The real ai

6ai — Ancient Wisdom With Modern Intelligence

Perry C. Douglas
11 min readFeb 3, 2024

There has been a resurgence in leaders wanting to learn more and practice stoicism as if it were a new philosophical discovery. But there is nothing new here except the realization that ancient philosophy is still applicable in modern times. However you choose to see it, new wisdom is derived from classic philosophies, traced back to ancient times but iterated over time. All philosophies, and models for thinking have their roots over many millenniums. From Socrates to Kant, Bertrand Russell and unaccountably more. Ancient philosophy has proven over time to serve humanity well.

Therefore, applied intelligence — the real ai is also nothing new, just iterations and interpretations which continue to build on the past — given modern scientific underpinnings and technological robustness. Modern application overlay optimizes good decision-making. So the times and technology have certainly changed but the human condition remains the same. Good thinking models have stood the test of time.

For that reason, by combining the disciplines of effective thinking with modern intelligent technology tools — artificial intelligence — with a defined scientific framework process — ai becomes the most productive, resilient, and warrantable system for thinking and thriving in the 21st century and beyond.

Soren Kierkegaard, an existentialist philosopher, believed the world has no intrinsic meaning or purpose and, consequently, that individuals alone bear the responsibility for their actions and decisions. He once said that there are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true. The other is to refuse to believe what is true. So it’s a fact that for most of our lives we humans choose to bask in the bliss of ignorance because it is easier to do so. Marcus Garvey said that Intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden, so we must get as far away from ignorance as possible. Hence, applied intelligence provides a methodological system that helps you choose to seek the objective truth, so as not to suffer ignorance.

Therefore, if you don’t have a defined system of thinking-to-action, AI will make you stupid. Falling for anything because you don’t know any better — how to be skeptical and think critically. Which has been the cornerstone principle for human survival since Homo sapiens roamed the earth. So without a proven critical thinking system embedded ultra-ignorance and fragility will flourish.

We are already seeing what that can look like; just recently, as reported by CNN https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/04/asia/deepfake-cfo-scam-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.htmlFinance worker pays out $25 million after video call with deepfake ‘chief financial officer’. Deepfake technology was used to fool an entire company with an entire cast of deepfake people including a deep-faked CFO. Scamming the company out of $25 million in a multi-person video conference. Therefore, if you have no commonsensical grounding discipline in how you process information and critically think and make decisions. Even a person who holds the title of CFO can be easily fooled by AI. So the critical development of our general intelligence has never been so important as it is now…and into the future, if we want to be in control of AI instead of AI controlling us.

Accordingly, those who are curious and venture to seek objective truths through risk and entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity, leadership and individualism will prosper in the physical world. They end up forming a small group of really successful people — the game changers who influence the modern world. While others watch and complain and make excuses.

As Friedrich Nietzsche describes it Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed. But the less we are connected to reality the more vulnerable we are to making poor decisions, and the less likely we are to create any real sustainable value for ourselves, others, and organizations we serve. Those exist in a state of diminished value never living up to their human potential.

What things come down to in the end is how to apply your intelligence not to become a sucker in life. Or as a modern-day mathematician-philosopher and best-selling author of “The Black Swan” and “Antifragile”, Nassim Nicholas Taleb says, don’t be a Turkey.

This humorous analogy of the clueless Thanksgiving turkey; “Consider a turkey that is fed every day,” Taleb writes. “Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests.’ Like the turkey, humans too can come under illusions about reality — a cognitive bias describing the surprise resulting if one does not know the causes or have a thinking framework to recognize what is actually happening. The concept was first introduced by Bertrand Russell to illustrate a problem with inductive reasoning. Again, good thinking systems stand the test of time and applied intelligence continues to build on intelligent frameworks of the past to lead us intelligently into the future.

@Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Having a cornerstone philosophy, and first principles — a system for making decisions are all essential functions in the success equation. To make a difference in the world you must first see the world differently, so knowing how to apply skepticism intelligently. To separate yourself from all the superfluous noise and people, from the herd, is critical positioning for the ambitious mind. The ai process can become your superpower.

So the essence of the real ai system is a scientific process which not only equips you to become a better decision maker but also how to effectively communicate it to others.

Susceptibility to bias and convenient stories told by others to manipulate and control minds is one of the greatest challenges humans must continually strive to overcome. In the 21st century, search engines…the internet…social media have become the epitome of confirmation bias and misinformation. So the six steps to applied intelligence (6ai) is a scientific decisioning process that concerns itself with dealing with reality — what is objectively true or not true is the foundational cornerstone of 6ai.

6ai trains you to avoid the noise and distractions, to be skeptically curious and to question what you don’t know, or are unsure of. But when valid evidence is presented you can then proceed to build strategic insights confidently.

Work has become more ubiquitous in recent years with the ascension of artificial intelligence (AI) and related platforms. As generative AI rapidly becomes more prevalent in our lives, the job market will require less highly technical skilled workers. Or “less” of those the machine can easily replace, do the work faster, better and at a fraction of the cost.

In the future of work, the more AI advances the more human creativity, and critical thinking for problem-solving will rise in demand. In brief, those humans that can do what the machine can’t; will have considerable market value in the universe. And 6ai is the tool that helps you to maximize your human value exponentially.

Again, nothing “new” here, the real ai is built on philosophical foundations of good thinking models from the past — that can be identified as far back as Plato. Particularly Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which is found in the middle of his seminal work “The Republic.” The “Allegory of the Cave” is the ultimate life narrative archetype — one of the most influential philosophical concepts ever introduced. It encapsulates timeless questions about reality, knowledge, perception, and enlightenment which ai builds on.

These ideas have formed the basis for enlightenment periods in history, i.e., “The Renaissance” period, a cultural movement marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity, covering the 15th and 16th centuries and characterized by the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art, science and mathematics. Then extended into the European Enlightenment period or the “Age of Reason,” a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries. A period in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity were synthesized into a worldview that gained wide assent in the West and instigated revolutionary developments in art, philosophy, and politics.

It also drove the defining of capitalism, noting the seminal work of Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations,” and many other emerging concepts of liberal democracy. All of which have contributed to shaping our world — to this day.

So regardless of the times, the human condition’s journey from ignorance to enlightenment is continual. Plato’s work — recurring fascination over the centuries with the distinction between ideal forms or perfection and everyday experience, and how it played out both for individuals and societies. Has inspired critical thinking and innovation which pushed the human spirit to do great things for civilization.

Plato took from his teacher Socrates…and the “The Academy” Plato founded was by some accounts the world’s first university and in it, he trained his greatest student, the equally influential philosopher Aristotle.

Accordingly, ai as a thinking-to-action application is founded in Aristotle’s practical view of our interaction with the universe. Aristotle believed that the pursuit of knowledge shouldn’t be about the pursuit of abstract perfection, or the very pursuit itself. Instead, our knowledge is best utilized when harnessed to our ingenuity in creating the tools that serve our humanity best. Therefore, technology is an effective tool that serves humanity best and not the other way around.

To Aristotle, the natural limitations of our world and the laws of nature are supreme! So wasting time in trying to circumvent nature is nonsensical and only plays to serve the ego and is not the most productive use of our intellect. Further, focusing on the abstract and utopian — a labyrinth — the consumption of the mind engaged in solving infinite problems that are not real problems in nature. Therefore, not a useful endeavour for humanity.

The Aristotle way is purposeful, empirical, tangible, practical, and commonsensical and calls for the use of technology the serve the advancement of civilizations. In helping humanity flourish through nature.

So how we effectively view the utility of technology, and how we decide to use it — with fascination or for practical application — will determine how effective we become in the digital era. Real ai utilizes AI and data ecosystems optimally as a utility tool to maximize thinking and applications for its user’s innovative and creative process.

Essentially, applied intelligence | ai is a proprietary six-step | 6ai insight engine that harnesses focused language models, guiding users in retrieving highly relevant information from verified and reputable sources that can be taken as empirically warrantable.

It identifies and determines the correct problem(s) to solve and moves the user through the strategy development design canvas — to strategy completion. Utilizing computational, quantitative, and qualitative measures to evaluate and iterate optimal strategy choices to build your organization’s 21st-century winning playbook.

When all is said and done, systems are essential for success, there is no such thing as luck because it seems the harder you work and the better your system is, the luckier you become. Highly focused philosophies bolstered by intellectually sound decision-making constructs, augmented with applied mathematics and algorithmic applications. Becomes a powerful beast for winning — this is the real ai.

The computer can process vastly more amounts of information unimaginably faster than any human or group of humans can. But this must be seen as an opportunity. Allowing humans to focus and create value in areas where machines are useless. So tap your human general intelligence and use your intrinsic emotional intelligence and emphatic understanding of the universe. Because AI has no idea about the universe or what’s it doing. AI is not and can’t ever be conscious or human so use your very human advantage intelligently and in your interest.

One of the people who have used systems extraordinarily successfully is Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, and specifically cites systems and principles as his key to success.

I discovered that such decision-making systems — especially when believability-weighted — are incredibly powerful and will soon profoundly change how people around the world make all kinds of decisions. Our principle-driven approach to decision-making has not only improved our economic, investment, and management decisions, it has helped us make better decisions in every aspect of our lives.

If billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio finds success with defined systems, it might be worth looking at 6ai. The principle-driven approach to decision-making is time-tested as discussed earlier on.

The main point is, that whether or not your own principles and philosophies are systematized/computerized is of secondary importance. The most important thing is that you develop your own principles and work with them in a disciplined way, toward what you’ve defined as what success looks like for you. 6ai provides you with the software tools to get you there.

It was that approach and the principles it yielded, and not me, that took me from being an ordinary middle-class kid from Long Island to being successful, by several conventional measures — like starting a company out of my two-bedroom apartment and building it into the fifth most important private company in the U.S. (according to Fortune), becoming one of the one hundred richest people in the world (according to Forbes), and being considered one of the one hundred most influential (according to Time).

Accordingly, applied intelligence, with thousands of years of wisdom backing it up, offers effective system-driven intelligent technology for 21st-century success. It harnesses human intellectual capacity, talents and determination in entrepreneurial style; to win.

They led me to a perch from which I got to see success and life very differently than I had imagined, and they gave me the meaningful work and meaningful relationships I value even more than my conventional successes. They gave me and Bridgewater far more than I ever dreamed of.

6ai empowers users to find their own insights and craft their own strategies at a very fraction of the cost of using consultants or advisors. When you use consultants you’re getting the same cookie-cutter PowerPoint presentations and answers the rest of your competitors are also receiving. And of course, you can be sure they are sharing your strategies with them too.

So ai is agnostic, for example, one of the methods it uses is retrieval augmented generation (RAG,) which allows our language models to access up-to-date, highly relevant knowledge bases. Smaller or highly focused tailored language models are more precise, practical, and considerably cheaper than training models from scratch or fine-tuning them. Also much easier to implement.

Anyone and everyone can use 6ai — it’s accessible to all. The goal is to enable those without technical backgrounds the ability to develop highly effective strategies without having to learn complex software or digital tools.

6ai levels the playing field. It makes generative AI an accessible space regardless of an individual’s professional or technical background. So whether it’s a high-level multi-billion-dollar corporate strategy, or for personal growth and well-being, the 6ai strategy development tool empowers ordinary users to do extraordinary things.

Information is best understood in context with all the other information around it, to turn information into insight that can effectively be applied in building useful strategies. You need a context engine that analyzes any claim, fact or assertion, and identifies any supporting evidence or contradictions for optimal, relevant, and useful contextualization. 6ai does that.

You can’t figure out a strategy unless you can clearly state what winning looks like…contextually. This requires vision, deciding where to play and building capacity to generate value. This includes capital analysis, risk management functionality and execution while applying proper management rigour to ensure follow-through — monitoring and measuring to avoid strategy drift.

So how your organization uses advanced technologies to create value has become one of the most profound questions of the 21st century. How you properly answer that question and execute will determine your future success trajectory.

The rapid advancement of AI is revolutionizing and defining our globalized knowledge landscape and economy. If you don’t make real and intelligent efforts to find the 21st-century tools and solutions to help you effectively compete in this AI-driven world. You’ll be left behind. Becoming irrelevant and eventually dying out.

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Perry C. Douglas

Perry is an Entrepreneur & Author - his new book is called: "ai - applied intelligence - A Renaissance in New Thinking..." and can be found on Amazon.