When pressed to explain my post on motivation the other day, in particular the idea of motivation as the gradient of the value function, I found my explanation, and indeed my own understanding, unsatisfactory. Since I like to aim for complete understanding, I thought I’d spend a little time on value function gradients and why [...]
In an otherwise interesting but ill-thought-out comparison of cuckoldry and rape, I found this little nugget: We all know that women tend to be more expressive about their complaints – you can’t beat ‘em for wailing and gnashing of teeth. Really? That hasn’t been my experience. And anyway, even by the flimsy standards of economics [...]
The turning point came in 1999, when Calagione was watching a cooking show on television. The chef, who was making a soup, was saying that several grindings of pepper, added to the pot at different points, would give the dish more flavor than a single dose added at the beginning. Not long afterward, at a [...]