Why make things simple / the Douglas Adams principle

brainsystems
Published

December 12, 2025

Douglas Adams said:

“I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.”

This is exactly the kind of productivity thinking the country needs, I think. I’ve been trying to follow his example recently. I am trying to disassemble how I do things / why I’m doing them / whether I should I just sit in my pants all day eating pringles / what sort of task-environment-brain re-jigs might help answer any of those questions. This is leading to many “all day programming for a ten second task” moments.

It’s all part of joining in the currently very fashionable and exciting pastime of “wondering what kind of brain I have and whether it really needs to have been so bloody difficult all this time.” (Analogy: as a left-hander, if I’d always been made to use my right hand, as was the case pre 1950ish.) Coming at it like a design problem, prototyping things that may end up on the scrapheap, is the only way.

So rather than get on with, say, actually working on the sci-fi book or writing about anything concrete, I’ve done the following:

So now the process of writing a blog post couldn’t be simpler. I just (1) write it in Obsidian as I’m doing now; (2) use the Obsidian-to-Quarto export function; (3) in RStudio, run the R function to convert exobrain links and YAML and move the files; (4) when in a state I’m happy to publish, move it manually to the posts folder (that could be streamlined); (5) run ‘render’ on that final post in RStudio so the HTML goes to the docs folder; (6) git stage/commit and push in Gitraken to get it live on coveredinbees. Done! Just like that. Substack schmubschmack.

Sigh. I am reminded a little of the Mars Curiosity Rover’s landing plan (in one of my all time favourite youtube videos, recorded before they knew whether it would succeed). Aim for a flat spot, use Mars’ atmosphere to slow down a little (it’s 1% the density of Earth’s), use a huge parachute, release a cap to view the ground, drop the rover carried by its own rocket stage because none of that can slow it down enough, but you can’t use rockets to land because the dust will bugger the rover’s systems - so hover above the ground and lower it on four wires, and then boost the rocket stage off to the side so it doesn’t crash on top of the now-on-Mars Curiosity. Oh and do all that entirely automatically because signals to Mars were a 14 minute round trip at the time. Done! Just like that. Elon Schmelon.

Here’s Jazz-student turned NASA entry/descent/landing lead Adam Steltzner:

“When people look at it, it looks crazy. That’s a very natural thing. Sometimes when we look at it, it looks crazy. It is the result of reasoned engineering thought. But it still looks crazy.”

Reasoned engineering thought, though, takes a lot of testing. The problem with testing human brains, or at least mine, is the tendency to default to “you’re just a useless idiot” and stop at that, rather than taking little steps, inching forward, playing, trying new things, seeing what goes with the grain, what rubs against it. It needs resetting daily as the self-blame module can be deeply wired in - previous perceived failures obviously a personal failure, says the module, rather than allowing consideration of the whole you/task/environment setup1.

So while I’m obviously getting those sweet sweet Douglas Adams Dopamine Hits from all this ridiculous tinkering, it’s… not entirely ridiculous. None of this is novel - here’s a nice writeup of the general digital garden idea, it’s in that ballpark. The world is littered with failed ‘Systems That Will Solve Everything’, but maybe there’s merit in this kind of slow, tentative gardening.

All the ‘digital garden’ tech is allowing is easy linkage - it’s been described as ‘your own personal wikipedia’. But replicating existing links would seem pointless, no? So the test here is: can it be used to add little modular chunks, questions, connections? In a way that isn’t just building an ideas oubliette? What, if anything, can it really add?

I’m finding that when you start playing with the task/environment/self parts, they all start affecting each other in unexpected ways. One of the most intriguing: what it’s doing to what I think words are actually for. That’s led to a List of writing questions (see, nice exobrain link; sorry, some LLM assistance in that list). There’s a long section on different functions of writing where “narrow professional words” are in the minority. There’s also writing for one’s own brain/ psychology/emotions; connection; experimentation; identity building…

That rather solipsistic view segues into bigger veins and arteries we all share. I tried “Writing” about that - it’s got some of the ideas there, but… too much. Let’s see if it’s possible to pick away at it more slowly. It feels like a very specific historical moment for language, when humans have lost their monopoly on the written word (people pointing that out here, here, here), when the collective lighthouses we used to steer away from the Deathly Rocks of Bullshit are under well-funded, sustained attack.

That’s enough to make it feel like finding your own words is pointless. Working theory: it isn’t, it’s more important than ever. So let’s add that one to the list for later:

Footnotes

  1. Hat tip to my partner Helen for bringing her OT background to bear.↩︎