The internet is breeding entirely new species through a kind of decentralized, memetic gain-of-function research on human types. The men who signup for this show have studied a fair amount of data, which they've memorized reasonably well. They spent their formative years watching "content," carefully studying the techniques whereby their favorite personalities "destroy" their opponents with facts and logic. Then, finding their paths to adult male glory thwarted at every turn, a show like this represents their first real opportunity for recognition (which is not a luxury but a true human need, as Hegel noted). And after all those years sharpening their knives, they really do bring an unprecedented verbal style, more ruthlessly optimized on a single dimension than any men in history. Fast, vicious, cutting, and breathless. And yet, this gentleman gets flustered when asked his name. I've never seen anything like it, he almost starts sweating when asked his name. Despite all of their training, despite having become discourse superpredators, it's all achieved by such a monstrous neglect of other basic abilities that it completely undercuts their performance and guarantees the extinction of this otherwise fascinating germline.

The internet is breeding entirely new species through a kind of decentralized, memetic gain-of-function research on human types. The men who signup for this show have studied a fair amount of data, which they've memorized reasonably well. They spent their formative years watching "content," carefully studying the techniques whereby their favorite personalities "destroy" their opponents with facts and logic. Then, finding their paths to adult male glory thwarted at every turn, a show like this represents their first real opportunity for recognition (which is not a luxury but a true human need, as Hegel noted). And after all those years sharpening their knives, they really do bring an unprecedented verbal style, more ruthlessly optimized on a single dimension than any men in history. Fast, vicious, cutting, and breathless. And yet, this gentleman gets flustered when asked his name. I've never seen anything like it, he almost starts sweating when asked his name. Despite all of their training, despite having become a sort of discourse superpredator, it's all achieved by such a monstrous neglect of other basic abilities that it completely undercuts their performance and guarantees the extinction of this otherwise fascinating germline.

The thing with writing is you really ought to be in a disinterested, childlike state of mind. If you have a workplace mentality, any of the various tensions of social striving, or any kind of instrumental fixation at all really, you may be productive and produce fine work, but you never get the magic. God does not dwell in widgets but only in vacuoles of wasted time joyfully stolen from, and protected against, the powers and principalities.

I'm bullish on voice-only computing. Every month since AI has become usable, I feel increasing pain at having to use screens at all. With LLMs it now feels like a huge waste of time to do things like "click" and move between "tabs." When I look at the improvement rate of agents especially, it now seems like a waste of time to do almost any kind of manual task on my computer. The gold standard life very soon may be reading paper and thinking in a sun-filled room, possibly with some kind of team if you need one, and essentially just making judgments and speaking words to handle every single thing on a todo list. Everything else somehow feels intolerably archaic already. I sort of hate to admit this but the OpenAI device might be the thing.

Wife took 3yo son to a magic show at the library. The magician started by saying that magic isn't real. Before telling me about the tricks, my son gave me the same preface. What? How sad. Perhaps the problem is not screens so much as the disenchantment of the world by adults.

The first time I saw him, I thought “great, they didn’t flood those kids.” The 8th time I saw him, I thought “Wow they really must have flooded those kids!” Tbc I believe him when he says they had no effect, but the only case study here is how to look guilty via over-exposure.

So is Grok 4 Heavy better than o3-pro?

As a nobleman, Montaigne could hope to attain high political office, perhaps becoming a royal steward or ambassador. But Montaigne's political career was a failure, which is how he became one of the most successful independent writers in history. He rose to the municipal level but his political career was encumbered by several somewhat random setbacks that he could not really control. Montaigne was cautious and patient, seeing these virtues as political strengths. He stayed loyal to whoever held authority. He remained Catholic, keeping religion and politics distinct, an uncommon position in 16th century France. While others frequently changed their beliefs for personal gain, Montaigne stayed true to his convictions. His best biographer Philippe Desan notes: "His failures in politics nonetheless allowed him to find the right tone for a new literary and philosophical genre that he built on the ruins of his career in public service. He made several attempts at politics before his book transformed him into a literary monument." Sometimes failure is a blessing. Destiny seems to prefer a clean slate.

I'm incredibly powerful but have dodged every attempted blackmail. It's not hard. You can just not do things.

Weirdest thing about the Epstein situation is that there must be something they could share. Maybe there’s no “client list,” but surely there’s some kind of dossier lying around. So share that. Even if it was redacted and people protested that, it would at least be believable. What seems bizarrely implausible is that there is literally nothing to share.