# Epigrams

My original quips.
(At least [I think they are original](!W "Cryptomnesia").
Those that aren't go on the [quotes page](/quotes).
"Words and gods" is the most suspect.)

The correct name of this page is thanks to ["Epigrams"](https://gwern.net/epigram) on Gwern.net.

## Contents

## Warnings

Warnings are advertisements.

## Upstreams

Never meet your upstreams.

## Magitech

Reductionism: "We have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots." Magitech: "We have a robot, but it's made of lots of tiny souls."

## Playlists

(Said in response to someone sharing an [anti-work](!W "Anti-work movement") playlist.)

Every playlist is an anti-work playlist.

## Everything

Actually, _everything_ needs timeouts, retries, exponential backoff, jitter, rate limiting, and usage quotas.

## Poetry

Poetry is an early form of proof of work.

## Manual memory management

*Manual memory management*, n.: The optimistic state of mind before you realize that sooner or later you will have to either abandon heap allocation altogether or implement reference counting.

## Outsider art

If you say you are making outsider art, you probably aren't.

## Rat madness

A rationalist's road to madness: between two maps of roughly equal probability choose the one that paints you as a worse person.

## The brain

The brain is an _inb4_ machine.

## Debugging

Debugging is applied pessimism.

## Long timelines

On a long enough timeline, every story becomes cosmic horror.

## Touch typing

Touch typing is a sign language.

## Words

Words are weapons that subdue people. They cannot subdue gods.

## Social critics

Social critics are better at diagnosis than prescriptions.

## Vigilance

(Re: "Should C be blamed for the [Heartbleed](!W) bug?")

Anything that requires constant vigilance is hard.


## See also

- [Concepts](/concepts)
- [Quotes](/quotes)

## Page metadata

URL: <https://dbohdan.com/epigrams.md>

Published 2020-11-19, updated 2025-05-10.

Tags:

- my work
- nonfiction
- programming