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Forms are a convenient way for bureaucracies to collect information. They’re convenient because they offload the work to the patient/customer/taxpayer. The shift in labor led to an explosion of self-serve forms, but the built-in inefficiencies punish everyone. The fundamental inefficiency is this–the form creator has to imagine all the possibilities before printing the form that […]
6 months ago

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More from Seth's Blog

Daydream fatigue

Spend enough time inventing possible futures in your head and you won’t have any time to build the future we will all share. Time to get to work.

11 hours ago 1 votes
A billion choices

Game theory has a lousy name. When most people think of games, they think of commercial stuff for kids, like Chutes and Ladders or possibly Monopoly. But a game is simply a system where humans, facing scarcity, make choices. Scarcity leads to choices and to competition. It turns out that our culture, our commerce and […]

yesterday 2 votes
Education is free, learning is expensive

That’s a complete reversal of how it used to be. Colleges used to be measured by how many books they had in the library. Access to courses was restricted. If knowledge was power, controlling access was essential. They even call it the ‘admissions office.’ Part of the status that comes from higher education is that […]

2 days ago 4 votes
As hot as possible

At sea level, water boils at 100 degrees C. It doesn’t matter how much more heat you use, steam is what you get. It turns out that water this hot makes lousy coffee. Tea too. And an amp turned up to 11 doesn’t sound that good. Just because we can send more emails, hustle a […]

3 days ago 4 votes
Use a lot of words

Verbosity is the new brevity. Google felt like a miracle. We could type just a word or two (“blog“) and it would magically guess what we wanted and take us there. This shortcut spread from Google to the search built into online shopping as well. How convenient. A few words and done. AI isn’t like […]

4 days ago 4 votes

More in creative

Daydream fatigue

Spend enough time inventing possible futures in your head and you won’t have any time to build the future we will all share. Time to get to work.

11 hours ago 1 votes
A Visualization of the History of Technology: 1,889 Innovations Across Three Million Years

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So holds the third and most famous of the “three laws” originally articulated by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Even when it was first published in the late nineteen-sixties, Clarke’s third law would have felt true to any resident of the developed world, surrounded by and […]

12 hours ago 1 votes
A billion choices

Game theory has a lousy name. When most people think of games, they think of commercial stuff for kids, like Chutes and Ladders or possibly Monopoly. But a game is simply a system where humans, facing scarcity, make choices. Scarcity leads to choices and to competition. It turns out that our culture, our commerce and […]

yesterday 2 votes
Hear the World’s Oldest Instrument, the “Neanderthal Flute,” Dating Back Over 43,000 Years

Several years ago, we brought you a transcription and a couple of audio interpretations of the oldest known song in the world, discovered in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit and dating back to the 14th century B.C.E.. Likely performed on an instrument resembling an ancient lyre, the so-called “Hurrian Cult Song” or “Hurrian Hymn […]

3 days ago 4 votes
Use a lot of words

Verbosity is the new brevity. Google felt like a miracle. We could type just a word or two (“blog“) and it would magically guess what we wanted and take us there. This shortcut spread from Google to the search built into online shopping as well. How convenient. A few words and done. AI isn’t like […]

4 days ago 4 votes