Happy Sunday Friends! Here is 1 quote I’m musing, 2 Ideas, 3 of my favorite things from the week, and 1 question. If you find it useful or interesting, please feel free to forward this along to some friends or others!

One Quote I’m Musing

“We see the world and things not as they are but as we are.”

-Immanuel Kant

We color the world with the flavor of our thoughts. I’ve completed my first full week in the new position as an Aide-de-Camp.

It isn’t far from my previous organization; however, the colors have changed with the scope, scale, politics, and optics required of this other organization.

I’m always fascinated by how very different opinions and inferences on the same engagements, meetings, and conversations can be simply from being in a slightly different position.

Let’s focus on opinions and inferences. But first, story time.

Socrates was resting under a tree when a disciple came to him and began to tell him about how he heard that a friend of Socrates was speaking negatively about him behind his back.
Socrates interrupted him with three questions.
“First, are you sure what you’re going to tell me is true?”
To which the disciple confirmed he didn’t know, he simply heard it was happening.
“Second, is what you’re going to tell me good? Or beneficial?”
The disciple said that it was not.
“Lastly, is what you’re telling me useful?”
The disciple admitted that he wasn’t sure.
“So,” Socrates said, “What you’re about to tell me, you don’t know if it’s true, it’s not kind or beneficial, and you’re not sure if it’s even necessary? Then it doesn’t deserve to be spoken, or even heard.”

As we are consumers of increasing quantities of information (thanks for reading by the way!), I find the importance of filtering also becomes important. Filtering so that we can determine if we need to have an opinion, or if we should even continue listening.

I rediscovered Socrates’ three filters and they’ve not only been pretty great for sifting through the news, gossip, etc. They helped me focus on what people are saying during a conversation, making sure I’m not just pretending to listen and only keying in on a nugget or two. No, genuinely engaging, absorbing the person’s views and words, then filtering on what is genuinely true, good, and necessary. Then framing questions and engagement around sussing those three out before going any further.

I’m glad it came back around. Let me know if you use this and your thoughts!

-e

Two Ideas From Me

Peace of mind is immeasurably more value than a piece of luxury.
Physics is life. There is no traction without friction, and you can’t gain momentum without starting; so, it goes with motivation.

Three Favorite Things From Others

Marcin Niemiec has been recording a series on leveraging LLMs for threat modeling. In this installment he compares and contrasts Claude 3 Opus with GPT-4. He pits them both against four forms of analysis: high-level design review, threat modeling, security-related acceptance criteria, and architecture review. While both have improved iteratively, it’s interesting to see his analysis on Claude (slightly) outperforming GPT-4. | More
Dr. Lonergan and RADM (Reg.) Montgomery headed up a published a paper and accompanying video with Rep. Gallagher for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that calls for a Cyber Force. While many others have already rushed to publish an opinion, I intend to publish my long form in the next musing. It’s a good read and some interesting points of view. | More
“The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.” - Jessica Hische, Humble Pied

One Question

Is my situation the way I observe it, or is my situation stained by the color of my thoughts?

Have a wonderful week,

I’ll see you Sunday.
-e