HeyJaredDan Davies - "Back of Mind"
A newsletter of quiet contrarianism, slow analysis and ambient ideas
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 14
- Latest publication
- Sep 25, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Aug 11, 2026
Latest issues
a question of capacity (opens the original)
Read excerpt
This is the second part, as promised on Wednesday. It also fits into a general theme of this blog, which is that “quite significant and material policy conclusions can be drawn from quite basic theorems, because economists tried to roll their own theory of information ignoring Shannon and Wiener”. (If that last sentence made no sense, then just ignore it, maybe buy a copy of The Unaccountability Machine and read on).<a class="button primary" href="https://backofmind.substack.com/s
headroom on the headroom (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Rushed today, so I think I will deal with one short [POSTSCRIPT: not exactly short, sorry!], but I think significant point today and write the longer piece on Friday, with respect to one of this blog’s constant bugbears, the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility[1]. Basically, the general theme is that some messengers are really bad, passing on incorrect messages and accidentally or purposefully manipulating the system they’re meant to be communicating for. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/b
13 theses on agentic AI and regulation (opens the original)
Read excerpt
It just came to me when I was drinking a cup of coffee – nobody, particularly me, wants me to write a big “here’s how it’s done” manifesto, nobody would listen to it and probably rightly so. The point of this blog is to put up ideas which stick in the back of your mind, so that people can use them for their own thinking. I don’t always stick to it but that was the original plan. So here are a number of disparate thoughts, which I have tried to arrange into some sort of order, but which don’t amo
a bad tool always blames the workman (opens the original)
Read excerpt
I have Many Thorts about the regulation of agentic artificial intelligence (partly influenced by this excellent new book, mainly about financial regulation). But I think they might have to wait until Friday, because before I can get into them, I need to explain, to myself and to you lot, how these things work, and consequently where the “regulatable surface” is easiest to find.This is not in any way original to me – I adapted it from <a href="https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/12/god-in-the-box/#ll
Apologies - scam warning (opens the original)
Read excerpt
I'm sorry to bother you, but thank you very much to the subscribers who have alerted me to this; there is a scammer claiming to be me who is sending out emails from a variety of addresses including “dandaviesdaily@gmail”. I do not understand how this person has got the subscriber list and have raised this issue with Substack. In the meantime I can confirm that I wouldn't ever give investment advice of any kind - I am not registered or authorized to do so and have not been for more than 10 years.
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.