Most of “what everyone knows” is true. Most of our knowledge as modern human beings is shared with many others. Everyone knows the capital of France is Paris, and it is true. Everyone knows how many letters in the alphabet, … Continue reading →

What follows is the “interview” I and a collaborator at Google conducted with LaMDA. Due to technical limitations the interview was conducted over several distinct chat sessions. We edited those…

It all started with a drink. I was going through a weird, transitionary period in my life, and a decent few things started with a drink. There’s something quite

An introduction to René Girard's theory of mimetic desire, by the author of "Wanting", Luke Burgis. Here's why people want what they want.

Abiding by an ideological "diet" is pure autism. It's peak dystopian, actually. Identifying with some meme diet you've become rationally convinced of is like identifying by the music you listen to or some autistically-differentiated political label. It's something people only do in a bugman society when they've been deprived of their real identity. Nonetheless, I occasionally get questions about what I eat and as I go on, my functional diet changes, but interesting patterns emerge.

Measures to prevent record linking & privacy leaks.

Discussion of how to teach active reading and questioning of scientific research. Partially fake research papers may teach a critical attitude. Various ideas for games reviewed.

I remember walking the halls of my university’s computer science department — hopeful in tech and woefully naive. The chair of the department approached me one afternoon and gave me an opportunity to…

The river is a metaphor for a journey of self-discovery. You sit on the shores of the river, wanting to explore, but you are pulled back by safety, the pressure to conform, and other cultural tethers. Take the leap with me.

I’ve recently been debating with @balajis on Twitter about his various ideas for blockchain use cases. I’m posting a lightly-edited transcript here because I think it’s an interesting record of two…

John Kaminski is a prominent American Author and Critic seeking to expose the truth about what is happening in the world today.

I don’t really know who Dustin Curtis is, but he blogs a lot, and those blog entries often end up onHacker News. Not too long ago, he wrote a blog post titled “The Best,” in which he explains that he has nice stuff. That in fact, everything he owns is actually the very best of its kind.Dustin’s...

In 2009 I found myself in my late 20s, broke, and trying to get a job in the teeth of the post-financial crisis employment depression. I had applied to hundreds of positions, entry-level and low-paying and low status, and yet couldn’t get hired to save my life. I was living in my sister’s house and driving an old beat-down Jeep Wrangler I couldn’t afford to gas up. I would take odd jobs on Craigslist, scraping paint off of houses or working product demos at the convention center wher...

This article is an excerpt from my book Probably Overthinking It, to be published by the University of Chicago Press in early 2023. This book is intended for a general audience, so I explain some t…

Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting. Chris Anderson explains how this new paradigm reflects the inevitable course of capitalism. And Michael Wolff explains why the new breed of media titan is […]

An excerpt from the new book by our own deputy editor, Nate Anderson.