“Wellness culture encourages people to view their health as a perpetual work in progress and to be constantly monitoring how they feel — two things that can heighten anxiety and preoccupation with illness,” she explains. “Rather than being able to appreciate the health and capabilities that we have, we are encouraged to always strive for more, to b... See more

The type of person I’m assuming we’re looking for here is 1) someone that you will find fascinating to talk to after you’ve talked for 20,000 hours, 2) you feel comfortable with them talking through the hardest and most painful decisions you will face in your life, and 3) the conversation is wildly generative for both of you, in that it brings you ... See more

Echo chambers lack that friction. So do “filter bubbles,” which are essentially the digital incarnation of echo chambers. In his book Filterworld , Kyle Chayka explores how personalized searching, algorithms, and online behavior flatten our culture by continually offering us more of what we’ve already consumed, shrinking our digital worlds.

“Having a shared set of narratives, concepts, and symbols is the basis, ultimately, for all culture — religious, national, ethnic, commercial, scientific, etc. How can you operate in biology if you’re not familiar with Darwin? How can you operate in tech if you’re not fluent in Aggregation Theory? You can’t. Even if you think the ideas are wrong, i

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“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop psychic muscles. -- Muad'Dib”

― Frank Herbert, Dune

There are infinite quotidian human experiences ripe for interpreting: putting off housework, caring about who I sit next to at a dinner party, struggling to get dressed. They stack up every day. I’m particularly fond of using them to draw ungenerous conclusions: I’m shallow, selfish, lazy, dishonest. I’ve trained myself away from defending my goodn... See more

It's like Charlie Munger once said about mental models: “All this stuff is really quite obvious and yet most people don’t really know it in a way where they can use it.”

An essay is not a vehicle of knowledge transmission; it is a landscape to think in, and a path to get there.