Better On Average™
I went to an incredible talk this week by a renowned optimizer in AI spaces. He’s worked on everything from power grids to e-commerce...
top of page
Rapid Fire
Basically a blog where I try to do philosophy outside.
Search
Oct 25
Consistently Biased
Hey, sorry for the late post, had to give a talk this morning! I’ve written a bit about QALYs here before, or Quality-Adjusted Life...
Sep 13
Something I HATE about Averages
If you had to summarize a statistical distribution with one number…well, I guess you could do worse than taking an average. Even so,...
Jun 14
The books Elon pretends he’s read
“I read a lot of books,” says Elon Musk. Apparently one of them is Superintelligence, the highly-influential book that AI moguls from Sam...
Jan 26
Letting Students Write the Rules
I mentioned before that I’m driving to the University of Kentucky eSports Lounge this weekend to give a talk on how rules structure a...
Jan 12
Talent and Fit
At a really (really) high level, performance is a function of what you bring to the table (we’ll call that talent), and and how you can...
Dec 29, 2023
Why is Racism bad?
I recently spoke to a trained economist who argued that racism was bad, but only because it was bad for the economy. What can we say...
Sep 29, 2023
MVP mini-manifesto
I’m always fascinated by Most Valuable Player awards because I think they’re a great encapsulation of how we think about value in sports...
Sep 8, 2023
Game Values vs. Real-Life Values
My friend Kjell and I noticed there just aren’t enough podcasts, so we decided to help. Our first episode takes an early look at some of...
Aug 25, 2023
The Politics of Age of Empires II
I’ve been playing a lot of Stellaris lately, but as a kid, the only computer game I really played much was Age of Empires II (AoE2, as in...
Aug 18, 2023
I got Published
Neat! You can check out a free version of my paper “Mutual Aid as Effective Altruism” here. (The final, professionally edited and typeset...
Jul 21, 2023
SlamBall and the Skill Explosion
Darius Clark, 25, is a highly decorated long jumper who holds the Guinness World Record for the highest vertical leap with a running...
Jul 14, 2023
Twilight Imperium and Instrumental Convergence
I got to play Twilight Imperium last weekend and I was so powerful I didn’t know what to do. I like to describe Twilight Imperium as 8...
Jun 16, 2023
Efficient and Effective
Just a quick dive into a useful distinction, because these aren’t the same: Effectiveness is all about outcomes. (You know, effects.)...
bottom of page