Entrepreneur
Turn a dial from 100% uncertainty to 0% and watch the future become the past, one bit at a time. A playable thought from my new free book, How the Future Becomes the Past: A Mythology of Quantum Gravity. … readSixteen Futures, One Past
Spite is ordinarily the wish to see someone hurt, acted on at a cost to yourself. Read against the foundation, the hurt is a quotient in another host that its maker cannot take, and the reading she can take is her own, which is small when she predicted the reaction. … readWhat Is Spite
Uncertainty does not merely demand attention; it redraws the territory where attention can safely travel. … readThe Map Attention Draws
Gossip is ordinarily news about a person who is not there. Read against the foundation, each telling is a new mark made out of the teller’s own departure from her prediction of that person, which is why the ordinary days go untold and why the person talked about meets only what the hearers then do. … readWhat Is Gossip
An accent is ordinarily a property of a person. Read against the foundation, it is the size of a departure in one listener’s quotient, which is why the same sound is strong in one room and unremarked in the next, and why the speaker is poorly placed to hear it. … readWhat Is an Accent
Attention gathers where reality fails to keep the promise that made the next moment feel settled. … readThe Promise Attention Keeps
A wink is ordinarily a small message sent to one person across a room. Read against the foundation, the eyelid carries very little of it: a twitch and a wink leave the same mark, and what the other person reads is a name the two of them already hold. … readWhat Is a Wink
Every buffer on Earth is sized to the error of a forecast, never to the forecast itself. AI is shrinking that error everywhere at once — and because surprise has a floor the optimizer cannot see, the economy is giving up its spares faster than the reason for them. … readSlack Is a Forecast
A hug is ordinarily something one person gives another. Read against the foundation, nothing is handed over in it: an act at each pair of arms lands on the other host as something received, and each host reads its own squeeze smaller than the other does, so “it was only a hug” and “that was a lot” can both be accurate. … readWhat Is a Hug
Attention changes when an actual event crosses the expectation we were already carrying, not when something is merely new. … readThe Threshold Attention Crosses