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Victor Tan

Victor Tan is incredibly excited about AI technology and its potential to transform the world. He is the creator of Transform Your Creative Writing With ChatGPT on Udemy and the author of The Little Robot That Could Paint, an AI-generated children’s book that introduces children to artificial intelligence that will release on March 14th, 2023. He is deeply passionate about education, and In his coaching and tutoring business Ascendant Academy, he teaches students not only how to sell themselves to top institutions, how to write effectively and conceptualize ideas with AI, believing deeply that AI is not here to replace us, but instead to help us to level up as a species as we conceptualize and create the most powerful tools that the world has known since the dawn of humanity. When he isn’t spending time writing, creating online courses, and creating the occasional video about ergonomic chairs and curious uses of ChatGPT on his YouTube channel, he’s probably  spending time coaching students to enter top universities in the US and UK, creating new Apple Homekit smart home automations, and playing an already unreasonably large yet still growing collection of musical instruments.

The author has 192 posts

You Can Never Step In The Same Stream Twice.

Fun quote?

I agree.

The little patchwork-mind-lizard-brain network inside my head revealed this simple phrase to me in the morning.

Somehow or another, it retrieved this quote from the depths – and that act of retrieval, I suppose, redounds to the truth of the statement.

When Heraclitus wrote these words…

Well, who am I to write about Heraclitus really, when all I know about the guy is a few Google searches and one or two AI overviews?

Screenshot

Either way, what I believe Heraclitus to have said (ok that’s better) is that life and existence is in constant flux – that those we encounter in that flux never are the same, though they may appear a little bit different here and there.

I’m thinking about this from the many choice examples in my life that I could use to illustrate a bit of that to those of you who have been following the journey.

In the past few weeks, I have done some of the following things, arranged in no particular order:

  • (Re)-learned Ableton
  • Gone to a new church
  • Pole danced with a pageant queen (LOL)
  • Made, remade, lost, re-encountered, new friends
  • Speaking of stepping, since this blog post is titled “You Can Never Step In The Same Stream Twice”, changed my steps so that now we have… Whatever this is.

The point is, change happens and it happens fast; often, it happens faster than we can chronicle it, both on the level of who we are changing into and what the world is changing into (and we’re not even considering what we’re changing the world into!) so much so that trying to capture every single change is an exercise in futility when perhaps our faculties are better used towards coping not only with the inevitability of change that we see in this world, but the interlinked reality that we are changing at every given moment and thus in being given these moments, summoning them to bring out the versions of ourselves whom we see as aligned with the higher goods and the moral sources that condition us.

I wonder what version of you is reading this blog post today, and I wonder what version of you will read this a day from now, a week from now, or years from now if this site either exists or is archived and made into viral memory because someone would like to cancel, celebrate, or immortalize me in the crystallization of a thought against the algorithmic rancor of a couple billion fractured attention spans?

I look forward to meeting you later, dear reader. 🙂

What Are You Willing To Suffer For?

It hit me this morning that as human beings, we are suffering creatures.

After all, suffering is basically written into the very code of all existence; to exist itself is to go against entropy, to summon together the forces of energy against decay, life against death – to work to create in a world of other people’s eyes and ears and judgments and socialities, minds in the full simulacrum of our brief temporal moment; to think and plan in a world of social relationships to do good and bad, right or wrong, ever to refine or polish, to push forward into the void, or to push against fate and the results of our own inaction.

Whether it is currency, social esteem, attraction, mates, or a future, a person is likely to suffer for these things; and if one is so lucky as to not suffer for one of them, one is likely to suffer for other things.

What are you suffering for today, and what are you willing to suffer for?

Are the things that you are suffering for things you deserve to suffer for?

Are they things that you truly want, or are the things you suffer for things that merit that suffering?

On Beatmatching

One of my current obsessions is learning beatmatching – it is a skill that DJs must have, such that the result of using that skill is that you get two different songs playing at the same beats per minute, in phase (the beats hit at the right time), in phrase, and importantly, you don’t stare at a screen while doing so.

Beatmatching involves making small changes to tempo (speed) that are either temporary (using the jog wheel) or permanent (using the tempo slider), in rapid response to what you are listening to (a topic that warrants another blog post, I think), until again, the beats are in phase, the speed of the tracks is the same, you get it right at the correct parts of the track (in phrase), and you don’t look at the screen while doing so.

Seems a little trivial? Well, contrary to what you might think, it is from this (apparently) simple skill comes our parties, celebrations, EDM festivals, and pretty much almost every kind of show that you can think of – it is that crucial.

To me, it is really interesting to think about how to develop that skill, as it involves asking a lot of questions in the head all at the same time, while running the program over and over again:

  1. When should I play the track…
    • In relation to the incoming beats?
    • In the overall track?
  2. When I do start playing the track…
    • Can I reliably and quickly tell:
      • Whether my track is fast or slow?
      • What adjustment to make and in what order?
      • How to perform a sequence of operations to make that adjustment?
      • How to calculate on the fly that sequence of operations?
    • Do I have the physical dexterity to make that adjustment while performing that listening?
    • Am I aware of what is coming next in the song that I may adjust to it?
  3. As an artist…
    • Am I able to create an interesting experience for the listener?
    • Through track selection and curation of a bespoke and varied experience, can I sustain the vibe of the listener, how they feel…
      • In that moment?
      • Throughout the night?
    • Can I create not just an interesting experience, but also a memorable and significant experience that they will remember deeply in some meaningful way as a part of their one and precious lifetime?
    • Can I develop my technical mastery to blend skill and experience, form and essence?

I am sure that there are many other questions that we could ask and many different things I haven’t considered, but the ones I’ve listed here are some of the more interesting ones I have in mind.

Of course, I could just use beat sync all the way and stare at a screen, but that wouldn’t be all that interesting, would it?

Certainly not, when it feels like what I’m doing in learning this is somehow evolving my brain in a strange way that I had never considered before, but that somehow is my privilege now and in the immediate hereafter.

Lots more to come – looking forward to creating more fun experiences for the world!