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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 14/07/2025

I mean, if it leads to more effective written communication...

Geordie LaForge meme.

Top panel: Writing well to get better results when working with humans

Bottom panel: Writing well to get better results when working with AI agents

Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 05/07/2025

Robustness work is about enlarging the system's competence envelope, resilience work is about improving the system's future behavior when it inevitably breaches its competence envelope.

An oval labeled "robustness", and a dotted region that extends the oval's boundary, labeled "resilience".

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 04/07/2025

I'm a fan of good documentation, but I also recognize its limits.

Woman yelling at cat meme.

Woman: You should have documented the behavior!
Cat: You wouldn't have read the docs.

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 24/06/2025

My reaction when I read about Meta trying to poach AI researchers from OpenAI with $100 million signing bonuses.

Bell curve meme.

Left-hand side: Study CS
Middle: AI is eating all the coding jobs!
Right-hand side: Study CS

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 15/06/2025

My general feelings about counterfactuals.

Principal Skinner saying: gonna, wonna, shonna

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 31/05/2025

The inevitability of future migration, a lesson never learned.

Anakin Padme meme:

Anakin: What a huge pain it was to migrate off the old system
Padme: The new system will be easier to sunset later, right?
Anakin: (no text)
Padme: (no text)

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 26/05/2025

Advertise your account with a Simpsons image

Radioactive Man from the Simpsons screaming: My eyes! The goggles do nothing!

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 15/05/2025

“Yes, but which hole was the *root cause*?”

Visual depiction of swiss cheese model of accidents, with slices of swiss cheese and an arrow that passes through the holes.

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 13/05/2025

I never appreciated how funny this Simpsons joke was until I moved to the U.S.

Image of Homer Simpson on television with the text “OUT OF STATE” superimposed

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 11/05/2025

I’ve never understood the “constitution-in-exile” thing.

Butterfly meme. Above the character’s head, it says “emoluments clause”. Under the butterfly, it says, “$400M jet from Qatar”. At the bottom, it says “Is this constitution-in-exile?”

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 08/05/2025

Evergreen observation, from informationisbeautiful.net/visualizatio...

Text that reads: Simple explanations are often compelling & convincing but not always accurate

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 10/04/2025

This is how I imagine interactions go between GOP members and Trump:

Marge Simpson saying to Bart: It’s good that you made that awful thing, Bart. It’s real good.

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 23/03/2025

I searched DuckDuckGo for "ieee transactions software engineering" and the first two hits are for IEEE Xplore's staging environment, which is apparently public.

Screenshot of duckduckgo search of "ieee transactions software engineering"

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 09/02/2025

And they say that religion is on the decline in America

Sign on a door that says: "We will be closing on Sunday 9th of February in observance of Super Bowl Day"

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 29/01/2025

LLMs are really good at giving plausible-sounding answers to queries.

Futurama screenshot, with the entire crew gathered together.

"It can answer any 'What if?' question to within one-tenth of a plausibility unit."

"That's so plausible I can't believe it."

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 28/12/2024

The current discourse on twitter, as told through screenshots of Matt Groening shows.

Left: Futurama screenshot. Head of Richard Nixon saying: "Good evening, ignorant pigs. Put down your crack pipes and your beer bongs."

Right: Simpsons screenshot. Homer Simpson saying "Our schools are so jam-packed with immigrants, kids like Bart have lost the will to learn."

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 15/12/2024

This was a great post on the value of qualitative description of a complex system with feedback. Also gave me a good excuse to play with loopy: bit.ly/ca-loopy

Screen shot of loopy showing feedback loops in calcium homeostasis system.

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 27/11/2024

Fun with the Alloy modeling language: Floyd's cycle detection algorithm (tortoise and hare): github.com/lorin/tortoi...

Output of Alloy Analyzer that shows a linked list with a cycle.

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Lorin Hochstein @norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com · 25/11/2024

“We haven’t had any high-severity incidents in a while. The work we put into improving reliability has clearly paid off!”

Lisa Simpson saying to Homer: “By your logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.”

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