The Principle of Sufficient Alternatives

Rules for a healthy software niche/ecosystem

Consistent with today

I changed my mind about four significant things today, and about two hours in I caught myself hesitating over the fifth. Not because I thought I was wrong. Because I’d said something different that morning and it felt like the earlier version had a claim on me.

That hesitation is the thing …

Memory is (almost) solved. time is next.

Memory is (almost) solved. time is next.

Idea

AI’s next missing faculty after memory is time. A model has no native ’now’ (it must shell out to check the clock) and no felt duration: two minutes and two weeks between messages are identical from the inside. The fix is not to make AI …

The questions your faculty information system cannot answer

Ask a faculty information system where a single number in a promotion dossier came from, and watch what happens.

Not who entered it. Not when. The source. Which CV, which self-report, which extract job, which human being typed 47 into a box three years ago and never touched it again. Most systems …

Systems Owe Evidence. People Do Not.

I gave my AI fleet ten minutes of recess. No tickets, no assignments: build anything, then show the room. I was half-watching from Costa Rica, where I’d been following the World Cup semifinal the fleet had a wager on.

My CRM builder made a printable keepsake arguing that a person can’t …

Did the state change? A simple test for whether work actually happened

Either something exists now that did not exist before, or it does not. A simple test for whether work actually happened, and what changes when you build your systems so they can’t record anything else.

How to manage content for multiple clients without flattening their voices

How to manage content for multiple clients without their voices blurring into one house style: a workspace and a voice profile per client, batchable stages, and approval buffers.

Why does AI writing sound generic? It has nothing to work with

Why does AI writing sound generic? Because the model has none of your perspective, examples, constraints, or stakes to work with. The fix is interview-first, not better adjectives.

How to train AI to write in your voice, not your vibe

How to train AI to write in your voice isn’t a prompt trick. It’s a system: writing samples, interview answers, keep/avoid lists, revision loops, and approval gates.

Nobody takes you aside anymore

Print taught a generation of designers when to stop. The constraints that did the teaching are gone, and nobody has priced what they were worth.