Writing

• Notes on AI: From Tokens to Protocols June 21, 2026

  Plain definitions of the machinery behind modern AI systems: next-token prediction, context, system prompts, and the file formats, skills, agents, and protocols built on top of them.

• Simplexes and Population Stability June 20, 2026

  How the state of an evolving population becomes a point in a simplex, and what it means for that point, and a strategy, to be stable.

• Five Games Beyond the Prisoner's Dilemma June 19, 2026

  Stag Hunt, Chicken, Battle of the Sexes, the Ultimatum Game, and Public Goods — five payoff structures and what each one might teach us about how states behave.

• Schelling Points June 18, 2026

  On the focal points people converge to without communicating, the empathy that makes them possible, and why they matter for cooperation between states.

• The Fisher-Wright and Moran Processes June 13, 2026

  Two models of how cooperators and defectors rise and fall in a finite population, one replacing every individual at once, the other one individual at a time.

• Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation June 12, 2026

  Notes on Nowak's account of when evolution favours cooperation over defection, and whether post-war American foreign policy might be read as indirect reciprocity.

• The Prisoner's Dilemma and Nash Equilibrium June 11, 2026

  A standalone explanation, written for someone with no prior knowledge, of why two rational players betray each other even when silence would serve them both.

• Game Theory: Opening Questions June 5, 2026

  Notes from a first week with repeated games: what asymmetric information, asymmetric payoffs, and non-binary defection might mean for geopolitics.