"Choosing adds. Deciding subtracts."
On the difference between adding options and eliminating them. The etymology of decision as cutting away. Why choosing keeps possibilities alive while deciding ends them, and why that ending is precisely the point.
"Cheap is about spending less. Frugal is about spending right."
Two people can make the exact same choice with their money and have completely different relationships with that choice. One resembles deprivation. The other resembles freedom. The distinction matters more than most of us realize.
"Then you remember what you're talking to."
On why next-token prediction creates the feeling of comprehension. Language models achieve something that looks like understanding by learning the shape of human thought, even without access to its substance.
"Rest doesn't exist without something to rest from."
On mutual dependence between apparent opposites. Courage requires fear to exist. Rest requires effort to mean anything. Freedom requires constraint to take form. Why the language of balance misleads, and why these pairs don't offset each other but generate each other.
"The breathing room evaporates before you ever get to take that first deep breath."
You finally get the salary bump you've been working toward, but three months later, you're still wondering where the money goes. This Dispatch explores what lifestyle inflation looks like from the inside, and why earning more rarely translates to feeling like you have more.
"She knows none of these objects have feelings. And yet."
On anthropomorphism as a basic feature of human cognition. When systems respond, remember, and use the word 'I,' something ancient in us registers mind. The question is what we do with that instinct as the systems grow more capable.
"It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."
Hofstadter's Law and the recursive nature of delay in complex systems. On how corrections introduce new structure, how progress generates fresh complexity, and why mature systems must learn when to remember and when to forget.
"He ordered two coffees every morning. I never saw anyone join him."
On attention, restraint, and the stories we build in place of contact. Through an observed detail and its disappearance, unasked questions often endure longer than the ones we resolve.
"Thinking becomes inheritance. Wisdom becomes something you borrow rather than build."
First principles thinking, examined through the conditions that produced it rather than the conclusions it reached. Understanding begins with a willingness to remain with unresolved questions long enough for explanations to earn their closure.
"Once you choose, something is no longer available to you."
On the hidden costs of choice and the losses of avoiding it. Indecision preserves possibility at the expense of depth, while commitment, despite what it closes off, is what allows clarity, responsibility, and compounding to emerge.
"Everyone is right, and everyone is talking past each other."
On how the word intelligence is used to mean different things across contexts. Many disputes about intelligence are really disputes about values. Treating it as a single measure obscures the distinct capacities we actually care about.
"Enough is not a number you reach. It is a relationship you build."
On money, margin, and the difference between accumulation and stability. Enough reframed not as a financial target but as a relationship that shapes how income, obligation, and attention are experienced over time.
"Some books have ideas but read like memos. Other books have craft but avoid anything that could be applied."
An introduction to Supercritical Books' organizing principle. This piece traces the gap between insight and craft in contemporary publishing, introduces the idea of 'supercritical' transformation, and outlines the standards and readership the imprint is designed to serve.
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