Zen, Einstein, Rutherford and the Art of Football Management

How I stopped worrying and learned to love Artificial Intelligence

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

It’s been a minute. How’s everyone doing?

If the pressure is getting to you, whistle

I’ll let you in on the last months of my hiatus from Substack. For one, I have been doing a lot of youth football coaching around my region. We were lucky to get some grants to pay for travel and expenses to go around the top of the South Island coaching at high schools and primary schools. And guess what, I love every minute of it. In a galaxy far far away, I used to be a biology teacher and my main passion in life is football, so combining football and teaching has been a blessing. It is the first job I have done, where I have never been upset or bedraggled about going to work! For me it’s not work, it’s love. And the kids respond to this.

As we all know, enthusiasm is contagious and children respond to this. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been challenging, every now and then there will be kids who act up or act like little idiots and sometimes it’s difficult to balance the passion with the simple task of trying to get lackadaisical children to not interrupt training sessions. But I have a good solution for that, whenever someone acts up, I just take a ball, show it to the kid and tell them that they have 20 seconds to bring me the ball back - I then proceed to boot it as far as I can and start counting. It’s like an easy game of hide and go seek and kids love it. One of the greatest skills I learned in life was how to whistle loudly. I remember when I was young and had a coach who could do that and I was like how on Earth does he do that, it’s so cool? I then spent the better part of 5 years perfecting my whistle, much to the chagrin of my parents, teachers or anyone who was around me really. Guess what, it paid off in my ultimate vocation, as children will pay attention to a good whistle, just like dogs. A heaven send.

Fear not for the future

Apart from football, I have been doing some research and writing gigs on the side. And I have spent a lot, let me repeat A LOT of time with Chat-GPT. I was fortunate to trial the latest version of Chat-GPT4 and it is incredible. To be honest for the first month it made me despondent and a bit sad, feeling like I was redundant in the only true skill that I have honed over 30 years of my life. That’s how good this text generator is. It is easily the best writer to ever have lived. If you prompt it well, it will deliver anything and everything you will ever need in life. I feel sorry for teachers as Chat-GPT5 will be the world’s greatest teacher/assistant - and imagine when we all have a little ear plug with it loaded and we can ask it any question we have or get it to help with any decision we need to. It will know us better than we know ourselves!

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

At the moment it has an IQ of 140, the average person living has an IQ of about 100-110 - so it will raise the average intelligence of every human on earth, which is a great thing as higher IQ results in better life outcomes. Albert Einstein had an IQ of 160, and Chat-GPT is not far off from that. So imagine. Not only are you going to be walking around with a little Einstein in your ear but think about the progress made in the sciences, especially physics and medicine. Cancer will be cured overnight, climate change resolved, poverty eliminated - governments will become obsolete. The future looks really bright if you just focus on the upside.

Yeah there is a lot of scaremongering out there about the potential negative side effects of AI on the planet, but again, this is all speculation, primarily fuelled by Terminator movies and science fiction authors of the past. And trust me I have spent a long time researching these potential negative effects, in fact the first months that was all I could think about. The ominous statement by Sam Altman, founder of Open AI and Chat-GPT - when he said that the worst outcome could be “lights out for humanity”. He is just as much speculating as anyone else, none of us know how this will go, so we might as well stay positive about it right?

I have become death, destroyer of worlds

I watched Oppenheimer last night, and wow, not only was it a cinematic masterclass but it also starred my favourite people in history (and many of my favourite actors.) I was grinning from ear to ear when Oppenheimer met Einstein, it made me feel so happy and it also reminded me of the reason why I moved to Golden Bay in the first place.

It wasn’t to coach football, well, not initially.

I came here ten years ago on a whim. I had been researching and writing a book about Einstein and his historical friendship with the kiwi Nobel prize winning physicist Ernest Rutherford, who grew not far from where I live now in Golden Bay. No one knows about this friendship but there are historical letters and the fact that Rutherford was so enamored by Einstein when he met him in Belgium at the Solvay Conference, that they stayed in touch and when the Nazis started ostracising Jewish professors in Germany, Rutherford helped fund and set up CARA (the Council for At Risk Academics.) It was such an amazing story, that I felt I needed to tell it.

I was on a flight in 2011 from Wellington to Auckland, after having just met with computer programmers there for a project I was working on. These guys were superstars in their field and had worked on the Obama campaign in 2008, building their state of the art online content management system. One of the people working on the project was sitting next to me on the flight and asked me about writing and what I was working on. I told him the general idea of the story and he loved it. He then proceeded to offer me the opportunity to move into a little cottage in the middle of nowhere by Farewell Spit (where Rutherford and his dad used to go on hikes together - and actually when Ernest was asked by the Nobel committee where he garnered his ideas from, he mentioned that specific area. So call it kismet or synchronicity or whatnot, but I ended packing all my things and moving to this super remote area at the top of the South Island. It was meant to be for 3 months, but fat forward 10 years and I am still here. This place has that effect on many people. You either love it or it spits you out. A small community, completely remote, is the perfect place to write a book - especially for an introvert with an aversion to people. It just so turns out that this community is football crazy and one thing just led to another.

As a human being one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists. If such humility could be conveyed to everybody, the world of human activities would be more appealing

10 years later and I am still working on this project. I know, crazy.

It means so much to me that I am scared about releasing anything - wanting to do the whole story the justice it deserves. I used to work in the building Einstein grew up in Munich, Germany and my girlfriend at the time had attended the school he had gone to. I always felt a really strong bond to that man, having lapped up all of his audio recordings that my mum bought for me at the Jewish Museum in Berlin many years ago and also reading all of his treatise on philosophy and politics. Let’s face it, his science is beyond me and most people on Earth, so all I can really do is get that story right. The only ‘layperson’ I know who actually understands relativity, would be my father Aki. Everyone else is waffling.

I really enjoy writing the dialogue between them two but getting the historical facts right and the setting and tone of that auspicious period in human history is difficult to say the least.

But Oppenheimer and Chat-GPT have changed all that. Oppenheimer inspired me to get my ass in gear and finish this damn project and Chat-GPT has finally given me the tools to be able to fact check all my work and research, a heaven send really.

My pledge to you

I will still continue coaching football, as that feeds my soul, inspiring young humans to learn a sport that will stay with them for life, is fulfilling and important. Football has been way more influential than any degree or university that I have attended. Not to knock academia but everywhere I have traveled in the world, football has been the doorway to me meeting people and making social connections (which I, as an introvert, struggle with normally - I hate small talk.) And of course, I will do my best to start finishing this magnum opus. Start finishing, great oxymoron!

So as a thank you to all of you, my loyal subscribers who have stuck with me (and some supported me financially) during this hiatus, I give you this promise:

I will share little snippets of the story and dialogue here on Substack and when it finally gets published, I will sign a copy and send it to each and every one of you, wherever you are in the world. You guys have been a rock for me and hopefully when I meet you personally I can give you a big hug and relay how much your interest and readership has meant to me. Amazing.

This is my guarantee to you. I love you all and Mauri Ora!

Talk soon.

PS if any of you are struggling to sleep at night with all the craziness in the world, I suggest listening to old lectures on Zen and Krishnamurthi from Alan Watts: These recordings are a true blessing and this is a good one to start out with

Love is gravity, because it makes some people feel attracted to others. Love is power, because it multiplies the best we have, and allows humanity not to be extinguished in their blind selfishness. Love unfolds and reveals. For love we live and die.