I don't want to turn this into an, oh look at mine.
It's just always been very behind the curve. I don't think you should use anyone's honestly. You should create your own shell base, and point to skills you find might add value, and add them. Then as you learn things about the shape of how things work, what you end up doing is rewriting them to follow your rules from what you learned.
What you'll find is, you'll have significantly better skills and systems.
Very interesting story. I come from a different direction.
I work in tech, and was onsite somewhere for over a month with nothing to do. Remote area. I had always loved magic, and had asked magic teachers to teach me when I was a kid, and they all said no, they don't teach anyone.
I read books, but didn't really get it.
So I was in tech, in a place completely foreign to me with no rental car on weekends. I asked the bartender if he had anything I could do. He handed me a deck of cards.
From there, I just started to learn and practice things cause I was bored. Ultimately went to train with Jeff McBride and Eugene Burger. Jeff wasn't focused on the kinds of magic I liked, and Eugene Burger hated my style. I fooled both of them for the "final", intentionally leading Eugene down a garden path.
He hated not treated the cards with reverence. So I threw cards behind me, knowing it would completely shut off his brain while I did the secret move.
I did the same with Jeff. In the routine, I took his teaching on what not to do, and intentionally did it to shut off his brain.
They were both completely, ridiculously fooled. I likely may have fooled them without it, but I am too clever for my own good, and wanted to trick them in my own way.
From there, I ended up training with the guy who actually fit my style, Dani Daortiz. I flew to Spain and learned from him and Yann Frisch. I also helped Yann develop a new move. I taught them some of my original moves which they loved. I just come at things from a very different angle, so I have some interesting things.
Dani asked me to perform at the end, but I was too nervous. He is the guy I most adore. I regret that.
I even left them at one point after a full day of working with them, and just went and did magic in Spain for the night. I just do whatever, and that was what my soul needed after listening to 12 hours of magic discussion.
So I'm a software engineer, who has it as a hobby, but whenever I do it, I do it at a level that is stupid good. I don't even remember tricks, or have a set list, I just sort of vibe with whatever I remember, and rely on all the random skills I have to get there. I will do Lennart's snap deal for fun, invent a new trick on the spot because I'm bored. I do have a few original tricks that are completely mine.
One of them has a mind reading plot with cards. I have done the trick so many times in life, that I can legitimately forget the card, and it's fine, I can actually do the activity of figuring out their card without knowing it a good percentage of time.
You just get so used to understanding how people react to things, that you can figure it out in the process.
The trick just keeps evolving. Now, quite often, I have other spectators figure out the card. They also can get it with my... direction to what to look for.
So then they get to be the star. Lot of fun. It has so many variations because the whole thing is jazzed. So every time something new works, it's another thing I might remember to do.
I also am maybe the only magician then will intentionally bomb tricks. I learned early on that I do this for fun, and unfun people are not worth my time.
So even though I know the trick, and their card, I will intentionally pretend I don't and bomb the trick. I like that space. Living in that space has taught me more than any book about how to jazz around failure.
Intentionally failing is a master class in the space of failure in magic.
So I'm just a software engineer, who has had a ridiculously deep hobby for a long enough time that I can do a full show at a moment's notice. I have the tools, the understanding, and I can do prepared stuff, jazz whatever, or remember a trick i haven't done in 10 years, and decide to do that.
I do it for my fun. It's enabled me to drink for free where ever I go if I want, and have an enjoyable time.
I don't usually do the Magic Live stuff. I did that stuff for awhile, but I never felt like it really added much value to my experience.
I feel like I could surely if I cared to, book a show here locally, and do it. It would teach me a lot, but I just don't really want it. I like just being a random dude who can do ridiculously good magic when I feel like it.
Yeah, I also cannot get a perfect faro consistently enough. I can consistently get 51 cards correct every time. It’s actually amazing how I am off by one every single one.
That’s a thing where when you know how hard the trick is, it makes it better.
Very cool your training.
And same on poker plots. I can do them infinite other cooler ways, so what’s the point?
The burnable 2nd I have. But it’s not the traditional 2nd. I have practiced and still practice the Richard Turner style 2nd, but I never do it in a performance. I use another path to get to the same result.
Wasn’t planning on Magic Live, but I should see where it is and when.
The interesting thing is, the cheating in mtg has always been so, ridiculously bad.
If anyone actually cared, and really learned the moves, it would be imperceptible, even on camera, but instead regularly players get caught doing the dumbest of obvious things, even while on camera.
I burn a ton of tokens, but things actually have to prove their value. And the vast majority of things do not come close to doing so.
I have my own AI agent full of stuff. I blind A/B test everything, but I also don't think the results are all that useful as a signal to others.
Just because I Blind A/B test it 4 months ago, it's maybe not meaningful today.
Maybe the word choices I use dramatically impact things.
I do it, because I can prove the value, and see it with my own eyes. I don't even bother publishing the specific Blind A/B tests.
Also, I've seen other people try to Blind A/B test and get it very wrong. If your measurements aren't good, the test is meaningless.
I don't know. We're all working on these problems together. There's a lot of black magic (which is why I rely on hooks a lot). I'm sure I have tons of black magic, I have a large little AI Agent.
But what I know for certain, is it works for me. All it takes is for me to not use it, and I honestly don't know how everyone currently works with AI.
I will link it, but it is not an endorsement for what you do. Mostly only other software engineers use it. And it's so very specific to the things I have to do.
At best, maybe it sparks an idea for you to implement on your own.
Yeah, I think we're in a phase honestly where you shouldn't use anyone elses skills, and you should instead point your stuff at a repo with skills, have it really read it, and then ask what of value there is to potentially rewrite in your style based on your preferences.
I have a complex setup with a lot of things based around what I do. I don't know how anyone could reasonably get their head around any of it. It's a research project in itself.
So I tell people, please don't use it. Just point your claude code at it, and see if there's anything useful for you.
I run a lot of a/b testing. But I'm not sure showing it actually communicates all that much. Since these are non deterministic systems, even showing you an a/b test from when i made the decision a month ago, doesn't really mean a whole lot.
I agree we need more clear indications of value, I don't quite understand how to legitimately do that in a fair, and honest way.
I watched all the Alphago games live, I've watched analysis of so many Alphago games.
I think one of the particulars about Go is how hard the player base took it. Far harder than chess did. Far harder than Starcraft did (although arguably, Alphastar wasn't even that good strategy wise, it was just better mechanically even with preventions. No one has adopted almost any of Alphastar's strategy)
Lee Sedol in particular was crushed by the experience.
Others found optimism and opportunity in it.
I don't think extrapolating the Go experience is all that useful across the board, although it does have some value, and perspective, and it was a fantastic article I enjoyed reading.
Games have cheating, because cheating is easier than getting better.
Before AI, there was rampant cheating. In Magic the gathering, it's shuffle cheating, or holding out cards, or whatever.
The ease at which you can cheat makes more cheaters. If you can get away with it, or if it's like Go, or Chess AI, it's trivial to do, and easy to not get caught.
Same with map hacking in Starcraft.
I don't know. I don't have any fully formed thoughts here, except that I think extrapolating the experience in this way is vastly overstating it's generalized impacts.
But I also could be very wrong. We are talking about predictions. No one can predict anything.
Predictions say more about you, and your perspective, than they do about reality.