Jason Liu (Website, X, Github, Newsletter) is a technologist, consultant, teacher, and friend.

He spent the first part of his career as a machine learning engineer, mostly at Stitchfix, only to run into a wall: a hand injury that prevented him from being able to write any software for over a year. Fortunately, he's not so one-dimensional, and spent time reclaiming somatic experience in learning to free-dive, train Jiu-Jitsu, and return to the pottery practice he developed in art school, all while reckoning with big questions of ambition, purpose, and self-fulfillment. Since then, he's built a consulting practice helping modern AI companies better implement RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), avoid system design mistakes, hire elite talent, and build for an LLM-centric world. He maintains a large structured output library called Instructor with about 1m downloads per month, writes prolifically (which he does entirely via voice input with LLM editing, as we discuss), tweets semi-manically (he's grown to 30K followers on X with the simplest strategy I've ever heard anyone articulate—tweeting 30K times), and teaches courses on RAG and online consulting. Finally, my man can yap. He was a perfect first guest because he has no shortage of ideas but comes at nearly everything with a beginner's mindset.

Timestamps

• (0:00 ): Intro to Dialectic
  (2:55 ): Brick laying vs. capital allocating
  (6:04 ): Acid Story: Trying so hard to be a somebody
  (9:20 ): Planning, judgement, elasticity, and abundance
  (11:28 ): Ambition and Trusting your future self
  (14:20 ): Fear; Confidence is the memory of success
  (18:46 ): Compounding psychology of risk taking
  (21:30 ): Do you get what you deserve?
  (22:32 ): Playing life on hard mode
  (27:22 ): Agency, Taking Accountability, and becoming essential
  (35:58 ): Consulting and Independent Contracting
  (39:52 ): Ambition and “Manhattan Project” Appeal
  (42:30 ): What are you motivated by?
  (44:36 ): Challenge runs and side quests
  (46:39 ): How to be prolific
  (53:46 ): Mastery, complex games, and creative fingerprints
  (57:47 ): Programming, animation, and style vs. cohesion
  (1:07:56 ): Jason only writes with his voice--with some LLM help
  (1:12:47 ): Flooding the airwaves with content
  (1:14:10 ): Twitter growth: simple math
  (1:19:49 ): Using the “sawdust”
  (1:23:30 ): ELI5 RAG (Retrieval augmented generation)
  (1:27:39 ): A final rant against couches

References

• Losing My Hands by Jason


• Advice to Young People, The Lies I Tell Myself by Jason


• A Critique on Couches by Jason


• Things you're allowed to do by Milan Cvitkovic


• Duolingo founder Luis Von Ahn on engagement vs. education