Gearing Down
Also: Pop-Up City Whispers, AI Minecraft, and Prediction Market Election Analysis
After the US election this week I've been unable to focus on writing this week's newsletter. Due personal life challenges as a result of it, it’s best to shift gears to focus on other life priorities.
Thus, for now, I'm going to slim down this newsletter and take out the tent pole articles as a regular feature and focus on roundups. I do want to keep up with social media use, but increasingly want to do it more on my own terms. So unless I have something burning to write, it will be life updates, some links, and new music every week. This I can fit into an afternoon and this I enjoy the most.
In reality, writing this newsletter in its current form takes at least 2 days a week to write: thinking, writing, revising. And those extra 2 days each week, as a passion project, means less time writing on my novel (and my art). It's been a year and half of writing this new book and I want to focus on finishing it properly. The context switching drags on my productivity a lot and as a result, the book has been forming slower than desired. I have to frequently reread it a lot to recalibrate even if it's just a few days off. As for my art. I’ve had a finished project since January 2024. So yes. Maybe it’s time.
Starting this newsletter in January 2023 came from a desire to write more and to move more away from feed socials. I’ve also written extensively on touching grass, and opting out of smoking the algorithms. So, I’m going to drink my own kool-aid a bit.
I’ll still be here. I’ll still write a longer-form article every now and again and I hope you will stay around. Thanks for reading.
Bonus Content!
📚 Reading - Caroline Kepnes - You
Getting close to finishing this. Will share thoughts once it’s done.
🏃♂️ Running
Slowly but surely getting my peak fitness back. It’s been so pretty with the colors and cooler weather.
🕹️ Gaming - Factorio
I want to get to playing the new Zelda, but truth be told, I’ve struggled to enjoy it as much as other outings. I’ll keep trying. That being said: in an effort to decompress, I finally relented and got Factorio. Yes. It's absolute nerd catnip. Going to use this as delightful escapism for a bit.
💾 Links
AI Minecraft
I’ve been a bit obsessed with watching AI Minecraft videos. The liminality of it and the attempt to master its idiosyncrasies have been so interesting. Speedrunners have been trying to coax it into allowing you to go where you hope it to go. The way it straddles the line between coherency and insanity is fascinating.
Placemaking vs Mission-Making
While I've been out of the crypto conference circuit for a few years, I still follow the events from afar. One of the more interesting experiments that have morphed out of it is the advent of pop-up cities. Recently, projects like Esmeralda and Praxis raised funds to build new physical spaces that's more than just a regular suburban expansion. It's primarily driven from online networks and ideas with an attempt to manifest physically (Balaji’s Network School is another example).
A distinction I've picked up is that some of these projects are more about manifesting a vision as opposed to being about living. For example, see the difference in approach between Esmeralda and Praxis. Esmeralda seems more solarpunk, focusing on intellectualism, family life, and common sense walkable urbanism. While Praxis preaches new modernism where art and culture is Le Corbusien: about civilizational aesthetic of grandness and progress. A key example: they call their gathering a “World Congress”, evoking imagery of the past like a “World Fair”.
As Paul Graham said: what’s the message of a city? Praxis-as-a-city whispers a manifestation of past Modernist grandness accompanied by modern technological aids, while Esmerelda whispers cozyweb-in-person intellectual mutualism. The latter is layering: a new hyperreal idea of a city. In some sense, like China Mieville’s “The City and The City”.
I'm thus happy that
came to similar conclusions and draws the line between place-making and mission making.Many such experiments, both historical and contemporary, get this balance not just wrong, but wildly wrong. They make the mistake of being about missions first, and placemaking second. That’s a suitable approach for a conference, corporation, religion, or a political movement, but not for a place qua place. Even a virtual place that exists only as a wandering hologram drifting about the surface of the planet. The purpose of places is to simply exist, and to do their best to continue existing. Not to go accomplish something in particular. And the task of placemaking is to figure out what that takes.
To me, it's more likely that mutualist placemaking pop-up cities are the future than neo-colonial beachheads like Praxis. You're still going to have to live next door to someone after all.
Post-Election Prediction Market Analysis
Much has been said about the >$3B election market on Polymarket. I still sit with the same critique I had earlier this year.
goes into details why he thought that Polymarket was actually mispriced compared to play-money and non-money forecaster.It’s prediction market survivor bias. Events that weren’t popular or did not go in the way that was newsworthy is merely forgotten. The bias also takes the following form.
It’s the belief that if an outcome is 70% for a while and eventually becomes true, it’s seen as “look how right it was.”
It’s the belief that if an outcome is 15% for a while and suddenly flips to true, it’s seen as “look! The mainstream media didn’t even this likelihood of happening!”
It’s never wrong.
I think it’s more likely that real-money markets have structural problems that make it hard for them to converge on a true probability. After taxes, transaction costs, and risk of misresolution, it’s often not worth it (especially compared to other investments) to invest money correcting small or even medium mispricings. Additionally, there is a lot of dumb money, most smart money is banned from using prediction markets because of some regulation or another, and the exact amount of dumb money available can swing wildly from one moment to the next.
So, yes, I think it’s running ahead of itself still and we need better metrics to evaluate it in general. Regardless, as Vitalik writes, it’s very useful ultimately as “info finance”.
You should never trust the charts entirely: if everyone trusts the charts, then anyone with money can manipulate the charts and no one will dare to bet against them. On the other hand, trusting the news entirely is also a bad idea. News has an incentive to be sensational, and play up the consequences of anything for clicks. Sometimes, this is justified, sometimes it's not. If you see a sensational article, but then you go to the market and you see that probabilities on relevant events have not changed at all, it makes sense to be suspicious. Alternatively, if you see an unexpectedly high or low probability on the market, or an unexpectedly sudden change, that's a signal to read through the news and see what might have caused it. Conclusion: you can be more informed by reading the news and the charts, than by reading either one alone.
100% agreed. It remains a powerful combination of understanding. Both, combined made for a very useful way to understand where things were going on election night.
🎶 Music
The War on Drugs - Red Eyes
Been getting back to listening to The War on Drugs again recently. Been calming and making me feel more present in the autumn colours.
Hope you get to enjoy a lovely sunset.
See you next week with a more slimmed down newsletter. Take care of yourself.