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–Ari

Suppose you’re choosing between two chocolate bars: the premium one costs three times as much but tastes noticeably better. Which should you buy? It depends on the actual prices! If they’re $5 and $15, maybe it’s not worth the $10 upgrade. However, if you find them on sale for $0.50 and $1.50, it’s probably worth the extra dollar for the better chocolate. Same ratio, different decisions.

It’s tempting to just look at the ratio - 3x the price for less than 3x the quality, so get the cheaper one, right? This is a common mistake in economic reasoning. When comparing options, the relevant quantities are the absolute difference in price and the absolute difference in utility.

This bias is well-documented. In a classic 1981 study, Tversky and Kahneman found that 68% of people would drive 20 minutes to save $5 on a $15 calculator, but only 29% would make the same trip to save $5 on a $125 calculator. Same $5, same 20 minutes, different decisions. Your time is worth the same amount regardless of what you’re buying. The $5 saved doesn’t care what fraction of the overall price it is.

One exception: factor-thinking can be a useful heuristic when comparing unit prices across many purchases. If Store A is 20% cheaper than Store B on average, that’s a reasonable shorthand for deciding where to shop. But the decision still comes down to absolute difference: estimate your total spend, multiply by the factor, and that’s your actual dollar savings. That number, not the percentage, is the thing to balance against other considerations.

If you catch yourself thinking in terms of percentages or factors when comparing prices, stop and ask instead: what’s the actual dollar difference, and what else could I do with that money? And on the other side: what’s the actual difference in utility that I’m getting for that price difference? Both questions need concrete answers, not ratios.

Age 28. Friends of mine are starting to raise children, and they talk about how nothing has ever made them happier. Habitually, I claim I don’t want kids, but I do start to worry: am I making a terrible mistake?

My vasectomy doesn’t actually put the decision to rest. PESA and TESE Percutaneous Epididymal Sperm Aspiration and Testicular Sperm Extraction, respectively. bypass the severed vas deferens. PESA costs about $3k and succeeds about 80% of the time post-vasectomy, while TESE costs $6-10k with success rates over 95%. These days, if I were going to have offspring, I’d want to take advantage of modern genetic technology, embryo screening at the very least, and that means IVF. Sperm extraction adds very little to the overall cost of having children. I haven’t removed my option to reproduce, I’ve just ensured that if I do, it will be a very deliberate choice.

Am I Yearning?

I wish I had donated sperm before getting the vasectomy. It would be nice to know my genes were out there, without the commitment. Alas, I didn’t think of it before plunging ahead. I hope my brother has children. Abstractly, I clearly want my bloodline to continue.

I often reminisce about my own childhood these days. Is that just simple nostalgia, or does it indicate a desire to live out childhood again vicariously?

People tell me sometimes that I’d be a great dad. I agree with them! I think my own dad did an excellent job of raising me and my brother, and I’m similar to him in many ways, plus I have the benefit of learning from his distilled wisdom. Am I unjustly depriving the world? I’ve never bought into that sort of argument, instead taking the stance that people should simply do what makes them happy. All structures are temporary, all moments are eternal; I once again find myself referencing this idea without yet having written the post about it. I'd better elaborate soon. we ought to focus on living well, not on leaving a legacy. Is that true philosophy though, or just a sophisticated defence for childish dereliction of duty? Then again, having children out of a sense of duty sounds like a recipe for disaster. So, let’s leave duty aside and return to the pursuit of a good life, to the question of whether I’d be happier as a father. My dad tells me that I and my brother are his greatest sources of meaning and joy in life; if I’m similar to him, shouldn’t I expect fatherhood to be similarly good for me?

It’s psychologically important to me to have someone to dote on. I enjoy maintaining comfortable physical spaces, fostering strong social bonds, and creating delightful experiences, especially when it’s for someone I love as well as myself. Is this a proto-parental instinct, nurturance missing a target? Falling out of love after a breakup left a painful void in my soul. I find myself diminished for lack of purpose, in need of being needed. I’ve been throwing myself into providing for my community, offering to help friends where I can and organizing events to bring people together. Raising a family seems like a more sustainable outlet for this drive, and likely more rewarding as well.

What Would I Lose?

I derive a lot of joy from spontaneity, the ability to follow my desire and never apply self-coercion. I fear parenthood would take away a lot of that, pushing me into structure and routine I would need to force myself to follow. Jacob Falkovich once asked me, “what will you spend your optionality on?” (in person, but this post explores a similar idea). The question stuck with me, but I think I intrinsically enjoy the feeling of slack more than most people do.

I hear it’s easier than expected to raise children. A major factor in my reluctance to become a parent is concern that it would take over my life and prevent me from pursuing my other interests, but it seems that may not be the case. People raise kids and keep on doing cool and fun things.

I’m enjoying my freewheeling lifestyle, and I’m somewhat determined to live without returning to 9-5 employment. Traditionally, a man is supposed to have financial stability before starting a family, but I’m untraditional in many ways. Maybe I can settle down with a lovely career woman and be a househusband? Or maybe a standard career isn’t actually necessary at all to support a family. I’ve learned that option space is consistently larger than people imagine, and the economy is full of niches.

This is a key question for me. How much of my own freedom would I sacrifice, to bring new life into the world? The right limit isn’t “zero”, but it’s a good deal less than “all”.

Other Concerns

I was around a newborn baby the other day, at a party. My friends were cooing and fawning over it. I can see how they found it cute, I suppose? Mostly I just wished the conversation would turn away to topics I found more interesting. Most children are not babies, of course, but in my limited interactions with children, I am often bored, preferring the more sophisticated conversations I can have with adults. What if I had a child and it turned out I didn’t like it? Given what I know about evolution and the people in my life who have children, it seems likely a switch would flip to make me care for a child of my own. Even so, given how much I’m theorizing, I should probably run some experiments, helping friends with childcare and seeing how I feel.

So much can go wrong in parenthood. I feel deeply; if a child of mine died or otherwise encountered disaster, I could be destroyed by grief. Then again, maybe I should be grieving the children fear stops me from having. Besides, I’ve had romantic relationships end, and it has been very painful, but I’ve never regretted the relationship despite the pain. Experience teaches me that the vulnerability of grief is a worthwhile risk to take for the joy of connection; why should parenthood be different from romance, in this regard?

Leaping Into The Dark

Reading what I’ve written here, my reasons not to embark on the adventure of parenthood don’t seem very compelling. In the end, the reason not to have children is the same as ever: fear of the unknown. The decision of whether to become a parent is a vampire problem, irreversible and transformative. There’s no such thing as truly informed consent when considering undergoing a fundamental transformation. Non-parents don’t know what parenthood is like, and parents have had their values changed by the process. I’m happy as I am; would I be happier? There’s no way to know without trying, and no way to go back if I try and it turns out it really isn’t for me. I only get one shot at life, and either path could lead to regret, be it the absence of children, or the sacrifices I made for them. How am I to choose?

I Guess I Will, Actually

After writing the above, I put this post down for a couple months. I talked to some people, went on doing other things with my life, and let the ideas simmer. At some point, I realized my mind had changed, I do want to be a father. It’s hard to admit, after spending so long vocally convinced otherwise. I haven’t even told my parents yet; somehow, it feels easier to blog than to open that conversation. I’ll be sending them this post though. Hi Mom, hi Dad, I look forward to your calls!

I’m not in any rush. I’ve learned some lessons about prudence, after all, having to reckon now with my decision to get a vasectomy. I will start orienting my life in the direction of eventually having children, though. I’ll change how I filter in my search for a partner, expressing my interest in family-raising and no longer filtering out those who express their own. There’s the question of career as well. Traditionally, as a man, it would be my responsibility to provide financially. I’ve never been one to hold to tradition though, and while I haven’t been great at making money lately, I’m a pretty decent cook and handyman, and I excel at providing a warm caring presence and maintaining a supportive community. I’d make a fantastic stay-at-home dad, to complement a working mom with the competence and drive I find so attractive.

Why did I have a change of heart? Two big emotional shifts feel like the core drivers. First, I have a newfound sense of worthiness, a feeling that it’s intrinsically good for the world to be more me-shaped. Second, as I’ve gotten older and had plenty of fun, I’ve learned how meaning adds depth of happiness beyond what pleasure alone can provide, and raising a family feels meaningful, carrying on the grand story of humanity. Parenthood still raises a vampire problem, but I’ve ventured into the unknown before, and generally come out better for it. Besides, all of my ancestors took the leap; how bad could it really be?

Perhaps at some point I’ll write in more detail about my reasons for changing. For now, I’ll simply offer my thanks to some people I talked to who helped me think things through: my parents, who told me about their own journey of raising me and my brother, and about the doubts they didn’t let stop them; my uncle, who provided a balancing perspective with his gladness that he didn’t have kids of his own; and my friend Cyn, who prompted me to start questioning my long-held belief in the first place.

I don’t often get bored at home. There, I keep pretty busy. I think that boredom is the feeling that I can’t take actions that matter. When I’m home, there’s always something I can do. I can spend time with a friend, or improve my space, or cook, or work out, or walk around my neighborhood and maybe discover something cool. I don’t always have the energy to do another meaningful thing, but lacking energy doesn’t feel like boredom. When I lack energy, I sleep or I unwind with a videogame or book, aware that I have other options but choosing to engage in something more passive.

Here, isolated from my regular context, I have far fewer meaningful options available to me. I don’t have knowledge of the environment around me, and any efforts I spent improving things would be ephemeral, my results washed away by distance and time. I follow along from one meal with my family to the next, idly filling the time in between. I’m much more driven to quick dopamine sources like videogames, TV, and drugs (and not even the cool ones; man, I miss Berkeley). I pester my brother and his girlfriend for scraps of lively socialization. I remember feeling bored like this before, visiting a friend in another city. As my world narrows, I narrow with it. I become dependent on the attention of the people I feel trapped with.

I’m not literally trapped of course. As always, I have lots of options. It’s just that most of what I do here feels pointless. Abstractly, I’m bonding with my family. Minute-to-minute, that mostly means politely listening to conversation, occasionally answering a question or making a quip. The quips sometimes get laughs, and sometimes go over heads. I mostly choose peace over expression, quelling my frustrations. Sometimes I vent the frustrations through dry mockery. Sometimes my mockery is answered with offence, sometimes it passes unchallenged. It makes no difference. We are all family here, resolved to love each other. So long as I don’t do anything terribly egregious, which I won’t, it doesn’t matter what I do.

Boredom is an opposite of agency. It’s corrosive. It’s not actually true that I can’t do anything meaningful here; I am writing now, after all. However, because so much of my action feels meaningless, I become habituated to boredom. I readily reach for easy ways to idle away downtime, even when the time-passing activity doesn’t feel all that engaging. It’s like the difference between having Doritos as a flavor-packed treat among a varied diet, and having Doritos as my only source of sustenance. It begins to feel empty and unsatisfying, but for lack of real nutrition, I keep munching. In a vicious cycle, my lack of meaningful action saps my energy, and then even when I have unconstrained time, I usually don’t have the energy to take meaningful action. I’m in waiting mode, just trying to skip ahead to when I can return to my life at home.

It’s said that only boring people get bored. I suppose I am boring, in my current context. I’m muted, compressed. A nourishing environment is so important to the well-being of a human mind. We need to feel that the world responds to our choices, that our actions will have a persistent impact. We need to feel that we understand our environment and can make meaningful choices to begin with, rather than being shuffled around by forces beyond our control. I’m tolerating this boredom because I know that it’s temporary and it won’t be long before I return to my usual interesting life. If you find yourself bored routinely, change your context! Boredom is an emotional signal to take action. Discover something new around you, or take an action you usually wouldn’t, or move to a place that seems more fun. Always remember, you’re more free than you imagine, and you only get one life, so make it fun and meaningful!

When I started Halfhaven, I noted that one of the reasons to write is that it clarifies my thinking. However, I think this is also a source of my aversion. I tend to resist legibility in general, out of a sense that being too clearly understood will compress the soft animal of my body, restricting my ability to spontaneously flow through the world. Writing similarly compresses my thoughts, turning formless intuition into a defined sequence of words. This part of my aversion to writing is a microcosm of a consistent tension in my life, between the desire for the connection that comes from being understood and the desire for the freedom that comes from being enigmatic.

I never liked English class, back in school. Writing essays was the worst part of it. I’ve been very consistent in this preference throughout my life, I suppose. Why didn’t I like writing essays? Perhaps it’s because they were the school assignment with the least clarity of evaluation standards. I’m not being graded on my blog posts, and I’ve vocally pushed back against perfectionism. Nonetheless, I suspect some of my aversion to writing is an homage to the student I used to be, a lingering resentment of having to meet a nebulous external standard.

It may be that I don’t feel the purpose of writing. Writing requires dedicated focus at my computer, and that takes mustering. We can compare to another focused computer activity, playing Magic Arena. That intrinsically draws me to focus, as I enjoy the moment-to-moment. Writing is much less engaging for me; I write for the product, not for the process. Especially as I’m writing for my Halfhaven commitment rather than being driven by an idea burning to get out, the goal of writing can feel somewhat arbitrary. Maybe it will help to publish on Substack so I can more easily get feedback in the form of likes and comments; I’ve started mirroring some of my posts, but consistently doing so feels like one more chore in the writing process. Did you know Substack has no public API? In the year 2025?! Absurd. Anyway, one of the best things about writing has been hearing from people, both friends and new acquaintances, that they’ve read and enjoyed my writing. Perhaps I can keep that in mind as I write, motivating myself by imagining a future encounter with someone who read the post.

Two blog posts I read recently are somewhat relevant here, so I’ll mention them as further reading. I enjoy reading and do a lot of it, so I’m grateful for the abundance of writers in my world! I won’t necessarily praise their disciplined struggle, since as Ozy writes, they may not find writing hard, but I appreciate their outputs regardless! keltan writes about the importance of life experience for producing good writing. Writing about my experiences has sometimes worked for me, resulting in some of my longest and most widely-read posts. On the other hand, when I’m doing cool things, I generally don’t want to take the time to sit down and write. Writing about cool experiences does seem to change the blocker from emotional aversion to time constraints though, and one thing I’ve learned from my software engineering experience is that having a different problem is progress!

Thanks for reading; as always, if you enjoyed or otherwise got something out of this post, I’d love to hear about it!

The pattern is a sequence of thoughts that goes like:

1. I’m noticing my thoughts.
2. Wait, I’ve been here before.
3. My thoughts are cyclical.
4. I’m aware of the cycle of my thoughts.
5. My awareness of the cycle will fade.
6. The fading of awareness is part of the cycle.
7. *get distracted / relax into raw experience*

This writing, of course, does not do full justice to the phenomenology, both because words are in general insufficient to describe qualia, and because it’s quite difficult to verbalize while under the influence of nangs, so I am describing my sober recollections of the experience. Still, I think it’s interesting. One thing that’s interesting about it is that because I keep having this thought pattern, it’s a true observation about my thoughts! I’m not sure how accurate the perception of a cycle is on the scale of a single nangs experience, but in a longer term, I do indeed go through cycles of being aware of a cyclic pattern in my thoughts, followed by unawareness as my mind moves elsewhere.

I’m not sure when I first had this experience of nangs. Now, because it’s familiar, it sometimes takes on an ironic flavor. “Oh, this old thought pattern again.” However, that sense of irony itself gets folded into the notion of the cycle. “It feels ironic, but that irony is part of the cycle, and now I’m aware of the cycle, so it’s real. Later, it will feel ironic again, as I lose this awareness.” I wonder to what extent this pattern naturally arises from the the interaction of nangs with the structure of my mind, vs now arising because I expect it. (Is that even a meaningful question? It arose organically in me once, and now my knowledge of it is also part of the structure of my mind.) I wonder if now that I’ve described this pattern to you, it will be part of your experience of nangs (if you partake) as well, like a benign cognitive virus.

To wrap up this post, I’ll take a big hit with my editor open, and let nangs!Ari write whatever he wants. That may well be nothing, since often when I take nangs I just want to flop. Nonetheless, I create the container:

Wowowoaoaoaoaoawowowowwowo jfiasuhfuf fallllll wowww hard to type woobawoobawooba wooba flop

Thanks nangs!Ari, very eloquent. I did indeed flop onto a nice soft surface after typing “flop”, and that was that for typing while on nangs. Fun times!

How To Play

Setup

Obtain a deck of cards. If you don't have playing cards, you can use any set of identifiable objects that can be randomly drawn, such as a bag of differently colored marbles. Pick out a set of cards, one per player; it’s most convenient to use a continuous range. Make sure all players know which cards are in the set. Gather in a loose circle; you’re ready to begin!

Gameplay

Players take turns coming up with dares. Each dare involves one or more people in the group, but they are not identified by name. Instead, each role in the dare is assigned to a card. For a simple example:

the King kisses the Queen on the cheek

Once the dare is given, shuffle the cards. Each player draws a card face-down and looks at it. Players with cards involved in the dare reveal them, and then do the dare.

Optional rule: A player involved in the dare may take a drink and identify a card that hasn’t been revealed yet, to pass their role in the dare to the holder of that card. This procedure can be repeated until there are no unrevealed cards remaining.

Why It Works

So, why play Veil of Ignorance over a more classic dare game like Truth or Dare? I think the random dare assignment offers a few cool advantages:

• Fairness: In Truth or Dare, there can be some awkwardness when people want specific people In my experience, this is especially prevalent along gender lines. to do certain things. Like the original thought experiment, Veil of Ignorance forces people to confront the possibility of being on the receiving end of their decisions.
• Deniability: The flip side of fairness is that a dare can be given without revealing who the dare-giver might hope ends up doing it, which can allow for dares that would feel awkward to give to a specific person.
• Suspense: The randomization process creates little moments of suspense. After hearing a dare, everyone gets to wonder who’ll be doing it, hoping or fearing. Similarly, there’s a little bit of suspense after seeing your card in a multi-person dare, and when someone chooses a successor card with the optional rule.
• Participation: As well as every player being potentially involved in each dare, the format naturally allows for dares that actually involve multiple people. When my friends and I played, someone came up with the innovation of matching even cards with odd ones for dares involving the whole room in pairs. More fun for all!

I hope you enjoy Veil of Ignorance at future parties! If you have any ideas for improving it, I’d like to hear about them.

What does “too busy” mean?

When I was a wee lad, my dad (whose wisdom has previously been featured on this blog) told me something that has stuck with me to this day as a useful heuristic: instead of saying “I’m too busy”, say “that’s not my priority right now”. Being busy isn’t an absolute condition, it’s a decision about prioritization. I’m not going to write a blog post about my experience of CFAR today, because I want to use my evening to talk and play games with the other people at CFAR instead. That isn’t something I’m forced to do, keeping me from my heart’s desire. No, I’m willingly giving up writing that blog post, because I’ve decided it’s more important to me to talk and play games.

By reframing from “I’m too busy for that” to “I’m not prioritizing that”, we reclaim agency. We aren’t being prevented from doing what we want by outside forces, we’re making decisions about our values. When we switch frames to notice that we’re making decisions, we can start examining those decisions. Are the actions we’re prioritizing actually in line with our values? I can imagine saying “I’m too busy to write about CFAR today” and then spending four hours mindlessly scrolling Twitter, and that wouldn’t be a trade I’m happy with. By saying “I’m not prioritizing writing about CFAR today” instead, I prompt myself to think about what I am prioritizing. It might feel sometimes like you are bound by circumstance, but remember that you’re always making decisions. By noticing the decisions you make, you unlock freedom to align your actions with what you care about.

Halfhaven posts are supposed to be at least 500 words long. This one falls a little short, but there’s a game of Blood on the Clocktower starting and I prioritize participating in that over bulking out this post.

Orientation

The other participants and I, about 20 in all, arrived to the venue yesterday evening. After being greeted with a hot meal catered by a local restaurant, we settled into the cozy living room. The opening session consisted of several components, with different staff members trading off leadership and introducing themselves in the process.

First, we read two poems, line by line one person at a time, in order to “bring our voices into the space”. After reading poems, we played nameball: we passed a small ball around the room, and each time a person caught it, everyone who knew that person’s name said it together. I liked this way to play; it brought in nice elements of spaced repetition and social learning.

Having introduced ourselves, we were given a history of CFAR as an organization, and of how its conception of “rationality” has evolved over time. What started as a model of people with static goals trying to form true beliefs in order to achieve them, has evolved to treat goals as dynamic and incorporate a sense of "whoness". Or "self-authorship", "pride", "ego", "spark", on the theory that if you don't have a good term for a concept, try using several.

There was a brief talk titled “TIME”, situating the workshop in the span of life, the orientation in the span of the workshop, and the current talk in the span of the orientation. After that, three different instructors each presented a tip/request for our engagement with the workshop:

1. Be A Hobbyist: pursue our interests earnestly and deeply
2. Respect Authorship: understand and encourage the perspectives/stories of ourselves and each other
3. Try Things: have lots of experiences, so we can find and do more of the ones we like

A theme of the workshop is that this is the Center For Applied Rationality, so we do active practice rather than just listen to lectures. To this end, we were asked to write down “bug lists”: problems or areas for improvement in our lives. Later sessions would pull from these bug lists for examples of targets for the techniques being taught. My bugs are somewhat abstract, which works well for practicing some techniques and presents difficulties for others.

Finally, we went over some operational details for the workshop, several of which were about protecting the welfare of the two adorable kittens at the venue.

After a bit of freeform chatting with the other participants, I went to bed, earlier than my usual to accommodate an 8:30 wakeup for coffee and breakfast before the start of classes at 9:00 sharp!

Goal Factoring

The class starts with a hypothetical. Imagine you wake up one morning with a desperate craving to eat an orange. You make your way to the grocery store and reach to grab the last orange there, but just as you do, another hand grabs for it as well. It seems the stranger wants that orange just as desperately as you; what to do? Well, in this toy example, you can talk to the stranger and learn that they aren’t desperate to eat the orange. They’re desperate to make mulled wine, and just need the peel. You can both get what you want!

When you consider an action and wrestle with tradeoffs, goal factoring asks: how can you get all of the good? The technique of goal factoring is to break down what you want to get from an action, and then consider how each of those goods might be achieved independently with alternative actions. It may well be that if you consider why you want to do the action in more granularity, you’ll find that you don’t need to make costly tradeoffs in order to get everything you wanted from it!

Some technical details to keep in mind for goal factoring effectively:

1. Make sure that the goals you factor out of your action are relevant, resonant, and complete.
   • Relevant: if a goal you factor doesn’t seem like it’s actually important to you, strike it from the list! You don’t need to come up with alternative actions to achieve goals you don’t care about.
   • Resonant: does the goal feel like something the proposed action was actually going to accomplish? If not, that goal may be important to you and worth noting separately, but it doesn’t need to be part of the replacements for this action.
   • Complete: if you imagine satisfying all of the goals you wrote down, and you still feel resistance to dropping the proposed action, you probably haven’t factored out all of the goals. A successful goal factoring should feel like a way to get everything you wanted from an action, not like you’re begrudgingly giving something up.
2. Focus on positive goals: what you want, not what to avoid. You can write down an action that achieves a positive; it’s much harder to come up with an action that on its own avoids a negative. Also, this accords with the general heuristic to focus your attention on what you want to see more of.

For the applied portion, I did a dual goal factoring on “get a job”/“stay self-employed”. I didn’t get very far into it before the session ended, with an incomplete factoring and very few ideas for alternative actions, but it was an interesting exercise and I may continue it later.

Trigger Action Plans

Trigger Action Plans Or Trigger Action Patterns, when constructed less deliberately. (TAPs) were presented as “assembly code for the mind”. TAPs are the low-level habitual nudges that make up our day-to-day decision-making. Much as an amoeba follows chemical gradients towards food and away from toxins, we follow our TAPs.

As the name suggests, a TAP consists of a trigger and an action, each consisting of a single mental chunk of complexity. For instance, “a person sits next to me” -> “I move my things to make space” or “I get out of bed” -> “I brush my teeth”. Both the trigger and the action are concrete and immediate, happening at the level of habitual action, not reasoned planning. Note that this implies that by chunking more complex concepts, we can form more effective TAPs!

By understanding TAPs and being more deliberate about which TAPs we install in our minds, we can harness their power in several ways:

• to form a routine, set up a consistent trigger for the action we want
• upon seeing someone do a cool thing, For example, intuitively choose just the right tool for a carpentry task. figure out the TAP that led them to it
• to uninstall a harmful TAP, install a new TAP with the same trigger to replace it, rather than just try to not do the action
• when something goes poorly, come up with a TAP to prevent the failure modes in similar situations
• install TAPs to coordinate with yourself across different cognitive contexts

I really like this concept and I’ll add it to my collection of useful jargon going forward, but I struggled to use it effectively during the applied portion of the lesson.

Inner Simulator

Each of us carries powerful mental machinery for simulating the world. We have a sense of what would surprise us, and we can form detailed “mental movies” when we imagine hypotheticals. By imagining the future, we can use “pre-hindsight” to get a detailed story of how things might go. This inner simulator can be very useful for making effective plans!

The technique of planning with the inner simulator, cheekily named “Murphy-jitsu”, runs as follows:

1. Select a goal you want to achieve.
2. Write out a plan. This should be a list of concrete steps that you can visualize in detail.
3. Imagine that in the future, you learn that your plan failed. Are you utterly shocked to learn this? If so, you’re done!
4. Given that your plan failed, use pre-hindsight to figure out what went wrong. This is what the inner simulator immediately visualizes having gone wrong when you imagine learning that the plan failed; your job at this step is not to brainstorm a list of possible failures.
5. Come up with a way to bulletproof your plan against the failure you imagined, so that it no longer feels plausible to imagine.
6. Return to step 3.

I really like this technique! In the practical portion, we paired off to plan together, and with support from my friend Ricki, I used Murphy-jitsu on my goal of “publish a blog post today”.

I found that much of the value of the technique was found in listing out these concrete steps! Breaking down my vague intention to blog into visualizable actions made me feel much better about my chances of succeeding, before I even started bulletproofing the plan. As it happened, the session ended before I could finish the iterative bulletproofing process, but I did simulate a few points of possible failure.

Reference Class Forecasting

There’s a well-established cognitive bias known as the planning fallacy; people reliably underestimate the duration and budget a project will take. To counter this, we can use a technique called “reference class forecasting”. In reference class forecasting, rather than imagine the details of a project, we look for a “reference class” of similar projects and use their outcomes to guide our estimates. Reference class forecasting involves a few steps:

1. Find a reference class. Look for similar projects that have been done before. The more similar to your project, the better! The gold standard here is a routine task you have personally done many times.
2. Get data from the reference class. This might involve looking up statistics, or just asking people who have done similar things how long they took.
3. Assume your project will have similar outcomes. For large-scale, important projects, you can do serious statistics and get information like mean, median, and N-percentile time to completion, but usually this is overkill. If you have a very good reason to think you are a special case, you can apply a corrective factor, but remember that others in your reference class may have also thought they were built different and fallen prey to the planning fallacy.

While reference class forecasting was presented in the context of project planning, it was noted that it can also be used for other types of predictions.

Reference class forecasting can fail when:

• an event is a one-off; similar things haven’t happened before
• it’s unclear what the proper reference class is for an event
• data about outcomes in the reference class is secret or otherwise unavailable
• your reference class is fictional; stories are biased by narrative demands and don’t present an accurate picture of reality

I found it interesting that reference class forecasting is, in some sense, the opposite of the inner simulator technique. One says to ignore your specific details, the other says to drill into them. Each is useful for its purpose; inner simulator for making solid plans for action, and reference class forecasting for predicting outcomes even when you don’t know much about the details.

On top of the well-established technique of reference class forecasting, CFAR has developed a more experimental technique called reference class hopping. If you use reference class forecasting and find that your predicted outcomes aren’t great, what can you do? Take action to shift your reference class! For instance, move from the reference class of “people who take a test” to “people who prepare extensively for a test”. This feels pretty common-sensical to me; stepping away from the jargon, this sounds like “do things that make you more likely to succeed”.

Multiple Hypothesis Testing

We went for a walk on the beach and were asked to pair up, notice something, and form multiple hypotheses about it. My partner and I noticed that some of the logs on the beach had flat ends. Some hypotheses:

1. Some natural process flattens the ends of driftwood.
2. Some industrial process releases cut logs into a river.
3. People bring logs to the beach to use as benches.
4. Lumber falls off of ships transporting it.

I don’t know that I learned much from this session, but it was pleasant to get out in nature and walk around and observe things!

Who-Friending

This session was pulled straight from How To Win Friends And Influence People, with the twist that the techniques of being kind, appreciating and pointing out people’s contributions, and validating people’s pride, were applied internally as well as interpersonally. More could perhaps be said about this session, but frankly I’m very tired and want to wrap up writing this post. Be nice to people!

Dinner and Pair Projects

Dinner was provided by an “artistic chef” from Chicago, and quite tasty. I chatted with him a bit and I’m looking forward to getting to know him better, given my own interest in cooking! After dinner, we paired up to work on projects. Most worked on physical projects, including disassembling a trove of old electronics that CFAR provided for educational purposes, but Ricki and I both wanted to work on the digital projects that we had planned earlier: she on some web development for Arbor Trading Bootcamp, and I on this very blog post. Writing this has kept me occupied since then, so that’s all I have to say for now. Time to get some rest, as I’m sure the second day will be just as packed with learning!

I actually have some ideas for topics to write about, but I’m not feeling driven to write the posts in full tonight. For instance: my initial foray into cooking professionally; the app I made to turn prose into song lyrics; and some reflections on privacy, since I’ve been posting pretty vulnerably lately.

Some of my thoughts here may also turn out to seed longer posts later, who knows?

I’ve lost 40 pounds since I started taking tirzepatide in January! That’s pretty crazy. Friends have commented on the noticeable change in my look.

The US government is crossing red lines. For instance, building concentration camps, suppressing political speech, and ramping up to use military force against protests. I don’t know what to do about this, but it at least bears mentioning. I went to a Holocaust museum today, and “Never Again” is ringing in my mind. I hope things don’t come to that, and I hope if they do I have the courage and capability to do something about it.

It feels hard for any thought to follow that one here, but life must go on despite the world’s problems. My grandmother just turned 90! That’s cause to celebrate, and that’s what we’re doing. It’s nice seeing my more distant family for the occasion.

It’s really interesting how music can set an emotional tone in the background. I’ve always liked having a soundtrack for life. My Everyday Shuffle playlist has a wide range of moods, and I often find myself skipping around to find a song that hits just right.

I’m gonna participate in a CFAR workshop in November, thanks to a friend’s recommendation. That’s pretty exciting! I wonder what I’ll learn.

Something I’ve been thinking about for a while and still haven’t settled on a good balance for: remembering things vs recording things. I have a good memory, and if I remember something, it feels accessible, whereas a record may simply sit around doing nothing. On the other hand, I have hit the limits of memory; records are more reliably durable. The ideal scenario would be to have records of everything AND remember the most important/frequently-used things. However, creating records costs time and effort, where internal memory is basically free. I reference this clip decently often. Trying to just remember things is more fun, but less effective in the long-run. But also, it’s nice to be able to just pull up a memory instead of digging for a record. Like I said, still figuring this one out.

I want more close friends in Berkeley / the Bay Area. I’ve seen people complain about the shallowness of the culture, but I think that’s just a skill issue, and I’ll develop close friends with time. I want friends whose homes I can casually drop by and whom I can go to for support in hard times, and who expect the same of me.

A lot of people have grand ambitions and stress about them. I think it’s so important to have fun, and I want to help others have fun too. Our lives are blinks in the history of the universe, and our legacies not so different. Let’s have a good time of it! That said, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized the fun that’s possible in doing ambitious things. Just make sure it’s for the right reasons! I’ll repeat here what’s become my motto: love people and do what makes you happy.

Alright, that’s a wrap for today. Let’s get this posted. Hoping to write some more substantial posts soon!

Dear Ari2022,

Things are going great for you right now. I’m really happy for you, and I know you are too! That’s good; gratitude is important, and the good things in life should be enjoyed and celebrated.

But. The worst times in our life have followed the times when we thought we had it all figured out. I’m still young and foolish, but I’m a little less young and foolish than you, and I want to warn you of two traps the good things will tempt you towards, and give you some miscellaneous bits of wisdom I’ve picked up over these three years.

The Trap Of Complacency

The first trap is complacency. Things are going so well, you’ll feel you can stop here and just enjoy them. Rest is valuable in service to other pursuits, but if you make rest a goal and always avoid effort, you’ll corrode over time. Always keep growing. Make sure you have people in your community who inspire you, not just pleasant company. Being smug about how great you are feels nice, but you need role models to learn from. On that note, go visit Berkeley. I know you’ve been resisting the call of the Bay because you know it’ll draw you in eventually and you’re stubbornly putting it off. Well, I do live here now, and I wish we’d moved sooner. Do enjoy some mangos before you go though. We've been totally spoiled, they're just so much better in the markets of CDMX than in the grocery stores here. It’s where our people are, and community both takes time to build and compounds on itself.

Also man, lay off the weed. You can’t see from the inside how it’s hurting you, because weed makes you feel like everything is ok. You don’t have to go totally cold turkey, but I recommend getting it out of your home. It should be an occasional treat that enhances your experience when you go out and socialize, not an always-available comfort that entices you to stay in. You don’t think of yourself as ambitious because you don’t want to change things at world scale, but you do want things from life, and you forget that a little bit every time you get high.

You didn’t hear it from me, but you’re gonna get laid off from work pretty soon. You’re gonna feel unmotivated to start applying to jobs, and want to take some time off. Consider trying a radical pivot to something other than software engineering! Just because it’s what you’ve always done, doesn’t mean it’s still right for you. Start considering soon though. Transitions take time, and that comfy pile of savings you’ve got is gonna start dwindling. Much better to have it available as runway and capital for trying a new thing, than to spend it down and then find myself scrambling.

The Trap Of Attachment

The second trap is attachment. The good things are so good, you’ll be scared of losing them. You’ll want to hold on tight, to stop things from changing. It won’t work. Everything is temporary regardless, and your clinging will damage the things you hold precious. Instead, trust that life will keep bringing you good things, and keep moving forward to meet them. Also, beware of grand visions. You know what I’m talking about, lover boy. Take things one step at a time. You have a lot of life ahead of you still; you don’t need to rush. Again, trust in yourself and in the universe. You don’t need to try so hard, the good things aren’t so fragile. Embody your values, and don't focus too much on particular outcomes. Right, I can't remember, do you still think of yourself as a consequentialist? Value ethics is pretty great actually. The world is too complex for you to control, but you can always aim to be good. Just keep being yourself and let the world rise to meet you.

You have a forceful personality and a talent for argumentation, so you can be very convincing. Use this power wisely! If someone you care about tells you what’s important to them, listen carefully. Your life is going well and you feel very confident, but you don’t always know what’s best for others. In particular, I know you want to have your friend close to you, and you don’t see why that should wait (and deep down, you’re worried about her slipping away from you if you let go). She tells you she needs independence; trust her and let that play out. If something is meant to be, it’ll happen without you forcing it.

Bits Of Wisdom

I think you’ve started figuring this out already, but pay attention to your body. You aren’t just an abstract intelligence that happens to have a meat robot. You’re an animal with a very sophisticated control system. Notice your breath and the tension of your muscles and the beating of your heart. Also, I regret to inform you that strength training really is as beneficial as people say; get on that.

All of your feelings are ok. You’re allowed to be sad; people will still love you if you aren’t always happy. You’re allowed to be horny; women often appreciate expressions of desire, and a bit of discomfort isn’t such a terrible thing.

Mom and Dad have your best interests at heart and a lot of hard-earned wisdom to share. Keep them updated I'm still working on this. and seek their counsel on life’s big decisions.

Life is complicated, there are a lot of things to balance, and sometimes you’ll mess up, but you’ll be ok. Just keep paying attention and learning, and let this guide you: love people and do what makes you happy.

Love, Ari2025

Some background context: my friend broke up with me around a year ago. I had expectations for the future, a vision for our life together. I’m sad about losing those. I didn’t want to be sad. I clung to her for palliatives to keep the sadness at bay: sex, time together, reassurances. The pressure hurt her. I started trying to push the sadness down so I would stop hurting my friend.

The other night, while spending time with her, something triggered an unexpected wellspring of emotion in me. I excused myself and left, to avoid making my feelings her problem yet again. As I walked home, the feeling manifested as rage. Rage at my circumstances, at the path that had led me here, and at myself. In a cruel irony, I was angry at myself for not being chill. Even so, I was tired of acting reasonable. Something had to change. I was going to make some Bad Decisions that night.

The confusion and rage and turmoil started boiling over. I wanted to break something or hurt someone, but I have a lot of practice controlling myself. Even as I deliberately let myself go, I kept the damage contained. I punched a tree until my knuckles bled, the violence and pain grounding me. I got home and started drinking, vodka left over from a party, straight from the bottle. My thoughts started turning toward self-harm, and I took the outside view. I called my brother to drive over and supervise me. His girlfriend came along as well, having accepted my condition that she was ok with me being scary. I finished off the vodka and rambled to my housemate as I waited for them to arrive. When they did, they took me out to a scenic viewpoint, far from any other people. I stepped out of the car and let loose a primal scream into the night sky. I raged and ranted and cried and writhed on the ground. I puked until I was empty. My brother took me back to our dad’s house, and set me up on the couch with a water bottle and a trash can. I quickly fell into a dreamless sleep.

When I woke up, the rage was gone. In its place, only sadness remained. As I lay there, sadness washing over me, I noticed something interesting: I was ok. The sadness was just sad, not bad. So, here’s my theory of grief. My sadness needed to know it had a voice, that it was allowed to exist. I showed it that safety by handing it the reins, letting it drive me for a night. In turn, my sadness rewarded the trust I showed it. I had feared that I needed to be happy, but when I let go of control and allowed my sadness to express itself freely, it turned out my fears were unfounded. I showed the worst of my grief, raw and wild and vulnerable, and I was still ok and loved. The process wasn’t pleasant, but I hadn’t broken anything important. Like turning to look at the unseen monster in a nightmare, my sadness became much less scary once I let myself fully feel it. When I stopped thinking of sadness as something I had to avoid, it stopped feeling painful to be sad.

Sometimes I’m gonna feel intensely, and that’s ok. I’m unrequitedly in love, and I’m sad about that. I don’t need to act to change that feeling, there’s no problem to be addressed. It was never my sadness that hurt me or my friend, but our attempts to avoid it. Here’s the really cool thing: if I don’t need to not be sad, I also don’t need to avoid what makes me sad. I can stop trying so hard and holding on so tightly, and dance through life with my heart unburdened. I won’t get everything I want, and I’ll be sad about that, and that’s fine. If it comes down to it, there’s always vodka and howling at the heavens. I’ve been there before, and I’m ok.

Thank you, grief. I’m sorry I spurned you for so long. Sadness is welcome in my heart.

More Vignettes

Saturday

I wrestle with a friend of mine as onlookers play music on a Bluetooth speaker: first Duel of the Fates, then Careless Whisper. It’s a hard-fought match, and we both get sweaty and scraped up. At one point, I have him in a headlock, but inexperienced as I am, I worry about hurting him and let up. After the bout, he calls me out on this, saying that he likely would have tapped out and given me the win if I had followed through. I reflect on the parallel to flirting; it’s hard to go for what I want if I’m not sure I can trust my partner to enforce their own boundaries.

I try the circling workshop, since I’ve never circled before and I want to know what the hype is about. I find it pretty boring. I’m already in the habit of openly noticing things, and I’d rather reflect on events outside of the circle.

I go to a “live cam show”, two women on stage with a menu board of actions the audience can tip for using tokens distributed at the start of the session. I know both of the women involved, and it’s fun to see, although I’m less aroused than I expected given my usual voyeuristic tendencies. There’s an atmosphere of camaraderie among the men (and few women) watching the show, as we joke around and pool our tokens for the more expensive tips (e.g. face-sitting). One of the actions on the board is “request a song”, and a friend of mine puts on a song so good that I and several others ask him for the link.

I’m very excited about the clothing-optional hot tub, that having been one of my highlights at Vibegala earlier this year. I love being naked with people, and I love being in liquid. I get in during the day, for less time than I’d like as I need to dry off for my volunteer shift, and again for some time at After Dark. While I have cheerful, friendly conversations with my soupmates, I enjoy the sight of beautiful naked women. I don’t even notice at the time, but looking back, I’m very happy with how comfortable I’ve gotten with such presence, letting my eyes wander and feeling no shame about it.

I don’t wear any underwear to After Dark, After Dark was the "afterparty" on Saturday night. so that if I have a boner, it will be obvious. My plan is for this to be a special, one-off thing, but I really enjoy it, and I stay commando on Sunday. I always wear comfortable pants, inspired by this Aella tweet, so I don’t need underwear for protection, and it feels very free. Maybe I’ll make a habit of this. My sexuality is a part of me, and I don’t want to conceal it from the world.

I get a little overwhelmed by the influx of new people at After Dark, and wander over to the check-in desk to offer some company to the flirtee I know and like on check-in duty, who’s eagerly waiting for her shift to end. When it does, we make a beeline for the bar, and I “buy” her a drink with one of my three allotted tickets. She also finds the crowd overwhelming, so I take her up to a rooftop for some quiet, intimate conversation. To be continued in my reflection on emotional connection…

Sunday

One of the security guards was quite friendly towards me on Saturday, saying he’d noticed me helping out around the venue. Chatting with him over coffee, I learn he didn’t realize I was a volunteer. It’s my job to move things around, set up furniture, and be ready to respond to any miscellaneous tasks that come up in the volunteer Discord channel or by direct request from an organizer. The recontextualization is pretty funny to me. I do love feeling helpful, but I’m volunteering for my entry to SlutCon, not just out of the goodness of my heart.

I participate in a workshop on “Navigating Non-Verbal Consent”. I seek out one particular flirtee in the workshop; I liked her vibe when we said hello on Friday, and I haven’t had a chance to interact with her since then. I sit in front of her and stare into her eyes, and run my hands along her arms, shoulders, cheeks, neck, and chest. She gives me the feedback that my reads were good and I backed off appropriately, but I seemed a bit rushed and could have verbally clarified at certain points. For instance: she moved my hand to her hair and would have been happy for me to pull it, but I was uncertain and didn't do so. That makes sense, considering the workshop involved a three-minute timer and I challenged myself to use no words at all.

I’m sitting next to a pretty woman in a group around a firepit, and another man wants my seat. He asks me, “could I talk you into switching seats with me?”. I’m wearing a flirtee wristband that I picked up earlier, and decide that rather than just give him what he wants, I’ll have some fun giving feedback. I point out that he didn’t actually ask me to switch seats, and question the motivations behind his hesitance. There’s a strong parallel to flirting; he wants a seat from a man rather than a kiss from a woman, but the dynamics are largely the same. It’s a fun conversation for all involved. He practices asking confidently for what he wants, I observe that I’ll likely give him the seat but I’m enjoying the will-they-won’t-they tension, there’s some discussion of whether I should ask the woman how she feels about the swap (I’m against; I’m the one the man is asking to move, and here at SlutCon of all places, I trust the woman to defend her own boundaries if she doesn’t want him next to her). Eventually, I get up to leave for a session that’s starting. Another man in the group slides into the seat as I do to keep the conversation rolling, eliciting a deep laugh from me as I walk away.

I wander out of “How To Be Attractive To Autistic Women”, having already internalized that I should be openly whimsical and not hide my weirdness. I walk by a small group talking about smoking a joint, and ask if I can join them. We find a corner of the venue and light up, then chat for a bit. I wander over to “Listening To Women” and enjoy sitting back and relaxing as the stories and perspectives wash over me. I’m always so curious about women’s experiences with men, the other side of the dynamic. There are so many Types Of Guy out there!

I go to a hair braiding workshop. I’m on shift, so I can’t actually participate since I might need to jump up at any moment, but I enjoy learning how brushing and braiding hair serves a practical purpose as well as feeling intimate. I braid my friend’s hair later to practice. It’s a tricky task that would be a lot easier with an extra pair of hands; yet another benefit of polyamory!

Night has fallen. I get out of the hot tub, towel off and get dressed, and start cuddling with some friends. There are string lights glowing overhead, and ambient happy chatter. I feel so much love for and from the people around me, and gratitude for the path that led me to this place. Life is good.

Reflections

Emotional Connection

I’m realizing how important emotional connection is to my sex drive. At SlutCon, surrounded by beautiful women in a context where it was fully safe to make my desires known, I found that what I really wanted was… to get to know a few specific women I found especially interesting. In a cuddle pile on the last night of the con, I groped and fingered a woman I barely knew. That experience was cool and novel, but not especially satisfying or arousing.

In contrast, the highlight of SlutCon for me was a hookup at After Dark with a woman I had several friendly chats with over the first two days (“Mary” in my vignettes). I got to know her perspective on the experience as a flirt girl, and we bonded over some of her stories of the more egregious advances men were making. She told me a little about her life at home, the empathy she developed for men’s flirting struggles in her experience at a lesbian bar, and her crush on Nina Hartley. The physical activities of the hookup were quite similar to those in the cuddle pile the next night, but the connection made it so much more fun, charged with passion from the release of the tension we’d been building. I was intensely turned on as I kissed and fingered her, hard and grinding, and I stared into her eyes when I made her come. Afterwards, I held her close and we kept talking and joking. She left for home on the last night of the con, and I miss her.

For a lot of my life, I didn’t distinguish between “she’s hot” and “I’m attracted to her”, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, that caused a fair bit of dissonance. I used to worry that I’m unattractive because I’m not having as much sex as others in my community, but having heard a few times that I didn’t need to be at SlutCon, I’ve realized I’m pretty great at seduction when it comes from my heart. Nowadays, I’m paying attention to what I want instead of what I expect myself to want. It turns out I’m attracted to people, not bodies, and I need time to warm up to someone before I can happily jump into being sexual with them.

Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy

A major misstep of mine at SlutCon was during my microdate, when I said I thought the model was the most beautiful person there. It was a true expression of my internal state at the time, and a big part of my goal was to just say true things, so I can’t be too upset about it. However, it was clearly a blunder, to no one’s benefit. Most obviously, as a public statement, it gave the women in the audience cause to feel worse about themselves, and made it harder for me to flirt with them later. On top of that, it wasn’t helpful in my active flirting with the woman in front of me! It put her on a pedestal, decentering myself and putting pressure on her. I think this kind of comparison-based compliment is basically never the right move, at least for me and people similar to me. In retrospect, a much better thing to say would have been “you’re so beautiful that my eyes are drawn to you every time you’re near” (which I had in fact told her privately earlier) or “I’m enticed by your cute, bubbly energy”. These are just as true, but don’t put down anyone else, and center my reaction (emotional, alive, sexy) instead of pointing to a hierarchy (thinky, crystalized, unsexy).

A couple women have expressed to me that they felt hurt by my statement on stage. I feel quite bad about this. Feeling bad this way is a signal that I’ve done something out of alignment with my values, and here, it’s clear where the mismatch lies. Avoiding comparison is a special case of a more general heuristic that has always served me well: Be Kind. Comparison necessarily involves an unkind judgement of someone, and that sort of thing leaves a blemish on my soul.

Specialness is important. I’m pretty selective, so a woman I’m interested in must be special to me somehow, and I want her to feel that. However, comparison to other women is Not The Way. Indeed, while comparison is a popular cultural script for expressing that someone is special, I think it’s really quite diminishing. If the person I’m with is so special, why are my thoughts with her about others? Instead, the important thing is to share what it is I find so special about her, expressing how I feel with my full attention present.

I Love Attention

Some experiences I reveled in:

• going to the men’s fashion talk and being used as an example of good style
• being pulled into multiple conversations people were having about style afterwards
• being on stage in front of the gathered attendees of SlutCon, and hearing repeatedly afterwards how great I was
• introducing myself to a microcelebrity (40k twitter followers) and learning that she also knew me by reputation
• being thanked for setting the tone and told that I helped a lot of men
• seeing tweets about me after the con ended

An experience I did not revel in:

• being on the edge of a cuddle pile with attention focused on the lovely women in the middle

I really enjoy being known and perceived. I want eyes on me, and space in people’s minds. I feel like my community as a whole is aware of who I am, and it’s fantastic! I’m enjoying watching Twitter follows roll in from strangers. I used to say I wouldn’t want to be famous, focusing on the costs. I’m starting to reconsider as I begin to feel the upsides.

Vulnerability

SlutCon was mostly a fantastic time for me, but there were a few low points, mostly centered around figuring out my relationship towards my friend I used to date. It feels hard for me to admit this. I got a lot of positive feedback about being publicly happy, so it’s scary to show my more vulnerable facets. Authenticity is just as important for the negative as the positive though; clamping any of my feelings makes me a less whole person, not just clamping desire. Also, asking for what you want makes you more likely to get it. In one of my weird headspaces after a conversation, I simply went up to a woman I had flirted with a bit during the weekend and said “hey, I’m in a weird headspace, can I squeeze your boobs?”. She said yes, I did, and it cheered me up a lot. Similarly, the day after SlutCon, coming down from the connection-filled high of the weekend (more on this in the next section), I was feeling delicate and in need of cuddles. I ran into the woman I knew from the non-verbal consent workshop, told her I was feeling delicate, and asked if I could rest my head on her shoulder. She said that was perfect, since she was feeling similarly, and we had a nice, calming cuddle session. I found it pretty easy to express desire during SlutCon; I’m much prouder of myself for my willingness to express fragility.

Gentle Dominance

I know I’m not submissive, but I’ve been unclear for a while on whether I’m dominant. It’s clear now that I am, with some nuance. Much of my confusion stemmed from my lack of sadism, which often goes hand in hand with dominance. I enjoy seeing happiness in the people around me! But pain is not the only thing one can impose. I am good, and I have power to shape my world. Mine is a gentle, caring dominance: you will feel good, physically and emotionally, because that is what I want and I will make it so.

A special case of this gentle dominance is imposing my vision of people’s goodness onto them. Several of the women I talked to had lower self-esteem than they should. One of the women I was most attracted to at SlutCon told me she didn’t believe it when people said she looked good. Another, whom I kept seeking out for charming conversation, routinely called herself a bitch. This simply will not stand. It’s really disheartening to delight in someone’s presence and have them try to shrink away because they think of themself as unworthy. I’m undertaking a personal mission: I will make women like these see themselves as beautifully as I do. The earnest compliments will continue until morale improves (and also after that)! Women have told me I’m too kind, but they’re invariably wrong about that; the truth is they deserve more kindness!

The Comedown

I felt really down for the few days after SlutCon. I’m writing this section on Thursday, and I still feel it somewhat. The weekend was a transcendent experience, full of connection with my heart fully open. Being myself is the easiest thing in the world, and SlutCon made it very easy to be myself, so it’s not that I felt drained (although I was very tired, having gotten very little sleep for 3 nights). No, what I felt was raw. The thriving connections of the weekend had dispersed, leaving my open heart to scrape against the quiet of life at home. I love being surrounded by friendly people, and the change was drastic. I sought out whatever connection I could find, trying to taper the withdrawal. I felt an undirected sadness; there was nothing to point to as bad, but my body wanted to curl up in bed and cry. I went back to the venue, helping out with cleanup but mostly just to find company in the other stragglers. I leaned on my best friend Cyn, both literally and metaphorically, and was very glad of her presence. I wrapped myself in warm cloth and cuddles and drank hot tea as the cold rain mirrored my emotional chill. The next day, as I felt the micro-heartbreaks of fleeting connection, Cyn shared some feminine culture with me, and the ensuing ice cream helped soothe my woes.

It was especially nerve-wracking waiting to hear from the women I connected with at the con. I’d given out my phone number to a few, but per the rules, hadn’t asked for theirs. In my fragile emotional state, doubts started creeping in. Did I do something wrong? Were they not as into me as I thought? These connections were real and important to me, and the idea that they might have been ephemeral sparks contained to the weekend was painful to consider. Luckily, my worries were unfounded. They had their own comedowns and reintegrations to handle, and by Wednesday, I’ve heard from each of them. We carry on friendly conversations, processing SlutCon together, and those local to the Bay express interest in my event invitations (and one very politely declines my brazen invitation to hook up). Some tension in my soul relaxes. I tell one that the comedown feels like waking up from a wonderful dream, and she responds beautifully: “Just because it was a dream doesn’t make it not real.”

Miscellaneous Reflections

A few people told me I didn’t need to be at SlutCon, because I was already doing things right. I came to the same conclusion by Saturday morning, but I didn’t know that going in. It was interesting to learn how much skill I hadn’t been giving myself credit for. Also, regardless of any question of need, SlutCon was simply a ton of fun, and as a volunteer, it cost me nothing to go, and I love being helpful to my community!

Much as I want to connect with someone emotionally before getting too physically intimate, I want to escalate gradually. I’ve heard tales from women I know about men who are focused on getting penis in vagina, and I just don’t get it. Foreplay is great! It’s fun in itself and it makes sex more comfortable and fun. Escalating physical intimacy gives me a chance to discover how I feel and notice whether I actually want to step things up, whereas moving too quickly can feel like I’m forcing myself into an expectation.

SlutCon was a fantastic experience, full of openness, authenticity, support, and love. Huge kudos to the organizers for making it possible! I’m already looking forward to next year’s.

Whew, this post was a doozy to write. I hope you got something good out of it, and I’d love to hear your feedback! Join the conversation on Twitter or share your thoughts with me directly.

I go to a talk on men’s fashion. The presenter points to me as a positive example, someone she would see and be intrigued by. This makes sense; I’ve been getting a lot of compliments on my cloak and matching dyed face hair.

I talk with the women at the check-in desk about flirting. I express doubt in my skill. One counters that I flirted so skillfully earlier that she simply described me when another man asked how to flirt. This is news to me.

I’m somewhat smitten by a woman named Jade. I tell her she’s so pretty she draws my eye every time I pass by. She seems very excited about this, but I’m on an ops mission and can’t stick around.

I attend a panel of commentary on porn, by the porn stars. Jade is one of the panelists. She describes the oddity of controlling her face to look good during sex, instead of making her usual orgasm face. I find her after the panel and repeat her humorous description of her orgasm face, and tell her I’d love to see that. She gives feedback on my flirting: “ooh, nice”.

Jade is assisting with part of the opening ceremony. Nick calls for a volunteer to go on a micro-date with her on stage. I’m the fastest to jump up. He asks how I feel about her; I answer truly that she’s the prettiest person on campus. He asks what I want to do with her. I say I want to kiss her, then when pressed for more, that it might be fun to have sex with her. Later, I’ll think of many more things I could have said, but in the pressure of the stage, my heart pounding with the nervousness I mostly don’t show, I draw a blank creatively. He asks what I want Jade to do with me. I answer that I want her gentle attention, and Nick prompts me to ask or command for specifics. I tell Jade to come closer, and tell me something she likes about me. She compliments my cloak, saying she’s been noticing it since the con started. I ask her to put her hands on me, and she declines. This is fine, of course. I tell her to describe what goes through her head when she imagines touching me. She says she feels a lot of attraction from me that she only somewhat reflects, and worries about my ability to handle rejection later if she touches me now. I address both her and the crowd when I say that I can handle a no, to please feel free. Nick steps in there, to affirm that everyone here can handle a no, and I sit back down, still hazy with adrenaline. My friends sitting next to me tell me I did great. Many others will repeat that sentiment over the course of the evening, men I don’t know coming up to fistbump me and tell me how impressed they were. The taste of celebrity feels fantastic. Later, I run into Jade, thank her and say it was awesome, and we hug.

I’ve been enjoying some nice chats with a cute woman named Mary. A friend reminds me that the opening ceremony assigned homework: for each man to ask to feel a woman’s boobs. I tell Mary I’ve remembered this and ask her. She accepts! She’s delightfully soft under her lacy crop top.

I ask Martha how her day is going. She’s made out with three people. I ask if she wants to make it four, and we do. She’s a decent kisser and wears a delicious lip balm. I ask if she wants to cuddle in the squish room. She declines for now.

Still craving cuddles, I find Sal, who I met during setup volunteering. She’s in a conversation with three men. I interrupt to say she’s cute and ask if she’ll join me in the squish room for cuddles with no further expectations. She’s happy to, so off we go. We have the room to ourselves, and cuddle and talk for a little while. She’s wearing a mask, and I ask if I can see her face. She declines, but offers to show me her ass instead. It’s a great ass, and I ask to touch it. The texture is lovely, smooth and firm. We cuddle some more, and I comment that I can feel myself getting more attracted to her. As she gets ready to leave for the night, I ask to touch her ass again. “Squeeze it, spank it, do whatever.” I give her a light spank and she challenges me to hit harder. I push her forward onto the padded floor, pull up her dress, and give her a hard whap that elicits a sexy moan. She really does need to get going unfortunately, so I walk her to the gate and wish her a good night. I reflect that I considered asking her to get naked, but it slipped my mind. I think it would have gone well if I had. Oh well, I expect there will be more opportunities.

I return to the common areas and find Martha again, and I sit by her side in the group. She mentions her sore shoulders, and I offer a massage. I can’t see her face from my position behind her, but the guys who can want to know what I’m doing. She says my massage is somehow healing her trauma. Eventually it’s time for her to head home. I extend an offer of more massages in the future and blow her a kiss goodbye.

I go find an old friend by a fire pit. I sit across from her, and she asks if she can cuddle up next to me. I happily accept; the familiar intimacy is a nice comfort after the thrilling day I’ve had.

You don’t need anyone’s approval. You may want others’ help in shaping the world, and there are various means to secure that, but you don’t need anyone Not even me, I'm just reminding you in case you've forgotten. to tell you that you’re good. Other people or abstract societal forces may have tried to convince you that you’re bad, because you don’t align with how they want the world to be. Block out the haters. Their vision for the world is not your own, and your own taste must guide you. Take up space and impose your goodness on the world around you. It’s possible your vision will bump up against others’, and you can figure out how to conflict or compromise as needed, but don’t preemptively make yourself small for fear of offending.

Making the world more beautiful may take some hard work. So be it. Aversion to work is evolution’s answer to metabolic scarcity, but you aren’t starving, conserving energy while you wait to be rescued or die. Food is abundant in our world, so eat well and use that energy to work for what you care about. The muscle must strain, the mind must plan. Gather resources and tools, build up your power to make change. Rest when you need to, but rest is not the end goal. Entropy always increases, but to stop pushing it away is death. So long as you live, feel the fire roaring in your heart and keep shaping the world around you into the things you care about.

You are good, so love yourself and your vision. Go forth and make the world in your beautiful image.

I’m not obligated to write, of course. I don’t really believe in the concept of obligation. I hope to do a high-effort post on this at some point. For now, I recommend Nate Soares’s writing on the matter, which heavily influenced my own view. No, I don’t have to write, so why am I doing so even though I don’t feel like it? Well, I want to follow through on Halfhaven. I’m looking forward to the feeling of pride about my 30 blog posts at the end of two months. I’m against self-coercion, but sometimes hard or unpleasant things are good to do. The trick is to remind oneself of why one is doing it. For a while, I just didn’t do hard things, and it turned out that only doing easy things wasn’t a recipe for happy thriving. Ever closer to my dao!

Isn’t this sort of low effort post just to technically follow through on Halfhaven against the spirit? Eh, I don’t think so. Lower the bar. Better to write something to honor my commitment rather than think about putting in a bunch of effort I’m not feeling up for, then write nothing and fail out of Halfhaven after two posts. This keeps me in the habit of writing at all; writing well can come later. As the parable of the pottery class teaches, quantity leads to quality.

Ok, that’s 269 words. Over halfway done! Now what else can I say here? How about some ideas I have for future posts:

• What is a “hivemind”, really? Why despite sci-fi presenting it as scary, becoming part of a large mind is great actually
• Some of my strategy heuristics for Magic and maybe other games as well
• An ad for my new personal chef business
• A write-up of the web app I made for generating song lyrics from prose
• Thoughts on externalizing cognition, both practical and philosophical
• All structures are temporary, all moments are eternal

A few I probably won’t do for Halfhaven, because they’re important to me and I want to put a lot more writing effort in than I typically have available in a two-day span:

• My mindset of “no rules, only consequences”
• A retrospective on being addicted to weed for a while
• My feelings on having children

If any of these seem particularly interesting to you, or there’s something else you’d like to read from me, let me know! You as a reader have influence over the content of this blog, should you choose to exercise it.

459 words. Man, this takes me back to grade school. I always hated those 500-word (or however long) essay assignments in English or History class. It feels a lot better now that I’m doing it by my own free choice though, and there’s no pressure of being graded on the result. Also, it’s an interesting marker of how much my writing skill has developed over the course of life. 500 word essays used to feel like big hard tasks. In contrast now, even though I may grumble that I don’t feel like writing, it’s really pretty easy. I started writing this less than an hour ago, and I’m basically finished. I guess there’s also a factor that an hour is less of a big deal in my current circumstances than it was when I had a full school day followed by homework load from various classes. Well, anyway, cheers to growth, to things getting easier so we can do more!

Alrighty, it’s done! Honestly, I’m surprised you read this far. Minimal edits, then I hit publish and get on with my night.

Lighthaven, my favorite place in the world, will be running Inkhaven, a month-long residency in November aimed at growing people into great writers. Apart from support in the form of advisors running workshops, Inkhaven provides a commitment mechanism: publish every day, or be kicked out of the program. I won’t be participating in Inkhaven. The price is beyond my means these days, and I’m not so committed to writing that I want it to be my main focus for a month. However, I do want to write more, or at least to have written more. So, when my friend keltan told me about Halfhaven, a less-intense and free version of Inkhaven’s peer group and commitment mechanism, I decided to give it a try.

The premise of Halfhaven is simple: each participant will write 30 blog posts, just as an Inkhaven resident would, but over the course of two months, with a requirement to publish every other day instead of daily. Instead of gathering in person at Lighthaven, we gather in a Discord server where we share links to our writing. Halfhaven started yesterday, so that our two months conclude with 30 finished blog posts at the same time as Inkhaven.

In theory, this should have been my first Halfhaven post, but it so happened that I was inspired to write about another topic first, and I’ve learned to follow my inspiration when it strikes!

Why Write?

It’s said that writing is thinking. Putting an idea into words clarifies it, shoring up gaps that weren’t obvious just from turning it over in my mind. I also like talking with people for the same reason, but an oral conversation is limited by the working memory of the participants. Writing expands my context window, letting me express ideas that my head can’t hold all at once. By making a practice of writing, I sharpen myself.

Writing is durable and accumulative. I was having a conversation with a friend recently where I mentioned that I often find the process of writing aversive. Nonetheless, when we looked at my website, there were several blog posts there. It was a nice feeling, and I’d like to continue building up this edifice. I want my ideas to be out in the world. This is all the more important with the rise of LLMs, as having published writing makes me part of the corpus that builds the soul of thinking machines.

Most importantly, writing is a search query. My writing is necessarily a reflection of the particular contours of my mind. By publishing, I increase the surface area for my best-matched people in the world to find me. As always, if you find my writing interesting, I encourage you to reach out!

I think the cadence of a post every other day will be somewhat difficult for me, but I’m optimistic I can pull it off! It’s been four months since I wrote my note on writing quickly, and I haven’t put it into practice much since then. Halfhaven will be a great forcing function for me to exercise the skill of non-perfectionism.

I was low on energy today, due most likely to some mix of poor sleep habits and the drain of ongoing emotional processing. Whatever the cause, with the clock approaching 7 p.m., I found myself lying in bed, ruminating on some issues in my life and staring at the overdue “Exercise” on my to-do list. Luckily, when the inspiration struck that I could solve both problems in one fell swoop, I still had enough motivation to get up and give it a shot. I grabbed my bathing suit and a towel, and walked down to the gym.

I’ve always loved being in water, even just like, standing in liquid. I like the coolness on my skin, and the gentle resistance as the water flows around my motion. I’m not a great swimmer, but efficiency doesn’t matter when cardio is one of the goals. I dunked my head under, swam a few laps, and treaded water for a while.

My main goal in going to the pool was to escape my thought loops. Reader, it worked like a charm. The brain is, first and foremost, a control system for the body. There’s less capacity for thinking when instead of lying still in bed, I’m engaging my limbs in complex motion. Stillness is not an option, while treading water. To stop moving is to drown. I didn't stop thinking entirely, Indeed, I started mentally composing this essay in the pool, including this very digression. but I did break out of my unpleasant rumination. I told a friend once that one of my main coping mechanisms for unhealthy thought patterns is to simply MOVE. Change my setting, use my muscles. I don’t always succeed in applying it when I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole, but when I do it consistently helps.

My experience of literal motion in the pool is an apt metaphor for motion in life, I think. You need to move, lest you find yourself in unpleasant and unproductive cycles. Your brain will always find a way to engage itself. Channel it towards what you value, so it doesn’t find more destructive outlets on its own. Treading water has a metaphorical meaning as well as a literal one, of course. Survival, effort going towards just staying in place. As I mentioned, I swam some laps as well as treading water. I found both activities to be similarly helpful in breaking me out of my rumination. It’s ok if you aren’t moving forward, so long as you’re moving at all. If all you can do is survive, then survive! But when your survival is secure, beware of the comfortable bed you’ve made. Push against the world and engage the capabilities you have, or risk finding yourself unhappily idle.

As always, reverse any advice you hear. Many people are in motion too constantly, leaving no time for reflection, and perhaps someday I’ll write a post about the virtues of stillness. However, with my accepting disposition and comfortable environment, I’m more likely to fall into the trap of idleness. If you’re like me in this regard, I exhort you to move, in both the literal and the metaphorical sense.

Lower the bar for ideas

As I’ve previously discussed on the blog, it’s possible to write more by writing worse. I’m publishing this rough collection of tidbits and references, rather than publish nothing because I haven’t written “enough”.

You underestimate how interesting your ideas are because they were generated by your mind. Other people don’t have all your context, so what seems obvious to you may be novel to them.

Lower the bar for events

Showing up is all it takes to create a community.

A friend of mine once told me a story of an event he put on. He named a time and place for a board game meetup, then arrived late and forgot to bring any games. Some attendees brought games of their own, good times were had, and as the event ended, people came up to him to express their gratitude for organizing the event!

Lower the bar for skills

It’s easier than people think to get good at a skill.

If you’re really interested in something, you might become a world-class expert in it basically by accident.

Lower the bar for introductions

Our brains are calibrated for small tribes where everyone knew everyone, and being disliked could mean death. Now, almost everyone is a stranger, and if one person or group dislikes you, you can just move on. The upside potential of meeting a new person can be arbitrarily large, and the downside risk is much smaller than we fear. Overcome your natural fear of rejection, and say hello!

Success is just math.

Lower the bar for flirting

Flirting is a collaborative game. Have fun with it, and invite others to join in the fun. If they aren’t interested, that’s fine! No harm done, just move along to find the people who do want to play.

Men: women want sex too.

Women: just ask people out.

In these last few years, Really, as a cascading project that started over a decade ago. however, I’ve become far more social. As I’ve poured my efforts into becoming gracious and gregarious, the parts of my mind that were thrilled by programming have moved aside to make way for new passions. I haven’t forgotten the skill of writing code, but I’m no longer drawn to it.

if you're a programmer your job is literally rewiring your brain to be more logical and machine-like. if you're a doctor you're developing perfect associative recall. if you're a financier you're becoming well attuned to the idea of risk until you see it everywhere.

— roon (@tszzl) June 5, 2022

This rewiring hasn’t been for nothing, of course. The effects of my growing interest in people have been drastic. I find friendly interactions everywhere I go, and I’m blessed with a wide circle of friends. I bring good vibes, emotional support, and a steady upbeatness, and people are vocal in their appreciation. My less-extroverted friends sometimes find themselves baffled by the way my social battery seems to never run out. Just as I can spot an error in code, I can spot subtle emotional expressions in people, and gently maneuver social situations toward happiness and comfort. My spiritual connection to what I do has shifted from logical, machine-like thinking, to emotional embodiment and intuition for relationships between people.

My community brings me great joy in life, and I’m glad I’ve developed my social skills. However, I’m out of work, and I haven’t yet figured out how to monetize my new flavor of insanity. I have full faith that I’ll find a niche, My leading contender right now is event operations generalist. I'm intrinsically interested in making great parties happen, and a lot of the work involved is just knowing the right people and talking to them, which I love doing anyway. On another possible path, I have a lot of fun cooking food that people enjoy! but in the meantime, being broke sucks. I can’t live where I want to, travel without depending on others, afford the luxuries I used to enjoy, or be spontaneously generous to my friends as I wish I could. Love is all I need, but it sure would be nice to have money as well.

The modern economy is set up to reward specialization, and I think it’s a great system. Nothing about my situation is unjust; indeed, I’m privileged to have enough slack to take time to find work I’m aligned with. The incentives are working as intended, to push me to find ways to be more directly productive. However, I do believe I bring real value to people’s lives, in a diffuse, non-professional manner. I also think, in this transitional period, I could do more of that with a little more money; an Uber here, an event ticket there, letting me show up more and bring my classic cheer and readiness to help out.

That brings us to the eponymous topic of this post: why I made a Patreon. The direct inspiration came when my friend Aaron bought me a ticket to Vibecamp, a community event I was excited about but otherwise priced out of attending.

I'm still unemployed, which means in theory I could go to Vibecamp, but also means doing so would be fiscally irresponsible. Anyone want to be extremely cool and get me a ticket?

— Ari Zerner (@AriZerner) June 4, 2025

Just days after I posted that, Aaron approached me to express interest in making it possible for me to go. This was incredibly generous of him, I had a fantastic time at Vibecamp, and I’m very grateful. It also got me thinking: if one person showed me such generosity, perhaps you’ll want to as well. You might appreciate my community impact, want to enable my authentic lifestyle, take interest in banking my goodwill, I certainly owe Aaron a favor! or simply feel a sense of noblesse oblige.

If you want to give me money, whatever your reason, I want to make that easy for you. That’s why I set up a Patreon: to reduce the friction of showing appreciation with financial support. Thanks to my family, I’m at no risk of finding myself homeless or hungry; there is no dire need here. However, if you find value in supporting me, you can do that right now: just click here!

I thought I hated mushrooms, but yours are making me reconsider.

– My brother

Mushrooms are one of my favorite ingredients to cook with, bringing rich umami flavor and a delightfully meaty texture to dishes. Because they can be so delicious, it makes me sad that so few people seem to get them right. I’ve seen even nice restaurants serve pale, watery mushrooms, which is a travesty, especially when the fix is so simple.

Mushrooms are fungi, not plants. Culinarily, this puts them about halfway Source: I made it up. Are you here for scientific rigor, or delicious mushrooms? between vegetables and meat. Cooking mushrooms like a vegetable doesn’t let them live up to their full potential.

For some reason, every recipe seems to call for adding onions and other vegetables before mushrooms. WRONG. Mushrooms contain a lot of water, and it’s important to give the mushrooms some alone time in the pan to let that liquid cook off. Otherwise, the liquid will interfere with the sautéing of the other ingredients, rendering them soggy, and you’ll undercook the mushrooms for fear of overcooking the other ingredients. Cook the mushrooms first, and don’t add other ingredients to the pan until the mushrooms stop releasing water. A generous sprinkle of salt added along with the mushrooms will help draw out the liquid, as well as enhancing their flavor.

Once the mushrooms stop releasing liquid, continue cooking them until they start to brown. A bit of a sear adds depth of flavor and texture, and mushrooms are quite sturdy. There’s a big window between ready and overcooked, so don’t be afraid to let the mushrooms cook! Once the mushrooms are a bit browned, it’s finally time to add other ingredients alongside them. The mushrooms will happily sit in the pan and absorb the delicious flavors as they develop.

Cook mushrooms first, with plenty of salt, and enough time and heat to release their liquid and start browning before adding vegetables to the pan. You’ll be rewarded with rich flavors and tender textures that are sure to impress!

1. Ask questions.
2. Share information.
3. Use simple sentences.

Ask Questions

In an uncertain situation, you’re missing information about the other person’s internal state. You want to know what they’re thinking and feeling. Instead of wondering and guessing, you can just ask! The other person has more insight than you into their experience, and will often be happy to tell you about it.

Asking questions can be scary. We may fear embarassment from what the question reveals about our own mental state, or offense if the question seems presumptuous. I’m not going to tell you these things are impossible, but the clarity gained by asking questions is well worth the risk, and people will likely appreciate your curiosity about them.

Share Information

Just as you wonder what your interlocutor is thinking, they don’t have all the information about you. To help clarify the situation, you can just volunteer what you’re thinking and feeling! This contextualizes your questions and actions, removing some ambiguity. Remember, no one is a mind reader. What’s obvious to you about yourself is often not obvious to others.

Use Simple Sentences

Compound sentences have fewer interaction points. Consider the difference between:

1. If you’re interested, I’d like to get drinks with you. (compound)
2. I’d like to get drinks with you. Are you interested? (simple)

In the compound sentence, there’s no explicit opportunity to respond. You haven’t actually asked them what they want! They might take the initiative and tell you, or they might just feel pressured to go along with your stated preference. The simple sentence structure creates a clear space for the other person to tell you about them. Separate your questions and statements. By clearly prompting responses, you get more clarity about the other person.

Recommended further reading: As I was writing this post, Cate Hall published this post on the related topic of skillfully naming interpersonal issues.

Feeling overwhelmed by endless beauty advice? Confused by 12-step skincare routines and wondering if you really need to contour your way to attractiveness? You don’t.

This guide cuts through the noise to give you the essentials - the 20% of effort that delivers 80% of the results. Whether you’re a complete beginner or just want to streamline your routine, these fundamentals will have you looking and feeling great without the overwhelm.

Note: The health and hygiene sections apply to everyone. The styling sections focus on women’s fashion since that’s my expertise, but the principles can be adapted.

Why This Matters

Let’s be honest about what we’re really after here. Beauty helps you secure romantic partners, sure, but it’s bigger than that - people just LIKE you more when you’re beautiful. They’re friendlier, more helpful, more likely to give you opportunities. It’s not fair, but it’s true.

This guide focuses on the physical side because that’s what I know best. But there are tons of other ways to get those same returns - the likability, the attraction, the doors opening. Wearing something unusual that gives people an excuse to talk to you (a patched up battle-jacket, interesting earrings, hell, even a cape!). Being genuinely interesting - having good stories, funny observations, being up on what’s happening. Bringing homemade cookies to work. Having skills people admire. Being the person who remembers names and asks follow-up questions.

The beauty stuff in this guide is just one tool in the toolkit. But it’s no excuse to slack on the others.

Part 1: The Universal Foundations (For Everyone)

These basics transcend all beauty standards - whether you’re punk, preppy, or somewhere in between, these fundamentals matter.

Your Health is Your Glow

The big three: Sleep, water, movement. That’s it.

• Sleep: 7-8 hours consistently beats any concealer for tired-looking skin
• Water: Make it your default drink - your skin will thank you
• Exercise: Just 2x per week makes a dramatic difference. Find something you actually enjoy, even if it takes time to discover what that is

Weight note: You probably don’t need to be as skinny as you think you do. There’s a significant gap - up to 20 lbs!- between what’s actually considered maximally attractive and what people think they need to achieve. Losing 5-10 pounds won’t make you happy or change your life.

That said, if you’re substantially overweight, losing weight is likely one of the highest-return things you can do for your appearance. I know this is way over 20% effort - it’s difficult and can take a long time. Don’t rely on dramatic diets; focus on changing your default eating habits.

Healthcare: Stay current with checkups. Treating underlying health issues improves how you look and feel more than any beauty product ever could.

Hygiene That Actually Matters

Showering

Showering when your BO is noticeable, your skin has accumulated oil or gotten dirty, or when you’ve exerted yourself enough to sweat has a huge impact. For most people, every other day is sufficient, but some people can get away with even more seldom, and some really need the daily shower.

Product tip: Avoid 3-in-1 shampoo/conditioner/body wash products or even 2-in-1 products - they don’t do any of their jobs well. Get separate products.

Hair Washing

Most people over-wash their hair. I shampoo every other shower when my hair starts looking stringy (around day 4). Condition every time you shampoo, and maybe also on non-shampoo days. Experiment here - your mileage may vary. Use sulfate-free shampoo for your hair type. Bonus points if it smells delicious.

If you really want your hair to look extra lucious, you can add in a product called ‘deep conditioner’ aka leave-in conditioner, approximately every month.

Shaving & Grooming

Women: shave legs/underarms: Shaving every shower is propaganda. If you regularly wear sleeveless tops, shaving your armpits matters to most people. If you wear shorts/skirts regularly, leg shaving is similarly important. So in summer, maybe every week (3ish showers) is plenty. Consider the season - “regularly” means different things for people whose hair grows at different speeds.

Men: shave facial hair: Keep your neck clean-shaven even if you have a beard - it’s the difference between “intentional facial hair” and “forgot to shave.” For clean-shaven faces, every other day usually works unless you have very fast-growing or very visible facial hair. Invest in a decent razor and replace blades regularly.

Everyone: Keep nose and ear hair trimmed. It’s a small detail that makes a big difference.

Skincare

Ignore the 10-step routines. I saw understanding and getting into skincare as SUPER intimidating - there’s so many products with confusing names! I’ll cut through it for you.

You need two things: cleanser (also called face wash) and moisturizer.

Basic routine: Every morning, wash your face with cleanser, rinse and pat dry, then put on AM facial moisturizer with SPF. If you’re spending more than a few minutes outside today, add sunscreen to your exposed skin (check arms, legs, front and back of neck, etc.). That’s it! Easy peasy, right? You can also exfoliate (scrub off dead skin, either with a rough surface or chemically with some cleansers) to increase how soft your skin is. If you do, do it less often than the rest of your routine, perhaps once a week. Don’t worry too much about it though, people don’t really notice.

Product rec: For a product line that’s relatively cheap, available, and proven to work, check out CeraVe. Pick a cleanser for your skin type, or a general one if that’s too overwhelming. If acne is a concern, pick one with salicylic acid.

Various Spot Treatments: salicylic acid cleaners should prevent blemishes, but if you do find yourself still dealing with them, a bit of benzoyl peroxide should clear it up. If you want to reduce puffiness (for example from allergies or crying), apply an ice pack.

Optional add-ons: Night moisturizer, eye creams, serums, masks, etc. They can be fun, and if you’re feeling really solid on everything else feel free, but they’re above the 20% effort threshold. Never bother with tanning salons or spray tans.

The Underrated Essentials

Teeth

People don’t think about teeth as an important part of beauty, but it totally is! Brush morning and night, floss regularly (for me it’s about once a week, but I know it should be more), brush your tongue for good-smelling breath, see your dentist regularly. This has a significant effect on your attractiveness. Consider getting an electric toothbrush.

Smelling Good

EVERYONE gets a boost from smelling good. Keep your teeth brushed (maybe an extra brushing before a date!), wear deodorant every day, and find a signature scent that you spritz on daily. Once you’ve found your scent, this is basically no additional work with crazy strong returns.

I recommend going to a perfumery or department store where an expert can help you pick something that matches your tastes. What scents you pick will be personal preference - some are more masc, femme, or neutral. I like to have different scents for summer and winter, but that’s just me.

Nails

Don’t let them look chewed or ragged. File regularly so they’re smooth and rounded. If you polish them, remove it when it chips. Getting fancy dip or gel manicures is super not worth it.

Hair

Find a cut that flatters your face shape and isn’t high-maintenance. Talk to a stylist about what works for your face. Avoid super trendy cuts or anything requiring constant upkeep (like bangs or shaved sections) unless you’re very committed.

Makeup: Find Your Power Products

The 80/20 approach: Instead of buying a full makeup collection, discover which 1-2 products make the biggest difference for YOUR face. (or zero! You don’t need to wear makeup at all.)

The testing method: Try products one at a time (borrow from friends, test at makeup stores, or buy drugstore versions to experiment). Put on just that one product and see if it makes a noticeable difference. If it doesn’t wow you, skip it.

Common high-impact products:

• Eyeliner: Often the single biggest eye-opener (literally)
• Lip color: Lipstick, gloss, or even tinted chapstick can brighten your whole face
• Mascara: If your lashes are light or short, this might be your game-changer
• Concealer: Great for covering blemishes or under-eye circles if they bother you

Lower-impact for most people: Foundation, eyeshadow, blush, contouring. These can be nice-to-haves but rarely provide the dramatic improvement that justifies daily application.

Your mileage will vary: My daily routine is eyeliner + lip color, sometimes mascara for special occasions. Yours might be completely different - maybe just mascara makes you feel put-together, or maybe lip color alone does the trick.

The key: Find your 1-2 products and master applying them quickly. A 2-minute routine you’ll actually do beats a 20-minute routine you’ll skip.

Part 2: Fashion and Styling

This section focuses more on advice for women.

Know Your Audience

Your styling should match your primary environment and goals:

Professional/Office: Clean, classic, low-maintenance. Think straight lines, wrinkle-free fabrics, minimal individuality. Both skirts and pants work - choose based on your comfort and workplace culture.

Dating/Attracting Men: Statistically, men tend to either have little preference between masc- and femme- styled women, or a strong preference towards femininity. Therefore, unless you’re sure you want to attract this specific type of man, I encourage you to lean more feminine than your default for this goal. This might mean heels (if you can walk in them), ballet flats if you can’t, skirts/dresses, or low-cut tops that show your figure. The key is highlighting one asset at a time - if you’re showing cleavage, keep legs covered; if you’re wearing a short skirt, go with a modest top. It might be a little uncomfortable the first time you wear an outfit that ramps up the sexiness, but it gets easier and more fun each time.

If you’re trying to attract women or not trying to attract anyone right now, just focus on the other parts of this guide. If you’re just trying to attract one particular person, like your spouse, then stop reading generic advice and talk to them about what they like.

Cultural/Subcultural Fit: This is mainly about fitting in with other women in your group rather than broad attractiveness. Make friends with women in your niche and get specific advice from them. Focus on medium-effort elements that help you belong. Examples might include ethnicity specific beauty standards from your mom or aunt like how to tie a sari, dying your hair or getting some piercings to show belonging with different flavors of alt, the right shape of sneakers for skateboarding, you name it.

For Yourself: The most important category. Pay attention to others whose style you genuinely admire - what specifically catches your eye? You might be into a certain color palette (pastels, jewel tones, high-contrast / b+w), a certain fabric style (drapery, ruffles, straight professional lines, asymmetry), a certain presentation /combination (she looks like such a rocker! A loose fitting tank top shows a lacy bralette underneath, with ripped jeans! She looks like such an artist! What a cool apron! She looks like such a happy fairy with that sparkly hair!) Start with a few thrifted basics in that direction rather than overhauling everything. Eventually wearing what makes you feel beautiful will be second nature.

Miscellaneous styling tips

1: Black is your friend. It’s slimming and flattering on everyone. A well-fitting black tee, black skirt, black pants, and black jacket can style in countless directions.

2: Create contrast. Mix fitted with flowy (crop top + wide pants, or fitted pants + flowy top). Mix modest with revealing (covered legs + cleavage, or short shorts + high neckline). Try combining different textures. Contrast creates visual interest.

3: Perfect your “tips.” Hair, nails, shoes, and bag - these edges of your outfit have outsized impact. Keep jewelry simple and consistent (all gold or all silver). One neutral everyday bag that’s not oversized. Clean, filed nails.

4: Show your waist. Almost universally flattering - fitted tops, dresses, or belts at the waist. Don’t hide under oversized everything.

5: Fit is everything - A $20 shirt that fits perfectly will look better than a $200 shirt that’s too big/small. Even basic pieces look expensive when they fit your body properly. This means less online shopping and more fitting rooms! For important events with repeat-outfits (a dress you’ll wear as a wedding guest a few times, or your default interview outfit) tailoring is usually worth it, and may be more affordable than you think.

6: Color near your face matters most - The color of your top/scarf/earrings affects how your skin looks way more than your pants or shoes. If you look washed out in certain colors, avoid them near your face.

7: Undergarments matter - A well-fitting bra changes how everything else looks on you. They’re also important for your back and your mental health. Visible bra lines, straps, or underwear lines can make even good outfits look sloppy.

8: Own your space. Stand up straight, make eye contact, smile. Confidence is the best accessory.

The Personality Factor

Be approachable. This is the highest-impact change you can make. Smile at strangers, ask small questions (“Love your phone case - where’s it from?”), make eye contact, put your phone away in social situations.

Yes, some people will say women don’t owe friendliness to anyone. That’s true - you don’t owe anything to anyone. But choosing connection over isolation improves your life and everyone else’s around you.

Your 80/20 Beauty Checklist

Daily (15 minutes):

• Brush teeth + tongue morning/night
• Face wash + moisturizer with SPF (morning)
• Deodorant + signature scent
• Smile and make eye contact

Every other day:

• Shower (shampoo every other shower)

Weekly:

• File nails
• Floss teeth (aim for more, but weekly beats never)

Monthly:

• Trim/shape eyebrows if needed
• Assess if hair needs a trim

One-time investments:

• Find your signature scent
• Get a haircut that works for your face
• Build a capsule of well-fitting basics in black
• Learn what styles make you feel confident

Remember: You’re already beautiful. This is just about highlighting what’s already there, not transforming into someone else. The goal is to feel confident and put-together without beauty routines taking over your life.

Write shorter posts

Most of my posts up until now have been essays exploring ideas I’ve put a lot of thought into. I often like reading longform others put out, and so I had a notion that that’s what a blog post is “supposed” to be. However, if I want to publish more often, one way to do that is to just jot down whatever I’m thinking about! Something is better than nothing; better to publish a single thought than not-publish a fleshed out edifice.

Write worse posts

The other thing slowing me down is my perfectionist bent. I spend a lot of time refinining and polishing my writing, and asking others for feedback in iterative cycles. This does make the posts I publish better, but vastly increases the amount of time they take to create. By lowering my quality bar, I can be less daunted by the prospect of writing, and get far more posts out the door. If I’m truly unsatisfied with a post, I can always go back and refine it later!

The imagined audience in my head has very high standards, and I’ve been hesitant to consume their time with writing that might leave them unsatisfied. However, I think my actual audience in real life finds my thoughts more interesting than I imagine and would really prefer to see more of them! If I start hearing complaints about my writing quality, I may reconsider, but for now I’m going to embrace writing shorter, less-refined posts, and get more content out there for my dear readers.

The gong just rang to signal the end of Quiethaven, so it’s time to publish!

The Decklist

Creatures (32)
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Burning‑Tree Emissary
2 Charming Prince
4 Fear of Change
4 Prosperous Innkeeper
2 Abhorrent Oculus
4 Extraction Specialist
4 Renegade Rallier
4 Skyclave Apparition

Enchantments (4)
4 Birthing Ritual

Instants (4)
4 Collected Company

Lands (20)
1 Boseiju, Who Endures
2 Botanical Sanctum
2 Breeding Pool
4 Brushland
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Mana Confluence
1 Plains
1 Prismatic Vista
1 Razorverge Thicket
3 Temple Garden
2 Yavimaya Coast

The Design

This deck is originally based on a Pioneer deck by my friend Josh, but it’s gone through several iterations from that starting point. Since I’m playing Historic rather than Pioneer, I have access to a couple of key cards that pushed the deck in a different direction (and gave the deck its name): Birthing Ritual and Fear of Change.

Remember Birthing Pod? It’s cheaper and more permissive now, at the cost of only seeing seven cards.

For those of you unfamiliar with Arena-only mechanics, the “random creature card” is drawn from Arena’s card pool, not just from the deck. That randomness is part of what makes the deck so much fun to play. With Fear of Change, no two games are the same, and I get to play with cards that would be uncompetitive or illegal in the mainboard. It also serves a functional role: by cycling through random creatures, I can dig for what I need In one particularly dramatic instance, I was staring down lethal combat damage from Mono-green Elves next turn, when I hit a Platinum Angel my opponent had no way to remove. in a given matchup.

I inherit Collected Company, Abhorrent Oculus, Extraction Specialist, and Prosperous Innkeeper from Josh’s deck, but I dropped Warden of the Grove, Tribute to the World Tree, and Tyvar, the Pummeler, favoring a more toolbox-oriented approach over pure go-wide aggression. In the next section, I’ll talk about how that toolbox functions.

The lands are a bit of a hodgepodge, based on what’s in my Arena collection; more on that later. The guiding principle is that every land should be able to tap for {G} on turn 1, except for a single basic Island and Plains to fetch with Prismatic Vista.

The Gameplan

The high-level plan of Ritual of Change is to get creatures on the board with Birthing Ritual, and to a lesser extent Collected Company. Apart from Collected Company, the curve tops out at 3, so Collected Company can hit every creature, and a 2-drop is always a sufficient sacrifice for Birthing Ritual. Since Birthing Ritual is such a key piece, the deck wants to get it on the board with a creature to sacrifice as soon as possible. To that end, I include several cheap creatures that provide mana to cast Birthing Ritual, and then act as sacrifice fodder once it’s on the field.

Once Birthing Ritual is in play, it’s time to start churning creatures, most of which have ETB effects so that they can serve their purpose without needing to stick around. The creatures with ETB effects are divided into 2-drops and 3-drops. In an ideal scenario, the 2-drops get sacrificed to Birthing Ritual, and the 3-drops get exiled to Fear of Change, but both can serve either purpose in order to flexibly respond to game conditions.

Creatures without ETB effects:

• Birds of Paradise accelerates the gameplan and provides mana consistency, and can be used as fodder later if needed.
• Abhorrent Oculus is simply a huge threat. Birthing Ritual and Collected Company both dodge its additional cost, and it can single-handedly run away with a game if unanswered, holding back an aggressive deck or making huge attacks against a slower one. In a pinch, the manifests can also be used as fodder for Fear of Change, although the mana value of zero means they aren’t ideal for that.

2-drops with ETB effects:

• Fear of Change is the ideal fodder for Birthing Ritual, with triggers both when it enters and when it dies. The random creature card with +2 mana value is mostly used to rapidly scale up to big, impactful creatures, often hitting useful ETB effects along the way, but in a pinch it can also turn a manifest or a Birds of Paradise into a 2-/3-drop for Birthing Ritual.
• Burning-Tree Emissary can come down on turn 2 and immediately provide mana to cast Birthing Ritual, then be sacrificed for a new creature.
• Prosperous Innkeeper doesn’t provide as much mana as Burning-Tree Emissary, needing to be paired with Birds of Paradise in order to enable a turn-2 Birthing Ritual that gets a 3-drop. However, the mana can be stored for later, and can fix colors, making it a better ETB later in the game. Also, the life gain as I churn through creatures is very helpful against aggro.
• Charming Prince is mostly good for its ability to blink another creature. As well as re-triggering ETB effects, it can flip a manifested land, Birthing Ritual, or creature with a mana value. Occasionally, the other modes come in handy, to gain life against aggro or dig for what I need after an unfortunate starting hand.

3-drops with ETB effects:

• Extraction Specialist serves to resurrect my 2-drops after they’ve been sacrificed to Birthing Ritual or put in the graveyard by Abhorrent Oculus. A common line is to get one into play by sacrificing Fear of Change to Birthing Ritual, get the Fear of Change back immediately, and use the Fear of Change triggers to immediately upgrade to a 7-drop while keeping the Fear of Change around to do it again next turn.
• Renegade Rallier has the same role as Extraction Specialist, with the added upside that it can target a Birthing Ritual or a land. In hand, Renegade Rallier can be enabled by Prismatic Vista, treasure from Prosperous Innkeeper, the old-fashioned method of losing a creature in combat, or occasionally by Charming Prince’s blink effect.
• Skyclave Apparition is flexible removal that can answer key threats in most of the matchups I face, and I put enough creatures in play that the token rarely matters.

Technical Tips

• It’s often worth mulliganing down to 5 cards to look for a playable Birthing Ritual.
• Be ready to attack with creatures that are destined to churn into untapped blockers.
• When sacrificing Fear of Change to get Skyclave Apparition with Birthing Ritual, order the triggers so that the Fear of Change trigger exiles the Skyclave Apparition before the Skyclave Apparition trigger resolves, so that the opponent doesn’t get a token.
• When manifesting dread, it’s often a good idea to put 2-mana creatures in the graveyard rather than face-down, to create targets for Extraction Specialist and Renegade Rallier.
• The optimal timing for Collected Company is complex. If you need fodder for Birthing Ritual, it can get some before the end step. Otherwise, it’s usually best to play after the sacrifice, in case it hits a Renegade Rallier. Both to enable Renegade Rallier and because Abhorrent Oculus triggers on the opponent’s upkeep, it’s usually not right to play Collected Company on your opponent’s turn, but it can be if you anticipate counter-magic, want to respond to removal (with Fear of Change or Charming Prince), or need surprise blockers.

Future Development

The current decklist is somewhat constrained by my supply of wildcards. There are a few changes I’d try out if I had full access to the card pool, although I can’t say for certain whether they’d be improvements before seeing them in action. I’ll aim to keep the decklist reasonably current on Moxfield as I update it.

Creature changes:

• Complete the playset of Abhorrent Oculus. For this, I’d likely cut 2 Renegade Ralliers, since they compete to be pulled out of the deck as 3-drops.
• Add Fiend Artisan. It’s another way to tutor creatures out of the deck, including Abhorrent Oculus without its additional cost. I think I would swap out Burning-Tree Emissary, counting on the strength of Fiend Artisan to make up for the loss of speed. Charming Prince could potentially be swapped out instead of the last two, but the increased access to Abhorrent Oculus makes the blink ability more valuable. I tried adding a Fiend Artisan, but found it to be too slow. Needing to stick around for a turn and then consume further mana makes it substantially worse than Birthing Ritual.

Land changes:

• Complete the playset of Mana Confluence. As well as coming in untapped to provide all three of my colors, it can tap for other colors to activate abilities of random creatures from Fear of Change. I think I could support the life loss with life gain from Prosperous Innkeeper, but possibly a full playset would be too much.
• Complete the playset of Prismatic Vista, to thin the deck and enable Renegade Rallier. For this, I’d add 2 Forests, for a total of 5 basic lands to fetch.

So with an unlimited supply of wildcards, an idealized decklist might look like:

Creatures (32)
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Charming Prince
4 Fear of Change
4 Fiend Artisan
4 Prosperous Innkeeper
4 Abhorrent Oculus
4 Extraction Specialist
2 Renegade Rallier
4 Skyclave Apparition

Enchantments (4)
4 Birthing Ritual

Instants (4)
4 Collected Company

Lands (20)
1 Boseiju, Who Endures
2 Botanical Sanctum
1 Breeding Pool
3 Forest
1 Island
4 Mana Confluence
1 Plains
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Razorverge Thicket
1 Temple Garden

Once I have 4x Mana Confluence, I’m considering splashing black in order to run Juggernaut Peddler. A two mana creature with a strong ETB is great for this deck, and many of my losses are against combo decks that it could disrupt. To make room, I might cut Collected Company. It feels crazy, but 4 mana is often too much in this fast format. However, I might change my tune on that when I finish the playset of Abhorrent Oculus.

It can be easy to lose sight of one’s values, when surrounded by a culture that doesn’t share them. Living in the SF Bay Area, I’ve met a lot of hyper-ambitious people with visions of the changing the world, who live and breathe their missions. It’s impressive and inspiring, and I have nothing but respect for them – but it’s not who I am. I began to try to mold myself into one, to sell myself as one, but lately I’ve been reflecting that I felt unnaturally contorted, and it showed in the half-heartedness of my efforts. I wrote this essay for myself, to clarify my values so I can fully align my actions behind them. Now, I’m publishing it to share that clear, honest picture with you.

What I Care About

My core values in life are connection, understanding, novelty, and luxury. Here’s what each of those mean to me and my career goals.

Connection

I’m primarily driven by personal connection. I’m at my happiest when I’m surrounded by friends – chatting around a fire, playing board games, enjoying a party, or anything so long as I’m with good people. I pay a lot of attention to social dynamics, greedily gathering information about how the people around me relate to each other. I want to be a positive impact on the people I encounter; when someone offers a way I can help them, I eagerly spring into action.

In my career, this means I want to collaborate closely with my team. I want projects to be group efforts with sharing of ideas on strategy and design, with pair programming and code reviews so each person on the team has a sense of what others are doing, rather than each of us doing head-down work that only occasionally interacts with the others. I want to interface with teams beyond my own, integrating into the larger structure of the company.

My drive for connection also means I want a culture of socializing with coworkers. For instance, in past roles, I’ve enjoyed biweekly Friday gaming sessions, and chatting in Monday standup meetings about our weekends. In my younger days, I thought of socializing with my team outside of work as an imposition, but I’ve realized it’s something I actively want; it’s important that I get along with my coworkers on a personal level, and after-work hangouts both signal and promote that.

Understanding

I want to know the Truth. I constantly strive to refine my mental models, excited to find ways reality disagrees so that I can understand it better. I’m precise in my speech and writing, and put a high value on honesty in myself and the people around me, cognizant of the way a single innaccuracy propagates through a connected web of belief. I like to know the intricate workings of systems, from atoms to economies. The world is vast, with far more detail than a human can comprehend in a lifetime, but I continue to expand the frontier of my knowledge.

At work, I want to form a detailed understanding of the systems I touch. I want to take the time to grok codebases, filling in my conceptual map rather than just making quick patches. I also value opportunities to learn complexities with less immediate relevance; for instance, I fondly recall a presentation about SQL database implementations at an offsite in my last role.

Novelty

Closely tied to my drive to understand the world, I’m excited by the variety of life. I travel to new places and seek out novel experiences, like the tingling of an electrified hot tub or the salty crunch of a fried scorpion. I enjoy having some structure, but that structure must build in variance or boredom will drive me insane.

In the workplace, novelty means opportunities to work on different projects over time, and sometimes take on responsibilities beyond the core of my position. I want to face problems that challenge me, forcing me to think creatively rather than just apply a standard toolkit. As well as varied work, it’s important to have slack in the week for playing around with new technologies and learning new skills when they seem exciting.

Luxury

The least important of my core values, luxury means comfortable environments, pleasant sensations, and space to relax. I’m a very chill, grounded person by nature, and I like soft beds, warm robes, and fine meals.

Luxury in my job looks like a sustainable and predictable pace of work, as contrasted with the always-sprinting founder mode I often see around me. I want a culture that understands that it can be counterproductive for a knowledge worker to try to focus for more than 4 or 5 hours in a day. I understand the occasional need for work to bleed into evenings or weekends, but I see it as a problem to fix; let’s make sure things are working well, so at the end of the day we can go back to our nice homes with minds clear of worry.

Where I Am

The Challenge I Face

I’ve written before about mistakes I’ve made in my career. Instead of focusing on making an impact, I was just trying to Do Work. As a result, I don’t have strong metrics to put in the experience section of my resume, and I don’t have quite the level of domain expertise I want. On top of that, I’ve now been out of work for two years, After getting laid off, my intention was to take a break for a few months, but it turns out habit is a powerful force. It's been a pleasant time, but I'm tired of not contributing to humanity beyond my immediate social circle. A sense of purpose is an important factor in thriving! and by all accounts, this is an unusually bad time to be looking for work as a software engineer. In some ways, despite my past experience, it feels like I’m starting my career from scratch. I wish I had done some things differently, but I can only start from where I am. With that in mind, let’s take stock of what I do have going for me.

The Advantages I Have

I’m smart and curious, and I’ve been writing code for more than a decade. I got a combined B.S./M.S. in Computer Science (plus B.S. in Economics) in 4 years. I’ve learned several programming languages with a variety of paradigms, and I’ll readily pick up new ones as needed. I’m familiar with the standard suite of developer tools, like Git, SQL, and Bash, and also have some experience with deployment technologies like AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform, although I know there’s much more to learn.

Luckily, I’m a quick learner, and I’m well-versed in using LLMs to shore up gaps in my knowledge. I’m dependable, with a strong aversion to falling through on any commitment I’ve made. I have an innate pride in the quality and details of my craft, that I’ve learned to temper with understanding of the value of fast feedback loops. I enjoy tinkering, and I have the projects to prove it, including this very website, which I set up off of the beaten path of Wordpress/Substack so I could customize it to my liking.

On top of my technical abilities as an individual, my drive for connection makes me a great team player. I believe a well-functioning team can achieve much more than the sum of its parts, so harmony and morale are critical ingredients in success. People’s days are happier for having me around; I’m reliably friendly and likable, and I don’t cause drama. Teammates in my past roles have commented that they enjoy the wit I bring to meetings.

In collaborative problem solving, I focus on finding the best answer, not egotistically defending my ideas. I strive to facilitate people in achieving their goals, whether by bringing my own expertise or just helping them think things through. I aim to present people in a positive light when I have the chance, and make sure people get at least their due credit for team efforts.

All of this makes me a solid individual contributor, and a top-tier personality hire. With these strengths, I’m confident the job that’s right for me is out there. I’ll persevere in finding it, and be a great addition to the team when I do. Please reach out with positions I would fit well!

Multiverse

In the history of science, we have often found that the world is not as it seems. Although the Earth appears flat to the senses, measurements tell us it is round. While the course charted by the sun and stars is plain to see, we know now that it is we who move as the heavens stand still. More recently, Einstein showed us that time and space are not the unchanging stage we intuit, but bend with the events of the universe. The case I’m about to present relies on the dissolution by science of one more illusion: that the universe follows only one true storyline.

Modern theories of physics, empirically tested and validated, suggest that we inhabit a multiverse, a collection of universes that share physical similarities but can’t interact with each other. Here I draw heavily from the works of Max Tegmark¹, which contain some interesting nuance about the multiverse Tegmark describes 4 levels of multiverse, each with a different mechanism. Either the first or third level alone is enough to make my case. The first level multiverse consists of finite-volume regions of infinite space, separated by the lightspeed limit. The third level consists of storylines happening in parallel in the same space, separated by quantum decoherence. It turns out that these theories make identical predictions of what we should observe, so I'll gloss over the ongoing debate among physicists of whether the level III multiverse exists, simply noting that I find it to be the most parsimonious explanation of experimental results. For more detail, refer to the footnotes. that isn’t central to my point. In the multiverse, there are infinite beings with the exact same history as yours, the exact same subjective experience, and the exact same sense of identity. An omniscient observer, looking at the multiverse from the outside, could pinpoint all of the copies, and describe every facet of each one’s subjective experience across all of time, but couldn’t say which is the “real” you; you all are.

Although the copies of you spread across the multiverse share the same observed pasts, your environments contain variation that you haven’t yet perceived. Therefore, the previously identical copies will experience different futures, splitting your story; everything that can happen, happens in some universe. In fact, because the collection being split is infinite, each outcome happens in infinite universes. Of course, any given instance of you will experience only a single past, which is what gives rise to the illusion that you have only a single future.

So, in every moment, your story splits into every possible future. Even an omniscient observer couldn’t tell you what will happen next in your particular universe, because no such universe is distinguishable; you ask the question identically in every universe you inhabit. How then should you think about prediction, of what to expect from the world? This is not a new problem, as humanity lived in the multiverse before we knew it as such. We call this phenomenon randomness, and model it with probability. We can talk about the chance of an occurence, a distribution of expected outcomes. Recognizing the multiverse, we can view probabilities as proportions of our collection of copies. Flip a coin, and half of you will see heads while the other half see tails, or in other words, the coin will come up heads with 50% probability. So far, while the concept of a multiverse might seem new and outlandish, it offers nothing new to your lived experience.

Identity

A common question at this point goes, “Ok, there are a bunch of copies of me out there. Why should I care?” To address this, we first need a clearer sense of what makes you “you.”

At the physical level, our usual notions of individuality begin to crumble. Particles, the building blocks of matter, lack any intrinsic identity. They are interchangeable and follow the same fundamental laws, with nothing that inherently distinguishes one particle from another. Similarly, there is no distinguished reference point from which to mark your unique location in space. This lack of a distinguished reference point applies to both 3D space and the Hilbert space underlying quantum mechanics.

Given that neither specific particles nor a location in the world provides a clear anchor for identity, consider defining “you” as a mostly-stable pattern of information – your memories, cognitive processes, and personality traits. This pattern endures across time, even as individual cells die and regenerate, as long as the overall structure of information remains intact.

Now, if the multiverse is real, then somewhere out there are other instances of this same pattern. Each copy is subjectively indistinguishable from you. From its own perspective, it has your memories, your thoughts, and your sense of self. Viewed this way, you are not confined to a single instance. Any observer with your subjective experience is you, just as you exist now. There’s no need to designate a “main” version. Your identity is that pattern, and if the pattern repeats infinitely, then all those occurrences count as you.

Anthropics

Now, imagine I flip 20 coins in front of you. What’s the probability that they all come up heads? $$ 2^{-20} $$, or roughly one in a million. Now, imagine that instead of simply flipping 20 coins, I assign millions of monkeys to each flip coins, recording each on a separate video. Now, despite those one-in-a-million odds, it is quite likely I will be able to show you a video of my monkey flipping 20 coins and getting 20 heads in a row. Make it infinite monkeys instead of millions, and it becomes a certainty that I can find one who flipped 20 heads, or 30 heads, or any sequence I care to show you, however unlikely.

This same principle applies directly to the consideration of immortality. All futures happen, but you only experience futures where you survive. Because the multiverse contains infinite copies of you, no matter how dangerous a situation is, some copies of you will always survive it, just as some of my monkeys kept flipping heads. Your subjective experience won’t be diminished by the deaths of your copies across the multiverse; you always perceive a single storyline, regardless of what happens in the other possibilities. In a deadly situation, anyone watching is likely to see you die, but multiverse theory implies that you will always find yourself in a world where you beat the odds and survived.

This logic applies to everyone, of course, but only applies subjectively. You will continue to observe that people die, just as you thought they would before you learned of the multiverse. Indeed, while physicists can test the models that suggest the existence of a multiverse, there is only one true test of my theory of immortality. Unfortunately, if the theory is wrong, testing it risks your death. However, every day you survive is another small piece of evidence against your mortality. I predict that you will outlive everyone you know. I hope, when you do, you think back to this essay and understand why. Take solace in the notion that your dearly departed survive in unlikely universes of their own, perhaps mourning you just as you mourn them.

Ramifications

If we are indeed immortal, how should that affect our decisions? Should we take high-variance, get-rich-or-die-trying gambles, secure in the knowledge that we won’t be around for the “die trying” side? I don’t jump to that approach, for a few reasons. First, while I do find this case for immortality to be fairly compelling, I’m not quite so confident that I’d bet my life on it. Even if we put aside that uncertainty and accept the premise of immortality, reasons remain to try to avoid death. For one, most risks of death carry associated risks of painful survival. You can’t experience being dead, but you can certainly experience being e.g. permanently injured. Also, if there are people who care about you, dying is a selfish act. The anthropic selection that keeps you alive doesn’t keep their futures connected to yours. If you die in 99% of worlds, you’ll hardly notice, but the vast majority of people you know throughout the multiverse must suffer your loss.

However, if one is willing to set aside the risks and the social harm, there are many opportunities to exploit immortality. For instance, consider the following setup: two strangers (or enemies!) pool their worldly possessions, then enter a machine that uses a quantum event to randomly select one for painless, instantaneous death. Each participant will find themselves to be the lucky survivor walking away with the other’s riches. I leave further examples as an exercise for the reader, but many courses of action become unlocked if death is not a concern.

In my case, there’s an additional wrinkle to immortality. I’m signed up for cryonics, with the goal that if I die, I will perhaps be revived in the future. However, if I always experience survival regardless, does this mean I’m simply shifting probability from worlds where I survive in my familiar life, A friend of mine argues that with multiverse immortality, I should expect to find myself in weirder and weirder worlds as I select for my increasingly unlikely survival, so that cryonics still steers me into preferable worlds. to worlds where I wake up in an unknown future where everyone I knew is long dead? How should I balance this concern against my uncertainty about whether this immortality theory holds?

Another philosophical consideration is that this theory of immortality only means you survive every moment. Survive long enough, however, and you will eventually be unrecognizable to your current self. The theory doesn’t preclude this long death by change, only the sudden kind. Is it immortality if no trace of you will ultimately remain? Even in a natural lifetime, we must address this consideration; how similar is an elder to the child who bore their name? In some sense, we already die and are reborn in every moment. While nothing in the world is permanent, every event is an immutable mathematical fact about the multiverse. Our decisions are indelibly written in the structure of spacetime, beyond the reach of change itself. However, I think expanding on that idea is best left for another post. Immortality of the sort I described here doesn’t change that fundamental truth, it just guarantees that there will always be a next moment of rebirth.

I’ve thought a fair bit about these considerations, yet I still don’t have good answers to all of the questions that arise. However, I remain convinced that the basic logic is sound: if the multiverse exists (as our best physics suggests), and if consciousness persists through our branching stories (as subjective experience suggests), then immortality follows as a conclusion. I’m publishing this essay partly in the hope that others will help clarify my thinking about the ramifications, so as always, please feel free to reach out!

I wasn’t the first to run into this problem. A quick Google search turned up this Hugo forum post, which in turn linked to this Github discussion. As I understood it, Hugo uses a rendering engine called Goldmark, which has the capability to display footnote previews. However, enabling that functionality would necessitate bringing in heavy rendering features that would impact performance, so the Hugo team decided to exclude it. At this point, the most promising approach seemed to be writing custom Javascript to implement the functionality. I was a little nervous about that, because LLMs had already failed at that, and I didn’t have much JS experience to draw on beyond theirs, but the best way to learn is by doing!

To get oriented, I inspected an existing footnote. It looked like this:

<sup id="fnref:1">
    <a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a>
</sup>

One somewhat hacky option at this stage would have been to use JS to populate a title attribute with the footnote content. However, I didn’t want to put my efforts into that until I ruled out solutions that would look better. More Googling was required.

My Googling found an alternative that I hadn’t thought of: sidenotes. Instead of giving footnote references hoverable previews, I could rework the way they appear to begin with. Sidenotes look like this. Instead of displaying at the bottom of the page, sidenotes display in the margin of the text where they appear. On mobile devices and other small screens, there is no margin, so tapping expands/collapses a sidenote. The main downside, as I saw it, would be clunkier syntax when writing posts, but following the principle of “write once, read many”, I decided that was a fine cost if it improved the reading experience for my audience. For the implementation of sidenotes, I drew heavily from this blog post. I ran into a hitch when adding the SCSS from the post that controls the appearance of sidenotes: it overrode existing styles, and the website looked horrible. To solve that, I converted the SCSS to CSS and followed the standard workflow of calling it assets/css/extended/custom.css. With the implementation working, I changed the sidenote highlight color to my liking. After that, I just had to change the footnotes in Manifesting a Trading Career to sidenotes, and the changes were ready to go, no custom JS required!

Understanding Markets

To understand how to trade in a market, we first need to understand what a market is and how it functions. A market is a platform where buyers and sellers come together to exchange goods, services, or financial instruments. Market structures vary widely, but the bootcamp primarily focused on the standard structure for US equity markets, and that’s what I’ll be talking about here. At its core, the market’s functionality is driven by the concept of an order book.

An order book is fundamental to financial markets. It lists all open buy orders (bids) and sell orders (asks or offers) for an asset, sorted by price and then by time. This means that orders with better prices are prioritized, and among orders with the same price, the ones placed earlier take precedence Markets operate this way to ensure fairness and liquidity. Sorting by price gives priority to those who provide the best price and gives incoming traders the best available deal automatically, and prioritizing older orders encourages placing orders quickly rather than waiting for others to place orders first or constantly canceling and replacing orders. . For example, an order book for some stock (let’s call it Shmoogle) might look like:

In this order book, Joshua, Max, and Andrey want to buy Shmoogle, while Michael, Stefanie, Yoav, and William want to sell Shmoogle. Coming into this market, you could sell up to 100 shares to Joshua for $50.02 each, or buy up to 150 shares from Michael for $50.04 each, before moving on to the orders below theirs in the book. Notice how Joshua gets to trade before Max at the same price, because he submitted his order first. You could also place your own bid or offer, and if you were willing to trade at $50.03 (in either direction), you’d get priority when someone new wanted to trade!

The best (highest-priced) bid is always at a lower price than the best (lowest-priced) offer; if this changes, the book is called “crossed” and one or more trades immediately execute. For example, if you tried to place a bid to buy 350 shares for $50.06 each in the book above, instead you would immediately fill Michael and Stefanie’s existing orders by buying Michael’s 150 shares for $50.04 each and Stefanie’s 200 shares for $50.05 each.

I was taught some specific jargon for orders, used for trading exercises in the bootcamp and, I presume, for real trading in the olden days before it all became computerized. For example, continuing to trade Shmoogle:

• "price bid for size": Place a bid to buy up to size shares of Shmoogle for price or lower each (e.g., “10 bid for 5” means buying up to 5 shares at $10 each).
• "size offered at price": Place an ask to sell size shares of Shmoogle for price or higher each (e.g., “5 offered at 10” means selling up to 5 shares at $10 each).
• “I’m out”: Cancel open orders in the Shmoogle market.

To get comfortable with the mechanics of order books, we played a game called Tighten Or Trade. We established an order book, written by hand on a whiteboard, for a contract that would settle to the total number of siblings of people in the room. That is, if it turned out that the people in the room had a total of 17 siblings, the value of the contract would be $17, and anyone who had bought it for $15 would profit $2 per share. With the market established, we took turns either “tightening” the order book by placing a bid or ask better than the current best price, or trading with an existing order from the book by either buying from an existing offer or selling to an existing bid. After a few rounds of this, In fact, after a few rounds of turn-based Tighten Or Trade, we had a short period of live trading on the market where we shouted out orders without taking turns as people gradually revealed their sibling numbers, which better simulated the chaos of a normal market. we resolved the market by counting up our siblings; those who sold at more than the true price or bought for less profited, while the people on the other end of those trades correspondingly lost out. In my case, I thought people were undervaluing the contract so I bought 2 shares for $20 and 1 share for $21. I turned out to be correct, and profited $14 when the contract settled to $25! By interacting with the market in a simplified, turn-based game, we were able to get a feel for order book dynamics in a low-pressure setting with time to think and ask questions.

Adverse Selection

One session of the bootcamp focused on adverse selection. Frankly, if you have the time, you should skip this section and read Ricki’s blog post on the topic instead. Otherwise, here’s my summary:

Adverse selection occurs when your available choices turn out to be worse than they initially appear, because other people selectively take the options you want and leave the ones you don’t. Although especially salient in the competitive zero-sum world of financial trades, it appears in a wide range of other contexts as well. To borrow an example, imagine asking a friend to toss you a Laffy Taffy candy from a bowl at a party. Like most people, you dislike banana flavor, but you figure a 75% chance of getting one of the other three flavors is pretty good, and you don’t want to seem picky. Your friend reaches into the bowl and tosses you a Laffy Taffy; it’s banana. What went wrong? Unfortunately, because other people have selectively been taking their preferred flavors from the bowl, much more than 25% of the remainder is banana flavored. The option you ended up with is precisely the option other people turned down. In trading, adverse selection means that the open orders on the book probably aren’t very good (or someone would have traded with them already) and that among orders you place, the ones that are bad for you are more likely to be traded with than those that would be good for you.

Given the risk of adverse selection, it might seem that people should never accept trades at all. However, there are several factors that can mitigate adverse selection. A non-exhaustive list:

• Naïve counterparties: If someone doesn’t know what they’re doing, they can take worse options and leave you with better ones (no one else at the party has tried Laffy Taffy before; someone’s uncle Bob has a good feeling about a stock).
• Unpopulated markets: If there aren’t many people selecting options, or you get to choose before most people, the good ones can stick around (you got to the party early; you have a server farm on the NYSE trading floor).
• Anti-correlated preferences: If what you want is unusual, the options other people take won’t be the ones you hoped for (you happen to love banana flavor Laffy Taffy; you want to control a company even if it loses you money).
• Constrained counterparties: Legal or other restrictions can force people to take worse options than they otherwise would, leaving better options for you (everyone else at the party follows a niche religion that prohibits eating non-yellow candy; legal limits on risk force a bank to sell an asset that’s profitable in expectation).

It’s critical to have a story for why adverse selection doesn’t apply in your case before making a trade. That story may look like one of the above factors, and takes one of two forms:

• “Here’s why my counterparty is wrong about this trade”: In a zero-sum trade, for you to win, your counterparty must lose. If they’re willing to trade, they presumably think they’ll win, so only trade if you have a good reason to think they’re wrong. Note that this can be recursive; if your counterparty is sophisticated, they have a story about why you’re wrong, and your story must explain why their story about you is wrong.

• “Here’s why this trade is positive sum”: In a trade where both parties benefit, no one needs to be wrong in order to trade. This commonly appears as comparative advantage (e.g., when you buy a T-shirt, you aren’t being misled about the value, the manufacturer can simply make it more cheaply than you could). While positive sum trades are very common in life, they are rarer in financial markets.

If you don’t have either kind of story for why a trade is good, walk away.

Inattentiveness

One implication of adverse selection is that it’s dangerous to make trades inattentively, because your bad trades will be snapped up while the trades that would have been good for you won’t get filled. A few cautions to keep in mind:

• Never place market orders! A market order says “trade with whatever orders are on the other side of the order book, no matter their price”. If you don’t pay close attention to the order book, a market order may trade at prices vastly different than you hoped, as in a recent example from Matt Levine's Money Stuff, If you're interested in finance, I highly recommend subscribing to the newsletter. Matt Levine tells some fascinating stories! wherein a five-figure market order ends up on the hook for $74 million. Instead, place a limit order, which won’t execute if the price is worse than you specify. When it executes successfully, it’s the same as a market order, and when it doesn’t execute, you didn’t want it to.
• When placing limit orders, set short expiration times (ideally immediate-or-cancel) unless you have a very good reason to leave an order open. If your unfilled limit order doesn’t expire, it will be filled precisely in the case where market conditions change such that your trade will lose money.
• If you have an automated trading system, pause it and cancel your orders when you can’t keep an eye on it to make sure it’s performing within expectations. Remember, if you don’t trade, your losses are capped at zero. One of my helpful draft reviewers points out that the value of assets you already have can go down if you don't trade. That's true, but remember adverse selection; even if you think the price will fall, you only get to sell the asset if someone disagrees!

Arbitrage

Arbitrage is a way to make a guaranteed profit by noticing when markets get out of sync in how they value things. To learn and practice this skill, we had a live crossword competition with several markets on the outcomes. There were two teams, Green and Orange, and in addition to the market on which team would win, there were markets on the fastest solve time for each team (GTIME and OTIME). The latter were key, because there were also markets on the sum of the times (SUM) and the difference between the green time and the orange time (DIFF). Bots were created to trade in all the markets to provide liquidity by allowing profitable trades against them, and the stage was set for a lesson on arbitrage.

As the prices of the markets drifted, arbitrage opportunities appeared. For instance, the price of SUM could drift below the sum of the prices of GTIME and OTIME. I'm handwaving a bit here, because there isn't actually such a thing as "the price". When financial news reports a single number, it's often the midpoint between the best bid and best ask or the price at which the most recent trade executed. However, if you want to actually trade, you have to fill an order on either side of the book, rather than magically getting the midpoint price. This difference means you get a worse price and is known as "crossing the bid-ask spread". In this arbitrage example, you would have to compare the ask price of SUM with the bid prices of GTIME and OTIME. In this case, a sharp trader could buy a position in SUM and sell positions in both GTIME and OTIME. Then, regardless of the actual times, the trader would make money. Because changes in the prices of the trader’s positions perfectly cancel out, there is no risk, and the profit is locked in. The same logic applies to DIFF, where one could buy DIFF and perfectly hedge (cancel out price movements) by buying OTIME and selling GTIME.

In real-world markets, hordes of traders keeping a watchful (and often automated) eye for arbitrage opportunities keep market prices largely self-consistent. For instance, let’s look at exchange traded funds (ETFs). An ETF functions like a basket of various assets, e.g. tech stocks. The ETF provider will give you shares of the ETF in exchange for the underlying assets, or give you the underlying assets in exchange for your ETF shares. In practice, because the providers need to keep costs down and make money, these exchanges can usually only happen in bulk and a small fee is taken in each direction. For instance, a provider may offer 99 shares of ETF for 100 of each underlying asset and 100 of each underlying asset for 101 shares of ETF. Prices of ETFs tend to closely track the prices of the underlying assets, even though there is no rule enforcing this property. This financial magic works by arbitrage; if the price of the ETF got too high/low, arbitrageurs would make money by buying/selling the underlying assets and selling/buying the ETF until their trading brought the prices back in sync. Similar logic keeps prices of assets consistent across different exchanges, even in different countries, to the extent that assets can be moved between them to correct differences.

Electronic Trading Competition

In the final session of the bootcamp, we participated in an electronic trading competition. Several markets were set up as simplified models of stocks, bonds, and other assets. An API was provided for fetching information about the markets and placing trades on their order books, and we were tasked with creating bots that would trade in the markets. In order to provide liquidity to the markets, and avoid the adverse selection concern of trading with only the other sophisticated bootcamp participants, several bots using naïve strategies were created as part of the competition structure.

With only 2 hours to build our bots, it was critical to quickly figure out which markets were worth focusing effort on, just as in real-life trading. Unfortunately, my team got bogged down in technical difficulties In retrospect, although there are often great advantages to teamwork, I think the other programmer and I both could have done better by working separately. "What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months." -Fred Brooks and we weren’t able to build much of a coherent trading strategy at all. Compounded with technical difficulties in the system running the markets and API, this meant our team eked out only a small profit with mostly-manual trades against the naïve bots. In fact, the top profit in the competition went to a highly-ranked Manifold trader who declined to build a bot at all, simply trading manually while the rest of us tried to get our bots working. So, while the electronic trading competition didn’t give me quite the experience I’d hoped for in building a trading bot, I learned an unexpected valuable lesson: having anything working at all outperforms delayed attempts at more sophisticated strategies. Start simple! You can always adapt by adding complexity later if conditions demand it.

Conclusion and Ongoing Learning

To summarize, here are the key lessons I learned:

• Beware Adverse Selection: Have a story for why your trade makes sense in a competitive environment.
• Stay Vigilant: Inattentive trading is dangerous, not trading is always safe.
• Focus Quickly: Learn to make snap judgements of where further effort will be most valuable.
• Spot Arbitrage: Inconsistencies between prices mean free money if you find them.
• Start Simple: A working strategy beats a perfect plan that’s not ready.

Overall, the Manifest Trading Bootcamp was a fantastic experience. I learned a lot about trading and had fun doing it! I hope you enjoyed this write-up, but there’s really no substitute for hands-on experience. Many thanks to Ricki for taking the time to run workshops and teach what she knows!

Post-bootcamp, I’m continuing to learn about trading in a few ways:

• Some of the other bootcamp participants and I started a book club, and as of this writing we’re reading The Laws of Trading by Agustin Lebron. So far, I’m really enjoying the book! If you want to learn more, there’s a good review of the book on Astral Codex Ten.
• Since Manifest, I’ve been more active on Manifold, honing my instincts for modeling the world and understanding market behavior in a low-stakes environment.
• As well as trading manually, I’m developing a Manifold bot in order to learn more about creating automated trading systems.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and as always, please feel free to get in touch!

1. Use a Wok: The high edges of a wok make vigorous stirring easier and reducing spillage.

2. High Heat: In Asian kitchens, chefs use special high-heat burners for cooking, so use the maximum heat on your home stove.

3. Lots of Butter: Butter gives a better flavor than oil, as well as keeping the wok greased. Add butter before most ingredients and more whenever you feel like it.

4. Salt at Every Step: Salt affects the way things cook and the way we taste them. Salt or marinate your protein ahead of time, and add salt each vegetable as you add it to the wok.

5. Cooking Order is Crucial:

• Protein: Cook proteins like chicken, tofu, or shrimp first. Salt or marinate them beforehand. Once cooked, set aside on paper towels.
• Vegetables: Cook mushrooms first if using so that other vegetables don’t soak up the liquid they release.
• Rice: When vegetables are ready, mix the protein back in, followed by the rice. Constant stirring is important here to prevent sticking.
• Eggs: Make space in the wok and cook the eggs, then mix with the rest. Some of the liquid egg will get in the rice; this is fine and will add a nice richness throughout the dish.
• Condiments: Just before turning off the heat, add any liquid condiments (I use soy sauce, oyster sauce, chili-garlic paste, and sesame oil). This will let the liquid cook off without applying enough heat to damage the flavors.

Before we dive in, I’ll note that I’m writing from my own experience in professional software engineering, and this may not generalize to other fields.

What Is School Mindset?

Let’s think about the usual structure of school, as the student experiences it. A teacher hands out an assignment. There will be instructions, perhaps a scoring rubric. The student works on the assignment, then submits some result to the teacher by the due date. After a time, the teacher returns a grade indicating the quality of the student’s work. Repeat. If the grades the student is getting are too low, the student can expect some unpleasant conversations with the teacher, the student’s parents, or other authority figures. The effect of all this is that much of the student’s energy is focused on getting good grades. Over time, the lesson learned is that to succeed, the student must carefully follow given instructions. Furthermore, grades cap out at “A” or “A+”, there is a fixed number of assignments in a semester, and while there are often penalties for late work, there are very rarely bonuses for early submission before the imposed deadline. If a student has the good fortune, as I did, not to struggle with their schoolwork, the lesson here is that there is some maximum effort needed, and there will be no further reward for further effort. In teaching compliance, school trains agency out of students.

How Professional Work Differs

Superficially, professional work is similar. Instead of a teacher, tasks are assigned by a manager or team lead or pulled from a shared task pool. The employee works on the task and submits some result to a shared repository. If the submitted work is of insufficient quality or quantity, the employee can expect some unpleasant conversations with their manager. However, there’s one big difference between school and professional work: no one wants the result of schoolwork. The teacher’s goal isn’t to collect 20 mediocre essays, it’s to educate the students (ostensibly at least). We hope that in doing work, the student learns something, but the result of that work may as well be thrown away afterwards.

In professional work, this dynamic is flipped. Whereas the primary purpose of school work is to educate the student, the primary purpose of professional work is to produce the result. Schools are in the business of teaching; companies are in the business of delivering value to their customers. A company may well hope its employees learn on the job, but only so they can do better work later. An employee who prodigiously learns all that can be learned, yet produces no work with this knowledge, provides zero value to the company.

Another important difference is that whereas school has a maximum effort that a given student can usefully apply, in professional work, there is almost always something useful to do. The challenge is not to hit the maximum effort target for one’s assignments, but to usefully allocate limited capacity for effort.

How School Mindset Held Me Back

I’m writing this post because I think it’s the career advice I needed to hear as I was transitioning from getting my degree in computer science to working as a software engineer. Writing code has always come easily to me, and in class, that’s most of the necessary skill. Requirements are clear, or clarified on request by the grading authority, most work is done in isolation, and all that’s needed at the end of the day is to submit code to the teacher. This is not what managers and team leads are looking for.

In professional work, there are problems to be solved, and employees are usually expected to apply creativity in solving these problems, not simply implement clear requirements handed down from on high. In my career so far, I have been too eager to ask for minor design clarifications from my (busy!) team lead. This habit is useful for a student, whose problem to solve is “how do I get the teacher to give me a good grade” and who therefore must be highly sensitive to the idiosyncracies of their local authority. In the professional world, it’s maladaptive, soaking up valuable time and attention without meaningfully improving results.

While a student might occasionally work in a group, a professional almost always does. I grew out of this part of school mindset sooner than others, as I came to marvel at how much more I could do as part of a team than working alone on a personal project. However, at the start of my career, I definitely had an unproductive bias towards creating things from scratch and looking for problems that allowed me to do so, rather than building on other people’s work and looking for any problems I could solve that mattered.

How I’m Unlearning School Mindset

I have spent several months on sabbatical following a layoff, and during this time I’ve followed the writing of several highly accomplished people. There’s a common thread between all of their accomplishments: figure out what needs doing, and get it done. Their work has been as employees, as founders of start-ups, and as philanthropists, and they’ve applied a wide variety of skills, usually learning as they went. In school, assignments are conveniently handed out; in professional work, a key skill is identifying needs.

I also recall two particular pieces of feedback my former team lead gave me in 1-on-1 meetings, that I think were downstream of school mindset and that helped me shift away from it. One was that my comments in reviews of my teammates’ code were often superfluous, about style rather than substance. Part of this is that school tends to care more about style, but more importantly, I was thinking of the code reviews as an assignment I would be judged on, rather than part of the process of creation. My focus was on what made me look smart and industrious, rather than on what was needed to solve problems.

The other piece of feedback was that I needed to shepard my tasks to completion, taking responsibility for getting them done in a timely fashion. In school, there is no difference between on time and early. With this mindset, I would pick up a few tasks, and shift between them when I felt like it, feeling no real urgency as long as I was making visible progess on something. As my team lead explained to me though, in professional work, it matters how long a particular task takes from start to finish. In school, students demonstrate the ability to complete some overall amount of work in some time; in professional work, tasks often create ongoing value after completion, so earlier is better. Furthermore, it’s important for timelines to be predictable when working in a group. Paralellizing work, as a student can do when meeting several independent deadlines, leaves tasks in limbo, marked as in progress but with no real expected time to completion. The common thread in these two pieces of feedback is that doing work isn’t about proving my capabilities, it’s about delivering value.

As we navigate the complexities of the professional world, it’s crucial to recognize the limitations of the school mindset that we may have internalized. Whether it’s the focus on grades over real-world impact or the tendency to seek validation from authority figures, these ingrained habits can hold us back. By shifting our focus from merely proving our abilities to actually delivering value, we can unlock new opportunities and achieve greater success. Society is full of people who need things, and whether you seek money, status, or impact, the surest path is to fill those needs.