Tier updates, preview of the next video, and yearly update

Hey folks,

Let’s jump right in.

Updated Patreon Tiers

Here’s the new set of tiers and rewards, which will go live when I publish the next video: Simulating the Evolution of Aging, which will come out in January. Basically, things are getting cheaper.

$3 – Name in the video credits, a discord role, and a merch discount. The main change here is putting video credits in the bottom tier. I’m extremely grateful to those of you willing to pay $37 per month for this, but I think I’ve overpriced it. No idea what the demand curve really looks like, but I want to err on the side of allowing more people to feel tangibly part of this project. This will take effect after the upcoming aging video, meaning those of you who have been paying for it will still have exclusive recognition. But after that, it will be a benefit for the $3 tier.

$10 – The above, plus participation in a live stream one week after the publish of each video. During the stream, I’ll have the simulation tool up so we can do custom simulation runs, and I’ll also have a tablet handy for chalk talk. This benefit includes access to the live stream itself, the opportunity to ask questions before and during the stream to help determine its structure, and also access to the recording in case you can’t make it live.

$25 – Same benefits as the $10 tier, just more impact for those who want to give extra support.

How will the transition work?

• I will update the tiers right before I publish the aging video in January. All of the current tiers will act as normal through that video. The old tiers will then be “unpublished”, meaning they stick around for existing members, but nobody can sign up for them.

• The first livestream, focusing on the aging video, will be open to all paying members, old and new. My hope here is to get as many people to show up as possible, since it will be a new format, and some existing members may not even realize it’s happening.

• Most of you could save money by selecting one of the new tiers. If that sounds good to you, please do it!

• For existing members who don’t update to a new tier:

  • Everyone will have access to non-stream Patreon posts.

  • Live streams will be available to anyone paying $10 or more.

  • Having your name in the credits will be strictly opt-in. If you’re not currently getting video recognition and would like to, either select one of the new tiers when they go live after the next video, or send me a direct message. I’ll also send direct messages to anyone with an ambiguous case beforehand to give another chance to opt in. This was a tricky choice. I think most people will want the recognition, and I would enjoy adding more names to the end screens. But I think it’s better for some people to miss out on the reward than to inflict publicity on someone who would rather keep things private.

Why the change?

I would like to bring in more money and use that money to help make videos more quickly. Primer isn’t doing well on Patreon, both in terms of general metric benchmarks and direct comparison to similar channels. I’m sure the new tiers are suboptimal in some way, but it seems clear that offering more value at lower tiers is a step in the right direction.

And even if revenue doesn’t increase, I’ll be glad that people are getting more value for their Patreon dollar. I’m particularly excited about the livestream tier, since it seems like it will be more valuable than my spotty generic updates, and it also gives me a concrete output to deliver on.

Realizing the current tiers are lackluster makes me all the more thankful for those of you reading this. You’re not getting much out of this personally, so you must be giving out of a genuine desire to see the channel succeed. I’m deeply thankful.

I can say thanks all I want, but the best way to show my appreciation for your support is to actually make the channel succeed. I’ve been overly averse to business-side optimizations, reasoning that the main bottleneck to the channel’s success is publishing speed. I still think that’s the main bottleneck, but making the Patreon tiers less terrible is an easy change that seems likely to result in more funds, which could in turn help solve that core problem of speed. It feels silly that I took so long to decide this, but here we are.

Next video: Simulating the Evolution of Aging

The next video on the evolution of aging is nearly done. I was hoping to finish in time for the new year, but it will be out in January.

The basic question in the video is: Dying seems bad. Why doesn’t natural selection improve our ability to maintain our bodies?

The video starts by simulating a population of blobs that don’t age, just to get a sense for the baseline without aging. It then goes through a few models to see if we can find any that can stand up to natural selection, or even be favored by it.

Here’s a frame from a scene that uses the simplest aging model: death genes that activate at a certain age. This isn’t a realistic model of aging, but the point of this scene is to illustrate the “selection shadow” phenomenon. Natural selection is weaker for genes whose effects are seen later in life, since the organism might already be dead from something else.

Looking back at this year's work

At the beginning of the year, I switched to the Godot game engine for a tool rebuild. It has been my destiny since the beginning of this whole YouTube endeavor to (re)build a lot of software stuff for every video. My goal with this year’s rebuild was to not have to do it again. In a way, the first six years of this channel have been me learning to code and learning what I actually need from a simulation video creation tool. I still have to follow through on the promise of finally actually publishing more often for real this time™, but I’m happy to report that I’m not planning to rebuild my tools next year. So that’s something.

For the aging video, I built a simulation from scratch with an eye toward making it extensible, easy to work with, and fast enough to run in real time.

• Extensibility – The system is modular, allowing new behaviors or entities to be added without affecting the operation of existing systems. This allows the same simulation structure to easily be used for future videos. For example, I could add predators to the simulation without having to touch the creature behaviors. And the same patterns could be used for economics videos, or videos on any other topic.

• Ease of use – The simulations are separated into data and visualization layers. This means bugs with one system don’t affect the other system. It’s also possible to run the data portion of the simulation alone to test and iterate on models more quickly.

• Realtime operation – The hope is to publish interactive versions of the simulations. This has been a dream ever since I moved video creation to Unity in 2019. There is still UI and design work needed, so I won’t be able to publish an interactive version of the aging sim along with the video. But we’re closer to this than we’ve ever been. Here’s a screencap of me playing with an early interactive version.
  

All in all, the tooling is feeling pretty good, so I’m hopeful there will be an uptick in the number of publishes in 2025.

My current intent for the next video is one on Bayesian hypothesis testing, a counterpart to How to Catch a Cheater with Math, which looked at hypothesis testing from a Frequentist perspective. That’s all for this post. Now more than ever, I really appreciate you all for sticking with me. I already had a reputation for publishing slowly, and the last two years have been the slowest yet. But I believe the future is bright, and I couldn’t have carried through without your support.

Thank you.

Justin