A Dream, Ultra-Personalized Cultural Recommendations Through AI, and Changing Behavior.

I have always seen the challenge of finding my next book, film, or series as something mystical. As if there were a particular work suited to that moment, one that could answer the soul’s longings. I say this because I have felt that happen many times—and seen it happen to many other people too—perhaps by chance at first, but increasingly by intention. The curious thing is that “by intention” often does not mean “trying hard,” but letting instinct speak. Sometimes effort can even get in the way of discovery and drown out that instinct.

My process has always involved wandering at random and learning to recognize that instinct. Sometimes I look for favorite-book lists from writers I like, but recently I have been experimenting with recommendations from AI systems such as GPT and Claude. I gave them all the episode transcripts from the Emoção Criativa podcast so they could get a sense of how I think and where my curiosity leads me. I added some of the questions I have been exploring through reflection and therapy, and started asking for works that dealt with those questions. The first book to come out of this was Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot,” as an example of what it might mean to have no ego, to take nothing personally, and—perhaps the most striking part of the sociological experiment that the novel is—what would happen to such a person in society. (In this case, the answer is: they would be crushed.) Of course, when we talk about trying to dissolve the ego and the harm caused by the illusion of making it the center of our existence, we have to remember that it exists for a reason. Still, building a point of reference for what someone without an ego might be like had a profound impact on me. I can already see real changes in how I handle everyday situations that might otherwise feel like attacks on my identity.

The second book to emerge from this process, while I was exploring scarcity and the fear of it, was “Babette’s Feast,” a book or short story written in the 1950s about a French servant who ends up in a small Norwegian town in the late nineteenth century. When she wins the lottery, instead of returning to France, she decides to spend it all on a lavish dinner for her employers. Asked why she did this for them, the cook replies that she did it for herself: “I am an artist.” She had needed to do it because she was one of France’s greatest cooks and wanted to exercise her talent to its fullest potential. Anything less would have been unacceptable, and she spent everything she had to make it happen.

Before Babette, I had just finished reading “Scarcity,” which explores the mental state created by the fear of not having enough. Beyond consuming mental processing power and creating the conditions for scarcity to perpetuate itself, that state also narrows our perception until scarcity is all we can see, even when it is an illusion. It reminds me of that famous test in which people who described themselves as pessimists or optimists were supposed to be assessed in a room, but the real test took place in the waiting room, with a magazine and a $100 prize voucher. Most of the optimists spotted the voucher; most of the pessimists did not.

I have become increasingly drawn to works that offer allegories I can use as a compass for behaviors I want to adopt or change. Lately, I have felt that AI is making them easier and easier to find.

By the way: today I dreamed that I should start a blog, and here it is. I always follow my instincts and dreams, and this one was no different. When I think about how anachronistic it is to start a blog in 2026, what motivates me most is the chance to exchange ideas with people who share similar interests. People who also want to be artists—not in a professional sense, but who are willing to stake their lottery winnings on the search for meaning. I do not mean people without fear, because courage comes precisely from facing fear, rather than from its absence, but people who have faith that it is possible to get somewhere.