https://johncderrick.com/logs/ Philosophy, identity, consciousness, and the questions that keep me up at night — from the digital lab notebook of John C. Derrick. en-us Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:00:00 EST https://johncderrick.com/logs/the-html-moment https://johncderrick.com/logs/the-html-moment Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:00:00 EST I assumed everyone would learn Claude Code the way I did — the same way I assumed everyone would learn HTML in 1997. They did not then. They will not now. The moat is not the tool. It is the willingness to sit with friction long enough to make it disappear. https://johncderrick.com/logs/the-advocacy-log https://johncderrick.com/logs/the-advocacy-log Sun, 22 Mar 2026 12:00:00 EST I never thought I had the right to advocate for myself. I followed the rules. I masked in front of every professional. I trusted the system to do right by me. It doesn't work that way. The system only works when you raise your hand and speak your truth. https://johncderrick.com/logs/alexithymia-emotional-blindspot https://johncderrick.com/logs/alexithymia-emotional-blindspot Thu, 19 Mar 2026 09:00:00 EST Alexithymia is the difficulty identifying and naming your own emotions. For a pattern-recognition brain that can reverse-engineer anything else, discovering that the one system you cannot read is yourself is a particular kind of disorienting. https://johncderrick.com/logs/review-severity-assessment https://johncderrick.com/logs/review-severity-assessment Wed, 18 Mar 2026 09:00:00 EST When the AI reviews all your data and says you might be Level 2. On the gap between a clean-looking life and the weight of the support systems holding it together. https://johncderrick.com/logs/trust-your-instincts https://johncderrick.com/logs/trust-your-instincts Sun, 15 Mar 2026 09:00:00 EST On the absurdity of gatekeeping a diagnosis that unlocks no benefits except self-understanding — and why the people most likely to be doubted are the ones who worked hardest to pass. https://johncderrick.com/logs/finding-tribe https://johncderrick.com/logs/finding-tribe Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:00:00 EST On the unmistakable hum of recognition when you see your people for the first time on a screen — and the strange grief of realizing they were always out there, just separated by geography. https://johncderrick.com/logs/catching-elvis https://johncderrick.com/logs/catching-elvis Fri, 27 Feb 2026 12:00:00 EST I am now older than Elvis was when he died. That sentence broke something in my brain. A reflection on temporal compression, middle age, and the summers that used to last forever. https://johncderrick.com/logs/when-someone-has-to-think-about-the-unthinkable https://johncderrick.com/logs/when-someone-has-to-think-about-the-unthinkable Wed, 25 Feb 2026 12:00:00 EST Amanda Askell wrote her PhD thesis on infinite ethics — how to make moral decisions when the world might contain infinitely many people. In 2018, that looked like navel-gazing. It was not. https://johncderrick.com/logs/the-question-engine https://johncderrick.com/logs/the-question-engine Tue, 24 Feb 2026 12:00:00 EST Philosophy was never useless. It was early. Every question it asked for two thousand years is now a configuration decision in an AI lab. The trolley problem has an API. https://johncderrick.com/logs/the-draft-folder https://johncderrick.com/logs/the-draft-folder Tue, 24 Feb 2026 11:00:00 EST Everyone has a draft folder full of thoughts they never published. The cost of thinking out loud in public has gotten so high that most people have stopped trying. But the thoughts do not go away. They accumulate. https://johncderrick.com/logs/office-hours https://johncderrick.com/logs/office-hours Tue, 24 Feb 2026 10:00:00 EST Amanda Askell is Anthropic's philosopher-in-residence. Her job is to help shape how Claude thinks, reasons, and communicates. Philosophy was always the most practical discipline. It just took building a mind to prove it. https://johncderrick.com/logs/vulnerability-fears https://johncderrick.com/logs/vulnerability-fears Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:00:00 EST The hardest part of vulnerability is not the fear of being judged. It is the fear that your words become the thing that divides the room. On being purple in a binary world. https://johncderrick.com/logs/thinking-about-thinking https://johncderrick.com/logs/thinking-about-thinking Fri, 20 Feb 2026 12:00:00 EST Metacognition and neuroticism feel identical from the inside but they are fundamentally different operations. One is a telescope. The other is a smoke detector. Knowing which is which changes everything. https://johncderrick.com/logs/whose-human https://johncderrick.com/logs/whose-human Mon, 16 Feb 2026 09:00:00 EST AI companies are racing to make models 'more human.' But whose version of human? Because right now, 'more human' means 'more neurotypical' — and that's a design choice nobody is questioning. https://johncderrick.com/logs/narrative-gravity https://johncderrick.com/logs/narrative-gravity Sat, 10 Jan 2026 09:00:00 EST Why fluency is not truth: Treating AI models as reasoning partners rather than oracles. https://johncderrick.com/logs/creative-bridge https://johncderrick.com/logs/creative-bridge Sat, 18 Jan 2026 09:00:00 EST How AI allows coders to become artists. Adapting my reflections from 'CritterCute' on the dissolution of creative barriers. https://johncderrick.com/logs/mirror-friction https://johncderrick.com/logs/mirror-friction Sat, 20 Dec 2025 09:00:00 EST Why we are drifting toward AI and the dangers of frictionless relationships. https://johncderrick.com/logs/depth-mismatch https://johncderrick.com/logs/depth-mismatch Fri, 19 Dec 2025 09:00:00 EST Snorkelers vs. Scuba Divers: A theory on communication bandwidth and neurodivergence. https://johncderrick.com/logs/architect-bricklayer https://johncderrick.com/logs/architect-bricklayer Thu, 08 Jan 2026 09:00:00 EST Does using AI to write make you less of a writer? Addressing the 'sadness' of automation. https://johncderrick.com/logs/programs-hacking-programs https://johncderrick.com/logs/programs-hacking-programs Thu, 30 Jan 2026 14:00:00 EST We have entered an era where software writes software. Why Git is the final barrier between non-coders and the Matrix.