4.18.2025 - Balance your viewpoint amid tech & economic disruption

We automatically assume our current viewpoint = solid reality. It does not.

S3T PodCast April 18 2025

0:00

/1786.3314285714287

1×

🎧 Listen here, or on Spotify

In this Issue

• ⚖️ Balance Your Thinking in Uncertain Times: Avoid extreme optimism or pessimism by clarifying your dilemma, acknowledging both fears and overconfidence, and crafting a realistic, balanced viewpoint to drive confident action.
• 📌 5-Step Clarity Exercise: Clearly identify your issue, recognize hidden fears, explore overly optimistic distortions, intentionally define a balanced perspective, and create a practical action plan to move forward with less stress.
• 🧠 Why This Helps: Awareness of your extremes (negative or positive) reveals realistic pathways, empowering you with calm, confident decision-making in personal and organizational contexts.
• 🤖 AI Milestone – LLM Passes Turing Test: GPT-4.5 successfully convinced judges it was human 73% of the time in a UC San Diego study—marking a significant turning point whose implications we're still unpacking.
• 🔗 Slow Progress in AI & Onchain Render Networks: Despite innovative partnerships showcased at RenderCon 2025 (notably THINK Agents’ decentralized AI ownership model), Render Token’s declining price indicates slow user adoption, investor sell-offs, and significant risk.
• 💸 Financial System Under Strain: Economist Lyn Alden highlights systemic breakdowns in the global monetary system—manifested subtly through rising populism in developed nations and explicitly via currency crises in developing economies.
• 🌐 Tariffs Mismanaged, Potential Lost: Nobel-winning economist Paul Samuelson's insights and Lori Wallach’s analysis argue current tariff chaos stems from poor strategy, missing opportunities to rebalance trade and genuinely benefit US and global workers.

[perspective]

Balancing your viewpoint: 5 simple steps

Here’s a simple approach for clarifying your thinking and arriving at a plan of action you can feel good about. Anytime you’re stuck—unsure what to do or what the “right” decision is—you can use this.

We’re living in uncertain times—economically, socially, and professionally. Prices keep rising, but paychecks often don’t. The job market feels unpredictable, even for high performers. Industries are being reshaped by AI and robotics, or being whipsawed by trade wars.

Whether you're a team leader, a business owner, or navigating a personal transition, there’s a growing pressure to “get it right” in the face of growing complexity.

When you're carrying this kind of weight—making decisions about your career, your finances, or how best to support your team or family—it’s easy to fall into extreme thinking. One moment, you’re spiraling into worst-case scenarios. The next, you’re brushing off the risks, hoping things will just work themselves out.

Neither mindset serves you well. So this is a great chance to learn a simple exercise that will help you make better decisions and maintain a more settled, calm mindset.

We're going to learn together how to spot the extremes in our thinking and intentionally find a more balanced, realistic view. You'll learn simple but powerful way to clarify your thinking and move forward with more confidence, less stress, and a plan you can stand behind.

It works both at the personal level and the organizational level. It's especially helpful in times like these where there is a lot of certainty and you may be wrestling with a difficult decision. Anytime you are feeling that you can't figure out what to do, or don't know what the right decision is, you can use this approach.

Step 1: What’s the question or issue I’m facing?

In 1–2 sentences, write out the decision or dilemma you're facing. Be clear and specific.

Step 2: What is my fear-based viewpoint?

List what you’re worried about. These are the thoughts that often run in the background but can quietly shape your decisions. I’ve added common mindsets to watch out for in parentheses.

• “I’m worried I’ll make the wrong decision.” (Can’t-win mentality)
• “I’m ahead of my skis—reaching for success I don’t deserve—and I’ll be punished for it.” (Sense of unworthiness)
• “I’m neglecting my team/family/self.” (Guilt)
• “This is all my fault.” (Overestimation of your own influence or agency)

Step 3: What is my overly optimistic viewpoint?

Now go to the opposite extreme. What would your thoughts sound like if you were overly confident or unrealistically positive? Again, watch for common distortions:

• “Things will work out just fine.” (Underestimating the work and prep required)
• “My customers/team/family will figure it out on their own.” (Avoiding involvement)
• “I’ll knock this out—plenty of time, and I’m great at time management.” (Overconfidence)

Step 4: What is my balanced viewpoint?

Now comes the important part: step back and intentionally define a balanced view—one that recognizes the realities of both risk and potential.

• “While there is some risk of ______, I can mitigate this by ______.”
  (Balance the risk of doing something vs. doing nothing.)
• “My team/family/customer needs my support—and they also need space and trust.” (Balance presence with empowerment.)
• “Time is limited—I’ll need to manage it carefully. Here's my step by step critical path” (Have a sequenced plan of action)
• “If I’ve contributed to problems, I’ll own that—and focus forward, not get stuck in guilt.” (Refuse to be paralyzed)
• “Doing A is not anti-thetical to doing B. If we (take step x and y) , we can do both A and B” (Challenge false trade-offs.)

Step 5: What is my plan of action?

Now, take that balanced viewpoint and turn it into a clear next step. What will you do with what you’ve just learned?

Why this is helpful

As humans, we have the ability to hold multiple perspectives and shift between them. The problem? We’re often unaware we’re operating from an extreme—either overly negative or overly positive—and we confuse our current perspective with reality. We easily forget that we get to decide our outlook, and we can choose to adopt a balanced view.

Asking yourself, “What is my fear-based viewpoint?” helps surface hidden fears that may be clouding your judgment. Exploring the opposite extreme helps you define what’s unrealistic in the other direction. And somewhere in the middle is a balanced, grounded perspective you can act on.

That’s where clarity and momentum come from.

👉 Related reading if you want to keep learning: S3T Playbook: Flipping the Script: Understanding and Changing Internal & Macro Narratives.

See Full List of S3T Playbooks

[emerging tech notes]

🤖A Large Language Model passes the Turing Test for the first time

In this UC San Diego study, "GPT-4.5 was judged to be the human 73% of the time...first empirical evidence that any artificial system passes a standard three-party Turing test." Seems like a significant milestone, but one that will take us time to fully understand the implications.

I tested GPT 4.5 and asked it to find outcomes and reports from the event below. Instead, it located marketing pieces about the event, published weeks ago, and then spoke about them as if they were actual outcomes vs marketing buzz. When corrected it still failed to find useful information published after the actual event.

Good progress. Needs work.

AI & Onchain Render Networks: Slow progress

RenderCon 2025 happened this week in a smallish venue in Hollywood. The event showcased partnerships with AI players including THINK Agents, an interesting decentralized AI play which incidentally, I think has a correct theory of the future about tokenized ownership of AI/Robots being the stocks and 401Ks of the future. (See https://docs.thinkagents.ai/roadmap).

However exciting these ideas are, they are still very far from any significant revenue income. The event itself did not do much for the Render Token price:

• At 12:01am April 15 the price was $4.02. By 12 noon April 16th it was $3.75.
• The price keeps sliding - currently at $3.70 down from $11.88 last May.

My guess is the investor/owners are selling tokens in order to sustain themselves and their continued development, and doing so at a rate that exceeds income from the user communities purchasing tokens for 3D rendering jobs. If there's a play here it's a long and risky one. Don't bet what you can't afford to lose. Get advice from qualified investment advisors and sources - this newsletter is not one of them :)

[economics notes]

📉Top Reads to understand the economic situation

Systemic issues in the current financial system

Lyn Alden a highly respected economist and investor has written a book Broken Money (summary here is worth a read and lays out the main points), explaining in clear terms why most of us sense that something is wrong with the current financial status quo.

"For the minority of the world’s population living in developed countries, the current monetary system tends to be broken in somewhat subtle ways, and comes out in the form of rising populism and a hollowing-out middle class over time. For the majority of the world’s population living in developing countries, it’s often broken in more obvious ways." - Lyn Alden, Broken Money

Alden notes currency devaluations imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the purchase of US dollars on the black market as signs that the current architecture is no longer working.

Tariffs aren't the problem, but how they're being used

In 2004 Nobel economist Paul Samuelson proved that globalization caused US workers to lose more in wages than they gained from cheap imported goods. From this perspective, the current administration seems to be fumbling a huge opportunity to actually do something beneficial for the US economy. As Lori Wallach explains in this excellent analysis, the current chaos isn't caused by the tariffs themselves, but by the uncoordinated ways they are being used.

Highlights:

• "As offshoring has moved into higher-wage work, the main premise of free trade gains – that even if some people lose their jobs, everyone benefits from access to cheaper imported goods – has collapsed." 
• "While the US has by far the largest chronic trade deficit, 66 countries are in the same position, while 19 countries, including China, Germany, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, rack up chronic global trade surpluses"
• "If deficit countries united to raise tariffs on surplus countries, it would not only help rebalance trade but also benefit their workers."

For Full Access Members: See the S3T Economic Dashboard for the Top 500+ US & International real-time economic indicators.

Opinions expressed are those of the individuals and do not reflect the official positions of companies or organizations those individuals may be affiliated with. Not financial, investment or legal advice, and no offers for securities or investment opportunities are intended. Mentions should not be construed as endorsements. Authors or guests may hold assets discussed or may have interests in companies mentioned.