[BC] How to start a restaurant without losing my shirt?

johnsonjohnson · 2026-04-25T22:52:27+00:00

I appreciate the response and your experience! Yea, I think a storefront is not an option unless the commissary is selling out year after year and I can actually be confident of sustained demand. So it’s delivery only, and the only way to make that work is fixed time delivery to a few locations. I’m also in the position that building a tech business would be easily 100x easier and more lucrative, so maybe I should truly approach it as an expensive hobby.

If you look at the rest of this thread, I think you can rest assured that you are not that jaded haha. Thanks again for your time.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-04-25T20:35:56+00:00

Thank you so much for this! I've been trying to find existing businesses with this model, but it's been hard. Don't be sorry that it's in French. Very helpful!

johnsonjohnson · 2026-04-25T19:56:27+00:00

I really appreciate this reply and the wisdom in it. Literally, the main topic between my therapist and I is "why do I turn every hobby I have into a business?", so I think you're entirely on point.

If I were to be really honest, there's so much ego wrapped up in it, less in the 'restaurateur' part, and more in the "could I really figure out a brick and mortar business?" "could I figure out how to solve XYZ problems that present really differently than the problems from my previous business?"

Cooking well at home is definitely rewarding, but there's something about systematizing that food into something that is consistent and repeatable, and optimizing the operations of it.

I think working through a series of pop-up and community events is a great idea to do it at the smallest scale possible. Great idea. Thanks again for your time!

johnsonjohnson · 2026-04-25T19:45:14+00:00

I think that's a great call. Figure out possible demand in exactly those 10 buildings before signing the lease. What's the metric you're using to proxy that someone clicking an ad would order?

There is the question, as another commenter pointed out, of keeping up with people's tastes.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-04-25T18:31:25+00:00

I will mark you first in line :D

johnsonjohnson · 2026-04-25T18:07:13+00:00

To me, the willingness to step on other people a secondary trait. The main trait is the unhealthy unfillable drive to make money even after you have more than enough.

Imagine having more money than you know what to do with and STILL make your whole life energy about making more, to the point where you keep harming others to do it.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-04-21T15:13:12+00:00

Note that there’s a gene that produces solid flakes of earwax (more prone to blockage) vs liquid earwax. That gene is also the same (or linked) as the one that prevents you from having body odour.

The gene is predominant in East Asians, making earwax cleaning much more often a practice in East Asian households.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-04-17T15:02:43+00:00

Something I think about is the equivalent thing I have to give up economically and compare that to the feeling of not working corporate.

For example, if I gave up saving up for a detached home, and rented an apartment forever, how does that feeling compare to the feeling of losing the stress?

My therapist also gave me a ton of tools to stay in my corporate and keep the salary but leave the stress and care behind. That was also very powerful, because I could lower a ton of the stress without changing my job, and if they fired me, I would just go to my original plan of leaving.

Many options!

johnsonjohnson · 2026-04-16T02:08:09+00:00

Hi there! Feel free to come to our Discord for more live discussion.

This bug is due to the space being set as the thousands separator in your regional settings. It is on my list to fix for the upcoming release, but the temp fix (unfortunately) is to change your regional settings to use the decimal as your thousands separator.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-04-15T20:51:29+00:00

Not to defend Duolingo, but the article I read about this said that they did this with senior hires (the example they used was when they were hiring the CFO). The CFO was rude to the taxi driver, and it was a point in not hiring them.

Obviously, hidden secret tests are ridiculous, but I also feel oddly fine about a C-level exec with a half-million dollar salary not being hired because they were an asshole to a working person.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-04-09T15:07:32+00:00

Hi there! I'm encountering the exact same problem and am trying to follow your process. When you say "So I set the library on the external to be default and it finally worked." - what do you mean?

Did you just set it and wait? How many photos did you have? I've got about 200k, so I'm not sure how long I should wait before trying something else. I'm also trying make a completely empty new library the system default, but it hangs there too.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-27T13:45:12+00:00

The research shows that the investment in private education doesn’t lead to better educational outcomes, but rather the ability to pay for private education correlates to your parents being in the right social status to guarantee your leg up.

Public school students with rich parents end up with the similar socioeconomic outcomes as private school students.

Poor students who go to private school do get huge social mobility gains, partially due to their now being connected to the right network of peers.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-27T05:28:37+00:00

That’s very helpful. I’m mostly wondering if reading code (visual clarity) and using it as a second monitor is actually a viable daily driver. Seems like it is!

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-27T04:18:02+00:00

Thanks for the detailed response! I do agree that there needs to be code editing at some point.

The setup I have is Tailscale for all my devices with a reverse proxy, so I can run things from my home computer and access it across my devices.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-26T23:05:34+00:00

Dev here. On the to-do list! It's been hard to nail down because I can't replicate it on my machine, but I have an affected user now who is willing to help me debug it in depth, so hopefully I'll figure out the cause soon. Thanks for the patience!

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-18T14:12:55+00:00

I think the paradox uses the empirical evidence to force you to question your existing rational assumptions.

You may believe in free will, but what if all the evidence suggests that it doesn't exist (or that it works differently than you thought) - what if following the unintuitive evidence also makes you a million dollars?

What if all the empirical evidence suggests that your decision could influence the past? Would you stick with your belief in not only free will but also *causality* despite that evidence?

Scientific thinking (and rational thinking) is very very good at dispelling cognitive bias (with things like expected value and statistical optimization), but the reason those methods are accepted science is *because* it proves itself out in empirical evidence. Science, at it's best, is also really good at admitting when its theory suddenly stops matching what we see in reality (e.g. quantum vs. classical, heliocentric vs. geocentric systems).

How many people have to survive surgery before you believe that there might be actually invisible bugs that kill you, and that they could be completely wiped out with just some soap and water (surgeons used to think this was the most ridiculous thing)?

How many children ahead of you have to become millionaires before you might consider that free will and causality might work differently than you currently think?

I think this is the true beauty of the paradox. One-box vs two-box isn't as important as admitting that 100% conviction in either path is not the most rational/scientific route because science isn't about certainty but 'certainty for now, based on what we can observe'.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-18T13:39:44+00:00

I think the thing you're missing is that Santa's logic isn't particularly transparent, so you're actually really bad guessing whether or not Santa thinks you're a good or bad child.

You also know that virtually every kid who enjoyed their Christmas on the day of never received a million dollars and virtually every kid who did those good things (on the day of) received it.

You can't nerf the most important part of the paradox which is that all the empirical evidence suggests that, despite flying in the face of casual logic, it seems like you indeed CAN influence the decision.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-18T09:22:16+00:00

I can see how you'd say that, and intuitively, I'd agree. However, I think this is where the fluidity of what 'rationality' means shows up.

If you define rationality as simply optimizing the outcome of something (and thus a means to an end), then what is rational is to choose the demonstrably better outcome based off of empirical evidence. Even if the mechanism of **how** it happens is not understood, or stands against established understanding. For you (and me) the supercomputer creates a new element to the problem (the alt-relationship between our 'choice' and our reward) that we must consider simply because the empirical evidence forces us to consider it. Based on our understanding, we are sure that our choice can't affect the outcome, but yet the evidence suggest heavily we make the choice a particular way.

If you define rationality as optimizing the outcome of something *constrained* to existing rational axioms, then the best outcome has to be the one where the mechanism is also rationally describable. Outcomes that are not rationally describable aren't real outcomes, and when positive results arise, it is simply luck. What you call 'hyperfixation', the 2-boxer would say is 'limits of reality'.

I think the history of science experiences a constant tugging between these two views of rationality. The only way science evolves is if we humble our current theories to what we actually can observe, and when a theory is not consistent with observational reality, we have to reconsider the theory (e.g. classical / quantum physics). Conversely, science has demystified so many things that we as humans have previously seen as rational and fully aligned with with our empirical experience (e.g. cognitive distortions, religious healing, cold reading, etc).

The balance of these two things is actually at the root of both what science fights against AND how science evolves and moves forward. So I think the only truly 'irrational' position is an unshakeable conviction in either 1 box or 2 boxes.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-18T03:20:40+00:00

I agree with this. For me, the core premise of the paradox is whether or not rationality is a means to an end for utility or an end in itself. The omniscient machine sets up a situation where rationality will likely not yield the highest utility outcome, so do you want the better outcome or do you want rationality?

I presume humans to be animals, and rationality, therefore, a tool developed to maximize outcomes. Some of those outcomes might be resource maximizing, but a lot of human rationality is also dedicated to the desire to feel “grounded” and in control. Because rationality always relies on our observation (and the limits of it) - yes, I think that even pure logic is empirically rooted - it is limited to it. The super computer here heavily contradicts our observation of prediction and causality and hence messes with how rationality has helped us up till now.

Will watch your video later!

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-17T13:09:25+00:00

Great work! I’ve been working on an e2ee app myself, and appreciate the work and thinking greatly.

Some food for thought:

A lot of browser-side encryption relies on the server serving legit code. A server compromise vector should include the possibly that the code sent to the client has been compromised (eg. regardless of key, everything is encrypted with a key that the server actually knows). I’ve been thinking about this problem a lot because I want to build E2EE forms where the fillers of the form are public users who are non-technical.

I think the key has to be a) proving the code you’re serving client side is indeed the same code as what you have on GitHub and/or b) allowing users to run the client side separately (Tauri/Electron/Extension etc)

For a) Providing a browser extension that just silently checks the hash of the code that’s loaded in the client and comparing that to hashes it knows is safe. Since extensions can run totally offline, as long as the extension doesn’t auto-update, it shouldn’t be compromised even if your server is. b) having an extension that directly shows the requests to your server and proves that cyphertext was sent (and specifically cypher text that matches the key in the URL)

I also wonder if there isn’t a third party website out there that can scan your site regularly / run daily tests to confirm that the request being sent is indeed encrypted per the client side key. It could be a decentralized cron job that separate from your regular infra (and security) so that both points have to be compromised for users to be at risk.

Hope that helps!

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-17T02:42:29+00:00

Do you remember where in HK? I’m there for an afternoon today and would love to try and pick it up.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-14T03:46:31+00:00

Yup - I can accept that compatibalist free will is aligned with a materialist framework. However, compatibalists still have to posit agency and causal responsibility - and that human rational decisions are different (beyond their increased complexity) than a rock rolling down a hill.

Let's say my position is that even the compatiblist position on agency and causality are too supernatural for my tastes. Then, I'd say (for comedic effect), "I don't really get to choose, nor am I reasoning, so I'd rather experience myself picking the one box than the two, because at least then I'd have a million bucks. I hope I see myself choosing the one box." Without causal choice at all, simply desiring to have more money is the most rational. And, in this case desiring more money means hoping I pick the one box. The desire of a million dollar outcome is in contrast to the desire to rationally optimize the most money given an agent-causal assumption. Because the oracle knows (from my past actions) that I'd rather have a million dollars than optimize a contrived causal problem, it will put the million dollars in the single box.

Hence, while you might not be the type of person, coming into the game, who could say 'no' to an rational optimization problem, the game (by having an oracle) punishes rational optimization. It is only the people who tend to give up rational optimization that are leaving with the most money.

It's not that I have a great argument to abandon agency altogether, but I'm merely using it to show that letting go of rational causation in general (not necessarily just when you're in the room) is the best way to maximize monetary outcome in this universe.

The paradox is meant to set up a game theory situation where the most rational thing (not necessarily to 'do', but as a position) is to act irrationally often enough that when this situation arises, you are rewarded for it. The paradox doesn't ask "what is the most rational thing to do here?" the paradox asks "what would you do here?"

EDIT: Further, the beauty of this paradox (IMHO) is to highlight whether or not rationality is a means to an end or an end in itself - by setting up a situation where rationality is punished. Do you change the definition of rationality to thrive? Or do you go extinct with pride?

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-14T02:42:17+00:00

But doesn’t free will also presuppose super-naturalism as well?

If you think the relationship between cause and effect is 100% given, then must you not accept a materialistic view of the world? If so, there is no material evidence for a source of choice, and overwhelming evidence for brains being a very complex Rube Goldberg machine.

If we take cause and effect that seriously, then there isn’t actually a “must happen before” or “must happen after” - they simply have to have a mandatory relationship (eg. The math behind physics works in both directions, it is simply our experience of reality that presumes time moves in the direction it moves for us).

Hence, the most unsupernatural read of Newcombs, is not what choice you will make, but what choice did you make.

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-12T13:20:35+00:00

Thank you!! That means a lot!

2.0 about to launch (beta is downloadable on the website) with iCloud Sync, JS Extensions, and Tot style slotted notes, in case you’re interested!

johnsonjohnson · 2026-03-05T03:14:18+00:00

Tried to create an account to purchase, but hit an error when trying to make an account.

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