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Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

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  AI policy discussions should start with China rather than treating it as an afterthought.

  China

  Their words

  Whatever your ideas for regulating AI, I say start with China. Do not put China as an afterthought at the end of your proposal, mentioned in a vague wish that something good ought to happen and that maybe the future of humanity can be secured.

  When discussing AI policy, start with Chinamarginalrevolution.com

Writer and teacher on productivity and personal knowledge management. Author of Building a Second Brain and founder of Forte Labs, which runs the course of the same name.

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  Educational methods should be validated by measurable research, not by how satisfying they feel to students and teachers.

  Their words

  The deeper lesson is that education has to be research-based and proven to work measurably, not just based on positive emotions or customer satisfaction.

  fortelabs.com

Genomics researcher and writer on science, biotech and the culture of research.

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  Curing disease is not worth it if the price is the permanent deprecation of most human beings' existence.

  Their words

  As someone coming from a biology background, who considers “curing disease” as a very noble mission, I still believe that the vague promise of “curing disease” is fundamentally not worth it if it comes with a form of permanent deprecation of most humans’ existence.

  Curing cancer won't redeem AIwritingruxandrabio.com

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

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  You cannot know what a program should do until you play with it, so in the agentic age you should be as vague as you can up front and then interact with what appears.

  Their words

  No one was happy. Because no one knows what they want until they receive it. You don't know what a program should do until you play with it. So in the agentic age, you should resist the temptation to be overly specific upfront. Be as vague as you can to manifest something, then interact with the something. The way you arrive at good software is you write a little bit of software, and then you try to use it. It is in the process of using software that you discover what you really want.

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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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  Ruling out every measurable cause because none explains all the variation, and putting an unmeasured one in their place, is not an explanation.

  Their words

  He ruled out all the actual, measurable variables because they were an imperfect explanation, and instead offers a vague, diffuse variable, for which he has no measure, and which is not actually included in his model.

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

Physician focused on longevity; wrote Outlive and hosts The Drive.

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  A supplement or drug should be judged on well-defined benefits for well-defined problems in well-defined populations, never on a vague promise of slowing ageing.

  Their words

  That’s a lesson we could all learn about our approach to supplements and even drugs: not to fall for hazy promises that a single molecule will deliver vaguely-defined benefits for all aging persons, but to demand rigorous evidence for well-defined benefits for well-defined problems in well-defined populations.

  Metformin and cancer: active surveillance neededpeterattiamd.com

British open-standards and open-source technologist, formerly of the UK Government Digital Service and the W3C Advisory Committee. Blogs at shkspr.mobi, where he posts a book review most weeks.

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  The Great When

  Their words

  It is an epic tale full of rogues and reprobates. The story is excellent even though the plot follows a fairly basic structure. Although set up to be a series, it is a satisfying stand-alone tale.

  shkspr.mobi

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

From one piece Michael Nielsen – Why aliens will have a different tech stack than us 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Poincare missed special relativity because he knew too much: the leading physicists of the day were prisoners of their own expertise.

  Their words

  his expertise seems to be getting in the way. He knows so much, he understands so much, um and then he's not able to let go of these these things.

  youtube.com

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  A theory gets abandoned when the old explanation becomes visibly insufficient: special relativity made Newtonian gravity's action at a distance impossible, and that was the forcing function.

  Their words

  Um and so, it's not a big leap to realize, "Oh, we have a big problem here." Um and so, you know, that's kind of the that's the forcing function there. It's it's you've realized that your old explanation is not sufficient. You need something new.

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Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, makers of Basecamp and HEY; co-author of Rework, Remote and It Does Not Have to Be Crazy at Work.

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  The original Cuisinart, with its two paddle buttons and clear affordances, was peak interface design, and it has been downhill from there.

  Their words

  Big flat toggle buttons under satisfying tension. Clear affordances. You push them down, not in. One click catches, one doesn't. You can use them with bare hands, oven mitts, fingers coated in slippery whatever. Doesn't matter. Plenty of surface area. Outstanding design. It's all been downhill from there.

  Great design was a Cuisinartworld.hey.com

Writer on habits and decision-making; author of Atomic Habits and the 3-2-1 newsletter, and publisher of long-running book recommendation lists.

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  Habits are built by making a behavior obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying, and broken by inverting each of those four.

  Their words

  So, I call these the four laws of behavior change. Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying. And you don't need all four every single moment of the day or every habit that you build. But the more that you have those four forces working for you, the more likely you are to stick with it.

  The Silent Cost of Bad Habits | James Clearyoutube.com

Writer and researcher on China, technology and industry; author of Breakneck, research fellow at Stanford, known for a widely read annual letter.

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  The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary

  Their words

  There is something deeply satisfying with reading out loud phrases like: “for in mere breath did it come, and into darkness it goes, and in darkness its name is covered.” Though King James is iconic, Robert Alter better conveys overall the literary power of the Hebrew Bible.

  danwang.co

Science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist; writes the daily blog and newsletter Pluralistic, and coined the term enshittification.

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  Fever Beach

  Their words

  It's screamingly funny, devilishly inventive, and deeply, profoundly satisfying. With Fever Beach, Hiaasen makes a compelling case for Florida as the perfect microcosm of the terrifying state of America, and an even more compelling case for his position as its supreme storyteller.

  pluralistic.net

Independent AI policy researcher; led policy research at OpenAI from 2018 to 2024, latterly as senior adviser for AGI readiness.

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  As AI systems become more capable, the danger of false or unverifiable safety claims grows, pushing competing companies toward cutting corners.

  Their words

  As AI gets more capable, the risks associated with mistaken claims, fraudulent claims, or too-vague-to-be-verified claims will increase, and a cloud of suspicion between competitors could drive corner-cutting (indeed, this is happening already and could get worse).

  milesbrundage.substack.com

Mathematician at UCLA, working mainly in harmonic analysis and partial differential equations. Writes What's new, a long-running blog on their research, open problems and expository notes.

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  Physics will be unified again as it has been before; the obstacle is that relativity and quantum mechanics already explain almost everything we can measure.

  Their words

  But I have faith that we've been doing this for centuries and we've made progress before. There's no reason why we should stop.

  youtube.com

Statistician at Carnegie Mellon; writes on complex systems, machine learning and inference, and has kept a books-read notebook since 2000 that is now thousands of entries long.

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  The Perspective of the World

  Their words

  It's definitely the volume I find least satisfying.

  bactra.org

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  Civilization and Capitalism, 15th--18th Century

  Their words

  It's definitely the volume I find least satisfying.

  bactra.org

Software engineer and writer; former CTO of Wave, now at Anthropic. Blogs at benkuhn.net on attention, engineering management and doing hard things well.

From one piece How I build and run behavioral interviews 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Someone who can't name what they'd do differently is unlikely to be good at improving over time.

  Their words

  if the person responds to "what would you do differently" with "nothing," or with non-actionable vague platitudes, it's a sign they may not be great at figuring out how to get better at things over time.

  How I build and run behavioral interviewsbenkuhn.net

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  Repeated vague platitudes without follow-up specifics signal weak first-principles thinking.

  Their words

  If they don't follow this up with a more specific, precise or nuanced claim, they may not be a strong first-principles thinker.

  How I build and run behavioral interviewsbenkuhn.net

Writes The Convivial Society, on technology and the moral life — what our tools do to attention, memory and how we treat each other.

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  The freedom that automation offers is freedom from the very involvement that makes a life meaningful.

  Their words

  The liberation we are offered is a liberation from the very care-driven involvement in the world and in our communities that would render our lives meaningful and satisfying.

  Waste Your Time, Your Life May Depend On Ittheconvivialsociety.substack.com

Statistician at Carnegie Mellon; writes on complex systems, machine learning and inference, and has kept a books-read notebook since 2000 that is now thousands of entries long.

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  Songs for the Dead: Afterlife

  Their words

  Mind candy fantasy, comic book flavor. A satisfying conclusion to the story.

  bactra.org

Research psychologist, instrumental in founding the field of naturalistic decision making; developed the recognition-primed decision model, the PreMortem method and the ShadowBox training method, and wrote Sources of Power and Seeing What Others Don't.

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  A pre-mortem has to treat the failure as certain and ask why it happened; asking what could go wrong is too tentative to work.

  Their words

  One of the mistakes is that they just frame it wrong from the beginning. They'll say, "Okay, we should do a pre-mortem. So, what can go wrong?" It's not an issue of what can go wrong. We're dealing with a crystal ball that has showed that the plan has failed. We know that it failed. And our job is is to explain why. So, saying what can go wrong is too tentative. It's too vague.

  youtube.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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  Iconoclasts

  Their words

  I read this because I was curious what sets the greatest entrepreneurs apart from everyone else? Where do they get their inspiration and how did they do it? While this book isn't completely satisfying, it does provide a number of interesting insights into the likes of Steve Jobs and other such icons.

  jasonevanish.com

Mathematician and maker of the 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel, which explains mathematics through animation. Creator of the open-source Manim animation library and founder of the Summer of Math Exposition.

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  Fourier Analysis: An Introduction

  Their words

  Not only is this a wonderful foundation for Fourier analysis, with a surprising and satisfying application to prime numbers given in the last chapter, but it's also a good starting point for analysis as a whole. Stein and Shakarchi have a series of four excellent books on the foundations of analysis, based on a now-famous series of lectures given at Princeton.

  3blue1brown.com

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  Ordinary Differential Equations

  Their words

  If you want to understand differential equations, but more from the pure math side of things, Arnold gives a wonderful picture of what the field is all about, with a mixture of high-level intuitions and low-level details, with a satisfying focus on visual and physical intuition along the way.

  3blue1brown.com

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  An Introduction to Thermal Physics

  Their words

  Despite my aim to keep this list purely about math books, I cannot help but include this one in the list. Simply put, it's one of the most enjoyable textbooks I've ever read, giving a very satisfying first-principles understanding of what thermodynamic concepts like temperature and entropy really are, and how we can to understand them.

  3blue1brown.com