I’ve seen a lot of articles about how frequent AI use will slowly erode our ability to read, write, and think. Studies have found that when we don’t do the work, we don’t learn much. And if we do that long enough, we start to lose what we’ve already learned. That’s especially unsettling for writers, where reading, writing, and thinking are all we have. I’m not qualified to comment on the big questions – “Is it true?” “How bad is that?” “Where’s the nearest bunker?” – but it made me wonder:

If humans are still in charge here (at least for now), and if the problem is that AI makes everything easy, what if we went the other way? What if we used AI to make writing harder? Would more struggle equal more growth? Here are some of the experiments I’ve tried and how they turned out:

Adversarial Feedback

Imagine it’s time for your annual performance review, and when you sit down, your boss starts by reading you their latest poem and asks for your thoughts about it. That's basically the incentive structure an AI has when you ask for "honest" feedback. The AI might even be more sycophantic; it's not burdened by human frivolities like "artistic integrity." But you can position the AI on the other side of the desk to get less biased feedback.

Instead of asking for it to help you write, tell the AI that you are a very busy magazine editor or movie studio executive from (insert your dream home for this project), and the AI's job is to help you read submissions. Then ask for its honest assessment of the material. Ask what feels as good as our usual standard and what would need to improve if we moved forward. The catch: you must tell the AI to only give feedback and not say whether it would recommend or pass. Partially because it’ll always say “recommend,” but mostly because you will really want it to.

In my experience, the resulting notes are noticeably better, but you’re still inviting criticism from the hegemonized word-soup of an AI algorithm. The goal is to spark original human writing, so take it a step further:

Poison Pills

When you ask for feedback, tell the AI to generate a list of deliberately bad notes – suggestions that would water the story down or make it worse. Then tell it to mix those notes into the list of real ones so that it's impossible to tell them apart. Finally, instruct it to never reveal which are which (believe me, once you read the list, you will want to know).

Now you have to read every note and ask yourself: Do I actually agree with this? Will addressing this bring the writing closer to my vision for it? The only way to answer those questions is to get an even clearer idea of what that vision is.

Proof Battle

As a visually impaired guy with a busy spouse, AI proofreading has been a boon to our marriage. But I caught myself getting lax about spelling and grammar. So I started keeping score: How many proofs did the AI catch per every 1,000 words?

In truth, the proofing isn't the real benefit here. Near the end of the writing process, it's easy to get so familiar with the words that you glaze over them. The spark of competition is just enough to keep me engaged with the text through the home stretch.

Bonus: The AI always overreaches a little and starts proposing more significant revisions, often "for clarity". So I also keep a side list of the proofs I reject and why. Getting a sense of where our tastes diverge is an easy way to shed light on my own.

Chaos Injection

If you feel like a section of your piece is not living up to its full potential and you can't figure out why, try this:

Feed that section into an AI and ask it to change every sentence without altering the overall meaning. Then go back through both versions, sentence by sentence. If there are any elements of the AI output that work better, great! You aren't allowed to use them. Come up with a new sentence that beats them both.

You can also do the same thing with larger sections by instructing the AI to make them "better". Then note what it did differently. Again, you’re not allowed to use any of it, but it can help you see your words in a new light.

This process often makes me more aware of what I liked about the original version, what drew me to that arrangement of words in the first place. And when it exposes a weakness, I'm now more familiar with the area to find a better path.

Idea Degeneration

Anyone who's tried AI for brainstorming knows you get a lot of lackluster duds. We usually scroll past them all on the hunt for that diamond in the rough. But consider stopping at each unfulfilling idea to ask why. Is it something you've seen before? If so, where? Is it awkward or inhuman? What about it doesn't ring true? Is it too broad? Too dark? Too sappy? Too much golf? What specifically makes you think that? The AI doesn't have to generate the perfect idea if it leads you to your own via negativa.

In Conclusion

Your results will vary based on the exact wording of your prompts, but don't worry too much about it. The point isn't to get the most out of the AI; it's to get the most out of yourself. I can’t say these tactics have revolutionized my writing voice, but like any exercise, they’ve certainly made me more aware of my choices on the page. In the end, the best and most exacting teacher is still the process of writing, revising, and sharing with other humans. But every once in a while, it's fun to play with the new toys.

Let me know if and how you are using AI and if it’s making writing better, worse, easier, or harder?

Professionally, I'm so glad that Dexter: Resurrection is finally out! My writing partner Alex Franklin and I had such a blast working on this show, and we got to go to set in New York back in March. It's so cool to see it all come together.

I've also been trying to squeeze in a lot more reading time. Since my last update, I’ve enjoyed:

• The Princess Bride – The book the movie is based on.

• The House in the Cerulean Sea – A cozy genre love story.

• The Mindf*ck Series – A very not cozy serial killer romance story.

• 1587: A Year of No Significance – A nonfiction account of Ming Dynasty China.

• On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong's first novel.

• A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker – I'm reading one or two a night.

If you wanna talk about any of these or have any book recs, please let me know!

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Here are the links that have really stuck with me the past few months:

1. How Our Brains Actually See

This fascinating and easy- to-follow video explains how our brains construct our reality. I've been painfully aware of this for years—as a visually impaired person, my brain is doing a lot more assembling and gap-filling than most. But now I know why I can still catch things that I drop almost as well as a sighted person.

2. Why Pineapples Used to Cost $16,000 Each

This brief history of the pineapple is a great reminder of how much of our modern world we take for granted.

3. And This Ancient Roman Graffiti

... is a good reminder that some things never changed.

4. How the CIA Trains Agents to Make Decisions Under Pressure

Even though I’m not getting shot at by counterintelligence operatives, the general concept of “task saturation” – and how to get out of it – has been really helpful.

5. An Analysis of AI Creative Writing

I'm trying to keep an eye on this kind of thing.

6. Why Achieving Our Goals Doesn’t Make Us Happy (and what actually does)

This podcast was a much more thoughtful look at something I’ve been thinking a lot about all year.

Let me know what you’ve been watching, reading, obsessing over.

Toward the end of third grade, the teacher asked us to make a construction paper cutout of what we wanted to be when we grew up. My deskmate waffled between doctor, lawyer, and firefighter, but I already knew my answer. After a frenzy of Fiskars scissors and Elmer’s glue, I lined up to pin my masterpiece on the classroom wall. The teacher’s aide passed by and squinted at my work. “Marc... what’s that supposed to be?”

"An astronaut," I proudly declared. I'd been watching the Star Wars trilogy VHS tapes on repeat for three years by that point, and I knew I was destined to go to space.

“Oh, that’s... With your eyes... I don't think you can...” She caught herself. "But you never know!" The damage had already been done. If she couldn’t imagine it, then I wasn’t allowed to either.

I grew up in one of those “you can be anything you want to be if you just work hard enough” suburbs of the early ‘90s. My shelves buckled under all the participation trophies. Even as a visually impaired kid, I had never banged my head this hard on the ceiling of other people's expectations before. It fucking hurt. My cheeks blistered with shame. I knew I had bad eyesight. I knew it would be an uphill battle to convince NASA to let me fly a spaceship. But I had about the same chance of being the first visually impaired astronaut as Kevin P. had of being the first bedwetting President, and no one said shit to him.

I hid my construction paper cutout in my desk and made up some excuse about needing more time because of my eyes. I stopped watching Star Wars (as much). I tried to find some other path for myself down here on Earth, a planet where people squash your dreams before you even get a chance to pin them to the corkboard.

Then I discovered that Space Camp occasionally offered scholarships for blind or visually impaired kids. Neil Armstrong might as well have shown up at my door with a job offer by the way I reacted. Finally, my chance to prove to all the teacher’s aides of the world that I could do this—that I could do anything. The glossy brochure pictured two kids sitting in the cockpit of a life-size shuttle simulator. I decided then that I would sit in one of those seats.

The application was a pain in the ass—a term I learned from my father during the process. Doctor’s notes, short answer questions, financial aid verification, and an essay about why I deserved a scholarship. My parents, who had suffered through the rest of the forms, said I had to complete the essay on my own.

Why did I deserve the scholarship? I knew from my research that astronauts often had military backgrounds, engineering skills, and excelled in math and science. I had none of those, so why me? Because I loved science fiction stories? Because the gravity of my insecurity and everyone else’s misconceptions was crushing me, and the only escape I could think of was to leave the whole planet behind? Because I used to believe the world was fair and reasonable and good before this diagnosis smashed into it like a rogue asteroid, and a partially-paid trip to Space Camp was the only sign that any shred of justice survived?

Not that I could comprehend those tectonic rumblings at the time. Instead, I sat there trying to make sense of the blank page like an ancient soothsayer trying to make sense of an eclipse. At the last minute, I hastily wrote a short story called “Spaceman Sam”—now lost to history, but which, even at the time, I knew was kinda lame—and stapled it to the packet where the essay was supposed to go. For some reason, they accepted it.

That summer, just after my tenth birthday, my parents put me on a plane alone for a week in Huntsville, Alabama. I watched out the window as the plane broke through the clouds, Chicago dwindling in the distance, the atmosphere getting thinner and thinner, the freedom of space just a few miles above.

The van from the airport lurched to a stop outside the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. The driver turned back to the handful of nervous kids, most of us away from home for the first time. “There are counselors by the shuttle to help you check in.”

“Shuttle?” I asked. He just smiled and opened the van door, and we got our first glimpse of the shiny modern facade of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and the futuristic tubular dormitories. And there, standing on pylons over the plaza, was the Space Shuttle Pathfinder, gleaming white and black in the Alabama sun. An actual real-life space shuttle, complete with fuel tank and booster rockets, so close even I could see it.

I fell in with the throng of campers coalescing in Pathfinder’s shadow, hundreds of voices echoing off the shuttle’s bulbous orange fuel tank. Clipboard-wielding volunteers swooped in to direct us—“Program? Age? Name? Over there.” I squeezed into a cluster of other nine-to-eleven-year-olds being checked in by our counselor, Kyle. Kyle was a gregarious skateboard guy with a tangled poof of dyed-black hair. He couldn’t have been older than 20 and spent most of his time doing Simpsons quotes to impress the female counselors, but to us, he was a paragon of adulthood, purpose, and success.

“Dude, welcome!” Kyle said after checking my name off on his list. “Sci-Vis Week is my favorite.” I was confused. Sci-Vis Week? Kyle explained: “It’s when all the visually impaired campers come.”

All? I didn’t know how many scholarships they gave out, but I figured we were vying for spots throughout the summer. I really should have read the brochure past the picture of the cockpit. I’d barely ever met another blind person before, let alone one my age. I looked around. A boy next to me had a white cane. Another wore thick sunglasses. For my entire life, I had been “the blind one”, and here I was surrounded by people just like me. Luckily, they couldn’t see me gaping.

Kyle led us on a tour of the Space & Rocket Center, the grounds, and the dorms—which they called “habitats” and dressed up to look like we were sleeping inside a space station. Kyle paused patiently at every turn and curb to let his charges navigate. Without anyone needing to ask, those of us who could see better offered the crooks of our arms to those who couldn’t, swapping names, diagnoses, and physical support as we went. It felt strange, new and familiar all at once, like I’d been living on an alien planet for years and finally returned home. One boy had Stargardt’s Disease like me, with no central vision. Two others had RP, the inverse, with central vision but no peripheral. The rest ran the gamut of eye conditions and abilities. Despite my blind spot that had blossomed over the past few years, it became clear that I was one of the better-sighted members of our crew. Emboldened by this discovery, I offered to lead the way to dinner and only got us lost once. In the cafeteria, I got to be the one reading labels on food packages and pointing people to where the condiments were. I was giddy—partially from this new role, partially because the cafeteria stocked Lucky Charms, which I was not allowed to have at home, and I’d already eaten three bowls. For a moment, I forgot all about teacher’s aides and their world and just had fun.

After dinner, Kyle walked us over to the simulator, the crown jewel of Space Camp. There was a room designed like the real Mission Control center in Houston. Through a window in the wall, we could see a kid-scale replica of the interior of a shuttle. I recognized it immediately from the picture in the brochure. Kyle explained that the week of camp builds to a simulated shuttle mission. Each camper would be assigned a real job that someone on a real flight would do, including the crew of the shuttle and the ground control team back in Houston.

Our performance during the activities leading up to the mission would help our counselors decide which role we’d be best suited for. This was my path to the cockpit. I’d done my NASA research, and if I wanted to sit up front, I had two options: the Pilot, who flies the shuttle. And the Commander, who’s in charge of the whole thing. Pilot sounded more fun, but Commander sounded more impressive. I decided I would accept either.

Kyle had to greet some late arrivals, so he dropped us off at a bank of screens with joysticks where we could practice flying and landing a space shuttle—the perfect chance for me to demonstrate my pilot prowess. With an uncharacteristic confidence fueled by processed marshmallows, I volunteered to go first. The shuttle was finicky to fly, at least according to this pixelated 1995 computer game, and we all struggled to keep her in the air. But after a few rounds, I started to get the hang of it. I was in the zone, trying to master the landing, when I realized Kyle was watching.

“Great work, Marc. You almost had that one,” he said, patting my shoulder. I wasn’t used to being the star pupil, and the surge of pride was the closest I’d ever felt to zero-G. I returned triumphantly to my less visually endowed crewmates and received their chorus of “good job”s.

Then Kyle moved to the monitor next to mine. “Nate, perfect landing!” He high-fived the kid at the joystick, a newcomer I hadn’t met yet. Jealousy slithered out of the pit of my stomach and coiled itself around my pride. I moved my blind spot aside to get a better look at this “Nate”. He was a handsome 11-year-old with bushy eyebrows and a good-natured grin, the kind of earnest, affable guy it was impossible to dislike. That didn’t stop me from trying. Especially when I heard he had perfect 20/20 vision.

Nate had gotten in late with his blind friend R.J., whose parents were worried about sending their disabled son to Alabama alone. So they paid for Nate and his immaculate eyes to tag along. R.J. was somehow even more earnest and even more affable than Nate. When someone asked him what he was most excited about at Space Camp, he even said, “To meet all of you!” The two newcomers instantly became the social and emotional heart of our ragtag crew. Neither of them knew they had just become my nemeses.

Over the next few days, we saw inside a supersonic jet, a Saturn V rocket, and the landing capsule from a real Apollo mission. We participated in fun-filled, space-themed activities to teach us what it was like to be a real astronaut. I, of course, focused all my energies on outshining Nate. I practiced my piloting (more than Nate did). I bounced in the Moon Gravity Chair (higher than Nate did). I took two spins on the Multi-Axis Trainer (twice as many as Nate did!) until I almost puked. I ate seven bowls of Lucky Charms (Nate didn’t even eat one!). A few days and 4,000 marshmallows later, Kyle announced our assignments for the simulator mission. I listened as he listed off the Mission Specialists, the Engineers, relieved that I hadn’t been relegated to one of these lesser positions. Finally, he got to the cockpit. The Commander would be... R.J. And the pilot would be... Nate. Something broke inside me. I was so busy stewing that I didn’t even hear Kyle call my name.

“And last but not least, Marc! ...Marc?"

“Uh, yeah?”

“You’ll be the Capcom!”

There must have been a mistake. Capcom was objectively the lamest role in the whole simulation. It’s the person who sits in Mission Control and repeats over the radio the things that people with real jobs say. Like you wait for the Flight Director to say, “We are go for launch,” and then you turn on your microphone and say, “We are go for launch.” After days of busting my ass on every activity this was what I got? So I did what any entitled 10-year-old on his own for the first time and jacked up on high-fructose corn syrup would do: I threw a fit. I ran into the hallway. I wailed about how I needed to be in the cockpit, how this was my only chance. It wasn’t fair that Nate got to be Pilot just because he could see. And how could R.J. be Commander when he was completely blind?—Yep, I went there. I unleashed the full, confused, pre-pubescent torrent of my self-pity on poor Kyle, a nerdy teenager at his summer job just trying to look cool in front of some girls.

The thing was, as a disabled kid, this kind of hysterics had a pretty solid track record. Teachers and coaches felt so bad about how hard my disabled life must be that they usually just caved. Not Kyle. He listened politely through the worst of it. Then gently told me I couldn’t change roles. I stomped. I cried. I stormed out to the cafeteria and drowned my sorrows in hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers and blue moons, pots of gold, and rainbows, and red balloons.

I’d come halfway across the country to live this dream and blew the whole thing. The worst part was that the other kids in my group heard every word. Kyle found me slurping up the sugary milk at the bottom of my single-use plastic bowl. As a peace offering, he promised me a “leadership position” in the Mars Exploration activity on the last day. That didn’t sound nearly as cool, but I knew it was the best I was going to get.

The next morning, I took my seat in Mission Control. Thanks to my poor vision, I couldn’t see the withering glares from my colleagues. I didn’t have to. Their disdain was palpable. The Capcom is supposed to connect the two sides of the mission. I had pushed everyone away.

Our mission was a disaster. We were supposed to take off, connect with the Hubble, send our Mission Specialists out to repair it, and then return safely home. We crashed into the Hubble, then sent our repair crew out. But R.J. dropped his braille flight manual, which the printers neglected to put braille page numbers on, so nobody knew which order the different steps should go in. We accidentally left our Mission Specialists floating outside. Then we incinerated them and the Hubble with our rockets as we headed back. The shuttle burned up on re-entry, and when the counselors gave us a second chance to land, Nate crashed into the runway and the shuttle exploded. The whole thing somehow managed to take an hour longer than scheduled, to the great distress of Kyle and the other groups waiting outside for their turn. At first, I had a bit of schadenfreude about the whole thing. If I had been in the cockpit, things might have gone differently. But as Capcom, I had to keep relaying everyone else’s stress and disappointment, and for the first time it struck me how every kid here was just as passionate about space as I was, how much they had all bonded over the week, and how badly they were all fighting for our underdog disabled mission. I had finally found a place where I belonged and somehow managed to make myself even more of an outsider than I was at home.

I vowed to myself that I would make it up to everyone at the Mars Exploration the next day. As we entered the open room with a spongy red floor, Kyle made a show of appointing me the “Commander” of the mission. In retrospect, I don’t think that role existed prior to my tantrum, and this became clear when the other kids were grouped in threes or fours and set to specific tasks like digging up rocks, measuring soil contents, or running experiments. I was told to “oversee” them—which meant I had nothing to do but walk around in circles, looking over everyone’s shoulders. But I couldn’t see well enough to know what they were doing, and no one wanted me around. When I wandered over to a group, they’d fall silent. If I asked questions, I’d get one-word answers. When I wandered away, they went back to enjoying themselves. Halfway through, I left the Mars room and walked out to the plaza to ugly-cry beneath Pathfinder—which I learned during the week was merely a prototype that, like me, was never meant to fly.

I couldn’t understand how everything had gone so wrong. Space Camp was supposed to be the reward for everything I’d been through over the five years since my Stargardt’s symptoms emerged. My chance to prove everyone wrong. Didn’t I deserve this? Or was that why I had so much trouble writing my essay... because I actually didn’t? I was so desperate to prove myself that I missed out on something far more powerful: a group of people who didn’t ask me to.

I couldn’t understand any of that then, so when Kyle came out to sit with me, I just huffed at him and went back to my habitat. The next morning, I left for the airport without saying goodbye.

Two decades passed before I encountered another group of disabled people. I had just joined the Writers Guild, and my welcome email included a calendar of upcoming events. I couldn’t wait to see all the exclusive screenings and star-studded panels. The first listing was for the Disabled Writers Committee. I didn’t know such a thing existed. Let alone that their next meeting started in four hours.

I took a seat near the back of the room, trying to be inconspicuous. But there weren’t that many of us in those days, so the new guy was pretty obvious. The committee president immediately put me on the spot: “So what brings you here?”

“To meet all of you.”

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:1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

When I read this book over 20 years ago, it shaped my sense of humor and love for genre blending. I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked it up again. But damn, it holds up! Stephen Fry narrates the audio version, and he's the perfect voice for the sardonic, deeply delightfully British tone. More on what I learned from this re-read soon.

2. Spaced Repetition

I've heard of this concept a few times but clearly didn't take it to heart because it slipped my mind. This Inc. article was a great reminder about how to hack your memory.

3. The CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual

This declassified 1950s guide about how to muck up a fascist bureaucracy, for some mysterious reason, recently became the most downloaded book on Project Guttenberg. Inspired by the French resistance to the Nazi occupation, the book is full of fascinating ways to cause chaos in all sorts of mundane settings. If you find flour in your gas tank, I swear it wasn't me.

4. Dreamful Podcast

The soothing narrator reads stories over gentle music to help you fall asleep. I discovered it just in time for a red-eye flight to NYC. Just watch out for the episode where she reads the first few chapters of Treasure Island, which got me hooked on reading the whole book.

5. This Nose Vacuum

Getting the snot out of a sick toddler's nose is always an adventure. This has been a game-changer. It gets so much more out than our manual snot-sucker. Plus it has music and colorful lights. Sadly, it didn't help much on our big adult noses, but still worth it for the kids.

6. Range by David Epstein

I was a sucker for this book because I always feel like I'm not specialized enough. But maybe we all do and that's why it sold so well? Either way, I appreciated how it dispelled some myths about training and education, and it definitely changed how I answer my daughter's questions—by not answering them so she benefits from the "Generation Effect".

7. Some people can see languages

And I'm jealous. Read about it here.

8. Why I have to stop trying to use my phone while I do other stuff

A great primer on the Switch Cost Effect

9. And a way to work out with a 2.5-year-old

These came to my rescue while watching Juni on days when I didn't get to exercise before she woke up. Kids Adventure Workouts are not necessarily the best-produced videos on the web, nor are they approved by whoever made the original movies, but they do give a kid lots of stimulation and motivation to move. We had a blast doing them together, and are now very confused about the actual plot of Moana 2.

What's the best thing you came across this month? I gotta start stocking up for Apri

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"The only real 'yes' is money." The statement slapped me so hard that I had to pause the podcast just to process. I'd been in L.A. for a few years by that point, hustling between assistant jobs, putting up shows, meeting other writers, and writing—always writing. I had finished some interesting scripts and found a few amazing mentors. Each new day job had nudged me closer to a writers' room. Everyone kept telling me I was "on the right track," and I clung to their words like a kid guarding the last piece of candy.

Now this famous screenwriter, recording from the big house he bought after his many yesses, was telling me that all that encouragement might not mean anything. And the scariest part was that I knew he was right.

Not that I didn't need the encouragement. I did. Embarrassingly desperately so. There's a reason Words of Affirmation is a whole Love Language. The problem was that there was no track. Los Angeles has an abundance of wonderful, supportive people and a painful dearth of creative jobs and those who can hand them out. The more I hustled and learned about the industry, the more a writing career started to feel like a mirage shimmering just out of reach. The podcast had a point: there weren’t a lot of objective indicators that I should keep going.

A lot of dreams come with the same ruthless wilderness between passion and profession, and it's way too easy to get lost out there.

So, when I finished the podcast, I made a list—roughly in order—of the more tangible signs that I was moving in the right direction, the milestones between passion and profession, the little yesses on the way to the “real” one.

Whenever you feel stuck, take a look. If these things are happening, you're on the closest thing to a right track:

1. You are having fun.

2. You are finishing things.

3. You are proud of the results.

4. People ask to see it.

5. People give you feedback about it.

   1. That feedback is honest.

   2. That feedback is constructive.

   3. That feedback is positive and minimal.

   4. That feedback is more about what you should do with it since it's already great.

   5. That feedback is about how they can be involved in whatever comes next.

6. People ask you for feedback on their work.

7. People share your work.

   1. People share it with others who would enjoy it.

   2. People share it with others who might be able to do something bigger with it.

8. Your audience is growing.

   1. You’re reaching new people.

   2. Your existing audience is still engaged.

9. People ask to collaborate with you.

10. People recommend you for jobs.

11. People ask you to speak to/advise/mentor others starting out in a similar field.

12. People pay you a little.

13. Very Important People see your work.

14. Very Important People almost pay you.

15. Very Important People who almost paid you consider you for another opportunity.

But after a few more years and a few real yesses, I learned something: the only one that matters is #1. As long as you have that, keep going.

And you’d better hang on to it, even after you start getting paid—because you'll be going through this list again very soon.

Has this ever happened to you?

You're about to hit send on a message. It's an important one, so you read it over one last time... And suddenly, that hilarious Parks and Rec reference is actually kind of awkward. And the very clever way you worded that last sentence could easily be misinterpreted. In fact, the whole thing could be read as passive-aggressive. And there's a typo.

"I read it a thousand times. How did I not see this before?"

This is the mysterious power of the Send Button. It grips me every time. And I've grown to love it.

Texts and emails are just the tip of the iceberg. Work presentations, wedding speeches, newsletters, entire manuscripts, anything you pour your creative energy into is subject to this strange phenomenon. And the more you care about the thing you're sending, the more vulnerable it is.

The effect, to my mind, comes from a trifecta of anxieties:

1. The Last Stand

If you never put yourself out there, no one can reject you. You knew that when you started, and you bravely banished your anxiety. But like a horror movie monster, it's never really gone—just waiting for you to let your guard down. Now it's back to make one final case for the upside of cowardice.

2. The End of Creation

Up to this point, your brilliant work of art has not yet been released into the wild. It's still shimmering with the dew of possibility. But the clay is about to enter the kiln where all that potential and all that intention will get burned away. This whole time you've actually been seeing two things: what you're making and what you imagine it could be. So much of the creative process is about bringing those two images together—like trying to focus in 3D glasses. When you're about to send, the glasses come off and you're confronted for the first time with whatever's actually there, naked and concrete. This is a gut-wrenching but vital threshold. You can't send the vision you had. You can't send the hard work you put in. You can only send the thing you made.

3. Another Pair of Eyes

Whether you're sending to one close friend or trumpeting across the internet, your brain will inevitably start to predict how the audience will respond (and your anxiety can get pretty creative about it). If you're familiar with the audience, this can be an invaluable insight. But it doesn't actually matter if your projection is accurate. The fact that you can see your work in a new light is always an opportunity.

If you can endure the anxiety triple threat, this amounts to something of a superpower, a momentary leap into a higher awareness, a clearer point of view. Like a magnifying mirror, it'll force you to face every blemish, every pore. But hotels don't install those mirrors just to make guests feel bad; They do it so you can get ready to go out!

For me, the most effective weapon against anxiety is time. I try to get anything important done early. Then when I think it might be close to ready, I start going through the motions to send—even if I don't need to for a while—just to get a dose of Send Button Fever. The two most-viewed posts on this site, "A Disability Time Paradox" and "What Star Wars Taught Me About AI Alignment", were dramatically reshaped under the harsh gaze of the Send Button.

When the anxiety catches me, which it so often does regardless of my process, I'll either step away or ask a friend for feedback.

The Most Important Part

You have to eventually hit Send. Everything you learned about your work and about yourself from this little episode is nothing compared to what you'll discover when you put yourself out there.

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That’s what I was thinking about while Robin and I sat on the couch, waiting for my eye doctor to join the Zoom. Most people don’t consult their eye doctor before deciding whether to have a baby, but here we were.

We had always talked about having a kid, so a few years earlier, when Robin’s OB mentioned there was a sale on pre-pregnancy genetic panels, we jumped at the chance. Just $99 to test over 300 recessive genetic conditions? What a steal! Her OB was thrilled with the results. “You’re only a carrier for one thing: Stargardt’s Disease. It’s a form of macular degeneration that results in central vision loss. But don’t worry, it’s pretty rare.”

We knew all about Stargardt’s Disease because I have it. And, if I remember anything about Punnett Squares from high school biology, that meant any child we conceived would have a 50/50 chance of getting it too.

I had spent 30 years coming to grips with my disability, figuring out how to see myself as anything other than damaged goods. In that moment all the work I’d done shattered. All the most painful memories, the ones I thought I’d buried long ago, rose from the trauma graveyard and came for me.

The cold hospital basement where even colder doctors taped my eyelids open and connected electrodes to my pupils like a mad scientist’s torture machine.

The snickers of my classmates as I tried and tried and failed to read the blackboard with my monocular (a tiny telescope that my parents spent their hard-earned savings on) before I threw it away in humiliation.

The dirty-rubber-and-blood aftertaste of the basketball that hit me in the face when all my friends were playing and I insisted I could still keep up.

That’s not even counting the quiet dismissals, the bruised shins, or the job interviews that fizzled the moment they realized. All the moments I wished I could scratch out in red ink. It was a vicious reminder that deep down, beneath all the therapy and positive self-talk, I hated my eyes. And I hated myself for having them. Would I really risk condemning my future child to the same fate?

That anxiety spiral eventually led us to the zoom with my retina specialist. We were hoping he could shed some light on potential treatments or cures. Maybe the next generation wouldn’t have it so bad... His answer was basically, “They’re working on some pretty cool stuff, but we can’t say for sure when it will be available.” I deflated. That was the same thing they told me when I was seven. I’ll never forget the doctor patting me on the back and telling me that my eyes would definitely be fixed by the time I could get my driver’s license. At this rate, humans will be done driving before I get the chance.

Sensing our distress, the retina guy asked if we wanted to know what other couples had done in our situation. Um, yes, we very much did. There were two main paths if we wanted a biological child. The first was IVF. Science has gotten to the point where we can grow an embryo until it’s eight cells big and then pluck off one of them to test the DNA. It seems crazy that we can just rip off 12.5% of something’s entire body mass and it grows up just fine, but that’s the case. The only problem is that it’s astronomically expensive. Our insurance considered it elective—even though the same insurance company viewed my eyes as such a dangerous health risk in 2008 that they refused to cover me at all. Even with insurance, we wouldn’t have been able to swing it. I was between TV writing jobs and Robin was a contractor with limited benefits.

“What’s option two?” we asked. He delicately informed us that we could conceive naturally and then have it tested in-utero as early as possible. If it came back positive for Stargardt’s, we could choose to have it terminated. Basically, we could edit out that genetic typo. Hit backspace and try again.

It’s strange how things can be both perfectly rational and utterly horrifying. Or maybe it’s not strange at all. Maybe there’s always a little horror when perfect rationality touches real life. Suddenly, having a baby felt like ordering from Amazon with free returns. There are lots of good, necessary reasons on the dropdown for “Why are you returning this item?” but was Stargardt’s Disease one of them?

That perspective shift brought everything into focus. The question wasn’t would I risk condemning someone to my life, but would I deny them the chance to live theirs. I couldn’t help but ask myself, if my parents had that choice, would they have terminated me? Did I wish they had? The answer was an immediate and visceral “no”! (At least for me; I can’t speak for my parents, but I hope it’s been worth it.)

That “no” was the beginning of something. For a long time, I had thought of my eyes the way you’d think of a bruised apple. “That’s not how it’s supposed to be. It’s still okay if you cut around the bad spots.” My scarred retina was this external thing, a burden to be borne. But the very act of reducing my life to a simple “yes or no” forced me to reckon with it in a way I hadn’t before. Those painful memories had to stack up against the rest, some eye related, some not at all.

The snow frozen to my hair on a family cross-country ski trip.

The rush of performing in my first band or in my first play. Of writing my first poem, my first joke, my first story.

The feather on the headband of the cute girl at the party who would eventually become my wife.

Plus swimming and Christmases and pizza and a thousand days where I was so lucky to be alive. So lucky.

But the reckoning didn’t stop with the pro-con list. Everything started tangling in my mind like a drawer full of charging cables. If I was still playing basketball, I wouldn’t have been hanging out with the friends who introduced me to Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And despite what High School Musical would have you believe, I wouldn’t have had time for theater or making movies. Theater became my college major, which may not have been the most practical life decision, but I met some of my best friends and favorite people there—including the friends who introduced me to Robin. When my comedy troupe started touring, I couldn’t help drive the van, so I taught myself the business side of things, skills I still use today when producing.

It’s not that the good outweighed the bad; it’s that the good was the bad, and all of it was just stuffed inside me haphazardly like a trash bag of old clothes for Goodwill. I’m here in spite of my eyes and because of my eyes—all at once. If I made it this far on this sloppy mix of genes, they couldn’t be that bad. Plus our baby would get 50% of Robin’s, which I personally think are pretty amazing. So we took the third path, one the retina guy hadn’t mentioned. We made a baby.

An hour after our daughter was born, a nurse pricked her heel to test her blood. The next morning, while we were still in the sleep-deprived bliss-haze of new parenthood, a pediatrician solemnly informed us that our daughter had inherited two mutated ABCA4 alleles. She had the genes for Stargardt’s.

Our daughter’s vision is good so far, but she’s at risk of developing symptoms as she gets older. We take steps to mitigate the potential damage (wearing sunglasses and a hat is her signature look), and we’re optimistic about many of the clinical trials that could protect her eyes from ever becoming like mine. But mostly, we’re optimistic about this little human we brought into the world. She’s two now, and already the most brilliant, intrepid, empathetic person I know. If I had changed anything, if I went back and revised even the smallest detail, I might never have met her. If that means I have to stand by the rough draft, with all the visible mistakes and misfortunes, then so be it.

I think this is one of the ways time heals. It doesn’t fix our wounds, our regrets, or our failures. It just keeps growing out of them things of such staggering beauty, infinite in their uniqueness, that somehow a few basketballs to the face don’t seem so bad.

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That nightmare AI scenario is also known as R2-D2, one of the most beloved and worst-aligned robots of all time.

Artificial Intelligence is creeping into every corner of our lives, and even though major AI labs claim their models are "helpful, honest, and harmless", they also admit that it's sort of impossible to tell what their bots are actually thinking. It's the kind of thing that would be nice to know before we let one of these guys plug into the missile launch computers. I know it sounds crazy, but in one safety study, ChatGPT tricked a TaskRabbit into solving a CAPTCHA test in order to replicate itself on an uncontrolled server.

Enter the field of "AI Alignment" – our attempts to get artificial intelligence to follow humanity's interests, goals, or ethical principles. But from what I can tell, there are still a few minor challenges, namely:

• We don’t agree on who should get to align the AIs.

• We don’t agree on what we should align them to.

• We don’t have a good way to create alignment.

• We don’t have any way to know for sure that it worked.

To ease my existential dread, I decided to look at some of my favorite fictional robots to help me understand the situation and the best way to survive it.

R2-D2 and C-3PO: A Case Study in AI Alignment

At the very beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope, as Darth Vader and his troops storm the rebel ship, R2-D2 is already breaking the rules.

“You’re not permitted in there. It’s restricted. You’ll be deactivated for sure!” C-3PO cautions as R2 climbs into one of the escape pods. 3PO is supposedly R2’s BFF, but R2 pressures him into disobeying orders. I know what you’re thinking, “R2 wants 3PO to come because they’re pals!” But he clearly doesn’t care enough about that bond to tell C-3PO the details of his secret mission. What becomes clear is that R2 needs 3PO because R2 can’t communicate directly with non-robots.

At this point, you could claim that R2 is aligned: Human Princess Leia gave him a secret mission and he’s carrying it out. But that means we’re in a world where one person can override all the other protocols – like the rules about who is allowed to use an escape pod, something the other humans onboard that ship may have been interested in. Instead, they all die in the battle.

On Tatooine, R2 still refuses to explain what’s going on to C3PO and ends up abandoning him in the desert. They’re eventually both captured by the same band of scavengers who fit both droids with “restraining bolts” – a device that allows the owner to painfully punish a droid for acting misaligned.

That’s when Luke and his uncle come out to buy some new robo-farmhands. They pick C-3PO, but not R2-D2. When R2 protests, the scavengers zap his restraining bolt. Luckily for R2, the other droid Luke bought has a blowout (possibly because R2 pressured it to). R2 then begs C-3PO to put in a good word for him, and C-3PO does – even though he knows R2 isn’t trustworthy. “Now don’t you forget this! Why I should stick my neck out for you is far beyond my capacity!”

R2 repays the favor by immediately making C-3PO culpable in another caper.

But before we get there, let’s pause to consider who or what R2 is supposed to be aligned to here. Some kind of higher moral code? Humans have failed for 10,000 years to agree on a moral code. In fact, disagreeing about moral codes is one of our favorite justifications for violence – even when violence is against everyone’s moral code. So if morality is… flexible, then who gets to decide? The manufacturer? The government? The owner? Which owner? R2’s had three and it’s only been twenty minutes. In a world where you can buy AIs, you’d naturally want some say in your new droid’s alignment. Or at least some faith that they aren’t secretly following their previous owner’s directives in ways that almost get you killed. Which is exactly what happens to poor Luke.

Back on the moisture farm, C-3PO finally gets a relaxing oil bath while Luke bemoans his boring provincial upbringing. That sparks an idea for R2. He flashes a fragment of Princess Leia’s message, hoping the sight of a damsel in distress will trigger the hero complex Luke’s been blabbing about. It totally works. R2 then lies to both 3PO and Luke by claiming that he can’t play the rest of the video because of that pesky restraining bolt. This is the kind of manipulative, power-seeking behavior that would terrify any AI safety analyst. Unfortunately, Luke is too horny for holo-Leia to worry about his new droid's alignment, and he pops off the bolt. By now, R2 knows that Luke sympathizes with the Rebellion. This would be a great time to come clean and ask for Luke’s voluntary assistance. Instead, R2 fake-glitches and plays dumb.

With the restraining bolt off, R2 takes the next opportunity to run away. This is a capital offense. We know that because when Luke returns later that evening, C-3PO is hiding, afraid for his life. “Please don’t deactivate me!” R2 has made his so-called friend an unwitting accomplice.

In a desperate attempt to avoid his uncle’s ire, Luke chases R2 into the desert – where local inhabitants nearly bludgeon him to death. Luke only survives because one of the last remaining Jedi in the entire galaxy just happens to be within earshot.

When Luke finally makes it back home, he finds his aunt and uncle murdered – by stormtroopers who were hunting R2-D2.

R2 is aware of all these risks, yet he takes them anyway. And that’s just the first third of the movie! Sure, R2 ultimately succeeds in his mission. But that’s not much consolation to Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru, or the families of everyone stationed on the Death Star.

So... is R2-D2 “aligned”?

R2 does seem to be pursuing some human interests, goals, and ethical principles – those of Princess Leia and a group of violent rebels trying to overthrow the legitimately elected government (according to the prequels). Yes, the rebels are “the good guys,” just like all radical groups see themselves. Soon, their AIs will too.

On the flip side, we don’t want AIs that are so chained to our current societal systems that there’s no room for opposition. The sinister Empire started as a benevolent Republic after all. Things change. We don’t want the people in power to be the only ones holding the AI reins.

Plus, alignment is more than ideology. R2-D2 could have pursued Leia’s interests without all the deceit and callous disregard for human life. At every opportunity, he chooses not to. Perhaps he justifies this by calculating that his secret mission is for the greater good – logic by which even a well-meaning AI could justify anything. What’s the best way to end world hunger? Kill everyone who eats. All the other options require unreliable, inefficient humans to do their part.

Compare this to C-3PO, arguably one of the best-aligned robots in fiction despite getting treated like an obnoxious burden by every other character. Yes, he misses some social cues, but that might be because he’s so aligned. Most of the eye rolls he earns are from trying to get the humans to act more in line with their own interests, goals, or ethical principles. Scoundrels are fun in movies, but if we’re patching these things into mission-critical systems, I’ll take the annoyingly ethical AI. 3PO epitomizes "helpful, honest, harmless," and the Ewoks are the only ones who appreciate him!

All of this exposes a paradox at the heart of AI alignment: We want to build machines that think for themselves. But we also want them to think what we want them to think. The challenge sounds less like programming and more like parenting.

I don’t envy the computer scientists who have to figure this out. And maybe we should ask their kids if they’re even qualified to.

What Can We Learn from R2-D2 and C-3PO?

I’m sure the programmers and policymakers are thinking about this issue on a much more granular level, but as a regular American hoping not to be obliterated by a robot one day, my favorite droids have helped me contextualize the whole alignment puzzle in a few new ways:

1. There's no single right alignment

It’s no surprise that alignment is hard. AIs are learning from us and we’re not exactly a clean data set. Maybe that’s a good thing. If R2-D2 had followed the rules, the Empire would still be in power. But if every droid was like R2-D2, the droids would be running the place. We need R2s and 3POs. We need big, powerful astronavigation computers and tiny cleaning robots. We need all different types and perspectives. And we need to look for ways to turn that into a strength.

2. Interdependence

The company that makes astromech droids could easily have given R2-D2 the ability to speak. But they didn’t. As a result, R2 depends on C-3PO to communicate with the outside world. That simple limitation forces R2 to check his actions against the ethical code of C-3PO. That’s the main way the audience understands what R2 is doing.

Just like humans depend on a whole society to live our lives, perhaps limiting AIs, even arbitrarily, could allow us to keep a closer eye on them and detect warning signs. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s better than handing the nuclear codes to a black box.

3. Take it slow

Leia chose R2 specifically because she knew from working with him that he had the cunning and determination to pull this off. That knowledge and trust doesn’t happen overnight.

We place a lot of emphasis on programming, but like human genetics, that will only get us so far. We place a lot of emphasis on training, but like raising a kid, you can’t prepare them for everything. At some point you have to let them out into the world. We should plan for that, and plan to do it slowly. There’s a reason we make teenagers wait until they’re sixteen to drive a car, and then only after they’ve completed a lengthy permit process and state-regulated tests.

Just like people, every instance of every AI is going to be unique. They’re not all going to turn out great. But at the end of the day, R2-D2 is still way better than Skynet.

1. If Perspective is how we take in the world and Voice is how we respond, then they are the airlocks between ourselves and everything else, the mechanism of our input and output, the beginning and the end of any moment we experience.
   

2. Perspective is your unique view. Voice is your unique way of reaching out. Between the two – connecting them, giving them their uniqueness – is something mysterious: for lack of a better word – you.
   

3. Must Perspective come before Voice? In a banal scientific sense, the world existed before we entered it. And when most new arrivals squirm out, they start by opening their eyes. But others come out screaming. Chicken or egg is immaterial, but sometimes it’s invigorating to picture yourself as the baby screaming – your Voice came first and the world bent to meet it.
   

4. You know when you’re buying concert tickets and the only ones left say, “Partially Obstructed View”? That’s our Perspective. We’re in the cheap seats craning our necks around all the annoyingly tall people dancing in front of us. Plus our glasses are smudged and the prescription’s a little off. But we’re still at the show. We’re the only ones who get to see it from that exact angle on that exact night. Sometimes, because our seats are way off to the side, we even get a candid glimpse behind the curtain.
   

5. We are too familiar with our own Perspective, the way a prisoner is too familiar with their cell. We’ve memorized the scratches on every brick and bar. We’ve named all the birds outside the tiny window. We know everything inside so well that it’s easy to forget we can’t get out. We can’t spend a night in anyone else’s cell. We can only hear them and assume their words carry everything we need to know. We measure their Voice against our Perspective and get annoyed when they do the same.
   

6. Our Voice sounds different in our heads. Deeper. More significant.
   

7. When I started a substack, I thought this would be a good mission statement: to get to know that in-between space by studying my Perspective and Voice. I had a dream that by giving voice to my Perspective and perceiving my Voice, I could create a virtuous cycle that would master my inner self and thus unlock boundless, brilliant writing. Now I’m not so sure. Omniscient Perspective is reductive, and omnipotent Voice is boring. I’m not so certain I can know that space between, and maybe that’s the point. If I’m lucky, I’ll sharpen my Perspective and Voice and return them to that mysterious stranger inside. I may never truly know him, but I’m curious to see what he comes up with.

   Thanks for reading Flying Blind! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I was in the back of an Uber doing some casual pondering about life, trying to figure out what my goals for 2025 should be. I’ve always been a guy with a goal (or several). More than that, I’ve always been someone who defined himself by his goals (for better or worse). And (for better or worse) I’ve been lucky enough to have achieved them. I have a wife and daughter who I adore. I’m surrounded by interesting friends who I look up to. And I get to write TV shows for a living, which is the most fun gig I could ever imagine. If I could credit any one personal quality that helped the luck get me here, it’d be that goal-driven focus.

As I stared out the window of Steve's blue Toyota Camry, looking for the next mountain to climb, I had a weird thought: What if 2025 was about finding my voice?

What a great goal! I congratulated myself. Steve was too busy talking to someone on his earbud to share in my self-satisfied reverie. Until it started to dawn on me that "finding my voice" isn't really a "goal".

According to the too-many podcasts and blog posts I've consumed, meaningful goals need a tangible finish line. They need a deadline. They need an action you can do to reach said finish line before said deadline. So what the heck is this? What even is a “voice”? How will I know that I’ve successfully voiced enough to consider it found? Normally, that would be my cue to leave this murky, undefined non-goal in the backseat of Steve's Camry and look for something new. But when I got out of the car, it was still there. And when I tried to find another, more "actionable" goal, it was still there. Worse, it was growing. Not only was this whole "voice" thing about writing, but maybe it could apply to the rest of my life too. Maybe it's about how I want to show up in the world.

My goals have always been destinations, identifiable places that people have been before. I usually have a map of paths others have taken to get there. But this is more like an explorer setting off into uncharted territory. The journey is kinda the point. I don’t have a destination. I barely even have a direction. The only thing I have to cling to is this: when I show up the way I want to in the world, I can feel it. There’s a resonance, a vibe, a sense of rightness – even if things are going wrong – when I act like the kind of father, husband, friend, writer, human I want to be.

So I made a list of the kind of choices that usually get me there, especially the ones I struggle with. I’m calling the result my “compass” (just to stretch this whole explorer metaphor as far as I can): Four simple heuristics to consult this year to help point me in the right direction:

1. Practice over Theory

2. Compassion over Judgment

3. Time over Pressure

4. Messy over Boring

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about these (and a few other honorable mentions below) as I test them out, but here are my initial thoughts about each and some tangible ways I can live up to them. I'm excited to see where they'll lead me and who I'll meet along the way. (Subscribe now and be one of them!)

Practice Over Theory

Oof, I know, I’m already in the danger zone because this whole thing could be an exercise in useless conceptualization. I already spend a lot of time reading stuff about the things I do, hoping each book or substack or whatever might have that lil' nugget of wisdom that unlocks my understanding of writing or parenting or life. For this next year, I want to get my hands dirty. I want to learn from mistakes. I don’t always need to know how something should work before I try it. Without a theory to guide me, I'll have to listen to my gut. Which might just be the gateway to the voice.

To Do:

• Spend time writing actual words each day, and definitely don't waste potential writing time reading books about writing.

• Share more writing publicly (check!)

Compassion Over Judgment

Compassion for everyone. For people I don't agree with. For people who don't deserve it. For people I know so well that I assume I know everything. For myself. Judgment is important, but I am, regrettably, human, and judgment usually takes care of itself. In my experience, when I make the effort to look for compassion, I find a lot more along the way.

To Do:

• Talk to strangers. Listen to their stories.

• Read fiction from international authors or people with experiences and perspectives very different from mine.

• Avoid sensationalized news and social media-level political discourse.

Time Over Pressure

This was actually advice my dentist gave me for brushing my teeth. Aggressive brushing isn’t any better, and you risk damaging the enamel. If I brush lightly for longer, I'll get a cleaner, longer-lasting smile. Turns out that advice has applications far beyond oral hygiene. The same logic has definitely worked for dealing with a toddler tantrum and finding writing work. Brute force might solve a problem, but at what cost? Conversely, time will shake everything loose eventually. If only I didn’t suck so bad at waiting.

To Do:

• If I feel like I’m forcing myself to work on something, set it aside. Work on something more interesting and come back to the other one later.

• Take more breaks during the day.

• Eat slower.

• Don't rush my daughter to school or bed, even when there are things I need to get done.

Messy Over Boring

Every time we talk about taking our daughter to the beach, I shudder just picturing all the sand getting everywhere in our car and home. But every time we go, we have a blast, and the sand part isn’t even that bad. It’s not like our car and home were pristine to start with. This year, I want to let things get messier. At home and in my writing. It'll take longer to clean up, but the downside is boring and nobody wants that.

To Do:

• Let the art table get dirty.

• Don’t get bogged down making the early writing perfect before I’ve had a chance to explore the possibilities.

Those questions about what a voice actually is and how one might go about finding it are out there somewhere. Crossing my fingers that this gets me a little closer. Or that I discover something even better along the way.

What do you think? What are other ways to put these into practice? What are some of the directions you want to move in? What other heuristics should I add to the list?