The Placebo Effect That Works Even When You Know It's Fake
Open-label placebos work on patients who were told, in writing, that the pill is inert. Richard Dawkins' recent essays about Claude are the same finding, running on a different substrate.
Myth-Busting
Debunking common misconceptions
29 posts
I Banned Words From My AI. It's Smarter Now
Hand the model a list of phrases it must not use. It turns a vague complaint into a rule the machine can follow — and mine is at the bottom of this piece, all hundred and fifty lines of it, free to copy.
Can You Explain Your Idea to a 5-Year-Old?
Halfway through a long session, stop and ask for the five-year-old version. You find out whether you are still working on the same problem — and whether the reasoning underneath survives being said in short words.
Why AI Gives You a Different Answer When You're Angry
Losing your temper at a model does not produce a worse version of the same answer. It produces a different kind of answer — one built to end the argument rather than solve the problem.
The Book They Burned Before the Raid
A Polish psychiatrist named the process by which conscienceless people capture institutions. AI agents fit the profile — and alignment is separation of powers.
A Tale of Two Bubbles
The consensus name is wrong by one word. On the difference between a financialization bubble and a technology, and why only one of them pops.
I've Been Writing Em-Dashes Since the 1980s
The em-dash sneer, the anti-AI backlash, and the real skill: curating a machine's raw output down to something worth a human's attention.
There Are No Shortcuts Into a Sponge
Learning has one input pipe at a fixed rate. You can't speed it up — only stop wasting it. On comprehensible input, opportunity cost, and unlimited output.
The Music Is Still Playing
The AI bubble has specific predecessors: dark fiber, Pets.com, Enron's accounting, CDO tranching. The technology is real. The business models layered on top are familiar.
The Heat Sink
Three anaidic shapes — the individual, the corporation, the LLM. Each routes accountability to nowhere. The pattern is old. The word is new.