Just Math

MUSINGS FROM A COACH - 10 APRIL '26

Math, Algorithms, Machine Learning, Large Language Models, Artificial Intelligence.

I've been thinking about this topic for a long time and want to share some thoughts. Although all of these have impacted the profession of coaching (I've written about it before here), this musing is a bit different. It's about our attitude with respect to our interactions with these "numbers".

One of my favorite movies of all time, "Interstellar" written and directed by Chris Nolan, has a small dialogue exchange within a big scene near the end of the movie that directly influenced how I interact with these new processes.

TARS is a robot (importantly, it doesn't look human, but rather like a large box) that will manually jettison one ship from the station with it onboard into a black hole. This plan was devised by the human astronaut, Cooper, in order to save the humans and ensure success of the mission. The other human onboard, Dr. Brand, upon finding out about TARS leaving the station forever is upset.

"Why does TARS have to detach?" Dr. Brand asked.

"Well, we have to shed the weight, escape gravity." Coop replies.

Upset, Dr. Brand replies, "Cooper, you can't ask TARS to do this for us!"

And Cooper replies, "He's a robot. So you don't have to ask him to do anything."

And that's the line that I've shaped how I interact with all the processes I listed at the start of this musing. I do not call Siri or Alexa "she". I don't call "Claude" him. I don't say "Thank You", "Please", or give any compliments.

If fact, I set up how I want to interact with LLM's referencing this movie. I don't want human compliments or a human personality.

Why?

Because none of these processes are human. They're all math. And when we forget that, we also forget that any advice, guidance, recommendations, evaluations, suggestions only comes from parsing, identifying and analyzing data. And that process is code, not human.

Can we use these processes to help improve our lives? Yes. Do I? Yes, daily. But they are just math equations. When my Garmin tells me to take 27 hour recovery after a 1.5 hour ride, I am reminded at how rudimentary so many of these processes are.

Remember that your intuition, your self-awareness, your instincts cannot be mimicked. As we age, we learn to hone these feelings and learn how to use them to guide us. We also communicate with other humans that are doing the same thing. None of this can be replaced by machines. But can math and machines help us continue to hone these skills? Absolutely.

We must never forget that these processes are just math. I remind myself daily by never interacting with them like they are human. Instead, I ask my coach, "What do you think?"  

Gratefully,

Mark

CEO Team MPI