2.3 BILLION ebooks are created every SECOND!?
How do we make sense of all this data? Truth as a process...
Once upon a time, a piece of curved glass changed everything.
The microscope, created by Hans and Zacharias Janssen circa 1590, took what was invisible to the naked eye—bacteria, cells, the very building blocks of life—and made it visible.
In doing so, it catapulted medicine, science, and technology forward at an exponential rate.
It helped us make sense of what could not be seen before.
We are now living through the birth of a new microscope—one that doesn’t just show us more, but helps us understand more.
Artificial Intelligence is the most overpowered microscope ever created.
And we’re barely scratching the surface of what it can do.
Let’s talk about how we make sense of the world.
What is truth?
What's Inside This Week:
ALIGN: Bats, AI Tutors, and Consumer Expectations
BUILD: Truth as a process
CULTURE: Ubuntu Philosophy
🤖 ALIGN:
A few curated links and resources of recent topics around AI, health, longevity, business and product frameworks, cool tools, and general stuff I find interesting.
Our Latest Podcast: As we shape AI, AI is reshaping us.
What if humans aren’t the center of intelligence evolution—but just a transitional phase in the scaffolding of planetary computation?
And… What is it like to be a bat?
Robert’s Take: Watch/listen to the pod, and find out (;
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says everyone should get an AI tutor right away
“Huang believes the vision of humans powered by AI as being aspirational. With the help of AI, people can learn and accomplish more than they could without it. The tech chief likens having the tech to wielding a superpower.”
Robert’s Take: Everybody should be using AI. If you’re not using it, you’re not learning as fast as you can be. And this is especially important if you’re interested in building the future.
Consumer Attitudes Towards AI in Longevity
Studies are exploring consumer attitudes and beliefs regarding the implementation of AI across a longer life course. These insights are crucial for understanding public perception and acceptance of AI-driven longevity technologies.
Robert’s Take: AI in longevity is ALL about trust. I talk about this a lot. People won’t embrace machine-driven health decisions unless they believe AI truly understands them. Great quote from this study by MIT: “Despite a belief in AI benefits, the public remains somewhat concerned about its potential risks, which may reflect public uncertainty.”
🛠️ BUILD: What Is Truth?
"AI will teach us as much about thinking as we teach it." — Benjamin Bratton
When Taking "Truth" at Face Value Goes Wrong: The Story of Stomach Ulcers
We humans love certainty—absolute truths.
We humans love the idea that we can just “know” things.
But truth actually has a funny way of evolving.
For most of the 20th century, doctors were absolutely certain that stomach ulcers were caused by stress and spicy food.
People suffered for decades, taking antacids and avoiding chili peppers—while their stomach linings continued to deteriorate.
Then, in 1982, Australian scientist Barry Marshall made a wild claim: ulcers were actually caused by bacteria (H. pylori), not stress.
The medical establishment laughed him out of the room.
His findings contradicted “established truth.”
So what did he do?
He drank a beaker of H. pylori bacteria, gave himself ulcers, then cured himself with antibiotics.
Damn. That’s commitment.
Only then did the medical world accept the truth—and this discovery went on to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
If we simply accepted what was considered true, millions—maybe billions— would still be suffering today.
This story tells us that truth is not a static thing.
Truth is a process.
Too Many “Truths”
Here’s a wild stat: every 10 seconds, humanity generates 2.3 billion ebooks worth of data (credit: Superagency by Reid Hoffman).
Today, we have too much information—and too many “truths” fighting for dominance.
We are drowning in information.
That’s more information than anyone could read in a lifetime—happening every moment.
So what does truth become, when we have so much information?
Well, we have a new microscope nowadays.
The most overpowered microscope of all time—Artificial Intelligence.
It can help you make sense of the world.
Right in the palm of your hand for the low price of $20/month.
I believe AI can help with “truth as a process”, much faster than any other “microscope” (or technology advancement) that has come before it.
So what does this mean for founders, entrepreneurs, and builders of the future?
Philosophy is THE Tool
If you’re building the future, your entire job is to question reality.
The most disruptive startups were built on rejecting the status quo:
"Why do taxis have to be owned by cab companies?" → Uber
"Why do people need to go to a store to rent movies?" → Netflix
"Why should phones just be for calling?" → Apple (iPhone)
And for us at Epistemic Me:
“How can AI understand us, if we don’t fully understand ourselves?”
“Why should we accept that every software system must relearn us?”
"Why isn’t there a Bluetooth or Linux for models of us, that evolve with us?"
Start questioning the “truths” you’ve accepted about your industry.
What assumptions are you making that might actually be wrong?
Fundamentally, my perspective is that AI is not here to give you truth.
It’s here to help you refine your process of finding it.
It is an overpowered microscope.
You’re still the user.
Bottom line…
Your job isn’t to find any absolute truth.
Your job is to keep questioning it.
Truth is a process.
Keep questioning, keep searching.
✌🏼 CULTURE: Ubuntu – “I Am Because We Are”
Did you know that the technology Ubuntu came from an African philosophy of the same name?
"In Africa there is a concept known as 'ubuntu'—the profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world it will in equal measure be due to the work and achievement of others.”—Nelson Mandela
Ubuntu is a philosophy, a way of being, and a lens for understanding human connection.
Here’s the latest definition:
“A collection of values and practices that people of Africa or of African origin view as making people authentic human beings. While the nuances of these values and practices vary across different ethnic groups, they all point to one thing – an authentic individual human being is part of a larger and more significant relational, communal, societal, environmental and spiritual world”
Rooted in African traditions, particularly from the Bantu languages of South Africa, Ubuntu emphasizes community, interdependence, and shared humanity.
None of us would exist without each other, or those who came before us.
Reading about this concept, was a great reminder to me: All births of technologies and ideas, came from previous technologies and ideas.
Everything is interconnected.
Makes me grateful for life.
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P.S. If you haven’t already checked out my other newsletter, ABCs for Growth—that’s where I have personal reflections on personal growth related to applied emotional intelligence, leadership and influence concepts, etc.
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💪🏼 How You Can Help
What's Next?
We're building something unprecedented: kind of an operating system for human understanding and beliefs.
We’re building something unprecedented. If you’re a builder, engineer, or entrepreneur interested in the intersection of AI and human understanding, let's connect.
Check out our website: https://epistemicme.ai/
GitHub here: https://github.com/Epistemic-Me
EM acts as a hyper-personalization layer and set of services that allows you and your applications to understand your users better.
We have built a model and set of interfaces from first principles thinking in philosophy and epistemology to accurately map human belief systems.
What can that do for you?
→ Perhaps increase sales conversions.
→ Perhaps optimize copywriting in your automation funnels, depending on the user.
→ Perhaps helping researchers and scientists better quantify subjectivity in their experiments, for better science.
And… if you are looking for the “next best question” to evolve your beliefs, it could help you too.
In a few weeks we are going to rapidly get the structure to ship new features constantly, with new releases tied to this newsletter and our podcast.
Check out our first podcast on YouTube or Substack for a heavier deep dive into our “Why”.