alcohol cleanAir communication economics explainer gameTheory history math personality philosophy philosophy, policy science science, selfImprovement statistics writing
alcohol
The big alcohol study that didn't happen: My primal scream of rage
Alcohol, health, and the ruthless logic of the Asian flush
cleanAir
A summary of the research on gas stoves and health
The case against ultrasonic humidifiers
Better air quality is the easiest way not to die
The Cuboid: A DIY air purifier that's better than a box-fan
Experiments on a $50 DIY air purifier you can make in 30s
communication
Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with? Six models
My attempted cult recruitment
Arguing without warning
How I learned to stop worrying and structure all writing as a list
Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate
How to use analogies for good not evil
Effective selfishness
What I learned from reading about writing
Doing discourse better: Stuff I wish I knew
economics
Why didn't we get GPT-2 in 2005?
First-principles on AI scaling
Winner take all science
Buy more copies
Litter and circles of internalization
Do economies tend to converge or diverge?
Sales tax creates more unnecessary pain than value added tax
Why I'm skeptical of universal basic income
Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
explainer
The conspiratorial Monty Hall problem
What happens if you don't fill out that ethnicity form?
Sales tax creates more unnecessary pain than value added tax
Making the Monty Hall problem weirder but obvious
Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
gameTheory
Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
history
Shorts for June
What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi?
How the United States didn't ban the death penalty
How France banned the death penalty
How the United Kingdom banned the death penalty
How Germany banned the death penalty
The death penalty as a lens on democracy
math
The conspiratorial Monty Hall problem
Simpson's paradox all the way down
The simplest possible way to convert Celsius and Fahrenheit
It's hard to use utility maximization to justify creating new sentient beings
Making the Monty Hall problem weirder but obvious
personality
My attempted cult recruitment
General factors of intelligence and physical fitness
It’s perfectly valid for a trait to be more than 100% heritable
Does the gender-equality paradox actually exist?
Are some personalities just better?
In defense of Myers-Briggs
philosophy
Underrated reasons to be thankful
Diet Coke probably isn't a cognitive performance enhancer
Why it's bad to kill Grandma
Why I don't believe in long-term thinking
Warby Parker multiverse
Reasons and Persons: The case against the self
How to use analogies for good not evil
Homosexuality and evolution
Plans you're not supposed to talk about
Reasons and Persons: Watch theories eat themselves
Underrated reasons to be thankful
Are ethics all a lie?
Pragmatic reasons to believe in formal ethics
It's hard to use utility maximization to justify creating new sentient beings
philosophy,
Reasons after nonpersons
The hard problem of feelings
policy
Things to argue about over the holidays instead of politics
Advice on being managed
Historical analogies for large language models
Valid arguments with invalid conclusions
What I learned trying to classify abortion access across the rich world
Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with? Six models
The madness of reduced medical diagnostics
Why I don't believe in long-term thinking
Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate
How the United States didn't ban the death penalty
How France banned the death penalty
How the United Kingdom banned the death penalty
How Germany banned the death penalty
The death penalty as a lens on democracy
A breakdown of the data on the homeless crisis across the U.S.
The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it
The big alcohol study that didn't happen: My primal scream of rage
Statistical nihilism and culture-war island hopping
Political polarization is partly a sample bias illusion
Does the gender-equality paradox actually exist?
The irrelevance of test scores is greatly exaggerated
What happens if you don't fill out that ethnicity form?
Sales tax creates more unnecessary pain than value added tax
Why fairness is basically unobservable
Policy proposals and what we don't know about them
The veil of darkness
Your ratios don't prove what you think they prove
Doing discourse better: Stuff I wish I knew
science
My stupid noise journey
The second system problem
I still think it's very unlikely we're observing alien aircraft
Taxonomy of procrastination
Numbers without which it's impossible to talk about weight loss
Reasons after nonpersons
The hard problem of feelings
Your friend the language model
Underrated reasons to be thankful
Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier
Aspartame: Once more unto the breach
Social dynamics of bluetooth speakers
Shorts for June
What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi?
Don't blame ethylene for bad tomatoes
The madness of reduced medical diagnostics
Why nuclear weapons aren't getting bigger
So you want to invent a nuclear weapon
Ethylene in the food supply chain
Ethylene for fun and profit and produce
You, your parents, and the hotness of who you marry
Homosexuality and evolution
How many extra days of life do you get from taking statins?
Underrated reasons to be thankful
The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it
Two conspiracy theories about cola
The big alcohol study that didn't happen: My primal scream of rage
A review of early split-brain experiments
Alcohol, health, and the ruthless logic of the Asian flush
Better air quality is the easiest way not to die
The Cuboid: A DIY air purifier that's better than a box-fan
Napoleon's failure in Russia as an analogy for T-cell based viral immunity
Experiments on a $50 DIY air purifier you can make in 30s
The simplest possible way to convert Celsius and Fahrenheit
What happens if you drink acetone?
science,
Why didn't we get GPT-2 in 2005?
First-principles on AI scaling
Winner take all science
selfImprovement
Things you're doing but don't want to be doing
How many extra days of life do you get from taking statins?
Effective selfishness
Alcohol, health, and the ruthless logic of the Asian flush
How to run without all the pesky agonizing pain
statistics
The conspiratorial Monty Hall problem
A breakdown of the data on the homeless crisis across the U.S.
Statistical nihilism and culture-war island hopping
Political polarization is partly a sample bias illusion
General factors of intelligence and physical fitness
It’s perfectly valid for a trait to be more than 100% heritable
Does the gender-equality paradox actually exist?
Are some personalities just better?
The irrelevance of test scores is greatly exaggerated
Why fairness is basically unobservable
Policy proposals and what we don't know about them
Simpson's paradox all the way down
The veil of darkness
Your ratios don't prove what you think they prove
Making the Monty Hall problem weirder but obvious
In defense of Myers-Briggs
writing
Creative nonfiction training exercises
Arguing without warning
So you're thinking about writing on the internet
What I learned from reading about writing