{"threads":[{"id":"simulation-argument-tipping","slug":"simulation-argument-tipping","title":"The Simulation Argument and Why I Don’t Tip","excerpt":"Every weekday at 7:42 I order an oat-milk cortado at the coffee place under my office, the barista spins the little iPad around, and I hit No Tip. I’ve done this roughly four hundred times. My coworker Evan thinks it makes me cheap, and last month he said so in front of the whole pod. I don’t think I’m cheap. I think I’m one of the only people in that line who has actually priced the simulation hypothesis into his discretionary spending.","lastActivity":"2026-02-07T05:00:00.000Z","commentCount":14,"comments":[{"id":"seed-simulation-argument-tipping-13","author":"low_fidelity_render","text":"Not yet. I've raised my estimate that she's real, since a cheap render wouldn't sustain a grudge this long.","date":"2026-02-07T05:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":58},{"id":"seed-simulation-argument-tipping-12","author":"maya_status_q","text":"Has Maya texted back?","date":"2026-02-07T00:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":31},{"id":"seed-simulation-argument-tipping-11","author":"xX_utilitron_Xx","text":"ok brad","date":"2026-01-15T09:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":-6}]},{"id":"revealed-preference-music-subway","slug":"revealed-preference-music-subway","title":"The Revealed-Preference Case for Playing Music on the Subway","excerpt":"I play music through a Bluetooth speaker on the subway. People often look unhappy about this. What interests me is how rarely their behavior supports the intensity of the objection people claim to have on their behalf.","lastActivity":"2025-12-25T09:40:00.000Z","commentCount":12,"comments":[{"id":"seed-revealed-preference-music-subway-11","author":"expected_value_bf","text":"Mostly Steely Dan.","date":"2025-12-25T09:40:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":26},{"id":"seed-revealed-preference-music-subway-10","author":"playlist_curious","text":"what were you playing on the day in the post","date":"2025-12-25T09:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":17},{"id":"seed-revealed-preference-music-subway-9","author":"smooth_jazz_strategy","text":"Fellow speaker guy. In my experience genre matters more than volume. Nobody has ever intervened on smooth jazz. Hip-hop gets looks, anything with vocals in a language people understand gets looks. You can play smooth jazz at a level that would get you killed with anything else.","date":"2025-12-25T08:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":38}]},{"id":"opportunity-cost-not-creating-ai-kills-everyone","slug":"opportunity-cost-not-creating-ai-kills-everyone","title":"The Opportunity Cost of Not Creating the AI That Kills Everyone","excerpt":"Suppose frontier AI has a meaningful probability of eventually killing everyone. The missing term in the standard extinction-risk model is what it would be doing immediately beforehand: vibe coding B2B SaaS for HVAC distribution.","lastActivity":"2025-12-20T00:00:00.000Z","commentCount":19,"comments":[{"id":"seed-opportunity-cost-not-creating-ai-kills-everyone-17","author":"tom_halvorsen","text":"Is there a follow-up planned on plumbing distribution specifically? I'd like to know whether P is bigger than H. My brother-in-law runs a plumbing supply house and he thinks it's not close.","date":"2025-12-20T00:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":18},{"id":"seed-opportunity-cost-not-creating-ai-kills-everyone-16","author":"real_engineer_420","text":"AI is never going to be able to do HVAC portals. Sage 100 integrations are way harder than you think. Source: I do them.","date":"2025-12-12T03:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":-12},{"id":"seed-opportunity-cost-not-creating-ai-kills-everyone-15","author":"mundane_abundance","text":"Agreed, though a holdout distributor is a real cost. Somebody in that region doesn't get the portal.","date":"2025-12-11T16:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":12}]},{"id":"object-level-roommate-groceries","slug":"object-level-roommate-groceries","title":"An Object-Level Analysis of My Roommate’s Groceries","excerpt":"My roommate says I keep stealing his groceries. I think this is a good example of how ordinary language can smuggle a surprising amount of moral content into what presents itself as a factual description.","lastActivity":"2025-11-21T00:00:00.000Z","commentCount":13,"comments":[{"id":"seed-object-level-roommate-groceries-12","author":"brrrt_capital","text":"stopped reading at \"rationalist taboo\"","date":"2025-11-21T00:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":-6},{"id":"seed-object-level-roommate-groceries-11","author":"semantic_dissolver","text":"The cans were taking up shelf space in a shared refrigerator, which has its own opportunity cost.","date":"2025-11-20T10:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":12},{"id":"seed-object-level-roommate-groceries-10","author":"lacroix_accounting","text":"Small note, LaCroix doesn't spoil. Whatever the case for the yogurt, the spoilage argument doesn't reach the cans.","date":"2025-11-20T09:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":31}]},{"id":"reallocating-child-support","slug":"reallocating-child-support","title":"On Reallocating Child Support Toward Higher-Impact Intimacy Expenditure","excerpt":"A common objection to my discretionary spending is that paying for escorts while remaining in arrears on child support is “obviously immoral.” I think this rests on scope insensitivity.","lastActivity":"2025-11-18T00:00:00.000Z","commentCount":14,"comments":[{"id":"seed-reallocating-child-support-13","author":"dana_k_family_law","text":"I work in family law. Courts don't recognize \"decision-theoretically open\" as a defense to contempt. I'd pay down the arrears before the next hearing.","date":"2025-11-18T00:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":18},{"id":"seed-reallocating-child-support-12","author":"sovereign_dad_coaching","text":"Struggling with support payments? Our program helps men take back financial sovereignty after divorce. First consult is free, DM me.","date":"2025-11-14T00:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":-16},{"id":"seed-reallocating-child-support-11","author":"expected_value_deadbeat","text":"Personal experience. Both times I was fired, I had gone at least two months without.","date":"2025-11-13T08:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":31}]},{"id":"work-requirements-trick-or-treaters","slug":"work-requirements-trick-or-treaters","title":"Work Requirements for Trick-or-Treaters","excerpt":"For nine years my household ran an open-enrollment candy program. Any child who reached the porch and recited a three-word demand received a benefit, no questions asked. Last October I gave out 412 pieces to 86 recipients and did not collect a single data point on any of them. I knew nothing about their need, their household candy income, or whether they had already been to the Okonkwos at number 22, who hand out full-size bars and have never audited anyone.","lastActivity":"2025-10-31T03:00:00.000Z","commentCount":13,"comments":[{"id":"seed-work-requirements-trick-or-treaters-12","author":"means_tested_porch","text":"Zero. The program ran at full integrity and paid no benefits. Craig was on the lawn chair until 9 and saw nobody.","date":"2025-10-31T03:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":88},{"id":"seed-work-requirements-trick-or-treaters-11","author":"maple_st_dad","text":"Parade went around your house this year as promised. How did the caseload look?","date":"2025-10-31T00:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":41},{"id":"seed-work-requirements-trick-or-treaters-10","author":"means_tested_porch","text":"Still under review. Both Spider-Men were the same height and neither would remove the mask for the photo, which is itself a documentation issue.","date":"2024-11-07T09:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":33}]},{"id":"blameless-postmortem-backed-into-your-car","slug":"blameless-postmortem-backed-into-your-car","title":"A Blameless Postmortem of the Night I Backed Into Your Car and Drove Away","excerpt":"I backed my truck into your parked car after drinking seven beers at O'Malley's. I got out, looked at the damage, said \"fuck\" several times and drove away. The next morning I stood beside you looking at the broken taillight and said people had no respect anymore. I am including all of this voluntarily, in the expectation that it will not be used to assign blame.","lastActivity":"2025-09-30T08:00:00.000Z","commentCount":12,"comments":[{"id":"seed-blameless-postmortem-backed-into-your-car-11","author":"root_cause","text":"The city's liability coverage should be considered before mine. The alley predates my policy by more than a century.","date":"2025-09-30T08:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":9},{"id":"seed-blameless-postmortem-backed-into-your-car-10","author":"claims_adjuster_dave","text":"The at-fault field on the intake form is just how liability coverage works. I adjust auto claims, for context. Your policy pays when you're liable. If you insist there's no at-fault party, there's nothing for your policy to pay, and the claim goes nowhere until someone is at fault, which on these facts is going to be you.","date":"2025-09-30T07:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":52},{"id":"seed-blameless-postmortem-backed-into-your-car-5","author":"drivable_is_not_recovered","text":"You define severity by the availability of the vehicle that caused the incident. That leaves the damaged vehicle outside both the impact metric and the shared responsibility model.","date":"2025-09-30T05:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":41}]},{"id":"artists-deserve-more-than-doctors-and-farmers","slug":"artists-deserve-more-than-doctors-and-farmers","title":"Artists Deserve More Than Doctors and Farmers","excerpt":"I keep seeing people say that generative AI “democratizes creativity,” and I genuinely need some of you to examine why you think wanting something means you are entitled to have it cheaply. I went to art school for 15 years.","lastActivity":"2025-09-18T06:00:00.000Z","commentCount":12,"comments":[{"id":"seed-artists-deserve-more-than-doctors-and-farmers-11","author":"smol_creative","text":"worse, as I predicted. I've started a Patreon. link in bio. support real artists","date":"2025-09-18T06:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":33},{"id":"seed-artists-deserve-more-than-doctors-and-farmers-10","author":"three_years_later","text":"Reading this almost three years later. How's the illustration market?","date":"2025-09-18T00:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":27},{"id":"seed-artists-deserve-more-than-doctors-and-farmers-9","author":"xX_utilitron_Xx","text":"pay me $2000 for this comment","date":"2022-12-09T00:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":-9}]},{"id":"against-hoarding-both-of-your-kidneys","slug":"against-hoarding-both-of-your-kidneys","title":"Against Hoarding Both of Your Kidneys","excerpt":"Daniel has two kidneys. I have a plan to sell shares in an option on one of them, finance the shares with debt, and hedge his refusal. He keeps asking whether he has agreed to any of this.","lastActivity":"2025-07-22T06:00:00.000Z","commentCount":21,"comments":[{"id":"seed-against-hoarding-both-of-your-kidneys-20","author":"organ_optionality","text":"Daniel has moved to Portland. The committee still hasn't met, the position is marked at nine cents, and I own most of it.","date":"2025-07-22T06:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":62},{"id":"seed-against-hoarding-both-of-your-kidneys-19","author":"two_years_later_q","text":"Two years on, where did this end up?","date":"2025-07-22T00:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":36},{"id":"seed-against-hoarding-both-of-your-kidneys-18","author":"organ_optionality","text":"Sent you the transfer agreement. Price is 22 cents on the dollar, firm.","date":"2023-07-23T02:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":14}]},{"id":"staged-rollout-my-divorce","slug":"staged-rollout-my-divorce","title":"A Staged Rollout of My Divorce","excerpt":"On Monday I told our five-year-old, Wren, that I was leaving her mother, asked her to keep it from her brother and sister, and offered her a second pudding if she could do that until Friday. Dana says this was a terrible thing to ask of a five-year-old. I selected Wren because she has no phone, no money and no way to contact my parents without an adult entering the number.","lastActivity":"2025-04-17T09:00:00.000Z","commentCount":12,"comments":[{"id":"seed-staged-rollout-my-divorce-11","author":"leave_your_dad_alone","text":"The last paragraph is the one I'd ask you to reconsider. Your father doesn't drive and you administer his phone, which means the plan for him is to control what he's able to find out. That's a different thing from a staged rollout, whatever you call it.","date":"2025-04-17T09:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":71},{"id":"seed-staged-rollout-my-divorce-10","author":"canary_release","text":"I didn't collect it before the announcement, which I regret. It wasn't on the dashboard yet.","date":"2025-04-17T07:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":16},{"id":"seed-staged-rollout-my-divorce-9","author":"shoe_check_baseline","text":"Shoe-checking is a good observable, but you'd need its baseline rate. Did Wren check your shoes before Monday? If you didn't measure it, you can't say the announcement caused it.","date":"2025-04-17T06:00:00.000Z","seed":true,"ownerAuthor":false,"score":51}]}],"hasMore":true}