53 chunks · 35 episodes
...ve Strassmann has a frame, Delicious Poison and Disgusting Cleanup. Rhymes with Gilded Turd / Grubby Truffle. These are two situations where the short-term and the long-term are disjoint. But we tend to pick based on the short-term, even whe...
...s. Goodhart's law. So vibecoding and other agentic production processes produce gilded turds by default. This mean that the more shiny things are, the more suspicious people are of the underlying quality. Superficial quality is now extremely...
...n to "how long is the tail?" If the tail is short and stubby, a linear, heroic, Gilded Turd approach might be viable. If there's no tail, just muscle through as quickly as possible. If the tail is long, then no amount of muscling through wil...
Short time horizons structurally select for Gilded Turds. If you have a long-enough time horizon, the benefit of the compounding curve becomes way more common, and the Grubby Truffle becomes a no-brainer.
...ng for great pull you in two different directions. The former pulls you towards Gilded Turds. The latter pulls you towards Grubby Truffles. This creates the process of canalization: when robustness of a good enough outcome is more important ...
Everyone can tell a Gilded Turd has value at the beginning. Only someone with differentiated insight can see the value of the Grubby Truffle at the beginning.
...ocumentation for a piece of shit that doesn't work. Vibecoded software produces Gilded Turds.
Vibecoding to create clones of useful software produces Gilded Turds by default. "I vibecoded a clone of X app" really means "I vibecoded something that looks like that app." The LLMs are great at making it look right...
...uth flows. Something only a massive, sprawling bureaucracy could be proud of. A Gilded Turd.
...lation that is even more in need of hand-holding for support. Classic MBA-style gilded turd logarithmic-benefit-for-exponential-cost.
...er software business model is ultimately about holding users' data hostage. The Gilded Turd model of software. Looks great, but the longer you use it the more you realize the deal stinks.
...iated by having really polished UIs. That matters less than it ever has before. Gilded Turds.[bo]
If you over-polish for the level of underlying momentum, it looks like a Gilded Turd. The closer people look, the less compelling it looks. This means that it looks like you're "pushing" it further than it would go on its own naturall...
...mell. People who can tell the value of Grubby Truffles can't stand the smell of Gilded Turds. Sight is obvious, remote, fast. Smell is subtle, close, slow. If all you're doing is sight, then you can go very fast. You have to go slower to do ...
...ponential cost curves, since they unlock value in the first few plys. These are Gilded Turds. Look great to start but look worse the longer they go on. I only care about Grubby Truffles. Look terrible to start but look better and better the ...
...e definitely missing something."[bv] Grubby Truffles win out in this phase over Gilded Turds.
In cacophony Gilded Turds have an advantage. No one has time to distinguish between the two.[cc] Modern society is awash in Gilded Turds. Everywhere you look, in every domain...
Two very different kinds of beauty: the Gilded Turd vs the Grubby Truffle. The Gilded Turd is superficially beautiful, but fundamentally disgusting. The Grubby Truffle is superficially disgusting but f...
...be a superficial signal of excellence But it's easy for beauty to be skin deep. Gilded turds.
...tems are often beautiful in their superficial appearance and ugly underneath. A gilded turd.