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-<rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:googleplay="http://www.google.com/schemas/play-podcasts/1.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Escaping Flatland]]></title><description><![CDATA[When my daughters aren’t hiding my notebooks, I write essays about relationships, writing, and being agentic and grounded in yourself]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz</link><image><url>https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8adc529b-e1e1-431c-b2a6-d1f14aaedc78_906x906.png</url><title>Escaping Flatland</title><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz</link></image><generator>Substack</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 13 Jul 2024 02:28:49 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><copyright><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></copyright><language><![CDATA[en]]></language><webMaster><![CDATA[escapingflatland@substack.com]]></webMaster><itunes:owner><itunes:email><![CDATA[escapingflatland@substack.com]]></itunes:email><itunes:name><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></itunes:name></itunes:owner><itunes:author><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></itunes:author><googleplay:owner><![CDATA[escapingflatland@substack.com]]></googleplay:owner><googleplay:email><![CDATA[escapingflatland@substack.com]]></googleplay:email><googleplay:author><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></googleplay:author><item><title><![CDATA[Garlic and gravel]]></title><description><![CDATA[fragments]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/garlic-and-gravel</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/garlic-and-gravel</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jul 2024 11:34:25 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1acf43c0-7c4e-490b-b82c-84967fb3a47c_1200x1200.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1acf43c0-7c4e-490b-b82c-84967fb3a47c_1200x1200.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1acf43c0-7c4e-490b-b82c-84967fb3a47c_1200x1200.jpeg 424w, 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data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1acf43c0-7c4e-490b-b82c-84967fb3a47c_1200x1200.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1200,&quot;width&quot;:1200,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:265483,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1acf43c0-7c4e-490b-b82c-84967fb3a47c_1200x1200.jpeg 424w, 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9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Today we harvested the garlic. Now it&#8217;s hanging from a clothes rack above me, drying. The rain is coming down on the roof, rushing down the gutters into the barrel where we catch water.</p><p>June was hard. My work at the art gallery has been taking up more time than I want. In April-June, we had twice as many guests as previous years, which was intense. And o&#8230;</p>
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-   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Advice from my editor]]></title><description><![CDATA[A sculptural representation of JS Bach&#8217;s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren &#8220;I can&#8217;t make myself finish this one,&#8221; Johanna said one night when we were reading together in bed. She was working her way through a 6021-word essay draft about identities as interfaces that I had written. &#8220;Why does this matter to you?&#8221;]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/advice-from-my-editor</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/advice-from-my-editor</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 19 Jun 2024 14:12:20 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg" width="750" height="913" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/f4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:913,&quot;width&quot;:750,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:142936,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4ec0c4e-90cd-40cf-b3ef-98ae304f45e6_750x913.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><h6>A sculptural representation of JS Bach&#8217;s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren </h6><div><hr></div><p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t make myself finish this one,&#8221; Johanna said one night when we were reading together in bed. She was working her way through a 6021-word essay draft about identities as interfaces that I had written. &#8220;Why does this matter to you?&#8221;</p><p>I looked up from my book and gave her an explanation of the importance of the ideas in the essay.</p><p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I meant, why do <em>you</em> care?&#8221;</p><p>Thinking for a bit, I started over, giving a slightly less pompous answer.</p><p>When I was done, we sat silent for a while, our youngest daughter turning over in her sleep, making a short cry, then going silent again.</p><p>&#8220;So is that really why you care?&#8221; Johanna said.</p><p>I looked out at the trees, so rich with green in the last light. Then&#8212;answering her question a third time&#8212;my pulse quickened. The ideas suddenly seemed to open up like a cathedral carved at the bottom of a salt mine: I had reached down to the embarrassing, personal need that hid under the text.</p><p>Johanna said, &#8220;I think you should throw out the essay and write that instead.&#8221;</p><div><hr></div><div class="digest-post-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;nodeId&quot;:&quot;6ba1e24e-403b-4f32-bb71-91b289823913&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Alexander Calder&#8217;s workshop Something I found frustrating when learning how to write was that writing advice tends to be very low resolution. You have someone looking back on their experience writing for decades and they sum it up by saying, oh, well, don&#8217;t use adverbs.&quot;,&quot;size&quot;:&quot;lg&quot;,&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;How I wrote \&quot;Looking for Alice\&quot;&quot;,&quot;publishedBylines&quot;:[{&quot;id&quot;:850764,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;Henrik Karlsson&quot;,&quot;bio&quot;:&quot;Writes 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Flatland&quot;,&quot;publication_logo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8adc529b-e1e1-431c-b2a6-d1f14aaedc78_906x906.png&quot;,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true}"></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Thoughts on agency]]></title><description><![CDATA[Gustav Klimt, Beech Grove I, 1902]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/thoughts-on-agency</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/thoughts-on-agency</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2024 20:15:50 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F967ab853-d2f3-47fa-907c-4396f5e2f9e4_1600x1588.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F967ab853-d2f3-47fa-907c-4396f5e2f9e4_1600x1588.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F967ab853-d2f3-47fa-907c-4396f5e2f9e4_1600x1588.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F967ab853-d2f3-47fa-907c-4396f5e2f9e4_1600x1588.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F967ab853-d2f3-47fa-907c-4396f5e2f9e4_1600x1588.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F967ab853-d2f3-47fa-907c-4396f5e2f9e4_1600x1588.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F967ab853-d2f3-47fa-907c-4396f5e2f9e4_1600x1588.jpeg" width="1456" height="1445" 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https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F967ab853-d2f3-47fa-907c-4396f5e2f9e4_1600x1588.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F967ab853-d2f3-47fa-907c-4396f5e2f9e4_1600x1588.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><h6>Gustav Klimt, <em>Beech Grove I</em>, 1902</h6>
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-      </p>
-   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing]]></title><description><![CDATA[I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter was born. This writing experiment has followed roughly the same trajectory as the baby. In 2021, Escaping Flatland's prime achievement was putting a few toys in its mouth (a handful of essays read by about fifty people). But then, around the time Rebecka got up on her legs and learned to talk, I found a voice and picked up pace.]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/sacrifice</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/sacrifice</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 30 May 2024 10:22:43 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg" width="927" height="1200" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1200,&quot;width&quot;:927,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe15d1b23-7ad9-4f85-bfea-4e23318cc080_927x1200.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter was born. This writing experiment has followed roughly the same trajectory as the baby. In 2021, Escaping Flatland's prime achievement was putting a few toys in its mouth (a handful of essays read by about fifty people). But then, around the time Rebecka got up on her legs and learned to talk, I found a voice and picked up pace.</p><p>I didn&#8217;t have any clear idea where I was going, as is evident by the name I picked for the blog. Flatland is a reference to Edwin Abbott Abbott&#8217;s 1884 novel about a Square who lives in a 2-dimensional world and makes contact with a Sphere from Spaceland, the 3-dimensional world.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16be8d7e-8a14-4180-b935-6815d672a261_1280x1566.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16be8d7e-8a14-4180-b935-6815d672a261_1280x1566.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16be8d7e-8a14-4180-b935-6815d672a261_1280x1566.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16be8d7e-8a14-4180-b935-6815d672a261_1280x1566.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16be8d7e-8a14-4180-b935-6815d672a261_1280x1566.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16be8d7e-8a14-4180-b935-6815d672a261_1280x1566.png" width="1280" height="1566" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/16be8d7e-8a14-4180-b935-6815d672a261_1280x1566.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1566,&quot;width&quot;:1280,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16be8d7e-8a14-4180-b935-6815d672a261_1280x1566.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16be8d7e-8a14-4180-b935-6815d672a261_1280x1566.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16be8d7e-8a14-4180-b935-6815d672a261_1280x1566.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16be8d7e-8a14-4180-b935-6815d672a261_1280x1566.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>I now recognize a deep longing in this name&#8212;to escape flatland is a dream of making contact with people and ideas that could expand and alter my understanding of reality into something richer, more full, more roundedly human. And the miraculous thing is that it worked! When Rebecka turned one, I had met several people through the blog, people who felt like spheres to me. First and foremost, <a href="https://alexanderobenauer.com/labnotes/000/">Alexander Obenauer</a>, whose writing I had admired from afar before I started the blog and who, when we became friends, gave me the courage to be more myself. But also <a href="https://x.com/_ArnaudS_">Arnaud Schenk</a>, <a href="https://x.com/experilearning">Jamesb</a>, <a href="https://x.com/stevekrouse">Steve Krouse</a> (for whom I wrote &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/looking-for-alice">Looking for Alice</a>&#8221;), and later others. There are many Spheres in the world if you <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query">whistle in an orthogonal direction</a>.</p><p>I can&#8217;t strongly enough recommend setting off 20 hours a week to work on a project that forces you to learn and grow and meet new people. Most of us are awake some 110 hours a week, so 20 hours is not impossible. But it adds up in a surprising way if you keep at it for 3 years. I feel like I've grown into my body. I feel fifteen years older. In a good way.</p><p>Of course, when carving out almost 3500 hours, as I have over these last 3 years, there are tradeoffs involved. The first winter after Rebecka was born, I hadn&#8217;t yet had time to renovate the rooms on the second floor so I had no office in the main building. I had to write in the stable. As the winter wore on and the energy prices rose, we could no longer afford to heat the room I wrote in. I would see my breath rise before me as I typed. I&#8217;m not saying this to make me sound like a starving artist. I could have written less and done more consulting and we would have had the money to heat the study. The point is that confronted with this tradeoff, writing in a room so cold my fingers hurt was the better option. It was what I wanted<em> </em>to do. Not because I thought making a sacrifice like this would somehow pay off later. Not because I guessed that Escaping Flatland would one day take off and become a source of income.<a class="footnote-anchor" data-component-name="FootnoteAnchorToDOM" id="footnote-anchor-1" href="#footnote-1" target="_self">1</a> No. Just because I wanted it.</p><p>In our twenties, Johanna and I stared for a long time into our souls and concluded that three things matter to us over everything else:</p><ol><li><p>our relationship,</p></li><li><p>being able to honor our curiosity, and</p></li><li><p>giving our children the opportunity to do the same.</p></li></ol><p>Getting clarity on our priorities has made it easy for us to say no to many things that we otherwise would have assumed that we needed to do, or have. If we have to choose between being able to afford a vacation or being able to write? Oh, let&#8217;s check the list. I should write! If we have to choose between spending more time with our kids or buying a car? We put the kids on the back of the bicycle.<a class="footnote-anchor" data-component-name="FootnoteAnchorToDOM" id="footnote-anchor-2" href="#footnote-2" target="_self">2</a></p><p>Two years after I began emailing essays into the void, I was contacted by the founder of a startup. He wanted me to write for them. He offered me $100k per year, which is about 5 times more than what I earn at the art gallery where I work part-time to pay the bills. I said thank you, but I wasn&#8217;t interested. He took that as a negotiating tactic. I played along. After five minutes, he offered me $200k per year.</p><p>&#8220;Well, that <em>is</em> interesting,&#8221; I said, getting carried away. &#8220;I&#8217;ll have to discuss it with my wife.&#8221;</p><p>We could fix the roof! I would never have to worry about money again! We could get a car!</p><p>I walked out to Johanna. She was in the vegetable garden, picking aphids of the artichokes. The children were playing with the soil between the planting beds. Halfway through telling her how much money I could make, Johanna broke me off, saying, &#8220;But why on earth would you accept that?&#8221; She was genuinely confused. She brushed some grass from her shirt, and said, &#8220;You wouldn&#8217;t have time to write.&#8221;</p><p>And by God&#8212;who cares that we can&#8217;t afford a car when I get to live with a person who says things like that? <em>Of course</em>, I don&#8217;t want $200k to write things I doubt the value of. </p><p>What is the opportunity cost? If I do this, if I go on this vacation, if I get this car, what am I turning down? By asking yourself this, and then consistently aiming to pick the thing that optimizes for what you most deeply value&#8212;it adds up. It makes life rich.</p><p>You don&#8217;t have to do things others do, or have things they have, at the expense of the deeper things you want. You really don&#8217;t. Almost everything is an option. You have full permission to ask yourself what really matters to you&#8212;whatever that is&#8212;and then optimize for that in all hard tradeoffs of life. You&#8217;re going to have to make some sacrifices anyway. Might as well not sacrifice the wrong thing.</p><p>As the blog enters its fourth year, this is what is on my mind. What is the deepest, truest direction I can take this experiment now? What is less important and can be sacrificed?</p><div class="footnote" data-component-name="FootnoteToDOM"><a id="footnote-1" href="#footnote-anchor-1" class="footnote-number" contenteditable="false" target="_self">1</a><div class="footnote-content"><p>My salary from the blog is about $20k per year.</p></div></div><div class="footnote" data-component-name="FootnoteToDOM"><a id="footnote-2" href="#footnote-anchor-2" class="footnote-number" contenteditable="false" target="_self">2</a><div class="footnote-content"><p>I&#8217;ve biked the equivalent of two crossings of the United States since starting this blog. You should see my legs.</p><p></p></div></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[On having more interesting ideas]]></title><description><![CDATA[&#8220;To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.&#8221; When I talk to people who have worked with their ideas seriously for 10+ years, it feels like I can throw any topic on them and they&#8217;ll have an interesting idea, or if not an idea so at least an unexpected way of approaching it.]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/interesting-ideas</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/interesting-ideas</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2024 15:29:26 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png" width="684" height="676" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/f940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:false,&quot;imageSize&quot;:&quot;normal&quot;,&quot;height&quot;:676,&quot;width&quot;:684,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:684,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff940b52b-5bd3-4337-af0c-692d20612436_684x676.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><h6>CY TWOMBLY&#8217;S STUDIO IN ROME, 1966</h6><div><hr></div><p>A hobby of mine is to answer random questions that people email me, and I figured I should publish some of the answers here so I don&#8217;t have to repeat myself. If you have a question, you can use <a href="https://forms.gle/s2SwaNEsFEVda14f8">this Google form</a> and I&#8217;ll publish an answer from time to time.</p><p>Here&#8217;s one. A reader asked me how I go about finding interesting things to write about. I am not sure how good I am at being interesting, but I do spend a lot of time coming up with ideas&#8212;both for essays and for other contexts&#8212;and I am much better at it than I used to be. So:</p><ol><li><p>It is a muscle. Every day for maybe 7 years, I&#8217;ve written about what I think in detail, and the more I&#8217;ve done it, the better I&#8217;ve gotten at articulating what is new and interesting and meaningful in my thoughts. There is a quote attributed to Oscar Wilde: &#8220;To write well all you need to do is develop your mind. If you have thought deeply, nearly everything looks interesting.&#8221; And it really is a lot like that. When I talk to people who have worked with their ideas seriously for 10+ years, it feels like I can throw any topic on them and they&#8217;ll have an interesting idea, or if not an idea so at least an unexpected way of approaching it.</p></li><li><p>I get ideas in communion with others&#8212;by reading and by talking, and by thinking about what I read and talk about. If you look at people who have been fountains of ideas they often had a dinner crew of witty people they met every day and whom they would try to entertain with interesting observations.<a class="footnote-anchor" data-component-name="FootnoteAnchorToDOM" id="footnote-anchor-1" href="#footnote-1" target="_self">1</a> I don&#8217;t do that, but I email a lot. There can be a positive feedback loop here: <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query">the more interesting ideas you have and make public, the more interesting people you attract</a>, and they provide you with more ideas, etc.</p></li><li><p>You can also get into this feedback loop by <a href="https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/chase-your-readinghtml">chasing your reading</a>. You read and reflect on what you learn. Then you use those reflections to find even more interesting nooks in the history of literature, spurring more and more ideas. If you don&#8217;t have access to interesting peers, you might feel like you are missing out. But books are the main peer group of any thinker.</p></li><li><p>The opposite of communion is also useful to me. When I am with others, when I read books, when I look at Twitter&#8212;I feel like a dam filling with water, with potential energy. But it is usually not until I spend a long time alone in my head that it turns into kinetic energy. My best writing happened after I, at the end of 2021, got so sick that I couldn&#8217;t move or talk or read for three weeks. It was like I melted away, all my thoughts sunk, I forgot who I was, and when I could get out of bed I wrote &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/looking-for-alice">Looking for Alice</a>.&#8221; The best ideas tend to be fragile and can&#8217;t stand the scrutiny of others until they&#8217;ve learned to walk. Johanna and I wrote a long piece about the relationship between solitude and having good ideas <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/good-ideas">here</a>.</p></li><li><p>For me, the core thing driving my thoughts is trying to get better at the things that matter to me&#8212;being a better father, husband, friend, writer, etc. You just have to grab hold of what awakens a sense of loving curiosity in you. If you pursue those things, they never cease to open up to new questions and observations and ideas. The richer your understanding of &#8220;the landscape&#8221; gets, so to speak, the more paths onward you spot.</p></li><li><p>I have more exciting ideas when I don&#8217;t feel shame about what excites me, when I allow myself to be stupid and naive and boring. I try not to judge myself in the act of giving birth to ideas.<a class="footnote-anchor" data-component-name="FootnoteAnchorToDOM" id="footnote-anchor-2" href="#footnote-2" target="_self">2</a></p></li><li><p>If we think of the space where unborn ideas live as a landscape, we need some map to navigate it. Your curiosity is one such map. Thinking about what others might find interesting is another. Your curiosity is the more fine-grained map of the two. And you need a fine-grained map to navigate these murky regions.</p></li></ol><div class="footnote" data-component-name="FootnoteToDOM"><a id="footnote-1" href="#footnote-anchor-1" class="footnote-number" contenteditable="false" target="_self">1</a><div class="footnote-content"><p>In 2021, six months before I started Escaping Flatland I began taking detailed notes from my conversations. In particular, I did this with my friend Torbj&#246;rn, whom I would call every week to discuss ideas as I walked through the nature reserve next to our house. We have known each other since we were 13, but it was remarkable how much untapped potential we had in our conversation&#8212;and how much better our ideas got when I wrote them down. Instead of drifting off to random topics each time, we could return to the most interesting idea from the last call and go deeper. I have written about this in much more detail <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/conversation">here</a>.</p></div></div><div class="footnote" data-component-name="FootnoteToDOM"><a id="footnote-2" href="#footnote-anchor-2" class="footnote-number" contenteditable="false" target="_self">2</a><div class="footnote-content"><p>However, I <em>do</em> judge later, and put at least 90 percent of the ideas in the garbage can when I reread it.</p><p></p></div></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[On shortcuts and longcuts]]></title><description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they make. This gives the path a lovely human fit. But sometimes you want to do the opposite. You want to design ways to get people to take a longer path, a longcut, so they can see or do things they&#8217;d miss otherwise.]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/on-shortcuts-and-longcuts</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/on-shortcuts-and-longcuts</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2024 06:22:27 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62eb5ebe-8a11-4fcd-89d8-7c0bc1a7d14e_1275x982.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62eb5ebe-8a11-4fcd-89d8-7c0bc1a7d14e_1275x982.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62eb5ebe-8a11-4fcd-89d8-7c0bc1a7d14e_1275x982.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62eb5ebe-8a11-4fcd-89d8-7c0bc1a7d14e_1275x982.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62eb5ebe-8a11-4fcd-89d8-7c0bc1a7d14e_1275x982.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62eb5ebe-8a11-4fcd-89d8-7c0bc1a7d14e_1275x982.jpeg" width="1275" height="982" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/62eb5ebe-8a11-4fcd-89d8-7c0bc1a7d14e_1275x982.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:982,&quot;width&quot;:1275,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;ANDREI TARKOVSKY POLAROIDS -2 - Flashbak&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="ANDREI TARKOVSKY POLAROIDS -2 - Flashbak" title="ANDREI TARKOVSKY POLAROIDS -2 - Flashbak" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62eb5ebe-8a11-4fcd-89d8-7c0bc1a7d14e_1275x982.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62eb5ebe-8a11-4fcd-89d8-7c0bc1a7d14e_1275x982.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62eb5ebe-8a11-4fcd-89d8-7c0bc1a7d14e_1275x982.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62eb5ebe-8a11-4fcd-89d8-7c0bc1a7d14e_1275x982.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><h6>A polaroid by Andrei Tarkovsky</h6><div><hr></div><p>There&#8217;s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they make. This gives the path a lovely human fit. But sometimes you want to do the opposite. You want to design ways to get people to take a longer path, a longcut, so they can see or do things they&#8217;d miss otherwise.</p><p>Johanna and I are talking about this as we walk through the forest on our grounds, where she is scouting the path for a new walking trail.</p><p>&#8220;This hilly area here,&#8221; she says, &#8220;where it is just tree trunks and no undergrowth. The evening sun comes from behind here, so the trunks throw a stripe pattern of long shadows on the ground. And it's just stunning looking through the forest with these full-grown trees in the evening. But we never go here.&#8221;</p><p>She is trying to integrate the parts that we&#8217;re never visiting by making small interventions that slightly change their function; a path, a seating bench, a stair where it&#8217;s too steep. By leading us off the easy path&#8212;the one that leads to the garbage can and the mailbox&#8212;we can enable new activities. If we put a table at the end of this path, I can go out and work when I feel blocked in the office. There is that feeling of returning to the body which the forest enables, and which we can encourage by having dinner at the meadow where the last light sets in late summer.</p><p>Writing essays is a lot like this. I walk the landscape to find interesting and overlooked spots, and then I make a path there. The words you are reading right now are not the fastest way to get from A to B. Writing it, Johanna and I have not asked ourselves where people were already going so we could make that a little more convenient. Instead, we're trying to create a path to encourage you to walk in a direction you wouldn't otherwise because we think that it's going to be an interesting experience for you. Writing an essay is like saying, Oh, look at how beautiful the light is over in that clearing! And then you get there, and we say, Oh, there's a wild rose, a little further on. Keep walking. It will be worth it.</p><p>Shortcuts tend to be pragmatic and goal-directed; you cut across the grass to save ten seconds on your way to the library. Longcuts are more about enabling; opening up a space for activities.</p><p>After I wrote &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/looking-for-alice">Looking for Alice</a>,&#8221; I received an email from someone who had read it and decided to break up with their partner. This was a startling thing to hear, that someone had walked into a series of thoughts I had written down and come away in that state. But a few weeks later it happened again: another breakup. And then I got an email from a couple who <em>had</em> been separated. They got back together after one of them emailed the essay to the other. This also happened twice. I hadn&#8217;t planned to alter the relationship status of strangers&#8212;I had just written some dating advice for my friend <a href="https://twitter.com/stevekrouse">Steve Krouse</a> (he&#8217;s off the market now). But in so doing, I had somehow constructed a path into a landscape of thought where things like this happen. The love story that &#8220;Looking for Alice&#8221; centers on created a narrative drive, a reason to walk out of your way, and pulled by that narrative these readers entered into a place where they saw their relationships in an unfamiliar light. An essay is not a vehicle of knowledge transmission; it is a landscape to think in, and a path to get there.</p><p>It is tempting to make shortcuts. When writing or doing art or building software (or in any other way constructing paths for people to walk on), you can typically earn more if you cater to the marginal user, the one who is on the fence. But <a href="https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user">the marginal user is the least patient and least interested</a>, so you have to simplify, reduce friction, make the path direct and unambiguous&#8212;and you end up working for the shortcut paving company. Imagine if Newton, when he had trekked through the landscape of thought and found equations that could unite the heavens and earth, had said, &#8220;Yeah, but this is a little convoluted, I should cut that part. . .&#8221; No! We build paths. We look for better ways of expressing ideas. We find more effective methods of teaching. These days, millions of people are capable of walking into the region of thought where Newton saw the laws of motion. And we can put satellites in orbit.</p><p>Almost everything that is meaningful, beautiful, life-affirming, empowering, transformational, true&#8212;it can&#8217;t be reached by shortcuts. But what we can do is make the longcuts walkable, put out footbridges and stairs, and a table where the ocean comes into view.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p>Johanna ordered an art book with paintings by Monet the other week. We sat in bed looking at the pictures together. I do not typically spend a lot of time looking at pictures&#8212;that is not my flavor of patience. But I love seeing the world through Johanna&#8217;s eyes, so I suspended my impatience and let her show me a path into the images.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png" width="1024" height="939" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:939,&quot;width&quot;:1024,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>&#8220;Notice the lines in the water&#8212;&#8221;</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9f24657-092a-43d6-af53-686f284bbb16_670x896.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9f24657-092a-43d6-af53-686f284bbb16_670x896.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9f24657-092a-43d6-af53-686f284bbb16_670x896.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9f24657-092a-43d6-af53-686f284bbb16_670x896.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9f24657-092a-43d6-af53-686f284bbb16_670x896.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9f24657-092a-43d6-af53-686f284bbb16_670x896.png" width="670" height="896" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e9f24657-092a-43d6-af53-686f284bbb16_670x896.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:896,&quot;width&quot;:670,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:927631,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9f24657-092a-43d6-af53-686f284bbb16_670x896.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9f24657-092a-43d6-af53-686f284bbb16_670x896.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9f24657-092a-43d6-af53-686f284bbb16_670x896.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9f24657-092a-43d6-af53-686f284bbb16_670x896.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>&#8220;&#8212;and how they the echo of color of the boat&#8212;&#8221;</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce9bf7c-1afd-49b0-88e5-70e8a635cf3f_626x834.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce9bf7c-1afd-49b0-88e5-70e8a635cf3f_626x834.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce9bf7c-1afd-49b0-88e5-70e8a635cf3f_626x834.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce9bf7c-1afd-49b0-88e5-70e8a635cf3f_626x834.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce9bf7c-1afd-49b0-88e5-70e8a635cf3f_626x834.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce9bf7c-1afd-49b0-88e5-70e8a635cf3f_626x834.png" width="626" height="834" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6ce9bf7c-1afd-49b0-88e5-70e8a635cf3f_626x834.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:834,&quot;width&quot;:626,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:798000,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce9bf7c-1afd-49b0-88e5-70e8a635cf3f_626x834.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce9bf7c-1afd-49b0-88e5-70e8a635cf3f_626x834.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce9bf7c-1afd-49b0-88e5-70e8a635cf3f_626x834.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce9bf7c-1afd-49b0-88e5-70e8a635cf3f_626x834.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>&#8220;Can you feel how that helps tie the picture together and adds to the wholeness?&#8221;</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png" width="1024" height="939" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:939,&quot;width&quot;:1024,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d208cc5-4f81-46ea-980a-3212b7bde5e5_1024x939.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>The longer I looked at the world as seen by Monet, as seen by Johanna, the more I seeped into my eyes.</p><p>I took my jacket on. Walking out, I turned left and followed the line that Johanna intends to turn into a path. It was twilight. The shadows were, yes, long stripes on the forest floor. Every needle on the pines shimmered distinct, with a level of detail that I&#8217;m not used to. The moss, I noticed, was made up of thousands of clear green stars of moss stems. I bent down. Among the green stars crawled red dots&#8212;clover mites, their eight legs almost pink, ending in minuscule claws which they used to navigate the intricate network of moss stems. One of the mites found a droplet and stuck its head into water. Imagine being that mite: you find a perfectly round ball of water, larger than your head, and when you need to drink, you sink into it. I looked up at the stems of the trees rising toward the shifting sky, got to my feet, and continued down the path.</p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Our essays are funded by ~350 subscribers. If you like to buy us time to do more, consider supporting the work by becoming a paid subscriber :)</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/on-shortcuts-and-longcuts?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Share&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/on-shortcuts-and-longcuts?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share"><span>Share</span></a></p><p>If you liked this essay, you might like another one about me and Johanna&#8212;on conversation, love, and craft:</p><div class="digest-post-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;nodeId&quot;:&quot;429208d2-cafb-4759-aae1-0e1763acbba8&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;This is the second part of a series that began with &#8220;Looking for Alice.&#8221; You don&#8217;t have to read that to understand this. But it&#8217;s cute. There is also a third part called &#8220;Relationships are coevolutionary loops.&#8221; A summer ten years ago, I spent all day every day talking to Johanna.&quot;,&quot;size&quot;:&quot;lg&quot;,&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Dostoevsky as lover&quot;,&quot;publishedBylines&quot;:[{&quot;id&quot;:850764,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;Henrik Karlsson&quot;,&quot;bio&quot;:&quot;Writes escapingflatland.substack.com/&quot;,&quot;photo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1d2b2afe-5da5-4bd4-9f1f-a2ec569d9dda_2048x1536.jpeg&quot;,&quot;is_guest&quot;:false,&quot;bestseller_tier&quot;:100}],&quot;post_date&quot;:&quot;2023-04-25T15:54:47.658Z&quot;,&quot;cover_image&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5fd5560f-abb9-47e8-966f-79b7f43bc09b_1024x608.jpeg&quot;,&quot;cover_image_alt&quot;:null,&quot;canonical_url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/doestoevsky-as-lover&quot;,&quot;section_name&quot;:null,&quot;id&quot;:62067940,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;newsletter&quot;,&quot;reaction_count&quot;:270,&quot;comment_count&quot;:20,&quot;publication_name&quot;:&quot;Escaping Flatland&quot;,&quot;publication_logo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8adc529b-e1e1-431c-b2a6-d1f14aaedc78_906x906.png&quot;,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true}"></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[In praise of insular groups]]></title><description><![CDATA[Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a meadow where two men were artificially inseminating a longhaired cow. We stopped to observe the work. When it was done, one of the men came over to where we stood by the electric fence to explain what we&#8217;d seen. He had blue overalls, graying beard, and an a&#8230;]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/insular-groups</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/insular-groups</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 04 May 2024 09:38:08 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9ca6d95c-7795-446f-8ebf-bea90be8dc7f_1091x1600.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47ec1f9b-fc6b-4ba4-9299-64eed00e2b18_540x640.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47ec1f9b-fc6b-4ba4-9299-64eed00e2b18_540x640.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47ec1f9b-fc6b-4ba4-9299-64eed00e2b18_540x640.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47ec1f9b-fc6b-4ba4-9299-64eed00e2b18_540x640.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47ec1f9b-fc6b-4ba4-9299-64eed00e2b18_540x640.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47ec1f9b-fc6b-4ba4-9299-64eed00e2b18_540x640.png" width="540" height="640" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/47ec1f9b-fc6b-4ba4-9299-64eed00e2b18_540x640.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:640,&quot;width&quot;:540,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47ec1f9b-fc6b-4ba4-9299-64eed00e2b18_540x640.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47ec1f9b-fc6b-4ba4-9299-64eed00e2b18_540x640.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47ec1f9b-fc6b-4ba4-9299-64eed00e2b18_540x640.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47ec1f9b-fc6b-4ba4-9299-64eed00e2b18_540x640.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a meadow where two men were artificially inseminating a longhaired cow. We stopped to observe the work. When&nbsp;it was done, one of the men came over to where we stood by the electric fence to explain what we&#8217;d seen. He had blue overalls, graying beard, and an a&#8230;</p>
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-          </a>
-      </p>
-   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[How to think in writing]]></title><description><![CDATA[Part 1: The thought behind the thought]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-to-think</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-to-think</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 25 Apr 2024 14:00:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png" width="750" height="587" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/d8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:587,&quot;width&quot;:750,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd8bec767-3242-4428-a281-0cdc3182ff75_750x587.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><blockquote><p><em>The reason I've spent so long establishing this rather obvious point [that writing helps you refine your thinking] is that it leads to another that many people will find shocking. If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.</em></p><p><em>It feels to them as if they do, especially if they're not in the habit of critically examining their own thinking. Ideas can feel complete. It's only when you try to put them into words that you discover they're not. So if you never subject your ideas to that test, you'll not only never have fully formed ideas, but also never realize it.</em></p><p>&#8212;Paul Graham</p></blockquote><p>When I sit down to write, the meadow is still sunk in darkness, and above it, satellites pass by, one after the other. My thoughts are flighty and shapeless; they morph as I approach them. But when I type, it is as if I pin my thoughts to the table. I can examine them.</p><p>But it is hard to do it right. Not all writing helps me <em>think</em>. Most kinds of writing are rather weak, or even counterproductive, in this regard. You have to approach it in the right way.</p><p>Until last fall, I had not seen anyone properly articulate the mental moves that make writing a powerful tool for thought. Writing advice is usually focused on more superficial parts of the craft. Whatever I knew about thinking on the page, I had picked up through trial and error and conversations with other writers.</p><p>But then I read Imre Lakatos&#8217;s <em><a href="https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/730446/mod_resource/content/2/Imre%20Lakatos%3B%20Proofs%20and%20Refutations.pdf">Proofs and Refutations</a></em>. It is not, at first glance, a book about writing. It is a book of mathematical philosophy. By a Hungarian Stalinist, no less. But it is, if you read it sideways, a profound exploration of the act of writing. This shouldn&#8217;t be a surprise. Mathematics is, after all, a subset of writing&#8212;it is a way of crafting a language that helps you express and improve thoughts. The main difference, compared to prose writers and poets, is that mathematicians are more rigorous, precise. Because of this precision, reading Lakatos gave me a clearer and more precise understanding of what I do, or strive to do, as I sit down each morning and wrestle with my thoughts.&nbsp;</p><p>What follows is a series of meditations about thinking through writing provoked by, but not faithful to, Lakatos&#8217;s book. I&#8217;ve divided it into two parts. The first part covers the basic mental models that are useful to most people (if you write a diary, for example, and want to get clarity about things in your life). The next part goes into more complex patterns of thinking which I suspect is mostly useful if you do research or engage in some other kind of deep creative work.</p><p>A warning. If you aim to write and publish stuff, this essay might tie you up in knots. It is about thinking, not about crafting beauty or finishing things in a finite time.</p><h1>Setting yourself up for defeat</h1><blockquote><p><em>There is a crack, a crack in everything<br>That&#8217;s how the light gets in.<br>&#8212;</em>Leonard Cohen, &#8220;Anthem&#8221;</p></blockquote><p>In <a href="https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/patrick-collison">a recent interview with Dwarkesh</a>, Patrick Collison explained the value of writing using a metaphor I enjoyed:</p><blockquote><p>Bruno Latour spoke about how he thinks the printing revolution, like Gutenberg&#8217;s, partially caused the scientific revolution by <em>making knowledge more rigid.</em> Before, if some observation didn&#8217;t match some claim, you could always shrug and be like: &#8220;Well, the person who transcribed that thing made a mistake.&#8221; So <em>by making things more rigid, it&#8217;s easier to break them. </em>[Emphasis mine.]&nbsp;</p></blockquote><p>Good thinking is about pushing past your current understanding and reaching the thought behind the thought. This often requires breaking old ideas, which is much easier to do when the ideas are as rigid as they get on the page. In a fluid medium like thought or conversation, you can always go, &#8220;Well, I didn&#8217;t mean it like <em>that</em>&#8221; or rely on the fact that your short-term memory is too limited for you to notice the contradiction between what you are saying now and what you said 12 minutes ago.</p><p>When I write, I get to observe the transition from this fluid mode of thinking to the rigid. As I type, I&#8217;m often in a fluid mode&#8212;writing at the speed of thought. I feel confident about what I&#8217;m saying. But as soon as I stop, the thoughts solidify, rigid on the page, and, as I read what I&#8217;ve written, I see cracks spreading through my ideas. What seemed right in my head fell to pieces on the page.</p><p>Seeing your ideas crumble can be a frustrating experience, but <em>it is the point</em> if you are writing to think. You want it to break. It is in the cracks the light shines in.</p><p>When I write, I push myself to make definite positive claims. Ambiguity allows thought to remain fluid on the page, floating into a different meaning when put under pressure. This makes it harder to push your thinking deeper. By making clear and sharp claims, I reveal my understanding so that I&#8212;or the person I&#8217;m writing to&#8212;can see the state of my knowledge and direct their feedback to the point where it will help my thinking improve.</p><p>This is valuable to do even in areas where you know way too little to &#8220;warrant&#8221; an opinion. I met a Japanese linguist in the harbor yesterday and talked about the relationship between the Chinese and the Japanese writing systems. This is a topic I had thought about for about twenty seconds before this. &#8220;So,&#8221; I said after two minutes, &#8220;this is a stupid question, but is the relationship between China and Japan like that between Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire?&#8221; This is, as it turns out, not a good analogy. But by spelling out my naive understanding, I gave the linguist a good area to work on when he laid out a richer model of the flow of cultural influence in East Asia.</p><p>In the terminology of mathematics, what I did here (and in my writing) was to &#8220;make a conjecture,&#8221; a qualified guess based on limited information. A hypothesis. The mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, whom Johanna and I <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/good-ideas">have written about elsewhere</a>, would always summarize his first impression of a new situation with a conjecture, proclaiming with irrepressible enthusiasm, &#8220;It must be true!&#8221; Ten seconds later, someone would come up with a counterexample that proved him wrong. But being right wasn&#8217;t the point: getting a better understanding was. And he would immediately throw out a new conjecture. (Holden Karnofsky has a blog post about using this technique to <a href="https://www.cold-takes.com/learning-by-writing/">learn through writing</a>.)</p><p>Forcing the diffuse ideas and impressions in your head into a definite statement is an art form. You have to grab hold of what is floating and make it rigid and sharp. It can feel almost embarrassing&#8211;revealing your ignorance with as much vulnerability as possible.</p><p>And it is only the first step. Once you have made your thoughts definite, clear, concrete, sharp, and rigid, you also want to <em>unfold </em>them.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Escaping Flatland is a reader-enabled publication. If you like it, consider becoming a paid subscriber :)</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><h1>Spreading the frontline until it snaps</h1><p>By unfolding I mean &#8220;interrogating the conclusion to come up with an explanation of why it <em>could </em>be true.&#8221; What premises and reasoning chains leads to this conclusion? The explanation isn&#8217;t meant to prove that your conclusion was right. It is just a way of unpacking it.</p><p>By unfolding a claim into an explanation, you spread it on a &#8220;wider front&#8221; (to borrow a metaphor from Lakatos), so that the criticism has more targets.</p><p>I used this tactic in the food store yesterday. Maud, our six-year-old, told me we had to get a pink miniature plastic teapot. I couldn&#8217;t come up with a compassionate counterargument, so I said, &#8220;Why do you think a plastic teapot is so great?&#8221; And she said, &#8220;Because it is <em>so</em> beautiful. And I need one in plastic so it doesn&#8217;t break. I would use it all the time.&#8221; This brought a smile to my face. See&#8212;trying to prove her point, she had given me three times as many claims to attack!</p><p>Since the goal is to find flaws in our guesses (so that we can change our minds, refine our mental models and our language, and be more right) unfolding a claim through an explanation is progress. Even if the explanation is wrong.</p><blockquote><p>You are interested only in proofs which &#8216;prove&#8217; what they have set out to prove. I am interested in proofs even if they do not accomplish their intended task. Columbus did not reach India but he discovered something interesting.<br>&#8212;Lakatos</p></blockquote><p>Let me take another example. Before Maud was born, Johanna and I worked as teachers in Sweden. The first conclusion we drew from that experience was that we didn&#8217;t want to submit our kids to what we had observed. This way of formulating it (&#8220;Not <em>that</em>&#8221;) is a bit vague as it only defines where not to look for the solution. It is useful to also attempt a positive formulation. If I were to reconstruct the positive version of our conclusion back then, it was something like, &#8220;We need to find (or start) a school where our daughter can pursue her interests at her pace.&#8221;</p><p>There are several subtle problems with this conclusion. But the point is&#8212;these problems didn&#8217;t come into view until we had unfolded and probed our original position.&nbsp;</p><p>The way we unfolded and improved our conclusion back then was more haphazard than it would have been today. We just talked about it aimlessly, read randomly, and made small notes. This cost us time and caused confusion. These days, I would instead unfold a conclusion like this as a series of bullet points where I spell out the intuition behind my claim in a series of premises. In the case of Maud&#8217;s education, this would have looked something like this (note that this is not my current understanding but a reconstruction of what I thought eight years ago):</p><ul><li><p>People have an intrinsic motivation to learn and it is important to not undermine that, which schools do&nbsp;</p></li><li><p>It is better to go deep on a few topics that you are passionate about rather than have a superficial understanding of a broad range of subjects you care little about</p></li><li><p>But you need to attend a school so you get socialized</p></li><li><p>Hence, we need to find a school that allows self-directed learning</p></li></ul><p>Once I unfold my understanding in writing, I often see holes right away. I start correcting myself and discarding ideas already while typing. I cut ideas that are obviously flawed. I rewrite what feels ambiguous to make it sharper&#8211;more precise, concrete, unhedged, and true to my understanding.</p><p>The flaws I see immediately, however, are only the more superficial flaws. The deeper patterns take a longer time to emerge&#8212;because they are further from my established thoughts and so are harder to articulate.</p><p>Often, they occur first as subtle emotional cues. As I reread a passage, I notice a slight tension across my chest or my eyes fog over. For some reason, it doesn&#8217;t feel right. There is something wrong here.&nbsp;</p><p>These subtle feelings are easy to dismiss (&#8220;Eh, words are slippery, I mean something slightly different . . . there is no reason to obsess about this&#8221;). But in my experience, it is these subtler problems that tend to open a path beyond my current understanding. I learned this from my wife, Johanna, who will often sit with a draft for several hours, not writing or editing, but simply articulating why something feels off to her. Our best essays have come out of the things she surfaced during those sessions.</p><p>For this reason, I suspect that many of my friends who write and publish rapidly are shortchanging themselves. They generate texts filled with hidden doors and move on before they&#8217;ve opened them.&nbsp;</p><p>I tend to go through my list of premises and assumptions and ask follow-up questions to myself, to further unfold my conclusion. To continue the example from above, I would take one of the premises and unfold it like this:</p><ul><li><p>But you need a school so you get socialized</p><ul><li><p><em>Curious: why?</em></p></li><li><p>Kids will get depressed and struggle to navigate workplaces, and so on, if they haven&#8217;t been exposed to society</p><ul><li><p><em>Where can I read more about this? Are there any good studies?</em></p></li></ul></li><li><p>Being in something like a school is important because humans are social animals. We pick up most of our skills and norms and so on by being immersed in a peer group</p><ul><li><p><em>And what follows from this?</em></p></li><li><p><em>If we are shaped by our peer group, what would the ideal peer group look like?</em></p></li></ul></li></ul></li></ul><p>The emotional tone of these questions is, in my head, lovingly curious; I&#8217;m not trying to<em> </em>put myself down. I&#8217;m trying not to kill ideas. I want to help them evolve and spill forth more insight. Often this dialogue ends with me changing my mind about several premises and coming to a different conclusion, but the original idea remains the seed&#8212;no less valuable for having been proven wrong. It takes creativity and boldness to leap out and form a conclusion, and the part that criticizes must understand how dependent it is on the part that throws ideas at the wall. It is often easier to criticize than it is to synthesize a new position.</p><h1>Counterexamples, local and global</h1><p>The sun is above the horizon now, the satellites hid behind a thin layer of orange and pink. A hare raises on his hind legs in the middle of the meadow looking around. I tap the glass and watch his ears turn my way.</p><p>Now that I have spelled out my position and fixed the obvious flaws, I start probing myself more seriously to see if I can get the argument to break down.</p><p>If one of the premises I have unfolded is a factual claim, I&#8217;ll spend a few minutes skimming research in the area to see how well my position holds up. &#8220;Oh, it turns out that most homeschooled kids do <em>not</em> have any problems with socialization!&#8221; I realized when doing this in relation to Maud&#8217;s education. (Though it didn&#8217;t take me a few minutes, it took me years in this case. Partly because we were unsystematic, partly because homeschooling is illegal and taboo in Sweden and this had worked itself into my body so that I felt revulsion each time I probed that assumption.) In this case, looking at studies and statistics helped remove several needless assumptions. We changed our conclusion (we left Sweden and now homeschool Maud and her sister).</p><p>But often the type of problem I like to think about is too personal and messy and qualitative to be resolved cleanly through a statistically significant study. What I do in these situations instead is to consider <em>counterexamples</em>.</p><p>I like to visualize concrete situations when I make an argument (in the notes for this essay, for example, I continually compare what I say against past writing projects). This makes it easier for me to think clearly. I am tied back into a lived reality, which is rigid, and do not float off into theory, where I have a solid track record of fooling myself. When I have a concrete situation in mind, I can ask myself, &#8220;What is a situation where the opposite happened? Why was that?&#8221; I can list the characteristics of the situation that inform my conclusion and then systematically look for cases that have other characteristics. In &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/childhoods">Childhoods of exceptional people</a>,&#8221; for example, I wrote about parenting from the perspective of concrete biographies. The sample was unsystematic. But once I had extracted what I thought were the common patterns, I asked myself, &#8220;So whom does this <em>not</em> apply to?&#8221; Then I added the people that came to mind to the sample and ended up with a distribution that was good enough for my purposes.</p><p>Counterexamples are useful in two ways. Either you find a counterexample that a) proves one of the premises wrong but b) does not change your mind about the conclusion. Lakatos calls this a local (and non-global) counterexample. This means there is something wrong with your unfolding. Perhaps you need to change that part of the explanation? Or perhaps you can simply drop it, making the mental model simpler and more general? Local counterexamples help you improve your explanation and get a better understanding.&nbsp;</p><p>There is a scene in the last season of <em>Breaking Bad</em> that illustrates this. The main character, whatever his name was, is a teacher that starts a meth lab. This can be thought of as his conclusion (&#8220;I should get into the meth business&#8221;) and when asked to defend this decision he unfolds the claim by saying, &#8220;I need to support my family.&#8221; This is false. There are better ways for him to do that (he has an old friend who offers him money). That is a local counterexample. In the final season, he admits to himself: &#8220;I did it because it made me feel alive.&#8221; This doesn&#8217;t change his conclusion (he does not change his mind about the meth) but it gives him a deeper and more correct understanding of himself.</p><p>Other times, the counterexample you find undermines the whole idea&#8212;a <em>global counterexample</em>. You unfold your conclusion and discover that one of the premises does not hold up, and there is no way to patch it. The fracture spreads right up to the conclusion. Now&#8212;this is what we have been longing for&#8212;there is a big hole of confusion where before there was a mental model. It is time to replace it with something more subtle and deep that incorporates the critique.</p><p>How to do this, and do it in the most interesting way possible, is the topic of the next part (which I have no idea when I&#8217;ll finish).</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p><em>If you liked this, you might enjoy this one too:</em></p><div class="digest-post-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;nodeId&quot;:&quot;e30d153d-ce5a-4eae-af95-3c781a1b7ba3&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;The Abyss of Hell, Sandro Botticelli, ca 1480&quot;,&quot;size&quot;:&quot;lg&quot;,&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Be patient with problems&quot;,&quot;publishedBylines&quot;:[{&quot;id&quot;:850764,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;Henrik Karlsson&quot;,&quot;bio&quot;:&quot;Writes escapingflatland.substack.com/&quot;,&quot;photo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1d2b2afe-5da5-4bd4-9f1f-a2ec569d9dda_2048x1536.jpeg&quot;,&quot;is_guest&quot;:false,&quot;bestseller_tier&quot;:100}],&quot;post_date&quot;:&quot;2023-10-17T17:34:53.053Z&quot;,&quot;cover_image&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb53dbb7a-b957-481c-8d0c-dbca8d0e6e57_1600x1090.png&quot;,&quot;cover_image_alt&quot;:null,&quot;canonical_url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/being-patient-with-problems&quot;,&quot;section_name&quot;:null,&quot;id&quot;:137935314,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;newsletter&quot;,&quot;reaction_count&quot;:209,&quot;comment_count&quot;:14,&quot;publication_name&quot;:&quot;Escaping Flatland&quot;,&quot;publication_logo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8adc529b-e1e1-431c-b2a6-d1f14aaedc78_906x906.png&quot;,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true}"></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Reading challenging books with kids is fun and probably useful]]></title><description><![CDATA[I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three years old, in late toddlerhood. 25th of July 2020. I was doing the dishes. Maud came in. &#8220;I have looked a little in books,&#8221; she said.]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/reading-comprehension</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/reading-comprehension</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 02 Apr 2024 13:47:25 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg" width="728" height="640.3440187646598" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:false,&quot;imageSize&quot;:&quot;normal&quot;,&quot;height&quot;:1125,&quot;width&quot;:1279,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:728,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9449bf6-5846-4525-b538-54059fb6a7c0_1279x1125.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><h6><em><strong>The rose-way in Giverny, </strong></em><strong>Claude Monet, before 1922</strong></h6><div><hr></div><p>I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three years old, in late toddlerhood.</p><blockquote><p><em>25th of July 2020</em>. I was doing the dishes. Maud came in.</p><p>&#8220;I have looked a little in books,&#8221; she said.</p><p>&#8220;You have?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she said. &#8220;A human book.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;What book is that?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;A book.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;What was it about?&#8221;</p><p>She led me to the sofa and picked up <em>Spring</em> by Karl Ove Knausg&#229;rd. It is an autofictive novel about a day in the life of Knausg&#229;rd and his fourth kid. They are traveling to see the mother who is staying at a psychiatric ward after a suicide attempt.</p><p>&#8220;There is a human picture at the end,&#8221; Maud said and flicked through the pages for a while. &#8220;Can you read the picture?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;It isn&#8217;t a picture book,&#8221; I said. &#8220;All it says is the name of the person who painted it. Anna Bjerger. But I can read the book if you want.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p><p>The writing is of the kind that three-year-olds can make sense of, I figured. It is people moving about and saying things. This should make it easy enough to explain to Maud what happens. I opened it to the first page, where Knausg&#229;rd wakes up with the six-month-old baby screaming at dawn.</p><p>&#8220;Why in the darkness, why does it scream?&#8221; said Maud.</p><p>&#8220;Well, you scream sometimes when you wake up, don&#8217;t you?&#8221; I said. &#8220;Why do you do that?&#8221;</p><p>She thought about this for a while. &#8220;Did it wake in the morning?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Yes, the baby woke in the morning,&#8221; I said. &#8220;But I want to know why <em>you</em>, Maud, why do you cry at night?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Why did you say night?&#8221; she said.</p><p>&#8220;Well, this baby cries in the morning. But you cry mostly at night.&#8221;</p><p>I read on as Knausg&#229;rd lifted his baby out of bed, and carried it to the toilet, where he held the baby with one hand as he looked for a diaper.</p><p>&#8220;The dad in the book takes the kid to the toilet,&#8221; I said after finishing the paragraph.</p><p>&#8220;Why?&#8221; said Maud.</p><p>&#8220;It needs to change its diaper.&#8221;</p><p>Knausg&#229;rd looks out the window and sees a thin band of light on the horizon. Maud said, &#8220;Why?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;The sky was pink, I said. The sun was about to go up. That was why he saw a band of light.&#8221;</p></blockquote><p>This reading session intrigued me, so I started reading more of my books to Maud. At first, it was a bit fumbling like this. Maud&#8217;s questions were all over the place, and it also took some time before I learned to calibrate what we read in a good way. Maud was fascinated by the complexity of the emotions portrayed in the books, but she could only follow along when the writing was concrete. As soon as it moved over to abstract arguments or multitemporal narration, she got confused, and I had to skim and summarize, which was a bit exhausting.</p><p>When my wife Johanna heard me explain the parallels between <em>Animal Farm </em>and early Soviet history to Maud, who was four (&#8220;. . . so Snowball is actually Trotsky, and Trotsky wanted to export the revolution beyond Russia whereas . . .&#8221;), Johanna thought I was being a bit of a Tiger mom.</p><p>&#8220;I think you are trying to impress yourself more than doing what would be best for Maud.&#8221;</p><p>I put the book aside. Johanna took over. She didn&#8217;t read <em>Animal Farm.</em> She read <em>War and Peace </em>instead. But unlike me, Johanna, sensibly, didn&#8217;t go page by page. Instead, realizing Maud was four, she pulled out the storyline about Natascha and told it to Maud in short installations every day. The boys throwing a policeman into the river with a bear tied to his back, the romantic scheming, the manipulation, the scenes where Natascha cares for the weak Andrei&#8212;every day Maud would harass Johanna, &#8220;Have you read more yet?&#8221;&nbsp;</p><p>This is what I&#8217;ve come to like about reading serious books with the kids. It is about figuring out a rich reading experience that both parties are excited about. Books that pull you in and open a space for deep conversation.</p><p>There are children&#8217;s books that have summoned this energy for us&#8212;Torbj&#248;rn Egner, <em>The Little House on the Prairie</em>, <em>Harry Potter</em>&#8212;but generally speaking, children&#8217;s books are a drag. The characters are flat; the science is so simplified that it doesn&#8217;t make sense; there is no mystery to unravel. When the kids pick books at the library what the staff presents them with is an affront to the human soul. There are no interesting conversations to be had about these kinds of books, and conversations are what make reading together fun. For Johanna and me, it is only books that excite us, that allow us to model what a deep love of reading means. The kids are perfectly happy listening to children&#8217;s books, but even they&#8212;or at least Maud, who is six now&#8212;can feel the flatness. Her emotional reaction to run-of-the-mill children&#8217;s books is similar to my reaction to reading Twitter: it is something you can sink into, to pass the time, but it doesn&#8217;t leave her excited about life.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Escaping Flatland is a reader-enabled publication. If you like it, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber :)</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p>The other day, Johanna and the girls read <em>The Gospel of the Eels</em> by Patrik Svensson. It is part scientific history of the European eel; part memoir of Svensson&#8217;s father, who used to fish eel with Svensson and then died of lung cancer from handling too much asphalt as a road worker. It is a story about social class, which was something new for Maud, and it fascinated her to think about how people will repeat patterns they are familiar with even if they don&#8217;t like it (like the father who lived a working class life even though he leaned intellectual) while others break the pattern (like the son). &#8220;I need to brush up on Bourdieu so I can explain habitus to Maud,&#8221; said Johanna. We also got into a long discussion about how Aristotle, despite his capacity for observation and logic, concluded that eels spawn from the mud.</p><p>Apart from being exciting, I suspect reading books that challenge and intrigue us as adults has benefits when it comes to reading comprehension. Maud&#8217;s decoding skills&#8212;her capacity to sound out words and sentences&#8212;are roughly in line with her age grade. But she is precocious when it comes to comprehension, the part of reading that schools struggle with. These days, there is no need to summarize and simplify the average nonfiction book unless we are reading a section that veers into philosophy. She can read between the lines, ask the right questions, summarize for herself, and so on.</p><p>We can understand this through the lens of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_apprenticeship">cognitive apprenticeship</a>. The basic gist of this pedagogical framework is that the reason learning reading comprehension is hard, and why most never learn to do it in the true sense of the word, is that most of what we do when we read is hidden in our heads. Unlike a kid learning to cook by hanging out in the kitchen, a novice reader can&#8217;t figure out what to do by looking at Dad reading an essay with his face pressed against his phone.</p><p>What happens in the darkness of our skulls when we read? If you slow down and pay attention, you might catch some of it. A good reader is &#8220;asking questions&#8221; about the text. The reason I put quotation marks around &#8220;asking questions&#8221; is that the questions are often nonconscious. But if you&#8217;d spell it out, what passed through your head during the last paragraph was perhaps something like: &#8220;Cognitive apprenticeship? I&#8217;ve never heard the term before. I wonder how it relates to what I know about cognition and traditional apprenticeships?&#8221; &#8220;Before Henrik got into this topic, he was talking about reading grown-up books with kids&#8212;where is he going?&#8221;</p><p>You connect what you read with what came before; you project where you are going, you notice what confuses or surprises you; you draw parallels to other things you&#8217;ve read or life experiences; and a hundred other little things that a weak reader does not.</p><p>Most students never learn to do this. After 15 years of schooling, they can sound out the words, but they can&#8217;t extract the ideas that the words are pointing toward. The statistics on reading comprehension among adults are quite depressing.</p><p>Cognitive apprenticeships are an attempt to correct this. Collins et al, who worked on cognitive apprenticeships, suggested that the reason so few can read is because they have never <em>seen</em> anyone do it. They have seen books. They have seen words. They have seen grave faces looking at words. But they have never seen the questions and strategies that are playing out behind those grave faces.</p><p>To counteract this, Collins et al devised a series of teaching strategies that would pull these questions out and make the reading process visible so you could learn it the way you learn to cook. I&#8217;m not going to go into all of the techniques (which you can find listed on Wikipedia) because, despite liking the general idea, I think the way they approached it was misdirected. They proposed that a teacher should design a series of assignments that would <em>imitate</em> what happens in an apprenticeship.</p><p>When I get to that point of their theory, I go, &#8220;Wait a minute? Isn&#8217;t the whole point of apprenticeship that you <em>don&#8217;t </em>have to sit in a classroom? That you get to go out into the real world and do stuff?&#8221;</p><p>I do understand why being able to reproduce it in classrooms is a good thing. Cognitive apprenticeships work better than many of the alternatives in class. But it is also much harder than just doing a normal apprenticeship&#8212;which a parent can do for half an hour each night.</p><p>And this is where reading Animal Farm etc fits in. Reading serious literature with kids makes the strategies that Collins et al suggested intuitive and obvious. You don&#8217;t have to plan exercises and be clever the way a teacher has to be (and most fail to). You can just be yourself.</p><p>If we try to do a cognitive apprenticeship while reading a book adaptation of <em>Disney&#8217;s Aristocats</em>, it takes great effort. Not only do we need to not die of boredom. We also need to remember to fake that we are asking questions since the text is really too flat for any questions to arise. The questions, and tactics, and insights that guide deep reading remain hidden. But books that force us to talk about what we read to make sure that it makes sense to Maud&#8212;these books pull out our hidden thoughts so Maud can see them. And then she imitates us.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p><em>If you like this, you might like the post about <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/socratic-dialogue-with-kids">doing socratic dialogues with children</a>.</em></p><div class="digest-post-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;nodeId&quot;:&quot;3c73ab99-131a-4bf3-b8b5-fae50b9a7113&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Abstraction Blue, Georgia O&#8217;Keeffe, 1927&quot;,&quot;size&quot;:&quot;lg&quot;,&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Socratic dialogue with kids&quot;,&quot;publishedBylines&quot;:[{&quot;id&quot;:850764,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;Henrik Karlsson&quot;,&quot;bio&quot;:&quot;Writes escapingflatland.substack.com/&quot;,&quot;photo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1d2b2afe-5da5-4bd4-9f1f-a2ec569d9dda_2048x1536.jpeg&quot;,&quot;is_guest&quot;:false,&quot;bestseller_tier&quot;:100}],&quot;post_date&quot;:&quot;2023-12-07T13:32:54.268Z&quot;,&quot;cover_image&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg&quot;,&quot;cover_image_alt&quot;:null,&quot;canonical_url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/socratic-dialogue-with-kids&quot;,&quot;section_name&quot;:null,&quot;id&quot;:139173918,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;newsletter&quot;,&quot;reaction_count&quot;:31,&quot;comment_count&quot;:11,&quot;publication_name&quot;:&quot;Escaping Flatland&quot;,&quot;publication_logo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8adc529b-e1e1-431c-b2a6-d1f14aaedc78_906x906.png&quot;,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true}"></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[On limitations that hide in your blindspot]]></title><description><![CDATA[and how to find them]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/limitatons</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/limitatons</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:23:11 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png" width="728" height="641" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/d6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:false,&quot;imageSize&quot;:&quot;normal&quot;,&quot;height&quot;:1282,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:728,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6afb69b-cd83-4c2e-874b-3ef58934e895_1600x1409.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><blockquote><p>If you&#8217;re currently plateaued at something, chances are you&#8217;re hitting some constraint. There is something that is stopping you from getting better at the thing, and if you don&#8217;t identify that constraint and try to fix it you&#8217;ll get nowhere.<em><br></em>&#8212;<a href="https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/starting-from-where-you-are">David R. MacIver</a></p></blockquote><p>My brother-in-law recently showed me a clip of a Swedish TV show that visited the small town where my wife, Johanna, grew up. The show hosts got out of their car, walked up to an old drunk outside a supermarket, and asked, &#8220;Is it possible to find love in this town?&#8221; &#8220;Yes,&#8221; said the drunk, &#8220;but you need to have a . . . peculiar taste.&#8221;</p><p>It isn&#8217;t exactly a place that encourages the life of the mind. When I met Johanna, far from there, in a university town, she made a deep and perplexing impression on me: the precision of her attention and the intensity of her curiosity were unlike anything I had seen, and yet, despite this, she was almost completely ignorant. If I mentioned the First World War, she would say, &#8220;When was that?&#8221; But if I explained an area I was researching, it would take her five minutes to cut through to the deep, underlying question that had eluded me for months.&nbsp;</p><p>One day we were out for a walk in the pocket park a block from my apartment. She was complaining about how little use she had of her classes in teacher ed. The faculty didn&#8217;t seem to have a grasp of learning psychology, nor of the practical skills necessary to do a proper job as a teacher. Besides, there had to be better ways of going about education than what she had been exposed to&#8212;this was a topic she often returned to.</p><p>I said, &#8220;You know you can just teach yourself, right? You don&#8217;t need a course.&#8221;</p><p>She stopped mid-step on the gravel path.</p><p>Later that day, Johanna biked up to the university library and packed a bag full of books picked semi-randomly from the shelves of education history. Then she sat down to read. She read every spare minute for a year, two years, three . . .&nbsp;</p><p>I find these transitions lovely. Somebody notices a limitation in themselves, something they lack or have misunderstood, something they need to learn or unlearn&#8212;and then they learn it, and discover, on the other side, a richer world. For Johanna, her blindspot was a lack of understanding of herself and her agency. But these hidden limitations can take many forms. It can be a skill you lack; a lacuna of knowledge; an attitude that is coming between you and the things that you value; a needless constraint; a fear. Often they have the character of doors hiding in plain sight: obvious once you see them, but quite possible to walk straight past for years (or a lifetime).</p><p>Once I catch sight of a limitation and set to work overcoming it, I invariably say, &#8220;I can&#8217;t believe I didn&#8217;t do this before. It feels so alive.&#8221; That&#8217;s how I felt when I noticed I wasn&#8217;t a great listener, and decided to practice. And it is what I felt when at 30 I admitted that I was, in many ways, a weak writer, and chose to stare at that flaw.</p><p>I assume there are many more opportunities to grow like this if I can only get better at seeing my blindspots. How do I do that?</p><h3>Looking at things that break</h3><blockquote><p>But what we need is an approach, a language which is adequate for the subject... &#8212;Oliver Sacks</p></blockquote><p>These days, Johanna and I collaborate when writing. On Escaping Flatland, we do <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/doestoevsky-as-lover">all</a> <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/childhoods">ambitious</a> <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/good-ideas">pieces</a> <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/multi-armed-bandit">together</a> (the <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/third-chair">small</a> <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/talking-to-part-of-a-friend">weird</a> <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/two-kinds-of-introspection">ones</a> I do on my own). A consequence of this is that we&#8217;ve had to put words to many of the things that I had previously done intuitively. We walk in circles on the meadow below the house, hashing out what it means for an idea to be mature, what the difference is between a &#8220;draft&#8221; and an &#8220;approach,&#8221; and so on.</p><p>In itself, making the process explicit in this way has helped us spot limitations&#8212;like how I would start an essay before I had gathered my thoughts, and then get attached to what I had written in a way that made it hard to refine my thinking.</p><p>But what is particularly useful is this habit Johanna has. She writes a note every time she feels that something is off, however subtle that feeling is. It might be a confusion in the writing, or a misunderstanding between us, or anything else that goes wrong&#8212;a slight frown will play across her face, then she&#8217;ll reach for her workbook and make a note. She is on the hunt for things that don&#8217;t seem right. All the big, frustrating failures, but also the hairline fractures that might hint at a deeper problem.&nbsp;</p><p>Darwin, who kept a notebook where he wrote down facts that contradicted him, observed that frustrating, cognitively dissonant things were the first to slip his memory. This is Johanna&#8217;s impression, too. If she doesn&#8217;t note those reactions immediately, they slip her by. It is like a rabbit that shoots up from the grass when you walk in the meadow. &#8220;You have to grab hold of her when she leaps,&#8221; Johanna writes in the margin of a draft. &#8220;And then you skin her quick.&#8221;</p><p>By skinning, she means to articulate why something feels off, to flesh it out, so you can see if it contains information that will help further the work. Let me give you an example. In the first version of this essay, we talked about &#8220;finding bottlenecks.&#8221; It was about what in management is known as the theory of constraint. But something about this felt off to Johanna. Why was that? A bottleneck refers to the slowest station on a production line, which, because production is linear, sets the speed of the entire line. To speed up production, you have to find the bottleneck and ease it. But is that a good metaphor for the types of things we are talking about? Does essay writing have bottlenecks like that? Does being a good partner? Bottlenecks form when there are clearly separated tasks that follow each other in a set order. Most things are not like this. In writing, it is quite possible to start typing before you&#8217;ve done the tasks that should come before it, and, besides, I&#8217;m never sure how to tell if the preparation is finished or not. In other words, the reason talking about bottlenecks felt off was that it mapped badly to the problems we cared about. So we went back to the drawing board.</p><p>Often the questions that arise as Johanna skins a rabbit are not relevant to the project at hand, but still seem promising. These she saves in her workbook and returns to later.</p><p>Johanna genuinely likes finding problems. I have more complicated feelings about it. If I discover, say, that the narrative that holds together a draft bores me, my first reaction is, &#8220;But it has to work. It took me&nbsp;<em>a week</em>.&#8221; These days, though, I don&#8217;t act on that thought. Instead, I tell Johanna about the problem. Then I put on my jacket and go see if the cranes are passing by going north (one of Johanna&#8217;s flaws is that she forgets that people get upset by these kinds of things, so I need some time alone before I can talk about it).&nbsp;<em>Why did I fail? The narrative in the last essay felt so alive&#8212;why can&#8217;t I achieve that now?</em>&nbsp;I hear the cranes call through the fog. When I get back, Johanna has made coffee and we talk it over. The pain point I wanted to ignore reveals itself as a source of insight.&nbsp;</p><p>What are the characteristics of a good narrative frame? How could we have evaluated that the one we settled on was boring sooner? In the light of that, what should we do with this essay?</p><p>For some reason, meditating on failure brings out our process, and our assumptions, in a way that success does not. (It is also useful to&nbsp;<em>contrast</em>&nbsp;success and failure, ideally several examples of each.) This reminds me of Paul Broca, the 19th-century French anatomist. He mapped the brain by sawing open the heads of people with aphasia and comparing their brains to normal brains so he could see which part was damaged in those who had lost their speech. Malfunctions mapped the function of the brain.</p><p>Essays that spring fully formed into my head and magically just work (not common!) do not tell us much about the mysterious process that goes on inside the head as an idea matures, etc. But studying the frustrating cases, the failures, the dead ends, gives an abundant stream of insights. Every frustration and failure tells&nbsp;<em>something</em>&nbsp;about the process and its limitations. It is not always obvious exactly&nbsp;<em>what</em>&nbsp;it tells us. Was it a fluke? Or is there a pattern? But by mapping the breakdowns month after month, we have been able to fill in our blindspot about how good essays evolve (or fail to evolve) from insights to finished pieces. Our process has, as a consequence, been overhauled.</p><p>Many high performers go a step further and actively push things until they break. They want to increase the number of failures they can learn from. Musicians speed up their playing to figure out which finger positions make them stumble, so they can practice that. Factories speed up production lines to see which station can&#8217;t keep up, so they know what the engineers need to work on. Startup founders set (seemingly) impossible goals to pinpoint the assumptions that makes it seem impossible, so the assumptions can be tested or circumvented. They want to accelerate the rate at which they find needless limitations.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Escaping Flatland is possible because of our subscribers. If you like our writing, please consider becoming one :)</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p>Writing about this makes me curious about doing this in more domains (for example in parenting), to increase my sensitivity to problems and hard-to-spot limitations.&nbsp;</p><h3>Studying others to see what they do that is beyond you</h3><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdf1c5d7-2dfc-41ce-9498-8a5f7d9c0cae_2000x1779.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdf1c5d7-2dfc-41ce-9498-8a5f7d9c0cae_2000x1779.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdf1c5d7-2dfc-41ce-9498-8a5f7d9c0cae_2000x1779.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdf1c5d7-2dfc-41ce-9498-8a5f7d9c0cae_2000x1779.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdf1c5d7-2dfc-41ce-9498-8a5f7d9c0cae_2000x1779.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdf1c5d7-2dfc-41ce-9498-8a5f7d9c0cae_2000x1779.jpeg" width="1456" height="1295" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/cdf1c5d7-2dfc-41ce-9498-8a5f7d9c0cae_2000x1779.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1295,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdf1c5d7-2dfc-41ce-9498-8a5f7d9c0cae_2000x1779.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdf1c5d7-2dfc-41ce-9498-8a5f7d9c0cae_2000x1779.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdf1c5d7-2dfc-41ce-9498-8a5f7d9c0cae_2000x1779.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdf1c5d7-2dfc-41ce-9498-8a5f7d9c0cae_2000x1779.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>One day in 2022, as I was doing the dishes, Johanna called to me, turning her laptop to show a video. Fog. A dog walking on a path through a garden&#8212;the greenery was so abundant it was otherworldly. It was like one of Anselm Kiefer&#8217;s mad sprawling art installations, where&nbsp;he turns an entire army base into a surreal wonderland, except it was all plants.</p><p>&#8220;What is that?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;It is from this guy called Dan Pearson,&#8221; said Johanna. &#8220;It is his farm.&#8221;</p><p>This was about a year after we had bought our house. Johanna was thinking about what to do with the six acres we now had to tend. She knew nothing about gardening, but from suddenly having land she was attracted by the challenge of using it well. She had begun teaching herself garden design a few months before by skimming textbooks, handbooks, overviews, and so on&#8212;working through 10 to 20 books, in a month or two. She was mapping the field. Between her reading sessions, she would walk our grounds. She observed the forest of maple, pine, and oak; the meadow; and the spaces around the houses, to get a sense of what areas of gardening and design were relevant in our context.</p><p>This taught her plenty. But learning from books soon hit diminishing returns. What they taught was not high resolution enough to help her explain why some gardens are much more appealing than others, nor how to create a garden that felt right for our specific plot of land. Using what she had learned, she was unable to solve the design problems we faced to her satisfaction. There was something she lacked. Reading the textbooks more closely didn&#8217;t tell her what it was.</p><p>Noticing this, Johanna shifted to massive input learning. People who perform at the highest levels have deep stores of tacit knowledge that textbooks miss. By looking at thousands of pictures of great gardens, Johanna hoped to see patterns that were too subtle or complex to be reduced to a concept and communicated in a book.<a class="footnote-anchor" data-component-name="FootnoteAnchorToDOM" id="footnote-anchor-1" href="#footnote-1" target="_self">1</a></p><p>She did this mainly by curating an Instagram feed where she could see the season unfold in gardens that resonated with her. It was like an AI train run; I could see the capabilities emerge. At first, she couldn&#8217;t even tell where one plant ended and another began when they bled into each other in an arrangement, but after seeing the same plants in multiple constellations, they became individuals to her. She learned their names and their growing patterns. Our land was suddenly awash with names and we saw it anew.</p><p>She mainly looked at gardens that struck her as exceptional (Great Dixter, Rousham Garden, Sissinghurst, Beth Chatto&#8217;s gardens). But she also, because of the messiness of the process, ended up seeing gardens that felt off to her, which was useful, too, since articulating why they felt off helped make certain design patterns and concepts salient.</p><p>This kind of massive input learning was what she was doing the morning when she called out to me, asking me to look at the video of a dog walking through Dan Pearson&#8217;s Hillside farm. The garden was unlike anything she had seen so far. To talk with Christopher Alexander, Hillside had an unusual degree of garden-landscape fit. It was well-integrated on all levels Johanna could perceive&#8212;the colors, the arrangement of the plants, the sections, and the echoes between them&#8212;and it all sat perfectly in the landscape, the larger wholeness.</p><p>Johanna wanted to know what Pearson knew that she did not and which allowed him to do this. As far as this was possible for her to learn. Lacking direct access to him, she poured through everything he had written over the last 40 years (hundreds of diary-like pieces detailing his process and work), as well as every interview and lecture available, and, first and foremost, pictures and films of the gardens. Each source in itself was of limited use. You can&#8217;t learn gardening from an interview, or from looking at pictures. But the sources were<em>&nbsp;limited in different ways</em>, so bouncing between them, they illuminated each other. A lecture could highlight patterns in a garden that Johanna had failed to see; while carefully studying hundreds of pictures from the same garden could bring out things that Pearson&#8217;s words only gestured at. Johanna would imitate what Pearson described doing which was also illuminating&#8212;going out into our fields looking, making trial beds, and sketching in the way he does&#8212;it helped her test her understanding and opened questions that enriched her reading.</p><p>By getting a deep sense of what it means to do exceptional work in gardening, Johanna&#8217;s limitations came into view. She now had a sense of what Pearson could do that she could not; what he saw that she did not; whom he had studied that she had not. This pointed out things she needed to learn to approach the level of skill, awareness, and taste she was after. It was a recursive process. The more she learned, the better she could see how little she knew.&nbsp;</p><p>Dan Pearson would note, for instance, that when he was making the final plans for his big flower garden (after five years of preparations!) he walked the land, imagining, feeling inwards, where he would want height and air, respectively. These kinds of throwaway remarks were useful insights into the process; they made things visceral and real. But they also raised new questions. What precisely was Pearson considering when he decided that a particular spot needed high plants, and another needed air?</p><p>Johanna had entered a loop where her constraints came into view&#8212;and dissolved as she approached them, revealing further, subtler, or deeper constraints.</p><p>When you find people who perform at a high level, and whose work you love, there are layers upon layers of insight to be gleaned from their work and the process behind it. If they are at the top of their field, it is sometimes the case that no one else has the mental models they have, it can&#8217;t be learned any other way; it can&#8217;t be found in a textbook.</p><p>Learning to see these layers takes time. They come into view one after the other as you attend to the work. Exactly how long this can be worth doing before you hit diminishing returns is itself something you may learn by studying others; it is not intuitive. Most people stop too soon. When it comes to the highest achievements in a domain, you don&#8217;t know how much there is to see there until you learn to see it. Our six-year-old, Maud, sighs at Johanna, saying, &#8220;Oh, but mom, you are always looking at the same pictures.&#8221; Yes. It&#8217;s true. She has returned to some of the pictures of Hillside for more than a year now.</p><p>But although they might look like a tangle of flowers to a child&#8217;s eye, they are dripping with patterns to be found.&nbsp;</p><h3>Feedback from others</h3><p>We are about 3000 words in now, so it might be time to remind ourselves of what we are doing. We are talking about how to find limitations&#8212;those often hard-to-spot doors that can open a new world to us. Many times, we sort of know where they are, but fail to see them fully until we take a step back and spell out what we&#8217;re doing and where that fails. Other times, we don&#8217;t know what we don&#8217;t know. Then studying others can help us see the landscape and get a sense of what is possible.</p><p>You can also do the inverse of the last strategy and ask other people to look at <em>you</em>. Getting people to honestly share their feedback with you can be a way to extend your perception so that you see more problems and possibilities. They might see things about you that are in your blindspot. </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb692de0e-5f13-4b44-b420-f866ce8073f0_800x654.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb692de0e-5f13-4b44-b420-f866ce8073f0_800x654.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb692de0e-5f13-4b44-b420-f866ce8073f0_800x654.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb692de0e-5f13-4b44-b420-f866ce8073f0_800x654.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb692de0e-5f13-4b44-b420-f866ce8073f0_800x654.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb692de0e-5f13-4b44-b420-f866ce8073f0_800x654.png" width="488" height="398.94" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/b692de0e-5f13-4b44-b420-f866ce8073f0_800x654.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:654,&quot;width&quot;:800,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:488,&quot;bytes&quot;:23362,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb692de0e-5f13-4b44-b420-f866ce8073f0_800x654.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb692de0e-5f13-4b44-b420-f866ce8073f0_800x654.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb692de0e-5f13-4b44-b420-f866ce8073f0_800x654.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb692de0e-5f13-4b44-b420-f866ce8073f0_800x654.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>The point isn&#8217;t to do what other people tell you. Just as they see things that you don&#8217;t, you see things they don&#8217;t. Often, when people tell you what to do they don&#8217;t understand what you are going for and project their interests onto you. This will <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/good-ideas">kill your best ideas</a> if you let it. But used right, feedback from (competent) others is a way to get more data so you can see further.&nbsp;</p><p>If you read about people who have done exceptional work, they have usually had friends and mentors who felt comfortable giving them direct and deep feedback.</p><blockquote><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoOQkhXvtDc&amp;t=1411s">PHILIP GLASS</a>: People talk about their lessons with Boulanger as being like having a brain transplant. It was like that. [. . .] It was very intense. I usually started around seven in the morning and finished at seven at night. [. . .]</p><p>CLAIRE CHASE: If you were to locate the most essential lesson that she gave you, what would it be?</p><p>GLASS: [laughing] Makes me laugh when you say that. She was full of advice. The thing that she said like a mantra was, &#8220;Il faut faire un effort.&#8221; You must make an effort. She said that constantly. She made me feel lazy. [. . .] I thought I knew everything. Of course, I knew nothing. I went to her. I took about what I thought were my best pieces. I was a Juilliard graduate and had a master&#8217;s degree, it didn&#8217;t matter what it was. I put my music on the rack of the piano. And she could speed read. [Glass indicates that it took her a second to read a page]. She was reading like that through three or four pieces. Finally, she stopped and she said, &#8220;That measure there was written by a real composer.&#8221;</p></blockquote><p>Getting that kind of exact, deep, and demanding feedback is invaluable if you want to figure out what your limitations are, what you need to work on, and what your potential is. But it can be tough. It is tempting to shy away from it.</p><p>In 2014/15, I wrote a novel. Reading an early draft Johanna noticed that the basic premise didn&#8217;t hold together. Addressing this problem, however, would have meant throwing out four or five months of my work, which she thought I couldn&#8217;t handle. So instead she gave me superficial feedback (talking about descriptions and sentences) and looked for ways to save the project. This was useful and helped me find my voice, but it didn&#8217;t, ultimately, save the project. It kept me from learning what I needed to learn.&nbsp;</p><p>When Johanna learned to trust me enough to give more sincere feedback, I did, indeed, find it stressful. If she pointed out that I had failed to do my research, I would say things like, &#8220;But this essay has to ship next week. What you are saying means I have to throw out everything&#8212;&#8221; And she would say, &#8220;Except one paragraph.&#8221; I would come up with reasons why doing what I had done was good, why I didn&#8217;t have time to make such a drastic rewrite&#8212;claiming we had to ship next week was just something I made up as an excuse not to look at my mistakes&#8212;and so on. My stress made me unable to think about the substance of what she was saying. When you act like I did, you encourage people to lie to you.&nbsp;</p><p>A lot of people send me drafts of blog posts asking for feedback, and it is interesting to notice when I feel compelled to give my deepest insights and when I feel like honest feedback isn&#8217;t what is asked for. When I get some version of, &#8220;What do you think?&#8221; I tend to read that as, &#8220;Am I ok?&#8221; Yes, you are, and I don&#8217;t mind telling you. But I get much more excited about talking craft when people write stuff like: &#8220;I really want to get better at writing. That would be so much fun. Could you look at this thing I wrote and see what I need to work on?&#8221; If you want to grow, it is important to think about what kind of energy you project when asking for feedback, so that people feel comfortable giving care in a demanding way, and so they know at what level you want to be seen. Most people will default to giving praise and pointing out surface-level details. It is up to you to prompt them to reveal deeper problems.</p><p>It took Johanna and me a few years to figure out how to be sincere about the flaws we saw in each other. I&#8217;m not sure what changed to make it less uncomfortable. Partly it was exposure training, I guess. If you get enough feedback, you figure out that having your failures pointed out doesn&#8217;t hurt you. It is just data.</p><p>But there was also a deeper mental shift for me. I transferred my loyalty away from the thing in front of me and toward what I&nbsp;<em>could</em>&nbsp;achieve. Much as working with a piano teacher is not, fundamentally, about learning songs, but about using songs to push yourself; I now think of our projects, not as ends in themselves, but as means to help us improve the underlying process and ourselves. This helps put me in the right frame of mind. I want this essay to turn out well, of course. But the goal of being honest with each other when we examine the drafts isn&#8217;t to figure out how to make a particular draft work, but to see what deeper possibilities it points out and then pursue those, even if it means trashing the draft.&nbsp;</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80b93909-22e9-474b-82cc-0caec1be0f76_1900x1896.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80b93909-22e9-474b-82cc-0caec1be0f76_1900x1896.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80b93909-22e9-474b-82cc-0caec1be0f76_1900x1896.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80b93909-22e9-474b-82cc-0caec1be0f76_1900x1896.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80b93909-22e9-474b-82cc-0caec1be0f76_1900x1896.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80b93909-22e9-474b-82cc-0caec1be0f76_1900x1896.jpeg" width="1456" height="1453" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/80b93909-22e9-474b-82cc-0caec1be0f76_1900x1896.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1453,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;undefined&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="undefined" title="undefined" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80b93909-22e9-474b-82cc-0caec1be0f76_1900x1896.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80b93909-22e9-474b-82cc-0caec1be0f76_1900x1896.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80b93909-22e9-474b-82cc-0caec1be0f76_1900x1896.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80b93909-22e9-474b-82cc-0caec1be0f76_1900x1896.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>When I look at the kids Johanna and I was when we met, when I look at our confusion and our fumbling attempts at being sincere with each other, I feel a deep gratitude toward them. When they found their limitations, they could transcend them, and this brought us into being. We have the same responsibility to the people we will be a year from now. Looking for limitations is about <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/third-chair">extending care to your future self</a>. </p><p>As we walk the grounds around our house, our daughters in tow, we talk about what we need to do next to keep growing. What are we not seeing? We spell out what we are trying to achieve and how we go about it; we study others; we give and take feedback. Then we write it all down in this essay, to see if you can help us see more clearly.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><h6>The paintings in the essay are both from Monet&#8217;s water lily series.</h6><div><hr></div><div class="digest-post-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;nodeId&quot;:&quot;8eee5dd2-4b84-4106-b9bb-7cfa0f040033&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Alice B. Toklas&quot;,&quot;size&quot;:&quot;lg&quot;,&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Looking for Alice&quot;,&quot;publishedBylines&quot;:[{&quot;id&quot;:850764,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;Henrik Karlsson&quot;,&quot;bio&quot;:&quot;Writes escapingflatland.substack.com/&quot;,&quot;photo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1d2b2afe-5da5-4bd4-9f1f-a2ec569d9dda_2048x1536.jpeg&quot;,&quot;is_guest&quot;:false,&quot;bestseller_tier&quot;:100}],&quot;post_date&quot;:&quot;2023-01-17T21:35:15.570Z&quot;,&quot;cover_image&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3c6398db-b77f-41fe-8604-5639f4717a9a_800x688.jpeg&quot;,&quot;cover_image_alt&quot;:null,&quot;canonical_url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/looking-for-alice&quot;,&quot;section_name&quot;:null,&quot;id&quot;:87791386,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;newsletter&quot;,&quot;reaction_count&quot;:892,&quot;comment_count&quot;:51,&quot;publication_name&quot;:&quot;Escaping Flatland&quot;,&quot;publication_logo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8adc529b-e1e1-431c-b2a6-d1f14aaedc78_906x906.png&quot;,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true}"></div><div class="footnote" data-component-name="FootnoteToDOM"><a id="footnote-1" href="#footnote-anchor-1" class="footnote-number" contenteditable="false" target="_self">1</a><div class="footnote-content"><p>This type of massive input learning works particularly well in domains like gardening, where there are no towers of abstractions (as in mathematics), but just tons of names and messy patterns. It works for language learning. Jos&#233; Rinc&#243;n says it works well in biology.&nbsp;</p><p>An extreme example of this was Casey Handmer&#8217;s contribution to the Vesuvius Challenge, where they sought to read the content of petrified papyrus rolls that had been scanned using a particle accelerator:</p><blockquote><p>The early months were a slog of splotchy images. Then Casey Handmer, an Australian mathematician, physicist and polymath, scored a point for humankind by beating the computers to the first major breakthrough. Handmer took a few stabs at writing scroll-reading code, but he soon concluded he might have better luck if he just stared at the images for a really long time. Eventually he began to notice what he and the other contestants have come to call &#8220;crackle,&#8221; a faint pattern of cracks and lines on the page that resembles what you might see in the mud of a dried-out lakebed. To Handmer&#8217;s eyes, the crackle seemed to have the shape of Greek letters and the blobs and strokes that accompany handwritten ink. </p></blockquote><p></p></div></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Self-help for cocoons]]></title><description><![CDATA[and what's on my mind]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/self-help-for-cocoons</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/self-help-for-cocoons</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 07 Mar 2024 15:19:14 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg" width="976" height="549" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:549,&quot;width&quot;:976,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Albert Einstein with Oliver Locker-Lampson and his secretary under armed guard outside his log cabin in Roughton Heath, Norfolk&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="Albert Einstein with Oliver Locker-Lampson and his secretary under armed guard outside his log cabin in Roughton Heath, Norfolk" title="Albert Einstein with Oliver Locker-Lampson and his secretary under armed guard outside his log cabin in Roughton Heath, Norfolk" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986b8e7-6831-4a66-91a6-1d1bc136933f_976x549.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p><em>This is the fifth part in a series. But it can be read on its own.</em></p><ol><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/first-we-shape-our-social-graph-then">First we shape our social graph; then it shapes us</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/training-data">Scraping training data for your mind</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query">A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to you</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-as-communion">Look for people who likes the illegible you of today, not your past achievements</a> (Writing as communion)</p></li><li><p>Self-help for cocoons &#8592; you are here</p></li></ol><div><hr></div><p>I find it useful to think of myself not as an individual but as an individual + a social context. The things I value and pay attention to and do are all influenced by the people, books, blogs, etc, I surround myself with. When I change the composition of that milieu, I change. Often quite abruptly. Things that seemed essential to me when I was in the poetry world (lying awake at night worrying if I had made a mistake using an Aeolic verse form instead of free verse) seemed like a strange dream two weeks after I had left. I have talked about this before: &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/first-we-shape-our-social-graph-then">First we shape our social graph; then it shapes us.</a>&#8221;</p><p>But in a way, I feel like I didn&#8217;t go far enough in that essay. Talking about a social milieu and how it shapes&nbsp;<em>you</em>, makes it sound like the milieu is something separate from you, something that&nbsp;<em>surrounds</em>&nbsp;you. But it is more like an&nbsp;<em>extension</em>&nbsp;of you. Or perhaps you can say that the self and its milieu is a coupled system. At least that is how it feels to me. My friends and my books are like a cultural cocoon that I spin around myself. I craft a context within which I live, and that context becomes an extension of my mind, which allows me to think, and live, in ways I couldn&#8217;t otherwise; it crafts me.</p><p>Sometimes the best way to care for myself is to extend care to the cocoon. If the cocoon is healthy and vibrant and thriving, the smaller self that lives inside it is usually ok. Just as there is self-help, there is something like self-help for cocoons.</p>
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-   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[The third chair]]></title><description><![CDATA[I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like home; that no one except my wife would ever care about me, about the things that for me held meaning.]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/third-chair</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/third-chair</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 24 Feb 2024 12:31:24 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg" width="960" height="720" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/dafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:720,&quot;width&quot;:960,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:321995,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdafdc2d4-4607-4e47-bd44-13f552f6594b_960x720.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><h6>From <em>Ivan&#8217;s Childhood </em>(1962) by Andrei Tarkovsky</h6><div><hr></div><p><em>22 February.</em> On Wednesday night, I had an errand at the store in the village where we lived when we first came to the island. Having some time to waste, I went to the library.</p><p>In Denmark you can open all public libraries with your social security card, so although it was closed, I walked in. The stacks lit up. It was like entering a Proustian memory. The stale, dry air reactivated feelings I had forgotten, feelings I had when I sat down here writing four years ago. I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. Standing there with my groceries in hand, the intensity of the feelings took me by surprise. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like home; that no one except my wife would ever care about me, about the things that for me held meaning.</p><p>I walked over to the chair where I used to sit. The sensation that he, my previous self, was still sitting there was so strong that I pulled out the chair next to it instead, and sat down. It was as if I could see him but he couldn&#8217;t see me. He thought he was alone. He wasn&#8217;t. I had been there all along. I just couldn&#8217;t reach him to tell him that it was okay, that it would work out if he just kept at it. One more year, and you will learn what you need for your writing to work. Two more years, and you&#8217;ll find friends who you can share your ideas with.</p><p>I felt a deep gratitude to him, for all he has given me, all the experiences and friendships that make my life better than his, and which his willingness to persevere brought into existence.&nbsp;&#8220;If you only knew,&#8221; I said out loud in the empty library,&nbsp;&#8220;how thankful I am for what you have done.&#8221; Something eased in me.</p><p>Then I turned and noticed, behind me&#8212;a third chair.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Integrity]]></title><description><![CDATA[Intensely Human, No 3]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/integrity</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/integrity</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 16 Feb 2024 14:41:40 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>There are certain works&#8212;paintings, films, books, gardens&#8212;that have an effect on me that I can most simply describe by saying: in their presence, I remember that I am a human being. Dry shallowness falls away. In this series, I write about works that have this effect on me.</em></p><p><em>This part is about the work of poet Tomas Transtr&#246;mer</em>.</p><p><em>See also, <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/intensely-human-no-1">part 1</a> about Herzog&#8217;s </em>Into the Abyss <em>and <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/intensely-human-no-2">part 2</a> about Shostakovitch </em>String Quartet no 8.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg" width="1200" height="906" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:906,&quot;width&quot;:1200,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Tomas Transtr&#246;mer &#8211; All Artworks &#8211; Moderna Museet&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="Tomas Transtr&#246;mer &#8211; All Artworks &#8211; Moderna Museet" title="Tomas Transtr&#246;mer &#8211; All Artworks &#8211; Moderna Museet" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F048e58cc-f90d-4118-b564-793aff957a1a_1200x906.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><blockquote><p>Tired of all who come with words, words but no language<br>I went to the snow-covered island.<br>&#8212;Tomas Transtr&#246;mer</p></blockquote><p>In 1954, when the poet Tomas Transtr&#246;mer published his first collection, reviewers hailed him as the most gifted writer of his generation. He was 23. You could sense forces rushing forth to prepare a path for him.<em> </em>There would be reading tours and residencies. He would be given literary grants and other support. In thirty years, when he had been groomed, they would induct him into the Swedish Academy to decide the Nobel prize.</p><p>But this path did not fit with Transtr&#246;mer&#8217;s sense of integrity.</p><p>Six years after his debut, he moved into a bungalow at the juvenile prison in Roxtuna. There, he would work as a psychologist, living next to the inmates in a secluded pine forest by the Roxen Lake. Transtr&#246;mer, who had grown up in Stockholm, attending Sweden&#8217;s most prestigious Latin high school, spent the rest of his life in small Swedish towns, away from the literary power centers.</p><div><hr></div><p>After his move, he fell out of favor with the literary elite. They felt he didn&#8217;t keep up with the times. In 1966, when he released <em>Klanger och sp&#229;r (Bells and Tracks)</em>, one reviewer called him a &#8220;used-up poet.&#8221; Used-up meant: he wasn&#8217;t political enough.</p><p>During the Vietnam War, literature in Stockholm was synonymous with politics (even more so than in other countries at the time, and more than in most quarters today). Writers staged a war tribunal in Stockholm where President Lyndon B. Johnson was sentenced in absentia for crimes against humanity. That sort of thing. Transtr&#246;mer, who attended the tribunal, wrote to the American poet Robert Bly: &#8220;It is one of those things that makes you feel like you have a crack through the top of your head down to the crutch.&#8221; And: &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to apologize for writing poems about blades of grass.&#8221;</p><p>Since Transtr&#246;mer felt alienated in Sweden, his social life revolved around letters to poets in other parts of the world. The poets found each other by circulating their work in letter networks and small magazines; their poems became <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query">search queries that surfaced people they could relate to</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>The first letter Transtr&#246;mer and Bly shared is Transtr&#246;mer asking for permission to translate a poem he has read in <em>The Sixties Press,</em> the magazine Bly edited. Bly replies that he found the letter in his box the minute he returned from a 600-mile drive to Chicago where he had gone to locate copies of Transtr&#246;mer&#8217;s collections!</p><p>The letters to Bly often return to the war. They were both appalled by Vietnam. But Transtr&#246;mer (unlike Bly) was also appalled by many of the critics of the war. The critics were, in Transtr&#246;mer&#8217;s eyes, more driven by political intoxication than a care for the victims in Vietnam. The stated goal of an open letter Transtr&#246;mer was asked to sign was to create &#8220;a hundred Vietnams.&#8221; He wanted none. In one letter, Transtr&#246;mer quotes an op-ed by a friend from his days in Stockholm: the friend says he hopes the US will continue its bombings since it helps spread anti-American sentiments.</p><p>Being bothered by this was not something Transtr&#246;mer talked about publicly. But sometimes his poems gave him away. In &#8220;With the River,&#8221; a poem about a bridge across the Dala River, he wrote:</p><blockquote><p>In conversations with contemporaries, I saw-heard behind their faces<br>the current<br>that flowed on and on and pulled with it the willing and unwilling.</p><p>And the creature with stuck-together eyes<br>that wants to go right down the rapids with the current<br>throws itself forward without trembling<br>in a furious hunger for simplicity.</p></blockquote><p>When &#8220;With the River&#8221; was published in the magazine <em>Konkret </em>in 1967, Transtr&#246;mer received a letter from the Writer&#8217;s Association informing him that G&#246;ran Sonnevi had reservations. Sonnevi was the leading Swedish poet of the 1960s. The letter was signed by G&#246;ran Palm&#8212;later a Transtr&#246;mer scholar&#8212;who seemed genuinely unsettled by the idea that he might be a creature that hungers for simplicity. The letter ended with Palm asking Transtr&#246;mer what he plans to do when the revolution comes?</p><blockquote><p>There will be no comfortable social democracy to lean your head against when the river gets violent enough and only the political extremes remain. . . if there is a right-wing coup, no one is going to care about your capacity to see . . .</p></blockquote><div class="paywall-jump" data-component-name="PaywallToDOM"></div><p>Transtr&#246;mer was uneasy with the reactions to his poems, and he kept a low profile. In a survey in 1968, he was asked what had caused the left turn of the cultural sector in the 1960s. Transtr&#246;mer (who was himself left-leaning) wrote an answer but didn&#8217;t publish it:</p><blockquote><p>1. The obvious world-historical conditions: the thawing of the Cold War and the shift of attention to the Third World around 1960. The increasingly brutal foreign policy of the United States in the mid-60s[.] Above all, the Vietnam War as a point where the divided left could unite and be joined by an opinion that is not otherwise &#8216;left&#8217;. When this happens, a pressure wave arises that moves the entire public opinion a step further.</p><p>[&#8230;]</p><p>4. The need for faith. I mean this partly in religious terms. The Swedish intellectual milieu is one of the most secularized in the world. And when the path to religion in the traditional sense is blocked, the religious needs will seek outlets that are accepted: right now, for example, in left-wing ideology. But also on a non-religious level, there is a need for faith: a desire for simplicity, fixed norms, an infallible method of analysis. The increasing flow of often contradictory information in a changing world makes the need for a fixed structure of thought, an apparatus for sorting and evaluating the information, extremely strong. When disoriented enough, the leap to an ideology is experienced as a moral salvation and a boost of strength.</p><p>[&#8230;]</p><p>8. The Swedish cultural elite is small. When a tendency begins to prevail, it quickly gains almost total dominance.</p></blockquote><p>I&#8217;m a bit vary including this quote. It makes Transtr&#246;mer sound like the type of person who, had he been alive and on Twitter, would have published threads attacking wokeness to boost his follower count. He wouldn&#8217;t have done that. He would have written poems about insects he found at his summer cottage. Then he would have sent them to his friends in a private chat group.</p><div><hr></div><p>Here is a poem. It is called &#8220;<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210513103252/https://www.theliteraryreview.org/poetry-2/schubertiana-tomas-transtromer-patty-crane/">Schubertiana</a>,&#8221; after the composer Schubert. It was written in the early 1980s after Robert Bly had invited Transtr&#246;mer to do a reading tour in the US. Pulling the car over at an outlook, on the way into New York, Transtr&#246;m notes (in Patty Crane&#8217;s translation):</p><blockquote><p>The giant city over there is a long flickering snow drift, a spiral galaxy seen from the side.<br>Within the galaxy, coffee cups are slid across the counter, storefront windows beg from passers-by, a swarm of shoes that leave no tracks.<br>The climbing fire escapes, elevator doors gliding together, and behind doors bolted with police locks, a steady flow of voices.<br>Slouched bodies doze in subway cars, the rushing catacombs.</p></blockquote><p>Seen from this distance the city becomes statistics; what is human is lost. But Transtr&#246;mer also knows &#8220;&#8212;without statistics&#8212;that right now Schubert is being played in some room over there and that for someone those notes are more real than anything else.&#8221; The music, in the following stanza, is described as somewhere you can &#8220;curl up like a fetus, fall asleep, roll weightless into the future, suddenly knowing that the plants have thoughts.&#8221; It captures &#8220;the signals from an entire life in some rather ordinary chords for five strings.&#8221;</p><p>All of this could be said about Transtr&#246;mer's work, too. It is small and personal&#8212;it fits in a volume slim enough to fit in my pocket. But when I open it: vaults open behind vaults without end, to borrow a metaphor Transtr&#246;mer used for the human soul.</p><p>This humble humanness was what his critics called "used-up." But those who said so rallied around Pol Pot during the Killing Fields, when at least 1,386,734 victims were executed.</p><p>The final stanza of &#8220;Schubertiana,&#8221; seen in this political context, reads like a summary of Transtr&#246;mer's work:</p><blockquote><p>Annie said &#8220;this music is so heroic,&#8221; and that&#8217;s true.<br>But those who keep an envious eye on men of action, those who deep down despise themselves for not being murderers,<br>they don&#8217;t recognize themselves here.<br>And the many who buy and sell people, believing everyone can be bought, don&#8217;t recognize themselves here.<br>Not their music. The long melody that remains itself in all its transformations, sometimes glittering and tender, sometimes harsh and strong, snail trails and steel wire.<br>The persistent humming that&#8217;s right now following us<br>up into<br>the depths.</p></blockquote><p>In 1991, at 59, Transtr&#246;mer suffered a stroke that robbed him of speech. As his poems became acclaimed abroad, translated into more than fifty languages, the Swedish literary elite dropped their criticism and embraced him. In 2011, he was awarded the Nobel prize. On 26 March 2015, he passed away.</p><div><hr></div><p><em>My favorite book by Transtr&#246;mer is </em>Baltics<em> which can be read <a href="https://pen.org/baltics/">translated in its entrity here</a>&#8212;it is only slightly longer than this essay. Though of course denser: it took him five years to write. I&#8217;ve read it at least a hundred times. But really anything by him is worth reading.</em></p><p><em>Of the English translations, Patty Crane and Robert Bly usually comes close to the original.</em></p><p><em>I also recommend this <a href="https://library.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/static/poetry/listeningbooth/poets/transtromer.html">recording of a reading Transtr&#246;mer</a> did at Harvard&#8217;s Woodberry Poetry Room in 1981. The <a href="https://library.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/static/poetry/listeningbooth/index.html">recordings from Woodberry Poetry Room</a> is a treasure trove in general. It really adds something to hear the timbre, personality and cadance of a poets voice.</em></p><div class="digest-post-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;nodeId&quot;:&quot;964e3c42-18b7-42a6-b59f-0a7b6411722a&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;There are certain works&#8212;paintings, films, books, gardens&#8212;that have an effect on me that I can only describe by saying: in their presence, I remember that I am a human being. Dry shallowness falls away. I&#8217;ve been playing around with the idea of making a series where I share works that have this effect on me, along with a short essay explaining what I see in them. It would be something like a small treat in between the larger, more time intensive essays I write. Let me know if you would enjoy that. Here is a trial.&quot;,&quot;size&quot;:&quot;lg&quot;,&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Into the Abyss&quot;,&quot;publishedBylines&quot;:[{&quot;id&quot;:850764,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;Henrik Karlsson&quot;,&quot;bio&quot;:&quot;Writes 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Flatland&quot;,&quot;publication_logo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8adc529b-e1e1-431c-b2a6-d1f14aaedc78_906x906.png&quot;,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true}"></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Morning ritual]]></title><description><![CDATA[+ reading recommendations]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/morning-ritual</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/morning-ritual</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 01 Feb 2024 17:13:54 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2400,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png" width="1200" height="893.4065934065934" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:false,&quot;imageSize&quot;:&quot;large&quot;,&quot;height&quot;:1084,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:1200,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-large" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc72c2ef3-2bf1-495e-9703-eb68f2e2fd07_3042x2264.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><blockquote><p><em>&#8220;My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk[.]&#8221;</em><br>&#8212;John Keats in a letter to Percy Bysshe Shelley, August 16, 1820</p></blockquote><p>Each night, I go to bed with the kids. Johanna stays up for another three hours, researching and editing our essays, or working on her projects. Then, at five, I go straight from bed to the living room table where I read through her comments and write for three hours before breakfast.&nbsp;</p><p>These pre-dawn hours are my core work. On the days when I don&#8217;t go into the art gallery, I usually write for another few hours during the day. But that feels more like preparing the ground for the morning. It is the morning hours that keep me&nbsp;<em>inside</em>&nbsp;the work.</p><p>There is something hermetic and sealed off about the pre-dawn hours that appeals to me&#8212;the sky slowly shifting, the animals living up as night ends, the skylarks, the deers, the pheasants with their clapping wings. There is nothing human between me and the work.</p><p>When you have kids, especially when you raise them at home as we do, getting extended focus can be a challenge. When I did my main writing during the daytime, I would often mess up my routines if the 2-year-old changed her sleep pattern or some activity forced me to reschedule. This made me feel restless. I would end up writing after the kids fell asleep, sometimes typing from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/doestoevsky-as-lover">ten in the evening past midnight</a>. But if I have been busy with work, chores and parenting for 13 hours, I am not my deepest self. I slog. It feels better when I set off time before work, and before anyone else is awake. (The only drawback is that it makes me sleepy in the late afternoon.)&nbsp;</p><p>Writing essays is unlike any other work I do. It requires a deeper, more patient focus. It is not a <em>task</em> that I solve. Rather, it is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/being-patient-with-problems">a problem I sit with</a> until it solves <em>itself</em>. This means I often make no publishable progress for weeks; then I write ten pages in three hours. The erratic progress can be hard on the nerves.</p>
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-   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[After AI beat them, professional Go players got better and more creative]]></title><description><![CDATA[For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is possible to play. Then AI beat them.]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/go</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/go</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jan 2024 19:33:01 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg" width="1024" height="825" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:825,&quot;width&quot;:1024,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:277381,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7fe2146-3231-45d4-bdcd-e5750e548b45_1024x825.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><h6>A game of the board game Go in Japan 1876</h6><div><hr></div><p>For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is possible to play. They were not getting better. Decision quality was largely plateaued from 1950 to the mid-2010s:</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0c3f82b-dd47-4dff-a6f8-680a1f975dc4.tif" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0c3f82b-dd47-4dff-a6f8-680a1f975dc4.tif 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0c3f82b-dd47-4dff-a6f8-680a1f975dc4.tif 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0c3f82b-dd47-4dff-a6f8-680a1f975dc4.tif 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0c3f82b-dd47-4dff-a6f8-680a1f975dc4.tif 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0c3f82b-dd47-4dff-a6f8-680a1f975dc4.tif" width="918" height="616" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/d0c3f82b-dd47-4dff-a6f8-680a1f975dc4.tif&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:616,&quot;width&quot;:918,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:1700056,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/tiff&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0c3f82b-dd47-4dff-a6f8-680a1f975dc4.tif 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0c3f82b-dd47-4dff-a6f8-680a1f975dc4.tif 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0c3f82b-dd47-4dff-a6f8-680a1f975dc4.tif 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0c3f82b-dd47-4dff-a6f8-680a1f975dc4.tif 1456w" sizes="100vw"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Then, in May 2016, DeepMind demonstrated AlphaGo, an AI that could beat the best human Go players. This is how the humans reacted:</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed5e34fa-38f3-4d0a-90d5-accfd367296b_1066x616.webp" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed5e34fa-38f3-4d0a-90d5-accfd367296b_1066x616.webp 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed5e34fa-38f3-4d0a-90d5-accfd367296b_1066x616.webp 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed5e34fa-38f3-4d0a-90d5-accfd367296b_1066x616.webp 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed5e34fa-38f3-4d0a-90d5-accfd367296b_1066x616.webp 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed5e34fa-38f3-4d0a-90d5-accfd367296b_1066x616.webp" width="1066" height="616" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ed5e34fa-38f3-4d0a-90d5-accfd367296b_1066x616.webp&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:616,&quot;width&quot;:1066,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:23786,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/webp&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed5e34fa-38f3-4d0a-90d5-accfd367296b_1066x616.webp 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed5e34fa-38f3-4d0a-90d5-accfd367296b_1066x616.webp 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed5e34fa-38f3-4d0a-90d5-accfd367296b_1066x616.webp 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed5e34fa-38f3-4d0a-90d5-accfd367296b_1066x616.webp 1456w" sizes="100vw"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01742-2">Source</a>.</figcaption></figure></div><p>After a few years, the weakest professional players were better than the strongest players before AI. The strongest players pushed beyond what had been thought possible. EDIT: as Gwern points out, I&#8217;m misreading the graph. The graph shows the average move quality across the whole Go player population. The lines are not the population, but simply the uncertainty around the mean. So moves were getting better, but we do not know how that was distributed in the population.</p><p>Were the moves getting better because some players cheated by using the AI? No.<a class="footnote-anchor" data-component-name="FootnoteAnchorToDOM" id="footnote-anchor-1" href="#footnote-1" target="_self">1</a> They really were getting better.</p><p>And it wasn&#8217;t simply that they imitated the AI, in a mechanical way. They got more creative, too. There was an uptick in historically novel moves and sequences.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2214840120">Shin et al</a>&nbsp;calculate about 40 percent of the improvement came from moves that could have been memorized by studying the AI. But moves that deviated from what the AI would do also improved, and these &#8220;human moves&#8221; accounted for 60 percent of the improvement.</p><p>My guess is that AlphaGo&#8217;s success forced the humans to reevaluate certain moves and abandon weak heuristics. This let them see possibilities that had been missed before.</p><p>Something is considered impossible. Then somebody does it. Soon it is standard. This is a common pattern. Until Roger Bannister ran the 4-minute mile, the best runners clustered just above 4 minutes for decades. A few months later Bannister was no longer the only runner to do a 4-minute mile. These days, high schoolers do it. The same story can be told about the French composer Pierre Boulez. His music was considered unplayable until recordings started circulating on YouTube and elsewhere. Now it is standard repertoire at concert houses.</p><p>The recent development in Go suggests that superhuman AI systems can have this effect, too. They can prove something is possible and lift people up. This doesn&#8217;t mean that AI systems will not displace humans at many tasks, and it doesn&#8217;t mean that humans can always adapt to keep up with the systems&#8212;in fact, the human Go players are not keeping up. But the flourishing of creativity and skills tells us something about what might happen at the tail end of the human skill distribution when more AI systems come online. As humans learn from AIs, they might push through blockages that have kept them stalled and reach higher.</p><p>Another interesting detail about the flourishing in Go, which is teased out in&nbsp;<a href="https://escholarship.org/content/qt6q05n7pz/qt6q05n7pz.pdf">this paper by Shin, Kim, and Kim</a>, is that the trend shift actually happened 18 months&nbsp;<em>after</em>&nbsp;AlphaGo. This coincides with the release of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leela_Zero">Leela Zero</a>, an open source Go engine. Being open source Leela Zero allowed Go players to build tools, like Lizzie, that show the AI&#8217;s reasoning when picking moves. Also, by giving people direct access, it made it possible to do massive input learning<a class="footnote-anchor" data-component-name="FootnoteAnchorToDOM" id="footnote-anchor-2" href="#footnote-2" target="_self">2</a>. This is likely what caused the machine-mediated unleash of human creativity.</p><p>This is not the first time this kind of machine-mediated flourishing has happened. When DeepBlue beat the chess world champion Kasparov in 1997, it was assumed this would be a blow to human chess players. It wasn&#8217;t. Chess became more popular than ever. And the games did not become machine-like and predictable. Instead, top players like Magnus Carlsen became&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/magnus-carlsen-ian-nepomniachtchi-world-chess-championship-computer-analysis-11639003641">more inventive than ever</a>.</p><p>Our potential is greater than we realize. Even in highly competitive domains, like chess and GO, performance can be operating far below the limit of what is possible. <em>Perhaps</em> AI will give us a way to push through these limits in more domains.</p><p>Warmly<br>Henrik</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><h4>Acknowledgements</h4><p>Several of the points here build on comments made on a Twitter thread I made about this yesterday. Nabeel S. Qureshi (<a href="https://twitter.com/nabeelqu">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://nabeelqu.co">blog</a>) read a draft and gave useful pointers.</p><div><hr></div><div class="digest-post-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;nodeId&quot;:&quot;6fa0086a-7b11-4cc2-b549-6a42b013de8e&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;In 2015, I amused myself by training a neural network to generate poems in the style of various poets I knew and submitted the results to a fanzine. The thing I built was a primitive language model and&#8212;though I thought it was fascinating, seeing a computer talk&#8212;it did not occur to me that it could be useful for much beyond pranks. I would never have gue&#8230;&quot;,&quot;size&quot;:&quot;lg&quot;,&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Notes on energy and intelligence becoming cheaper&quot;,&quot;publishedBylines&quot;:[{&quot;id&quot;:850764,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;Henrik Karlsson&quot;,&quot;bio&quot;:&quot;Writes escapingflatland.substack.com/&quot;,&quot;photo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1d2b2afe-5da5-4bd4-9f1f-a2ec569d9dda_2048x1536.jpeg&quot;,&quot;is_guest&quot;:false,&quot;bestseller_tier&quot;:100}],&quot;post_date&quot;:&quot;2023-11-15T15:58:34.490Z&quot;,&quot;cover_image&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1a51cecf-083b-42a0-9795-739b3d384381_1600x1139.png&quot;,&quot;cover_image_alt&quot;:null,&quot;canonical_url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/notes-on-energy-and-intelligence&quot;,&quot;section_name&quot;:null,&quot;id&quot;:138830438,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;newsletter&quot;,&quot;reaction_count&quot;:69,&quot;comment_count&quot;:10,&quot;publication_name&quot;:&quot;Escaping Flatland&quot;,&quot;publication_logo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8adc529b-e1e1-431c-b2a6-d1f14aaedc78_906x906.png&quot;,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true}"></div><div class="footnote" data-component-name="FootnoteToDOM"><a id="footnote-1" href="#footnote-anchor-1" class="footnote-number" contenteditable="false" target="_self">1</a><div class="footnote-content"><p>The data in the graph which shows the improvement is from&nbsp;<a href="https://gogodonline.co.uk">Games of Go on Disk</a>, a project that transcribes games at professional Go tournaments. These games happen in person and have precautions against cheating. There was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/27/chinese-chess-champion-stripped-of-title-after-defecating-in-hotel-bathtub">a recent incident in Chinese Chess</a>&nbsp;when Yan Chenglong, last year's winner of the Chinese tournaments, was accused of cheating by using an anal bead that let him send information to a computer by squeezing, and receiving moves sent back as a code of vibrations&#8212;so who&nbsp;<em>knows</em>. But cheating doesn&#8217;t seem common enough to explain the trend.</p></div></div><div class="footnote" data-component-name="FootnoteToDOM"><a id="footnote-2" href="#footnote-anchor-2" class="footnote-number" contenteditable="false" target="_self">2</a><div class="footnote-content"><p>It is Shin, Kim and Kim who claim Leela Zero helped because, unlike AlphaGo, it showed the <em>reasoning</em> <em>behind the move, </em>not just the move.<em> </em></p><p>This is interesting in light of cognitive apprenticeship theory which posits that the reason people have a hard time learning cognitive skills, like literacy or Go, is that our learning is adapted for imitation and apprenticeship-like situations, and this works poorly for cognitive skills which happen hidden in the head. By opening up the box, so that the thought process can be observed, like Lizzie does, you allow people to apprentice themselves to the cognition, not just the actions.</p><p>I am not sure I believe this explanation! When I look at <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/bf4wes/how_to_use_lizzie_effectively_for_getting_better/">subreddits for Go players</a> who use Lizzie, my impression is that they don&#8217;t look at the reasoning all that much. They use it mainly to pinpoint moves where the winrate suddenly drops, so they can focus their learning on their biggest mistakes.</p><p>The true explanation why open source helped might actually be the inverse of what Shin, Kim and Kim propose. It might that the reason open source helped was that it let people do massive input learning&#8212;simply flooding themselves with data on how the AI plays&#8212;and <em>bypassing reasoning all together.</em> It could be that reasoning was holding people back before. Human moves tend to follow heuristics that are explainable and simplify things so people can do the computations in their heads. The AIs don&#8217;t care about these heuristics and explanations and so can play cleaner. In chess parlance, the AI is more &#8220;concrete&#8221;&#8212;reasoning based on specific variations rather than on general principles. Doing massive input training on this kind of concrete play, bypassing heuristics and explanations, might be the why of the improved decision quality.</p><p>In chess, the new batch of young grandmasters in chess got there largely by playing 10+ hours a day of online speed chess instead of the older strategies that emphasized targeting learning, deliberate practice and slower exercises. This is another example of a shift toward massive input, pushing beyond heuristics to pure pattern matching, and it was, like the shift in Go, facilitated by AI engines.</p><p></p></div></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Life update]]></title><description><![CDATA[+ open thread and a few fragments of essays]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/life-update</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/life-update</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 08 Jan 2024 14:02:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg" width="1200" height="850" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:850,&quot;width&quot;:1200,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:207317,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ff6adfb-a9c7-40be-82e6-811e63e83f57_1200x850.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>There were two parts we cut from the final draft of &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/multi-armed-bandit">Almost everyone I&#8217;ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on</a>,&#8221; which I sort of regret cutting. So I&#8217;ll send them out now.</p><p>At the end of the post, there is also a short update on what Johanna and I have been up to. Since I&#8217;m in the mood for random updates, you can treat this as an &#8230;</p>
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-   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on]]></title><description><![CDATA[Including me]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/multi-armed-bandit</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/multi-armed-bandit</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jan 2024 14:49:01 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2400,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg" width="1200" height="1200" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:false,&quot;imageSize&quot;:&quot;large&quot;,&quot;height&quot;:1200,&quot;width&quot;:1200,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:1200,&quot;bytes&quot;:135602,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-large" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3efc63a4-3759-4c62-8042-bf30abd7a873_1200x1200.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><blockquote><p><em>Almost everyone I&#8217;ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. </em>&#8212;Sam Altman</p></blockquote><p>In May 2020, we parked two moving trucks in the harbor and carried everything we owned from one to the other. Johanna, Maud, and I were leaving Sweden, and Covid restrictions meant we were forbidden from returning once we boarded the ferry. Hence the second truck, which we had gotten a stranger to ferry from the island to us: the Swedish truck had to stay in Sweden.</p><p>The motivation to leave was that we wanted to homeschool Maud, who was 3. In Sweden, this is illegal, so most Swedish homeschoolers end up on various small islands in the Baltic Sea. On our island, we knew no one. We had no jobs awaiting. We were leaving something, more than going somewhere. The life we had grown piecemeal over 30 years disappeared overnight. We had to figure out what to replace it with. Should I start another software consultancy to support us? Could I write? How would we find a meaningful social context?</p><h2>Life is a multi-armed bandit</h2><p>The moldy apartment we rented as we looked for a house has a view of the sea. Every day, deep into winter, I&#8217;d walk down to the water and dive from the cliffs. Swimming in the channels between the rocks, I realized I could model our situation using a concept from probability theory.</p><p>It was a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit">multi-armed bandit problem</a>. This problem, which, under a different name, had&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/yhn9prnr5bz0156/1933-thompson.pdf">first been studied</a>&nbsp;by the biologist&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_R._Thompson">William R. Thompson</a>&nbsp;in 1933, centers on a rather surreal thought experiment. A gambler faces a slot machine (&#8220;a one-armed bandit&#8221;), except this machine doesn&#8217;t have one arm&#8212;following some twisted dream logic, it has&nbsp;<em>k&nbsp;</em>arms, arms sticking out in every direction. Some of these arms have a high probability of paying out the jackpot, others are worse. But the gambler does not know which is which.</p><p>The problem is pulling the arms in an order that maximizes the expected total gains. ("Gains" could be anything. Early on, the problem was used to design drug trials. There, the jackpot was defined as finding a successful treatment. If you are looking for a partner, talking to people is how you pull the multi-armed bandit and the resonance (or lack thereof) is the payoff.)</p><p>The gambler needs to learn new knowledge about the machines&nbsp;<em>and simultaneously</em>&nbsp;use what they have already learned to optimize their decisions. In the literature, these two activities are referred to as&nbsp;<em>exploring</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>exploiting.</em>&nbsp;You can&#8217;t do both things at the same time. When you explore, you are pulling new arms on the bandit trying to figure out their expected payout. When you exploit, you pull the best arm you&#8217;ve found. You need to find the right balance. If you spend too little time exploring, you get stuck playing a machine with a low expected payoff. But if you spend too much time exploring, you will earn less than you would if you played the best arm. This is the explore/exploit trade-off.</p><p>People tend to gravitate to different sides of the explore/exploit spectrum. If you are high on openness, like I am, exploring comes easy. But it is harder to make a commitment and exploit what you&#8217;ve learned about yourself and the world. Other people are more committed, but risk being too conventional in their choices. They miss better avenues for their effort. Most, however, tend to do less than optimal of&nbsp;<em>both&#8212;</em>not exploring, not exploiting; but doing things out of blind habit, and half-heartedly.</p><p>First, I&#8217;ll say a few words about exploration and exploitation in real life. Then I'll return to the question of how to navigate the tradeoff between them.</p><h2><strong>Explore:&nbsp;</strong>doggedly looking for what makes you feel alive</h2><p>There are two kinds of people. Those who do not understand how complex the world is, and those who know that they do not understand how complex the world is.</p><p>To navigate life we create mental models of the world out there, and then we confuse the models for reality. Have you ever noticed this when interacting with someone who has a less accurate model than you: that it&#8217;s like they have a VR headset on and are fighting against monsters you know are not there? For instance, there was a Swedish couple who were working at the embassy in New Delhi in the 1990s. They had a housekeeper. On the housekeeper&#8217;s birthday, they made her a cake and invited her to eat at their table. She refused. She insisted she had to eat on the floor, or else she&#8217;d be reborn as a lower animal. It is tempting to say, &#8220;You can take off the headset, there is nothing there. Have some cake.&#8221; But we all have headsets on. There is no way of living in direct contact with reality.</p><p>The trick is to collide your mental model with the outside world as often as possible. This is what exploring does. You think you know the distribution of payoffs of the slot machines, but you try something new. You discover that you were wrong. You update your model.</p><p>Many of the mental models I have are things I&#8217;ve picked up from others. On closer inspection, it turns up that they too picked up from someone else, who picked it up from someone else&#8212;going back to someone who lived in the 1950s. This is not the 1950s. Have some cake.</p><p>For instance, as I wrote in &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query">A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting things to your inbox</a>,&#8221; I wasn&#8217;t able to get my blog to &#8220;work&#8221; until I unlearned the patterns of communication I had picked up from mass media. Blogs are not mass media. They are more powerful than that. I was stuck in the 50s.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p>Some mental models have more leverage than others. I try to focus on these. Realizing that I didn&#8217;t understand <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/being-patient-with-problems">process</a>, or priorities, or <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/looking-for-alice">relationships</a>, was highly rewarding. Understanding those areas better pays off every day.</p><p>If you can break inaccurate mental models, life becomes easier to navigate. But how do you do that? I know two ways.</p><ol><li><p>Find people who understand things better than you and read what they have to say. Read with the intention of answering your questions. If you can&#8217;t find the answers, email them.</p></li><li><p>Perform experiments. By this I don&#8217;t mean do random things. I mean,&nbsp;<em>STATE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS </em>and&nbsp;<em>FIND WAYS TO TEST IF THEY ARE FALSE</em>. Most of the time, the slot machine of an experiment yields nothing. But that&#8217;s ok. A few will rearrange the world around you.</p></li></ol><p>But, as I was saying before, there is a tradeoff. Time spent exploring to gather new information means less time acting on it. Besides, exploiting is often more valuable than it seems, since narrowing your focus to &#8220;slot machines&#8221; you know are promising can have nonlinear returns.</p><h2>Exploit: trimming everything but your top 1-3 priorities makes life richer</h2><p>As a rule of thumb, you can only do 1 or 2 things well. Some people are exceptional: they can do 3. I&#8217;m not exceptional.</p><p>I learned this, as many do, when I had my first child. I had been a bit nervous about becoming a father. Having failed to achieve what I had expected I would, I thought strapping a child to my chest meant setting myself up for permanent failure. It did not. When Maud ate about half my time, I had to force myself to make priorities: I would care for her, I would write,&nbsp;<em>and I would say no to everything else.</em></p><p>Narrowing my life like this, at least doubled how much I could achieve. When I had more time, I had spread myself too thin to get stuff done.</p><p>This is something I now notice whenever I read biographies of people who have done exceptional work: they lived narrow lives. They allowed themselves to care about less than others do. To take two quotes at random, here is Jony Ives who designed the iPhone:</p><blockquote><p>One of the things Steve [Jobs] would say [to me] because he was worried I wasn&#8217;t focused &#8212; he would say, &#8220;How many things have you said no to?&#8221; I would tell him I said no to this. And I said no to that. But he knew I wasn&#8217;t interested in doing those things. There was no&nbsp;<em>sacrifice</em>&nbsp;in saying no [to those things]. What focus means is saying no to something that with every bone in your body you think is a phenomenal idea, you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you are focusing on something else.&#8221;</p></blockquote><p>And here is Werner Herzog, the German filmmaker:</p><blockquote><p>Although for many years I lived hand to mouth&#8212;sometimes in semi-poverty&#8212;I have lived like a rich man ever since I started making films. Throughout my life I have been able to do what I truly love, which is more valuable than any cash you could throw at me. At a time when friends were establishing themselves by getting university degrees, going into business, building careers and buying houses, I was making films, investing everything back into my work.</p></blockquote><p>In the terminology of multi-armed bandits, they found a good arm. Then they exploited it to the exclusion of everything else.</p><p>Why do some people achieve so many of the things they want, and others not? Do people have a fixed budget of things they can achieve in a lifetime? It doesn&#8217;t seem so. Rather, it seems like our achievement budget is a function of the number of priorities we have. Interestingly, it seems to be a&nbsp;nonlinear&nbsp;function. Meaning that if you go from 4 priorities to 3, you can get, say, 10 percent more done; but if you go from 4 to 1, you get 400 percent more done. (I&#8217;m obviously making these numbers up.) If I look at Elon Musk, I have a hard time even grasping that he has the same number of hours in a day as I have. But he has, of course. We all do. It is just that his decisions have compounded because of a sharp focus.</p><p>Why would focus compound? Part of it is time. If you care about less, you spend more time doing what you care about most. Also, you are always nonconsciously processing the thing you focus on.<strong>&nbsp;</strong>So cutting priorities means you work even when it looks like you&#8217;re not working. These days,<strong>&nbsp;</strong>I&#8217;ll spend the afternoon playing with the kids, doing the dishes, repairing the houses&#8212;being busy in a mind-clearing way. Then, when I sit down to write the next morning, I can type 700 words without thinking. The ideas have been churning in my head, just below the surface of conscious thought, and come fully formed.</p><p>When I was younger, I was never this lucky. It is partly because I was less skilled. But it is also partly because I would interrupt the nonconscious processing back then. Unintentionally, I would tell my brain to focus on something else&#8212;a conflict in a TV series I was watching, for instance. I would watch an episode before bed, and the cliffhanger would open a loop in my head. That loop would be churning in my head as I slept; I woke to a blank page. I don&#8217;t have time for that anymore. I make sure to always have an open loop concerning my writing. And I close every other loop&#8212;by wrapping it up as fast as I can, or by writing it down on a list, or, preferably, by not opening the loop at all.</p><p>Allocating more time and mental processing power alone doesn&#8217;t explain the nonlinearity, though. More time is just a linear increase. I would guess the nonlinearity comes from:</p><ul><li><p><strong>Focus accelerates the accumulation of skills and accurate world models.</strong>&nbsp;In open-ended domains, such as writing, relationships, or business, there is nearly endless room for skill growth. When you spend more time, you get a better model of the situation which allows you to allocate your time better, which accelerates your rate of learning, and so on, in a nonlinear way.</p></li><li><p><strong>Focus attracts &#8220;resources.&#8221;&nbsp;</strong>This is obvious in business: if you have a ferocious focus investors will start following you around begging you to take their money. Then you can use the money to pull even faster on the arms of the bandit. This is true in writing, too: the more I write, the more interesting people my blog attracts. They start giving me feedback and advice which helps me write better, which, in a flywheel, attracts more interesting people (and some money). If you are curious and kind to people around you, you attract strong supportive networks. Networks have nonlinear properties.</p></li></ul><p>But for me, as a person for whom narrow focus is against my instincts, the most remarkable thing about it is how rich it feels. My life these days is small and boring. I bicycle across the same fields every day, I notice how the wind turbines turn to face the wind, I rarely travel, and I spend my spare time staring at a text document. Annie Dillard calls the writer&#8217;s life colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. That fits. But, as she also knows, there is another kind of color that can only be discovered three years down a writing hole. It is a subtle, nightly color; your eyes need time to adjust to the dark before you can see them. You wouldn't believe their beauty if I told you.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8666c64-0109-4d9a-a9f0-fc73aa5a3e7b_3264x1958.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8666c64-0109-4d9a-a9f0-fc73aa5a3e7b_3264x1958.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8666c64-0109-4d9a-a9f0-fc73aa5a3e7b_3264x1958.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8666c64-0109-4d9a-a9f0-fc73aa5a3e7b_3264x1958.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8666c64-0109-4d9a-a9f0-fc73aa5a3e7b_3264x1958.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8666c64-0109-4d9a-a9f0-fc73aa5a3e7b_3264x1958.jpeg" width="1456" height="873" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/b8666c64-0109-4d9a-a9f0-fc73aa5a3e7b_3264x1958.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:873,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:1150745,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8666c64-0109-4d9a-a9f0-fc73aa5a3e7b_3264x1958.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8666c64-0109-4d9a-a9f0-fc73aa5a3e7b_3264x1958.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8666c64-0109-4d9a-a9f0-fc73aa5a3e7b_3264x1958.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8666c64-0109-4d9a-a9f0-fc73aa5a3e7b_3264x1958.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><h2>The explore/exploit trade-off</h2><p>So, as I was saying, I was swimming by the cliffs. Every day, walking up and down the coast I found new places to dive in. I got interested in high diving&#8212;something I had been too much of a coward to do as a kid. I felt a childish excitement for water. The kids on the beach would look at me, whisper, and laugh. That is one of the pleasures of youth. The pleasure of being a dad is knowing I was having more fun than them.</p><p>But beyond being a dad, I didn&#8217;t know what to do with my life. Swimming and thinking about the things I&#8217;ve said in this essay, I made a decision. I would approach my situation algorithmically. I would apply rules to decide when to explore and when to exploit to counteract my natural tendencies (which would push me to do too little of both).</p><p>There are several algorithmic solutions to the multi-armed bandit problem, going back to Thompson sampling in the 1930s, all the way up to contemporary algorithms used in machine learning, such as EXP3 and Upper Confidence Bounds. What they all have in common is some version of: 1) prioritize exploration early on and 2) dial up exploitation as the situation becomes more clear. If you are new in a city, it makes sense to meet as many people as possible. If you find someone you love hanging with early, you will have years of happiness. But if you are about to leave, it makes more sense to hang with your best friends. Even if you found someone you liked more, you wouldn&#8217;t have any time to hang out. The amount of exploration that is optimal depends on the complexity of the problem and the time horizon.</p><p>What I decided to do was this. I would divide the next 30 months into three parts. For the first ten months, I would allow myself to explore freely. After that, I&#8217;d switch to exploring 2/3 of the time and using 1/3 to double down on the most interesting opportunity I had found, then I&#8217;d do 1/3 exploring and 2/3 exploiting, and so on.</p><p>We can think of the amount of time I spent on explorative open-ended search as my &#8220;temperature.&#8221; When you heat atoms, they bounce around faster; when you heat a life, it becomes more explorative. When you cool it, you narrow down and spend more time exploiting what you know. Here&#8217;s what it looks like when you search for the highest peak while gradually reducing the &#8220;temperature&#8221;:</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F44a6a537-8851-4039-aef6-c61c66bcc26f_500x161.gif" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F44a6a537-8851-4039-aef6-c61c66bcc26f_500x161.gif 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F44a6a537-8851-4039-aef6-c61c66bcc26f_500x161.gif 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F44a6a537-8851-4039-aef6-c61c66bcc26f_500x161.gif 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F44a6a537-8851-4039-aef6-c61c66bcc26f_500x161.gif 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F44a6a537-8851-4039-aef6-c61c66bcc26f_500x161.gif" width="500" height="161" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/44a6a537-8851-4039-aef6-c61c66bcc26f_500x161.gif&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:161,&quot;width&quot;:500,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" title="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F44a6a537-8851-4039-aef6-c61c66bcc26f_500x161.gif 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F44a6a537-8851-4039-aef6-c61c66bcc26f_500x161.gif 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F44a6a537-8851-4039-aef6-c61c66bcc26f_500x161.gif 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F44a6a537-8851-4039-aef6-c61c66bcc26f_500x161.gif 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Notice that the search starts in the area to the right, which does not contain the highest peak. If it had been a focused search early on it would have gotten stuck at a local optimum. (This is one of the reasons why education is a nightmare for many, by the way. Schooling forces you to decide what you will pursue long before you get to try it. It makes your future, more knowledgeable self, the servant of the younger, ignorant self.)</p><p>It felt comforting to put strict rules on myself like this, especially in the early part of the search. I felt stressed that I would not find the right thing to spend my time on and support my family. This made me want to go into exploit mode too soon. Knowing that there would be a time for focus later made me more willing to try anything and fail. I learned the piano and played around with coding. I wrote a few chapters of a novel. I got involved with a kindergarten/goat farm and studied the history of the island. I took a job at an art gallery. </p><p>After 10 months, I reduced the amount of randomness for the first time. I decided to spend 1/3 of my spare time programming. But I kept exploring 2/3s of my days.</p><p>The next time I dialed down the temperature I had started this blog. Since writing it was more interesting than programming, I stopped coding and switched 2/3s of my spare time to the blog. In retrospect, this seems like an obvious choice. Writing had always been my main obsession. But it wasn&#8217;t obvious at the time. I had for years been frustrated that no one was interested in what I wrote. The magazines that had published me when I was in my early twenties wanted nothing to do with the stuff I was exploring now. Writing seemed like a dead end.</p><p>I didn&#8217;t tell anyone that I was writing a blog. Having my friends read it would have made it harder for me to experiment and do things that risked embarrassment or failure. I wanted to put myself in a social context where I was rewarded for <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-as-communion">exploring my illegible potential</a>.</p><p>It worked. In January 2023, I dialed down the temperature to 0. I had landed on a peak I could not have imagined when we arrived on the island: being on track to supporting my family by emailing my thoughts to strangers. Even better, it is a small family writing business since Johanna and I work as a team these days (and we project that the essays will be our main income by the end of 2024).    </p><p>If I had decided on a path when I swam by the cliffs, before exploring, this possibility would not have occurred to me. Thoughtful emails did not seem like the type of thing that can support a family. Had I known it was, I would have thought I lacked what it takes to pull it off. This is an important thing to keep in mind: you don&#8217;t know until you try. </p><p>Warmly,<br>Henrik</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><div class="digest-post-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;nodeId&quot;:&quot;d81e58af-9776-4a4a-acbf-f45554f94b53&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;The Abyss of Hell, Sandro Botticelli, ca 1480&quot;,&quot;size&quot;:&quot;lg&quot;,&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Being patient with problems&quot;,&quot;publishedBylines&quot;:[{&quot;id&quot;:850764,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;Henrik Karlsson&quot;,&quot;bio&quot;:&quot;Writes escapingflatland.substack.com/&quot;,&quot;photo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1d2b2afe-5da5-4bd4-9f1f-a2ec569d9dda_2048x1536.jpeg&quot;,&quot;is_guest&quot;:false,&quot;bestseller_tier&quot;:100}],&quot;post_date&quot;:&quot;2023-10-17T17:34:53.053Z&quot;,&quot;cover_image&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb53dbb7a-b957-481c-8d0c-dbca8d0e6e57_1600x1090.png&quot;,&quot;cover_image_alt&quot;:null,&quot;canonical_url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/being-patient-with-problems&quot;,&quot;section_name&quot;:null,&quot;id&quot;:137935314,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;newsletter&quot;,&quot;reaction_count&quot;:191,&quot;comment_count&quot;:15,&quot;publication_name&quot;:&quot;Escaping Flatland&quot;,&quot;publication_logo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8adc529b-e1e1-431c-b2a6-d1f14aaedc78_906x906.png&quot;,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true}"></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[A summary of what I wrote in 2023]]></title><description><![CDATA[In 2023, I published 37 essays. I&#8217;ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to see what the themes were&#8212;it is quite surprising to notice what emerges when you allow yourself to follow your curiosity and intuition for a full year. I wrote a summary of the themes.]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/a-summary-of-what-i-wrote-in-2023</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/a-summary-of-what-i-wrote-in-2023</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 19 Dec 2023 15:23:32 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg" width="784" height="1024" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1024,&quot;width&quot;:784,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b9c0965-8bee-4e62-8618-8384e5bd83c4_784x1024.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><p>In 2023, I published 37 essays. I&#8217;ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to see what the themes were&#8212;it is quite surprising to notice what emerges when you allow yourself to follow your curiosity and intuition for a full year. I wrote a summary of the themes.</p><p>At the end of this post, there are also some notes on my experience running Escaping Flatland in 2023.</p><p><strong>The ten most popular posts were </strong>(some of these are paywalled halfway through, but the paywalls are placed so that the first half should be interesting in itself): </p><ol><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/childhoods/">Childhoods of exceptional people</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/looking-for-alice">Looking for Alice</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/good-ideas">Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/making-a-home-together">Relationships are coevolutionary loops</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/doestoevsky-as-lover">Dostoevsky as lover</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/being-patient-with-problems">Being patient with problems</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/scene-creation-engines">Why Sweden punches above its weight in music</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/ai-tutors">AI tutors will be held back by culture</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/two-kinds-of-introspection">Two kinds of introspection</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/internet-a-user-manual">Internet: a user manual</a></p></li></ol><p>Also, since I didn&#8217;t curate a list last year, these were&nbsp;<strong>the five most read in 2022</strong>:</p><ol><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query">A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/gpt-3">Using GPT-3 to augment human intelligence</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/first-we-shape-our-social-graph-then">First we shape our social graph; then it shapes us</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/training-data">Scraping training data for your mind</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/popular-education-in-sweden-much?s=w">Popular education in Sweden: much more than you wanted to know</a></p></li></ol><h2>What were the themes this year?</h2><ul><li><p><strong>Being ambitious in relationships</strong></p><ul><li><p>This theme is the biggest surprise to me. This is how it happened: in December I wrote a post that I sent to two friends who wanted to know what I thought about finding a life partner. I didn&#8217;t intend to make it public, it felt too private. But then it started circulating between friends and someone posted it to Twitter, and I thought, &#8220;Oh, well, I should just nip this one in the bud,&#8221; so I put it on the blog, and, well, it blew up. It was called &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/looking-for-alice">Looking for Alice,</a>&#8221; in homage to Gertrude Stein, who, when asked if she was a lesbian, said, No, I just like Alice.</p></li><li><p>Because of that essay, I ended up having an unusual number of conversations about relationships this year, and I noticed myself saying some clever things along the way. I wrote some of it up as essays. I wrote one piece about how to have genuine, deep conversations with people, called &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/doestoevsky-as-lover">Dostoevsky as lover</a>.&#8221; I wrote another about what makes some relationships have positive&nbsp;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/making-a-home-together">coevolutionary loops that make people fit together better and better over time</a>.</p></li><li><p>These essays tell the story of my relationship with Johanna up until the birth of Maud. They were interestingly&nbsp;<em>hard</em>&nbsp;to write. I thought a lot about why this is. I think it has to do with the fact that our traditional narrative forms center conflict, which means that love stories tend to be anything but&#8212;they tend to be stories of infatuations, toxic romance, failed expectations, and so on. Writing about healthy, transformative love breaks our narrative forms. This means we rarely see it portrayed in fiction. How does this shape our expectations of love? I wrote&nbsp;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/the-shapes-of-our-stories-limit-what">an essay about that</a>.</p></li><li><p>There were also some more practical essays about making deeper relationships. One talked about how using a notetaking system can improve conversations, turning the conversational stream into a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/conversation">conversational canyon</a>. Another talked about using the tools of internal family systems to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/talking-to-part-of-a-friend">reinvent old friendships that have gotten stuck</a>.</p></li></ul></li><li><p><strong>Another theme was: If we think beyond school, what would be better ways of educating?</strong></p><ul><li><p>Maud, our oldest daughter, turned six this year and officially enrolled as a homeschooler in August, so Johanna and I have been thinking a lot about how we are to help her and her sister mature into flourishing adults. This is a thread that we have pulled on since before the kids were born, when we both worked in public schools. But there was a shift this year. Previously, my aim has been mainly to reduce some of the harm to curiosity and dignity that I felt the children suffered in the schools I worked in, but this year, I realized that we can do a lot better than just reducing harm. I raised my aspirations.</p></li><li><p>The big essay on this topic was &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/childhoods/">Childhoods of exceptional people</a>,&#8221; where I ploughed through a man-high pile of biographies of people who have done exceptional work, to see if there are any patterns. There were. Most of them were homeschooled until age 12, they were surrounded by talented adults who engaged them in serious conversations, they had plenty of time to be bored, they were tutored 1-on-1 and they were gifted.</p></li><li><p>In a similar vein, I wrote a piece about&nbsp;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/scene-creation-engines">the talent networks behind the Swedish music miracle</a>. There have been years when Sweden, with a population of 10 million, has supplied 25 percent of all top ten hits in the US. Why? The answer, as far as I can tell, is a combination of decentralized learning facilities that can be used in open-ended ways&#8212;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/learningsystem">a very Ivan Illich-like idea</a>&#8212;and a strong tradition of mentorship. It is easy to start a band in Sweden, so there are (or at least used to be) strong scenes in nearly every town, and the networks are tight, so when someone talented shows up they are discovered while still in their teens and brought in to work with people like Denniz PoP and Max Martin (Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift etc).</p></li><li><p>My working assumption right now is that the best way to approach improving education is to frame the problem like this:&nbsp;<em>it is about crafting subcultures that value excellence, where children are surrounded by people whose norms and skills they do well by internalizing</em>. I haven&#8217;t written as much about this as I wanted&#8212;there are a bunch of drafts that are slowly coming together. Maybe next year.</p></li><li><p>I published a piece where I argued that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/ai-tutors">this cultural aspect of learning means that AI tutoring systems will not make as big of a difference as many assume</a>. Tutoring systems will only work well in cultures of excellence.</p></li></ul></li><li><p><strong>Trying to map out what is happening with AI</strong></p></li><li><p>It feels like every non-AI essay I write comes with a big question mark at the end that says, &#8220;But what if you factor in continued scaling of AI systems? Does what I wrote here still make sense in such a world?&#8221; So I&#8217;ve tried to keep up with the developments and formulate a rough model of what is going on. Most people still radically underestimate how rapidly and profoundly things are poised to change. I wrote up my baseline predictions for the next ten years&nbsp;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/notes-on-energy-and-intelligence">here</a>&#8212;which include systems powerful enough to do mathematical research at a doctoral level by the time our oldest daughter turns 13.</p><ul><li><p>See also: &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/ai-tutors">AI tutors will be held back by culture</a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/language-models-as-community-moderators">Large language models as community moderators</a>.&#8221;</p></li></ul></li><li><p><strong>Reflections on my craft</strong></p><ul><li><p>I&#8217;ve never written as much as I have this year, so there have been plenty of growing pains as I&#8217;ve had to learn to navigate that. Both in doing the internal work necessary to push ideas on, and also, the work needed to emotionally handle the pressures that come from my readership suddenly ballooning (in May, when the blog turned two, the readership had grown 42X year-over-year, which is a pretty disorienting experience).</p></li><li><p>My favorite essay of the year was in this category. It was called &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/good-ideas">Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born</a>,&#8221; and was based on close readings of the workbooks of the mathematician Alexander Grothendieck and the filmmaker Ingemar Bergman. It was the first essay I wrote together with Johanna Wiberg, which was a fascinating experience. Johanna is a much more rigorous and ambitious thinker than I am, and I decided to suspend my judgment and allow her to set the pace, which led me to stay much longer with the ideas than I usually do. It taught me how it is supposed to&nbsp;<em>feel</em>&nbsp;to push an idea as far as it deserves. I wrote about that experience (indirectly) in a follow-up called &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/being-patient-with-problems">Being patient with problems</a>.&#8221; Also, since this was the first essay that Johanna wrote, it made me happy that it made it to the top of HackerNews. It is one of those &#8220;I&#8217;ve made it as a blogger&#8221; achievements, and it is very much her style to do it on the first attempt.</p></li><li><p>Other essays about craft included: &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-up">Writing up</a>,&#8221; which is a reminder to myself to address readers whom I admire when I write; &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-thoughts">Writing in a way that gets your thoughts to flow</a>&#8221;; and &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/writing-as-communion">Writing as communion</a>,&#8221; which is something of a sister piece to last year&#8217;s &#8220;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query">A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox</a>.&#8221;</p></li><li><p>I also published a very long and detailed description of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/how-i-wrote-looking-for-alice">how I wrote &#8220;Looking for Alice.&#8221;</a></p></li></ul></li></ul><h2>What it felt like writing all of this</h2><p>When I was 26, I was sad that I couldn&#8217;t write well. To get around that feeling, I decided that I would write every day for the next 25 years and worry about how good or bad the writing was when I was done with that. I figured that way I might discover at 50 that I had written a few great essays in my 40s. I&#8217;m now 34. Although I haven&#8217;t written every single day in the last 12 months, I managed 351. I had more fun writing than ever before.</p><p>On the production side, Escaping Flatland evolved away from being a lonely guy in a room toward something more akin to a village. There were more than 40 people (!) who helped out with the essays this year&#8212;collaborators, editors, friends giving comments, and intelligent-seeming strangers who pointed out flaws in my thinking and whom I invited to give feedback on upcoming drafts. You know who you are.</p><p>I hope you also know how grateful I am.</p><p>This year was also the first when I allowed readers to support my work financially. I was unsure about doing this. I was afraid it would introduce pressures that would make it harder to stay committed to my long-term goal. It did, indeed, cause some emotional stress at first. But after a while, it did the opposite. It turns out that a membership program is a good filter: those who value what I do enough to support me are to a surprising degree people I admire for their own work and/or people I feel unblocked when I talk to. So the membership essays ended up being a place where I felt&nbsp;<em>less</em>&nbsp;pressure to conform and instead felt encouraged to raise my aspirations and be more personal. (It is good to run experiments&#8212;sometimes you&#8217;re assumptions are wrong!)</p><p>Thank you. All of you. Readers, members, collaborators, friends. It has been a transformative year for me. I hope you liked it too.</p><p>It is hard to overstate how big of a difference paid subscribers make. I was able to work part-time this year by eating into my savings, but it now looks like I can continue to do that thanks to you. Imagine that.</p><p>If the work we&#8217;ve done in 2023 has been meaningful to you, becoming a paid subscriber is a vote for a world in which I&#8217;m able to continue writing ambitiously (you also get more essays, subscriber calls, and so on). </p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p>If you feel like a subscription is too expensive but still want to have access to everything, just shoot me an email. You do that by replying to the emails I send out. I can do discounts and so on.</p><p>I hope Escaping Flatland can grow into a place that feels expansive and human and out of time. I think we can do that.</p><p>See you in 2024. Take care of your loved ones.<br>Henrik</p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Seeing people clearly]]></title><description><![CDATA[Head of people operations for the entire friend group]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/head-of-people-operations</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/head-of-people-operations</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 12 Dec 2023 15:06:07 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2400,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg" width="1200" height="907" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/cd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:false,&quot;imageSize&quot;:&quot;large&quot;,&quot;height&quot;:907,&quot;width&quot;:1200,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:1200,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;PRESENTATION: Cy Twombly &#8211; dreamideamachine ART VIEW&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-large" alt="PRESENTATION: Cy Twombly &#8211; dreamideamachine ART VIEW" title="PRESENTATION: Cy Twombly &#8211; dreamideamachine ART VIEW" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcd9bbe2a-d72e-415b-88e4-ec09b5b9b1bd_1200x907.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><h5>This was either painted by Cy Twombly or my two-year-old and I&#8217;m not going to tell you who</h5><div><hr></div><p>In September, I asked my friend Jakob to show me how he uses Tinder. Jakob has something of a Protestant work ethic when it comes to swiping; he had amassed 327 matches. But, he said, every single one was boring.</p><p>Like most dating apps, Tinder is a filter game. Its core game loop is bean sorting: you swipe right and left to decide&nbsp; which pile the beans belong to. Jakob said that at the swiping stage, he only applied the most rudimentary filters, since, &#8220;there is no point thinking too hard until you know if it is a match.&#8221; But there were other filters. Plenty of them. He had a rule of thumb that he only talked to girls who wrote to him first (to make sure they had agency). And the chat conversations were filters and the dates were filters and the sex, too. One sieve placed after another, to make sure none of the bad beans made it into the good pile.</p><p>The question repeated was, &#8220;Is this the one?&#8221;</p><div><hr></div><p>Here&#8217;s another way of thinking about making relationships. I&#8217;m not sure it is better, but it is closer to my heart.</p><p>Graham Duncan has an essay called &#8220;<a href="https://grahamduncan.blog/whats-going-on-here/">What&#8217;s going on here, with this human?</a>&#8221; It is not about dating&#8212;it is about evaluating if someone is a good hire. But that is more or less the same thing. Hiring, like dating, is about crafting relationships and putting the right person on the right team.</p><p>The typical way of recruiting is to play an adversarial game. The candidate tries to pretend to be one of those people whose <em>raison d&#8217;&#234;tre </em>is to be a team player in the sales department. The interviewer tries to bust them. &#8220;Well then, why did you have to leave your last employer after only two months?&#8221; Much like how my friend uses Tinder, this is a game of filters.</p><p>Duncan takes this approach and turns it inside out. Instead of asking if the candidate is right for the role, he asks: what role <em>would</em> be ideal for them? Given their character, their strengths and weaknesses, where should they work? With what, and with whom?&nbsp;</p><blockquote><p>I try to imagine myself as head of people operations for the entire hedge fund or private equity ecosystem, that I&#8217;m agnostic as to where they should sit and just trying to help them get to the best spot.</p><p>[. . . ] rather than going in with the purpose of determining whether someone is an A player in a binary, Manichean way. I prefer to imagine that I&#8217;m trying to find the candidate the best possible job for them; it may be the job I had in mind, or something else altogether.</p></blockquote><p>Framing the problem in this way makes you focus on&nbsp;<em>seeing the person</em>. Not the person in relationship to your needs, but the person in themselves.&nbsp;</p><blockquote><p>When you see people clearly, you see the transcript of their conversation with reality up until that moment of your meeting, and you glimpse the horizon that stretches out ahead of them. And then sometimes you can help them overhear themselves and overhear what the world wants from them, whether or not that includes working in the role that you had initially imagined for them.</p></blockquote><div><hr></div><p>If you approach people with this kind of open-ended curiosity, you never know where you will end up. You might go on a Tinder date and discover, for instance, that what you should really do is start a violin-based death metal band together called Leper&#8217;s Kiss.</p><p>Or maybe you realize that there is indeed the possibility of romance? Leaving the bar, you lean close and say, &#8220;This was a lovely night, dear. What you said about Derrida really made me think. And what I concluded was that you should date this guy I met four weeks ago at a psychometrics conference.&#8221;</p><p>(I&#8217;ve never been on a Tinder date so perhaps you shouldn&#8217;t take advice from me. But I think it is the right&nbsp;<em>attitude</em>.)</p><p>I think we would all be happier if spent more time introducing our friends to each other; if, to borrow Duncan&#8217;s phrase, we imagined that we are &#8220;head of people operations for the entire hedge fund ecosystem&#8221;; if we focused less on our criteria and more on seeing people, letting our curiosity steer the relationships where they want to go.&nbsp;</p><p>One day, doing this, Jakob, I bet you will meet someone who divides your life in two. But when this happens, it will, <a href="https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/looking-for-alice">in my experience</a>, look almost nothing like you thought it would. On Tinder, you could have swiped right past it.</p><p>Warmly,<br>Henrik</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Escaping Flatland is made possible by the support of paying subscribers. If you like what you read, consider becoming one. You will get twice as many essays and full archives.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div class="digest-post-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;nodeId&quot;:&quot;6d2cc48e-b426-472c-a08e-243d8ba0f76b&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;This is essay is part of a series, but it can be read independently. The first part, &#8220;Looking for Alice,&#8221; I wrote for two friends who wanted to know how I thought about finding someone to share your life with. The second part, &#8220;Dostoesvky as lover,&#8221; was about open dialogue in relationships.&quot;,&quot;size&quot;:&quot;lg&quot;,&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Relationships are coevolutionary loops&quot;,&quot;publishedBylines&quot;:[{&quot;id&quot;:850764,&quot;name&quot;:&quot;Henrik Karlsson&quot;,&quot;bio&quot;:&quot;Writes escapingflatland.substack.com/&quot;,&quot;photo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/1d2b2afe-5da5-4bd4-9f1f-a2ec569d9dda_2048x1536.jpeg&quot;,&quot;is_guest&quot;:false,&quot;bestseller_tier&quot;:100}],&quot;post_date&quot;:&quot;2023-10-31T15:59:44.857Z&quot;,&quot;cover_image&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9e3af3b5-bf9e-4374-8bd6-50d68cf89d6d_800x800.jpeg&quot;,&quot;cover_image_alt&quot;:null,&quot;canonical_url&quot;:&quot;https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/making-a-home-together&quot;,&quot;section_name&quot;:null,&quot;id&quot;:137775492,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;newsletter&quot;,&quot;reaction_count&quot;:227,&quot;comment_count&quot;:14,&quot;publication_name&quot;:&quot;Escaping Flatland&quot;,&quot;publication_logo_url&quot;:&quot;https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8adc529b-e1e1-431c-b2a6-d1f14aaedc78_906x906.png&quot;,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true}"></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Socratic dialogue with kids]]></title><description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m simply trying to understand&#160;how she thinks. When she answers in a way that does not match my understanding&#8212;that is interesting to me.]]></description><link>https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/socratic-dialogue-with-kids</link><guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/socratic-dialogue-with-kids</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Henrik Karlsson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 07 Dec 2023 13:32:54 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2400,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg" width="1200" height="1602.1978021978023" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/bbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:false,&quot;imageSize&quot;:&quot;large&quot;,&quot;height&quot;:1944,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:1200,&quot;bytes&quot;:null,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Georgia O'Keeffe. Abstraction Blue. 1927 | MoMA&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:null,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-large" alt="Georgia O'Keeffe. Abstraction Blue. 1927 | MoMA" title="Georgia O'Keeffe. Abstraction Blue. 1927 | MoMA" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbee236f-1cea-4387-b7c3-aff9d9c5a1f7_1498x2000.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><h5><em>Abstraction Blue</em>, Georgia O&#8217;Keeffe, 1927</h5>
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