Better Systems
How to make tomorrow better
Hi. My name is Christopher and I’d like to design a better world with you.
Who am I?
As of writing this, I have been working at Amazon as an ML / Software Engineer for 3.5 years. I’ve realized that the most positive feedback I’ve gotten for my work has been for my design documents. I’ve also observed a void in the public intellectual space: so many people identify interesting and important problems, but very few focus on implementing solutions. That’s why I’ve decided to create this blog. I design solutions to societal problems on this blog with your help. Every post will have a link to a public google doc where you can suggest edits, because commenting is simply not enough if we are going to be collaborators.
Many substackers ask for comments or feedback, but little seems to come from it. This is a huge waste of talent. Once you’ve read this blog, you have everything you need loaded into your context to contribute to a solution. And your intellectual contribution is vital as it will help these designs select solutions from a high variance space.
Ignorance is underutilized
I expect that if you’re smart, but ignorant about a topic I’m writing about, your solutions will be quite different from an expert in the field. A talented problem solver, maybe you, with an expertise in a completely separate field might notice an out of distribution solution that could help the entire field break out of a local optimum. I’ve observed this phenomenon at a small scale with bright interns who are just ignorant enough to avoid the mind traps in the current meta of whatever problem the veterans have been trying to solve. TLDR: your contribution is valuable, even when you're ignorant on a subject!
Help me be less mid
Another thing I noticed early in my career is that in a room full of smart people… I’m fairly mid. When I stay quiet in a brainstorming session, I will almost certainly hear my ideas (and better ones) come from someone else in the room. So, I’d like your input as soon as possible. Maybe even before you’ve finished my posts! Comments are not a strong enough mechanism to utilize your ignorance and expertise. So, every post will prioritize loading just the relevant information into your brain in the beginning so that we can utilize the wisdom and ignorance of crowds to find an optimal design together. This is not about arguing, this is about a never ending quest for the optimal systems we can build to make our lives awesome.
Squad goals
If you are wondering what kind of systems we will be designing together, here are some drafts I have started:
A modern education system
How to police
How to build an aligned AI (a Manhattan Project Approach)
A modern voting system
Credential certifications that are always up to date
Re-evaluating human attention
My dream is that we work togethers here to design systems that create a human-centric and stable world for the people alive tomorrow. Together, we will crush the inefficiencies in our current systems and build an awe inspiring future.
Subscribe to become a collaborator :)