What the hell is a butter sword?

“One should never debate an idiot, no more than one should use one's best sword to spread butter.”
-Wit, The Way of Kings

Oh, that kind of makes sense

Yeah, no worries. Let it never be said that I don't eventually get around to explaining my obstuse references. Hopefully this naming choice doesn't haunt me for years to come.

Wait, I'm gonna need more than that.

What, the random quote wasn't enough for you? Fine, let's unpack some unnecessarily complicated metaphor-ing. To start us off, here are a few things I happen to have been considering as of late:

I.

I know very little. This is relevant to lead with, as I tend to make a lot of wild accusations about how little everyone knows. Trust me when I say we're all in the same boat here, people, and that it takes one to know one.

II.

A tragic percentage of online discourse is deeply flawed. I'm not motivated enough at the moment for a deep dive into all that right now¹, but suffice to say it grinds my gears how easy it is for people to not change their minds about things these days.

Trying to share thoughts on public forums can be exhausting, which is really sad, because sharing things online is SO valuable. The ease at which we've enabled ourselves to share information over the last 20 years is astounding, and while I want to take advantage of that, people love to yell on the internet.

It's important to have a place in which one can note down a thought or two. This is me creating such a space without having to resort to tweeting.

III.

The consumer tech world is a really weird place to be, especially for a guy like me at the point in one's career that I'm at.

Morally, in our day-to-day we bounce wildly back and forth between "I'm actively improving people's lives with my work!" and "I provide nothing of value to the world." This dichotomy really gets the ol' brain moving around questions of meaning and ideals.

Operationally, there's a lot of downright comical shit that goes down in the engineering space, and it's a lot of fun to talk about.

IV.

Writing is critically important for one's mental development. Since leaving college some undetermined number of years ago, my writing quantity² has dropped to approcimately zilch.

LLMs have robbed an entire generation of the need to write and that kind of terrifies me. I'd like to avoid that fate if I can.

VI.

I could (though I won't) go on for days with the list of things that interest me, and I'd love to take a shot at exploring, explaining, or completely fumbling around in the dark in relation to a number of them!

That doesn't answer my question?

Ah, yes, terribly sorry. How does all of this relate to this concept of a butter sword?

For a brief moment, picture a once-magnificent blade dripping with unwanted dairy product. For me, the image is initially a visceral reminder not to fight unwinnable battles. Why would you use your best sword (spend time crafting well-thought-out arguments on Twitter) to spread butter (fruitlessly try and change the mind of a random internet user who adamently disagrees with your worldview)?

Historically, while I love a good unanswerable question, I've historically been a proponent of this way of thinking when it comes to the social internet.³ It's not hard to adopt the perspective that the web is a black hole where good opinions go to die in a swirling event horizon of uneducated takes, and that arguments with no clear positive outcome (e.g. my correct worldview proved victorious over their incorrect one) are a waste of time. Life is a lot easier this way - you waste less time on pursuits that leave you feeling drained and despairing for humanity's future.

Under that worldview, writing a blog, or posting a bunch on social media, or having really any sort of thought presence online would seem like a waste of time.

But despite knowing very little, and despite some hopelessness regarding issues raised above, there are a few things that I do know or at least want to explore further which I think would be fun to share with people if for no other reason than refining my own thinking. It's rarely a bad exercise to open-mindedly share your thoughts on the open thought market to see just how far off the track you are.

And that means that recently I've been thinking more along the lines of, every now and again, reciting some ancient vows and going to the mantlepiece and unsheathing I-can't-believe-it's-not-Excalibur and using it to spread some butter. Just for fun.

...so anyways, the moral of the story is that I'm writing a blog now. Mostly I'll stick to what I know, stories from the tech world, commentaries on philosophy and economics, random vignettes that for some reason get me motivated to put words on a page, that sort of thing. I'll also probably go off the rails every now and again about things I know nothing about. See you around.