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Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
There will always be those who try to challenge growing scientific consensus — indeed the challenge is fundamental to science. Motives, however, matter and not everyone has good intentions. *** Naomi …
It’s not immediately clear to the layman what the essential difference is between science and something masquerading as science: pseudoscience. The distinction between the two is at …
In his 1986 speech at the commencement of Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles (found in Poor Charlie’s Almanack) Charlie Munger gave a short Johnny Carson-like speech on the things to avoid …
* “Be not deceived,” Epictetus writes in The Discourses, “every animal is attached to nothing so much as to its own interest.” Few things are more in our nature than our …
We’ve been told for decades that dietary fat makes us gain weight, yet research suggests refined carbohydrates are to blame. It’s time to turn the food pyramid upside down. Let’s examine the …
The biologist E.O. Wilson, now of Harvard University, made his first and largest splash by releasing his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, which made the controversial claim (at the time) that …
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track is a wonderful collection of letters written to and from the physicist and professor Richard Feynman—champion of understanding, explainer, an …
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) has long been one of my favorites — for both his wisdom and heart. Reproduced below you can find the entirety of his 1974 commencement address at Caltech entitled Cargo …
Carl Sagan’s timeless and humbling Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, based on the photograph above. Here’s an excerpt: Look again at that dot. That’s here. …
The Origin of the Universe, a lecture, by Stephen Hawking According to the Boshongo people of central Africa, in the beginning, there was only darkness, water, and the great god Bumba. One day Bumba, …
The Lucretius Problem is a mental defect where we assume the worst-case event that has happened is the worst-case event that can happen. In so doing, we fail to understand that the worst event that …
In this brief video, Elon Musk, who previously brought us how to build knowledge and 12 book recommendations, talks about a framework for thinking. I do think there is a good framework for thinking. …
What makes us human? In part, argues evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel in Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind, language is one of the keys to our evolutionary success, especially in …
Too often life gets in the way of reading and thinking. Rarely are we given a chance to look back at what influenced our thinking. Sometimes these are small fragments — words, thoughts, marginalia, …
Elon Musk recently did an AMA on reddit. Here are three question-and-response pairs that I enjoyed, including how to build knowledge. He knows how to say I don’t know. Previously, you’ve …
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was no ordinary genius. He believed that “the world is much more interesting than any one discipline.” His explanations — on why questions, why trains stay on the tracks as …