I'm genuinely curious, and I know this can get political quickly, but I mean this in good faith. The wealth that people like Bezos or Musk have—did it only come into existence because they created their companies? In other words, if they had never been born or chosen a different path, their wealth wouldn't simply be redistributed among others, right? The world would just have less overall wealth, roughly equal to their net worth. Is that correct?
I have an iPad and use notability for this. I have a 350 page note that's filled with to-dos, doodles, screenshots of quotes, etc. I love being able to just scroll up endlessly to see what I was thinking about or working on, all in chronological order.
I started learning to code this year, and I keep thinking that I would have thrown in the towel if not for ChatGPT. For better or for worse.
The big difference for me is being able to struggle right up until I'm ready to give up, and then ask ChatGPT for insight. Usually my issue is a syntax one, and I have the concepts down (i.e. I was right to solve it using nested if statements, but I forgot I need to put a variable outside a function, for example). This way I get that dopamine hit of being mostly right, and quick feedback on what I need to improve. If not for ChatGPT, I'd be left feeling like I just failed entirely and I'm not getting it at all, which I don't think is the case.
I think the same experience would be achieved with a good teacher, but then I'd need my schedule to overlap, and the feedback on problems would still be often be delayed instead of instant.
I second this recommendation. It's a wonderful book. There are many fascinating tidbits in here that makes you really appreciate the importance of being able manipulate materials with precision. It's easy to take this for granted today, but it's critical to basically every technology we enjoy.