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Kyle Chayka x.com
The the words it uses that this site has seen least often elsewhere. Posts are matched on those words alone — nothing here is a summary of this one.
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19 September
18 September
17 September
16 September
15 September
14 September
13 September
10 September
8 September
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Their words
if you have good enough transitions, an essay will feel as if it has a good structure. And vice versa: when readers complain about lack of structure, the reason is often simply that they're bothered by clumsy or abrupt transitions.
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korrents.com
In an age of abundant information, a person's judgment, taste and perspective are their primary value as a writer.Their words
Information is ridiculously abundant. Your judgment, taste, and perspective are literally all you have to work with now.
7 September
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Their words
especially with AI now I'd say anyone can try, and non-technical people with the best ideas, creativity/taste and understanding of whatever cultural zeitgeist we're in can win
6 September
4 September
3 September
1 September
26 August
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Their words
The other thing I'd say is that most organizations don't know what they want. They don't know how to make it better. They're not bottlenecked on implementation. They're bottlenecked on ideas. They're bottlenecked on vision. They're bottlenecked on taste. And if you don't have those element in excess of your implementational capacity, it doesn't help. So you can make a lot of shitty ideas come true, then what?
25 August
20 August
18 August
16 August
14 August
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Their words
making intelligence cheap does not automatically make “agency” cheap. people are constrained by time, money, confidence, health, education, institutions, family, geography; a model does not magic any of that away. there’s a perfectly believable future where these tools mostly compound the advantage of people who already have the skill, taste, money and the spare time to use them well.
12 August
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Their words
Something intertwined with this story, which I stumbled upon when thinking about agents, is how your pace of understanding won't increase by using agents.
11 August
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Their words
A few months ago I read an essay about silence by Amir Zadnemat in 3 Quarks Daily, called "The Symphony of Silence: An Exploration of the Sound of Absence"*. The most interesting section was a riff on various kinds of silence, especially in spoken language, each communicating something very distinct despite the fact that objectively each silence sounds (or I guess doesn't sound) identical:
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
Clean CodeTheir words
Clean Code is another standard recommendation, but that one wasn't for me. There are useful design principles in there worth studying, but the book as a whole is too narrow and a bit too dogmatic for my taste. Your mileage might vary.
9 August
6 August
From one piece On the Perils of Self-Assessing... 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Could this phrase or sentence or paragraph or section be improved, even a little? That is, can I make myself (on this very localized turf) make myself dislike it less?
On the Perils of Self-Assessing...georgesaunders.substack.com
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korrents.com
A first draft should not be graded good or bad; it is only the material that taste then gets to act on.Their words
Just don’t do it. Accept it, whatever it is, as a starting place in the long game of exerting your taste on your own prose.
On the Perils of Self-Assessing...georgesaunders.substack.com
5 August
31 July
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korrents.com
Models can prove monumental theorems and still have never written an essay worth reading.Their words
I mean, it's very interesting, right? Because these can prove the Jacobian conjecture, you know, whatever. Uh and so clearly they're capable of these monumental feats. Um but somehow I still haven't read the LLM essay that I found super compelling.
30 July
From one piece Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AI 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
When agents do the building, the scarce skill is taste: choosing which problem is worth the time at all.Their words
Yeah, I mean I think it's really having incredibly good taste in what you ask your agents to work on, right? That is the the crux of you know from my background uh a research problem. You know, a researcher can have all the tools and all the techniques, but often most of the battle is what problem are you gonna spend your time on?
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Their words
Um, another way you can get more experience for yourself is to just write down a bunch of things you think might be important in the next 12 months. And maybe you pick one of them to work on, but go back and evaluate in 12 months of these other things, which ones actually seemed important or which ones did other people in the world go out and and create and which ones did they did not seem to do yet.
28 July
24 July
22 July
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korrents.com
Asking AI for help on a first attempt robs you of the experience that builds your own judgement about the problem.Their words
Asking an AI for help with the start of an essay, for instance, will invariably shape what direction you end up following, robbing you of the crucial experience of building your own judgement around a topic and selecting your own path to research and argue.
21 July
14 July
13 July
9 July
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korrents.com
AI tends to flatten outputs toward sameness, so personal taste and perspective become the main way to stand out.Their words
AI flattens everything it touches. The way you stand out is by getting clearer about what you really want, your taste, your perspective, your opinions.
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Their words
you've got these other generalists doing design, you've got engineers doing design, product staff doing design, but I'm actually pretty long on design or designers because they tend to have taste and I think that is something that is much more difficult to imagine being automated away.
5 July
From one piece If You Want Taste, You're Gonna Have to Eat 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
AI has made ability nearly free, making taste the main bottleneck separating good creators from mediocre ones.Their words
As AI has allowed more and more people to create things, the biggest differentiation, the biggest skill people are lacking, is taste itself.
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korrents.com
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.
30 June
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Rishi Dandelion GingerTheir words
Rishi Dandelion Ginger. Extraordinary and surprising. And most things taste better mixed with tonic.
29 June
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korrents.com
AI models default to generic, lowest-common-denominator output unless a user actively pushes back against them.Their words
If the user doesn't actively push back against the AI model, then they get the generic output, the lowest common acceptable denominator of aesthetics and taste.
26 June
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korrents.com
Models have no research taste yet, which is why they complement researchers rather than replace them.Their words
one thing I see for research in particular is they don't have very good research taste right now and so I think they're actually a very good complement to researchers
7 June
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Their words
crema is composed of lots of carbon dioxide, fines, oils, and bitter compounds.
2 June
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korrents.com
Most people who would be a good audience for an essay will never notice it or bother to engage with it.Their words
99% of people who you'd want to read your essay probably don't know you exist, or don't give a fuck, or wouldn't be bothered to engage even if they read it.
31 May
30 May
11 May
6 May
3 May
22 April
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Their words
We don't ask the students to write essays because we love reading their amazing essays. We ask them to write essays because they we want them to go through a thought process, which helps them learn something.
2 April
26 March
From one piece Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste" 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
The online ecosystem has become so degraded that it has impaired people's ability to exercise taste.Their words
Another conclusion might be that the online ecosystem has become so polluted-so fragmented, deceptive, overstimulating, ersatz-that it has warped our ability to exercise taste at all.
Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste"kylechayka.substack.com
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korrents.com
AI companies promote themselves around 'taste' because their products are unappealing outside tech circles.Their words
A.I. companies need to associate themselves with taste precisely because their tools are not very palatable, much less cool, to anyone outside of Silicon Valley.
Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste"kylechayka.substack.com
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korrents.com
Tech's embrace of 'taste' is an attempt to dress anti-humanist technology in humanist branding.Their words
We might call what's going on now "taste-washing," an attempt to give anti-humanist technologies a veneer of liberal humanism.
Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste"kylechayka.substack.com
25 March
23 March
9 February
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korrents.com
Craftsmanship, taste, and human judgment remain valuable in software development despite AI-assisted coding tools.Their words
There is value in good taste, there is value in craftsmanship, and there is value in human judgment.
29 January
20 January
15 January
14 January
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Almost ThereTheir words
The Academy Is…, one of my favorite bands from this century (and yes, I feel old just typing that out), has recorded their first new album in eighteen years, titled Almost There, and will be putting it out in March.
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Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
The Hedgehog and The FoxTheir words
Probably the most illuminating thing I read about Tolstoy was Isaiah Berlin's long essay, The Hedgehog and The Fox.
14 December 2025
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Tony's Chocolonely Lil BitsTheir words
Tony's Chocolonely Lil Bits (in Milk Caramel Sea Salt and Cookie Mix), which single-handedly got me through this work year. I shudder to think how many bags of these I ate, but I can barely finish an essay without one.
28 November 2025
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korrents.com
Dripper diameter, with other brew variables held fixed, does not change extraction or taste — only batch size.Their words
changing the dripper diameter, keeping all other important variables fixed, has no impact on the brew mechanics and the resulting cup, in an "idealized" scenario
26 November 2025
25 November 2025
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Their words
Like basically I think I think that there is a big benefit from AI being in the public and that would be a reason for us to not be quite straight shot.
16 October 2025
From one piece Figma’s CEO: Why AI makes design, craft, and quality the new moat for startups | Dylan Field 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
I think the best, you know, designers on the product side can turn it on and off. They can go, I have my own taste. I know what I like. And then, okay, you're going for this. And that might be different than what I like, but I can match it brand as well.
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korrents.com
A lot of people can match a framework for taste; almost nobody can create one, and creating one is the rare skill.Their words
I think that for those who can create and then articulate a framework around what is taste for us that is really a important skill and uh then I think people can a lot of people can basically match a framework not many people can create the framework.
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Their words
It's just this loop of okay, I'm having an experience of any sense. Maybe I'm looking at art, maybe I'm hearing music, maybe I'm literally eating food and tasting something, you know, but like do I like it? Do I not like it? Why?
+ 1 more
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Their words
And there is something about judgment in there too. you know, uh, implied in taste is that some things are good and some things are bad. So, I think you have to be willing to lean into that yourself in terms of uh, being high judgment.
7 October 2025
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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.
5 October 2025
1 October 2025
1 September 2025
19 August 2025
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Their words
My model is that research requires a mix of skills. The day-to-day coding and execution is crucial. But there's also a set of harder-to-learn conceptual skills, collectively called research taste. These skills take a long time to gain because they have poor feedback loops, but they take very little time to use.
3 August 2025
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Their words
This essay series will argue that work on Flourishing is in the same ballpark of priority as work on Surviving.
25 July 2025
23 July 2025
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Their words
So picking the right question is the hardest part of science and making the right hypothesis. And that's what today's systems definitely they can't do. So I often say it's harder to come up with a conjecture, a really good conjecture than it is to solve it.
24 June 2025
9 June 2025
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Their words
the word "listen" doesn't appear anywhere in the essay, and listening is arguably a product manager's most important tool.
A How to Hire a Product Manager Retrospectivebringthedonuts.com
3 June 2025
19 April 2025
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korrents.com
Different people's areas of strongest judgment or taste rarely overlap much with each other.Their words
it's quite rare for different people's "zone of best taste" to overlap very much.
25 March 2025
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Their words
Good taste: taste is the ability to distinguish excellence from mediocrity. The hand can never consistently produce better than the eye can discern.
The Death of Product Development as We Know itlg.substack.com
3 February 2025
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Their words
The scale word gets a lot of attention in this. The interpretation that I use is effectively to avoid adding the human priors to your learning process. And if you read the original essay, this is what it talks about is how researchers will try to come up with clever solutions to their specific problem that might get them small gains in the short term while simply enabling these deep learning systems to work efficiently, and for these bigger problems in the long term might be more likely to scale and continue to drive success.
30 December 2024
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Likedrcmnd.app
Less Than OneTheir words
This book is a collection of essays, and some of them are quite profound. One of his essays on Dostoevsky is particularly insightful; it left such an impression on me that I reflected on it and wrote an essay of my own.
16 December 2024
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
First, Break all the RulesTheir words
Gallup interviewed thousands of high-performing teams and managers and found a dozen of things each of these teams had in common. While the insights are good, the content itself was quite dry for my taste.
14 December 2024
4 July 2024
15 April 2024
11 February 2024
5 February 2024
3 February 2024
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Likedrcmnd.app
ArabsTheir words
3000 years of factual Arab history, and personal insights from this Oxford Brit who lived in Yemen for 37 years, translates classical Arabic, and clearly cares a lot. Huge and thorough but really wonderful for those with the interest. I loved his writing style and poetic asides. Read my notes here for a taste. What a great book.
5 December 2023
11 October 2023
7 October 2023
28 September 2023
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Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
CuckooTheir words
It turns out that a breakthrough rice cooker is a bargain, even if it seems expensive at first. The Cuckoo is an extraordinary device. It comes in many shapes and colors, most of them will not be to your taste, but persist until you find one.
3 July 2023
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korrents.com
Vertical farming swaps a land problem for an energy problem, and the energy cost is what stops it feeding the world.Their words
I explain why in the essay; the TLDR is that they’re energy hogs. The sun is a really awesome source of calories, and it’s kind of dumb not to take advantage of it.
The Food Problem Is Bigger Than Lettucemichaelgrunwald.substack.com
29 June 2023
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Their words
I think things like MuZero and AlphaGo are so much more impressive because these things are playing beyond the highest human level. The language models are writing middle school level essays and people are like, wow, it’s a great essay.
16 January 2023
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Their words
What ChatGPT is, in this instance, is replication as travesty. ChatGPT may be able to write a speech or an essay or a sermon or an obituary but it cannot create a genuine song.
1 January 2023
Nothing matches.
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