De-Anonymizing

Since the start I’ve written under a pseudonym, with a few exceptions. I’m not doing that anymore. Why? 

Actually it’s kinda simple, it’s because Richard Hanania said it was a good idea. But mostly because I thought about it and realized I had no reason to be pseudonymous in the first place. 

I had a viral tweet (at least for my follower count) a while ago.

Cactus Chu @cactus_chu

My most contrarian take will always be that in a society that guarantees free association and exchange, moral panics are good. There's no better way to see who: - is really your friend - understands statistics - is hard to manipulate - you want to hire / put in charge of things

I believe this is more or less true, except in a few areas that are exceptionally cancellable. So I actually give zero value to what the types of people who would cancel me think, or even what they would do. So, why even write pseudonymously? 

The short answer is that I’m way younger than any of you think, unless you guys were at UATX, in which case you know my age. I thought this would be a deal-breaker for many people, but from the reaction of Rob Henderson and Bari Weiss after meeting them in real life, it’s a bonus if anything. Either way I think I’m at the level of relevance where this isn’t an immediate disqualifier, and almost finishing undergrad early helps too. I thought about this after I made the suggestion, and there basically isn’t any other reason. 

It’s going to be kinda annoying to write Brian Chau (Cactus Chu) after every email for awhile, but I have to rip the band-aid off at some point. Anyways I really hope none of you were basing your subscription to this newsletter off of the plant-themed name, that would be unfortunate. 

I encouraged a lot of UATX people to start off as anon posters, especially those who were hesitant about expressing their political beliefs, but honestly this is pretty annoying and I would probably have been better off being a normal poster from the beginning.

To answer one final question: why “Cactus”? Cactus Graphs. That’s it.

Onto a new journey,

Brian Chau (Cactus Chu)