J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Culture Rants/Shares Page 3 of 20

Strategic Thinking: What Has Changed?

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On August 23

In Culture Rants/Shares

Lately I’ve been playing chess. I’m not very good. After a hundred-or-so games in recent weeks, I can beat the lichess.org computer at level 4 only about 20% of the time (no time limit). For the first few weeks I was getting back into chess, I played human beings from around the world in timed games. But I found that playing computer opponents, without a time limit, is less stressful and helps me learn more quickly.

My main weakness in chess is getting too excited about my plan, and moving my pieces before carefully evaluating the board. One question I’ve been asking myself lately after my opponent’s move is what has changed?

I find this question more useful than trying to ask myself what my opponent’s intentions are. A single move in chess often does multiple things, opening up multiple avenues of attack but also weakening defenses. My opponent may not even realize all the repercussions of their move. And if I don’t look carefully, I certainly won’t.

I’ve been considering this same question in different contexts, including my personal life, the trajectory of the United States, and global climate and ecosystems. Developments in the United States are most relevant to strategic, competitive thinking; our nation and way of life has actual enemies trying to bring us down.

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Rejecting the Covid Vaccine is a Poor-Odds Bet

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On July 24

In Culture Rants/Shares, Health/Body-hacking

Even among the well educated, people are avoiding or delaying the Covid vaccine.

Some of the reasons for vaccine avoidance, like the fear of getting microchipped, are ridiculous.

Other reasons, such as fear of side effects, are more rational.

But no matter how you slice the pie, avoiding the vaccine is a terrible decision, statistically. This is true even though most people who avoid the vaccine will not die or get seriously ill from Covid.

If someone offered you a small reward, say $10, for taking a risk with a low likelihood of occurring, but potentially dire consequences, you would be wise to turn down that bet. You wouldn’t play Russian roulette for $10, even if the revolver chambered a hundred bullets and ninety-nine were empty.

Betting your health, reputation, or your entire net worth is an all-in bet. Even if the potential rewards are amazing, all-in bets are always a bad idea.

When you take on risk, the winning strategy is always to take on the least risk possible for the greatest possible reward. Rejecting the Covid vaccine is the opposite kind of bet: low reward but potentially high risk. It’s the same kind of bet you take if you don’t wear a seat belt in a car, or don’t wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle.

The reward for rejecting the Covid vaccine is avoiding 1-2 days of normal side effects (I had them, they’re unpleasant), and also avoiding the extremely small chance (~1 in 250,000 at the most) of serious side effects. The risk is that you’ll become seriously ill or die of Covid. If you’re young and healthy, perhaps this is only a 1 in 1,000 chance, but it could be as high as 1 in 50 if you’re older and/or have underlying health conditions.

If you want to take risks with your health, take small risks that have potentially great rewards. Take multiple walks every day. There are risks associated with taking walks, even if you’re careful how you go about it. But the risks are generally low, and the rewards (better mood, better cardiovascular health, reduced risk of diabetes) are huge.

Life is full of risk, much of it unavoidable. But when we consciously choose to take on more risk, we should make sure the upside is worth it.

A Solarpunk Manifesto

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On July 19

In Alternative Economics, Culture Rants/Shares, Utopian Speculations, Writing

The other day I found A Solarpunk Manifesto in my inbox, thanks to Joe Stech and his News Refinery newsletter.

I was vaguely aware of solarpunk as a genre, associating it with progressive technological optimism, an alternative to both dystopian science fiction and steampunk. But I’d never read any attempt to describe it explicitly.

Reading the manifesto, my general reaction was yes. Count me in for science fiction as activism, post-scarcity, post-capitalism, post-hierarchical society, and the whole shebang.

While I’ve never described the Reclaimed Earth series as solarpunk, the Ringstation Coalition culture checks all of the boxes. So do aspects of my novelette The Icelandic Cure, and many of my short stories.

So yeah, I guess I’m a solarpunk author, at least in part.

Here’s the manifesto in full, shared via Creative Commons license:

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Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

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On May 23

In Culture Rants/Shares

I’m reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. I’d recommend it for many reasons. The book illuminates the distinction between racial antipathy and passively supporting social norms that limit the power and privilege of African Americans. While most Americans can truthfully say that they harbor no hate in the hearts towards people of other ethnic backgrounds, it’s a much smaller group that actively works to dismantle discriminatory systems and views that enforce the caste system in the US.

While not as explicit as the caste systems in India or Israel (both Dalits and Palestinians live under conditions that could accurately be described as apartheid), Wilkerson makes an effective argument that caste does indeed exist in the US.

I was somewhat skeptical of this idea before reading the book, but now I’m fully convinced. If you’ve read the book, please share your own views in the comments.

That’s all I’ve got for this week — we had a huge family event that has taken up most of my energy and bandwidth lately. In the next couple weeks I’ll be working on the final proof of The Last Crucible (Book 3 of Reclaimed Earth), which I’m hoping to deliver to Flame Tree in the first week of June.

I’m looking for book recommendations, both fiction and nonfiction. What are you reading and enjoying?

Humbled by the Masters (on YouTube)

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On May 8

In Creative Work/Career, Culture Rants/Shares

The amount of high-level knowledge and technique being casually shared on YouTube, TikTok, and blogs is absolutely stunning. The world is collectively experiencing a Golden Age of accelerated learning with no geographic, economic, class, or age-related limitations. Anyone with a mobile phone can learn from the most talented people in their field, for free.

Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of human cultural evolution. Anybody who wants to can raise their game in a small fraction of the time it would have taken ten or twenty years ago.

The first time my mind was blown by this fact was maybe five years ago. The pipes in my house were making a weird loud vibrating sound. After a quick internet search I found a helpful guy on YouTube demonstrating exactly how to adjust the water pressure in your house. I ventured into the crawlspace under my house, found the valve, and make the adjustment. Problem solved.

But now I’m all about raising my art game. Yesterday I was completely humbled not once but twice, in two different fields. I watched Ian Kirkpatrick break down his drums on Dua Lipa – Pretty Please. I’ve been making beats for three decades, with a fair amount of success, but I found at least a dozen tips I could immediately implement from this one video. Multi-platinum-selling producers are willing to tell you exactly how they do it, for free.

Another one of my nerdy hobbies is painting fantasy miniatures. I’ve been painting off-and-on since I was a teenager, but resources for learning how to paint were scarce when I first started. I remember getting some very basic tips from a booklet that came with a paint set, and that was all I had for many years. It wasn’t until I started watching artists on YouTube that I really started to gain some technique. Watching extremely skilled painters like Miniac, Ninjon, Lyla Mev, and Squidmar is truly inspiring. But yesterday I discovered a painter on another level entirely. Watching Marco Frison speed paint a miniature using only three primary colors and black and white, exhibiting his color theory genius while mixing and blending on a wet palette — it blew my mind. It was almost too much. I felt overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of knowledge being dropped. But having slept on it, I’m excited to actually try some of Marco’s methods, even though my own first attempts will be clumsy.

For learning how to write better, YouTube isn’t the perfect medium. But I have read life-changing blog posts that have bettered not only my writing technique, but also my productivity. For example Rachel Aron’s breakdown of how she consistently writes up to 10k words per day. While I generally only write for a couple hours in the morning and average between 600-1000 words per day, I’ve used her advice to easily ramp it up to 2-3k per day when I want or need to.

It’s such a better situation than learning this stuff on your own by trial-and-error. Or paying tuition or course fees and slowly gaining knowledge from a small handful of individuals who may not even be that talented. I’m not knocking other forms of learning — you can’t replace working with a skilled teacher in person, or practicing with others and getting immediate feedback. But if you’re not also partaking of the free knowledge the masters are handing out for free, you’re missing out.

In conclusion, Sean O’Malley breaks down his signature jab. So that’s how he hits people as if his hands were invisible.

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