1. Like many people I have been drawn to Christopher Hitchens. Perhaps the many recordings of him on YouTube will mark his legacy more than his writings because the real-life roundness of his warmth,
As a young child, I was painfully shy. I’d watch other children at play in the park, wishing I could join their ranks for a game of tag, hide-and-seek, or jump rope, but too scared to approach them. E
If it's your own history, you might as well use it. In August 1969, during a brief break from one of their final recording sessions, the four members of the Beatles were photographed in mid-stride on
On Sunday 28 April 1996, Martin Bryant was awoken by his alarm at 6am. He said goodbye to his girlfriend as she left the house, ate some breakfast, and set the burglar alarm before leaving his Hobart
This story originally appeared in the April 13th, 2000 issue of Rolling Stone Prologue: Who Cares? Since you’re reading Rolling Stone , the chances are you’re an American between say 18 and 35, which
I consider Definite Optimism as Human Capital to be my most creative piece. Unfortunately, it’s oblique and meandering. So I thought to write a followup to lay out its premises more directly and to of
Talk at Bellcore, 7 March 1986 The title of my talk is "You and Your Research." It is not about managing research, it is about how you individually do your research. I could give a talk on the other s
On May 18, 2017, Jonathan Bush was standing at the stern of his luxury catamaran, the Zenyatta, named for a champion Thoroughbred racehorse, when he received a text message from a colleague warning hi
Scott Alexander has become obsessed with the predictive processing theory of cognition. If you start clicking on those links in order, as I have, you will become obsessed too. It will change how you t
THE WORLD THAT literary critic René Girard described and explored — one of runaway desire, obsession with taboo and scandal, and an overwhelming instinct to blame outsiders for our problems — is remar
Socrates bust by Victor Wager, University of Western Australia Philosophers acquired their designation in ancient times, in consequence of a becoming modesty. Socrates is said to have turned aside a c
By using these resources, you agree to abide by Columbia University's Acceptable Usage of Information Resources Policy . Managed by CUIT. Please contact the CUIT Service Desk for login assistance.
By using these resources, you agree to abide by Columbia University's Acceptable Usage of Information Resources Policy . Managed by CUIT. Please contact the CUIT Service Desk for login assistance.
What a year. We gave up our college eligibility and went pro, albeit in a late round of the draft, by raising a $50 million fund. It was our “big deal” of the year. More on that later. It felt like th
Bryan Caplan and Nassim Nicholas Taleb on What’s Missing in Education (Bonus-Live at Mercatus) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / RSS Mercatus Center May 23, 2018 · 30 min read Sure, Nassim Nichola
December 2005 The most impressive people I know are all terrible procrastinators.So could it be that procrastination isn't always bad? Most people who write about procrastination write about how to cu
Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Self-Education and Doing the Math (Ep. 41 — Live at Mercatus) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / RSS Mercatus Center May 23, 2018 · 32 min read Though what Nassim Nicholas
The McKinsey & Company offices in Sandton, Johannesburg’s financial center. In 2015, the consulting giant entered into a contract that turned out to be illegal. Credit Gulshan Khan for The New York Times When the godfather of management consulting landed its biggest contract ever in Africa, it made…
By James Currier, Managing Partner ( @JamesCurrier ) As investors and advisors in over 60 early-marketplace startups, we've paid close attention to what it takes to get marketplaces started. Which comes first, the supply or the demand? Chicken or egg? We’ve noticed at least 19 distinct, executable…
Humans are social animals. We live in groups. We care for our offspring for years. We cooperate with each other (the United States Congress notwithstanding). Most of all, we have lasting relationships with other individual humans – what biologists call long-term pair bonds. Some of these pair bonds,…
Robert Nickelsberg / Contributor “We think of capitalism as being locked in an ideological battle with socialism, but we never really saw that capitalism might be defeated by its own child — technology.” This is how Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and a managing director of Peter Thiel’s investment…
(Photo: Erich Chen) Two moments now stand out at me in my life. Driving home, by myself, after my high school graduation, thinking: I am finally free. And now, driving with my father, on the way to my wedding . Such different feelings toward two similar life events, almost exactly a decade between…
One of my blog posts from 2007 has been making the rounds on social media this week. (Thank you, Naval Ravikant .) I take that as a signal that I should re-post it here in case you missed it the first time. And now a second look… The Day You Became A Better Writer I went from being a bad writer to a…
January 2004 Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself andbeen embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actuallydress like that? We did. And we had no idea howsilly we looked.It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, in thesame way the movement of the earth is invisible to allof us riding on…
From the Oct. 3, 2011, issue of NR. When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of…
Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn, has a premise about how the economic world will work from now on. Illustration by Stanley Chow Early on a Monday evening in June, Reid Hoffman, the founder and executive chairman of the business-oriented networking site LinkedIn, met Mark Pincus, the founder and chief…
Look, listen — proceed When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a…
And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. — Luke 17:26–30 F or the judeo-western…
“Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.” – Mae West In this post, we’ll look two alternatives to monogamy: an “anything goes” sex club and living with three lovers at once. It’s very graphic, definitely not suitable for work (NSFW), and guaranteed to offend most of you. If you’re…
Let’s get right to it. For more every month, sign up for the book club . Non-Fiction Because the criteria is “per-page,” many of the non-fiction books I’ve chosen are very systematic . They tend to describe/explain how one or more system(s) work. This is so valuable because understanding a system is…
A fun question to ask yourself: what books have you read that literally changed your life? I read a lot of great books, but when I went through my list of about 1,000, there were only 8 (!!) that rewired me so much that I can say I was changed after reading them. These books are old—median: 119…
We’ve all heard this quote from Peter Thiel: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” It’s the introduction of his VC’s manifesto entitled “What Happened to the Future?”, and it neatly sums up his argument that we’re economically stagnant and no longer living in a…
Fri., May 25, 2018 Several years ago, Jordan Peterson told me he wanted to buy a church. This was long before he became known as “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world,” as he was described in the pages of the New York Times a few months ago. It was before he was fancied to…
( Note: this is not a typical Stratechery article; there is no over-arching narrative or reference to current news. Rather, the primary goal is to provide a future point of reference ) Aggregation Theory describes how platforms (i.e. aggregators) come to dominate the industries in which they compete…
I thought to write a post on some of the things I’ve learned in the past year, along with some recommendations on what you should see and read. Here’s a general principle I’d like to put forward: That learning, broadly defined, ought to accelerate over time. It’s an analytical error to analogize the…
I. Four years ago, soon after learning that my wife was pregnant with our first child, I was sitting on the Metro-North commuter train, reading. I was thinking about being a father; specifically, I was wondering what it would take to be a great father. Unconditional love and support seemed obvious.…
September 2007 In high school I decided I was going to study philosophy in college.I had several motives, some more honorable than others. One of theless honorable was to shock people. College was regarded as jobtraining where I grew up, so studying philosophy seemed an impressivelyimpractical thing…
"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." - Sun Tzu My…
This week I had dinner at a great steakhouse in New York with a very good friend. Like any two “normal” guys after a long day, all we could talk about was science, and on this particular night the topic du jour was NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease for the non-cognoscenti). We ate, we drank,…
Jeremy Giffon