Writing

I built a tool to help visualize history.

I've built a little social app called Slowpost.

Ditching your smartphone is (mostly) possible, and will make you feel so much better.

Status Traps, The Purpose of a System is what it Rewards, A Non-cynical View of Colleges and Power, Thinking Too Much is Bad for Society, The Most Important Political Dimension is Certainty

The future of work is managing a team of AI agents to do work.

It’s pretty cheap and easy to make something fun.

A brief history of angry elections, Is politics optimized for outrage, Can remote work save the world, What is Democracy and how can we save it, Watch out for number two.

Jesus' 9-bullet summary of morality has value even to non-Christians.

Treating things as good vs bad is too simple.

Compromise Coin, Will AI Detach Wealth from Ability, Power flows Up then Down, Lessons from Revolt of the Public, and Empirical Consequentialism

Not everything that counts can be counted, but maybe GPT can measure it anyway.

We are hiring a Software Engineer to work on Public Spaces Incubator.

Education does lots of things for society. AI will change all of them.

I used to write on Quora. Here is some of what I wrote.

AI doesn't need to match all human intelligence to replace all human work. If it's faster and cheaper, we'll adapt the rest of the world around it.

"Nothing makes sense and that's okay", "Mourning Facebook Past", "Why Tech Companies have so many Employees", "How Music Became Meaningless", and "Accepting Pain".

I normally try to avoid overtly political posts on this blog, but this one seems important

Everything rots, How Facebook stole the Gaps, and other thoughts.

Big companies are creepy, but so is antitrust action. Could more progressive taxation solve things better?

Do large organizations function like a single mind? What if we simulate that mind?

Let's build better digital public spaces.

How rapid iteration allows us to create the incomprehensible.

If ranking is as easy as saying what should rank highly, then lots of interesting things happen.

They could disrupt all four of the pillars that Google's business rests on.

It turns out that making an engaging platform that encourages civil discourse is hard.

Don't let people do new things. Make existing behaviors less painful.

We need speech to flow in better ways.

I guess I should say some words before we get started...

Thought is like a Fourier transform of matter. A dual and equally real representation of reality.

A lot of lessons we've learned from building neural networks apply to people too.

It works because your subconsciousness is listening, not because God is listening.

Peace comes from the enforcement of mutually beneficial truces.

God exists in the same way that money, companies, and countries exist.

All ideas are incremental. If you think an idea is novel you don't know what it built on.

Sports teach kids important lessons about resilience, pain tolerance, and risk.

Society is a collection of games within games. Sometimes those games go wrong.

By focusing on tests, schools might actually be teaching immorality.

Probably not the wisest decision of my life.

The biggest opportunities come from technology shifts that change the rules of competition.

Self-driving vehicles will transform transportation, logistics, and urban planning.

Technology could help parents monitor, educate, and connect with their children.

Security requires assuming you will be breached and planning accordingly.

Big companies are often too slow, too distracted, or too constrained to compete with startups.

The future is electric, autonomous, and shared.

A combination of universities, defense spending, venture capital, and culture created a self-reinforcing ecosystem.

Google tries to do good but faces difficult tradeoffs at scale.

Focus on being genuinely interesting rather than checking boxes.

Active recall and spaced repetition beat passive reading.

Low-cost index funds and avoiding panic are the keys to long-term wealth.

Remember that the wedding industry profits from making you feel inadequate.

Write the abstract first, then make the paper match it.

Speed reading is mostly about knowing what to skip.

Find ways to demonstrate competence before you need to be hired.

Creativity comes from combining ideas from different domains.

Write a lot, read a lot, and get feedback.

Changing media incentives and electoral systems could help reduce polarization.

A prediction from before the 2016 election.

The problem isn't just fake news but misleading framing of true stories.

Schools should teach critical thinking and civil discourse.

Most people hold a mix of views that don't fit neatly into party lines.

Both sides often argue against strawman versions of the other's position.

Schools should teach how to evaluate evidence, not which conclusions to hold.

The paradox of tolerance requires tolerating people but not always their actions.

The meaning of 'liberal' shifted from economic freedom to social freedom.

Four months traveling from Berkeley through Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Balloons, bears, ancient Persepolis, Ethiopian festivals, and great white sharks.

A whirlwind tour through Lima, Cusco, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, and the Amazon jungle. From coca tea to bouncy castles.

17 days of cycling through France. Featuring crashes, rain, Coypu, the Tourmalet, racing Eric, and designer luggage.