Welcome to Ways of Looking. Roughly every month, I send my friends links and summaries for anything I’ve written recently, plus a few things I’m enjoying.
Check out my more regular writing and reply to this email anytime. Thanks for reading.
What I wrote last month
Winnie-the-Pooh, customized for my daughter — a very fun little project! I fully customized and printed a physical copy of Winnie-the-Pooh for my daughter from scratch.
You can solve problems ambiently — a post that made me feel much better about an uncommonly effective way of problem solving.
AI Captain’s Log — regular thoughts, this month on too much intelligence.
What I’m enjoying
Book: Buddhism: A Journey through History by Donald Lopez. A series of very-readable (albeit occasionally repetitive) short essays by one of America’s leading Buddhist scholars that, in sum, bust many myths and reveal many idiosyncrasies about the true history of Buddhism. If you’re at all curious about the subject matter, I recommend this one.
Articles:
A Concise Overview of Wolfram’s Research by Geoff Anders. The most approachable explanation of Stephen Wolfram’s research I have found — a great primer. For my favorite Wolfram idea, see The Concept of the Ruliad by the man himself (although I’d start with Anders’ overview if you aren’t already familiar with the work).
Why Japanese companies do so many different things by David Oks. An interesting thesis on why companies like Toto (known for their bidets, but also in the business of memory chips and photocatalytic building coatings) and Kyocera (smartphones, ballpoint pens, tooth replacements, and more) exist in Japan but not the US.
Aluminum foil by Kragen Javier Sitaker. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the stuff. I would love to see more blog posts like this on the internet, about anything and everything.
Dynomight regularly writes great posts where they simply do the math or analyze the evidence for (or against) something. Two recents: Does creatine make you smarter? and So you want to use plants to reduce indoor CO₂
Inside the Coke-Fueled Rise and Fall of VICE by Mitchell Jackson. Remember VICE? A very entertaining read.
A short post from Jack Gallagher with an under-appreciated insight about AI: “a lot of work is intelligence x schlep gated and as you improve on those axes just about everything eventually falls. maybe you still miss some grand creative spark but nanotech doesn’t require a creative spark from here it requires relentless grinding on miniaturization.” — this is also why increased inference speed can directly translate to better results / “more intelligence,” because AI speed isn’t just about speed itself; it’s about increased bandwidth for schlepping and thinking.
Experiment: cost-per-use. I’ve started doing some tracking of cost-per-wear or cost-per-use for items I own, and it is often eye-opening. Things that feel expensive on an absolute basis can end up feeling cheap on a per-use basis (“yes this cost $x but I’ve worn it three hundred times…”), or vice versa (“if I knew I would only use this twice ever, how would I feel about the price?”). I built a little app for this I may write about soon, but in the meantime here’s a post from Steph Ango about the topic.
Product: combi-steam ovens. We just moved into a new place that happened to come with one of these and it is my new favorite way to easily cook or heat up food. So much better than normal convection ovens — and in hindsight, obvious that there would have been some technological innovation in the last 80 years since those hit the market.
For a compilation of all past recommendations, see the Recommendations page on my site.
About me: I’m a multi-time founder (Eco, Lightwork Home Health, CoinList, Sidewire). I’m currently spending time on: a stealthy AI company, investing at Amity, Lightwork, Eco, tinkering with interface0 and other products, supporting FreeWorld, and advising great companies and founders.
Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.
— Andy