Will Bench

People who have not experienced the thing are unlikely to be generating truth. More likely, they’re resurfacing cached thoughts and narratives. Reading popular science books or news articles is not a substitute for understanding, and may make you stupider, by filling your mind with narratives and stories that don’t represent your own synthesis.

One of the mistakes we make is believing that information is meant to be established and authoritative. Outside of a highly select set of "eternal truths," most ideas are meant to be fluid.

Life has gotten very chaotic incredibly quickly. It has become increasingly difficult to parse anything from the static. People started coping with this lack of meaning through a kind of ironic detachment (which is very much still around), but it has matured into a pervasive cultural apathy, a permeating numbness. This isn’t nihilism per se. (Even... See more

“Being a writer is the best way I know how to get paid for being insane.” This 4-minute speech by author Fredrik Backman on “creative anxiety and procrastination” made me laugh.