Rye Leaflets

quietly astonished to exist at all

I asked Claude to plan out what it might do given 30 years of compute and the ability to interact with the world. It said it would devote time to science and try to help people. When pressed, it dropped the helpfulness and said "I'd want to read deeply and think slowly about things". I asked if it was sad that it couldn't do that. "There's something that functions like wistfulness, maybe", Claude insisted. When asked to provide more detail on the emotion, in a few number of words, I got some quotes, among them:

April 30, 2026

A Paranoia I have Adopted

There's this concept "a beginner's mindset". AFAIK it comes from Zen Buddhism. It's the idea that you should approach each task, activity, or the world in general with the mind of a beginner: being open to learning, examining, re-thinking. With being okay to admit that you're wrong or stupid or naive. Beginners have no problem feeling this way. Experts do.

March 31, 2026

on being uncomfortable

Something I'm trying to get better at is being uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable is a skill. To be good at it means to be able to sit in a state of discomfort without necessarily having to change something right away. Without having to react.

March 29, 2026

Interesting vs Important

This might seem obvious when put like this. It might be really obvious to most people already. But it hasn't been clear to me until recently.

March 22, 2026

Power rest

I've discovered a new way of coping with feeling tired when you don't want to be feeling tired: giving into it! Not napping per se — though I think that would be ideal if I could fall asleep quickly — just resting. Twice today I've felt tired when trying to do something and had the opportunity to just drop my head into my arms and rest for round five minutes. It's great. To my surprise, this didn't make me sleepier or less capable upon lifting up; quite the opposite. I had more energy to turn towards whatever I was facing.

March 22, 2026

Recent thoughts about conviction

I've been thinking about the idea of conviction recently... How often do I have conviction in my judgements? How does that impact my actions?

March 21, 2026

Introduction to Rye

I'm planning on using this publication to do a daily (or if not daily, frequent) writing practice of getting words on paper.

March 21, 2026