My Favorite Links

Visa is a writer and thinker who explores topics around personal growth, learning, and what it means to life a good life. He shines brightest through his twitter threads, where he's gathered 10+ years of random thoughts and links that cycle back on themselves to create some seriously insane insights. But he also does long-form pieces sometimes. Below are some of my favorite pieces of his, with my must-reads bolded:

• Are You Serious? (2023): A thoughtful exploration of what it means to be truly serious about something, and how that differs from solemnity.
• Math (2020): Realize how many people are in the world, and how few you probably need to accomplish whatever your goal is.
• Smart vs Kind: Why being smart without kindness is a losing strategy, and how combining both creates compounding returns in relationships.
• Deviants: An exploration of how social deviants often drive progress and innovation, despite (or because of) their rejection of social norms.
• Most People: A thoughtful take on why "most people" statements are usually wrong and how to think more carefully about generalizations.
• Greatness is Deviance: How achieving greatness often requires deviating from conventional wisdom and accepted norms in your field.

As the author behind SlateStarCodex (now AstralCodexTen) and many great LessWrong posts, Scott is among one of the best written content creators of the last decade. He writes about psychiatry, rationality, and meta-science. Here's some writing of his that I love, with my favorites bolded:

• Beware Trivial Inconveniences (2009): Trivial inconveniences (like default app settings) are a powerful force.
• The Internet is Written by Insane People (2018) [Community Post]: If you post on the internet, you're more of an outlier than you think.
• A third-party website with all posts indexed and easily searchable (2024): A third-party website with all posts indexed and easily searchable.

Gwern.net is a collection of links and resources from Gwern Branwen, a prolific writer and researcher. Here are some of his most popular posts:

• Sunk Cost: A comprehensive analysis of sunk cost fallacy, why it persists, and how sometimes what looks like sunk cost fallacy is actually rational behavior.
• Spaced Repetition: The definitive guide to spaced repetition systems, their scientific basis, and how to use them effectively for long-term learning.

Currently working on New Science, Alexey writes extensively about leveraging the internet for social connections, personal growth, and meta-science. His writing has deeply influenced how I think about online relationships and content creation. Some of my favorites:

• It Is Your Responsibility to Follow Up (2019) : A compelling argument for why you should follow up on important emails, and how most people dramatically underestimate the importance of persistence.
• How to Make Friends Over the Internet (2019) : A practical guide to building meaningful relationships online, with concrete examples and strategies.
• Why You Should Start a Blog Right Now (2019) : An inspiring case for why blogging is valuable even if you think you have nothing original to say.
• What Should You Do with Your Life? (2018) : A collection of advice on finding direction, with particularly good sections on cold emailing and using Twitter effectively.

A programmer, writer, and entrepreneur known for founding CD Baby. Derek writes about business, life philosophy, and personal development with remarkable clarity and insight. His writing style is distinctively concise and practical. Here are some of his most impactful pieces:

• Augmenting Cognition (LTM): Michael Nielsen's detailed exploration of using Anki and spaced repetition to learn complex technical material.
• Aella: This Practice Made Men Arouse Me: A fascinating personal account of how meditation changed sexual attraction patterns, with broader implications for mind-body connections.
• Near Blog: Where Are The Builders?: A call to action about the importance of building and shipping real projects instead of endless theorizing.
• People Don't Work As Much As You Think: An eye-opening look at how most people's actual productive work hours are far fewer than commonly believed.
• Motherfuckingwebsite: A humorous but pointed critique of over-designed websites, advocating for simple, functional web design.
• Playing to Play, Playing to Win: The crucial distinction between casual participation and serious competition, and how this mindset difference affects outcomes.
• How to Legally Own Another Person: Nassim Taleb's analysis of how modern employment often creates hidden forms of servitude through financial dependence.
• How to Work Hard (Paul Graham): Insights on the nature of productive work and how to cultivate the ability to work hard effectively.
• Are You Hunting Antelope or Field Mice?: A metaphor for focusing on high-impact activities versus getting caught up in trivial tasks.
• Do The Real Thing (Scott H. Young): Why direct practice beats adjacent activities, and how to identify when you're avoiding the real work.
• Thoughts on Code Reviews: Practical advice on making code reviews more effective and less confrontational.
• When Evidence Says No, But Doctors Say Yes: An investigation into why doctors often prescribe treatments that research shows don't work.
• On Becoming Competitive When Joining a New Company: Strategies for quickly becoming effective and valuable when starting at a new company.