Writing the Contraptions newsletter. Exploring protocols at protocol-institute.org. Substack is currently the best public place to find me.
Trantor
- Tweets 152,539
- Following 285
- Followers 62,980
- Likes 69,593
Just hit me that at say $3/gallon and say 40mpg, it would be cheaper for a self-driving gasoline car to just circle around than park anywhere at more than $3/hr. At say $0.5/mile fully loaded operating cost it’s not worth parking above $20/h.
The loitering car cloud is coming.
112
640
2,318
If you don’t switch to hard mode by 35, life switches to impossible mode for you by 45.
Middle-class privilege + mediocre intelligence + decent strategic thinking = incentives are heavily loaded in favor of getting addicted to playing in easy mode by like 19
48
171
1,481
Grifts are undertheorized, and too often conflated with long cons, scams, frauds and other more blatant soft crimes. Lemme offer a definition.
A grift is a scheme that profits from the existence of a real problem without actually addressing it.
30
326
1,376
Gonna make a thread of my ongoing slow journey (emigration? perhaps…) to Web3, along with my covered wagon full of Web1 and Web2 stuff. Including NFTs, DAOs etc. So if those topics annoy you, you can mute this thread.
33
155
1,444
Surprisingly cogent meditation on probabilistic thinking in the NYT.
Takeaways:
1. People round probabilities up to 100% or down to 0%.
2. People call probability “wrong” if <50% events happen
3. People need a story to take <50% scenarios seriously
nytimes.com/2017/12/24/opini…
22
527
1,238
1/ Lemme do a 1-slide presentation since I'm feeling job sick. Title: How to Actually Manage Attention Without Smashing Your Phone and Retreating to a Log Cabin
32
293
1,224
The older I get the more it sinks in that 90% of effectiveness is just taking a thing seriously enough. That translates to just wanting the thing itself rather than adjacent things that may or may not happen as a side effect. Most things sort themselves out if you’re serious.
Motivations
Wanting the thing
Wanting to be seen to want the thing
Wanting to do the things needed to do the thing
Wanting to be seen to do the things needed to do the thing
Wanting to want the thing
Wanting to want to do the thing
Wanting to have done the thing
39
213
1,154
Weird how people are letting their guard down. My guard level is steadily trending higher. Risk seems to be increasing steadily rather than decreasing to me.
19
131
894
Scenario Z: Covid is never brought under control, mutates too much every season to be managed like the flu, and goes endemic with higher base fatality rate and is too costly to chase with vaccines. Joins the top-3 ranks of steady modern killers alongside heart disease and cancer.
48
211
944
Tech is getting insufficient credit for the current situation response.
This entire social distancing protocol made possible by social media, zoom, video games. Also streaming TV, movies. Everything you thought was bad for you is now saving lives. You’re welcome.
30
149
952
Increasingly feels that AIs will never consistently pass any philosophically reasonable test of intelligence. But as we make the tests increasingly subtle, neither will most humans. This effect needs a name. It's like a progressive decertification of human intelligence.
55
76
807
Politics is the only game where there is a well-defined idea of winning with no associated material skill it is ^about*. Imagine a sportsball game where all players did was pump up the crowd and argued with umpires. No field, ball, or play. Just points scoring.
59
171
779
I think there’s an actual conspiracy afoot to get people to quit working from home and get back to the office
The industrial economy sometimes does feel like a continuation of serfdom by other means 🧐
23
85
769
I’m kinda grateful I got 20 years of pre-Internet life. Hybrid pre-post Internet brain feels like a superpower relative to people who were too old/dead or too young/unborn to develop one. A kind of bicameralism.
24
91
640
Trying out various oks for feel
ok boomer
ok nazi
ok wokie
ok centrist
ok millennial
ok techie
ok incel
ok chad
damn they all work
this is the broad spectrum antibiotic of memes
46
87
674
tech acting only when it is both politically safe to do so, and unsafe not to, due to election results, shows weakness, not strength... it shows they have a healthy fear of political power: now in new hands
It would be a flex if they’d acted when there *wasn’t* a political shift
12
93
600
“Masks don’t work” is going to be a historic line on par with the apocryphal “let them eat cake”
What's happening here? Does this masks thing really make sense, scientifically? Yes, it does!
Here's 34 scientific papers that all point to the same thing: masks (even home made ones) really work to dramatically reduce the spread of covid-19.
tiny.cc/maskswork
15
149
582
Thread of opinion threads (some are doing 1 per like, others are just going straight for a target number)
21
115
614
Most admired elites in the west:
1940s: decorated military veterans
1950s: spies
1960s: rocket scientists
1970s: brain surgeons*
1980-1987: investors
1988-1997: hackers
1997-2015: entrepreneurs
2015 - now: nobody
* when did ‘brain surgery’ replace ‘rocket science’?
58
40
594
Stuff you learned and forgot feels like rent paid. You lived in it for a while but are now left with no equity in it. Most schooling only rents you some knowledge for a while.
10
69
579
Feels like all the youngish people who are in love with the idea of rituals have never actually experienced real ones. Your morning meditative pour-over coffee ain’t it. The real kind is having to memorize lots of arbitrary bs and suffer long, boring performances without yawning.
24
35
573
The larger the pile of money the dumber it is
If you have only $10 it is probably really smart money because you’re going to think hard and object level about spending it
If you have $10B, it’s being deployed mostly in > $250m chunks via org charts with 7 levels of bs theories
11
59
553
A big part of midlife is the feel of windows of opportunity closing. You don’t realize how much room a vague option was occupying in your head until it closes.
“I’ll never do X” gets locked in for more and more X.
16
32
538
“If your boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, then give him loyalty” — John Boyd
The presence/absence of attack dog types close to the leader is a good litmus test for groups based on loyalty vs integrity.
12
54
527
Motivation is a skill. Wanting things is not something you can just “do” beyond lollipop level at age 3. You have to learn to zoom in on the thing that vaguely attracts you, with enough precision that the motivational feedback loop kicks in. Like a starter motor.
8
64
529
What's the most most mysterious bug you've ever encountered that later turned out to have a trivial explanation?
144
102
460
“Sophomore portal” books: You’re likely to read them 17-21, with median at ~19
— Ayn Rand
— GEB
— HHG
— Alchemist
— Pirsig
They seem optimized to have a profound effect in that range, be inaccessible if you’re younger (unless you’re precocious) and underwhelming if you’re older
80
34
512
Been sleeping on this thought. I’m surprised by how much people are willing to indulge SBF’s weird EA ideology/funky math ideas as some sort of meaningful mitigating factor that moves him from scammer bucket to good/well-intentioned. To me it puts him into the terrorist bucket.
22
35
478
Damn... I never new the backstory of how Vladimir Kamarov became the first man to die in space. He *knowingly* went realizing he would die due to problems with the mission, to save his friend Yuri Gagarin.
9
94
454
Human condition pie chart
1%: making dents in universe, not going gentle into that good night
9%: tormented by existential despair on edge between meaning and nihilism
90%: mostly satisfied with life while there’s stuff to watch on Netflix/Prime/Hulu
12
98
455
What book did you read >10 years too early?
What book did you read >10 years too late?
What book did you read at about the right time?
113
83
466
One good thing pre-modern societies did better than us is take luck a lot more seriously. The content of superstitions and astrology etc does not matter. What matters is that it occupies headspace that would otherwise get filled by false confidence in causality.
9
54
449
Meme eras (eras used to last ~2y, now they last 6mo)
prehistoric lolcat era
doge classical era
harambe dark age
expanding brain enlightenment
distracted boyfriend impressionism
American chopper expressionism
We should expect surrealist, cubist, abstract expressionist by 2020
24
97
435
I have discovered the secret of happiness
Step 1: Construct a full, enriching life of worthwhile activities that exalt your time on earth
Step 2: Sneak off from that life every chance you get and mess around doing random shit
Step 3: Sneak off from *that* and lay around idling
11
71
459
Sometimes I suspect we only buy 3 things above basic necessities:
The rich mostly buy the belief that the world makes sense
The middle class mostly buys procedural illusions of agency
The poor mostly buy pain relief
Belief pills, agency pills, pain pills
7
62
457
Social media platforms basically gerrymander attention.
Gerrymandering flips democracies around so politicians choose their voters rather than the other way around.
Gerrymandering attention allows publishers to choose their audiences rather than the other way around.
15
117
459
Next pandemic live read, Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, a history of the 14th century through the life of a single minor nobleman whose life was coextensive with the main events, esp the Black Death. amzn.to/2ww5ixs
23
60
450
One of the strongest American taboos is admitting you don’t want to work hard. You have to at least claim some energetic hobby like snowboarding or surfing. Or some sort of physical or mental ailment holding you back. Even the 4HWW thing is about freeing up time for intense play.
31
28
436
A megatrend hypothesis inspired by several microtrend that I think are related:
a) waldenponding
b) rise of heavy duty information management methods like @fortelabs BASB (build a second brain)
c) conversational media eating authorial media
d) "hivebrain" jokes/references
20
91
440
The word “invest” has 2 distinct meanings in relation to capital:
Invest (1): Spend money to build a capability. Example: a bridge, a factory, a mansion.
Invest (2): Spend money to acquire a formal stake in an existing capability. Example: stock, bond, lien.
2 now dominates 1
11
68
436
Lately there’s been a gradual uptick in young(er) people asking me for “advice” and a steady decline in my energy to be helpful in any way. So I made up a convenient boilerplate advice table to blow them off with.
18
56
445
there's a dangerous moment of moral hazard in learning about a topic where you know enough to phone it in and fool 90% of even informed people, but not enough to add any value... a lot of people settle into that zone. It's like the grifter side of imposter syndrome
11
30
437
Map people: “things must be getting better because they’re easing restrictions, so I can let down my guard”
Territory people: “err basically nothing has changed, so easing restrictions means we’re just accepting higher shared risk which means I must mitigate personal risk more”
7
71
383
The LOTR movies are now 18-21y old. Entire generation born after them is headed for college 🤯
Watched the first part (Fellowship) and then read the Wikipedia on the production. This thing was the Apollo program of film. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lo…
12
63
425
Anyone else have ocd habit of stripping ?utm=bullshit_seo_crap from urls before sharing? Just me?
Hate that shit. Like people bumming rides from you without asking by climbing into your car trunk.
55
15
429
I’m increasingly impressed by the sheer surreally unironic continued existence of LinkedIn
It’ll outlast all the other crap, including twitter
20
18
419
I've been noodling on an idea for a while that I've been reluctant to do a thread on for... reasons that will become obvious, but let's yolo it. I call the idea "charismatic epistemologies." Aka... how successful people explain the world, and how those explanations fail.
14
47
426
In practice, the real alternative to cancel culture is usually know-your-place culture for the masses. Civil-debate-culture is not an actual option. It’s what elites get to enjoy when the masses know their place and stay there quietly without getting uppity.
12
59
396
I’ve read maybe 6 of these which is probably about as many as you can safely read without acquiring the superpower of being able to bore people to death in less than a minute
9
1
371
Hypothesis: few people actually *want* a full-blown community past about 25. They just think they do. It’s a lot of time and work to be involved in “community” in the sense of shared beyond-family communal daily life (meals etc) and weekly parties, seeing friends everyday etc.
52
21
404
3 traits I’ve noticed most often in people who get cripplingly invested in culture warring:
- Lack of strong individual interests outside of group affiliations
- Sense of humor restricted to amirite and mockery
- Totalizing (hedgehog) aesthetics
9
39
394
I’m guessing 10 more weeks before we see the first signs of economy reboot.
This is going to get really brutal. I’m not seeing any historical comparable for what we’re headed for. Not WW2, not the Great Depression, not the Spanish Flu. This is a totally sui generis cataclysm.
22
64
380
The more I pay attention to how religious people live, the less I’m able to distinguish it from fandoms+larps
15
47
393
Motivations
Wanting the thing
Wanting to be seen to want the thing
Wanting to do the things needed to do the thing
Wanting to be seen to do the things needed to do the thing
Wanting to want the thing
Wanting to want to do the thing
Wanting to have done the thing
16
57
401
Oh whoa, Clayton Christensen died?
Damn. Probably the single most important business thinker of the last century. I'd put him ahead of even Drucker and Porter. The first to take a fundamentally technology-informed approach to business thinking, rather than people or economics.
6
49
396
I’m done with the “creator economy” frame. Plays to narcissistic flake types a little too much.
The backstopper economy is much more interesting. People who step up to keep collaborative efforts going through uncertainties and lean patches. Including necessary grinder work.
11
32
385
My feed is really weird now. All the people I normally interact with are tweeting about either the muskening or the ruggening
Everybody else has that peculiar linkedin vibe of obliviousness
The intermediate people who seem real, just not in my neck of the woods, are gone/quiet
48
11
397
15-25: mostly learn generically from generic famous books
25-32: mostly learn from introspection and weird/obscure books/writings that somehow “spoke” to me in a unique way
32-40: mostly learned from experiences and older people 1:1
40+: mostly learning from <40 people 1:1
11
24
381
I suspect Covid19 economic stress made this explode about 3x worse than it otherwise would have
22
21
362
Why the weird flex @nytimes? Why does telling whatever story require doxxing a blogger with legitimate reasons for being pseudonymous.
slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/2…
7
50
385
Chesterton-Miller Behavioral Fence: when you see people behaving in a seemingly suboptimal way, ask what you’re missing about what they’re actually optimizing for.
Behavior is rarely suboptimal, but assumed cost functions are usually wrong.
15
50
364
A world that’s 100% electrified, with air/sea ships for long-distance travel, high-quality VR/telepresence, rent-over-own society, high mobility, hyperloops, rewilded/reforested countrysides, fake meat without factory farmed farting cows... as exciting a vision as colonizing Mars
22
70
364
Even a shallow understanding to blockchains makes you see them everywhere. Makes you realize how much of civilization is just book-keeping.
8
124
379
Very large quantities of concentrated capital can bend truth rays and warp epistimology and ontology. There is a financial lending effect by which you can detect the presence of large cold masses of money that otherwise can’t be seen
23
72
354
Biggest thing I’ve learned in the last 2 months: the basic currency of civilized life is time in a crisis, and it is *very* expensive
Years of foresight work buy you days to weeks at most in a crisis
Millions/billions of preparedness dollars buy you months at most
...
10
69
356
Annoying how much of maintaining mental health boils down to recalling the right trite thought at the right time:
This too shall pass
Don’t decide when depressed
Drink water
Drink
Eat
Sleep
Take a walk
Go gymming
Let this one go
It’s only money
Morning is wiser than evening
15
64
356
Our world requires a dangerous and increasing amount of faking it to make it. Compared to even 20 years ago, you have to pretend to know vast amounts of stuff, and pretend to possess way more varied skills, to get taken seriously. This is very dangerous.
17
70
353
When software eats a $2000 thing, it generally produces:
a) A crappy free version
b) An 80% at $200 janky version
c) A snowflake, temperamental $1500 "managed service" version from people racing against automation
d) $3000 premium mediocre version
d) $10,000 bespoke version
9
58
350
Can’t believe some of you chose writing software as an entire career. Pure masochism. Every time I have to touch code I think about how we’ve handed over the future of the world to people who clearly hate themselves.
21
26
339
90% of both the work and returns are in the last 10% of polish in anything, but 100% of the fun is in the first 89%
9
27
350
“It is 2020. 250k are dead from a raging pandemic; a private space company is launching crewed missions NASA can’t. A mad president is live-tweeting a painfully slow psychotic break, refusing to leave office. The planet boils.” —Blurb from “2020” obscure sci-fi book from 2007.
8
42
342
Culture war wrangling has unfortunately become a key element in my consulting. It is now the 4th, and youngest manifestation of bullshit jobs.
Bullshit jobs evolve in one of 4 ways: automation, outsourcing, trumpification, and now: wokification. Only the first 2 are survivable
14
53
345
Life gets way easier once you realize you’re useless to almost everybody and almost everybody is useless to you. Mutual uselessness is the most relaxing basis for a relationship, yet we filter most of it out, looking for the 1% exploit/be exploited/mutually exploit/win-win zone.
6
46
344
What is wrong with this teacher? The pencilled answer is obviously the correct one. The question was how us thus possible, not why is this impossible.
23
14
338
Some people seem to have 100% interests and 0% curiosities. You can be a good advocate with that personality, but not really a researcher.
12
40
335
It’s becoming increasingly clear that for a fragile few years, the grand narrative of the world flowed through TED talks
12
19
335
In every project, there are people it is important to _not_ talk to. Talking to them merely transforms them from unaware to adversarial, and puts a target on your back. They are often looking for things to obstruct, have ‘defender’ self-images, and are addicted to stopping things
6
51
332
If your workers don’t need physical presence or access to specialized equipment, you’re externalizing the cost of your incompetent management and leadership in the form of commuter carbon externalities. A carbon tax on commutes for jobs that can be done remotely would be great.
2
53
328
One of the advantages of formal education over autodidact is that at some point 10-20 years later you realize you learned everything the wrong way, blame your teachers, and start to fix the damage. Self-taught people have no one else to blame but themselves, so they often don’t.
9
25
327