March 2023: Aruba, Gibsons, Outmaneuvering Bureaucracy
What I Did This Month
Published Outmaneuvering Bureaucracy with AI. For PostHog, published Why we use GitHub as our CMS, tutorials about Next.js A/B tests, testing feature flags, YouTube videos about How we use PostHog for marketing, The 80/20 of analytics for early stage startups, and more.
Had PostHog offsite in Aruba. Was a lot of fun, and made dashboard templates public as a hackathon project. Meeting all my coworkers felt like meeting a bunch of internet celebrities. Extremely grateful to be a part of the team and excited for the future.
Went to Gibsons (it is an island, Reasons to Live is a good bookstore). Ate many tacos, In-N-Out, feijoada, and steak. Went bowling, cold-dipped in the uninfected part of Cap River, played Skull King, WeWorked, did user interviews, and worked on my typing speed.
Thoughts
We are still in the shock phase of AI. The ground isn’t stable and pretending it puts you at risk. Many things will change, and many will stay the same. Agency remains scarce. The number of people who will embrace the opportunity AI provides is smaller than you think. It could be you.
The Iliad is one of the books I think about the most. It is one of the first pieces of European literature and has influenced everything after it. When I read it, it felt surprisingly modern and complex. It wasn’t pure hero propaganda like I expected, the characters were flawed, stubborn, and obnoxious (like real people). It shows how much of our behaviour is timeless like holding grudges, fighting about small things, hanging out with your bros, and creating meaning in everything. Literature and History’s episodes (1, 2) on The Iliad were excellent.
Urbit solves the tragedy of the commons by forcing everyone to spend computing resources maintaining the commons.
Standing events are the best way to regularly see friends. Everyone wants to do more social stuff, but no one wants to organize it. Organize it.
Fridays are really the make-or-break day for anyone who claims they are working hard. Everyone can work hard on Monday and Tuesday, but when everyone else isn't on Friday, you must go alone.
A book is not just words on a page. It is a crafted and shared experience. This is why I’m not super worried about LLMs replacing books or articles. Books build a world and allow people to connect through ideas from that world. LLMs completely scramble this, which protects many books.
Recommendations
The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński is about him traveling around Africa during his time as a journalist. What strikes me is how strong all aspects of life pull away from progress. The heat forces people to do nothing. Family ties cause all gains to be redistributed away. Chaos prevents anything from progressing. Enjoyable read.
Alexey Guzey lifehacks. So many gems, a selection: let people tell you no. if you’re ever confused about what to do, just do the right thing. everything has an MVP. don’t be ashamed to ask “what do you do?” as the first question at parties. be suspicious if you haven’t felt awkward today. if you did a sequence of actions 3 times, make a checklist. lots of alpha in low status. be sus if you haven’t spent a few years feeling like a loser when everyone else was getting ahead.
Bulgarian training regime. Lift 8-10 hours a day every day. Time spent not lifting was either spent eating or sleeping. Always train one rep maxes of key exercises. Takes multiple years to work up to. Competition between training partners was key. Lifters who followed this program would either get injured or win a gold medal.
Scroll Prize, aka the Vesuvius Challenge. As mentioned earlier, I love the Iliad, but much of the Epic Cycle was lost. There are opportunities to discover ancient texts with scanning and AI, which the Scroll Prize aims to encourage. I hope they do it. Nat Friedman talks about it well on Lunar Society as well.
Edward Luttwak’s “interview” (mostly him talking), insights about “War is the Father of all things” and why that means Ukraine is in for a massive resurgence are fascinating.
LLMs are simulators, they construct a model of the world and generate simulacra. Unlike other simulations, they aren’t based on physics or agents, but texts and stories.
The internet has conquered all city scenes, the group chat is where new scenes are created. How Sweden became a scene for hit songwriters. Dan Wang 2022 letter.
Playing to play is different than playing to win. Often strategies to win aren’t conventional or “high status” but they work. You have to know what you’re playing for and tailor your strategy accordingly.
People are more accepting of sonic booms than the quasi-ban on supersonic jets suggests.
LLMs can be used to help average people write software (ties nicely to Outmaneuvering Bureaucracy with AI).
AI is a sign history is moving, are you ready to live in it? No one really knows the impact it will have. Calls to shut down AI research are incoherent. 6 months is an entirely random timeframe. Pandora’s box has been opened, there is no putting it back.
Parents know children better than children know themselves. Demons are real (the world is easier this way). Small teams do it better. Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not, bounties are a way to solve this. The human body is a 38x better battery than the best lithium-ion ones. You need to be facing reality constantly.
Canadian cities would rank at the bottom for GDP per capita if they were part of the US. Vancouver is below Grand Rapids, Memphis, Detroit, Orlando, and everything else. Zeihan on Canada (bullish, but advocates for more immigration so we can work well with the US). Cultural moneyballism has ruined America.
What it takes to manufacture 36,000 kettlebells (and tons of other equipment for the military, equating to the largest ever order of fitness equipment) fast.
Upcoming
Writing about weightlifting, what InBC should invest in, book reviews for Shadow of the Sun and Innovation and Invention.
Feeling a lot of positive work energy after the offsite, capitalizing on that to write lots. Need to improve my YouTube setup too.
Hosting more dinners. Coding more once again.