Amateur Utility Maximizer's website about genetic patterns, networks, game theory, and civilization
Every boat is copied from another boat. . . . Let's reason as follows in the manner of Darwin. It is clear that a very badly made boat will end up at the bottom after one or two voyages and thus never be copied. . . . One could then say, with complete rigor, that … Continue reading Design vs Darwinism and “skin in the game”
My "Sam Harris is wrong" series is not done; it has been on hold. I have a lot more ideas for topics in that series. You can find out what happened to it on my Twitter. In short, it's very difficult to write, and I dread it. But it's one of the only great ideas I … Continue reading Updates
This post will follow up on a previous one about anti-trust. In that post, I allege that the best (if not only) way to become aggressively rich — to have “passive income” — is to abuse some “barrier to entry.” A barrier to entry is essentially some leverage that makes it very difficult for someone else to compete with … Continue reading More about barriers to entry: How people get rich
See the image below. Imagine you start at the dot. Your job is to construct roads, in such a way to minimize the time spent traveling. It needs to be possible, starting at the dot, to arrive anywhere at the line. Here is the challenge: how do you construct the roads? If cost is not … Continue reading Tree structures, the last mile problem, and the inevitability of hierarchy
First of all, I think you should vote. Some people say, “I don’t vote because I don’t live in a swing state, so my vote doesn’t make a difference.” I find this to be a nonsensical reason for not voting, because your vote never makes a difference, whether you live in a swing state or … Continue reading Your vote will never matter. That’s why you should vote.
Anti-trust origins Anti-trust regulations are called that because they were once considered generically anti-corporate regulations, like what tough-on-corporation politicians expound today. Think the trusts are oppressing the workers? Hit them with some regulations! But eventually, anti-trust would come to by synonymous with curbing the power of monopoly. And with good reason. Market power is the … Continue reading A proposal for a better standard of anti-trust
You may have heard that symmetry is scientifically attractive. This statement is true, but incomplete. Symmetry is just a smaller component of a broader trait. Here, I will revisit a website I have linked previously on my blog, this. It allows you to combine faces. Personally, I think that all of the people’s faces are … Continue reading What is Attractiveness?
