Plans & Ideas
Some of these ideas are for improving things. Some are for making things worse. I’m not going to tell you which ones are which.
Some of these plans seem pretty sensible. Some seem kinda ridiculous. The latter ones are the plans I take most seriously.
Public letters
Robin’s newsletter is great, there are very few writers whose writing I await as eagerly.
All mediums have their constraints, whether they be essays, tweets or full-length papers. The cool thing about trying out a new one is that you don’t know how it will change what you can say.
27th January 20223
Everything I Know
If I ever start a YouTube channel, this is what I want it to be:
- Long-ish videos (30m - 1 hour) of me explaining everything I know about a topic that I have no “real” expertise in.
- The camera points downwards on large sheet of paper (or whiteboard) that I draw on while talking.
- Minimal editing, but keep the audio and video quality high.
The point is not to provide a particularly accurate or well-thought-out lecture, but the kind of personal perspective only a fairly experienced amateur can give. Stuff that isn’t exactly the right method, or idiosyncratic enough to be useless to most people.
True experts have a really specialised understanding of their field, and have usually long since forgotten what it’s like to be new to it. More importantly, they have an “expert’s duty” to say only what they believe is true, and is usually common knowledge.
Until I do get around to doing this, I’ll try to add posts to the Useful section. If you try something like this, please send it to me, I’d love to see it.
26th December 2022
Perfect wallet
Think about all the things that make physical wallets great.
23th December 2022
Cooler websites
20th December 2022
Kitchen-table internet
The hard part is stumbling across the people you want to bump into.
The Forest, kognise’s webring.
9th December 2022
Idea lists
| List | About |
|---|---|
| Project Ideas | Software-related product ideas with “reasonable” scope, from Justin Duke |
| Startup Ideas | I’m not sure if Gwern is being completely serious here, but these do seem fun. |
| Internet Research Tools | List of ideas for better web browsing, from Tyler Angert. |
| A List of Major, Future Innovations | List of innovations which, if successful, will dramatically improve our society, from Harsimony. |
6th December 2022