2025-12-12 21:38:35
My street has no public trash cans but each building has a domestic bin, so various people walking down our street throw their coffee cups or takeaway bags into our domestic bin. They're trying to be civic-minded and not just throw their litter in the street, and I'm sure I've done the same at times as well.
This would be fine in a place where the trash vans mechanically pick up your whole bin and dump its contents, but because we live in a city which (bizarrely) has a $14k per person municipal budget but where trash is still collected manually by hand, and where even just having bins instead of leaving out bags of garbage at the curb is a hard-won, cutting-edge innovation. Basically the trash collectors lean into our bin and grab the large bags of trash we put in there and manually throw them into the garbage truck, leaving the loose coffee cups and takeout bags behind.
This means that every week or two I have to upturn my own trash bin to pour out the loose contents into a whole new trash bag, which is a giant pain in the ass; it would honestly be easier for me if people just left their litter on my doorstep directly.
I am not sure this story is worth the time you just spent reading it, but it strikes me as a good illustration of how good intentions can lead to bad outcomes.
Many years ago, I came up with an idea for a new voting system that I called Proxy Democracy, which (in short) allowed you to proxy your vote to a friend instead of voting directly.
One noteworthy feature of this system is that it had already been invented, multiple times, by other people. But fifteen years ago it wasn't easy to find that out, because it wasn't the kind of idea that would necessarily be findable using any obvious set of terms.
I think in the old days you would talk to a knowledgable scholar in a given field and they would say "oh yes that sounds like so-and-so's work", but that's not easily scalable, and doesn't always catch repetition across disciplines.
You knew it was coming: I wonder if LLMs could solve this? And if this is just a special case of "better fuzzy search will save us a bunch of wasted effort, and we haven't really integrated that yet"?
I have a few friends who have spent/wasted significant amounts of time working on papers that it turned out someone else was already writing, and which they only found out about by (say) going to a conference 6 months into their work and meeting someone else who was clearly going to publish before they did.
This one is a little trickier because part of the problem is that the unpublished work is not yet searchable; I wonder if there's a way for people to submit their work to a registry in a way that doesn't reveal the work itself but allows other people to query and will tell them "before you write this paper, you should talk to so-and-so."
(Like many of my ideas, this is more of a social and organizational problem than a technical one – everyone would use it if everyone else did, but getting to that point is very difficult – and so a terrible startup idea unless you have the strange set of skills to get something like that off the ground).
Someone should do a psych study about how, when you get that warning that your laptop battery is down to its last 10 minutes, you can either go plug it in immediately or go "meh" and wait another 9 minutes, and then suddenly freak out and scramble to find your charger, and plug it in at the last possible second, and this behavior probably correlates meaningfully with life outcomes.
2025-12-10 21:04:39
The Greeks were right about Xenia: once someone gives you food, you become obliged to them.
For the Greeks, as I understand it, this was an explicit, ritualized set of obligations. Xenia involves more than just food, but sharing a meal is the ritualized act that seals the bond: once someone has eaten from your table, they are your guests and you both owe each other "guest friendship." In the Iliad, one of the reasons it's bad that Paris kidnaps Helen is that he was an existing guest-friend of Menelaus'; this meant the Achaeans were obliged to avenge the transgression of the kidnapping, not just permitted to.
But I think food-creates-obligation works as something more primal, beyond any codified obligations: if someone gives you food, and you accept it, you feel a meaningful relationship with them, even in a Zeusless modern society.
One time, on July 4th, I walked the streets of New York with friend-of-the-blog S. and was offered hotdogs and beers by a group of guys who had shut down their restaurant for the afternoon and were giving out free food to anyone who passed by. I don't know exactly what I owe those people but I think of them often and feel like I have a relationship with them that I wouldn't if they'd handed out free balloons. There is something deep and mystical going on here that far, far, far exceeds the cash value of the food, especially in this strange modern time where (for many of us, in much of the world), food is now plentiful and cheap.
I think a lot of corporations have figured this out to their great advantage.
I remember realizing the importance of all this while having dinner with a startup founder, whose company was in the process of screwing over mine. He was trying very hard to pay for dinner, including by making fun of the venture capitalists who had poured ridiculous sums of money into his enterprise and how he enjoyed wasting their money. I realized in that moment that there was an emotional weight to accepting food from someone that outweighs the mere financial cost: I turned down his money and paid for my own dinner, and shortly afterwards left his service to his great displeasure. I truly think that if I'd accepted his Xenia it would have been harder to do that. Trust the Greeks on this: food is a relationship, so don't accept free food from anyone you don't wish to be bonded to.
p.s. what should we make of paid food, i.e. restaurants? Does paying for the food entirely free us of obligation, or just lessen it? Are we alienating ourselves from a primal relationship in some way by making a potentially-sacred relationship entirely transactional? Your thoughts appreciated....
2025-12-08 21:57:57
While making my board game, I met another designer who was desperate to find more testers for their game, and asked me how I'd found people to test mine. I told them that (among other things) I'd found a bunch of testers by posting on a Facebook group and offering a $10 thank-you for people to spend 20 mins with me.
This other game-designer wrinkled their nose at this, saying it seemed expensive and unnecessary. I found this strange because:
I hope it goes without saying that if you can't afford to spend money on a project then that's completely valid, and the following argument doesn't apply to you in the slightest, but I basically think that some people (like this example game designer) living in big expensive cities while working on side-projects are irrationally under-investing. Here's how I think about it:
Again, none of this applies if you simply can't afford the spending, and I think there's a whole different category of problems people get into by over-spending on projects where they can't afford to, so I don't want to seem in any way to be encouraging that. But for the category of people who live in expensive places and have money in the bank but are trying to economize it, I think giving up development-speed to save money can be false economy. There is probably a more general mental move this relies on where you feel ok about converting time and money, in general, but I haven't figured that out yet.
2025-12-05 21:49:46
A little shameless self promotion: My annual list of things I learned in 2025 is here. Loyal readers of Good Tokens will have already seen most of these, but perhaps a curious person in your life might enjoy them.
Over regulation is hamstringing deep tech innovation. Real specific complaints, not just someone ranting about red tape.
Noah Smith on housing: “The true homeownership rate for Millennials at age 30 is less than 35%; for Gen X it was around 45%, and for Boomers it was almost 50%.” Also Noah on drones and the future of war.
How to get someone to leave a cult. Reminds me of Dr. David Burns’ work on relationships and communication.
There’s less pushback on the building of new housing when it’s beautiful. I definitely see this in Roswell where there is intense, almost blind opposition to building apartments but strong support for mixed use development from the people that are opposing the building of apartments. This paper helps me understand those people better and more graciously.
A long read on what it would take to revitalize the American industrial base.
How penicillin was discovered. It’s more complicated than the story that you’ve heard and yet still somehow increased my belief in the value of unguided experiments (play).
Extinction rates seem to be slowing across plant and animal groups — University of Arizona
New York, LA, Chicago, and Boston have all seen a more than 30% decline in the number of children under 5 living there in the past 20 years — Bobby Fijan
33% of Oregon public school students are chronically absent (missing more than 17 days in a school year) — Oregon Live. What are we doing here people?
Girls are now less likely than boys to say that they want to get married; the percentage of girls who say they want to get married has fallen from 83% to 61% since 1993 — American Storylines. Tons of other interesting information in here about the perceptions and realities of marriage. Also this anecdata:
To start off our conversation, I asked participants to raise their hands if their parents had ever talked with them about the importance of getting a good education and pursuing a rewarding career. Every single hand shot up. The response was identical in both the male and female groups. I then asked whether their families had stressed the importance of finding a partner or starting a family. No one raised their hand.
Nano Banana can make beautiful charts. I can’t wait to have an excuse to use this.
2025-12-03 21:40:32
After my previous Book Thoughts post, I met with a dear friend who said "I read one of the books from your post, it was the one you recommended not-reading." I thought this was really funny but also extremely relatable: somehow hearing someone tell you not to read a book makes it very compelling. I'm not sure what to do with this information.
Winner of the Hugo and Nebula and Arthur C Clarke Awards. I thought it was fine – didn't love it, but appreciate how hard it is to write something that's even-fine.
Afterwards I searched for a podcast episode review to see if anyone had interesting commentary / could explain what I'd missed, which lead me to this podcast called SFF Audio that was 10/10 incredible: they did explain a key thing I missed, and interesting perspectives on some of the details, while also articulating many of my own critiques and disappointments much better than I could, and also just giving a really cogent analysis of what makes different SFF books feel the way they do. Also they wasted ZERO time on small talk and just jumped into discussing the book! True heroes among podcasters.
This book is the first of a trilogy, and I found myself wondering what was in the latter two despite not-really having enjoyed the first one, so I went online and read a summary of them instead, to prevent any future temptation I would have to waste another N hours of my life. I assume some of you will find this strategy viscerally appalling but I personally recommend it, burn the boats and save your future self from bad decisions, make Thomas Schelling proud.
[Disclosure: I have a personal bias towards this book].
It must be crazy to be a guy who goes to an elite university and everyone actually thinks you're the smartest. Statistically most people who go to elite universities think they're hot, but are only-average in their new environment. Wittgenstein barges into Bertrand Russell's life/office, and pretty quickly Bertie is like "this kid is going to change how we do philosophy." How does that feel? (Admittedly Russell also went through phases of thinking Wittgenstein was an idiot, it's not as simple as I'm making out here).
Wittgenstein seems very arrogant/self assured, and willing to argue with his elders and/or betters, and I can't help wondering whether that's because he was a precocious genius or why he was able to be seen as one.
The first Culture novel. I have been meaning to get to this series for a while so I started here (book 1), but struggled to get into it. Then I googled and discovered that many people recommend starting at Book 2, Player of Games. So maybe I'll go do that. [Update: since it was still on my phone I eventually listened to most of it, but I'm not sure I should have. Banks is a very competent writer so the narrative is fun and compelling, but... life is short and you only get so many books, I wish I were more deliberate about what I start. As the monks say: Better not to begin; once begun, better to finish.]
Here's a tangential thought: could we start making more-altered audiobook adaptations of novels that were written for print? First priority is adding Greek-style epithets for characters, because it is far harder in audio (for some reason) to remember who is who. Ideally we'd also rename characters for the audiobook versions to give them far more distinct names, starting with different letters, but I understand that's a bigger ask. (This is all especially salient in science fiction, where you're supposed to differentiate the urK'tang, the X'tami and the Ak'ktan while listening at double speed, it's impossible. But if you at least gave them consistent epithets I would track it better....)
2025-12-01 21:06:51
I'm reading an 1854 edition of Scientific American, which is a thoroughly charming experience, it's got a very Progress Studies vibe full of 1) optimism and 2) specific descriptions of how mechanical things work. Also, the letters page is full of stuff like this:
Half Bricks.
We believe that a benefit would be conferred upon masons, if brickmakers would mould half-sized as well as whole bricks. Half bricks are often wanted for beginning and finishing rows, so as to have every alternate row break joint. To obtain these, the masons have to break whole or trim broken bricks. This occupies considerable time which would all be saved by half mould bricks, of which a certain number might be made for every thousand of whole bricks of the common kind.
This, to me, is a very relatable form of Thing: an idea for how something in the world could be better, that the author doesn't really have anything concrete to do with, so is writing to the newspaper about it to get it off their brain.
I figured the ATVBT readership would be exactly the type who would have these kinds of ideas in spades (complimentary), so please submit yours for publication in a future edition.
If you're very talented at something, much of the advice you get about it will be wrong. At minimum the public advice about the thing is likely to be not-written for you, and specifically to be written for the average person, so it might just not be helpful or relevant. For example, perhaps a lot of the advice is too simple or basic to be helpful to you.
But I think in many situations the ultra-talented should actually do the opposite of what most people should do, so the widely cited advice would be actively harmful for them. For example: most people who enjoy [singing/dancing/acting/sports] should not try to become professionals at those things, and a lot of advice for the average person should rightly advise about "how to get the most out of [thing] as a hobby while also working another job for money, because you will absolutely never make any money from doing [thing]."
But if you're actually truly top 0.1% aptitude at one of these skills, that advice might stop you from putting in the work that would allow you to fully develop your excellence, and therefore be exactly the wrong thing for you to hear.
It's not really clear to me how you figure out correctly whether you're ultra-talented at something vs just being deluded in your own favour, as many people are. But as I age I've seen extremely talented people whither away their aretḗ, which I think is a tragedy, and I wish they'd been given different advice 20 years ago.
One very helpful piece of advice I got is that anytime you do something you've been avoiding, you MUST immediately congratulate yourself on doing it rather than berating yourself for not doing it sooner/better/more.
You can literally give yourself a cookie, or pat yourself on the back, or just rabidly fight the voice in your head that's like "well FINALLY you did it. But if you'd done it three months ago then...." and replace it with a voice that says "You did it! Well done!"
If you berate yourself after doing a thing you've avoided, you're training your brain to associate completing this kind of task with being berated, and therefore increasing the likelihood you will avoid it even more in future. Bad, don't! (But if you've done this in the past, don't feel too bad about it, just congratulate yourself on not-doing it in future).