Jacob Falkovich
Writer of the blog Putanumonit and the newsletter Second Person, on rationality, dating and probability; based in New York.
Jacob Falkovich did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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Most people who would be a good audience for an essay will never notice it or bother to engage with it.
99% of people who you'd want to read your essay probably don't know you exist, or don't give a fuck, or wouldn't be bothered to engage even if they read it.
putanumonit.comSaid 2 Jun 2026This on korrents
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Good writing requires wanting to tell people something, which AI itself lacks.
The prerequisite to good writing is having something you want to tell people about, which AI doesn't.
putanumonit.comSaid 28 May 2026This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Feed
As its own page →Hiding
11 September
2 June
From one piece By Chains or by Promises 3 beliefs · putanumonit.com
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Their words
LLMs themselves are the perfect captive reader: they never get bored or confused, never miss a reference or have an emotional reaction, never ask themselves why am I reading this?, never close the tab.
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korrents.com
Large language models write to satisfy an evaluator's grading criteria rather than to move a human reader.Their words
LLMs write to get a grade, not with the goal of moving the reader.
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korrents.com
Most people who would be a good audience for an essay will never notice it or bother to engage with it.Their words
99% of people who you'd want to read your essay probably don't know you exist, or don't give a fuck, or wouldn't be bothered to engage even if they read it.
28 May
From one piece Slop Readers 2 beliefs · putanumonit.com
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Their words
There's little point trying to avoid LLMisms as a human, the readers who'll latch onto that don't care what you're saying anyway.
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Their words
The prerequisite to good writing is having something you want to tell people about, which AI doesn't.
26 May
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From one piece Jacob Will Work For You 3 beliefs · putanumonit.com
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Their words
The high value human tasks, like understanding the client's true pain points and deciding on priorities and trade-offs, would be easier with a smaller, proactive team.
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Their words
clients want a lot more from a software vendor than a solution that performs ABC by XYZ date.
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Their words
From my experience, a lot of company culture is downstream from profit margins.
6 January 2025
From one piece I’m Writing The Dating Sequences over at secondperson.dating 2 beliefs · putanumonit.com
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Their words
Ultimately, the only thing that matters is if you think the writing is good, not how much effort I put into it.
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Their words
I suspect that both Substack and OnlyFans may become a Girardian bubble. Everyone joins after hearing from the few people who succeed; the thousands who slink away after months of effort netted them a mere 17 subscribers usually do so quietly.
19 August 2023
From one piece Seth Explains Consciousness 3 beliefs · putanumonit.com
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korrents.com
It is unclear whether a digital emulation of a person could ever be conscious, even in principle.Their words
But it is not clear at all that such a being could even exist in principle.
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korrents.com
Free will does not require violating the laws of physics, yet the subjective experience of it is real and meaningful.Their words
There is no "spooky free will" that violates the laws of physics in our common model of them, but the experience of free will certainly exists and is informative.
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korrents.com
Color as perceived is not an objective property of objects, but a construct generated by the perceiving brain.Their words
Redness is not "objective" in the sense of being "in the object", it only exists in the models generated by the sort of brains which are hooked up to eyes.
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Being YouTheir words
I highly recommend that you read Being You, and then that you spend a good while thinking about it.
10 June 2023
From one piece Whose dream bf is it anyway 2 beliefs · putanumonit.com
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Their words
Whether one does find a good spouse or not depends more on one's orientation towards actually building relationships, and whether they can identify non-trivial traits in a partner that would contribute to that.
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Their words
It's not that looks and status don't matter, it's that focusing on looks and status as one's dating strategy is perfectly pointless.
7 March 2023
12 February 2023
4 January 2023
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21 April 2022
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 18 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Most people who would be a good audience for an essay will never notice it or bother to engage with it.
99% of people who you'd want to read your essay probably don't know you exist, or don't give a fuck, or wouldn't be bothered to engage even if they read it.
By Chains or by Promises Said 2 Jun 2026
Large language models write to satisfy an evaluator's grading criteria rather than to move a human reader.
LLMs write to get a grade, not with the goal of moving the reader.
By Chains or by Promises Said 2 Jun 2026
Because they never get bored, confused or distracted, large language models are an ideal captive reader rather than a free one.
LLMs themselves are the perfect captive reader: they never get bored or confused, never miss a reference or have an emotional reaction, never ask themselves why am I reading this?, never close the tab.
By Chains or by Promises Said 2 Jun 2026
Show 15 more
Good writing requires wanting to tell people something, which AI itself lacks.
The prerequisite to good writing is having something you want to tell people about, which AI doesn't.
Slop Readers Said 28 May 2026
Trying to avoid AI-writing tells as a human writer is pointless, since readers who fixate on them ignore substance anyway.
There's little point trying to avoid LLMisms as a human, the readers who'll latch onto that don't care what you're saying anyway.
Slop Readers Said 28 May 2026
A company's culture is largely shaped by its profit margins.
From my experience, a lot of company culture is downstream from profit margins.
Jacob Will Work For You Said 11 Jun 2025
Enterprise software clients want reassurance, support, and a credible story from a vendor, not just a technically correct solution.
clients want a lot more from a software vendor than a solution that performs ABC by XYZ date.
Jacob Will Work For You Said 11 Jun 2025
With AI handling routine tasks, the high-value human work of understanding client needs and trade-offs can be done by a smaller, more proactive team.
The high value human tasks, like understanding the client's true pain points and deciding on priorities and trade-offs, would be easier with a smaller, proactive team.
Jacob Will Work For You Said 11 Jun 2025
Subscription platforms like Substack and OnlyFans tend to become a Girardian bubble, where a few visible successes obscure the many who quietly give up after failing to build an audience.
I suspect that both Substack and OnlyFans may become a Girardian bubble. Everyone joins after hearing from the few people who succeed; the thousands who slink away after months of effort netted them a mere 17 subscribers usually do so quietly.
I’m Writing The Dating Sequences over at secondperson.dating Said 6 Jan 2025
The value of a piece of writing depends on whether the reader finds it good, not on how much effort the writer put into it.
Ultimately, the only thing that matters is if you think the writing is good, not how much effort I put into it.
I’m Writing The Dating Sequences over at secondperson.dating Said 6 Jan 2025
Color as perceived is not an objective property of objects, but a construct generated by the perceiving brain.
Redness is not "objective" in the sense of being "in the object", it only exists in the models generated by the sort of brains which are hooked up to eyes.
Seth Explains Consciousness Said 19 Aug 2023
Free will does not require violating the laws of physics, yet the subjective experience of it is real and meaningful.
There is no "spooky free will" that violates the laws of physics in our common model of them, but the experience of free will certainly exists and is informative.
Seth Explains Consciousness Said 19 Aug 2023
It is unclear whether a digital emulation of a person could ever be conscious, even in principle.
But it is not clear at all that such a being could even exist in principle.
Seth Explains Consciousness Said 19 Aug 2023
Focusing on looks and status as a dating strategy is pointless, even though looks and status do matter in mate selection
It's not that looks and status don't matter, it's that focusing on looks and status as one's dating strategy is perfectly pointless.
Whose dream bf is it anyway Said 10 Jun 2023
Finding a good spouse depends more on one's orientation toward building relationships and spotting non-trivial compatible traits than on matching a status checklist
Whether one does find a good spouse or not depends more on one's orientation towards actually building relationships, and whether they can identify non-trivial traits in a partner that would contribute to that.
Whose dream bf is it anyway Said 10 Jun 2023
Genuinely open-minded political thinking tends toward centrism or non-political issues, since ideological extremes mostly signal tribal loyalty or serve the power-hungry.
High rung thinking will almost always land on "centrist" position because it acknowledges tradeoffs, or on non-politicized positions because it's not beholden to supporting either of the two parties in a zero-sum game. It's not a coincidence that the political square is a triangle.
What’s Not Our Problem Said 7 Mar 2023
Institutions with the most high-minded mission statements attract the most opportunistic conformists, making them the most vulnerable to ideological takeover.
The proportion of profiteers seems highly correlated with the number of VERITAS plaques on campus and the high-mindedness of the organization's mission statement.
What’s Not Our Problem Said 7 Mar 2023
Political power is held by those with the will to power, a drive that can't arise from detached truth-seeking communities without corrupting them.
But power is ultimately held by those with the will to power. That will does not grow in decoupled idea labs, and would immediately corrupt them if it did.
What’s Not Our Problem Said 7 Mar 2023
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 5 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Recommends Being You
I highly recommend that you read Being You, and then that you spend a good while thinking about it.
putanumonit.com 19 Aug 2023
Recommends Galileo's Middle Finger
This is ultimately why Galileo's Middle Finger is a vitally important work, and why I recommend that people read it in spite of its flaws.
putanumonit.com 17 Feb 2018
Loved The Mark and the Void
The Mark and the Void is my favorite of the three novels but this review will be the shortest because it would superfluous. This review by Slate magazine is excellent, covers all the bases, and it's what has gotten me to read the book to begin with. I'll just focus on the magic.
putanumonit.com 9 Sept 2017
Show 2 more
Loved Seven Surrenders
As with movies, it's very rare for a book sequel to be so much better than the original. Seven Surrenders is rated 0.34 points higher on Goodreads than Lightning, which is the gap between an average book and "best of" lists.
putanumonit.com 9 Sept 2017
Mixed on Too Like the Lightning
This preamble is very pertinent to Lightning. The best facets of the novel are really good, and the worst parts are really bad.
putanumonit.com 21 Apr 2017
Where they publish
Blog Putanumonit His long-running blog on rationality, dating and probability; on indefinite hiatus since 2025.
Recent
- By Chains or by Promises 2 Jun 2026 How to write for a reader who can leave at any moment — unlike LLMs.
- Slop Readers 28 May 2026 Machines with nothing they want to say writing for humans with nothing they want to hear.
- Cult Writing 26 May 2026 A new miniblogging series on writing and AI. First post: on finding and losing my blogging cult.
Show 17 more
- Jacob Will Work For You 11 Jun 2025 I grew as a generalist from a small office to a 10-figure acquisition. Hire me and we'll do it again.
- I’m Writing The Dating Sequences over at secondperson.dating 6 Jan 2025 Going full-time on Putanumonit's favorite topic.
- Seth Explains Consciousness 19 Aug 2023 Philosophers have long explained why science could never explain consciousness. Thankfully, science didn't listen.
- Whose dream bf is it anyway 10 Jun 2023 Everyone wants to date someone impressive, but focusing on impressiveness in dating is perfectly useless.
- What’s Not Our Problem 7 Mar 2023 A review of what is in Tim Urban's book on politics, and what very conspicuously isn't.
- Building and Entertaining Couples 12 Feb 2023 People look for partners to build families with, but pick partners based on how entertaining they are after a few drinks. Both have value, but these are very different relationships.
- UDASSA 4 Jan 2023 You are a random sample of short experience-generating strings, and the crazy thing about it is that it's all less crazy than it sounds.
- Why Are Women Hot? 13 Dec 2022 Women are hot to seduce men. This is both plainly true and paradoxically contradicted everywhere men look at women. So what is actually going on?
- Date-me, Doc! 2 Sept 2022 Documenting the rise of date-me docs and the decline of resultant dating
- Metacognition in the Rat 28 Jun 2022 Awareness of your own uncertainty requires consciousness, and some claim that this awareness is present in rats. Are rats smarter than we thought, or is it the humans that are dumber?
- Genders Discrimination 2 May 2022 Whales are queering the fish-mammal binary
- Tarnished Guy Who Puts A Num On It 21 Apr 2022 Why Elden Ring is great, and how not to die binomially.
- Midwit Monogamy 13 Apr 2022 A relationship must sacrifice exclusivity or sacrifice for the sake of exclusivity. Simply feeling entitled to it is a recipe for failure.
- Between the Blog and the Birdsite 12 Apr 2022 Looking for a middle ground between the hard upsides of blogging and the easy downsides of tweeting.
- Artificial Wordcels 24 Feb 2022 Humans think in concepts and perceive ourselves living in physical reality, but babies aren't born doing either. We learn these things slowly, and not by reading. So who will teach them to GPT?
- Selfless Dating 2 Jan 2022 What if you just modeled your partner well enough to do what they would want without needing to ask? And what if you tried this from the first date?
- 10 Reasons You’re Lazy About Dating 19 Nov 2021 Everyone complains that dating isn't working, but no one want to put the work into dating. Here are 10 reasons why.
Link verified 5 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Newsletter Second Person His current newsletter, a serialized book about dating and agency.
Recent
- The Precarious Mediocre Life of Zoe Zoomette 11 Sept 2026 A dating apocalypse
- Unschooling 31 Jan 2026 You were taught to stop wanting
- Dating Apps Are Dead. And We Have Killed Them 21 Sept 2025 The users are the product, and the product is turning to shit
Show 17 more
- You Have 33 Bits 10 Sept 2025 All the work of dating is selection. If you don't do it, it will be done to you.
- The Lost Men 2 Sept 2025 A man finds himself when he finds out where he's needed.
- One Last Month of Second Person 27 Aug 2025 A new job, a blog that's concluding, and a book that's taking shape.
- Uncut Gems 18 Aug 2025 The cult of optionality makes people attractive and entirely impossible to date
- You Can Fix Him 11 Aug 2025 You probably shouldn't. But if you really insist, at least do it the right way.
- Marriage Isn't Fair 4 Aug 2025 On magic boxes, mankeeping, and expecting more
- The Couple as Firm 28 Jul 2025 Tits or ass? Bro, her operational range
- GF who Bewitches You 19 Jul 2025 If you want to live in his head, you have to pay rent
- Dating in the Age of Superintelligence 11 Jul 2025 This post isn't about AI
- Be Your Psycho-Cybernetic Self 3 Jul 2025 Coach yourself to dating success
- From Nobody to Husband 24 Jun 2025 The story of my own slow climb up the marriageability curve.
- Husband-Shaped Curve 17 Jun 2025 Becoming matters more than wanting.
- Jacob Will Work For You 11 Jun 2025 I grew as a generalist from a small office to a 10-figure acquisition, now it's time to do it again.
- What I Learned about Sex at the Rationalist Bloggers' Conference 8 Jun 2025 Sufficiently advanced integrity is indistinguishable from a sex cult.
- To Love is to Surrender 28 May 2025 Sacrifice, responsiveness, longing: a review of the Europa League final
- The Good Men Aren’t Gone, They’re Delayed 21 May 2025 And that means women can't afford to wait in the marriage market.
- Status: Incel — a Conversation with William Costello 15 May 2025 The past and future of mating reflected in the black pill.
Link verified 5 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
x.com @yashkaf His X account, linked from his Substack profile.
Link verified 5 Sept 2026.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.