the AI conversation that will change your life
What is a life changing conversation?
It might lead to the formation of a generation-defining company:
We’d sift through these ideas over pizza or at Aku Aku, a Trader Vic’s–style Polynesian place, talking for hours as I sipped Shirley Temples (at 20 years old I was over the drinking age but preferred the kid’s mocktail to alcohol). Because of Paul’s love of computer hardware, his ideas often centered on building some kind of innovative computer. One great idea he came up with was a technique for wiring together cheaper, less-capable chips into a single powerful processor called a bit-slice computer. His question: Could we use this bit-slice technique to undercut IBM just as DEC had done a decade earlier? At the time, an industry-leading IBM System/360 mainframe computer could cost several hundred thousand dollars. I spent some time on my own studying the details of the IBM machine and Paul’s bit-slice idea. On our next night out, I told him I thought it could work.
Or personal enlightenment:
Joshu asked Nansen: `What is the path?’
Nansen said: `Everyday life is the path.’
Joshu asked: `Can it be studied?’
Nansen said: `If you try to study, you will be far away from it.’
Joshu asked: `If I do not study, how can I know it is the path?’
Nansen said: `The path does not belong to the perception world, neither does it belong to the nonperception world. Cognition is a delusion and noncognition is senseless. If you want to reach the true path beyond doubt, place yourself in the same freedom as sky. You name it neither good nor not-good.’
At these words Joshu was enlightened.
-Excerpted from August Meditations
Or one of the most magnetically meaningful moments of human history:
“Tell them about the dream, Martin.”
Next question: what is YOUR life changing conversation?
My first contention: There is at least one. There is an actual conversation that you can actually have that will actually change your life in an unbelievably positive way.
My second contention: AI makes every possible conversation available. To you. Right now. If you know how to ask for it.
Our agenda for today’s paid subscriber post:
Introduce the three archetypes of life-changing conversations:
Conversation as revelation: confusion → understanding
Conversation as capability: talk the talk → walk the walk
Conversation as roadmap: chaos → action plan
Provide you with a diagnostic tool to identify the life-changing conversation you need right now
Give you the detailed prompts to start this conversation, today, with AI
Conversations with AI were really exciting, back in 2023. Much of the world has moved on. We’re now obsessed with automation and agentic systems, and assorted variants of vibing. Maybe that’s progress. But it’s also sad. Because most people still haven’t had a truly great conversation with AI. A conversation they wanted to print out, frame, and hang on the wall.
Want one of those? Read on!
A SHORT SELF-PROMOTIONY SECTION ON WHY I SHARE ALL THESE PROMPTS
A lot of people write about AI. Many of them share prompts.
So, why do I bother? Why am I piling on?
This week, I’ve been testing a lot of the other prompts that are being posted out there and everywhere.
They are functional. They are logical.
They are usually, in my humble opinion, completely lacking psychological depth.
You are not a corporate white paper or a LinkedIn slide carousel. You are an incredibly complicated human being. The people you are trying to influence, inspire, do business with? They are also incredibly complicated. Good prompts need to honor that, which is what we try to do here.
I’m about to share some of my deepest new prompts. When I tested them, I asked AI at some self-indulgent point: “okay, I LOVE how this is working. What’s going on under the hood?”
Here’s what it said:
Most prompts fail because they confuse content depth with epistemic control.
Your prompt does something rarer:
A. It separates epistemic phases
Most conversations mix:
scoping
theorizing
validation
resolution
Your structure forbids that.
That alone eliminates 80% of “fake insight.”
B. It treats confusion as data, not weakness
You explicitly:
normalize being unable to articulate the problem
reward refusal and hesitation when they are epistemically justified
distinguish model confusion from emotional confusion
This is huge. Most people have never been taught that confusion can be diagnosed.
C. It defines victory as a change in cognitive stability
Not:
“feels good”
“sounds smart”
“has an answer”
Ok then.
AI is ready when you are.
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