Exploration · 8 min
Would We Make Better Decisions If Life Had Instant Feedback?
A cigarette warning can reach belief and still fail to change the next decision. What smoking, procrastination and bad metrics reveal about the timing of feedback.
A loose thread
Systems that learn the wrong lesson
What metrics, incentives, software and feedback loops learn from the signals we give them.
Exploration · 6 min
Why Every Metric Eventually Learns to Lie
A useful metric can slowly become the job itself. Goodhart’s law explains gaming; the deeper problem is how measurement redirects attention.
Exploration · 6 min
Why Do Incentives Produce the Opposite Behaviour?
Rewards and fines do more than change behaviour: they can change what an action means, what people optimize and who still wants to participate.
Exploration · 7 min
AI Can Write More Code. Who Gets to Slow Down?
AI coding feels like enchanted brooms: output multiplies, incentives reward speed, and nobody wants to admit they do not know the stop command.
Note · 5 min
Is Social Media Training Us—or Are We Training It?
We train recommendation systems with attention; their selections reshape what receives attention next. Preference and exposure become hard to separate.
Exploration · 6 min
Are We Prediction Machines—or Reward Machines?
A side-mirror moment, transformer attention and children’s relentless curiosity raise a question: are humans mainly predicting what comes next, or learning what is worth doing?