Reed Esau

The bad kind of skeptic, coder, hiker, diver, skier, & bougie camper van guy. Recently authored book dealing with bullsh*t, summarized in #RealityTrackingDaily

[Reed Esau @reedes]

Trade-off denial is unreality with a clean-solution costume. Ask what you are buying, what you are giving up, and who bears the loss. Bring the same question to the status quo. It has costs too, even when no one is campaigning against them. 3/3

[Reed Esau @reedes]

Jun 3 - TRADE-OFFS are the price structure of reality showing through a choice. You gain one thing by giving up, risking, weakening, delaying, or worsening another. Serious decisions often offer competing goods, not clean victories ... 1/3 #RealityTrackingDaily

[Reed Esau @reedes]

... so honest thinking names the cost side as plainly as the benefit. More speed may mean less accuracy. More privacy may mean less convenience. More safety may mean less freedom or openness. A worthy goal does not abolish its price. 2/3

[Reed Esau @reedes]

Today walked through a (1980?) Revcon motorhome undergoing *major* restoration. Roughly similar to the GMCs but with riveted aluminum shell like the Airstream trailers. I estimate it’s 10x the effort of van conversion like mine! https://t.co/urYC7w2XeG

[Reed Esau @reedes]

Separate the person from the proposition for a moment. What is being claimed? What would make it true or false? Then ask what the motive story changes. Sometimes it changes a lot. But if it substitutes for evaluating the claim, reality has lost its vote. 3/3

[Reed Esau @reedes]

Jun 2 - MOTIVE-BASED DISMISSAL treats a story about why someone said something as if it settled whether the claim is true. The motive story may be right. He may profit. She may be tribal. The criticism may be resentful. The claim still needs an answer. 1/3 #RealityTrackingDaily

[Reed Esau @reedes]

Motives matter. Incentives, conflicts, bad faith, and repeated dishonesty can all lower trust and raise scrutiny. The trap begins when source-analysis replaces claim-analysis, and a psychological guess becomes permission to stop looking. 2/3

[Reed Esau @reedes]

@JoeAnderson There was none, but Bat P*ssy would have been a good choice

[Reed Esau @reedes]

Today I went for a short ride in a friend’s RV homebuilt plane and survived.

(Coincidentally we landed and took off at air strip in nearby town where I have family history.)

[Reed Esau @reedes]

The correction is not optimism. It is proportion. Ask what part of reality dropped out because it was stable, competent, safe, or merely uneventful. Then ask whether the bad signal deserves this much authority, or whether it is winning because it is vivid. 3/3

[Reed Esau @reedes]

Jun 1 - NEGATIVITY BIAS makes bad signals count for more than the rest of the evidence warrants. The bad may be real: a warning can matter, a criticism can help, a scandal can expose corruption. The distortion is weight, not existence ... 1/3 #RealityTrackingDaily

[Reed Esau @reedes]

... so one ugly fact starts speaking for the whole field. One harsh comment outweighs ten fair ones. One gruesome headline makes ordinary life look more dangerous than it is. What fails loudly begins to feel more representative than what works quietly. 2/3

[Reed Esau @reedes]

An incredible example of why our skepticism of institutions and prestige is merited. In this case a broad range of institutions (multiple levels of government, media, law enforcement, academia, etc.) hallucinating and committing to a false reality that has persisted for years. #realitytracking

[Jonathan Kay @jonkay]

Wow. The editorial board of the Globe & Mail just flat out admitted that it screwed up by failing to scrutinize the false 2021 claims that “unmarked graves” had been “confirmed” at Kamloops. It’s taken five years, which is a disgrace, but give them credit for finally saying it

[Reed Esau @reedes]

Coincidentally I wasn't far from his planned route south through Wyoming where we had met up briefly.

[JoeAnderson @JoeAnderson]

Some things are worth taking a few days to verify properly. This is one of them...

I'm proud to announce that I have successfully driven through all 48 contiguous states plus DC in my 2026 Tesla Model Y Juniper on FSD 14.3.2. And I did it solo. Actually, let's be accurate. I rode. FSD drove.

🗓️ May 20-29, 2026.
🗺️ 7,241 official miles. 9 days, 21 hours, 50 minutes.
⚡ Not a single gallon of gas. Not a single steering input. FSD drove every mile.
💵 Total cost: $901 in Supercharger fees. Same trip in a comparable gas SUV: ~$1,303.

The moment that defined the trip: the tri-state corner of MT/WY/SD, the most remote stretch of the drive from a Supercharger standpoint. I could have taken a safer route but I wanted to get there on a single charge. I knew the risk. Turned off the AC, sweated through 95°F inside the cabin, arrived at 2%. Cost me a little backtracking to officially enter Wyoming. Worth every mile. 🎯

Call it a Gentleman's Cannonball Run. I pushed hard every single day, but with rules. Sleep every night. No tickets. No driving tired. Highway speeds. Supervising an autonomous system while exhausted is reckless. I know a little something about that. Those aren't arbitrary rules, safety is my first priority. I'm an airline pilot. ✈️

Based on everything I've been able to find, this trip may represent three records worth noting:

🏆 First FSD drive through all 48 contiguous states plus DC. Solo.
🏆 Most US jurisdictions covered in a single FSD trip (49)
🏆 Possibly first and fastest EV drive through all 48 states plus DC

All claims subject to verification. If anyone has done this before, I genuinely want to know. My data is fully logged and available.

#Tesla #FSD #ModelY #48StatesPlus #EVRoadTrip #GentlemansCannonball #FSD14 @Tesla @DavidMoss @WholeMars

[Reed Esau @reedes]

... and maybe more evidence-based than the person who disagrees. Ask what would count against your view, then face the strongest contrary case. If the evidence had pointed the other way, would you have noticed, remembered, and weighted it equally? 3/3

[Reed Esau @reedes]

May 31 - CONFIRMATION BIAS is the tendency to seek, notice, interpret, and remember information in ways that favor what you believe or want. The danger begins early: belief helps decide what gets onto the table before you feel you are judging fairly ... 1/3 #RealityTrackingDaily

[Reed Esau @reedes]

... so supporting examples jump out, ambiguous cases lean your way, and inconvenient facts look dismissible. The result feels like reality has spoken, but your contact with reality has already been filtered. You do not feel biased. You feel sensible, careful, confirmed ... 2/3

[Reed Esau @reedes]

Installed USB GPS receiver atop motor within Maxxair fan enclosure so my onboard openclaw agent can access our location.

(Recently Starlink restricted ability to query location, so that was no longer an option.) #vanbuild

[Reed Esau @reedes]

... while the language of principle remains. Ask: if the roles were reversed, would this still look principled? Would I ask for the same evidence, grant the same context, and draw the same conclusion? Double standards let favoritism feel like fairness. 3/3

[Reed Esau @reedes]

May 30 - DOUBLE STANDARDS appear when similar cases are judged by different measures. An ally gets context. An opponent gets condemnation. One claim may lean on ambiguity while another must clear every hurdle. The issue is asymmetry with a direction ... 1/3 #RealityTrackingDaily

[Reed Esau @reedes]

... standards soften for the protected side and harden for the exposed side. That corrupts comparison, one of the main tools of judgment. False equivalence flattens differences that matter; double standards deny similarities that should matter. Comparability breaks ... 2/3