AI Systems
The Productivity Placebo: METR’s AI Coding Study
METR's randomized trial found AI tools made experienced developers 19% slower while they believed they were 24% faster. The perception gap demands investigation.
Tagged
Tag: epistemology
Apr 13, 2026
Process
Estimation Is Epistemology: Confidence Intervals
Calibrated teams delivered within 15% of estimates 74% of the time versus 31% for gut-feel. The difference was self-knowledge, not technical skill.
Apr 10, 2026
Philosophy
Imposter Syndrome as Socratic Wisdom
Imposter syndrome is the emotional experience of Socratic wisdom without the framework to recognize it as virtue. The doubt is the competence.
Mar 19, 2026
Architecture
Observability as Epistemology for Distributed Systems
Observability is epistemology for distributed systems. Logs, metrics, and traces construct knowledge about systems too complex for direct inspection.
Mar 17, 2026
Data
Goodhart’s Law and the Weaponization of KPIs
Goodhart's Law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. After managing 30+ metrics across 1,000+ programs, the…
Mar 12, 2026
AI Systems
Hallucination Is Not a Bug
Language model hallucination is treated as a defect, but it is a fundamental property of probabilistic text generation. Models will always produce confident, occasionally fictional…
Mar 12, 2026
Data
The Myth of the Clean Dataset
After processing 36,791 SEC filings, 23% contained structural anomalies that would have corrupted any downstream analysis. The myth of the clean dataset persists because most…
Mar 10, 2026