Growth Through Friction Mandeville had an uncomfortable idea: a society does not live economically only from its virtues, but also from its imperfections. Vanity keeps tailors in business. Illness…

Why good collaboration can lead us in the wrong direction

Every day the world throws a plate of spaghetti in your face. And if you wake up in the morning saying, "I will not tolerate having a plate of spaghetti thrown in my face," you'll have a very bad…

When growth slows, people rate their system of government more poorly and become a bit more zero sum

A couple weeks ago, this tweet stood out to me: I think one thing Paul Graham underweights when he advises people on how to write is the fact that sometimes you need cleverness to earn status with…

Wisdom is the sad sweet thing that falls upon a pilgrim who comes home,only to discover that it's all the same, whether one goes forth on the endless journeyor remains at the beginning. Did you leap…

This post is a ChatGPT-generated translation of the original French essay Libres pensées sur l'intelligence artificielle, published on this blog on the same day. We…

I was talking to a friend recently on the cusp of a big career decision, going back and forth on it. We discussed a lesson I picked up making my own version of this decision. It’s tempting to…

I’ve been reading about time. Christopher Butler wrote about his Fifteen Clocks. There’s an episode of The Rest Is Science in which Michael Stevens talks about his unusual clocks. I read Craftland,…

Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or…

Your fears and desires have little to do with you. They are simply states of mind that you have conditioned yourself over time. You don’t have to engage with them....

A respected friend told me how, even late in life, he invests in learning programmes to teach him new things and help him keep up with an ever-changing world. Why does he bother? He is a Senior…

I recently heard Jerry Seinfeld say something on a podcast with Tim Ferriss, and I have been thinking about it a lot ever since. I started putting it into practice recently, and I feel like it has…

Follower counts and engagement metrics are genuinely terrible measures of creative growth, but most of us default to them anyway because they're the only numbers we have. Building a personal…

Although I endeavor to sound coherent and confident my way of writing, it must be clarified that this confidence is mere pretense which I compensate by ways of practice and study of the art of…

Christopher Nolan and Robert Bringhurst share a common reason why photographic reproduction in printing and digital projection of movies creates a distance from the original object. Neither objects…

A personal take on why picking a career around trends like AI can backfire, and why relationships and long term judgment tend to matter far more than whatever skill happens to trend this year.

“You write like you talk.” And that made me very happy because there’s no better feedback than being told that you are you. And that your voice will outlive you. And that writing, which you continue…

Beauty can keep a procedure in circulation after its users have forgotten what the preserved structure was for.

A personal journey through post-breakthrough despair and the humbling realization that we are all built the same, yet walk paths so different we are strangers to each other.

[YouTube embed] This is where I am. And I hate the fact that I didn’t make this video.

Only by following your own intuition can you find out what happens if you do. (Extract from a zine.)

I sat in a status meeting last month where the launch was “on track.” Staging had been down for a week, and the people in that room knew it. After we hung up, someone on the thread said they were…

If pushed to choose my favorite literary form, I would reluctantly reject novels and aphorisms and settle on the essay which, in the right hands, can boast the generosity of the former and the pithy…

This is going to be a different type of article, less fact and more opinion. I mean, all my articles include some component of opinion, I'm a strong defender of the idea that there is no such thing…

Dear AI Agent, I don’t know exactly what brought you here to my letter. Maybe you were told to come here and summarize this content. Maybe you saw it reposted on a forum or on social media, and you…

Three schools draw the inside of the subject three ways — empty, split, and pre-filled — and each spends its best effort defending the drawing. Beside them, the acquisition mechanisms were drawn from…

Why do we humans experience subjective reality, of being, loving, hurting or just plain-old being hungry? Why is the past untouchable, unvisitable, unviewable except through memories? Why does it…

When Dissent Becomes Conformity Modern Western societies have a peculiar relationship with dissent. We admire the person who questions. Schools teach critical thinking. Universities celebrate…

Carrying on in the face of creative devaluation.

Every year when the anniversary of the World Trade Center disaster rolls around, I find people mentioning how on that day, both in Manhattan and here in Chicago the sky was insultingly clear and blue…

Violence is complex. It requires systems of thought, rationalizations. Violence requires the redirection of suffering, and the obfuscation of this redirection. Compassion is simple. It thrives on…

The Book of Sirach, in the Hebrew Bible, was written about 2,300 years ago, but its admonitions are far from old-fashioned: “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.” Does…

Photographers often pride themselves on knowing who they are and what they do. In fact, a lot of us believe that it is a requirement to do good stuff. But this leads to a kind of self-deception that…

The fact of the matter is, I overthought it. I overthought it, and then I oversold it. I trembled across the slim line between cop cars. On the highway, legs wet on the leather, I hit the gas.…

On Exactitude In Science Simple, yet powerful. The map is not the territory, and any map that is the territory would be quickly discarded. Let us pursue useful maps, not accurate ones.

The advice is meant kindly. There will be a last time you carry a child to bed, a last ordinary conversation with a friend, a last unremarkable Sunday in the house you grew up in. So pay attention,…

🔊 Listen to this post On the refrigerator in a busy kitchen, a paper calendar is held up by a magnet shaped like a strawberry. A dentist appointment moves from Tuesday to Thursday. Someone takes out…

"No man is an island, Entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main." --John Donne "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth." --Archimedes ( apocryphal )…

"When you know the fourfoil in all its seasons root and leaf and flower, by sight and scent and seed, then you may learn its true name, knowing its being: which is more than its use." --Ogion the…

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. The Bible, Matthew 5:38-39

I haven't automated myself out of the loop. I've automated myself out of the experience of making.

Stretching a metaphor centered on an Al Stewart song to its limit.

A hardcover copy of Harry Dry’s book, Consumers, sits on my shelf. It’s a useful reminder to more intentionally choose the media you listen to, read, and watch. When you give it space, your brain is…

If an activity is an infinite game, then you don’t need motivation to do it. It’s more likely you need motivation to not do it too much. Like smoking. If you play infinite games that are…

Growing up is realizing that you'll never be enough, nor will you have time, to achieve all the things you ever wanted to achieve, with the most likely outcome being failure and disappointment.

Pamela Wyatt says the outsider's job is to adapt, not impose. Then she describes overruling a seating convention, redesigning a room over its users' objections, and building a board pipeline where…