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Demographer; writes on fertility, marriage and population, and directs the Pro-Family Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.

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  A model fitted only to trends in its own outcome cannot forecast anything, because it contains no variable anyone could change.

  Their words

  The demand for explanations of low fertility is entirely a demand for variables which will reduce these technical trends to near zero.

  We Actually Know A Lot About Fertility Declinelymanstone.substack.com

Polyglot who speaks twenty languages and co-founded LingQ; argues that comprehensible input, not study, is what does the work.

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  Learning from input does not mean refusing grammar books; the point is to notice patterns, not to master the rules.

  Their words

  Some people think CI means you reject grammar books. I disagree. I often reference grammar materials and find these explanations useful. However, the focus of my learning is not to “master the rules”. Grammar resources simply help me notice and make sense of patterns in the language.

  blog.thelinguist.com

Scientist and writer on quantum computing, memory systems and metascience; co-wrote the standard quantum computation textbook and wrote Reinventing Discovery.

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  A trained model is a new kind of object that should be taken seriously as an explanation, once we work out the operations to perform on it.

  Their words

  And I think the like the third and the most interesting possibility is no, that like they're they're a new type of object in some in some sense. They should be taken very seriously as as explanations, but where in the past we haven't had the ability to really do anything with them.

  youtube.com

Machine-learning researcher; has written the Lil'Log survey posts on how a model technique works since 2017, and worked at OpenAI from 2018 to 2024, latterly leading its safety systems team.

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  Chain-of-thought explanations from language models can be biased because training does not explicitly reward faithful reasoning.

  Their words

  model CoTs could be biased due to lack of explicit training objectives aimed at encouraging faithful reasoning

  Why We Thinklilianweng.github.io

Writer on learning and skill acquisition; author of Ultralearning and Get Better at Anything, known for the MIT Challenge and the Year Without English.

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  Creativity in Science

  Their words

  This book surveys theories of creativity, contrasting four competing explanations: expertise, genius, society, and chance, in offering a model for how creativity works. Simonton's work provides a nice hybrid between the purely anecdotal work of biographers and the data-driven work of experimental scientists.

  scotthyoung.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  The Righteous Mind

  Their words

  Brilliant insights into human nature. Moral reasoning, inventing victims, emotional reactions, the elephant (emotions) and its rider (explanations). Intuition reacts then logic confabulates a reason. Survival of the fittest applied to groups. Understanding religion and tradition. Great from start to finish.

  sive.rs

Polyglot and language coach; teaches translating back and forth from a text as the core exercise.

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  Knowing conjugation tables, word lists and the names of the tenses has nothing to do with being able to use a language.

  Their words

  In traditional classroom settings, the development of skills often gets overlooked in favor of facts. Facts in the form of conjugation tables, word lists, grammar explanations, the names of verb tenses, and so on. All of these things are related to language, but it’s important to realize that knowing these things has nothing to do with speaking and using a language productively.

  lucalampariello.com

Founder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company, and previously a product lead at KISSmetrics. Writes about leadership, management and product at jasonevanish.com.

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  Simple and Usable

  Their words

  I felt like I often saw things that were good or bad design but didn't know why. Using beautiful full page pictures and simple explanations, this book goes through great principles for building simple & usable apps and sites.

  jasonevanish.com

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  Decoded

  Their words

  Decoded is a semi-autobiographical book that tells Jay-Z's story growing up and finding success in hip hop. It also helps you deeply understand the inner-city ghetto struggles (Jay was actually a drug dealer until age 27). In organized sections of hand picked songs with RapGenius-style lyric explanations (note: Decoded came first), you see through his eyes the difficult choices he and so many others faced while listening to some of his best tracks.

  jasonevanish.com

Writer and novelist. Publishes essays and book notes at nateliason.com; author of the novel Husk and of Crypto Confidential.

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  The Elephant in the Brain

  Their words

  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

Physicist and science communicator. Writes Backreaction and makes videos explaining new physics and astronomy results, frequently to argue that the headline about them overstates the case.

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  Richie Doodles: The Brilliance of a Young Richard Feynman

  Their words

  In summary, the illustrations are awesome, the explanations aren't.

  backreaction.blogspot.com

Programmer and writer on computer architecture, performance, and software reliability. He has worked on CPU design at Centaur Technology and on software at Google and Microsoft, and writes long-form technical essays at danluu.com.

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  Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines

  Their words

  The explanations are delightful and I've watched some of the videos more than once just to watch Bernhardt explain things.

  danluu.com

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  Computation

  Their words

  Covers a few theory of computation highlights. The explanations are delightful and I've watched some of the videos more than once just to watch Bernhardt explain things.

  danluu.com

Physicist and science communicator. Writes Backreaction and makes videos explaining new physics and astronomy results, frequently to argue that the headline about them overstates the case.

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  Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits

  Their words

  The book is well written, though not very inspired, and the scientific explanations are well referenced and, for all I can tell, flawless. I'd give four out of five stars if I had stars to give.

  backreaction.blogspot.com