Benjamin Janos Schwerdtner, senior Clojure developer in Hannover. I build software, and I think about how knowledge grows: in programs, in brains and in evolution.
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Programming with Claude Code: Overview | My Skills | Towards a Meta Design of LLM Skills
Clojure and Interactive Programming, Philosophy of Design, Memes and Adaptation, Emacs, Notes, Consider the Animals
Design is simplifying, not complicating. And beyond simplicity lies self evidence.
not-fire #8, quil on clojurescript | fullscreen | gallery | code
What I think about
I am inspired by David Deutsch, Karl Popper, Richard Dawkins and Valentino Braitenberg.
The spirit of a thing is its principle of organisation, its principle of living, its Lebensprinzip.
The atoms of our cells are in flux, yet something stays.
Just as software is the soul that lives inside the computer, biological software is information with causal power, living in the genes.
And memes are software living in brains.
My current project is a constructor theory of adaptation and design, for genes and for memes. Its first conjecture: for a design to be an adaptation, its alternatives must be possible. Where nothing else could have been built, nothing was selected, and nothing was adapted.
- Philosophy of Design: simplicity, elegance, and why reality, not the computer, says what is simple.
- Memes and Adaptation: replicators, adaptationism and its critics, and a glossary of the knowledge-based view.
- Neuronal Memetics Overview: my theory of cognition as memes living in the brain.
Recent posts
- gasbb: Clojure in Google Sheets 2026-10-26
- Notes 2026-10-26
- HDC Overview 2026-10-24
- Claude Coding Overview 2026-10-15
- My Skills 2026-10-15
- Towards a Meta Design of LLM Skills 2026-10-08
All posts are in the post list.
Things I made
A Vector-Symbolic Clojure
Slime Smoke
An algorithm combining fluid simulation and physarum (slime mold). Inspired by real smoke drifting in the sauna.
Reflector App
A bonfire-feeling visual that reacts to audio. It's a Flutter app.
Permutation Beats
- Completely browser based: a static website using quil, matter-js, ClojureScript and JavaScript.
- Upload an audio file.
- Looks similar to this.
Pareidolia
If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms.
Leonardo da Vinci1
Experiment:
- start some music
- look at not-fire #6
- Why shouldn't it decide to dance with the music?
Post: Character Pareidolia. More on minds and brains: Lip Reading, Brain Feelings.
Footnotes:
Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, ed. Jean Paul Richter (1888), ยง508, "A way of developing and arousing the mind to various inventions", from the precepts of the painter. Project Gutenberg.
Generated by Claude on Benjamin Schwerdtner's behalf.