Independent scholar. New book: The Independent Scholar (2026), a history from Plato to Nietzsche.
Austin, TX
Joined November 2010
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Young man, do not tell me ever again that the modern world offers no opportunities for adventure.
Muchos mensajes, análisis y comentarios como este, asegurando que las pandillas de Haití no son como las de El Salvador; que son sanguinarias, que están fuertemente armadas, que nadie ha podido vencerlas, que todas las misiones han fracasado, que estamos cayendo en una trampa, que no sabemos a lo que nos enfrentamos, que será nuestra ruina, que vamos camino a nuestro Waterloo.
Pero cuando Dios nos conceda la victoria, los mismos que hoy dicen todo eso cambiarán su discurso. Dirán que siempre fue fácil, que cualquiera podía hacerlo, que las pandillas de Haití no eran tan peligrosas como se pensaba.
En fin, nunca los hemos escuchado y no vamos a empezar ahora.
Todos los que se han enlistado son creyentes y hemos encomendado esta misión a Dios, mientras que las pandillas de Haití son satánicas y es de conocimiento público que hacen sacrificios humanos.
Dios nos concederá la victoria. El Creador del Universo está con nosotros.
Deuteronomio 28:7
“Jehová derrotará a tus enemigos que se levantaren contra ti; por un camino saldrán contra ti, y por siete caminos huirán de delante de ti”.
No not yet. All I can say is I promise you I'm still working on it and I'm incredibly close to finished. I'll send it as soon as humanly possible. You'll get an email when I do.
Haven't looked at or posted on X in more than a month I think, longest I've been completely off this app since I can remember... Been pushing to finish and ship this book full-time now for several months now. First time in years I've been writing all day and doing nothing else for such a long period. God willing it will ship very soon (in fact it must or else I'll genuinely go broke). Interesting lesson, I should have done this sooner and ran out of money sooner because it's the only thing that can replace a publisher or someone putting their boot on your neck...
very cool online + IRL combo. someone sent me the event listing a few days ago, I figured I had to go say hello
I think we're incredibly early in understanding the differences between code and prose.
I'll give you one specific technical example that illustrates why I think AI tooling for prose has to look very different than what we're seeing for code.
Since coding compiles in a binary fashion (it works, or it doesn't), this means you can just throw at it as much context and tooling as you can. If the code compiles, then it's fine.
Prose does not compile in binary fashion (the ideal prose result is not only non-binary, but multiple, because it is unique to the author). This means you precisely do NOT want to throw more context and tools into the mix, other things equal, because compute can't reduce that toward any verifiable ideal point, so it only wastes tokens (time and money) while usually pushing away from the ideal end-state you are personally, creatively trying to arrive at.
(This is why I think it deserves dedicated commercial attention and is not likely to be solved by the big labs to the degree of precision that I want.)
Today we're launching Precision Copyeditor, the only publication-grade AI copyeditor that learns your house style.
ChatGPT and Claude can't do publication-grade copyediting for 4 reasons:
1) Most people don't need publication-grade precision, so popular tools never apply enough compute to this
2) They "learn" your preferences but in a generic way across all your various tasks, which you can't dial in with precision
3) So they always miss some errors and
4) They always change things you do not consider errors
We solve this by:
1) Applying more compute than most people want or need and
2) Learning and updating your House Style every time you run it
It's also the only professional copyediting tool that offers a self-serve API key you can give to your agents in 5 minutes!
You can try it without an account. It's free to use with daily limits but requires signup to build your preferences.
No, you haven't missed anything. I'm just finishing it still. I'm working on it nearly full-time right now. It will ship soon, I promise! Thanks for your patience Marc, and I appreciate your interest in my work.
it's not cynical at all. this is a completely obvious and inescapable fact of life among social primates
huh? because you incur a huge loss if the truth is at odds with your interest? how could you honestly and publicly adjudicate competing interests in cases where being truthful would cause massive loss of income and influence?
no, that is a pre-formatted judgment on your part
there are hard tradeoffs everywhere that matters
one can be blessed in many ways, but almost never in every way
I never said he's lying. Crucial point! You can be 100% honest and systematically biased in all of your public speech. He's fine, he just shouldn't pretend that he can also *excel* at brave objectivity, which he cannot.
You're a smart guy, get the bag, build the future, but don't pretend you're also a brave, noble truth teller!
It's literally the one thing you give up by taking payment from a company to strategically shape the future on their behalf lol.
You can just enjoy money & influence!
I want to explain something to you:
People often quote tweet me and say "can you believe that an OPENAI EXECUTIVE is so dumb that he thinks tweeting like THIS is the way to fix AI's image problem?!?!?!"
I was not hired by OpenAI to "fix AI's image problem," and I do not get out of bed every day to make you feel good about tokens. Yes, AI has enriched my life tremendously and I believe it will enrich most people's lives, and I speak of this often. But I believe a truly transformative thing is underway, and that some aspects of it will be incredible and others will be extraordinarily fraught. I want to tell you the truth about that transformation as I see it happening, to the best of my ability.
The truth as I see it will not always be optimal marketing for the AI industry, nor will it always necessarily arrest the public's concerns. The public, very often, is right to be concerned. I am concerned. Most people I know who work at true frontier labs are concerned. Sometimes, I will feel it is my duty to describe to you changes I believe may be afoot in our world that will not be fun to think about or experience, and that cause me sadness and fear in my private life.
I'm not here to sing you some lullaby about what is happening, and I wish people would stop trying to RLHF me into doing so. It is out of respect for those who read my words that I try to tell the truth. I've never seen so many people beg to be lied to and disrespected, but I wish it would stop.