At this time of year, everyone either writes a “How to set and keep your New Year’s resolution” article, or a “Why you shouldn’t set a New Year’s resolution” article. This is the latter. Continue reading
I’ve been noticing that a recurring theme in my writing here is balance between opposites. I’ve written about balancing consumption vs. production in your life, and recently about balancing systems vs. goals for achieving what you desire. And I can think of a few more that I haven’t written about yet, that I’d like to touch on. It could become a pain to try to keep so many balances in mind, but I thought if I could arrange most of it hierarchically, that would be much cleaner. Continue reading
Last year I wrote about setting personal goals. One bit of feedback I got went something like, “Goal setting is a bad mindset, you should use systems instead.” I’ve heard that idea before, with a few different justifications. I do have some thoughts, and experience, on using systems to build skills or manage productivity, and I realized I should write on that too in order to make the goal-setting content more complete. Continue reading
This one came from another dream I had. Nothing really happened in the dream that I can remember, but the physical space was pretty striking. There’s lots of meanings we could ascribe to this. I have an interpretation, but I’d rather leave it up to you. Continue reading
A couple years ago, I noticed that I’d been holding onto a mindset that was counterproductive, and I’ve often seen this mindset in some of the online communities I spend time in. I like talking with people who believe in the truth-seeking power of good-faith disagreements, but some of these kinds of people have a tendency to overestimate the value of argument, which causes them to engage in conversations they shouldn’t. And I think I have good heuristics for avoiding that without giving up on rational disagreements entirely. Continue reading
This is the art I made for my AI Historical Figures project. It’s used by the AI Twitter accounts as the profile picture and banner image. I wanted to develop a style that’s unique and recognizable, so Twitter users who saw multiple accounts would make the connection that they go together in a series. Continue reading
I’ve just started two Twitter accounts that use artificial intelligence to emulate the thoughts of two long-dead historical figures—apocryphal writing to entertain fellow enthusiasts. Twitter provides a never-ending torrent of content to respond to, and the idea of being able to hear a historical figure’s simulated thoughts about a given present-day event just sounded really fun to me. The model does an impressive job both at copying the vocabulary of the original person, and also often getting historical details right. Continue reading
Figuring out which strangers to trust on the Internet is a challenging problem, but potentially a very rewarding one. Ideally you’re interacting with transparent, accountable people who may even be experts in their fields, who may have tons of invaluable wisdom and knowledge to share—if only you trust them. I’m weighing in on this because I have reason to believe I’m particularly good at solving this problem. Continue reading
On paper, the Internet looks like something that would drastically change humanity for the better. But, while capable of delivering just about any information that our greatest aspirations could demand, it is mostly delivering information perfectly tuned to our lowest aspirations. The Good Internet is the subset of the Internet that actually makes your life better. It is hidden in plain sight. Continue reading
Denial of Death is the 1973 summation of anthropologist Ernest Becker’s life’s work studying human nature, building upon the work of the great psychologists of the 20th Century. It basically aims to be a grand unifying theory of psychology, and against all odds it kind of succeeds. Continue reading
This is a recreation of a scary dream I had when I was very young, maybe four or five years old. It’s the oldest dream I can remember and one of my oldest memories period. The dream was just that … Continue reading
This image came to my mind a year and a half ago when I was sick and more-or-less stranded in Australia, at the tail end of my vacation, because all the airlines were canceling their service due to covid. I wanted to portray the weariness you feel when a handful of different problems happen to combine around you. Continue reading
This one is about setting goals. In my last post I wrote from experience about some ways to approach problems of willpower and increase our chances of doing the things we most want to do. Closely related to that is the practice of goal-setting. If your goals are stated in detail and align well to your deepest values, you’ll have an easier time justifying the work to carry them out. Continue reading
This one is about willpower. Willpower is definitely an overdone topic in the whole lifestyle-improvement-self-help-literature world. But it seems no one out there is saying quite what I want to say about it, so I have to say it myself. … Continue reading
There’s a weird kind of phenomenon that happens when people use easy-to-fake symbols to try to deceive each other: the symbols become cyclic in their meaning. They flip to mean the opposite of what they once meant, and then they flip back again. Continue reading
