Nat Eliason
Writer and novelist. Publishes essays and book notes at nateliason.com; author of the novel Husk and of Crypto Confidential.
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What they believe
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The effectiveness of a plot twist depends on how carefully a story's point of view relates to its audience.
Point of view is essential for effective twists. Contrast Frozen with Fight Club, where the narrator's unreliability works because the entire story flows through his perspective and he maintains a direct relationship with the audience through fourth-wall breaks.
nateliason.comSaid 18 Nov 2025This on korrents
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Excluding less healthy members from a health cost-sharing pool makes it cheaper for the remaining healthy members.
And by excluding unhealthy people, they've created a better, cheaper option for healthy people.
nateliason.comSaid 12 Nov 2025This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
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As its own page →Hiding
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18 November 2025
From one piece Frozen's Lie: How a Tiny Detail Can Ruin a Story 2 beliefs · nateliason.com
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korrents.com
A twist works best when it is discoverable on rewatch rather than achieved by directly misleading the audience.Their words
Instead, the filmmakers directly misled the audience rather than crafting a clever deception discoverable on rewatch.
Frozen's Lie: How a Tiny Detail Can Ruin a Storynateliason.com
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korrents.com
The effectiveness of a plot twist depends on how carefully a story's point of view relates to its audience.Their words
Point of view is essential for effective twists. Contrast Frozen with Fight Club, where the narrator's unreliability works because the entire story flows through his perspective and he maintains a direct relationship with the audience through fourth-wall breaks.
Frozen's Lie: How a Tiny Detail Can Ruin a Storynateliason.com
12 November 2025
From one piece I Canceled My Family's Health Insurance (and joined CrowdHealth) 2 beliefs · nateliason.com
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korrents.com
People are not obligated to help cover healthcare costs that result from others' lifestyle choices.Their words
But if someone has made poor lifestyle choices, that's not my problem.
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korrents.com
Excluding less healthy members from a health cost-sharing pool makes it cheaper for the remaining healthy members.Their words
And by excluding unhealthy people, they've created a better, cheaper option for healthy people.
22 October 2025
From one piece To Be Useful You Must Risk Offending 3 beliefs · nateliason.com
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Their words
Agreement is often quiet. It's the likes, it's the shares, it's the nods as people read along at their computers that you never hear about.
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Their words
There is some truth to the idea that you are unlikely to go viral if you do not adopt some of this combative stance.
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Their words
An idea I'm trying to hold tighter is that the only way to be useful here is to risk offending people. And perhaps if you're not taking any risk offending people then it's unlikely you're saying something useful.
16 October 2025
From one piece Don't Waste Your 20s Not Taking Big Risks 2 beliefs · nateliason.com
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Their words
Each delayed year costs approximately 10% of life's easiest risk-taking period.
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Their words
You don't fully grasp how constrained your time actually is or how exponentially harder risk-taking becomes later.
7 October 2025
From one piece The Past and Future of Vibe Coding 3 beliefs · nateliason.com
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korrents.com
As AI lowers the barrier to building software, personal taste becomes a more valuable differentiator.Their words
But along with the question of what you're willing to maintain, as the barriers to creation drop the value of taste will only increase.
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Their words
I suspect per-seat pricing for a tool like Slack is going to be hard to defend.
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Their words
Good software requires maintenance and ongoing attention, which is why most people will still prefer to pay to use something someone else is maintaining.
18 September 2025
From one piece Having Kids Has Been Far Easier and Better than I Expected 3 beliefs · nateliason.com
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korrents.com
The difficulty of raising more children increases gradually enough that parents adapt to it without noticing.Their words
It rarely gets hard all at once. You slide into the new level of challenge without really noticing it.
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korrents.com
Extensive preparation before having kids is unnecessary since parents have months to adjust as needs arise.Their words
This is part of why I think "getting ready" to have kids is, frankly, ridiculous.
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Their words
none of the imagined deficiencies in your situation are more limiting than your attitude.
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Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 15 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
The effectiveness of a plot twist depends on how carefully a story's point of view relates to its audience.
Point of view is essential for effective twists. Contrast Frozen with Fight Club, where the narrator's unreliability works because the entire story flows through his perspective and he maintains a direct relationship with the audience through fourth-wall breaks.
Frozen's Lie: How a Tiny Detail Can Ruin a Story Said 18 Nov 2025
A twist works best when it is discoverable on rewatch rather than achieved by directly misleading the audience.
Instead, the filmmakers directly misled the audience rather than crafting a clever deception discoverable on rewatch.
Frozen's Lie: How a Tiny Detail Can Ruin a Story Said 18 Nov 2025
Excluding less healthy members from a health cost-sharing pool makes it cheaper for the remaining healthy members.
And by excluding unhealthy people, they've created a better, cheaper option for healthy people.
I Canceled My Family's Health Insurance (and joined CrowdHealth) Said 12 Nov 2025
Show 12 more
People are not obligated to help cover healthcare costs that result from others' lifestyle choices.
But if someone has made poor lifestyle choices, that's not my problem.
I Canceled My Family's Health Insurance (and joined CrowdHealth) Said 12 Nov 2025
Being genuinely useful requires a willingness to risk offending people.
An idea I'm trying to hold tighter is that the only way to be useful here is to risk offending people. And perhaps if you're not taking any risk offending people then it's unlikely you're saying something useful.
To Be Useful You Must Risk Offending Said 22 Oct 2025
Content that avoids any combative or provocative stance is unlikely to go viral.
There is some truth to the idea that you are unlikely to go viral if you do not adopt some of this combative stance.
To Be Useful You Must Risk Offending Said 22 Oct 2025
Public disagreement with a piece of writing tends to be loud while agreement with it tends to be silent and go unnoticed.
Agreement is often quiet. It's the likes, it's the shares, it's the nods as people read along at their computers that you never hear about.
To Be Useful You Must Risk Offending Said 22 Oct 2025
Risk-taking becomes exponentially harder as a person gets older.
You don't fully grasp how constrained your time actually is or how exponentially harder risk-taking becomes later.
Don't Waste Your 20s Not Taking Big Risks Said 16 Oct 2025
Each year of delay costs a person about ten percent of their prime risk-taking years.
Each delayed year costs approximately 10% of life's easiest risk-taking period.
Don't Waste Your 20s Not Taking Big Risks Said 16 Oct 2025
Most people will keep paying for software rather than build and maintain their own.
Good software requires maintenance and ongoing attention, which is why most people will still prefer to pay to use something someone else is maintaining.
The Past and Future of Vibe Coding Said 7 Oct 2025
Per-seat SaaS pricing, as used by tools like Slack, will become hard to defend.
I suspect per-seat pricing for a tool like Slack is going to be hard to defend.
The Past and Future of Vibe Coding Said 7 Oct 2025
As AI lowers the barrier to building software, personal taste becomes a more valuable differentiator.
But along with the question of what you're willing to maintain, as the barriers to creation drop the value of taste will only increase.
The Past and Future of Vibe Coding Said 7 Oct 2025
Attitude, not the surrounding circumstances, determines how hard parenting feels.
none of the imagined deficiencies in your situation are more limiting than your attitude.
Having Kids Has Been Far Easier and Better than I Expected Said 18 Sept 2025
Extensive preparation before having kids is unnecessary since parents have months to adjust as needs arise.
This is part of why I think "getting ready" to have kids is, frankly, ridiculous.
Having Kids Has Been Far Easier and Better than I Expected Said 18 Sept 2025
The difficulty of raising more children increases gradually enough that parents adapt to it without noticing.
It rarely gets hard all at once. You slide into the new level of challenge without really noticing it.
Having Kids Has Been Far Easier and Better than I Expected Said 18 Sept 2025
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 27 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Recommends Husk
Recommends Recursion
But for anyone who enjoyed Dark Matter, Inception, or any story that plays with perception and reality, Recursion is a must-read.
nateliason.com 16 May 2025
Loved Armor
But otherwise, yes, absolutely. This is one of my favorite Sci-Fi novels I've read.
nateliason.com 11 Oct 2024
Show 24 more
Loved Finite and Infinite Games
It’s an oddly written, extremely concise, very thought-provoking book. It definitely needs to be re-read 2-3 times. Make sure you’re thinking on the plane of infinite play.
nateliason.com 23 Aug 2023
Disliked End the Fed
It's a book by a politician, about what you expect. Some interesting tid bits on the history of the Fed but you could get it from Wikipedia.
nateliason.com 22 Jun 2022
Liked Infinite Jest
It's incredibly written, deeply complex, confusing as hell, and you'll probably throw it at the wall when it's done. But then you'll kinda go "okay... I'm glad I did that" and maybe start it again.
nateliason.com 22 Jun 2022
Mixed on A Random Walk Down Wall Street
A fine intro to investing if you think you can reliably beat the market or that active trading is a good use of energy. If you're already bought in on index funds though, you won't find much here.
nateliason.com 1 Dec 2021
Recommends Antifragile
The book that’s had one of the greatest influences on my thinking. If you enjoy the content on this site, you’ll love Antifragile.
nateliason.com 23 Nov 2020
Loved Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Such an incredible book on becoming a better chef, with little tricks and methods I use almost every day now. Plus the recipes in the back are delicious!
nateliason.com 3 Sept 2020
Disliked Brain Rules
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Mixed on The 12 Week Year
It’s okay, didn’t feel like there was anything groundbreaking here in the planning, productivity, or business space though.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Disliked Perennial Seller
Fairly shallow marketing and writing advice, I’d recommend reading something else.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Disliked The First 20 Hours
This is basically a much worse version of 4-Hour Chef. Kaufman doesn’t bring nearly as much to the table as Ferriss, and it feels a little rushed and under researched. Wouldn’t recommend it if you’re trying to quickly develop skills, I’d read 4-Hour Chef instead.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Disliked Tools of Titans
I was disappointed. I love Tim’s work, but this didn’t deliver in the way his past books have. There’s zero thematic organization, so you can’t reference certain topics you want to learn more about except in a few cases. While this has some interesting pieces, I doubt I’ll refer back to it like I have with Workweek, Body, and Chef.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Recommends The Dialogues of Socrates
Socrates remains the greatest foundational influence on philosophy, and to understand his method, you have to read his dialogues. The rhetoric is brilliant, and at times, even hilarious.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Recommends The Bhagavad Gita
Fantastic, many similar ideas to Stoicism and Virtue Ethics, though with more mystical elements thrown in. Would highly recommend it as a “first taste” of eastern religion.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Recommends Principles
Much better organized and fleshed out than the original PDF. It gets very slow in the work principles, definitely skim those based on your interest. The life principles are phenomenal, though. Would highly recommend.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Loved The Elephant in the Brain
A phenomenal book on understanding your own "hidden motivations in everyday life" and why we do what we do. Widely applicable to all parts of life, and the kind of explanations you can't stop thinking about after reading.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Loved Letters from a Stoic
A massively influential work of philosophy, I've enjoyed this book every time I go back to it. Great entry point for anyone into virtue ethics.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Recommends Seeking Wisdom
Simply the best book on improving your decision making there is. It’s dense and hard to get through if you’re not truly interested, but it’s well worth it.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Loved Gödel Escher Bach
This book stretched my mind more than almost any other book I’ve read. It’s tough at parts, it’s long, but you’ll come out of it thinking about brains, minds, intelligence, and AI in an entirely new way.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Loved The Fish that Ate the Whale
One of the craziest, most impressive stories of business smarts I’ve come across and from someone otherwise unknown. Like a real-life Francisco d’Anconia from Atlas Shrugged.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Recommends Endurance
Holy shit what a ride! Absolutely amazing story of perseverance and leadership, a must read. Whatever struggles you think you are going through simply cannot compare.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Recommends The Effective Executive
The best book on getting your most important work done. Read this instead of every other “productivity” book.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Recommends East of Eden
Absolutely beautiful, a must read. No crazy plot, but there doesn’t need to be.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Loved The Denial of Death
Phenomenal book on how our fear of death is the core of our psychological disturbances, and our motivation for life. It will make you think about why we do things and behave in certain ways in an entirely new fashion, and the language within it is delicious.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Recommends Amusing Ourselves to Death
Everyone needs to read this book. The observations were made in a pre-internet era, and they’re 10x as relevant today. Nothing will do more to help cure your information addiction that the healthy dose of reality provided in these pages.
nateliason.com 7 Feb 2020
Where they publish
Site nateliason.com Eliason's personal site: essays, book notes and reviews, courses and his own books.
Recent
- The Birth of Paradise is Now Available! 20 Jan 2026 Live on Kindle, Physical, and Audio
- The Birth of Paradise 13 Jan 2026 My novella is out next week!
- Frozen's Lie: How a Tiny Detail Can Ruin a Story 18 Nov 2025 No I won't Let it Go
Show 17 more
- I Canceled My Family's Health Insurance (and joined CrowdHealth) 12 Nov 2025 How it works and why it made sense
- To Be Useful You Must Risk Offending 22 Oct 2025 Or why you should publish that piece you've been avoiding
- Don't Waste Your 20s Not Taking Big Risks 16 Oct 2025 You have it so easy, and so little time
- The Past and Future of Vibe Coding 7 Oct 2025 Thoughts from 2 years of yelling at digital gods
- Having Kids Has Been Far Easier and Better than I Expected 18 Sept 2025 Even with three under four
- The Little Kegel App that Could 9 Sept 2025 After 9 years and $380,000, Stamena has a new home
- IT'S TIME! My Sci-Fi Thriller Husk is Now Available 27 May 2025 Plus some thoughts on this journey
- LAST CHANCE for the Husk Preorder Bundle! 19 May 2025 It goes away tomorrow at midnight
- Only 1 Week Left for the Husk Preorder Bundle 13 May 2025 And preorders end next week!
- Quarterly Author Update: April 2025 8 Apr 2025 Book sales, draft progress, secret projects, and more!
- How to Outline and Plan a Novel 24 Mar 2025 What I've learned from the first few
- Preorder My Sci-Fi Novel, Husk 12 Mar 2025 A limited time, first-edition signed hardcover with bonuses
- To Improve Yourself You Must Know Yourself 26 Feb 2025 How to make change stick
- Fast Cash vs. Slow Equity 21 Feb 2025 Knowing what you're building
- The Strange Fruits of Exploration 13 Feb 2025 And maybe a beach bar
- Between Drafts: The Podcast for Writers and Aspiring Authors 14 Jan 2025 Mine and Nathan Baugh's new podcast about writing, publishing, book marketing, and making it as an author.
- How to Build Your Own Software with AI (No Experience Necessary) 3 Jan 2025 By popular demand, I'm running a course to teach you how to build your own software using AI.
Link verified 4 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
x.com @nateliason Eliason's X account, linked from his own site.
Recent
- I love the @cursor_ai mobile app. Makes it so easy to ensure my bots are not taking weekends off. 17 Oct 2026
- And we're only six weeks in! 16 Oct 2026
- Very excited to have Aviv on the team! 16 Oct 2026
Show 17 more
- It's a small thing but it's remarkable how much better @bot is at searching my Gmail than Gmail is 15 Oct 2026
- I had this thought today that surely OpenClaw was last year. Nope. I didn’t even start working at @Alphaschool on @alpha_founders until March 🫨 14 Oct 2026
- Kudos @0xdanielk, amazing things happening at @alpha_founders 14 Oct 2026
- Elijah makes very nice sites 12 Oct 2026
- Realized my bots thought they were allowed to take weekends off for some reason. 11 Oct 2026
- Kinda want to map a Naga Pro onto an agent control system. The mouse optimized for MMOs might be the right form factor for managing a bunch of agents at once. 11 Oct 2026
- TIL you don’t have to manually create new @bot bots, your lead bots can spawn them 10 Oct 2026
- Games are the best teachers 10 Oct 2026
- Crying about milk Spill issue 10 Oct 2026
- You should wake up every day thrilled by the race for relevance you find yourself in, sprinting along the frontier, delegating work you previously held dear to open space for new possibilities you never imagined. 10 Oct 2026
- Our student @JamesC_Alpha showed me yesterday that he has his connected to Granola, so he can instantly start recording something to send to his @bot. Very cool. 10 Oct 2026
- How @Jayyanginspires went from 0 to $25k in 30 days 👇 9 Oct 2026
- The funniest thing about this is that paying employees is also a tax write off 9 Oct 2026
- I pointed Claude at my @fortworthchris podcast and told it: "Create a potentially viral vertical short from a great moment from this interview" Didn't give it any other tools or instructions and it did this in one shot: 9 Oct 2026
- We’re just getting started 9 Oct 2026
- Today, we are announcing Founders School. It is here: 9 Oct 2026 founders.school
- Just another day at Founders 8 Oct 2026
Link verified 4 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
YouTube @nateliason Eliason's YouTube channel, linked from his own site.
Link verified 4 Sept 2026.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.