The Translator - Ken-22D

The speaker, Professor Robert Greene, compares AI to unhealthy food that may taste good but is not good for our bodies. He shares a personal story about struggling to translate a difficult passage from Thucydides and emphasizes the importance of deep thinking and taking the longer approach when facing challenges. He believes that relying too heavily on technology and shortcuts can hinder personal growth and development. The speaker also warns about the potential negative effects of technology on language learning and encourages mindfulness in consuming information. The translator, Professor Robert Greene. You know how some foods can rot our body, how they're not good for you. They taste good, but they're not really good for you. I think of AI in that way, and I'm thinking back to the moment. When I was 19 years old, and I was in Berkeley, and I decided I was going to take this six-week express course where you learned one year of ancient Greek language in only six weeks. At one point near the end, they gave us a passage of Thucydides, an ancient Greek historian and general. He was born in 460 B.C. and passed away in 400 B.C. He was the hardest writer of all to read during his era. His history of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century B.C. war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 B.C. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of scientific history by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods as outlined in his introduction to his work. Back to Mr. Green's talk, words by words, sentence by sentence. So I have this one paragraph, and I must have spent like 10 hours just trying to translate the paragraph, and I couldn't figure it out. I thought, I thought, and I thought, finally I go, I think this is the answer, and I kind of excited. I thought about all the thoughts that I have thought, this is how it's going to work, and I turned it to my professor. Well, he goes, Robert, I see what you were thinking, I see where you're going. You're almost there, but you missed it. You completely missed, translated this beautiful paragraph, but you were getting at something, and that has an incredible impact on me even to this day. It made me realize whenever you face a difficult problem that you don't quite understand, you have to think, and you have to think more deeply, like you have to use the anxiety of asking yourself. Quote from LKX, Bloody Birdman, it's perfectly acceptable to use shortcut to streamline your workflow and save time, like trim it down, you know, go light when your inner mind feel it's about time, elite knight, and hmm, moreover, it's crucial to initially embrace the longer approach first when faced with a new challenge. Don't skip the slower and more tedious parts right away. The more you desire success, the more time you must invest in overcoming the steep learning curve. After the first 100 days, the learning curve becomes second nature, allowing you to comfortably employ shortcuts, and you can safely skip the beginner stage, and feel free to utilize as many shortcuts as you desire from this point forward. This golden rule applies to almost many difficult aspects of life, of course depends on correct context with proper strategies and techniques, is it right? No, it's not totally right, I have to dig deeper, into the deeper end, far far in, the depth of doubts, into the fabric and infrastructure of exorcist rhythm of existence, see itself. What if in that very moment, I simply pulled, put my translation of Thucydides, and mindlessly copy the paragraph? What if I have chat GPT, and I just put it in there and it gave it to me right away? My thing king park, king of packing things, the whole process of thinking, packing and translating, would have been annihilated right there. The entire process of me struggling, boiling frustration, like, oh, I still can't get it. Dang, it's not good enough. Why don't I use this word and that paraphrase? Why? I think it's not smooth enough, still not crude enough. Oh, I've got to go further and further conceptually into the unknown of meaning. That sounds great. This thought process developed your character, it developed your patience, it enhanced discipline, it totally improved your self-esteem and humility. There's nothing more humiliating than facing an ancient paragraph for 10 long hours, and not quite figure it out. So kids nowadays who are never going to have that kind of experience again, they're never going to learn a foreign language anymore, because if you just go to Mongolian digital translator and type in that sentence, you got it translated immediately on your phone in less than meta one second. These incredible skills that the brain has are going to be atrophying, I fear. The brain is so much more interesting to me than any piece of technology. I'm sorry. That's what we should be worshipping as always, not these new little toys, little gadgets that we created thus far. Does it make sense? However, the fast approach should always come after you have mastered the introduction phase, unlike some others, magic find I've encountered, who only do the opposite, jump to the expert stage right at the start, they burnt out pretty quickly. After a short period of time and they never revisit the stuff they used to love doing dearly again. Be mindful of what you consume mentally and how quickly you digest it. By doing so, without overthinking, but rather relying on intuition, you'll be surprised at how much our monkey brain influences us. On a daily basis, whoop whoop whoops, Fitbit waving on monkey hands, chattering chatter chat bots, not on now Caesar son, it's not right now, it's too soon, moon soon or noon, or is it room room? Big applause from engaging audiences raised slowly from afar.