#082: Walking the World, Code in Weeks Not Months, Human Interests Calculable By Numbers

Hi All!

We are pleased to welcome you to this week's edition of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding from the material found on our main site - becketu.com.

This week, we will take a look at an individual who is walking the world with the help of AI, Marc Lou's 2.5 hour masterclass on building apps with AI, how John von Neumann's thesis on game theory and calculating people's interests became a reality, and more.

Let's dive in:

Walking the World

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison recently shared the third Substack subscription he "highly recommends", which is Chris Arnade Walks the World. The premise is simple, and described in Arnade's words here:

One of the articles that stood out to me as I was looking for my first piece to read, was called Very low tech high tech travel. In it, he details how he used AI to help plan one of his latest walks. He was familiar with a route and plugged it into AI anyway, and he was surprised by how closely it mapped out a similar path to his own.

He continues to talk about the serendipity that arises from not relying entirely on tech when planning things like spontaneous walks. This balance struck me as being pertinent to more than just walks in unfamiliar neighborhoods.

AI should not be a 100% replacement for us, as chance interactions like the ones Arnade describes in his Substack help facilitate human experiences. How can we utilize AI so that it serves us, instead of us serving it?

Using ChatGPT to Make Custom Products

The next time you are facing a daily annoyance, such as the one Hunter Weiss describes here on Twitter, fire up ChatGPT and describe your problem along with the parts needed for the solution.

His thread stemmed from an initial idea he had which was an app that gives you a custom weekly diet plan and lets you click to order from the grocery store immediately. He then went on to discuss how the same could be done for construction, with the example of ordering materials to build a treehouse. And motorcycle maintenance and mechanic repairs.

Yes, its possible to just use the Instacart plugin like Weiss describes later, but is this the most user friendly experience? Apps should spring up in each of these niche use cases, and 'unbundle' ChatGPT by having better short-form content and distribution.

Making Human Interests Calculable By Numbers

​Game Theory is one of the core six subjects we discuss on our website, and I always enjoy when I see it pop up in the real world. Neha Kalani was responding to a post by Signull, where they were describing how 'every key part of the human experience is now filtered through an algorithm'.

This prompted Kalani to reply with the following:

Neha Kalani @thericebowlgirl @signulll It's wild. Just over a 100 years ago, when Von Neumann was creating the foundations of Game Theory, he was fascinated by the idea of making human interests calculable using numbers. Cut to today - we've already commoditised human interests and experiences. These generic signüll @signulll every key part of the human experience is now filtered through an algorithm: applying for jobs, finding a place to live, finding a romantic partner, etc. 1:11 PM • May 3, 2025 14 Retweets 425 Likes Read 7 replies

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The idea of human interests being calculable is fascinating to me, because it makes sense. Every online interaction is weighed and measured with precision. These platforms know us better than most people probably know themselves.

It's a little disheartening to believe these massive moments that make us human can be commoditized like Kalani says, but how can we continue to find foster unique experiences in our lives that bring new jobs, romantic interests, and other big life events?

Marc Lou 2.5 Hour SaaS Build Masterclass

Marc Lou recently reshared his incredible video of building a SaaS product from 0 with the help of AI. You can see the roadmap of coding on his website CodeFast, which covers everything from the fundamentals, to building the SaaS, and 10x'ing your programming skills with AI.

The whole premise of this approach is to get you coding in 'weeks, not months' as Marc says. Just like any skill, the more you are able to supplement your learnings with more materials (like the ones found in our Computers section on our site), the better your prompting and coding with AI will be.

For those not on Twitter, you can also find the video on YouTube.

Sell Outcomes, Not Deliverables

A quick reminder from Cody Schneider on one of the principles of marketing, similar to 'sell the benefits, not the features':

Cody Schneider @codyschneiderxx selling outcomes is the most valuable thing you can do and the hardest thing to do selling deliverables is the most approachable thing you can do but the less compelling thing to sell 2:0 PM • Apr 30, 2025 8 Retweets 129 Likes Read 7 replies

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