Epsilon Theory: A 2019 Retrospective

After a year (well, 11+ months, anyway) in which we published 225 standalone pieces and numerous additional multi-topic Zeitgeist posts, we thought it made sense to take stock of what we’ve actually been telling you lot. Instead of the usual “The Year in Review” or “The Year Ahead” nonsense you don’t want to read and we don’t want to write, what we’ve got for you is a quintessentially Epsilon Theory experience.

In short, what we want to do is help you:

• Recall some pieces that were among our most-read and most popular;
• Find some new pieces which may have slipped underneath your radar, but which have a lot of influence and explanatory power on the overall Epsilon Theory output for 2019;
• Find some philosophical rabbit holes to follow for a while, perhaps helping you find connections between concepts and notes we’ve written that aid in understanding or putting them to use.

So, true to form, the first thing we’ve got for you is our 2019 Discovery Map, an NLP-based clustering and graphing of all of our content (other than Zeitgeist pieces from the first half of 2019 which bounced across multiple topics). What you will find is a few high-level, linguistically related clusters with a fair amount of internal diversity and fascinating points of connection to other topics.

Simply mouseover any node / article to see its name and, if you want to read it, click it and go.

Where should you start?

By Navigating the Discovery Map

Highly Central / Influential Articles: Your eye probably gets drawn to the middle of the screen, maybe a couple of those Big, Red Circles at the middle of the central-most cluster. Mouseover them and you’ll see The Long Now, Pt. 2 and The Long Now, Pt. 3, two of our most-read but also most linguistically connected notes of 2019. Starting here, you could follow language and narrative-based relationships to the outer quadrants of the topics we cover by simply following some of the connecting lines.

Highly Interconnected Articles: You may also be attracted to multi-disciplinary articles which bridge the gap between some of the higher level concepts that we write about here. Look for the nodes which connect across to one or more clusters of a different color. For example, the top-most article in the yellow cluster – The Citizen’s Response to the Long Now – is an article called How to Live Safely in a Wall Street Universe, a gem from Ben which includes one of the most powerful bits of advice I think he’s ever written: “Never ask for a cut on an existential trade.”

You’ll find another similarly interconnected piece in my contribution of A Holy Day from earlier this year, or The Stereogram, which bridges our criticisms of Fiat News media with a more intense focus on China this year.

By Reading What Others Read

If you’re looking for a more traditional marker that an article might be worth your time, here are our most-read pieces from 2019:

#1 Most Read: This is Water

#2 Most Read: Yeah, It’s Still Water

#3 Most Read: The Spanish Prisoner

#4 Most Read: Modern Monetary Theory or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the National Debt

#5 Most Read: The Long Now, Pt. 1

By Reading What Others Didn’t Read…But Should Have

We also have a range of notes which people didn’t read as much, but which are among the richest examples of connectivity between core Epsilon Theory concepts. If you’re a frequent reader but looking for some gems you might have missed, this is where you’ll find some good jumping off points to explore other notes.

#1 By Our Own Petard

#2 Send Lawyers, Guns and Money

#3 The Patsy, Revisited

#4 The Age of the High-Functioning Sociopath

#5 In Praise of Work

However you decide to navigate the 2019 Epsilon Theory oeuvre, we hope you find it thought-provoking, enjoyable and worthwhile. For those of you navigating it as pack-members, we remain grateful as always for your support. And for those who, in navigating these notes, find something you want to be a part of, we hope you’ll consider Joining the Pack.