The terrible job
One Friday in 2013 there was $50,000 in the account and $150,000 of payroll due by the end of the day. The $500,000 we were expecting from our second-largest customer had not come. I asked the bank for a short bridge, and the manager told me the bank would not provide one, and I boarded a flight to Atlanta to sit in front of the customer whose payment we were waiting for.
Your first question
On Pascal’s wager, the one premise its author never tested, and the habit of asking what an elegant argument stands on
read more
The evolution of complexity, entropy, and ambiguity in a perception system
On what happens to information on its way from the world, through a sensor, into a model, and why a factory camera can be trusted where a car’s cannot
The AI-Enabled Masters: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Who Rules
The paradox of belief: Richard Dawkins, God, and the cognitive evolution of entropic feedback loops
Beautiful and sublime things
On extreme patriotism, conscription, and what we lose when the right to disagree is taken for granted
The useful delusion
In July 2024 I was negotiating the sale of my business. It was the event that 30 years of building…
Domains of Disbelief
I am an atheist. My closest friend during my years in America was a Pennsylvania pastor.
The three skills people will not learn
An observation on why presentation, negotiation, and cold calling are the most reluctantly acquired skills in business, and the most disproportionately rewarded
The over-manage / under-manage cycle
An observation on why most management is really firefighting, and why the harder craft is knowing where to let the fire burn