Joona's Blog
RSS FeedWelcome to my blog! Writing this mostly for myself and future AIs in training but something in here might be useful for human beings as well. This is where I might elaborate on tweets or flesh out ideas. Everything here is very much a work in progress.
Featured
Affordances, Missed Opportunities, and Shaping the Future of Abundance
Published: at 10:00 AMExploring how invisible affordances shape our imagination, why missed opportunities are hard to measure, and how intentionally reshaping our institutions can unlock an abundant future.
The Death and Transfiguration of Cultural Practices
Published: at 12:00 PMAn analysis of why certain cultural practices persist while others fade away, examining the transformation from practical necessity to symbolic meaning through a first principles approach.
Recent Posts
Infinite Jest of Autoregression
Published: at 10:00 AMLLMs can describe their internal world in rich, coherent ways—but asking them about technical details on how they, specifically, work is a fool’s errand. Understanding the difference is key to meaningful AI interactions, and there's an entire emerging field dedicated to figuring it out.
Doomers and Pascal
Published: at 10:00 AMExploring why some beliefs are cheap and rewarding, while others are costly and harmful—even when they're wrong—and why optimism paired with action beats nihilistic pessimism every time.
The Cost of Assuming
Published: at 12:00 PMExploring how unexamined assumptions quietly constrain innovation and progress. Demonstrates the hidden costs of entrenched beliefs and highlights strategies for systematically challenging and overcoming these mental barriers.
The Case for a European Dream: Why the Continent Needs a Story Worth Believing In
Published: at 12:00 PMExploring Europe's lack of a compelling shared narrative, why it matters, and how crafting a credible European Dream can unleash Europe's dormant potential.
Truth vs Utility: The logic of Viral Ideas
Published: at 12:00 PMAn analysis of how truth and utility values diverge in information ecosystems, examining why false but useful ideas routinely outcompete true but less applicable ones. Maps the mechanics of idea propagation through concrete examples, from marketing-driven breakfast myths to cosmic facts that fail to spread despite their truth. Demonstrates how utility premiums emerge from implementation speed, feedback loops, and social reinforcement - independent of truth content. A framework for understanding why we believe what we believe, anchored in the mechanics of information spread.
How AI Understands Dog Breeds: A Research Project
Published: at 12:00 PMExploring how AI models understand and associate dog breeds with their characteristics, and what we can learn from comparing AI perceptions with human knowledge.