Type: Essays
All the posts of type "Essays".
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New Zealand as Mediocristan
If all you care about is avoiding the risk of ruin, New Zealand is a good place to be. The flipside is that there are also far fewer opportunities for transformative upside.
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Highlights From the Comments on AI Doom
My coming-out post on why I'm no longer an AI doomer seems to have struck a nerve.
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Why I am No Longer an AI Doomer
At the exact same time we're seeing a real-life explosion in AI capabilities, I've become much less worried about the prospect of doom. Here's why.
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The ‘Bias’ Bias: No, Your Brain is Not Made of Swiss Cheese
Most apparent biases are, in fact, perfectly good heuristics, and people are far more rational than we have been led to believe.
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Things that Surprised Me About the First Year of Parenthood
One year ago my daughter was born. This is the single most monumental thing to ever happen to me.
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Bro, Do You Even Lit? Why I Switched to Reading Fiction
Almost all my adult life I've been an infovore obsessed with hoovering up all the knowledge.
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Is Crypto Bullshit? Calling My Shots
Nothing in this arena can be taken at face value, which makes it unusually fertile ground for battle-testing your own critical thinking skills.
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Why Bitcoin is Not That Stupid
No, not even at these apparently ridiculous prices. Not even when financial illiterates are making grandiose claims about where it'll end up.
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10 Principles of Optionality For an Uncertain World
What is optionality? If you want a thorough answer, check out the big juicy book I spent the last couple of years writing.
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Happiness is a Greased Pig Chase
Happiness is a greased pig chase: the harder you grab at it, the more it squirms away. Here's what the happiness research gets wrong about the good life.
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Is Blogging Worth It? A Cheap Option for Attracting Serendipity
Blogging is an endurance sport. As Deep Dish's 4th birthday approaches—a million views, a thousand comments—I have a decent sense of whether it's been worth it.
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Make Frugality Great Again!
The modern practice of frugality has become a funhouse-mirror perversion of the original virtue. What happened?
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Kindly Stop Saying The Efficient Market Hypothesis is Dead
There are whispers that the efficient-market hypothesis is dead, or dying, or at least has a very nasty cough. But rumours of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
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How to Profit From Coronavirus
A black swan event unleashes destruction, but also opportunity. What would it take to not only weather this situation, but profit from it?
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Inevitable Coronavirus Post
If it costs nothing at all to mitigate a small chance of a big risk, then do it! Ignore anyone who makes fun of you for being 'paranoid', and don't wait for permission.
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The Embarrassing Problem of Premature Exploitation
Video games give you a clear pathway for leveling up into a muscle-bound hero, and impressing scantily-clad elven princesses with your Very Big Sword.
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Time Travel for Pleasure and Profit
Our meatsack bodies slavishly plod along at the precise rate of one second per second.
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2019 Spending Breakdown: The Year of Becoming a Fancy Bitch
After tracking all my expenses, I calculate that my lifestyle has inflated by 1.25x this year. Honestly... I’m kind of into it.
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Getting to 'Good Enough'
Time for some Reverse Life Coaching: a shared ambition to become less ambitious. Here's the plan for reaching 'good enough' (and staying there).
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An Interview with Alain de Botton
The British philosopher speaks out on the curse of fame, the cruel expectations of self-help, and why we're all "hellish propositions".
