Human abilities are limited unless you have a "second brain"

As a liberal arts student who doesn’t understand programming languages, I accidentally noticed Open AI, an artificial intelligence research center founded by Elon Musk. This year, it launched a GPT-3 text that can imitate the tone of any famous writer and automatically generate poems or articles. Generator , and after two and three seasons of "Westworld", there is a faint sense of crisis - in the near future, the biggest competitor of text writers will not be other writers, but "writing robots" with artificial intelligence .

In recent years, I have read a lot of articles like "Artificial intelligence will cause 20 million people to lose their jobs within ten years", and I thought that the affected jobs should be blue-collar workers, various intermediaries, drivers and other positions that are easily replaced by AI; Unexpectedly, Musk This tech madman, in addition to planning to conquer Mars (SpaceX), surround the Earth (Starlink), and control humans (brain-computer interface Neurallink), does not even let go of the writer's small site!

Facing the threat of AI, Tim O'Reilly (the creator of the term Web 2.0), who is good at predicting the future, said in his book "What's The Future and Why It's Up to Us" that to survive in the future world, one must have Two aspects of ability, the first is platform thinking , knowing how to use technology to integrate resources, because successful companies in the future will no longer just provide products or services, but provide platforms to match transactions, such as Uber, Spotify, Amazon, Netflix and so on.

The second is learning ability . Because technology is developing too fast, the knowledge we learned in school is outdated when we go out to work in the society. If we don’t take the initiative to learn for life, we may be eliminated by the times at any time. The ability to learn across fields is more important than professional learning, because the boundaries between majors and majors are becoming more and more blurred.

Take my industry as an example. In the past, people who made movies looked down on TV, those who made TV looked down on online dramas, those who made online dramas looked down on short videos, and those who made short videos looked down on live broadcasts... As a result, an epidemic killed all movies and TV, you See how many big stars are running to shoot videos and do live broadcasts now?

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, people have been worried about being replaced by machines, in fact, machines, so far, have only liberated humans from repetitive labor, giving us more physical strength and time to do what "human" should do matter.

Since we can’t compare speed with cars and strength with overweight machines, we shouldn’t be smarter and faster than computers; we should use computers and even AI as tools to deal with things we don’t want to deal with, so as to free up our minds” processing power” to do what we humans are best at and AI has not been able to replace for the time being—creation.

In order to develop the above-mentioned abilities, we need a "second head".

【Let Ai Power Generation Writing Project Eight】

What is the second head?

Different note-taking experts and writing tutors have mentioned similar concepts in recent years. Some call it Digital Brain , some describe it as LifeOS , and even the official propaganda of my favorite note-taking software Obsidian recently. The words are A Second Brain, For You, Forever.

Don't think too much of the second head, it's not the Host in "Westworld", it's not about creating a replica or a digital twin , backing up your mind, in the world Make one more you come out.

Building a Second Brain is actually pretty simple, just:

Outside of your physical head, build a reliable system for storing, organizing, digesting information, and ultimately producing great ideas.

Source: Building a Second Brain: The Illustrated Notes

The second head can be a stack of physical notebooks, one or even several handy software, apps that come with a mobile phone, or a combination of the above, because they are all just tools . It doesn't matter what tool you use, what matters is how to build a system that suits you.

Four functions of the second head

According to Tiago Forte , founder of the online course Building a Second Brain (BASB), the main function of the Second Brain system is CODE :

Collect

Whether it’s an excellent article, a golden sentence on the Internet that resonates with you, a proud idea, a work order from your boss, or your wife reminding you of groceries to buy after get off work… There are so many things in life and work that need to be done immediately Write it down, otherwise it will be fleeting.

Therefore, the primary function of the second head is to establish a habit of recording and collecting any information that is useful (or that you think will be useful in the future), and don't rely too much on your memory. You can use cards or paper notebooks, you can use the To-do List of your mobile phone, in short, whichever is convenient for you.

In order to save space and future access, the electronic second head is still more convenient than paper notes. Personally recommended software are:

1. Drafts: Because my memory is really bad, sometimes I think of an idea, open the phone, open the app, open a new page... After that, the idea has been completely forgotten, so I need an out-of-the-box recording tool , the fastest I've ever used is Drafts. It is a new page every time it is opened, there is no need to open a new note, and the first line is automatically changed to the note name, and it will also be automatically saved. With the voice input method, you can take notes immediately even on the road. There are other advantages, such as cross-platform, free, support for Apple Watch, etc.
2. The memo or Google Keep that comes with the phone : The speed is not as fast as Drafts, but it is better in every phone, no special installation is required, and learning is not difficult.
3. Evernote Voice Notes : If you are an Evernote user, its voice note function is also very convenient, but the disadvantage is that it will take time to convert voice to text in the future. If you use an iPhone, you can try to create an iOS "shortcut" to speed up the speed of opening a new Evernote note, but I have tried it, and Drafts is still faster.

For web scraping, either Evernote or Notion's Web-Clipper are fine, depending on which one you prefer. I used Pocket once, because I neglected to organize it, and the outline pages piled up like a mountain, and I finally abandoned it.

If you like early adopters, you can try Mymind.com . It uses AI to help you organize information. You don't need to create folders or labels yourself. Pull any data (pictures, text, web pages, etc.) into it, and it will automatically classify it, a bit like Google Photo of gameplay.

If you want to find information, you can enter a keyword. Even if it is a picture, you can use the keyword to search its content. It is very fun. The free version provides 100 pieces of information for you to try. However, the monthly fee is not cheap, and the minimum consumption is $5.99 a month. Whether it is worth it is up to you.

Organise, Distill and Express

It's easy to collect, and it only takes a week or two to find and build the collection method that works best for you.

The most difficult part is the next work. All the collected information must be properly classified, sorted, digested, filtered, and finally refined into a masterpiece. This process can take years, or it may end up with nothing...

In the last " Personal Knowledge Management " series " Card Box Notes ", I shared with you a knowledge system that uses " links " and " records with one's own words " as the main axis. (Friends who haven't seen it can start here: I have used the method of taking notes for a lifetime, but it is wrong! )

The "card box note-taking method" is actually not contradictory to the "second head". You can use the card method to deal with your "second head".

However, the "card box note-taking method" is better at dealing with more academic and literal ideas and information such as writing and essay writing .

If your work, life and study are far more than words, but include various projects, programs, and plans, which are required to be completed within a certain time limit, or if you need to work with a team, the "card box note-taking method" is not enough. , so the next article will recommend another system to you to make your second head more complete.

References:

1. How to Build a Second Brain - Tiago Forte Style — Keep Productive
2. Six abilities to live more like a human being and not be eliminated by the future world