Neon Vagabond
⚠️ UNRELIABLE PROPHECIES WARNING ⚠️
THIS PROPHET'S FORETELLING MAY OR MAY NOT BE ACCURATE. NO REFUNDS WILL BE OFFERED FOR INACCURATE PROPHECIES.
WOULD YOU DESTROY A BETTER WORLD TO SAVE THIS ONE?
TO GO STILL FURTHER ... IN THE MOVEMENT OF THE MARKET ... FOR PERHAPS THE FLOWS ARE NOT YET DETERRITORIALIZED ENOUGH, NOT DECODED ENOUGH ... NOT TO WITHDRAW FROM THE PROCESS, BUT TO GO FURTHER, TO "ACCELERATE THE PROCESS" ... THE TRUTH IS THAT WE HAVEN'T SEEN ANYTHING YET.
I SWEAR BY MY LIFE AND MY LOVE OF IT THAT I WILL NEVER LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER MAN TO LIVE FOR MINE.
EVERY MAN IS FREE TO DO THAT WHICH HE WILLS, PROVIDED HE INFRINGES NOT THE EQUAL LIBERTY OF ANY OTHER MAN.
IN ITS COLDER VARIANTS, WHICH ARE THOSE THAT WIN OUT, ACCELERATIONISM TENDS TO LAUGH.
WE WILL ENJOY OUR ALIENATION
DARKLY • AESTHETICIZE • WHAT'S • COMING
Index
To briefly explain the structure of this blog: this is a nearly direct export of my Zettelkasten knowledge system. I call the hypertext nodes here thoughts instead of "posts," because they can be changed, rewritten, and edited over time — to erase mistakes or represent my changing views — but can also remain stagnant and unedited as I move on to thinking more actively about other things — whether unrelated, or specific related subtopics — and my views change but I haven't had time to go back and edit them.
Thus, if you want to get a more complete and up to date understanding of my views on a topic, look at a whole thought page, not just an individual thought: like any brain, my public second brain is a constantly changing, evolving web of beliefs which is moved forward precisely by the tensions between various parts of it, forcing it to move in one direction or another.
Recent Updates
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Do we really need macros much?
I've kind of fallen out of love with macros to a certain degree. Now that we don't just have snippets, but also AI, to help deal with boilerplate and refactoring, to a certain degree, yeah --- but there's more to it than that. Ultimately, it's because the vast majority --- like 99% --- of things you do with macros in Lisp, are just basic textual compression, basically. You get rid of boilerplate, but the resulting DSL is completely isomorphic to the structures and control flow of the underlying ... -
This is a new heading
Foo! -
Why I'm obsessed with Common Lisp
Although I haven't had much chance to use it yet, one of the languages that I have been utterly obsessed with for years is Common Lisp. This, of course, is not a new phenomenon amongst hackers like me. However, I think it's worth articulating why I personally am interested in Common Lisp, because the programming language landscape has changed drastically since the earliest hacker essays singing its praises were written, which has led to some of the points they make becoming obsolete -- or more n... -
The phenomenology agentic coding
AI coding agents are important because they fundamentally alter what it is like to program. That is what this essay is about: not whether this transformation is good or bad for programmers as a labor bloc, or economically, or socially; not whether it makes us more or less productive in the odd Taylorist sense that seems prevelent whenever the subject pops up. What interests me and, I believe, should interest you about this whole enterprise, is the phenomenology of how this new human-machine asse... -
Seriously? Using DARE scare tactics?
This study focuses on finding out the cognitive cost of using an LLM in the educational context of writing an essay. We assigned participants to three groups: LLM group, Search Engine group, Brain-only group, where each participant used a designated tool ... to write an essay. We conducted 3 sessions with the same group assignment for each participant. In the 4th session we asked LLM group participants to use no tools (we refer to them as LLM-to-Brain), and the Brain-only group participants were...