Favorite Essays of 2023
My favorite things I read from the past year, golf and non-golf related
Non-golf
How to Do Great Work by Paul Graham (paulgraham.com)
People who do great work are not necessarily happier than everyone else, but they're happier than they'd be if they didn't. In fact, if you're smart and ambitious, it's dangerous not to be productive. People who are smart and ambitious but don't achieve much tend to become bitter.
Paul Graham has an exceptional collection of writings on his website, but doesn’t publish as frequently anymore. I was excited to read this piece and it exceeded my expectations in terms of its logic, depth and wholeness. His blueprint for what constitutes and how to accomplish great work was motivational as someone who believes they have the capability to do great work. The challenge of achieving something great with your life can be quite daunting, but through the way Paul dispatches it all you want to do is go out and execute. It’s easier said than done, but hopefully I can look back upon my life and confidently say I did great work.
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreesen (pmarca or a16z)
We believe we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop, and drive them both to infinity.
We believe we should use the feedback loop of intelligence and energy to make everything we want and need abundant.
We believe the measure of abundance is falling prices. Every time a price falls, the universe of people who buy it get a raise in buying power, which is the same as a raise in income. If a lot of goods and services drop in price, the result is an upward explosion of buying power, real income, and quality of life.
We believe that if we make both intelligence and energy “too cheap to meter”, the ultimate result will be that all physical goods become as cheap as pencils. Pencils are actually quite technologically complex and difficult to manufacture, and yet nobody gets mad if you borrow a pencil and fail to return it. We should make the same true of all physical goods.
I don’t know if I’m fully onboard with the entire vision laid out by Marc Andreesen in this manifesto, but the excitement and positivity that abounds throughout this vision of the future is intoxicating. I highlighted a passage that I do sincerely agree with related to the abundance mindset. The abundance mindset was featured in my favorite essays of 2022 as well. I wholeheartedly believe we should be creating as much energy as possible in order to have an excess, and then channel that excess into beneficial projects that require lots of energy, such as desalination. The rest of the piece continues to offer a reprise from gloomy forecasts for our future. In so many ways human life is better now than it ever has been, let’s keep pushing to continue that trend.
The Brock Purdy Question by Ethan Strauss (House of Strauss)
The conventional wisdom initially has trouble with the arrival of a guy like this, but perhaps it shouldn’t. Neither player, Green or Purdy, would have had a prayer of being drafted in the first place if not for their decision making powers. If a dude’s body type overtly doesn’t fit in the league, he’s obviously bringing something else to the table. Instead of being aghast by an unexpected success, it makes more sense to just realize that an ability that brought a player to the scene has since allowed him to triumph within it. Draymond and Brock think fast and the ironic byproduct is that many are slow to adjust their priors to this reality.
I appreciate the Bay Area sports connection that Ethan weaves here between Brock Purdy and Draymond Green. Finding interesting connections like this is what I am trying to do here at Lonny Likes as well. Framing one’s evaluation of Brock Purdy through the lens of evaluating Draymond Green was novel to me and provided much clarity for how to view the former. Brock Purdy is definitely good at football and he’s good fundamentally because he doesn’t do bad things. Purdy makes quick and correct decisions as a quarterback, even if they are obvious and easy decisions. Just how good Purdy is may be up for debate since he certainly benefits from the strong supporting cast and coaches around him, but Purdy executes well when he has to make decisions. Therefore, just like Draymond, he is good.
Even More Bay Area House Party by Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten)
“You know who else wanted to kick out money-changers?” asked the youth pastor. Some of the onlookers cheer, and you think you see a few dollars change hands.
“The moneychangers in the Temple were a housing problem!” objects the YIMBY. “If first-century Jerusalem had been vertically denser, there would have been room for banks in the commercial district. The only reason they had to invade the Temple grounds was because of artificial land scarcity.“
“We don’t even need moneychangers!” says the crypto bro. “Automated market makers can do that! This is all so obvious! People are ignoring it just because of a temporary market downturn, but as soon as crypto goes up again - “
“You know who else rose again?” asks the youth pastor.
“Land value tax could have solved that,” says the YIMBY. The crowd suddenly goes silent. Did he just say that land value tax could have solved the Resurrection of the Christ?
Speaking of Bay Area, Scott Alexander expanded upon his satirical series which mocks the wacky conversations regarding the online zeitgeist that you may encounter at a Bay Area house party. I don’t often laugh when I am reading, but I do when I read these. Don’t miss out on his more recent publication Son of Bride of Bay Area House Party.
Who Predicted 2022? by Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten)
The “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis says that averaging many ordinary people’s predictions produces a “smoothed-out” prediction at least as good as experts. That proved true here. An aggregate created by averaging all 508 participants’ guesses scored at the 84th percentile, equaling superforecaster performance.
There are fancy ways to adjust people’s predictions before aggregating them that outperformed simple averaging in the previous experiments. Eric tried one of these methods, and it scored at the 85th percentile, barely better than the simple average.
Crowds can beat smart people, but crowds of smart people do best of all. The aggregate of the 12 participating superforecasters scored at the 97th percentile.
If you aren’t reading Scott Alexander, you should be. Scott was featured heavily in my favorite essays of 2022 and that continues to be the case this year. I really cannot recommend his blog and now Substack enough. He covers so many topics with consistently excellent writing and a variety of styles as shown via the two fantastic but vastly different pieces I have just linked. Not only is he generating humorous tales, but he’s also running prediction contests among his massive, wide-ranging and intelligent reader base. Here, Scott recaps his probabilistic prediction contest for what would would occur in the world in 2022. The results were summarized and released in early 2023. I found the nugget that the performance of the aggregation of the masses’ predictions equaled the average superforecaster’s performance quite interesting. Markets are efficient and this reaffirms there is a lot of value in what a market is predicting. Look for the 2023 prediction contest results soon.
Are you serious? by Visakan Veerasamy (visa’s voltaic verses)
Anyway so– it’s actually quite rational for most people to assume that any other random person probably isn’t serious. That they don’t really mean what they say. Lots of people play-act seriousness for social reasons, but quit when the going gets tough. So it makes sense that lots of people are broadly cynical. Cynicism is a completely reasonable defense against fraud and bullshit. The trouble with cynicism as a defense mechanism is that you can get so good at it that you inadvertently also defend yourself against anything good happening for you.
I want to consider myself a serious person in the way Visa defines it, but I don’t I yet qualify. I am still a deeply unserious person, as are most people. For one, I am deeply unserious about this blogging project, which is something that’s bothered me for years. It’s something that I want to change. This essay was a good reminder that you actually need to do the stuff you are serious about, otherwise you are not serious about them. This pairs well with Paul Graham’s piece that I linked above.
Second Street Housing: Living next to, but not on top of main street by Alfred Twu (alfredtwu.medium.com)
Second Street Housing — so named since the street next to Main Street in many cities is 2nd Street — puts the biggest new apartment buildings behind, not on top of, the main commercial strip, separated by an alley for deliveries. Further back, still within a five-minute walk, are mid-rise apartments, and beyond that, a mix of houses, duplexes, fourplexes and courtyard apartments.
This is a very short read with some lovely renderings. I found the concepts laid out here easy to internalize since I live on street that’s a spitting image of “corridor zoning” in Chicago. My street has taller apartments buildings and businesses, while everything nearby on the secondary streets is strictly residential. I had never really considered the impact of corridor zoning on the urban environment before, but there are indeed several drawbacks which Alfred outlines. I think this new zoning concept would excel since it creates a more gentile urbanism. I’m glad I was introduced to it.
The Reebok Club C 85 Is the Last Sneaker I'll Ever Buy by Jake Woolf (GQ)
After four years of abuse, the soles have been eroded to the point of actually tearing apart. Even the occasional scrubdown of the leather can’t dislodge the dirt that’s so deeply embedded into those chasmic creases. They’ve been disqualified from appearing in any halfway-decent public space. This irredeemable thrashed-ness is proof of my love—and it’s why you, too, should consider the style if you too want a sneaker that’ll never let you down.
An extremely personal and validating choice here. Confirmation bias galore as that excerpt applies perfectly to my former pair of Reebok Club C 85s. I loved those shoes and I never wanted to get rid of them. I had them for about seven years. I never laced them. They were my favorite pair of shoes ever. I have rotated through different white sneakers for the last 15 years of my life and I had created a rule in my head every time I needed new ones: never buy the same pair twice in a row. I told myself I always had to mix it up. For the past year, however, I was at an impasse. I really didn’t want any other shoes, but my current pair had completely deteriorated. Then one morning I woke up and read this piece. My perspective was flipped on its head. What I had previously been dreading, deciding what pair of shoes to get next, did not need to be a decision at all. These shoes are the best; these shoes never let me down. Why change? I don’t need a different pair of shoes, just reup on what you’ve fallen in love with. So that is exactly what I did this Fall. I am once again excited about the future.
Golf
Comets by Kevin Van Valkenburg (No Laying Up)
Someday, I know, one of my daughters may have to pick me up when I am broken. There will be a time when my body, or my mind, deteriorates to the point where I cannot hide my weaknesses from them. But that’s okay. There is much to be done in the interim, courses to see and memories to make and majors to cover. All any of us can hope for is that we’ve led a life that makes someone we love want to find us when we’re vulnerable, someone who will prop us up, nurse us back to health, and steer us toward the proper tees, confident this is right where we belong.
A poetic end to Kevin’s piece which announced he was going to be working full time at one of my favorite companies, No Laying Up. The basic desire laid out here stuck with me throughout the whole year. At the end of the day, when we’re in need, all we really want is to be surrounding and supported by those we love.
Growing the game vs. showing the game by D.J. Piehowski (No Laying Up)
Golf has a comical amount of inhibitors for new fans. It’s brutally difficult to play, to understand, to follow and, perhaps most of all, to pay for. It takes far too long and is, even on its best days, almost irredeemably dorky.
The PGA TOUR’s Netflix series is not very compelling. When attempting to copy and paste a formula that worked for the opulent and dramatic world of Formula 1 racing on to something that’s almost irredeemably dorky, it probably is not going to excel. This review covered all the positives and negatives of the show fairly. It’s tough to make golf cool, because a lot of the time golf is not cool. It’s almost irredeemably dorky (I love that phrasing), and that’s what primarily shines through in the show.
What makes a golf tournament entertaining? by Data Golf (Data Golf)
In this post we propose 3 simple metrics to capture how entertaining a PGA Tour tournament was. The motivation for these metrics comes from the idea that golf tournaments are more entertaining when 1) there are lots of players with a chance to win, 2) there are frequent and sudden changes in who is likely to win, and 3) there are top players with a chance to win. When all 3 of these conditions are met, it usually makes for an entertaining tournament.
Now that’s an excellent, and correct, distillation of what makes a golf tournament entertaining. This is a valuable way to evaluate golf tournaments. However, what makes this article stand out, since those criteria are relatively obvious to come up with, is that the guys at Data Golf ran a model using these criteria on their live model’s data from the past few years of tournaments. The results of model are then posted illuminating the events which achieved the top cumulative scores. I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed people posting the results of their model, whatever it may be.
The Justin Thomas Dichotomy by Chris Almeida (The Fried Egg)
Is anything actually interesting about Justin Thomas?
To anybody not already interested in golf, the answer is no. Thomas is a third-generation PGA pro from a warm-weather state who played golf at a strong college program. He has two first names and few defining physical attributes—he is not particularly short or tall, not too muscled or scarily slight. He would not stand out at a country club.
This, I think, is why the story of Justin Thomas is so often told through his friendships. It’s easy. A golfer does not become a superstar by simply being very good. There are very few golfers, just one or two in a generation, who are good enough to become stars without selling a story—this is something that players like Bryson DeChambeau and Max Homa understand. Only the great ones are allowed the luxury of being boring. And so, when we look at Thomas and see neither tragedy nor unexpected triumph nor any particular quirk, good or bad, we go searching for something else. Is this the best we can find?
I’ll be the first to highlight any piece which criticizes the flaws of Justin Thomas, but I also thought there was a lot of originality here. Later on, the author touches on the more common complaint about Thomas: his thirstiness. Yet, this critique of Thomas’ character as insipid was something I had never considered before. While I have some additional opinions, this touches on an element of Thomas that I could never quite pinpoint previously. And as a person who has probably spent too much time thinking about Justin Thomas, any new angle or insight is appreciated. This argument helped me paint a more complete picture of who Justin Thomas is, despite never meeting him.
Two Years Since Bryson’s Big Moment by Will Knights (The Fried Egg)
Two years ago on the weekend at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Bryson DeChambeau grabbed the attention of the golf world, and arguably the larger sports world. After hinting that he would attempt to carry the entire lake on Bay Hill’s par-5 6th hole, the beefy five-layer DeChambeau stepped up and did the damn thing, blasting his tee shot 370 yards. He did it again during the final round and went on to win the event by one stroke over Lee Westwood.
Bryson DeChambeau is a maniac and a weirdo. Though he has chilled out a bit recently, he’s also been in the spotlight way less often since departing for LIV. You probably have forgotten how funny and wacky some of the stuff he has done over the years was. This article provides a timeline of all those incredible little moments. Enjoy a comical trip down memory lane.
Thanks for reading and have a great 2024.