Philip Soriano

Raising a son is real work, but we have to get this right, because if we don’t teach our sons, the world will. If we don’t teach our sons about women, pornography will. If we don’t teach our sons about friendship, they’ll live a life of loneliness. If we don’t teach our sons about leadership, they’ll be followers all of their lives. Being a father

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Ultimately you'll have to determine the info-diet that works for you. But if you insist on endlessly consuming whatever the web serves you, know that this banquet culminates in a bitter dessert: at the end of your life, when you're weighing your regrets, you probably won’t say “Man, I wish I’d spent more time browsing the web.” On the contrary, you... See more

And if your cravings can't be beaten by mere reasoning, then consider rearranging your lifestyle so junk info is simply not an option. The way I beat intellectual obesity was by trying to become the best writer I can be. Writing requires you to filter out bad information because you have a duty to your readers to not be full of shit. Writing also f... See more

The easiest strong emotion to evoke is outrage; it requires nothing more sophisticated than a simple story of oppression, tailored to the appropriate political tribe. And yet outrage, for all its cheapness, is highly addictive and highly contagious, making it the weapon of choice for anyone who wants to be noticed in the online cacophony. Even once... See more

We evolved to crave sugar because it was a scarce source of energy. But when we learned to produce it on an industrial scale, suddenly our love for sweet things became a liability. The same is now true of data. In an age of information overabundance, our curiosity, which once focused us, now distracts us. And it’s led to an epidemic of intellectual... See more

I believe there are two plausible scenarios for the future of knowledge work. There’s one in which as machines become more human-like in their capabilities, we paradoxically become more machine-like in our pursuit of productivity, focused on efficiency and keeping busy above all else. But there’s another where we lean into ways of working that are ... See more

When it comes to AI, we need to aim higher than the question: “What if you could press a button to generate an essay?” AI can produce infinite amounts of content; quantity is its game. Quality, intention, taste, originality, vision—that’s where we come in.

Today’s knowledge workers carry a growing sense of anxiety. We have more tools than ever, but these options rarely match how we actually create. Rather than build more technology that keeps us on a miserable hamster wheel of churning out more shallow content, we have a unique opportunity to design tools that encourage us to slow down and create wit... See more

Instead of being a passive consumer of the web, I begin to feel as though the internet is molding itself around my intentions, transforming from a distraction machine into a precision instrument for creativity.

Speaking from personal experience, however, it feels clear that for our brains, the act of reading and reflecting on a book is not all that different from the act of writing one. In both cases, we are seeking out novel connections, combining existing concepts to produce new ones.