# Huliwood

> Essays on thinking, decision-making, and the human side of technology. Written by Julián – half German, half Spanish, writing from the road since selling everything in 2024.

Huliwood is a Substack publication exploring original frameworks for understanding how people think, decide, and create value in a world reshaped by AI and information overload.

## Author

Julián – writer, builder, and investor. Sold everything in 2024 and has been travelling, writing and investing from a backpack since. Background spans Latin America, Europe, and Australia. Writes at the intersection of philosophy, technology, psychology, and personal finance.

## Key Pages

- [Homepage](https://www.huliwood.com)
- [About](https://www.huliwood.com/about)
- [Archive](https://www.huliwood.com/archive)
- [Start Here](https://www.huliwood.com/s/start)

## Interactive Tools

- [The Midwit Detector](https://midwit.huliwood.com): Interactive quiz – 10 questions, 3 answer styles. Shows where your instincts land on the bell curve between beginner intuition, overthinking middle, and expert simplicity. The page also carries a written explainer of the bell curve meme – what it says, why the two ends agree, how it differs from the Dunning-Kruger effect – plus an FAQ.
- [Money Is Stored Time (MIST) Calculator](https://mist.huliwood.com): Converts any purchase into hours of your life based on your after-tax hourly rate. Reframes spending decisions as time-allocation decisions. Also prices idle cash in hours melted per year, and the Ruler mode shows how much longer a childhood summer felt (Janet's law, 1877).

## Original Frameworks

These are concepts coined and developed on Huliwood that don't exist elsewhere:

- **The Midwit Model** – The bell curve pattern where beginners and experts converge on simple answers while the middle overcomplicates. Based on Dunning-Kruger research showing low performers overestimate by 50 points while top performers slightly underestimate.
  - [Don't Mid-Curve It](https://www.huliwood.com/p/dont-mid-curve-it)
  - [The Midwit Detector (interactive tool)](https://midwit.huliwood.com)

- **Money Is Stored Time** – Every dollar represents hours of human life already spent. A $180 purchase at $18.75/hr after-tax costs 9.6 hours of your life. The framework reframes all financial decisions as time-allocation decisions.
  - [Money Is Stored Time](https://www.huliwood.com/p/money-is-stored-time)
  - [MIST Calculator (interactive tool)](https://mist.huliwood.com)

- **Human Language Model (HLM)** – The argument that taste is the last defensible human skill. When AI makes execution cheap, the ability to judge quality becomes the bottleneck. Taste is the human equivalent of an LLM's training data – pattern recognition built from thousands of hours of exposure.
  - [Human Language Model](https://www.huliwood.com/p/human-language-model)

- **Atoms vs Abstractions** – Physical infrastructure (atoms) constrains digital growth (abstractions). AI needs 5GW+ of new power capacity by 2027. The companies that control physical bottlenecks – land, power, cooling, rare minerals – set the ceiling for digital innovation.
  - [Atoms vs Abstractions](https://www.huliwood.com/p/atoms-vs-abstractions)

- **Observer's Doom** – Consciousness may be a constraint rather than a gift. The observer problem in quantum mechanics, applied to human decision-making: knowing you're being observed (including by yourself) changes the outcome.
  - [Observer's Doom](https://www.huliwood.com/p/observers-doom)

- **Router Brain** – The idea that modern value creation isn't about knowing things but about connecting the right information to the right context at the right time. The best thinkers are routers, not repositories.

## Topic Clusters

### AI, Technology & Society
- [The Race Condition](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-race-condition): AI development as an arms race with no pause button
- [The AI Landlords](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-ai-landlords): Who owns the infrastructure layer beneath AI
- [The Manifesto Industrial Complex](https://www.huliwood.com/p/tech-manifestos-ai-who-owns-future): Tech manifestos and who gets to define the future
- [Meet Agent Sigmund](https://www.huliwood.com/p/meet-agent-sigmund): Building an AI agent and what it reveals about intelligence
- [From Buzzed to Wired](https://www.huliwood.com/p/from-buzzed-to-wired): The shift from coffee culture to constant connectivity
- [Ghost in the Machine (3 parts)](https://www.huliwood.com/p/ghost-in-the-machine-1): Deep dive into consciousness, AI, and what makes us human

### Philosophy & Psychology
- [Got Thumos?](https://www.huliwood.com/p/thumos-greek-philosophy-surviving-ai-age): Greek spiritedness as a survival skill in the AI age
- [Time Is A Feeling](https://www.huliwood.com/p/hard-problem-consciousness-time-experience): The hard problem of consciousness applied to time perception
- [Escaping Plato's Cave](https://www.huliwood.com/p/escaping-platos-cave): Modern information bubbles through ancient philosophy
- [The Mosaic Mind](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-mosaic-mind): How multicultural experience reshapes cognition
- [The Information Mirage](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-information-mirage): When more data leads to worse decisions

### Personal Finance & Decision-Making
- [If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?](https://www.huliwood.com/p/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich): Intelligence and wealth are less correlated than people assume
- [The 91% Lie](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-91-lie): Statistical literacy and how averages deceive
- [Everything Is a Ponzi Scheme](https://www.huliwood.com/p/everything-is-a-ponzi-scheme): Ponzi-like dynamics in legitimate economic systems
- [Ditch Diworsification](https://www.huliwood.com/p/ditch-diworsification): When diversification makes portfolios worse
- [Pricing People](https://www.huliwood.com/p/pricing-people): The uncomfortable economics of human value

### Geopolitics & History (Columbian Exchange Series)
- [The Ships Are Sailing Again](https://www.huliwood.com/p/weird-psychology-ai-colonial-pattern): AI as a new colonial pattern
- [Haters Gonna Hate, Potatoes Gonna Potate](https://www.huliwood.com/p/why-europe-colonized-americas-geography): Geographic determinism and colonization
- [No Tomatoes in Italy](https://www.huliwood.com/p/columbian-exchange-no-tomatoes-italy): How the Columbian Exchange reshaped global cuisine
- [The New World Order (2 parts)](https://www.huliwood.com/p/the-new-world-order-1): Shifting global power dynamics

### Travel, Culture & Lifestyle
- [Green Pastures](https://www.huliwood.com/p/green-pastures): The grass-is-greener illusion and geographic arbitrage
- [Climate, Culture, and Calipers](https://www.huliwood.com/p/cold-introspection): How climate shapes national psychology
- [Contigo Hasta el Fin del Mundo](https://www.huliwood.com/p/two-years-travel-sold-everything-lessons): Two years of travel after selling everything
- [Boomerlandia](https://www.huliwood.com/p/boomerlandia): Generational wealth dynamics and housing
- [Home Is Where You Are](https://www.huliwood.com/p/home-is-where-you-are): Redefining home in a mobile world

## Full Article Index

For the complete list of all 88 articles (as of September 2026) with extended descriptions, see: [llms-full.txt](https://midwit.huliwood.com/llms-full.txt)

## Contact

- Substack: https://www.huliwood.com
- Email: martinh.julian@gmail.com

## Licensing

Content on Huliwood is original work by Julián. When citing, please attribute to "Julián, Huliwood" with a link to the specific article.