The Chuckle Salesman or Paid Subscriptions are Now Enabled
Also, Paid Subscribers can Vote for my Next Piece
I’m going to be completely offline the next few days as I focus on the new addition to my family, whose arrival —knock on wood— should now be imminent. I wanted to get this posted before that happens.
Turning on Payments — Chuckle Salesman
I have turned on paid subscriptions. The substack has reached a certain size where even as I try to talk myself out of it, it just makes sense. Also my wife saw the pledge feature, so kudos to whoever made that. I think this move will enable me to write a lot more frequently in the future. This is primarily my way of returning value to my family for the time I spend writing, and to create more time in which to write.
Here’s how that will work out in practice:
Things relating to my personal life, i.e. the stuff that most people here like, may be subject to a paywall in the future. I’m going to test the waters here to see what works.
Things relating to what I think of as my primary mission, which is popularizing group consensus and sense-making mechanisms for the internet, ie the stuff that only a few of you like at present, will be forever free.
Anything I write on ethics, apologetics, etc will also be free.
Paid subscribers will have a right to vote to partially determine my publishing schedule.
I will sell chuckles, but not anything I think is a universal public good.
Let me also be clear on what I absolutely cannot promise you in regard to my turning on paid subscriptions. I can’t promise you that I will be able to immediately and infinitely fund the building of a Trust Assembly. Depending on the conversion rate, I’ll have to scale probably two orders of magnitude before that becomes feasible. I’ll sell chuckles but not things I think are good for everyone to talk about.
That said, we are putting a pretty great group together. I know a few of you have already left comments signaling interest and I will be reaching out to anyone who is not in the discord chat in the next few weeks. Apologies for the awkwardness of the timing.
That said, if I can meaningfully bring a Trust Assembly closer to existence by using some of this money for that purpose, I will do so. I just don’t know at what scale it will be helpful. Cross your fingers on that last one.
Without further ado, here is our first paid subscriber voting poll. A description and then the vote. Your support is much appreciated.
Biographical Piece #1
A piece about the time I went to work for a wealthy retired carpenter for about six months who was an enormous pervert and owned something like thirty peacocks, who would follow me around all day while I tried to do things like install insulation under his house. I also spent a lot of time thinking about philosophy on this job while bull-nosing tile by myself for several days.
Biographical Piece #2
I break wind in the third grade during silent reading time in the middle of a panic attack brought on the need to desperately break wind. I prayed that it would be silent. It was not. The whole class then blamed it on a developmentally delayed boy who happened to be sitting next to me. This piece will have strong themes of guilt.
Essay on Immortality and Identity
This will feature two very short stories to illustrate a larger point about what it means to “live forever” and then a lengthy explanation about why I physically don’t think you can “live forever” or at least not in anyway that you would like if you think about it at Cosmic scales. One of the short stories will be about a house robot taking care of an elderly man but with a secret twist. The second will be about the time my dad laughed in the face of the Many Worlds interpretation and said “I don’t think about that fucking shit.” A lot of discussion around the meaning of identity here. This will have a surprising amount of references to Nassim Taleb.
Essay on Lunar Olympics
This should be a fun one about the future of space flight which I don’t think people realize is changing rapidly in our lifetimes. My guess is that in a few decades a slightly above average wealthy person in the US will be able to vacation on the moon. I will focus on the idea of an Olympic stadium on the moon and low gravity sports.
Religious Apologetics on Free Will
This will be a rehash of some of what I wrote before, but cleaned up since the audience has expanded. I have my own thought experiment about free will that I’m pretty sure I uniquely created and which I think makes the compatibilist interpretation unavoidable.
Other Stuff in the Hopper I’m Not Quite Ready to Write but Which I Nevertheless Write in my Imagination whenever I Push my Son in his Stroller and may be in Future Polls:
The last installment of “Death Vector” which I’m going to write primarily for all those who were original followers of this substack.
A fantasy short story about a homeless man with one very shiny boot set something like the magical version of post revolution Russia.
A fantasy short story about a kid being mean to his dad for being a goofball only to realize his dorky father is the legendary hero who disappeared.
A long joke post about a movie I want to make when AI tools allow it about “Josh Chris” the famous Nazarean carpenter and cousin to Johnny the Pool Guy from 2000 years ago, that retired at thirty and nobody knows what happened to him. The movie would be set in modern day focusing on a construction crew and it would be a running gag there’s a guy on the work crew who looks like Josh but he refuses to wear safety glasses or a hard hat. That man’s name? Jesus H. Christ.
A long essay about “the Intelligence Speed Limit of the Universe” which will breakdown the kinds of forms I think intelligent agentic minds can actually take in the universe and why we may not see aliens all over the place. Would have at least two takes on the Fermi paradox I’m pretty sure I invented.
The rest of my entire personal biography, which has too many things to write down right now.
A long post about how I think about profanity and why I swear so much but still get taken aback when someone says “bless your heart” or “fuddy duddy” with a lot of venom.
The Post about how I became middle class and how my parents really did everything they could do to not be middle class.
Various other Trust Assembly pieces which I’m going to force down everyone’s throat like spinach, whether anyone votes for them or not.
Discord chat?
Personally I think you're making a mistake to downplay your best writing as just freebie chuckles. It's true, that's your writing people will most likely pay you for. But think what that means. It's your voice, not your ideas that matter; it's the only part of you that most people will care about. Maybe keep some of the good stuff free to maintain your audience..