Optimizing Algorithms 101 (Intro)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living 101 Masterclass Series. Today I'm excited to chat about Optimizing Algorithms 101, how to Become an optibot, which of course is short for an optimizing robot, and program yourself to reach your infinite potential. As always, we have 10 big ideas. Let's take a quick look and then we'll dive in deep. The first big idea is an algorithm. What is an algorithm? Why should you care? Well, Professor Yuval Noah Harari tells us in Homo Deos that an algorithm is the most important concept of the 21st century. And algorithms. Understanding them, he says, is the most important thing that you can understand for the 21st century. It's a pretty powerful statement. We'll talk about the three big projects of humanity he describes in his book Homo Deus, immortality, happiness and divinity, and how your happiness is connected to essentially your ability to write effective algorithms. We'll talk about jobs in the year 2033. The percent likelihood of cashiers having jobs vis a vis robots doing those jobs. We'll talk about Teslas. How is it that a Tesla drives itself? Algorithms, algorithms, algorithms. It's all algorithms. Second big idea, two AIs plus two thermostats. So you have Professor Harari, genius intellectual, telling us algorithms are important. Then you have Ray Dalio, genius billionaire, one of the most successful and wealthiest people in the world. What does he tell us? He tells us that I quote the most important language, I paraphrase rather, that you and your kids can learn in the 21st century is how to write algorithms. Now he's talking about artificial intelligence. We're going to talk about another AI. Ancient intelligence, artificial intelligence. Little over 50 years old, 1959 Dartmouth. Brilliant guys and ladies came up with this idea of artificial intelligence. Well, guess what? 500 million years ago, we had ancient intelligence in our basal ganglia. Behaviors that were repeated became ingrained. What were those behaviors? How do we use that today? Algorithms. We're going to talk about programming your thermostat in your house via an algorithm to stay warm. Same thing with your life. You want happiness? Learn how to program and algorithms. The third big idea is to connect those two guys to modern positive psychology. Guess what the number one psychological behavioral hack is? An algorithm. They call it if then implementation intentions. If this happens, then I will do that. It is the way you use your finite willpower wisely to install habits that run on autopilot. If then implementations that's nothing more than an algorithm. So now that we've established the high level, why algorithms matter, we will then move on to the fourth big idea, which is 101 algorithms. I'm going to challenge you to do an exercise, spend an hour, tilt your head to the side, let all the little algorithms that currently run your life come out on a piece of paper. We want to shine a spotlight of attention on the algorithms that are currently running your show. Some of them are great. Maybe they changed your life. They're awesome. Some of them probably need work. We want to again look at those algorithms. And then in the next idea, number five, and I'm going to share with you my 101 algorithms that came out when I spent an hour doing that exercise. Then we're going to move into our 11 power algorithms. I will share my 11 most powerful algorithms that run my life. Right? Algorithm, robot, do this. Boom. Help me create the life I have. And then, of course, continuing to optimize those. I'm going to challenge you to discover your 11 power algorithms. The sixth big idea. We're going to get into the details of how to write an optimizing algorithm. Rule number one, or I should say rule number zero, is what? Can you guess the number one rule of writing effective power optimizing algorithms? Well, here's a hint. You need to have a target. A Tesla has a target. Drive safely to a destination. Let's say you have an autonomous car. What's your target? I'm going to suggest that your ultimate target should be happiness, but not in the kind of shallow sense of happiness we take it these days. In the deepest sense, Eudaimonia, good soul, this sense of flourishing. And then I'm going to introduce you to your programmer. Who's your programmer? That inner soul. We want that inner soul to program us to be our best selves. We'll have fun with that one. That's actually probably my favorite idea. And then our seventh big idea, we're going to revisit the attention spotlight that we're putting on your algorithms. And we're going to start to go through our days and see the meta opportunities to write algorithms and the little micro opportunities. Every single moment affords you an opportunity to write a better algorithm. We're not going to go crazy about it. We want to have fun looking at it and saying, okay, how is my sitting algorithm? How about my standing algorithm, my breathing algorithm, my nutrition algorithm, et cetera? We want to shine our spotlight of attention on the different algorithms that might currently be unconsciously running behind the scenes, but they're running. So we want to become more aware and notice which ones are working, which ones aren't. The ones that are working, do more of that. The the ones that aren't working needs work, optimize, et cetera. Our eighth big idea is to drill it down into even more practical detail. We're going to talk about your keystone algorithms and we're going to talk about your kryptonite algorithms. We're going to drop this into our big three that we talk about all the time. Energy, work, and love. What's your number one Keystone for each of those? And what's your number one? Kryptonite for each of those? Again, shine your attention on that. Then we're going to talk about the big T. The big three. Energy, work, and love the big T. Technology. Our last class was conquering Digital Addiction 101. The reality is 21st century technology is washing over us and we need to get really, really good at writing algorithms that help us interact with technology such that we use it as a tool rather than be a tool. So we're going to talk about your declaration of Independence, optimization with technology. Again, another little exercise. I'm going to share with you my 11 things that I've done algorithmically to deal with the big T. That leads us to our ninth big idea. We're going to create masterpiece algorithms. So algorithm is spelled A L G O R I T H M Algorithm. Well, when you program algorithms, you create algorithms in your life. R H Y T H M S algorithms equals rhythms in your life. We want to take the best algorithms and create masterpiece days and masterpiece weeks, which leads to our masterpiece lives. We'll talk about how to go about doing that. And then finally, our 10th big idea is machine learning. Learning machine learning. So the crazy thing about machines is that programmed properly, they can actually learn. They can get better as they go through their algorithms and process incoming data to become better. Well, we want to approach our lives in this similar way and realize this is a constant and never ending optimization process. Right. We're constantly evolving into the next best version of ourselves and taking in all the data, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't, and programming that optibot such that we can reach our infinite potential. That is a quick look at this class. I'm excited to jump in.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Bryan Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.