{"id":76,"date":"2006-04-21T01:59:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-21T01:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=76"},"modified":"2006-04-21T01:59:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-21T01:59:00","slug":"repentance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=76","title":{"rendered":"Repentance"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning I got an email pointedly criticizing several aspects of this blog — including my handling of l’affaire Chad Okere<\/a>, and my ridiculing (as opposed to answering) people who think that if P=NP, the major implication would be that airlines could schedule their flights better. The author summed up his critique as follows:<\/p>\n

I like your blog. I only wish it would be a little bit more about complexity theory and things at least vaguely related. You have a knack for writing, and for making hard things easy. That’s something which separates you from the large majority of the (blogging) complexity theorists. I understand that you blog in order to procrastinate, and that you have no special obligation to write about anything you don’t want to write about, but I don’t believe I’m alone in thinking that such talent could nonetheless be used to better ends than writing about biting vaginas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Godammit, I muttered. Though he overestimates my talent, the dude has a point. In my constant battle against predictability, I’ve become too self-absorbed — like Frank Gehry designing the MIT Stata Center<\/a>, or a Playboy model discoursing on international politics. I’ve neglected the meat-and-potatoes that readers want and expect from me.<\/p>\n

So, welcome to a reconceptualized shtetl. From now on I’ll be sure to ladle out the heaping helpings of complexity you crave. The danger, of course, is that as the earnestness and scientific-ness goes up, the sexual innuendoes, heavy-handed irony, ethnic jokes, and crass ridicule will decrease proportionately. Rest assured that I’ll guard against that possibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning I got an email pointedly criticizing several aspects of this blog — including my handling of l’affaire Chad Okere, and my ridiculing (as opposed to answering) people who think that if P=NP, the major implication would be that airlines could schedule their flights better. The author summed up his critique as follows: I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-self-referential"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}