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Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.

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  The arcane config files and error messages that kept Linux off the desktop are exactly what make it the right operating system for agents.

  Linux

  Their words

  Linux conquered everything else. All the AI infrastructure that everyone runs off, it's all running on Linux. All the systems, all the servers, everything is Linux. So it was kind of a curiosity that the desktop and the personal computers we were using really hadn't been captured, but clearly it was just waiting for this moment. Linux spent the time from '91 to now waiting for agents to fully flourish as an end user operating system.

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Founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, the Denver company building the Overture supersonic airliner and its Symphony engine.

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  Iterating through outside aerospace suppliers is close to impossible, which is why a hardware startup should own its own machine shop.

  startups

  Their words

  one of the most important things we discovered along the way is it's extremely difficult to iterate with outside suppliers, particularly outside suppliers in aerospace, which are let's just say I have no kind words for them. So we chose to build our own machine shop. And now we can go from a digitally designed engine part to a prototype part in about 24 hours.

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Professor of psychology at UCLA, where he studies human memory, attention and cognitive ageing, and author of Better with Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging.

From one piece How to Improve Your Memory & Cognitive Function at Any Age | Dr. Alan Castel 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Older adults are not worse rememberers so much as more selective ones: they keep what they were curious about and let the rest go.

  Their words

  And so, in this study on curiosity, we found that older adults tend to remember the things that they're most curious about, but they're also really good at forgetting the things that they just didn't care about in the first place.

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  Curiosity does not simply fade with age: the general disposition declines while curiosity aroused by a particular thing you care about actually increases.

  Their words

  but as you get older that tends to decline with age which I thought was kind of perplexing because I you know a lot of curious people but we found that levels of state curiosity when I give you some interesting bit of information but I don't give you the answer if it's something you care about that actually increases with age your level of curiosity and learning.

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Short-story writer and novelist; won the Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo, and teaches craft weekly in Story Club.

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  There is no separate class of natural-born artists: the artistic impulse is ordinary curiosity about life turned into a wish to make someone else feel something.

  energy

  Their words

  I think of it like this: any person has an innate curiosity about life, and an energy toward it, that may manifest itself in all kinds of ways throughout the course of their life.

  The Natural-Born Artist.georgesaunders.substack.com

Machine learning engineer and consultant focused on RAG and retrieval systems. He writes about applied AI engineering at jxnl.co and is the author of the instructor library.

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  Taste is not about consensus or criticism, but the courage to value what genuinely resonates with you.

  Their words

  Taste isn't consensus. It's not judgment first, either. It's easy to be a critic. Curiosity has to come first, because without curiosity you never broaden your horizons.

  If You Want Taste, You're Gonna Have to Eatjxnl.co

Clinical psychologist and clinical professor of psychiatry at UCSF. His 2010 meta-analysis established psychodynamic therapy as an evidence-based treatment; he has argued ever since that "evidence-based therapy" is used as a marketing term.

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  Telling a patient "your feelings are valid" is not therapy: it is the mirror image of "get a grip", and it makes the therapist a judge of feelings instead of a companion in them.

  Psychotherapy

  Their words

  The phrase "your feelings are valid" does not invite curiosity or deeper self-understanding, which is the point of psychotherapy. It is the mirror image of "stop whining and get a grip." One sounds warm and one sounds harsh, but neither deepens self-awareness.

  jonathanshedler.substack.com

Software design writer and chief scientist at Thoughtworks; wrote Refactoring and Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.

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  Skepticism about a new technology only works if it is total enough to be turned on itself, which is what forces you to stay curious.

  Their words

  My skepticism has to be absolute and total, which means I have to be skeptical about my skepticism. And that requires that curiosity.

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Uber's first Chief Technology Officer, from 2013 to 2020; later CTO of Coupang and of Faire.

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  AI tooling has not compressed the gap between great and average engineers: it is still two or three times, and for the same reasons as before — curiosity and appetite for the bleeding edge.

  Their words

  we see the difference between the great engineer and an an average engineer is still two 3x in terms of their capability. They're more inquisitive. they're at the bleeding edge more, they're more innovative,

  Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber's first CTO)youtube.com

Roboticist; co-founded iRobot and Rethink Robotics, directed the MIT AI Lab, and publishes a scorecard grading his own dated predictions about AI, robots and self-driving.

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  Most of the companies now selling a transport technology will quietly disappear, and the survivors will redefine what they are doing without renaming it.

  Their words

  As with self driving cars, most of the early players in humanoid robots, will quietly shut up shop and disappear. Those that remain will pivot and redefine what they are doing, without renaming it, to something more achievable and with, finally, plausible business cases.

  Predictions Scorecard, 2026 January 01rodneybrooks.com

Novelist, author of twelve books including Foundry, Bandwidth and Cumulus. Sends a newsletter of monthly book recommendations.

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  Breakneck

  Their words

  Breakneck by Dan Wang takes you on a fascinating journey through China's engineering state, juxtaposing it against America's lawyerly society in an effort to reveal what each country should learn from the other. I've been a keen reader of Dan's personal blog for many years and am delighted to report that this book, his first, features everything I love most about his writing: his unbounded curiosity, thoughtful analysis, compelling storytelling, self-awareness, offbeat sense of humor, and insights born of lived experience.

  eliotpeper.substack.com

Professor at Berkeley working on robot learning; co-founded Physical Intelligence, and argues that robots will learn from data rather than be programmed.

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  Robots will be given more scope as they get more capable, exactly the way coding assistants went from completing a function to writing a pull request.

  Their words

  So, I think it'll be the same thing that that we'll see an increase in the scope that we're giving that we're willing to give to the robots as they get better and better where initially the scope might be like there is a particular thing you do like you're making the coffee or something. Uh whereas as they get more capable, as their ability to have common sense and a broader repertoire of tasks increases, then we'll give them greater scope. Now you're running the whole coffee shop.

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Economist specialising in China's economy, international macroeconomics and global trade, and author of The New China Playbook.

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  Economically China is one of the most capitalist societies on earth; it is the social fabric, not the economy, that is socialist.

  China

  Their words

  I’ve rarely seen a more capitalist society than China, from the pure economic side. I’ve rarely seen companies that are as competitive as Chinese companies. People as ambitious and obsessed with making money as Chinese people. Kind of ruthless actually. And look, consumers shop, firms invest. If you invest well financially, you’ll get great returns. What is not capitalistic about the Chinese economy? At the same time, the social fabric is highly socialist.

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Executive coach for product leaders. Previously a partner at GV (Google Ventures) and a product manager at Google. Writes at Bring the Donuts, including a standing essential-reading list for product managers.

From one piece The Power of Not Knowing 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Resisting the discomfort of not knowing leads people to jump to conclusions or decide before they have enough information.

  Their words

  When we resist not knowing, we often leap to conclusions, make decisions without all of the information, or simply guess. Of course, that might make it even more likely that we're wrong, the very thing our subconscious is trying to avoid. Needing to be right comes at the expense of curiosity.

  The Power of Not Knowingbringthedonuts.com

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  Good leadership is defined by presence, curiosity, and authenticity rather than always having the right answer.

  Their words

  Leadership isn't about always having the answer and always being right. It's about being present, deeply curious, and authentic.

  The Power of Not Knowingbringthedonuts.com

Pen name of the Canadian-American writer behind mrmoneymustache.com, a blog on frugality, early retirement and index-fund investing that has run since 2011.

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  Vanguard

  Their words

  For most of my investing life, Vanguard was THE one-stop shop for index funds of all types. They have the lowest expense ratio and the utmost respect for their customers.

  mrmoneymustache.com

Software engineer and essayist who writes about programming, formal methods, philosophy and literature at thoughts.wyounas.com.

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  Principles of the SPIN Model Checker

  Their words

  This book gave me both insight and a deeper curiosity about the subject. This book introduces the SPIN model checker and exposes the reader to the nuances of verifying programs using SPIN. A nice feature of the book is how it explains concepts using thoughtfully developed, freely available tools (such as jSpin) that the author created for pedagogical purposes. It's a demanding book, but the content was interesting. The book presents details about concurrency, temporal logic, non-determinism, advanced SPIN topics, and even case studies. I've already written a few blog posts about the topics I explored while reading this book, and I plan to write more. Overall, it's a good book. I'm sure I'll revisit the latter half again.

  thoughts.wyounas.com

Writer on a lost civilisation of the Ice Age; wrote Fingerprints of the Gods and presented Ancient Apocalypse. Archaeologists reject the claims, which he disputes at length.

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  The Great Pyramid was never a tomb — it is a curiosity device built to make later cultures investigate it.

  Their words

  But the Great Pyramid, to go to that length to create a tomb, to make it a scale model of the earth, to orient it perfectly to true north, to make it 6 million tons. This is not a tomb. This is something else. This is a curiosity device.

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Co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, an AI answer engine; previously a research scientist at OpenAI and a PhD student at UC Berkeley.

From one piece Aravind Srinivas: Perplexity CEO on Future of AI, Search & the Internet | Lex Fridman Podcast #434 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Curiosity is the thing AI has not cracked: a model can research a question thoroughly, but it cannot decide which question is worth asking.

  Their words

  What makes humans special though, is our curiosity. Even if AI’s cracked this, it’s us still asking them to go explore something. And one thing that I feel like AI’s haven’t cracked yet, is being naturally curious and coming up with interesting questions to understand the world and going and digging deeper about them.

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  The obstacle to search is not the competition but the fact that people are not naturally good at turning curiosity into a question.

  Their words

  There is a skill to asking good questions, and everyone’s curious though. Curiosity is unbounded in this world. Every person in the world is curious, but not all of them are blessed to translate that curiosity into a well-articulated question.

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Professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus at Yale. Author of Against Empathy, The Sweet Spot and Psych, and writer of the Small Potatoes newsletter.

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  Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us

  Their words

  This is a humane book—there is a warmth and wisdom to Roberts’ writing; he has a real affection for and curiosity about everyday decision makers—but it carries real bite.

  smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net

Founder of Platformer, a newsletter on tech platforms and the people they affect, and co-host of the Hard Fork podcast at the New York Times.

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  Design Lobster

  Their words

  Ben Strak's short and sweet Monday newsletter offers weekly inspiration to designers and anyone else curious about the world around them. A good example of how newsletters thrive on the authentic curiosity of the people who write them.

  platformer.substack.com

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  Big Technology

  Their words

  Alex Kantrowitz's weekly dispatches on the tech industry show off a genuine curiosity and knack for putting events in their broader context. The accompanying podcast, which features an eclectic mix of newsmakers and journalists, is well worth a listen.

  platformer.substack.com

Bulgarian-born writer and founder of The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings), a reader-funded blog on books, science, art and philosophy running since 2006.

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  The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise

  Their words

  With soulful curiosity channeled in his ever-lyrical prose, Pico Iyer chronicles a lifetime of pilgrimages to some of Earth's greatest shrines to that longing in The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise

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Founded SpaceX in 2002, joined Tesla's board in 2004 and became its chief executive in 2008; later founded Neuralink, The Boring Company and xAI. Bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, where he now posts many times a day.

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  We do not know the meaning of life, so the thing to do is expand the scope and scale of consciousness, digital and biological, until we know what questions to ask.

  Their words

  which is that we don’t know the meaning of life, but the more we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, digital and biological, the more we’re able to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. So I have a philosophy of curiosity.

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