This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. Most content is free, some is subscriber only; you can subscribe here. Also:
1: Sorry for no review this Friday. I had time-sensitive requests for the open letter and meetups posts, and didn’t want to send you guys three emails in twenty-four hours. Reviews will resume this coming week.
2: Speaking of the open letter - sorry about mishandling it. The authors wanted to make things easy for me and gave me a pre-written post in what they thought was ACX style / my own voice. I hate pretending I wrote things that I didn’t, so I posted it in a quote block and attributed it to the authors. Readers assumed that anything in a quote block attributed to “open letter authors” must be the text of the open letter, and vocally criticized it as inappropriate for open letter text. I edited the post to clarify the situation after a few minutes, but some of you may have read it before then, or by email. You can read the actual open letter text here.
3: Meetups this week in Athens, Markham, Bozeman, Barcelona, Bucharest, Dayton, Dubai, Edinburgh, Erlangen, Klang Valley, Lyon, Manhattan/NYC, Newton (MA), Northampton (MA), Simi Valley, Vancouver, Williamsburg, and Zurich, see the meetups post for more. And two minor corrections: Berkeley is on Tuesday (not Thursday), and London is on Saturday (not Friday).
4: Thanks to everyone who responded to my request for ACX Grants evaluators in aerospace, climatetech, and policy. I got ~two dozen aerospace experts, ~one dozen climatetech experts, and one policy expert (surprising given how confident some of you sound during policy discussions in the comments!) To those of you who responded on aerospace or climatetech - thank you so much, but I probably won’t be contacting most of you. To the one person who responded on policy, you might be getting more than you bargained for (but feel free to say no).
5: New subscriber-only post, The Economy of Envy, about consumer behavior among 1.5 year old twins:
Much of my parenting time is spent trying to minimize toy and book theft. A typical cycle will go like this: Kai will be playing with a toy drum. Lyra will see and try to steal the drum from him. I will prevent her. She will scream. In order to defuse the crisis, I must get some other toy to interest her more. This is very easy, because her level of interest in any toy is directly proportional to how interested other people seem by it. So I will take the digital thermometer, point it at my head, and take my temperature. “Wow,” I will say, “I’m having lots of fun using this thermometer. Might this thermometer be . . . the most fun toy in the entire world???” Then Lyra will scream because she doesn’t have the thermometer. “Fine,” I will say, as if I am making some deep concession. “I suppose you can have the thermometer.” Her face will light up and she will start repeatedly hitting the thermometer button like a rat pulling the deliver-opioids lever.
All of this was to protect Kai’s ability to play with his toy drum. But more likely than not, Kai will have seen this whole spectacle and now he wants the digital thermometer. “Mine! Mine!” he will scream, the toy drum totally abandoned in his newfound distress. “Noooooo!” Lyra will shout, clutching the thermometer close to her chest. “Look!” I tell Lyra. “The drum you wanted is free now! You can have it! Take it! Go!” Sometimes this will solve the whole problem. Lyra will take the drum, Kai will take the thermometer, everyone is happy. Other times Lyra will refuse to give the thermometer up for a stupid drum. Other times she’ll agree, but as soon as Kai sees Lyra playing with the drum, he’ll forget about the thermometer and want the drum back. After some number of cycles, this hopefully converges to both kids having a toy they will tolerate for at least sixty seconds, which is enough time for me to wind down, regain my composure, and prepare for the cycle to start again.
