Andrei Stoica

To sabotage the mindless saboteurs who are following the CIA’s manual, here are some new instructions:

01. ELI5 (Explain Like I’m Five) : Play dumb. Require over-simplification in the recommendation. Request or provide a super basic answer to help strip jargon and complexity. If it doesn’t make sense to a five year old, it won’t ever make sense.... See more

Once a year, the winners of EV grants are invited to an “UnConference” in Virginia, which is designed as an intellectual petri dish for people to mingle and spawn ideas. Talks are given with no preparation and to no schedule, in randomly arranged discussion groups that you can leave whenever you please. In the evening, buses take groups out to one... See more

I often draw a distinction between the political elites of Washington DC and the industrial elites of Silicon Valley with a joke: in San Francisco reading books, and talking about what you have read, is a matter of high prestige. Not so in Washington DC. In Washington people never read books—they just write them.

When the pandemic hit, Cowen and Collison, the founder of Stripe, set up a separate grant programme to fund research. The pair had raised and spent millions before larger bodies managed to respond. One large grant went to Anne Wylie, who developed saliva tests for covid-19. Though Wylie was a researcher at the Yale School of Public Health, and... See more

These stories often feature exaggerated elements of rebellion, autodidact mastery, subversive hacking, heroic confrontations with villainous teachers and schoolyard bullies, genius non-neurotypical personal innovations and breakthroughs, and powerful experiences outside formal learning. These stories often sound like self-serving tales told by... See more

What’s been the hardest thing about running a shared practice as a couple?

Yihan & Franklin: Tracking and celebrating individual contributions! Oftentimes, as a team it is more intuitive to prioritize the bigger group achievements rather than the small efforts that each person is contributing. And it's worse when you are a couple because you think... See more

Over the last six months, as I’ve been looking for things that will interest me, I’ve done it coldly. I’ve kept a list of things that makes me say, “Hm. That’s interesting.” That is, I’ve looked for things that match the pattern of how an Interesting Idea is supposed to look. But I’ve forgotten to ask myself what feels interesting, as in, “I can’t... See more

If you read Influence by Robert Cialdini, what you realize is that many things are successfully sold by opposites. Everybody has one of these, so it must be good. Or: not many people have one of these, so it must be good. You can achieve the same emotional effect with opposite messages. There are two great ways to check into a hotel. One of them is... See more