How I Use ChatGPT Voice Mode To Learn More From Books
Even though I read a lot of informational non-fiction, I read mostly for fun.
I might read a book about US foreign policy, or the financial crisis, or even black holes in outer space--but I'm doing so because reading is fun, and I have broad interests. I'm not too concerned with taking notes or actionable lessons from everything I read. If I did that with every book I read, it would make reading a slog.
But every now and then I read a book that I want to embed deep in my brain.
Whether it's about something that can help me in my career or personal life, there are some books that I read that make me feel like I'm wasting my time if I don't come away with a more thorough understanding of the topic after reading them. These are books I want to be able to reference in conversation, incorporate into my worldview, and use to my advantage. And the only way to do that is to check my understanding of them and update my thinking where I'm wrong.
Writing is great for this, but what if you want to be able to articulate your understanding of a book in your own words, on the fly, using your voice?
Enter, ChatGPT voice mode.
Talking to ChatGPT while reading a book I want to fully understand has been a game changer for me. When I sit down to read, I'll open the ChatGPT app on my phone and start a voice chat. When I get to a point in the book where I feel like I've read through an important topic, I'll tell ChatGPT what my understanding of the author was and to give me feedback on my interpretation. Even better, if I come across something I don't understand or have prior knowledge of, like a past historical event that the author is referencing, I can ask ChatGPT to explain it to me.
Doing this allows me to read a book with more context and feedback than ever before. And I'm learning more from books that matter to me than I ever have in the past.
Here's an example from Tripping Over The Truth, by Travis Christoffsen, a book about the metabolic theory of cancer:
So Tripping Over the Truth is about the metabolic theory of cancer and why it is overlooked in modern cancer therapy. So the metabolic theory of cancer comes from the work of Otto Warburg back in the 1920s when he discovered that cancer cells tend to prefer anaerobic respiration over aerobic respiration even in the presence of adequate oxygen. This led him to the theory that cancer cells are voracious consumers of glucose and that if you just restrict glucose from cancer cells that you can slow their growth or even reverse cancer. This theory was studied but never proven, and then throughout the rest of the 20th century you had the somatic mutation theory of cancer become more prominent, and it basically took over. This is when you had cancer researchers believing fully that all cancer was caused by mutations, and people went on a hunt to find the specific mutations that cause specific cancers with the belief that if we just figure out which specific mutations caused specific cancers, we could create targeted drugs that could cure those cancers. There was a huge effort to create targeted therapies to attack specific tumors, but they mostly failed and were very toxic to patients. And then in the early 2000s when the entire human genome was sequenced, there was also an effort shortly after that to sequence the genomes of all known tumors, and the belief was that once we sequenced those genomes we would find common mutations across all cancers and it would usher in a new era of targeted therapies for cancers. But what was found was that there was a lot of heterogeneity in cancer cell mutations and that there were no one targeted therapy that could really be created for one type of cancer that would work in all patients. All patients' tumors were different. This has led to a renewed interest in the metabolic theory of cancer, and there have been studies that have shown that by putting patients on a ketogenic diet you could increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy by protecting healthy cells because when healthy cells are engaged in ketosis, or when they are functioning off of ketosis, they are less susceptible to damage, whereas cancer cells are more susceptible to damage, and you're also shutting off their major fuel supply. The metabolic theory of cancer, I believe, also posits that cancer is driven by damage to cellular mitochondria, which causes epigenetic changes that lead to the chromosomal changes or the genetic markers in cancer. And so it's driven by this mitochondrial damage in the metabolic theory of cancer, and that's why we see all of these different mutations, and it's not necessarily damaged the DNA that's being caused first and then affecting the mitochondria, but rather the reverse.
And then ChatGPT's response:
1. Metabolic Theory of Cancer: You accurately explained Otto Warburg’s discovery of cancer cells favoring anaerobic respiration, known as the Warburg effect, even with sufficient oxygen. This observation led to the theory that targeting cancer’s glucose dependency could be therapeutic.
2. Somatic Mutation Theory: You’re right that this theory, which focuses on genetic mutations as the primary cause of cancer, dominated much of the 20th century. The hope was to find common mutations across cancers for targeted treatments, but the genetic heterogeneity of tumors made this approach challenging.
3. Renewed Interest in Metabolic Theory: Correct, the failure of many targeted therapies and the realization of cancer’s complexity have led to a resurgence of interest in metabolic approaches, including ketogenic diets to exploit cancer cells’ reliance on glucose.
4. Role of Mitochondria: You captured this well. The metabolic theory suggests cancer arises from mitochondrial dysfunction, leading to alterations in cellular metabolism and, subsequently, genetic mutations. This perspective contrasts with the somatic mutation theory, which sees genetic mutations as the primary cause of cancer.
The transcript got cut off, unfortunately, but you can see how valuable this feature is.
I now remember more from the book than I normally would have, simply because I forced myself to talk about it and test my understanding after reading it. What's great about using ChatGPT for this is it's like talking to an expert about the book, without ever having to seek one out.
AI is enabling us to essentially have conversations with the authors of the books we read, and I think that's amazing.