Curiosity

The easiest cure for Learning Syndrome is to adopt an attitude of just-in-time learning: start your project, using any step you can conceivably make, and then only learn whatever you need to take step number two.

The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or

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"Diversive curiosity makes us want to know what lies on the other side of the mountain; epistemic curiosity arms us with the knowledge we need to survive when we get there. Every human society is, in Mark Pagel’s words, a ‘cultural survival vehicle’, rich in accumulated knowledge. Every baby is born with a powerful urge to explore it." (Ian Leslie,

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I said that there is an idiosyncratic magic to the way he follows his interests, which is that they’re not just an input; Kelly turns his interests into an output that he can share with others. When I asked if I was onto something, I learned that Kelly doesn’t think in outputs. For him, doing is part of learning. “I don’t really pursue a... See more

Sam Harris once said, about smoking weed, that everyone he knows who smokes weed would benefit from smoking less, and everyone he knows who doesn’t smoke weed would benefit from smoking more. I feel the same way about the pursuit of self-knowledge. If you’ve never looked within, you should probably start. But if you look within all the time, maybe... See more

Side projects as the key to the good life By Marty Bell • 31 Jul 2025

When I was 13, I created a chat room for teenagers to talk about art and photography (the tagline was, if I remember, “The future of art but we don’t give a fuck”). I think that was the first self-made project I put out into the world, and it taught me one of the most important

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