profile

Josh Knox

Just Joshin' #96 (Joy)

Published 2 months ago • 2 min read


1 Family Photo:
Joy

What's the Venn diagram of Joy, Happiness, and Pleasure?

I interrogated ChatGPT. It gave me this list.

Is there a better way to study deep human emotions than through the eyes of a robot?

Is there a better way to use seeing robots than to study deep human emotions?

My conclusions from the chart:

Pleasure takes place in the skin, Happiness takes place in the mind, Joy takes place in the soul.

I don't know if that's right. I don't know if anyone's ever said that before. But it feels right to me. ChatGPT kinda, sorta agrees.

The exercise is an interesting synthesis. I queried a machine and wound-up learning something new about myself and how I work inside. Discovering this new knowledge makes me feel happiness, with shades of joy.


1 Dad Joke:
Joyful

Real life dad-joke, animated by Dad[AI]Base


Highlights:
Joyous

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

He found himself blindsided by an unexpected joy. Arthur died, he told himself, you couldn’t save him, there’s nothing to be happy about. But there was, he was exhilarated, because he’d wondered all his life what his profession should be, and now he was certain, absolutely certain that he wanted to be a paramedic. At moments when other people could only stare, he wanted to be the one to step forward.

Childhood and Education Roundup #4 by Zvi Mowshowitz

Math homework is rigged, engineered to have easy answers, and even more than that easily formulated and selected questions. This means it is little help with allowing you to set up real world problems and find their practical solutions. I have made a lot of money out of doing math. Almost all that math is deeply, deeply simple at its core. The hard part is figuring out what math to do. I still remember that one time I got to write an integral sign on a piece of paper in real life. I did a dance of joy.

Lessons from a surprisingly successful blog by Robert Heaton

Unless writing brings you both joy and some degree of attention, you will struggle to keep at it. There are other reasons that one can give, and these can be pleasant auxiliary benefits. “It improves your writing skills”, “It is satisfying and professionally beneficial to build up a body of work”. But I don’t believe that any of these actually cause people to write.

From Blog to Book: How To Self-Publish On Your Own Terms by Paul Millerd

In consulting, you are usually focused on solving a problem. You often spend weeks defining the problem and fine-tuning this over and over again with the client. After that, you develop a set of hypotheses and start testing out all sorts of different questions. This kickstarts a process between high-level questions and bottom-up research and analysis. This back and forth is something that is incredibly uncomfortable when you first learn it and if you don’t find some joy in this way of working, you end up leaving consulting pretty quickly.

Inner Monologue by Camilo Moreno-Salamanca

[C]reating brings me joy. And any time you find something that brings you constructive joy, not cheap dopamine hits like social media, you should hang on to those...

iamJoshKnox Highlight:

People have been sending me pictures of my book in the wild!

This has been a wonderful surprise, and a source of great joy.

You can still buy it on Amazon here or reply and I'd love to gift you a copy.


Fancy a Chat?

What brings you joy?

Let's Chat!

Book some time even if you don't know what you want to talk about:
https://calendly.com/iamjoshknox

Until next week,
iamJoshKnox​


Thoughts? Feedback?
😊Hit Reply and let me know😊


Josh Knox

Hi! I am Josh Knox. Read more of me here: 👇

Read more from Josh Knox

1 Family Photo: Water Cycle The Discovery is a science museum in Reno. We celebrated Lawrence's birthday with a visit. The museum's biggest exhibit is a model of the Truckee River watershed and the water cycle, complete with "clouds" cut from stacks of pringles-shaped platforms towering 3-stories above the atrium. The clouds create an irregular jungle gym for "climbers of all ages". Lawrence loved the clouds—undeterred by their height—dragging me up and down the tiny crawlspaces they created....

2 days ago • 3 min read

1 Family Photo: Raccoon! We had a cabin visitor this week. A raccoon popped over and looked in on us. He didn't just pass by—he stopped, pulled on the sliding glass door to check if it would budge, peeped through to see what was happening inside. It felt like a zoo exhibit, but in reverse. I could hear the raccoon thinking: "LOOK AT THE ADORABLE HOOMANS! HOW SAD THEY'RE TRAPPED IN GLASS BOX. DON'T THEY WANT TO EXPLORE OUTSIDE?" The raccoon started at us. We stared at him. He wouldn't leave us...

9 days ago • 7 min read

1 Family Photo: Screens This week, we only stopped once on our seven-hour drive to Truckee. In travel-dad golf, that's shooting birdie on a par 3. [*insert joke about drivers*] The boys passed some of the time looking at their books, drawing on little pads, singing songs, and napping. Mostly though, they just gazed out their windows, occasionally asking questions about things we passed. I don't know if it makes any difference to life-outcomes (and I don't judge anyone else's parenting...

16 days ago • 4 min read
Share this post