-world from which the ritual draws its power, and each diligent, ceremonial performance of it strengthens that story. A perfunctory performance, in contrast, weakens the story that gave it power. Thatās what happens when we routinely, thoughtlessly click āI agreeā every time we subscribe to a website or log onto wifi at a cafe. We are supposedly signing a contract every time we do that. In so doing, we cheapen the very idea of contract. That mouse-click becomes a ritual in the popular sense: a meaningless symbolic action, an āempty ritual.ā
š£Words of Wisdomš£
"When you lead your real job is to create more leaders not more followers." (Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living)
"Arguing inhibits our ability to learn how the other person sees the world. When we argue, we tend to trade conclusions ā the ābottom lineā" (Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, Difficult Conversations)
"Think about the implications of that for a sports task: a large range of solutions to perform the same task = more possibilities for adaptability to changing constraints!" (Rob Gray, The Advanced Ecological Approach to Skill Development)
"Don't be proud of your consumption. Be proud of what you've built. The family you've built, the friends you've found, the memories you have, the wisdom you've accumulated." (Morgan Housel, The Art of Spending Money)
"The human motor system can be seen as a permanent problem solver that functions within a continuous interaction with its environment. Living is learning but living is also changing." (The Athletic Skills Model)
"Look deep enough into any person and you will find something shining within." (Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore)
"You must be able to name for yourself why your work matters. And if you're a leader, you need to encourage everyone on your team to do the same." (Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality)
šThanks for Readingš
What entanglements do we currently have?
How can we entangle better or maybe just differently to see what happens next?
Namaste,
Christian
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themiddleway.substack.com