But first, some context The way this tournament is set up is kind of funny. I used Claude Code to create a design specific language (DSL) for defining Prisoner’s Dilemma strategies in a way that can be flexible enough to allow for all kinds of interesting strategies (including the infinite number that haven’t yet been thought of) while also being simple enough for a non-technical human to be able…
I’m playing around with different ways of presenting the results of this tournament. I’ve never really played around with podcast tools, so this is my first foray, and so you’re gonna cringe at the short-cuts I’m taking here. I’m using Riverside.fm, Google Notebook LLM, and suno.com for the intro beeps and boops. I don’t know how to make the transcripts and show notes look nice. This short episode…
Context: I’m running a team-based iterated prisoner’s dilemma tournament that has 4 teams with 5 players each. The teams are run by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and us humans. Details about the game and how this tournament will run are here. Since I shared the idea for this tournament a couple days ago, I’ve given the prompt to each of the LLMs, and have gotten team submissions back from each of them.…
If you’re unfamiliar with Prisoner’s Dilemma or feel like you need a refresher, this video from Veritasium from last year does a good job of introducing the game, as well as explaining why I think it’s such an interesting little microcosm of how we behave in the world and a game that is capable of teaching us so much: I’ve hosted a few “team-based iterated prisoner’s dilemma” games on Facebook…
What are your beliefs about the nature of reality? This interview is designed to be a fun way to help you identify your fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality (aka your cosmology), and attempts to get kind of specific about it. It’s not meant to be a comprehensive survey of all possible cosmologies, but rather a tool to help you identify your own cosmology and perhaps to spark a fun…
This short interview is designed to be a fun way to help you identify your fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality (aka your cosmology), and attempts to get kind of specific about it. It’s not meant to be a comprehensive survey of all possible cosmologies, but rather a tool to help you identify your own cosmology and perhaps to spark a fun conversation with others. STEP 1: Identify your…
It’s now been 2 months since I set out to work full-time on 750 Words for 9 months and try to make it something that could sustain permanent full-time work. October’s report is here. The goal remains: to find a way to grow from ~4,500 paying members to 8,500 before the summer of 2025. To do this in a way that keeps 750 Words feeling simple, non-annoying, and focused on helping people more than…
Cue movie trailer voice, “In a land before time…” Hm, that’s not quite right. Okay, got it. Cue scratchy old man’s voice, “Four score minus 25 years ago today, when I was but a wee lad…” That’s too derivative, damn it. I guess I gotta just be me, BBB. Okay, well, this coming December 16th, a little website called 750words.com is gonna turn 15 years old. It was inspired by the idea of morning pages…
It’s been a little over a month since I quit my job and decided to work on 750 Words full time for about 6 months (or however long my portioned savings last). The experiment is to see if it might be possible to survive without getting another job in tech for even longer than that, because working on this would be so much more fulfilling and fun. The goal remains: to find a way to grow from ~4,500…
If you go to your stats page after writing 750 words you should now see a new button that starts off by saying “Stats sharing is OFF”. Like this: If you click that button, you will be given an opportunity to configure your sharing preferences. One of the main things that I never want to change about 750 Words is that the writing is private. So for now the sharing feature will always be turned off…
This is a bit weird to write, but here goes. I left my lovely job at Medium a couple weeks ago to try something kinda crazy. Between now and the summer of 2025 (the next 6-9 months), I’m going to be working hard to try to grow 750 Words enough so I can work on the site full-time in a sustainable way (it currently requires dipping deeply into savings, hence the kinda crazy part, but also a very…
Wow, it’s October. For the last 18 years I’ve reviewed my life and posted an annual review around my birthday in May, and have done so for the most part rather promptly. Here I am over 4 whole months later, starting maybe my 10th draft of this damned thing, still at a complete loss for words around how to talk about what is happening in my life. To be honest, I haven’t had much luck talking about…
We rolled out a new little feature that has been in testing for a few weeks and could really change the way 750 works. For that reason we’re not gonna fully commit to making it a permanent feature yet, but would love for people to try it and let us know what you think. The gist of it is that if you miss a day and break your streak, you will have 7 days to make up for the missed day with a “double”…
I’ve written an annual review every year for the last 17 years, and they’re getting weirder. This one is no exception! Here we go. I was about to start this review by talking about a thing I realized in therapy recently, until I read my review from last year and could see that I was talking about it back then too. Here it is anyway. Recently (aka over the last year or two), I’ve realized that my…
We’ve been writing 3 pages every morning for the past week and we want to check in! For one thing, writing has been tough and surprising. Especially when you get a couple pages in, ie. the sweet spot. On this episode we were lucky enough to discuss that with an expert. Buster Benson is a writer and founder of 750words.com, which is a service that has helped half a million people develop a private…
😱 Holy shitballs, I’m 46 years old! It’s been a year. Literally. Because that’s how birthdays work. But for the first time in a long time I took a weekend to myself and am staying in Calistoga and treating myself to mud baths, geothermally-heated pools, massages, walks through gardens, and some delicious food and beverage while I consider my past year and think about the one coming up. Palomas,…
I’ll come back to this but for now just a quick definition of a word that doesn’t exist that I’ll be using a lot: Reconstellate: v. the potentially foolish act of dismantling various constellations (not only of stars but also of identity and worldview) in order to create space for new constellations to be formed. Connecting dots from the past I’ve reviewed my life around the time of my birthday…
Contents: 2nd pass notes Series links Concepts Raw notes by chapter
I’ve reviewed my life around the time of my birthday every year for the last 14 years. It’s a funny habit to review a life as it’s happening. I can look back to last year when I was just acclimating to a life without a full-time tech job (with all its perks and foibles) and finishing up a book with no idea what lay on the other side of that project. Being “all in and with the flow” turned out to…
My last letter to you all was on January 16th of this year 2020. Our heads know that this was only a few months of calendar time, but our hearts know that it was a lifetime ago. The last letter was titled, What’s Next?, quaintly referring to what was next for me after all my book promotion and conversation. And now we have an answer! It’s the same as your answer. We have all converged our…
Setting context for this post is going to be tough. It’s gonna get weird but I try to tie it all together into a useful proposal by the end. Bear with me! I tossed this idea out the other day: There was a 'Moved Permanently' error fetching URL: 'https://twitter.com/buster/status/1212419523044761601' This is an idea that’s been developing in the back of my head, in very nebulous regions of my notes…
Hello Kevin, I’m 100% on board with thinking about wicked problems starting from the personal and moving out to the more intimidating problems facing the world. I am thinking that it’ll help us to have our own easy-to-reference (and expand, if necessary) guide to wicked problems, so I’m gonna take a stab at it right now. I took all of the various lists of qualities from the Wikipedia page and…
( Click here to see the timeline larger ) Okay, things are starting to get real. Today is the day I begin to share a lot more about this book on productive disagreement I spent the last 3+ years writing with the broader world. You all have been patiently hearing about it the whole time, so I want to both thank you and extend deep apologies for the next month or two. I just added a few things to…