Welcome to my first monthly newsletter! We’ll see how it goes — for now, it’s just covering what I’m doing and the world as I encounter it. If you know anyone who might have an interest, or perhaps should, you can tell them to subscribe.
Updates
Work — I’ve recently been meeting a lot of hidden Leverage supporters; it seems like there’s a lot of support that hasn’t come out into the open yet. That’s encouraging; the potential energy is now essentially all on our side. Also, we’re hiring, which is fun, now that I know a lot more about how organizations work.
Play — Had a birthday party, went to a gun range with some friends. Took some completely unsharable pictures. Found an absolute gem of a restaurant in Austin.
Art — I’ve been working on creative projects for a while now and these are beginning to bear fruit. The branding and design teams I’ve been working with are phenomenal. Preparing various written pieces for publication, and have myself been thinking a lot about yellow light, haze, and brushed glass.
Travel — Vacation in LA, stayed at a beautiful converted greenhouse (thanks R!), visited some fun and controversial places. Then Austin as part of city search for Leverage. Austin was extremely hot but very chill, basically a party town surrounding a university. Loved how friendly people were, “blue city in a red state” seemed to neutralize politics, which was great.
Reflections
Ideological strongholds — Ideas attract followers; those followers have resources. Much of the fight over ideas occurs at the level of popularity and visible power, and it is tempting to think that ideas are defeated when their popularity diminishes. However, the actual power of ideas is often intellectual, social, and ideological. Ideas that lose their followings, or that never had them in the first place, can thus continue to occupy ideological strongholds and emit influence for decades. Actually defeating an idea requires undoing the source of its power, even if there is no person remaining who holds that idea.
Diffusion of ideas — As ideas spread, they often ameliorate, lose their form, weaken. To understand what is happening with an idea, one must look not only at who holds the idea, but how the idea changes as it is adopted. In many cases there are serious barriers to the acceptance of an idea in its original form by a group; the challenge then is not causing the idea to spread, but making it possible for the idea to spread while undergoing the right changes and not the wrong ones.
News
Design —
Apple — Jony Ive ends his work with Apple. I’m only beginning to look into the design space, but I’ve thought of Apple with Ive as the king of the design world.
Neom — Designs announced for The Line. It’s the best instantiation of a future aesthetic based on the supposition that the present is functional that I’ve seen. Unfortunately it’s a resort, not a city. It would need a thriving underground culture to succeed, but will this be permitted?
Technology —
Image generation — AI-enhanced image generation goes big. with DALL-E Mini (now Craiyon), Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and others. Design, art, architecture, and related areas will be revolutionized through lowered costs of exploration and production. Tremendous creative energy will be released. This is a very good thing.
AGI — Kerry declares war on AGI. This follows some of his previous moves. This will be a challenge; people support AGI for all sorts of weird reasons. Luckily, the whole area has a ton of comedic potential.
Ideology —
Effective Altruism — EA mainstreaming continues, with simultaneous entrance into the public sphere and substantive retreat. Kerry lands a critique on Twitter, though there is pushback. EA holds a self-criticism contest; various people scoff.
Rationality — Scott Siskind backs off his accusation that Michael Vassar caused psychosis in the cases that came up during the Jessica Taylor CFAR/MIRI conversation. User Iceman completely nails the situation.
Micro-movements — Besides Effective Accelerationism (e/acc), I’ve heard of at least three other movements in the works. I think micro-movements make sense right now given the material conditions, actual ideological diversity, and coordination profiles of the people.
Other —
Crypto — Crypto signifies a long run bet against the system but for humanity, and that’s the right bet to make. Absent further investment theses, the move is hodl.
Recent Work
What’s Next
August-September — Back in the Bay, then Miami. Thinking about architecture. Reconciling with old friends? Publishing some writing, time permitting. But more, learning how everything old can be new again, which it can be. I feel it, and am sure.