Dear Magicians,

This week I learned something I already knew.

Again.

Attention is never neutral. It arrives with baggage: incentives, asymmetries, and people who want something from you. Your credibility. Your legitimacy. Or just a convenient villain for their own story.

In 1497, Florence held the Bonfire of the Vanities. People piled their mirrors, books, cosmetics, instruments—anything associated with status or self-regard—and set them on fire. It wasn’t about purification. It was about spectacle. Heat mistaken for morality.

I recently went on a podcast expecting disagreement, but instead got ambushed by my hosts’ supplication to their audience.

Debate is good; science needs friction.

What I didn’t expect was the flavor of the response. “They” say never read the comments. Usually, I listen to that advice. This time, I didn’t. I wanted to see what this particular audience—of a once-great podcast—was actually doing with the conversation.

Most of the outrage wasn’t about ideas. It was about identities.

For the high crime of defending the Big Bang, evolution, and even the scientific method + peer review, I was roasted in the comments — declared a “priest,” a “gatekeeper,” a “douchebag,” a “hubristic asshole,” and my favorite: “Buzz Lightyear wannabe” (guilty as charged).

I won’t pretend some of that didn’t sting. But a pattern emerged quickly. When your entire worldview rests on “experts are ignorant,” and “consensus is groupthink”, well then disagreement isn’t a productive conversation. It’s an attack. And attacks shouldn’t be answered. They must be repelled.

Every creator begs the audience to like, comment, and subscribe. I do too. Here’s something most creators won’t say out loud: comments are not feedback. They’re algorithmic kindling.

Comments are thermodynamics. Bonfires of vanity. They measure heat, not work. Views measure something quieter—attention that doesn’t need a keyboard and a grievance to announce itself.

The data were clarifying. The episode soared. Serious people watched. Some disagreed thoughtfully. Many simply moved on with their lives. And here’s the part that surprised me—

Nothing came of it.

No emails from colleagues. No institutional fallout. No crater where my reputation used to be. Just noise. Dissipating. Exactly like noise always does. Because the audience of this particular podcast no longer matters in the way it once did. At some point, it got captured by the gravity of ten thousand cranks.

I should have known this. I did know this. Apparently, I needed to feel it at scale. Consider that lesson received.

In 2026, I finally realized I don’t need to engage grifters to “expand reach.” There’s a reason Terence Tao doesn’t debate Terrence Howard about why 1×1 ≠ 2. It’s not fear.

It’s triage.

Some conversations aren’t brave. They’re just expensive. Attention is finite. Credibility compounds slowly. Credulity and outrage go hyperbolic.

This episode closed a door—one I’d been holding open out of some misplaced sense of obligation. Or maybe vanity. Probably vanity.

That door is closed now.

Not loss.

Clarity.

​Focus.

And clarity—unlike outrage—burns brighter than any sanctimonious bonfire ever ignited.

Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week,

Brian