I don’t know anything about dating, have barely ever done it. But I am married to the coolest person I’ve ever met.
So some friends asked for advice on finding someone like that, and I said, LOL why not.
An essay
Henrik Karlsson
@phokarlsson
Anthropologist gone native on the internet. Thinking about how to scale agentic and flourishing cultures.
Writes escapingflatland.substack.com
escapingflatland.substack.comJoined September 2011
Henrik Karlsson’s Tweets
Here's something I like about Andrei Tarkovsky: when he meets the sound editor who will work on Solaris, Tarkovsky writes in his diary that the editor is "brilliant" and said "we should not use Bach because everyone is doing that now" and then Tarkovsky goes ahead and uses Bach.
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Some thoughts about how language models can be used to reinvent community moderation.
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It is in the conflicts between bubbles that most problems occur--polarization etc. Isolated bubbles leads to a few cults, but not much harm overall. But I haven't seen a good analysis of this topic. What should I read? Preferably something that proves me wrong.
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My intuition is that filter bubbles are not as much of a problem as unclear bounderies between filter bubbles.
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Keeping a blog is to journalism what running a startup is to working a corporate job.
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. shared an excerpt of my post on the human systems theory of the scientific slowdown
Excerpt describes scientists' negative reactions to growing conference sizes. 1 of several systems changes that, together, may add up to the main problem
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I don't have a single essay that I'm excited about at the moment, the way I've felt about some of my best essays in the past. It feels more like I'm tunneling toward something, and it excites me in a new way.
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There's a part in Bob Dylan's memoars that I resonate with right now. Its in 1993. He feels like he's in a rut. But then he has a revelation - it is a bit unclear what it is - but he discovers a new way of singing, and knows that he must do thousands of concerts to figure it out.
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Usually, those essays will die, or at least I will cut the parts where I try new things - but gradually, I reach new parts of the experience pile I'm tunneling.
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So I spend more time thinking about craft and register to have more degrees of freedom as I tunnel through my experience. I study others, I dissect sentence constructions, images, tones of voice. And then I might do a series of essays that explore in that direction.
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I guess I see essays as tunnels through my experience and my knowledge, and the limits in my register means certain directions are out of reach. When I get to those points, I have to turn the essay in another direction, and that becomes more obvious when I write more.
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To not repeat, I try to push into topics or registers that are new to me - and I fail. For example, I notice that I am unable to write about things that I'm angry about. I can't write that register in a way that I'm proud of - I can't do anger like Thomas Bernhard.
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When I write more pieces, I become more aware of the limitations in my craft, my register. I notice how I repeat myself. Another sloppy hopeful ending! And this pushes me to explore the edges of my craft.
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There is also the privilege I have that my essays have reach now, so I will get people emailing me book recommendations or telling me about experiences etc. I might write an essay just to set off that reaction, to see what comes out of that.
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Now, I'm having that sense over the arch of several pieces. I might have a feeling that if I lean into a certain topic or register for a month, that will start uncovering interesting new essays. I might write one or two and throw them away just to prepare ground for the third one
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When going into a piece, there is always this feeling that you are aiming for something - you never quite know what you will find at the end. Your thinking evolve, you discover holes, as you edit you notice interesting parallels etc etc
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Just writing a single essay used to be overwhelmingly hard. But now I write one or two a week and publish slightly less than half.
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I’m noticing a shift in how I experience writing as I’m producing more. I no longer think about the pieces separately but as part of this larger flow. It's a bit like how experienced chess players start thinking not about particular moves but larger patterns.
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Unless you know for certain that a certain outcome was the result of luck, err on the side of assuming it was not. It is a more effective way of navigating the terrain.
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What will the next two years hold? I don't know exactly. But I want to be much much more ambitious.
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The thing that has most surprised and delighted me, though, is all the people I have met. I've written in legacy media before and it is screaming into a void. But writing a blog is summoning a culture. And the culture that I found changed me.
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This post also covers some things I've learned during the first two years of blogging.
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So I've changed my mind about that. Though, as you might notice from the tone, I'm still a bit defensive about it. It makes me uncomfortable. But my job is not to be comfortable! It is to do whatever I can to bring into the world what I am capable of bringing into the world.
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And not only is that necessary to do big work. I feel I have a moral responsibility to do it too. Because it will allow me to bring more beauty into the world. And we need more beauty. We need more people doing work at their highest level.
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You don't get the Sixteenth Chapel by someone who refuses to navigate the dirty world and rub the shoulders of rich ppl etc.
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The best art (or whatever you want to do) gets made by people who know what they stand for *but they are also very shrewd about reading the incentive landscape and the opportunities*. And whenever they find alignment with their goals, they exploit it.
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It is important to have a very clear understanding of your values. I prefer not to be able to heat my house than sell out my values. I've done that. But not compromising on your values is not the same thing as not paying attention to the market.
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Reading Tarkovsky's diaries and it fascinates me that he is focused on making more money - it is not something that bleeds through in his films. While working on Solaris: "Now I must earn as much as possible so that we can finish the house by the autumn."
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But one thing I've changed my mind about over these two years is: refusing to think about money is not morally superior. I used to be very much the hungry artist type. I wouldn't compromise. And I still won't compromise. But. How to explain it?
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I notice a certain resistance in me when I talk about "how to make things go viral", "ROI" etc. Because what I want to do is not that: I want to do great work, great essays. And I want to delight my friends.
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It would be great if more ppl focused on doing big valuable pieces. I think on average they will have a better ROI on their time doing that than 10 hot takes on the news. (Though ppl will be slightly less inclined to pay for big pieces compared to mass content.)
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The piece I did summarizing 42 biographies on the childhoods of exceptional people - entirely predictable that it would become my most read piece. Of course.
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And also: it's not like it is particularly surprising which posts will go viral. The ones that do a lot of valuable work for readers.
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Which I find to be a terribly rude way to think about your readers. Well fuck you, I'm not going to put in the work to make good stuff, you'll have to do the work of filtering and curating.
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Some who advise that you should go for quantity reference this power law thing, and go "So throw a lot of balls" the winners will go viral and the shit will get lost in the algorithm.
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The return on a blog post follows a power law (how many interesting ppl it introduces you to, how many opportunities, how many subscribers). So it's better to do few but good pieces.
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Another thing I've come to believe is something like "the advice that you should be super prolific and quantity will lead to quality" is wrong. Or to be more precise: it is prbly good advice for someone who is new to writing, as a way to get unblocked and get reps. But.
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