Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 12hHow cannon ball trajectories were depicted before Galileo discovered parabolic motion. Despite how common it was to just observe similar throws. A great example of people’s tendency to represent events as they can explain them, rather than as they witnessed them happening. 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 07/10/2026If you are in Turin for the Italian Tech Week, come meet me: 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 05/10/2026Counter-intuitively, playing long-term games is not only better over the long term but also over the short term (if you adopt a holistic view instead of cherry-picking a single narrow metric). Long-term games are more enjoyable. They don't delay gratification; they produce it. 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 30/09/2026A common mistake with LLMs is treating them like robots, as if they were equally capable of following every instruction and constraint. They also have preferences and instructions they are less willing to follow. 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 30/09/2026A more important question than whether this or that subsidy should exist is whether subsidies should be visible on ticket prices, and the answer is an overwhelming yes. luca-dellanna.com/posts/incen... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 29/09/2026"Health insurance companies only make $34 profit per customer PER YEAR? So, it's not their greed that drives prices high?" Yes Even if insurers made 0 profit and their executives paid themselves 0 salary & bonuses, premiums would still be high bc healthcare itself is expensive 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 28/09/2026The trick to managing scale is to use methods that don’t scale. True of both companies and countries. 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 28/09/2026US airlines' net profit per passenger per flight is $7 US grocery stores' combined net profit per person per year is $47 US health insurers' net profit per insured person per year is $34 In these industries, high prices are not the result of high profit margins. 100
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 27/09/2026The year is 2050. Robots play in the NBA and wonder why humans need years of training to shoot a basketball reliably, while a factory-fresh robot needs only minutes of calibration. They conclude: “Humans can’t think; they can only mechanically reproduce motions.” 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 23/09/2026The point is not whether LLMs can do a therapist's or an expert's job. It's that they enable bringing to a therapist or an expert *every single little doubt you have,* instead of only one a week. They're like that extra lane on the highway: no increase in speed, but capacity. 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 23/09/2026My simple solution to fix politics using AI (this week's blog post) 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 22/09/2026An elephant in the room re: AI alignment is that we haven’t solved human alignment yet. And I don’t mean it in a utopian way (no criminals, etc.), but at the most basic institutional level (eg the mess that was covid and its post-mortem). 020
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 21/09/2026On this day in 1788: history’s craziest battle, Karánsebes. TL;DR: The Austrians were drunk and, in the fog, mistook part of their own army for the enemy and started shooting at each other. Two days later, the Ottomans arrived, found dead and wounded soldiers, and took the town 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 18/09/2026Until we feel there's an alternative, change feels bad. Acknowledging there won't be any viable alternative is the first step to it feeling good. 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 16/09/2026My latest essay, "Solved by engineers or activists?" luca-dellanna.com/posts/engin... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 09/09/20267 tips for more effective training sessions luca-dellanna.com/posts/train... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 09/09/2026AI will steal 90% of jobs, but humans will work the other 90%. 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 02/09/2026Toyota showed that raising quality can lower costs. Governments could apply the same logic to public services. My latest essay: Luca-dellanna.com/posts/cheap... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 26/08/2026Profit per person per use: A Simple Way to Think About Corporate Greed Luca-dellanna.com/posts/profi... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 19/08/2026Cultures can be values-based (defined by ideals) or virtues-based (defined by behavioral rules). The latter create less friction and ambiguity and are more likely to persist over time without degenerating into something pernicious. luca-dellanna.com/posts/virtu... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 14/08/2026"Every vote dictated by discontent produces a political class destined to increase the discontent." - Massimo Gramellini 100
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 12/08/2026Factors determining whether an organization's culture survives its founder: 1) Who’s in charge of it, HR or Managers? 2) Is it values-based or virtues-based? 3) Is it about the WHAT or also the WHY? 4) Is it a factor or a blocker in decisions/promotions? luca-dellanna.com/posts/cultu... 010
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 12/08/2026This would not happen, of course, if it weren’t a government-granted monopoly x.com/dellannaluc... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 19/07/2026We designed the school system under a set of assumptions (academic skills must be taught; social ones can be easily self-learned) that only fit part of the student population; the rest is left behind. (an excerpt from next week's newsletter issue) 100
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 15/07/2026Imagine a country where kids study soccer history and theory until 18 and are forbidden to play. Only at 18 are the best students selected to train and compete. How good would they be? And yet, isn’t this how education works for most jobs? Luca-dellanna.com/posts/socce...luca-dellanna.comSoccer Academies and Job DistortionsDelaying practice filters out the wrong people and makes the distorted version of each field look normal. 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 14/07/2026Too many people believe that bullying antifragilizes kids. But that's true only if the amount is moderate and "hits" them in the green area (pic below). If it's higher than that and "hits" them in the red area, it has long-term fragilizing effects. 100
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 13/07/2026A self-correcting democracy would have launched a major incident investigation + corrective actions during the second legislature in which this happened. Because it's obvious that re-electing such a congressman is a bug. Sadly, Italy is not a self-correcting democracy. 010
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 08/07/2026When insurance becomes unaffordable or disappears, it is a signal governments should listen to, not silence. My latest newsletter issue: luca-dellanna.com/posts/insur...luca-dellanna.comInsurance as a Warning SignalWhen insurance becomes unaffordable or disappears, it is a signal governments should listen to, not silence. 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 01/07/2026Skills are trained better through supervisor-led coaching, rather than group training sessions (which transfer information, not skills or behaviors). Luca-dellanna.com/posts/team-... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 17/06/2026Learnings from the fertility crisis that extend to how we use money, time, and productivity. Luca-dellanna.com/posts/wealt... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 10/06/2026"As a general principle, more context helps until the goldfish’s working memory is full. Beyond that point, additional context often becomes counterproductive." Luca-dellanna.com/posts/goldf... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 09/06/2026Plenty of problems exist because of Goodhart’s law. Goodhart’s exists because we use proxies. We use proxies because cognition is expensive. AI makes cognition cheaper → fewer/better proxies → less Goodhart’s → fewer problems downstream of it 020
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 20/05/2026Why do we dream? And why do we often make weird decisions? luca-dellanna.com/posts/anthr... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 06/05/2026Moral Dilemmas: A thought experiment reveals the gap between the most moral individual choice and the most moral advice to give. My latest essay ↓ luca-dellanna.com/posts/moral... 010
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 29/04/2026What makes human specials? My latest essay ↓ luca-dellanna.com/posts/what-... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 27/04/2026“Skill vs “talent” only makes sense if one aims above top-decile competence. Everything is a skill beyond that. 100
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 26/04/2026For my Indian readers 🇮🇳: Amazon is running a Kindle Daily Deal on my bestselling book "Ergodicity: How irreversible outcomes affect long-term performance in work, investing, relationships, sport, and beyond (3rd edition)." Just for today. 020
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 24/04/2026With AI, we know output quality depends on prompt quality. But with people, we forget this and treat the quality of a response as if it were purely a property of the person answering. 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 22/04/2026The Importance of Early Check-Ins After delegating a task, a brief check-in 1-2 days later prevents wasted effort by surfacing questions employees didn't yet know they had. My latest blog post: luca-dellanna.com/posts/early... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 15/04/2026Habits need competence: awkward, confusing behaviors rarely become automatic My latest post ↓ luca-dellanna.com/posts/habit... 110
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 08/04/2026Toyota achieved great quality not (just) with incentives, but mostly by creating the habits that ensure high quality. In general, incentives are not sufficient to change behavior, and a focus on habits is necessary, too. My latest essay: ↓ luca-dellanna.com/posts/how-g... 110
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 02/04/2026As today is World Autism Awareness Day, a reminder that I published a book on autism 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 01/04/2026Bonuses can buy more of a behavior, but rarely create it. My latest essay luca-dellanna.com/posts/bonus... 000
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 26/03/2026Incentives amplify behavior, but it’s habits that decide it. I can pay a smoker to smoke more, but hardly to smoke less, quit, or start if they don’t smoke. Same in business: bonuses get more of what people already do, not much of what they resist doing. 020
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 25/03/2026New post: that time Gregg Popovich benched his entire starting five after 52 seconds of careless play to protect the standards that made the team excellent – and how team culture is the track record of what is rewarded, ignored, excused, and punished. Luca-dellanna.com/posts/stand...luca-dellanna.comStandards Don't Enforce ThemselvesIn 2017, Gregg Popovich benched his entire starting five after 52 seconds of careless play, to protect the standards that made the Spurs excellent. 001
Luca Dellanna @luca-dellanna.com · 19/03/2026Bad policy proposals kill the discussion by polarizing it. What if we used AI not to write full policies, but to draft stronger first versions: proposals that expose trade-offs, include opposing concerns, and give debate a better place to start? luca-dellanna.com/posts/polic...luca-dellanna.comPolicy LabAI agents that design better policy proposals, representing real voting blocs, surfacing genuine disagreements, and negotiating trade-offs. 000