https://gwern.net Pages from gwern.net in the 'Culture & Design' section Sat, 07 Mar 2026 22:52:09 +0000 GwernRSSBuilder/1.0 https://gwern.net/video-game-art https://gwern.net/video-game-art Video games are art, but a strange art: their essence is transformation of the player, not description to the player. This makes meaningful criticism nearly impossible—you can point at the moon, but it’s not the moon, and once someone sees it, they no longer need the pointing. Gwern Sat, 31 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 2026-01-17T00:00:00Z essay https://gwern.net/blog/2026/make-me-care https://gwern.net/blog/2026/make-me-care Writing advice: some nonfiction fails because it opens with background instead of a hook—readers leave before reaching the good material. Find the single anomaly or question that makes your topic interesting, lead with that, and let the background follow once you’ve earned attention. Gwern Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 2026-01-14T00:00:00Z essay history psychology/writing https://gwern.net/blog/2023/good-writing https://gwern.net/blog/2023/good-writing N/A Gwern Fri, 29 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000 2025-03-16T00:00:00Z essay https://gwern.net/rock-paper-scissors https://gwern.net/rock-paper-scissors Speculation on why 3-move games like Rock-Paper-Scissors are so common in games & decisions: aside from allowing ties, is this design information-theoretically optimal in game difficulty vs information per game? Gwern Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 2025-02-02T00:00:00Z essay cs/algorithm/information design statistics/decision statistics/order/comparison https://gwern.net/book-writing https://gwern.net/book-writing A discussion of why I don’t intend to turn Gwern.net into a book, and how trying to write a book can harm writers. Gwern Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 2024-09-17T00:00:00Z essay psychiatry/anxiety psychiatry/depression psychology/writing https://gwern.net/blog/2024/writing-online https://gwern.net/blog/2024/writing-online You should write more online: it is still a good time to influence humans and AI, especially as everyone else foolishly retreats into hiding out of fear. Gwern Wed, 21 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 2024-08-22T00:00:00Z essay https://gwern.net/note/fashion https://gwern.net/note/fashion Links on the circularity and mimetic desire basis of fashions in consumer goods, ideologies, politics, organizations like academia, religion etc. Gwern Fri, 14 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000 2021-05-14T00:00:00Z essay economics history insight-porn music politics psychology/collecting reinforcement-learning/multi-agent sociology https://gwern.net/development-hell https://gwern.net/development-hell Why do movies or games go through development hell, and usually come out worse, rather than better, and long gestation times do not seem to improve them despite the large resources poured into them by the most talented people? Gwern Tue, 17 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000 2020-11-17T00:00:00Z essay fiction/criticism fiction/science-fiction/star-wars sociology/technology statistics/order/selection/pipeline https://gwern.net/goodreads https://gwern.net/goodreads Which books on GoodReads are most difficult to finish? Estimating proportions in December 2019 gives an entirely different result than absolute counts. Gwern Mon, 09 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000 2020-01-05T00:00:00Z essay cs/r cs/shell fiction/criticism statistics/bayes https://gwern.net/sand https://gwern.net/sand Forgotten chores and their use by Romanticism Gwern Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000 2017-03-26T00:00:00Z essay fiction/criticism sociology/technology survey technology/google