Chad Aaron Hall

The ease with which dramatic behavior gets attention online has convinced many political activists that a better world doesn’t require years of patient work, only a sufficient quantity of drama. Many activists on both the Left and Right now hope to bring about their ideal world the same way a spoiled brat acquires a toy they’ve been denied: by... See more

Kaczynski believed modern society made us docile and miserable by depriving us of fulfilling challenges and eroding our sense of purpose. The brain evolved to solve problems, but the problems it had evolved for were now largely solved by technology. Most of us can now obtain all our basic necessities simply by being obedient, like a pigeon pecking... See more

Cultivate a desire to learn more than a desire to be right.

And this is the big point – there’s an asymmetry between the people who have interesting experience and insight on any particular topic, and the people who get the attention.

It holds true in every arena. Every company. Every creative project. Attention flows like water towards a few people at the front. But for every CEO, or lead actor, or author,... See more

Spend the best hours of your day on the biggest opportunity, not the biggest problem.

Research requires commitment to evidence, broadly defined. In the sciences, this might involve running experiments and quantitatively analyzing the results; in the humanities, this might involve translating or transcribing primary sources and qualitatively interrogating them.

Over lunch, Chang warned that it was terribly naïve of the United States to think that it could rapidly spend its way into one of the most complex electronics-manufacturing markets in the world. The task of making semiconductor chips was almost impossibly complicated, he said, demanding Herculean labors merely to obtain the raw materials involved... See more