Peterson Fellow Chronicles #1: Intro & Background

Introduction to the Peterson Fellow Chronicles

I wanted to use the unique opportunity space that I'm currently inhabiting to begin a series of articles that I'm calling the Peterson Fellow Chronicles. These articles represent to me a possible avenue to profoundly integrate the personal part of myself with my technical skills and proclivities that help me to earn a living.

I want to use my network as a sounding board to think out loud a bit and see what echos back. I want to try to learn something new and push others to think about new ideas. Hopefully, in the end, if nothing else, this series of articles will help me to understand and move towards my Next Great Adventure in life.

A Little Background on the Peterson Fellowship @ Acton

The Peterson Fellowship is an entrepreneurial fellowship program administered by the Acton School of Business in Austin, TX. The program is built on three pillars or teaching promises; namely, that's the incoming cohort will: 1) Learn how to learn, 2) Learn how to make money, and 3) Learn to live a life of meaning.

I am part of the incoming cohort this year. Although Acton has been around for nearly 20 years, this will be the 2nd year where there have been "Peterson Fellows," which could, I suppose, be thought of as simply budding entrepreneurial MBA students who have to pay less for the program. However, that view is far too cynical for me, and it's certainly not what the program means to me. It means so much more. In fact, the whole point of the program since its inception has been to learn how to be an entrepreneur while living a meaningful life. Hence the Peterson-Acton connection.

A Little Background on my Discovery of Jordan B Peterson

I originally discovered Jordan B Peterson similar to how many people did: I had a personal problem and was googling for answers. This was a few years ago. That's when I discovered his Maps of Meaning and his Personality and Its Transformations lectures online.

Then I realized that all the papers he assigned as readings in his classes that he taught at Toronto (and even Harvard), were on his website. I could basically self-teach some of the most interesting aspects of a Psychology degree at/near the MS and PhD levels. I was hooked.

Then I started reading his "list of influential books that everyone must read". I cannot stress enough how much I recommend that you trudge through this list, no matter how many years it takes. Then I delved further into his reading lists.

Then he came out with the Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories lectures. I thought, "No way, I won't be into that." I was, though -- the series resonated with me. I read 12 Rules For Life. Then I went to his show in Cincinnati, OH. Then I read Maps of Meaning. Then I listened to both of his books in audio-book format. Then I listened to his podcasts. I still look forward to them each week. More recently, even, Meaningwave. But more on that in my next article.

As I worked towards (and continue to work towards) making the self-improvements that Dr. Peterson constantly talks about, my life, health, and overall mood have improved, along with my relationships (including with myself). At one point it became clear to me when he articulated what he was doing as "scaling" the classical one-on-one therapeutic relationship between psychologist and patient. Indeed, I think he was. I think he continues to. I think that's a hell of a goal.

So how does this relate to me & my NGA @ Acton?

I'd always been into personal growth and self-help content from all sorts of people and authors, and have always been thoroughly fascinated with relationship and behavioral psychology in particular. Here was this guy putting forth not just conceptual ideas about emotion, but making things quantitative in a primarily qualitative realm. That struck a chord in me.

My own research and academic career can basically be summed up by the idea that I've worked with teams of people at various companies and institutions, or sometimes by myself, to turn qualitative ideas into quantitative frameworks, and then to optimize something as a result of the framework, even if only once for R&D demonstration purposes. Basically you have an idea, you find a way to get information about the idea via an experiment, then you turn that experimental information into numbers, and you let the numbers tell you what to do next. Once you converge this process on a single "what to do next," you're "optimized," at least for the moment.

This is still what I do as an AI Consultant and Data Scientist. Namely, I turn the qualitative into a something quantitative framework so it can be "optimized." There's even a word for doing this that's oft used: encoding.

Jordan Peterson basically spent his academic career, as far as I can tell, at Harvard and at Toronto working on encoding various dimensions of personality and their effect on people's behaviors, and he's got quite the publication record (just check Google Scholar or ResearchGate). In addition he worked with clients in a one-on-one capacity in his clinical practice for many years. It's funny though, as much encoding as he did, and as much as he got to see his conclusions manifest themselves in real people's lives, he never did get very good at simply coding. In fact, he was asked during one of his 12 Rules For Life Lectures what skill he wished he had that he doesn't have. Without missing a beat his answer was "programming."

This is where I want to come in and add something to the discussion. I have some level of mastery over open-source tools used for creating Machine Learning (ML) engines and larger optimization frameworks. Further, I'm very interested to see what will happen when I start applying these tools to Dr. Peterson's ideas and work.

Part of my motivation is Jordan Peterson: the guy has provided me with sets of ideas that have an infinite richness and depth. I appreciate that.

The other part of my motivation is to continue, as I have been doing for the past 4 years since graduating with a PhD in Optimization, to try to understand what "full-stack" AI capabilities are fundamentally necessary for an entrepreneur to flourish in that space in 2020. This too, is a source of infinite richness and depth for me. In other words I want to understand how to build, construct, and maintain useful, no kidding, business-value-generating, data-centric products and businesses along the digital thread. Preferably ones that actually help people and make their lives a little bit better.

In the next article I'll begin my hunt for some "Meta-Rules For Life." ... stay tuned!