Rules of the blog

The rules I've set for myself

This is an informal post to guide my writing on this blog. I’m posting it here, partly to hold myself accountable and partly to let you know what to expect.

While I’ve attempted to write out some of my goals for this Substack in my inaugural post, writing subsequent posts has led me to lay out some ‘rules of the game’ for myself going forward. I reserve the right to edit these as my ideas progress and my goals develop. But I’ll keep a log of these changes on this post so that I (and you) can remember the journey.

My rules:

1. This Substack focuses on technological changes and the trade-offs technology brings us using the perspectives of history and sociology. While I will deviate from this now and again, I will create a new Substack if I decide this (already very broad focus) is not wide enough.

2. I only get to deviate so far. There are some topics I do not want to see myself writing on. They include:

   1. Politics. I hope this post will be the only one to include the words “Republican” and “Democrat.” The world is awash with political opinions; my rants add nothing to the din.

   2. Media criticisms. As I recently admitted, I’m not a literary critic, and I do not want to descend into giving my thoughts on TV shows and novels to ensure I have something to write about.

   3. Wikipedia posts. As I intend to write about in the future, the value of posts like “Here’s the history of X” is low between LLMs and Wikipedia. If I’m just summarizing Wikipedia or writing something ChatGPT could give you, I will delete the post.

3. This is an informal blog, so I won’t hold myself to the standards of The Atlantic or The Globe. But, I will do my best to use the Chicago Style and ensure that every post is grammatically correct, does not repeat something I’ve said previously, and is something I would have been happy to see in my feed.

4. Contra Tyler Cowen, writing every day may improve your skills, but posting every day is the surest way to bring down the average quality of your work. I plan to post between once a week and once a month. This Substack is not for all of my ideas, but for my best ones, such as they are.