Stephen Malina pfp

Stephen Malina

@an1lam

16 Following
17 Followers
Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Dunno why I let whoop sleep-shame me
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Stephen Malina pfp
Stephen Malina
@an1lam
Bought my Goruck GR1 nearly 10 years ago. Have used almost daily and only thing that's ever broken on it is the rubber around the zipper cord. At $345, that's ~$.1 per use.
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Stephen Malina pfp
Stephen Malina
@an1lam
Some naval gazey, self-indulgent reflections on 2022: https://stephenmalina.com/post/2023-01-02-reflections-on-2022/.
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Stephen Malina
@an1lam
Thanks, probably backread these when I started following Ribbonfarm but totally forgot about them. Will have to reread!
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Stephen Malina pfp
Stephen Malina
@an1lam
Another angle on this is that I'm relatively more excited about writing and coding assistants that improve quality than I am about tools that help me write more prose or code.
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Stephen Malina
@an1lam
One measure of this type of writing is whether the ideas pattern match situations by association before you've fully digested them. I fear he'll hate this entire idea for failing to understand mediocrity (which I don't) but @vgr was probably the first person whose writing did this for me.
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Stephen Malina pfp
Stephen Malina
@an1lam
Another way to describe this writing is that it's compressed. It gives a sense of inexpressible yet crisp ideas lingering under the surface. Unfortunately, I don't think my writing often gives off this sense that I'm seeking out. Too much of a drive towards explicit crushing density.
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Stephen Malina pfp
Stephen Malina
@an1lam
On the other hand, with art I don't perceive such a clear gap. Maybe because I've spent on the order of 1000-10000x more time consuming writing vs. art?
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Stephen Malina
@an1lam
The obvious way to test this is to do a blind test, although constructing one is tricky.
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Stephen Malina pfp
Stephen Malina
@an1lam
Maybe I'm just fooling myself but when reading this I feel like I detect an aliveness that AI writing still lacks, even with prompt wizardry applied. This isn't just carbon chauvinism either. The aliveness isn't inherent; an AI could totally achieve it. I just don't think they have yet.
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Stephen Malina
@an1lam
Not sure if it's a result of approaching 30 or kneejerk contrarianism against AI-generated writing (which I'm actually optimistic about) but I'm finding myself appreciating "stylized" writing more recently. Bruce Sterling's prologue to Ascendancies is a good example: https://i.imgur.com/4wKqzpG.jpg
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Stephen Malina
@an1lam
stephenmalina.com Hugo because it's easy to maintain and I can understand the code if I need to.
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Stephen Malina pfp
Stephen Malina
@an1lam
Yeah I totally agree, especially when part of the reveal is "the villain is actually an idiot". Started agreeing before I even saw your reply: farcaster://casts/0x...32ee49b099
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Stephen Malina
@an1lam
(Spoiler alert...) That said, the idea that she didn't take a picture was too much suspension of disbelief for me.
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Stephen Malina
@an1lam
I agree, although I suspect it's an attempt to subvert the genre trope where the detective (Poirot being the example I'm most familiar with) reveals everything in front of the characters and wraps it up tidily at the end.
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Stephen Malina
@an1lam
Ok, I guess this is basically repl.it bounties with a sprinkling of Gitcoin...
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Stephen Malina pfp
Stephen Malina
@an1lam
The hard part seems to be verification. Every product feature is more complicated than its spec so you're bound to have cases where the funders disagree whether it's actually done.
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Stephen Malina pfp
Stephen Malina
@an1lam
Cool crypto use-case I haven't seen discussed (but maybe it has) is dominant assurance contracts for product features. This requires reliable oracles but the idea would be that users agree to pay some prize if a product develops some feature. Upon shipping the payment automatically goes through.
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Stephen Malina pfp
Stephen Malina
@an1lam
And Silicon Valley folks are often big readers, so it's not a case of ignoring a market because it's not relevant to them.
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Stephen Malina pfp
Stephen Malina
@an1lam
It's crazy to me that no one has disrupted Goodreads. Yes it's an Amazon product but I'm pretty sure they don't really care about it. The barrier isn't technological and it's clearly a case where something 5-10x better is possible, especially relative to some of the other stuff that receives a lot of investment.
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