The Games of Entropy are nearing completion, which feels great. I’m now filling small gaps, sandpapering over rough bits and worrying about how to cut it all down to size. For reasons that will be explained eventually, every sermon has exactly 80 stanzas. I completed about 120 anyway, as for the previous one, because I really liked how when finishing up the first one, trimming and compressing it improved it quite a bit. Trimming is painful, but it is a good kind of pain. (Of course I’m throwing out a much larger number of uncompleted stanzas when I realize I can’t get them to fulfill all the criteria, but I’m much less attached to those.)

There is a bit of progress on the other sermons too, mostly on the third one, now tentatively entitled One of Us, and the seventh, working title United in the Quest for Truth. But mostly I’m proceeding pretty much sequentially, as planned.

I now have a dedicated Sermons writing desk, where I’m not allowed to do anything else, and a dedicated notebook. This makes a surprising amount of difference. It seems B. F. Skinner was right about this, as he was right about so many things.

Oh and in the meantime, Eliezer Yudkowsky has completed Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I suggest you try reading the first five chapters, it is available for free. If you’re like me, you’ll discover a book that is breathtakingly clever and can, if you read on, actually change your mind about profound things in a very rewarding fashion. If not, you’ve lost nothing but an hour and have probably had a couple of good laughs. There is a free audiobook version too.