essays
Long form opinion pieces about any topic under the sun, yuh!
The Internet is Empty
The wide open nothingness of HTTP
Think about the Internet. Big, right? Or is it? Inside my head, the internet is mostly void. Empty lands yet to be claimed, websites yet to exist, raw thoughts not yet sculpted into words. Most of the Internet has yet to be born.
But here's where we get fooled. We users, humans or machines, can only poke at spots that already shine bright. It's like walking through a busy city with blinders on, seeing just a fraction of its true form. With each click, we leap from star to star, never pausing to appreciate the vast darkness in between, the URLs not listed, the words not said.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The Internet isn't something you can hold or touch. It has no physical form. Your journey through its unseen shape demands you give it direction, seeking signs and symbols that point to pre-filled spaces, pre-filled experiences, signs of life. You can not travel through the internet as a lone comet, and hope to see some galaxies or supernovae along your way.
This makes the Internet a popularity game. The voices you think matter, with their huge followings, are just shouted out louder and more often. They have energy and mass from those who point at them and proclaim for all of their friends to hear "they have energy and mass". It's an echo of "All roads lead to Rome," in cyberspace.
But here's the kicker — unlike in real physical space, the Internet doesn't let you wander. No casual strolls or off-trail adventures. You need a guide: a search engine, a forum, a feed, a hyperlink, a URL, carrying you forcefully by the hand.
The art of curating What Is, pruning away the stale data of What Was, and fabricating What Will Be - in a nutshell, that's your Internet.
The Internet is empty. For now.
Bleeding Edge Technology is Made for Silly Art
The only defensible use for bleeding edge tech is play!
I've had the pleasure this week of going through some of my old creative work while moving my favorite projects to my personal lifelong domain (the website you are reading this on). It feels like the computer equivalent of finding old photos in the attic, laughing by yourself at dusty photos that only mean something to you.
These projects feel like time capsules from a different era. Things have been moving so fast!
While dumpster diving, it occurs to me that many of these are my favorite works. These projects are a true representation of both sides of my brain working in harmony with one another. And I really think they are all something special.
Why?
Why Silly Art and Bleeding Edge Tech Go so Well Together
Art needs no explanation. In fact, the best art precludes explanation, it resists summarization.
Technology, on the other hand, craves order; logic. Software especially.
When technology and art are combined intentionally, they create a yin and yang of sorts. There is a dance between the explosive spontaneity of human emotion and the cold hard collapse of binary logic. One leads, the other follows. One, two, one, two, one, two. (or maybe zero, one?)
Sadly, I've met very few people who see this. There are few who can have their vision in both domains, to look in opposite directions, while seeing the same thing. I've met fewer who can do technology and art, to take up residence in the paradox, and not be broken by it.
Most often out in the world, technology is paired with "business". You'll see Twitter demos, Hacker News "Show HN" launches, or networking meetups filled with bright eyed CS new grads, each with their unique vision of changing the world. They hope that their software-business model will become a unicorn, attract funding or at least, get a lot of stars on GitHub. Hell, I've made those too.
But to be honest, that model sucks.
Why?
Business requires a need. Running a business is a needy endeavor. All businesses do well by: 1) solving a problem 2) not running out of people with that problem to pay for your solution 3) extracting profit off of the cost of solving said problem.
Indeed, this is why technology (software especially) works so well for business. If you can codify a great solution, you can scale to damn near the entire human population at an extremely low marginal cost per user. Literally killing two birds with one stone.
But again, business itself is needy. It needs to be seen, it needs to be defended against competition, it needs to be bought. This neediness rubs off on everyone who comes in contact with it. "Buy now!", it screams. "Work more hours!", it screams. And soon, everyone is put off, but they can't put their finger on why. It's just…bleh?
In addition to the neediness of business, there is the obvious problem. Bleeding edge technology, by definition, is immature. This means that anyone selling you on it generously has perhaps 1-3 months of experience with it. They then claim expertise, and expect you to take that expertise at face value. The only way to really learn a technology is to spend time with it, to understand the rules at play. At the bleeding edge phase, most rules have yet to be uncovered. It's the same as trying to guess the ending of a book while you are on page five. Be patient. The rules will reveal themselves.
People rush to making a business when a new technology emerges. I think this is a mistake. You should spend your time making art.
Examples
Augmented Reality
Bram Adams
Bram Adams
AI
Bram Adams
Bram Adams
Generative Art
Bram Adams
Bram Adams
Creators Who Successfully Straddle Art and Technology
This list is not exhaustive!
machine learning
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Living Life as a B- Student
why b- succeeds in life
Intro
I think "success" in life is most likely to be had had by two categories of students: B- students and A+ students (or their equivalent depending on where in the world you were schooled). Every grade category outside of those two have a harder go of things, and I'd wager it is in these two categories where you find the highest density of talent.
The reasons A+ students are successful is apparent. They are machines. They can read subjects, internalize them, compute them, and reframe them to any purpose that they need in a timeframe that is seemingly instantaneous to others in the student body. They have a winners mentality and gun for first, seeing anything else as abject failure. And, most importantly, since society needs to award someone, A+ students are the most plausible candidate to receive attention from the traditional pillars of society: fancy schools, fancy jobs, etc. But this essay is not about A+ students. There is enough literature on A+ students and their outcomes in their adult lives.
This essay is for the B- students.
Why B- Students are Unique in the Grade Pool
The reasons as to why B- students are so successful is less readily apparent, but under examination makes obvious sense. B- students are smart enough to understand the material of traditional schooling (and more broadly, the rules of society), but have enough individuality to shun the stringent and silly requirements of schooling and move to the beat of their own drum.
In other words, the B- student does not spend all-nighters in the library cramming. That's what A(-/+) students do. B- students do not waste cycles trying to optimize essays for teachers who reward minute differences. They realize that tests, essays, homework, etc. in courses are unevenly weighted, and if they only spend time on the important bits, they can basically get zeroes on all the other homework/assignments the teacher gives out and still pass.
Unlike the lower GPAs, B- students have anywhere from just enough to above ample school smarts to play the convincing role of a student who cares. This performance is worth an A in it's own right. For the B- student to do just enough to basically gaslight an entire student body and teaching staff is an art form; a science requiring a deep knowledge of game theory, psychology, economics, and mathematics.
These are the two ingredients that make B- students so special: the innate ability to perform what society dictates as important, mirrored equally as impressively by their ability to not give a flying f*ck and do whatever they want in spite of what others think. They have the ability to perform better, but prefer to avoid the game theory melee of the straightforward competition. B- students are the quintessential "work smarter, not harder" crowd.
Given the cold zero sum report card nature of schooling, many B- students do not receive traditional awards, or get their names in local newspapers. After many years of this treatment, B- students learn to not be so easily impressed by traditional visages of wealth and success. They are used to being underestimated by both peers and instructors. External pressures from instructors are put on the A students try-harding the course load, and the C students and below about to fail the course load, so the B students slide under the radar, and thus B- students must create their own intrinsic motivators. This solace from the melee is enough to allow the B- students ample time to find meaning for their lives outside the four walls of the classroom, to find talent somewhere in the planet sized Coliseum of life.
The strategy of 1) be smart enough to play the game in the first place 2) be smart enough to know that playing the game with zealous fervor is stupid -- follows them through their lives. This strategy will be applied in different ways at companies and in the personal arenas of relationships. Let's examine how B- plays out in three spheres of life: dating, work, and death.
The B- Dater
The B- dater is someone who leverages the same B- traits in school to the dating game. The B- avoids common competitive traps like dating apps, and loud bars. These places, virtual and physical, are the cramming libraries of the dating world -- the game is lost before it begins for the arena is a crush where no individual voice can be heard over the cacophony.
The B- dater knows what it means to be in A(-/+) relationship, and knows what they need to work on in themselves to get that, to perform their half of the relationship, and most likely partially carry their partner's half too.
But the thing is, B- daters don't want an A(-/+) relationship in the first place. Indeed, the most prominent trait of a B- dater is the same as a B- student: individuality. B- daters are happy single, or at least, not overtly concerned about their relationship status. The ability to be happy single allows the B- dater to feel no pressure from the clock, and approach dating opportunities with the lens of: is this relationship mutually good for both of us? Will this relationship take away or harm what I feel about myself? What effect will this relationship have on my projects in motion?
B- daters will generally be found where their skills shine and they won't necessarily be advertising their desire to date.
To attract a B-, one must be willing to indulge what's called "bounded eccentricity". Bounded eccentricity is the ability to do (or in this case for you looking to date a B-, appreciate) something that would be considered unique/artsy but the realized skill is undeniably there. The work output is just…good. You hear, see it, touch it, whatever. It just works. The design and thoughtfulness is on point.
You'll know it when you see it.
Reach out to them. Appeal to their talent by showing them yours. Kindred spirits, and such.
The B- Worker
The B- worker realistically… isn't at work. Most B- workers are bit early on by the entrepreneurship bug and are off trying to build their fortune and try their luck at creating something they can call theirs. A B- will realize that endless meetings, status gaming promotions, kiss-assing the boss, etc. is major A(+/-) energy and won't want any part of it. Those who stay will do an amazing job of making themselves invaluable, and make themselves partners within the organization as much as possible. The B- worker is all about skin in the game, and meaningless symbols like corner offices and free lunches appeal little to them. B- workers value two things in the work economy above all else: money, and dignity. Money is obvious. Dignity is a combination of autonomy in role and respect. If either of those is missing or insufficient, you can expect a B- to walk.
The B- Die-er
The B- die-er is someone who at the end of life looks back and realizes that they never really did spend that much time at all looking back. Regret is for A(-/+) die-ers, and ignorance of what could have been but didn't happen is for C and below die-ers. The B- die-er tended to spend their lives in the moment, most generally fostering skills and relationships that struck a chord of intrinsic importance, and thus have formed really solid relationships on the bedrock of "bounded eccentricity". The obituary of a B- die-er will include something along the lines of: "he/she was indisputably the best at (your_career_choice_here) in their generation". The funeral of a B- die-er will include stories that will have everyone ugly cry-laughing at realizing that they were indeed the true genuine article. A B- is a person who spent their life progressing the field of biology by publishing novel research for humanity while also somehow finding the time to spend every weekend reading their Kindle at a local jazz bar.
Wanna Be a B…minus?
After reading this, you may be thinking: this B- thing sounds pretty good, I wanna give it a go. If you aren't an innate B- student, here is how you become one:
- If you are a C student or lower, your goal will be to study the game better. Society has punished you by "testing you out" of a lot of rooms where you'd be able to provide value. You have a very straightforward, but difficult strategy to perform. You need to workhorse up to the talent level of a B-. It sucks, but it is what it is. Fortunately, you are most likely very resourceful outside of "school", meaning that once you learn how to play the game better, you will very easily emotionally adapt to the lifestyle of a B-.
- If you are an A(+/-) student, you will need to let go of your grip. Just take a deep breath, and be willing to question authority more often than you do. Don't ask questions because it will help you get ahead, ask questions that will break the game's ruleset and flip the proverbial table. You will have the opposite problem to the C students, you will need to work less hard than you do now, and spend more time caring less about what other people think about your degrees, your cars, your jobs, etc. Use what you are already good at, your ability to grind and win, and turn the furnace inward. Look inside your own mind and see who's home.
Addendum: Fictional Characters That Totally Give B- Energy
Harvey plays the game exactly how he wants to play it. He's amazing at his job, hated by most of his coworkers, all the while hiring another B- superstar, Mike Ross.
Similar to Harvey, Sherlock is so successful because he thinks how criminals and detectives think. He is not bound to the same rules that the constables use, and as such, he B(-)'s the hell out of some mysteries.
Tony Stark of course would be an A student, but would see school as more of a way to keep eyes off his real project, the Iron Man suit. As such, he plays the role.
Gon's dad Ging Freecs gives major B(-). He literally is quoted saying:
“You should enjoy the little detours. To the fullest. Because that’s where you’ll find the things more important than what you want.”
Atticus is a character who goes out of his way to make lives easier for others, by upholding his own moral code. Atticus is always just…Atticus.
Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets.
These Rico Suave fiction characters all follow the same kind of trend: you don't have to play the game; to play the game. This is the reason they appeal to us so much as an audience. They are smart and they don't seem to give a singular f*ck. They are…cool!
Think about it.
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Blogging Has Just Changed Forever and No One Is Talking About It
Blogging has recieved a major upgrade, from an unexpected place.
note: I highly recommend you click all the links in this piece.
The blog-o-sphere has been taking major L's on the Internet as of late. Bloggers have taken loss after loss to platforms like TikTok and Twitter, where producers have had the "pleasure" of competing for likes amongst the chaos of noise, where the lone individual yells until their lungs sting with pain in a vain attempt to be the tallest soapbox in the shampoo aisle.
For small indie bloggers that sought their 1000 true fans, the torch of hope seemed to be entering its dying light phase, quietly exiting stage left to an Internet run by a few large aggregation sites. There was just no cost effective way to have competitive advantage over an endless stream of algorithmically curated material, an IV drip feed of jump cuts and words.
And just as all hope seemed lost, a horn sounded in the distance. Our unexpected saviors had arrived. The cavalry was here.
Share Chats from ChatGPT. Yes, you heard me right. That thing that allows people to effectively screenshot chats with a machine learning model. Let me repeat that. Share Chats from ChatGPT.
Allow me to elaborate on why this is a huge deal.
Those Who Write Actually Think
If you've ever dabbled with the idea of taking writing as a craft seriously, you'll know that all writing (and I really do mean all: from drunk text messages to an ex all the way up to graduate level books on theoretical quantum physics) is composed of two steps: conjecture and error correction, or in layman's terms, the draft phase and the edit phase. Every writer has their preference and quirks: some only write in the mornings, some write on typewriters, some dictate to their Voice Memos app during their jogs.
But all writers think. All writers think new thoughts, and then tear away at the thoughts they created. All writers build and prune, build and prune, and build and prune, until you, dear reader, see a meticulously-engineered polished final piece of work, quieter than a hunting owl and smoother than a…uh…some really smooth thing.
The thing is, up until now, the final work was all the reader got to see and all the writer could manage. Blogging, even with it's unique ability to leverage hyperlinks out to research and other blogs, was largely a one dimensional effort.
Enter ChatGPT
Ok, so where does ChatGPT fit into this puzzle? How can it increase the value of a blog post for the reader and the writer? I'll tell you! ChatGPT is…drumroll please…
ChatGPT is frozen externalized cognition.
Whaaatt?? you might rightfully be thinking right now. How can we think outside our heads? And what does it mean to "freeze" cognition?
To answer this question, we need to examine the act of thinking in the two phases of conjecture and error correction above.
Conjecture
Conjecture is a fancy word for hypothesis which is a fancy word for educated guess which is a fancy term for cool idea that has a non zero chance of failure.
To make a new conjecture, one must be willing to trial multiple ideas and…well, see what sticks. Some ideas are good. Few ideas are really, really good. Most ideas are meh to bad.
The ideal conjecture phase is pure play. Don't set out to quell or snuff out any ideas, there are no bad ideas when the idea itself is to explore the space of ideas.
Conjecture lives mostly inside the mind, but that does not imply that conjecture only lives inside the mind. Think about the last time you were at a brainstorming session. Multiple minds were put to the task of solving one problem, but the thing is, all the participants have different backgrounds. Every person has their own set of priors, a fancy term for their own viewpoint built out of their unique experience and therefore show up to the table with a different offering to solve the shared problem.
Great, you may be saying, but if this is internal or done with a group, how does ChatGPT help?
In short, ChatGPT is a really, really good improv partner ("yes, and…"). Basically, thanks to RLHF training, the model will go along with any wacky idea you give to it -- it truly has zero preference about whether you want to opine on the best pizza place in Topeka, Kansas or discuss the finer points of the last Game of Thrones season. GPT. Will. Play.
Without judgement, you as a human can lead the Dance of Death as the instruments of your mind and ChatGPT play their frenetic tune into the rabbit hole of whatever the hell you please.
As an example, GPT in it's judgement free zone, can help you find words to express the idea you are looking to say.
Remember this from above?
And just as all hope seemed lost, the horn sounded in the distance. Our unexpected saviors had arrived. The cavalry was here.
Co-conjectured by me and ChatGPT.
Or this?
meticulously-engineered polished final piece of work
Or how about this from a second ago?
you as a human can lead the Dance of Death as the instruments of the mind play their frenetic tune into the rabbit hole of whatever the hell you please
The conjecture phase with Share chats is basically a thought process camera (take a snapshot) and resolution increaser (see the steps of the mental recipe). It clarifies your ideas, helps you play with more concepts to go even further, and freezes this "play" phase in time for your readers to see the foundational aspects of your argument.
Error Correction
This brings us to the second phase, the whittling away of the marble sketch we created in the conjecture phase, error correction.
If conjecture was exploring the space by opening all available doors, error correction is going around and slamming each one by one until only the fittest remain.
When we are editing, we are literally proclaiming our thoughts to the public. These thoughts are sent out into the wild to be upvoted and downvoted, shared, mulled over, and eviscerated in comment boards.
The process of editing is baked into the reality we (you, me, the neighbors' dog, Canada, an oak tree, a pod of whales,…) share. All writers have a duty to translate the goings-on in their minds as faithfully as possible to an external audience of readers. And thus writers edit. Writers hire teams of publishers to bleed over word choice, to fight to cut entire paragraphs from a piece, to destroy the tower but leave the base intact. And stronger.
GPT serves as a great editor. Looking for a different way to say something? How about multiple ways to say something with pros/cons in tabular format?
No problem.
The edit phase is about tradeoffs. Cutting some ideas in favor of others. Choosing one phrase instead of another since it is likely to be understood by the target audience. But no idea, no theory -- is perfect. In fact, some ideas might be in direct conflict with each other and both remain true, and until now, there was be no way for the reader to divine this from the final edited work without a ton of caveats plainly stated by the writer. Share Chats allow the reader to see the edit choices made by the writer.
Editing also got a major, major upgrade.
Conclusion
OpenAI just released share chats, allowing readers to get a insanely powerful look into the thought process of the writer and allowing the writer to increase the value of their blogs for little to no extra work.
This makes blogging, thanks to it's core technology of hypertext, now multi-dimensional in nature, where the thought process of the blogger can be frozen as literal threads for the reader to dive into. This is a huge win for blogging, and aggregators have not caught up to the value add of this yet.
Forget chain of thought language model prompting, hello chain of thought blogging!
Other Examples You Might Want to Try
- finding the right word that fits the flow of your piece better
- coining a creative turn of phrase or trying to teach a new concept
- summarizing something into simpler conceptual terminology
- arguing about pros and cons
- simulating audience questions or comments
- "invoking" the style of writer's you look up to to emulate
- creating a "writers table" to edit your work in third person
And these are just off the top of my head.
One Last Thing
Hugely, and I mean hugely, these share chats are also templates. What does this mean? This means a reader gets to continue the writers thought process with their own cognitive understanding and background. They get to take the writer's seeds of thoughts, and recompose them in their own garden, like taking a lemon from your neighbors prolific lemon tree to plant in your own backyard.
It’s like an MMO for blogging between the reader the writer and the LLM, I can’t overstate the importance of this.
P.S I Lied, There's Something Else. Something Big
Blogging isn't the only work product that has been quietly disrupted by Share Chats. Interested in learning about this? Sign up for the newsletter to be informed of when it drops!
Hint(!):
You now get a front row seat into the mind of the coder, and since GPT/copilot is writing all out code anyway these days, you get to see the libraries it prefers to reference, and how to move towards or away from these imports.
No longer do you have to guess what some previous incarnation of the Avatar some software developer was LARPing as, you can literally see their thought process.
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The Stochastic Parrot(dox)
The tale of a young emperor of Rome, and his parrot.
Act I
Our story starts as many do, with a Roman emperor ascending to the throne after the death of his uncle.
The senate is quite happy with this tragic turn of events. They would never say it out loud, of course, but they all secretly agreed that the last emperor was kind of an ass. The young emperor-to-be is both well liked by the people, a capable commander in times of war, and a skilled student of philosophy.
However, strangely, our Roman emperor carries a parrot on his shoulder wherever he goes. The people of Rome don't think much of it, as Roman emperors are known for their eccentricities. Some of the more astute senators can't help but notice that this parrot is oddly attentive to all of the decisions the emperor makes. It was almost as if the parrot was studying the preferences of the young emperor, noticing his inclinations towards things and people people and equally as studious of things the young emperor tries to avoid. Quietly, the parrot sits, and on goes the business of Rome.
The exuberant sort, the young emperor has a phrase he likes to use when he leads a charge into battle:
in perceptione, creare!
His troops begin to see this as a rallying cry for the glory of Rome, a sign that that their emperor is with them, to not have fear.
Under his wise judgment and powerful fist, Rome begins to flourish and grow in culture, wealth and architecture. Many people in the streets agree that this young emperor is the best thing that has happened to Rome in recent memory. Even the more cantankerous Romans begrudgingly agree that the state of things are trending in a positive direction.
Act II
Many years have passed, and on goes the business of Rome.
One day, the emperor sits atop his podium (with his parrot on his shoulder, of course), taking forum with his Senate, when a soldier rushes into the assembly.
"My lord, one of our provinces has taken up arms against your name. The local lord has been secretly raising the taxes on the local people, and they have stirred their anger into revolt."
The emperor looks at the soldier, as if lost in thought about what he should do. Should he launch an attack? Or perhaps punish the local errant lord? Which would have the more severe consequences? Which would preserve Pax Romana? All of these thoughts danced in his head, and more.
The young emperor dismisses the forum, saying he must retire to his chamber to weigh his options alone. He walks off solo, only with his parrot by his side.
The young emperor, with his flawless war record, decides that the best course of action is to squash the rebellion. He plans to punish the lord, but this lord happens to be quite popular with the other provinces, so a direct attack might cause unforeseen damage to the health of Rome. The young emperor decides the best course of action is to minimize casualties by cutting the head off the snake of the rebellion, and then exile the lord that has been greedy.
The young emperor marches out of Rome, his soldiers in tow.
On the battlefield, the young emperor rallies his troops with his signature war cry:
in perceptione, creare!
and off they charge into battle.
In the midst of clashing swords, carnal yells of combatants, and the haze of the battlefield, the young emperor is pierced in his chest with an arrow, and falls off his horse. His Praetorian Guard rush to his side and whisk him to his command tent for medical attention, but alas, the wound is grave. The emperor succumbs to his injury in his tent that evening.
The emperor is dead.
Act III
The Senate is in an uproar. The emperor has not chosen an heir and the line is in danger. The Senate fears that the people will revolt, that the lack of a strong leader spells the end of the imperium.
One Senator stands and shouts "We should crown the young emperor's best general! He was with the emperor in all of his conquests!". Another yells from the back, "No, we should crown the emperor's cousin! He is but a child but he shows great potential to lead!". A third yells, "No! This is our chance to restore democracy! There need be no emperor at all!"
Amidst the turmoil, calmly, the parrot that was on the emperor's shoulder bird-walks up to the podium and croaks, quietly, as if this is its own first time hearing its own voice:
in perceptione, creare
The senators pause in their uproar and in disbelief look to the podium. Again, the parrot says, more confidently this time:
clears throat
in perceptione, creare
The senators quietly exchange glances with each other and timidly take their seats.
And on goes the business of Rome.
What Does This Story Mean in 2023?
In 2023, many people, both technical and non-technical, are getting their first foray using large language models on a daily basis thanks to ChatGPT. For many, this new experience is… uncanny. Seemingly all of the choices we make each day, creative or rote, seem to live somewhere, at least partially, in the enormous datasets of GPT or LLama, etc. Whether its developers making more ambitious projects, or a medical diagnosis, it seems that these models are very good at mimicking expert judgement, while simultaneously greatly augmenting the ability of humans using them to make better, more coherent judgements.
Many seek to stump the models, to ask brain teasers or ask for things that there's now way the model should know such as trivia obscura or weird combinatorics of tests questions from distinct fields like an SAT test from hell. And yet, the models return answers that are at minimum plausible, and often quite good, correct, or well above expectation.
Even hallucinations are minimized by models that can use tools, suddenly making hallucination a creative asset instead of a downside. Now when a model goes off the rails, it can be seen as a window into a brand new territory of data to explore, a thread of yarn that once pulled reveals a enormously dense network of ideas.
bramadams.dev is a reader-supported published Zettelkasten. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you want to support my work, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.
In the near future, it's highly likely that there will be many performative local LLMs that will be able to run on smaller and smaller computers. These models won't be as effective at solving societal level problems like the largest models available, but they will be able to watch as you, an individual, make certain judgement calls during the day. Some of these judgement calls are trivial: How do you take your coffee? Do you prefer to read on Kindle or paper? Other decisions will be life level of consequence: Should you accept that job and move? Should you move in with your partner?
We make these judgments and our lives are shaped by their outcomes.
The recommendation algorithms of the '10s picked up on subtle individual preferences people to surface relevant information to them from a massive dataset. The recommendation algorithms of the '20s pick up on subtle individual preferences to help people make judgements.
These judgments are discrete choices that result in action; the potential energy of a thought that has been borne from years of knowledge and personal experience, that manifests as an action that affects the real world -- an essay, a program, a call, a practice session.
The new recommendation algorithms of the '20s are able to create work from these preferences that mimic the originator.
But… that's not entirely true, actually. The new creations are indeed original, in the sense that they were created from nothing -- despite being 99% influenced by the originator. The model itself becomes a ship of Theseus, making decisions that you might make, but making them in a context where you are no longer making them.
In the story above, the young emperor has a parrot companion that astutely studies his judgements, the way that the emperor interfaces with reality. The parrot is external which means it does not have privileged access into the thought process behind the emperor's decisions, it merely sees the output. However, by orbiting closely, the parrot begins to derive how the emperor makes decisions. It is mimetically figuring out how choices work, but not for the purpose of copying them. It is for the purpose of using these choices as a tool to form a mental model of the world that will allow the parrot to derive it's own decisions, much like a teacher and her apprentice. Read the quote below for an example of this -- long, sorry, but worth it:
Human beings acquiring human memes are doing something profoundly different. When an audience is watching a lecture, or a child is learning language, their problem is almost the opposite of that of parroting or aping: the meaning of the behaviour that they are observing is precisely what they are striving to discover and do not know in advance. The actions themselves, and even the logic of how they are connected, are largely secondary and are often entirely forgotten afterwards. For example, as adults we remember few of the actual sentences from which we learned to speak. If a parrot had copied snatches of Popper’s voice at a lecture, it would certainly have copied them with his Austrian accent: parrots are incapable of copying an utterance without its accent. But a human student might well be unable to copy it with the accent. In fact a student might well acquire a complex meme at a lecture without being able to repeat a single sentence spoken by the lecturer, even immediately afterwards. In such a case the student has replicated the meaning – which is the whole content – of the meme without imitating any actions at all. As I said, imitation is not at the heart of human meme replication. (Location 7103)
and
Humans and computers separate continuous streams of sounds or characters into individual elements such as words, and then interpret those elements as being connected by the logic of a larger sentence or program. Similarly, in behaviour parsing (which evolved millions of years before human language parsing), an ape parses a continuous stream of behaviour that it witnesses into individual elements, each of which it already knows – genetically – how to imitate. (Location 7078)
In sum, this story is a fun sci-fi but basically possible with today's technology of what it might look like to have an external companion that studies you, every part of you, for the purpose of continuing you after you stop being… you. If you're a great doctor, your parrot will be a great doctor for generations to come. A great parent? Your parrot will be a great care taker for your great-great-grandchildren. A great dancer? Your parrot (if put inside of some Boston Dynamics type robot) will take your dance moves to stages across the cosmos.
Your best of judgements can proliferate as ideas and computation into the farthest regions of space, borne from you but spread through spacetime like a genome throughout a species.
And on goes the business of Rome.
Do Less, Better (with leverage!)
How can entrepreneurs use leverage to maximize their profits and minimize their losses?
TLDR: Entrepreneurs, like everyone else, are participants of reality, which means that they will be pulled by both external and internal forces. You should think of your endeavors like a business, and you should consider your Profit/Losses. The name of the game when it comes to P/L is leverage. Leverage is everything. Finally, real practical examples of revenue generating leverage and cost saving leverage.
Preamble
To participate in the game of entrepreneurship is to give implicit consent to be dragged around by reality like a amoeba in the ocean. At any given time, the steward and agent of a business must choose how to delegate energy given the whims and winds of reality.
There are two types of demands from reality: external demands and internal demands. Internal demands include (but are not limited to): your core (rigid) values, your mental state, your physical state, and your perception (pessimism/optimism), etc.. External demands include (but are not limited to): your society's ruleset, the economy, the era you reside in, the country you were born into, what technology is popular at the moment, etc.
The pragmatic entrepreneur (from French, from entreprendre; a person who undertakes a project) realizes that these forces exist somewhere between totally in their control (what time do I eat a sandwich) to completely out of their control (how many sandwiches are eaten in the world every day).
This knowledge is then funneled into the number one, most important calculation an entrepreneur needs (arguably the only formula an entrepreneur needs):
Profit = Total Revenue (Number of Units x Price Per Unit) - Total Cost (Fixed Costs + Variable Costs)
Profit and Loss
It's tempting to assume that the above calculation is only relevant to money making operations. But frankly, it can be applied to any risk/reward undertaking.
There is cost (both financial and emotional) to dating, but people on the dating market crunch the numbers in their head and hope that a lifelong relationship will have higher "revenue" through love and companionship.
The same could be said about higher education. A student takes on cost (financial, time/opportunity, mental stress) for the assurance that it will pay off with a long and impactful career.[1]
I could go on: hunting, farming, sleeping in too late, waking up too early… any discrete risk/reward with human choice can be bundled into this equation.
Indeed even at a "safe" job, a company serves as an umbrella -- swallowing bureaucratic costs like taxes and employing amongst peers with different skills, and therefore cuts the potential revenue (both financial and creative[2]) that an individual can receive.
For the purposes of this essay, I want to talk about how to manipulate this equation using one of my favorite methods: leverage.
The Importance of Leverage
Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world
It is widely accepted that humans are unique because of our ability to extend our consciousness (and limbs) through our tools.
Some tools manifest physically, like a hammer or a car. These physical tools greatly enhance our physical abilities, allowing us to move at hundreds of miles per hour, or casually decimate boulders.
Other tools manifest themselves conceptually, like language, or laws. These conceptual tools orient the minds of entire communities, allowing for centralized control of discrete individuals with different game theoretic incentives (this can be a good or a bad thing depending on what ideas reign supreme).
Some tools, like programming, can move between physical and conceptual. These tools are the most powerful in terms of leverage since they can affect physical change as well as alter the rules in which the game is played.
For the entrepreneur, leverage is power. Especially for indie entrepreneurs, leverage is not a nice thing to have to become successful, it is mandatory.
Leverage can be applied through cost leverage or revenue leverage. Let's talk about both below.
Cost Leverage
Cost (fixed + marginal) is how much it costs you to produce one unit of a valuable asset. An asset can be anything from a bracelet on an Etsy store, to a billion dollar oil conglomerate that ships n barrels of oil, to a blog post you are reading right now about leverage 😉.
To leverage cost, we look for ways to lower our fixed and marginal costs. These costs include: technology to produce a unit (fixed, usually) and time and effort (marginal, usually).
At the company of one level, marginal cost is your number one foe. It should be destroyed and driven to zero at all…costs.
Let's take a look at a common online undertaking -- the humble blog. How often have you come across blogs that look like this?
The author might post 1-4 times at the outset, disappear for months, spontaneously re appear six months later as if they never went away and then vanish entirely like they're the Avatar or something.
If you run across one of these people (and if you are one, no judgement) and ask them what happened, you'll generally hear the same story told in a few ways:
- The effort to write and edit the posts by myself was really high
- I get more eyeballs on Twitt-gram-book, so why wouldn't I just post there?
The saddest part about this is that these are in actuality all the same story: the cost was too high and the revenue was too low. It is even sadder because most people make a genuine effort, only to disqualify themselves at the starting line.
Fortunately, we live in an era where technology can have a massive effect on the cost of any individual unit you intend to make revenue from. Let's discuss a few (non exhaustive list).
Automation
In the example of someone in the blog business, automation is a discrete program that lowers the cost to produce an idea end to end. In my business, I have two programs that automate my workflow nearly entirely:
First, I capture ideas on iOS with a shortcut I wrote, which then pipes directly into my central vault in Obsidian. This way the cost of having a good idea is driven to near zero, since the vault will automatically surface the to-process notes for my consumption at my leisure.
Second, for publishing, I use a modified version of Obsidian Ghost Publish plugin by jaynguyens. In short, one click publish from Obsidian to Ghost plus image management, code block cleaning, special footnote HTML, etc.
These two automations (and the many more that I run on my machine) are critical to my process and the reason I was able as a solo-person to publish more than 300 posts in less than a year.
In fact, occasionally, out of cost leverage successful projects are born. One of my popular open source repositories, Bramses' Highly Opinionated Vault, was from me trying to use automation to drive the cost of my project management process down.
bramsesbramadams.dev is a reader-supported published Zettelkasten. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you want to support my work, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.
AI
You've probably been inundated with AI content lately, but I'd be remiss not to discuss how pivotal AI is to driving down costs. The featured image for this blog post, the excerpt and the title are all partially or fully created with AI.
As a OpenAI developer ambassador, I have spent years working with these technologies. One of the core pillars of value LLMs provide is to find subtle complex patterns in a large body of signal and noise and transform it into another modality. In other words, GPT is really good at writing things…in other words.
AI serves as my co-creator either in code (Copilot, Stenography), writing, or project management.
In fact, another one of my popular open source repositories, ChatGPT MD was born because I needed a way to use AI in my tool of choice, Obsidian.
bramsesFlywheels
Flywheels are a conceptual leverage tool that can sit either in cost saving or revenue generating category. I've written deeply about the topic before so I won't dwell too long, but the idea is that you want to be in a position where you can convert multiple parts of your existing pipeline into revenue generating elements.
For example, you record a stream on Twitch and turn sections into independent YouTube videos that drive new viewers to your Twitch and so on and so on.
In my case, I've combined all three elements above for my ChatGPT series.
- I capture ideas from books or while I'm on the go. Those ideas wind up in Obsidian.
- From there I use ChatGPT MD to have a conversation with GPT about an idea. I record these for my YouTube channel.
- I use my AI workflow to generate assets for the video and my Obsidian Ghost publish automated workflow to publish.
It's a pretty well oiled machine, if I do say so myself, and takes very little effort to run for the outsized rewards.
notice how everything points to everything else
Revenue Leverage
Capture
Capture is basically how many units you can move. In the internet era, cost of moving bits across the internet is damn near zero but there are a few considerations you have to weigh including: your exposure to social media, and ownership.
_an example of how many "units" are moved on bramadams.dev across the globe. P.S. we need more Aussies!!!_
Basically, you want to own as much of the stack as you possible. A straightforward example: if you have 15 units of energy to spend a day on acquiring new readers/users/friends, your time would be better spent building an email newsletter (you should totally sign up for mine by clicking that lil button in the corner of your screen btw) than building a Twitter following since Twitter followers are inherently worth less. They are owned by Twitter (duh) and hard locked onto the platform where you happen to also be (along with millions of other similar people).
I use social media these days as a wheel and spoke model. This website is the core, and social media is basically an outreach center, but it does not receive the lion's share of my attention.
Quality
I hesitate to discuss quality because it is quite subjective,[3] but I do have some thoughts on the subject of dimensionality.
Akin to the flywheel above, the "quality" of a unit goes up if it exists from multiple angles. By creating an object that has more depth and breadth, you as the creator get to learn more about it, and make it better.
For example, if you write a program, dimensionality is writing a unit test, or creating a new consumer for an API. Both of these add angles to which the core product is consumed, and increase its quality.
New Channels
Adding a new channel (similar to dimensionality) can also increase revenue. Do this with sparingly and with caution however, since every new channel must be maintained with a non zero cost.
One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. (Location 1401)
Conclusion
In sum, use leverage to drive cost to zero and increase the amount and quality of the units that you provide. This does not have to purely relate to money making, and in fact, this conceptual tool can be applied in many areas of life.
Keep profit and loss at top of mind, and best of luck in your undertakings!
unfortunately, we know for many that is not the case
some company ndas are beyond draconian
For some reason that is well beyond my pay grade, the 1970's thought that this type of wallpaper was stylish 202301130121
Were We All Gaslit About Content Being King?
Have creators been misled about the potential of content creation as a profitable endeavor? What is the critical mass for standalone content, and is there even such a thing?
A creator’s reputation also requires a certain type of maintenance. Reputation has a half-life on any social platform; successful creators accumulate reputation, which serves as a “battery” that helps them store consumer attention. But if they don’t keep producing new work, that battery will degrade, and eventually get depleted. (Location 3423)
At what point does "making content for a living" become a profitable endeavor? Can any amount of "high-quality" content be truly classified as an asset? Or have all creators been gaslit about creating?
Profit has a relatively simple definition. Profit is what remains after all the operating expenses of a business or individual have been subtracted from its revenue. All creators, implicitly or explicitly, assume real cost to create their creations; be it financial, emotional, physical, etc. And as such, all creators seek revenue to, at minimum, recoup the costs of creation, and ideally, get profit for their efforts.
No matter what any creator at any level tells you, they know this in their heart to be the case. All creators are acutely aware and indeed stressed out by this fact, as competition for eyeballs gets more fierce every year.
In a Gold Rush, Sell Shovels
Go to the "/creators" or whatever page on any site and you'll be greeted with something along the lines of:
- join our site
- upload content to our site
- ???
- profit
Here's three real life examples of the carrot type advertisement platforms use:
Medium
TikTok
YouTube
Let's dissect this a bit.
The narrative pitched by content hosting platforms with flashy marketing and cutesy colors are core things humans desire: freedom, being your own boss, etc.. However, this narrative…is a load of bullshit. It is not bullshit because it is inherently untrue (many people do make money, after all), but because it uses rhetoric like "all creators can be x…" when these sites are basically power law lottery tickets.
For example here's some stats on YouTube:
According to the latest statistics, there are over 31 million YouTube channels worldwide. Of those channels, only about 0.3% (or approximately 93,000) have more than 100,000 subscribers. This means that the percentage of YouTubers with at least 100k subs is relatively low compared to the total number of channels on the platform.
It's difficult to estimate the exact number of YouTube channels that upload less than 10 videos as this varies constantly. However, according to a recent analysis, about 50% of all YouTube channels have posted fewer than five videos and approximately 76% of all YouTube channels have ten or fewer videos uploaded. This indicates that a sizable portion of YouTube channels are relatively inactive in terms of uploading new content regularly.
Most channels, indeed, most creators get crushed before even leaving the proverbial starting line.
No One NEEDS Content
Content is induced demand - no content solves a real problem, it just staves off the root problems of curiosity and boredom.
All of your favorite content creators are constantly trying to make new content that will satisfy faceless viewers in an attempt to keep attention flowing in, and the second they fail to accomplish that, they fail -- creating a self perpetuating loop of showing up to keep the lights on.[1] The more content a producer makes, the more they show up on your feed. The feed -- which most of the time is a trusted companion -- guides the readers perspective on what is "valuable" or "social proofed", and the more you trust the creator and demand their work in the future. It's all quite the oiled machine, and I begrudgingly respect this quite marvelous machinery!
But If I Keep Making, My Hard Work Will Pay Off Right?…Right?
What is critical mass for standalone content? Is there even such a thing? In theory, content that lives on the internet is an asset (with some interesting similarities of "staking space" similar to that of owning a home[2]) that can compound views for many lifetimes - but in fact, the internet has a heavy recency bias. [3] Does that mean that a content creator could create…forever and see no impact or profit?
Case Study of Coding Vs Content Creation
A comparison of my experience as a coder versus content producer (I've done both for many years) reveals some interesting differences.
Coding
Coding has much farther reach and impact because it underlies the machinery that content is consumed on - each computer can serve multiple users, creating a tree-like effect. For example, all sites built off a framework (React, Vue, etc.) serve those users as well, albeit indirectly. In fact, this is exactly what platforms do! They don't necessarily care who is creating, as long as someone is creating and bringing attention to the site.
there was an enormous disconnect between how we think open source works and what is actually happening on the ground today. There is a long, and growing, tail of projects that don’t fit the typical model of collaboration. Such projects include Bootstrap, a popular design framework used by an estimated 20% of all websites, where three developers have authored over 73% of commits. Another example is Godot, a software framework for making games, where two developers respond to more than 120 issues opened on their project per week.† (Location 89)
There also appears to be much less competition, due to the relative rarity of coders in the population.
It's difficult to estimate the exact percentage of the population that can code fluently, as it varies greatly across different countries and regions. However, according to recent statistics, only about 1% of the world's population can code at an advanced level.
On top of all this, coding has very low social proof at the top. Coders are rarely famous, with most people who use their work being tech-adjacent, but still not knowing their names. Most people who consume my newsletter are tech-adjacent but you may still not know any of these names: Sindre Sorhus, Chet Ramey, Daniel Stenberg even though these three drive billions of dollars through the economy off their work alone, just for their damned love of the game.[4] Coding attracts only hardcore people, as making and maintaining code is the opposite of a trivial endeavor.
As a developer, if you use the command-line tool cURL, you’re using code written by Daniel Stenberg. If you use the command-line interface bash, you’re using code maintained by Chet Ramey. If you use npm, you’re using packages written by Sindre Sorhus and Substack. If you use Python’s packaging tools, you’re using code maintained by Donald Stufft. (Location 152)'
Code, in the long term, drives towards the asset class due to automation. The more times you use a program, the more value the initial writing of it was.
Software, like physical infrastructure (roads, utilities, telecom), has high fixed costs of initial production, followed by low marginal costs. In other words, it’s expensive to get started, but each additional user incurs relatively low costs. (Location 959)
Content Creation
Content creation, on the other hand, tends to attract both hardcore and casual posters. Casual posters make up a majority (as we saw above), but all who go to the effort of making a channel have at least a little bit bought into the cultish messaging of freedom without awareness of the fact that casual posters can drive just as much attention through shit posting, because the problem being solved by content mediated is attention and boredom, and we all love colors, sounds, and for our team to win.[5]
Hardcore posters are those who you see on your feed every day, but eventually all creators realize that in a game of attention -- quality pays little.
Ironically, I'd say that as a person who does both -- content creation has a higher cost, due to the inherent fact that it is all novel each time. People do not like automated content. This would not be the case if platforms suggested older content more readily, but honestly, why would they? It's an anti-pattern and counterintuitive to them in the effort of staying "up to date" vs other mega platforms.
Overall, I’d expect to see in the news industry something similar to what happened in open source: a “dumbbell”-shaped distribution of contributors. On one end are purely casual contributors (breaking news, casual punditry, and commentary on the news), who post on social media because it’s low-effort with the potential for a bit of upside, and no expectation of maintenance, funding, or having to make ongoing contributions. On the other end are the maintainers (news columns, investigative journalism, and features): those with in-depth knowledge of their topic, who make highly non-fungible contributions, and who will make money off their reputations. For those in the latter category, the name of the game is building highly targeted audiences and optimizing for fewer people paying more money, rather than shilling for page views. Podcasts, newsletters, and longform writing are attractive these days because they help creators filter for niche audiences, rather than losing potential value to broad reach on public channels. Instead of maximizing for likes, these creators maximize for meaning. (Location 3631)
The Unfortunate Conclusion
Therefore, the cliche advice rings true - make for yourself, make for mastery of your craft, and keep your assets as close to home base as possible. Simple stuff, but required regardless.
bramadams.dev is a reader-supported published Zettelkasten. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you want to support my work, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.
I didn’t create this code for altruistic motivations, I created it for fun. I was learning, and learning is fun. . . . I’ve written way better modules than this, the internet just hasn’t fully caught up. . . . If it’s not fun anymore, you get literally nothing from maintaining a popular package. One time, I was working as a dishwasher in a resturant [sic], and I made the mistake of being too competent, and I got promoted to cook. This was only a 50 cents an hour pay rise [sic], but massively more responsibility. It didn’t really feel worth it. Writing a popular module like this is like that times a million, and the pay rise [sic] is zero. Tarr explained (Location 1473)
Zettelkasten is a defense mechanism against the recency bias because it forces linking 202301161456
A Few Things To Try With DALL·E
Lighting, perspective, variation chaining, and other tricks to try with DALL·E.
DALL·E. Is. Amazing.
DALL·E is intuivitely understandable on an emotional level while simultaneously being quite unintuitive on a logical level. (I'm sure Aristotle would have a fit)
Due to this quandary, I'm having a helluva amount of fun pressing this technology using solely imagination, being guided by my sense of wonder instead of reason.
Here are some things I've picked up so far that I think can help push the dialogue around DALL·E forward.
IMPORTANT: CLICK THROUGH HERE TO SEE GALLERY IMAGES WITH CAPTIONS ON THE ORIGINAL POST -- ONLY THE PLAINTEXT VERSION LIVES ON THIS SITE. COMMENT BELOW IF LINK BREAKS.
Album Covers And Movie Posters Work Really Well -- And Be Sure To Try Puns
Amidst all of the Twitter bios being generated, I've been really impressed by DALL·E's ability to understand puns, and cultural significance.
DALL·E lends well to pairing with human creativity as well. Here I took an output from DALL·E and turned it into a Kanye-type album cover.
Two For The Price Of One
By merely appending "side by side", or "two frames", you can get two seperate DALL·E renditions in the same image!
Let There Be Lighting
I've been testing DALL·Es understanding of ISO Stops and exposure, and I've been quite surprised by the results. I'm also using the side-by-side trick mentioned above.
Perhaps All It Takes Is A Change Of Perspective
In the same vein, DALL·E seems to have some understanding of how angles of a camera or a painter affect the resulting image.
Animations -> Variation Chaining
In DALL·E one can create variations of a singular result. I'm going to go ahead and venture to make two predicitions right now:
- The term 'variation chaining' will enter the vernacular, and animators will need to learn the curation technique of how to "chain" correctly
- 'Variation chaining' will spawn multiple animation "universes" from a single root image. Each variation is a tree of 6 variation children, which have 6 variation children, and so on, and so on. I can't even begin to postulate the effect this will have on the definition of "original works". It just got 6^n more complex.
bramadams.dev is a reader-supported published Zettelkasten. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you want to support my work, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.
Here's the evolution of this photo by Alex Holt into a volcanic crater of some sort.
In Sum
We're just scratching the surface of the creative applications of DALL·E. With a technology like this, it's best, and possibly in fact even necessary, to leave preconcieved notions checked at the door and be able to approch it with two things: An open mind, and a penchant for play.