Visakan Veerasamy

I hereby reintroduce the concept of megabucks and gigabucks

haters are collaborators

I do feel like I’m a ‘belly of the beast’ phase of my life rn. like that stage of a video game where I’ve lost all my powers and have to survive with low health and no weapons etc. I find myself thinking things like “in 3 months the younger kid can sit in a baby chair, that’ll be a relief…”

A man’s political party wins everything. His peers are elated. We’re so back!! Eternal victory for our values! What a triumph!! The man says, we’ll see. A few years pass. The party loses everything. His peers are despondent. It’s so over!! All is lost! We’re truly cooked!! The man says, we’ll see. A few years pass. The party wins everything…

internet speech has rotted my brain “oh yeah they put their whole citrussy into it”

I was asked for my take on AI

when I was younger, I thought “if you’re worrying, you’re probably not the problem” was a smart and correct move to reassure people who were anxious about causing harm. surely only the thoughtless, indifferent people were the harm-causers! And I’d feel proud of myself anytime I helped someone worry less. turns out it’s not so simple. in the years since I’ve encountered a lot of people who’d actually cause the harm they were worrying about. Sometimes the worrying did nothing. Sometimes it turns out it was reducing the harm a bit. Sometimes it made the harm worse. Directing someone to worry less may or may not help them worry less, in part depending on your skill as a worry-reducer. Supposed you’re skilled at it. You might reduce worries today. It *might* cause more harm as a consequence. So one oughta investigate the situation more thoroughly before issuing a simplistic correction

here’s what I think might be the essential challenge of parenting: your children are born not as your peers, but as your dependents. if you treat them like your peers when they’re too young, it’s unfair to them. but if you treat them like dependents for too long, that’s unfair to them too. you can try to be scrupulous about being fair, but you can’t make the cost of that scrupulosity their problem. your task is to raise them to *become* your peers. meaning you have to repeatedly update how you relate to them. this is hard!! 99% of human interactions aren’t like this! Most interactions happen in comparatively stable configurations. It’s rare that your boss today is your employee tomorrow. But in parenting this dynamism is inevitable. The child ages into the adult, the adult ages into the child. every parent probably has a phase that they’re uniquely In The Zone for. Alice might be great with toddlers. Bob might be great with 7yos. Claire might be great with preteens. Whatever your strength is, you likely have a corresponding weakness. And your kids, if you’re lucky, will grow through all of the ages. So you’ll inevitably find yourself in a context you’re uniquely unsuited for. And it’s your duty to show up and try your best anyway. it’s a very elaborate, nested series of balancing acts, which requires a level of attunement you likely didn’t have before. every day you encounter the need to balance humility and confidence, or some other bullshit like that, and the next challenge hits you before you have time to process the last one. It’s great. Knowing what I know now, I wish we had our kids sooner. I have a lot more to say on the topic (particularly why it’s great, both *despite* the challenge, and *because* but I gotta end this here because we’re in the middle of shopping for Deepavali clothes so ttyl)