A Programming Note

Optimism in Pessimistic Times

A Programming Note

It’s been over two weeks since I’ve put out new content and, for once, it’s not because I have been struggling to finish anything. Rather, my failure to publish is about you, dear reader, and what I believe you want right now. Thus, I wanted to take a few moments to explain why I’m not publishing.

I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of the people who read this Substack have also spent the last few weeks watching the unfolding horrors of the despicable Russian invasion of Ukraine. Short of 9/11, the early Iraq War, and the beginning of the coronavirus, I have not seen anything in my adult life so capture the attention of my fellow Americans.¹

On the one hand, it would be easy for me – essentially a fully functioning AI inside of a human body – to emotionlessly point out that every piece I’ve published has been done so while there were ongoing horrors in the world. I didn’t have a problem writing about plant-based meats while the people of Afghanistan were starving. I didn’t have a problem mocking Segways while the great humanitarian crisis of our day was on-going in Yemen. Over 3,000 people have died this year alone in Myanmar while I was straining an analogy between hockey prospects and Joe Rogan. And over 8,000 people lost their lives last year during the Boko Haram insurgency while I was setting the record straight about the popularity of the Kardashians and Tucker Carlson. So, if we were all fine with that, why do I think you don’t want to read about how much Netflix sucks² while Ukrainians are hiding in subway stations to avoid shelling?

Well, let’s just go back to the first thing I published here. Something I published before I even explained what the hell this newsletter is about, because I believe it’s so fundamental to understanding the world today. Those other disasters are – unless you have some connection to them – not as real for most of the people reading this. Ukraine, meanwhile, is being pumped into your brains daily through media that makes it feel much more real. And sure, the DanBot 5000 is capable of whirring along, tying the failure of MOOCs into Web3 hype with some WKRP in Cincinnati references thrown in for good measure. But my perusal of the internet over the last few weeks tells me that most people who would read this aren’t really interested in that right now. They’re interested in Ukraine.

That allows me two options. The first option is to do the thing where I tie whatever my topic is into whatever the overwhelming topic of interest is. We’ve all read those. The “How We Can Center Black Voices in the Aquatic Paleontology Community” or the “The Baked Goods Recipes Syrian Refugees Bring to Their New Countries That You’ll Be Baking This Fall” or the “Five Titleist Drivers That Will Help You Stick it to bin Laden – and Add Distance to Your Game” articles that get churned out in times of crisis. But does anyone really enjoy those? Aren’t they just the product of business models that require a never-ending churn of content? Could I spend the next however long trying to do a techno-optimist approach on Ukraine? Sure! But it would probably be terrible, and, honestly, tacky enough that even a fully sentient robot like myself would be repulsed.

With a few exceptions – such as the autonomous vehicles piece or the one on phase transitions – most of these are written over the course of months. Since October I have been working on a series about “predictions,” Web3, and the disconnect between those in what we more narrowly think of as the “tech” sector and reality. One of those installments – which is also my favorite – takes aim at the frankly insane prediction by Balaji Srinivasan that drone technology will mean the end of war.³ My main contention in this is that it is based on a complete misunderstanding of what war actually is, an attempt to disrupt something without understanding that something. And shockingly, I try to draw that out into larger lessons. With fifteen minutes of work I could alter that to be highly topical – “Drones of Death: What the Invasion of Ukraine Teaches us About Tech Disruption” – and yet I would find that, for lack of a better word, gross. People are dying who shouldn’t be dying, I’m not comfortable using that to try and win an argument on the internet.

The other option is to just stop publishing until the immediacy of this has receded. That feels like the wiser option. This newsletter is literally about how humans can use our unique abilities⁴ to innovate and create and build to make the world a better place, and my belief that we will. That belief remains unshaken. In 1941 the Wehrmacht captured the village of Klushino on their way to Moscow. The village was destroyed. The residents had everything seized and were forced to work the land. The schoolhouse where a young seven-year-old boy named Yuri attended was burned down, along with most of the other structures. He was forced to live in a mud shack and watched his younger brother survive a hanging by a Nazi officer. His older brothers were sent to Poland as slave labor and he thought they were dead. Eventually he ended up in a hospital. The scale of horror that boy lived through is unimaginable to any of us 21st Century Americans. Surely, he could be forgiven for losing faith in mankind’s ability to do great things. And yet, less than 20 years after the Nazis came to his village, he became the first human being to ever slip the surly bonds of gravity and touch the face of God. Yes, we often do horrible things, but it should never disabuse us of our faith that we can do great things.

That said, I’m not sure if that tone is what people want right now. Of course, I could be wrong, and some of you may want a heated discussion over whether the mid-90s explosion of virtual reality in fiction – decades before the technology was ready – created a hangover that still hampers the adoption of the technology today. In that case, please, let me know. I also know many of you also have your own Substacks – which I hope you will feel free to plug in the comments – and I’d love to hear how you’re handling this.

And if you are, in fact, looking for something to read about Ukraine – which you won’t get here – I can provide you some recommendations. Allow me to present a round up of a few pieces I remembered enough to go back and find again. I feel guilty using any adjectives because I don’t want someone thinking I used a better adjective on someone else – particularly since some of these authors are readers here – but Lord knows I can’t quit adjectives.

I’ve linked to Mike Pearl previously on the issue of climate change and socialism and he, once again, nails the zeitgeist in this piece about how our news ecosystems work.

Friend of the Substack Erin E. knocked out this piece that I described as being one I almost completely disagreed with, which means it is exactly the type of thing I should link. Again, content bubbles and all that. Epistemic humility is the killer app of the 21st Century thinking process.

Friend of the Substack Mike Hind has an absolutely fantastic piece about the invasion that is, frankly, a little difficult to summarize. Which means you should go and read it now.

I can’t possibly praise enough this piece by Erik Hoel that somehow manages to tie together Star Trek, Francis Fukuyama, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This manages to even fit the themes of this Substack enough that I’m embarrassed I didn’t write it.

Of course, it goes without saying – but not really in 2022 – that I don’t agree with everything in those pieces. I still think you should read them.

Now, because I don’t want you all to walk away empty handed if you don’t want to read about Ukraine, here’s a couple of stories that I have spent weeks or months trying to figure out what – if anything – I want to say about them.

This article about using tokens to fund litigation endlessly fascinates me. I’m not sure if it’s brilliant or batshit, which is exactly where I find interest. As a litigator I feel I’d have something to add here but damned if I know what that is yet.

Do you ever stop and think “man, if only we had some society that really did put technology first?” If so, there is a place, it’s called Singapore. This rather lengthy article looks at Singapore and, well, the situation isn’t entirely wine and roses. I’m not sure how to tackle that one.

Hopefully, with any luck, we’ll be in a different moment before I’ve even figured out how to spin either of those into a tidy 2,000 words.

1. Even in a short programming note I need a long footnote. Ironically, none of these events have ever affected my life the way the financial crisis did. The Great Recession probably destroyed my life – or at least the one I thought I would live – and, I will argue until my dying breath, is the most important thing to occur in the 21st Century. Yet, even in my milieu we were more concerned with the Presidential election and the Phillies.

2. That is not just a random example. This is actually what my next piece is about. It’s one of my favorite I’ve ever written.

3. The Twitter argument I got into with the otherwise always right Alice From Queens over this issue was the original impulse to begin writing again.

4. Of course, with all due respect to beavers. The dams are impressive but, come on son.