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Systems and developer-tools engineer at Cloudflare as of 2026, on durable infrastructure for AI agents; worked on React and PartyKit before that. Writes at sunilpai.dev.

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  Foundation is really about individuals with extreme agency and puzzle-solving ability having outsized impact on a universe that would otherwise decay

  Their words

  foundation is ostensibly a sci-fi series about empires, psychohistory, and hard technology, but really it's about individuals with extreme agency and puzzle-solving ability having wildly outsized impact on a universe that would otherwise just sit there waiting to decay

  @threepointone on Xx.com

Co-founder of Ximian and Xamarin; CEO of GitHub from 2018 to 2021; now an independent investor and funder of open technical projects, including the Vesuvius Challenge to read the Herculaneum Papyri.

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  It is our right, and maybe our moral duty, to reshape the universe to our preferences

  Their words

  As human beings it is our right (maybe our moral duty) to reshape the universe to our preferences Technology, which is really knowledge, enables this

  Nat Friedmannat.org

Creator of the Keras deep-learning library and the ARC-AGI benchmark.

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  In verifiable domains model capability scaling should remain unbounded, because the space of enumerable patterns is infinite by construction.

  Their words

  In verifiable domains, model capability scaling should remain unbounded. Models will simply keep improving by "absorbing more and more of the computational universe", which is infinite by construction.

  @fchollet on Xx.com

British comics writer and novelist (Transmetropolitan, Planetary, The Authority, Gun Machine). Keeps a public daily notebook logging what he reads, watches and listens to.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Copenhagen

  Their words

  LAST WATCHED: A filmed version of the Frayn play COPENHAGEN with Stephen Rea, Daniel Craig and Francesca Annis.

  warrenellis.ltd

Co-founded Neuralink and founded Science Corp, which is building a retinal implant; writes about neural interfaces and biology.

From one piece From Restoring Sight to Reimagining the Brain, with Max Hodak 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  If we are serious about going to the stars we will have to adapt our bodies, because we are not going to export Earth everywhere we go.

  Their words

  the other extreme is if we're serious about exploring the universe and going to the stars, we are going to have to adapt ourselves to that environment. We're not going to export Earth with us everywhere we go.

  youtube.com

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  The brain is very literally a computer, and so is the universe -- this is not a metaphor.

  Their words

  Like, the brain very literally, very clearly, plainly is a computer in in my understanding of the world. I also view the universe generally as a computer.

  youtube.com

Programmer and teacher; writes on software, learning and the web, and makes the Coding Blocks video course.

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  The Lord of the Rings

  Their words

  What can I say? Seems like I spent most of my free time in this universe back in high school…

  rakhim.org

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  The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

  Their words

  String theory for the masses. This is how popular science books should be like: interesting, enchanting, inviting.

  rakhim.org

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  Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration Into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

  Their words

  It’s a very interesting book, but for some reason Michio Kaku’s style doesn’t spark me as much as Briane Greene’s or Stephen Hawking’s or Neil deGrasse Tyson’s.

  rakhim.org

+ 1 more

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  Hyperion

  Their words

  One of the best and definitely the scariest space opera. The universe Dan Simmons had created is enchanting.

  rakhim.org

Researcher on distributed systems and local-first software at the University of Cambridge; wrote Designing Data-Intensive Applications.

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  A test checks a handful of examples; a proof settles an infinite state space, which is why formal methods can say things testing never can.

  Their words

  But a proof can reason about potentially infinite state spaces. So, it can tell you things about like every possible thing that could possibly happen in the entire universe.

  youtube.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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  We are living through a cognitive Copernican revolution: human intelligence is not the centre, and which tasks we count as requiring intelligence has to be re-evaluated.

  Their words

  you know, right now we're going through uh an in um an cognitive version of the Copernican revolution where we used to think that human intelligence is the center of the universe. And now we're actually seeing that there's there's very different types of intelligence um that that that are out there uh with very different strengths and weaknesses.

  youtube.com

Founding member of OpenAI and former director of AI at Tesla; creator of nanoGPT and the term "vibe coding".

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  Purely digital progress runs out: to keep learning, the machines will have to run experiments and ask the universe questions.

  Their words

  you're going to run out of things that you're going to do purely in the digital space. At some point you have to go to the universe and you have to ask it questions. Um you have to run an experiment and see what the universe tells you to get back to learn something.

  youtube.com

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

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  The Universe Box

  Their words

  This is what it means to read a short story collection from an absolute master at the absolute peak of his powers. He can slide you frictionlessly between Icelandic troll tragedies to lethal drone-leopard romantic agonies to battles of the gods and the cigar box that has the universe inside of it. All with the lyricism of Bradbury, the madcap wit of Sturgeon, the unrelenting weirdness of Dick, the heart of Tiptree and the precision of Chiang.

  pluralistic.net

Director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. Writes the A Wealth of Common Sense blog and co-hosts the Animal Spirits podcast with Michael Batnick.

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  11/22/63

  Their words

  11/22/63 by Stephen King Somehow this was my first Stephen King novel.

  awealthofcommonsense.com

Assyriologist and curator at the British Museum; reads cuneiform, and wrote The Ark Before Noah and The First Ghosts.

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  The modern adherence to the electronic universe is disastrous for humans, and reduces the vitality of the human component.

  Their words

  Because I think that the modern adherence to the electronic universe is disastrous for humans, and because it reduces the vitality of the human component. I think it’s restrictive in a way that people don’t realize until it’s too late.

  youtube.com

Co-founder of Rockstar Games, lead writer of the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series, and founder of Absurd Ventures since leaving in 2020.

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  The most plausible answer to why we are here is that we were designed by the universe to watch itself and to comment on it in interesting ways.

  Their words

  To watch the universe. The easiest plausible answer is we are designed by the universe to watch itself and to comment on it in interesting ways.

  youtube.com

Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, and a 2024 Nobel laureate in Chemistry for the protein-structure work behind AlphaFold.

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  Information is the most fundamental unit of the universe, more fundamental than energy or matter.

  energy

  Their words

  And it sort of fits with the way I think about physics in general, which is that I think information is primary, information is the most sort of fundamental unit of the universe, more fundamental than energy and matter.

  youtube.com

Astrophysicist at Barnard College; wrote Black Hole Blues and How the Universe Got Its Spots, and directs sciences at Pioneer Works.

From one piece Janna Levin: Black Holes, Wormholes, Aliens, Paradoxes & Extra Dimensions | Lex Fridman Podcast #468 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Supermassive black holes did not grow by merging smaller ones — there has not been enough time — they collapsed directly out of primordial matter.

  Their words

  We don’t think that the universe has had enough time to make them from stars that just merge. We know that two black holes can merge and make a bigger black hole and then those can merge and make a bigger black hole. We don’t think there’s been enough time for that.

  youtube.com

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  Looking for aliens who build things is a failure of imagination: the long-lived species we know of do not manipulate their environment at all.

  Their words

  So I think we’re very attached to imagining creatures like us, that manipulate technology, and I think we have to be way more imaginative if we’re going to really take seriously life in the universe.

  youtube.com

Astrophysicist at the University of Rochester; works on the search for life elsewhere and wrote The Little Book of Aliens and Light of the Stars.

From one piece Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  The universe has run ten billion trillion habitable-zone experiments, so we are the first technological civilisation only if every single one of them failed.

  Their words

  And so, what we found was basically that there have been 10 billion trillion habitable zone planets in the universe. And what that means is that those are 10 billion trillion experiments that have been run. And the only way that we're this whole process from a biogenesis to a civilization has occurred is if every one of those experiments failed.

  youtube.com

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  Life is going to be common in the universe; the genuinely open question is how long technological civilisations last.

  Their words

  Intelligent life and how long intelligent, technological civilizations, I think there's a big question about how long those last. And I'm hopeful, but in terms of just, I think life is absolutely going to be common, pretty common in the universe.

  youtube.com

Astrobiologist and theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, working on assembly theory and the physics of life.

From one piece Sara Walker: Physics of Life, Time, Complexity, and Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #433 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Life is not chemical; it merely emerges in chemistry, because chemistry is the first space the universe builds that is too large for it to exhaust.

  Their words

  And then you can go to chemical system. I don’t think that’s good either. I think there’s a confusion because life emerges in chemistry that life is chemical. I don’t think life is chemical. I think life emerges in chemistry because chemistry is the first thing the universe builds where it cannot exhaust all the possibilities, because the combinatorial space of chemistry is too large.

  youtube.com

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  The modern technosphere is the largest object in time that we know of anywhere in the universe.

  Their words

  Yeah, I think the modern technosphere is the largest object in time in the universe that we know about.

  youtube.com

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  Living things are among the largest objects in the universe — not large in space, but large in time.

  Their words

  And so what I’m getting at with this is I think that living objects are actually huge. They’re some of the biggest structures in the universe, but they are not big in space. They’re big in time. And we actually can’t resolve that feature.

  youtube.com

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  A theory of reality that cannot name the question it is answering is not worth building.

  Their words

  It’s totally fine to have a turtle. Everyone has a turtle. You can’t build a theory without a turtle. It depends on the problem you want to describe. Actually, the reason I can’t get behind Stephen’s ontology is I don’t know what question he’s trying to answer. Without a question to answer, I don’t understand why you’re building a theory of reality.

  youtube.com

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  Life obeys universal principles, and the right framework will let us recognise life that is currently too different for us to see as alive at all.

  Their words

  I think life obeys universal principles. I think there is some deep underlying explanatory framework that will tell us about the nature of life in the universe and will allow us to identify life that we can’t yet recognize because it’s too different.

  youtube.com

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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  On Writing

  Their words

  But Stephen King has good war stories, and his book really is bullshit-free.

  smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net

Theoretical physicist and philosopher, Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Writes the Preposterous Universe blog and hosts the Mindscape podcast.

From one piece Sean Carroll: General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Black Holes & Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #428 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  "Why is there something rather than nothing?" cannot have the kind of answer why-questions usually get, because the universe is not embedded in anything bigger — it can just be.

  Their words

  I think that specifically the question why is there something rather than nothing? does not have the kind of answer that we would ordinarily attribute to why questions because typical why questions are embedded in the universe. And when we answer them, we take advantage of the features of the universe that we know and love. But the universe itself, as far as we know, is not embedded in anything bigger or stronger, and therefore it can just be.

  youtube.com

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  Assuming you are a typical observer in the universe is not humility but a hilariously presumptuous claim that typical observers are like you.

  Their words

  But then you draw some conclusions from this, and what you end up realizing is you’ve been hilariously presumptuous because by saying, “I’m a typical observer in the universe,” you’re saying, “Typical observers in the universe are like me,” and that is completely unjustified by anything.

  youtube.com

Computer science professor who works on fast data processing; co-author of the simdjson parser and a weekly blogger about software performance since 2004.

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  Theft of Fire

  Their words

  Theft of Fire offers a plausible and realistic universe. The characters, Marcus Warnoc and Miranda Foxgrove, are not mere archetypes; they are complex, flawed, and deeply human. Their struggle to trust one another and overcome their own demons is a powerful allegory for the modern human condition.

  lemire.me

Theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, working on particle physics, extra dimensions and dark matter.

From one piece Lisa Randall: Dark Matter, Theoretical Physics, and Extinction Events | Lex Fridman Podcast #403 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  The universe does not come into being when we measure it: electrons and their wave functions are there whether or not anyone is looking.

  Their words

  I could believe that the Middle East doesn’t exist because I’m not there now. That would be kind of ridiculous, I think we would all agree on that. I think there’s only so much that we can attribute to our own powers of seeing. The whole system doesn’t come into being because I’m measuring it.

  youtube.com

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  The surprise is not that most of the universe is invisible to us, but that the matter we can see makes up as large a fraction as it does.

  energy

  Their words

  In fact, I would say it’s more surprising that the matter that we know about is constitutes as big a fraction of the universe as it does. We’re limited, we’re human. The fact that we see 5% of the energy density of the universe, about one sixth of the energy density in matter, that’s remarkable.

  youtube.com

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.

  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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  This Corner of the Universe

  Their words

  Mind candy: Military SF by someone who must've spent a big chunk of time in the (US?) military. The novel is good on the inter-personal dynamics of the service and especially of the small ship.

  bactra.org

Biochemist at University College London; writes about the origin of life and the role of energy in evolution, in The Vital Question and Transformer.

From one piece Nick Lane: Origin of Life, Evolution, Aliens, Biology, and Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #318 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  There are far fewer alien civilizations than people would like to believe, because the road from bacteria to humans has huge gaps in it.

  Their words

  Well, the universe is very big, but not as many as most people would like to think is my view, because the idea that there is a trajectory going from simple cellular life like bacteria, all the way through to humans, seems to me there’s some big gaps along that way, that the eukaryotic cell, the complex cell that we have is the biggest of them.

  youtube.com

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  If we found a thousand life forms across the universe, 995 of them would be carbon-based and living in water.

  Their words

  I would say pretty fundamental. I wouldn’t like to say it’s impossible for life to start any other way, but water is everywhere. Water’s extremely good at what it does, and carbon works in water especially well. And carbon is everywhere. So, those things together make me think probabilistically, if we found 1,000 life forms, 995 of them would be carbon-based and living in water.

  youtube.com

Computer science professor at Georgetown University and author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism and Slow Productivity; writes about focus, technology and work at calnewport.com and hosts the Deep Questions podcast.

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  How Star Wars Conquered the Universe

  Their words

  Though this book frequently digresses into discussions of the cultural impact of the Star Wars franchise, it also contains one of the most thoroughly-researched biographies of Lucas currently available.

  calnewport.com

Philosopher and historian of existential risk; wrote Human Extinction, and coined "TESCREAL" with Timnit Gebru for the cluster of ideologies they argue underpins the AI industry.

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  The moral theory underneath longtermism treats people as containers of value rather than as the point of it, which is why creating more of them counts as making the universe better.

  Their words

  In a phrase: people exist for the sake of maximising value, rather than value existing for the sake of benefitting people.

  Against longtermismaeon.co

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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  Looking Glass Universe

  Their words

  She covers ideas from physics and math explained simply and unusually honestly.

  3blue1brown.com

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  Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe

  Their words

  This is another wonderful book aiming to popularize calculus (2019 was a good year for that goal). What I enjoyed about this one is how broad a view Strogatz takes of the origins of calculus, ranging from the clever proofs Archimedes was developing up to Fourier's study of heat.

  3blue1brown.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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  Brain Rules

  Their words

  A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking

  nateliason.com

American backpacking guide, writer and endurance athlete who has hiked more than 30,000 miles; author of The Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide and publisher of gear reviews and trip-planning tutorials at andrewskurka.com.

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  Nothing Like It In The World

  Their words

  For the full account, go with Nothing Like It In The World by Stephen Ambrose.

  andrewskurka.com

Mathematician and Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics department at Columbia University. Author of the book Not Even Wrong and of the long-running physics blog of the same name.

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  Quantum Space: Loop Quantum Gravity and the Search for the Structure of Space, Time, and the Universe

  Their words

  Jim Baggott has a very good new book out, entitled Quantum Space

  math.columbia.edu

Wine writer and Master of Wine; Financial Times wine columnist, editor of The Oxford Companion to Wine and co-author of The World Atlas of Wine.

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  The Complete Bordeaux

  Their words

  It is not dry and scientific. I don't think Stephen is particularly interested in science. It's got lots of value judgements, and it is a good solid read.

  fivebooks.com

Co-founder of Microsoft and of the Gates Foundation. Writes Gates Notes on global health, energy and climate, and on whatever they have been reading.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Origin Story

  Their words

  It does a fantastic job distilling the latest thinking about the origins of the universe.

  gatesnotes.com

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  The Dialogues: Conversations about the Nature of the Universe

  Their words

  I would recommend this book to everyone who has an interest in the foundations of physics.

  backreaction.blogspot.com

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  Beyond the Galaxy: How Humanity Looked Beyond Our Milky Way and Discovered the Entire Universe

  Their words

  In short, Ethan's book is the missing link between cosmology textbooks and popular science articles.

  backreaction.blogspot.com

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  Cracking the Particle Code of the Universe

  Their words

  In summary, Moffat's new book is a well-done and well-written survey of the history, achievements, and shortcomings of the Standard Model of particle physics.

  backreaction.blogspot.com

Software engineer who led Google's webspam team for over a decade and later served as administrator of the United States Digital Service.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Pocket Casts

  Their words

  I love Pocket Casts for podcasts. It costs $3.99 but totally worth it to listen to This Week in Google and This American Life and Stephen Tobolowsky.

  usesthis.com

Emeritus Professor of Statistics at the University of Cambridge, former president of the Royal Statistical Society, and author of The Art of Statistics.

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  Dicing with Death

  Their words

  This book is somewhat similar to The Drunkard's Walk in that it covers the history of probability. But since Stephen's background is in medical statistics, he looks at clinical trials and other medical studies.

  fivebooks.com