Thinking Better

Better methods to think better, and to be less wrong.

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Don't Read History for Lessons

Learning from history is often problematic — history is context and path dependent, and it doesn't repeat itself. But what if there is a better way to read history, one that sidesteps these problems?

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Verifying Believability

Believability is a heuristic for practical advice. Here's one surprising way that it can fail.

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Cognitive Flexibility Theory: The Rules

Everything I know about learning in novel, ill-structured domains, summarised in one piece.

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How To Hunt For Useful Self Improvement Research

How to hunt for useful expertise research, emotional regulation work, or better learning techniques, straight from the primary literature.

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The Best Way to Learn From Other People's Experiences

Why bother learning history, when history isn't likely to repeat itself? We take a look at what Cognitive Flexibility Theory tells us about the best way to learn from other people's experiences.

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The Dangers of Treating Life as a Game

Game analogies can be helpful when you're playing to win. But there's a limit to how useful they can be when thinking about life.

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Take a Simple Idea and Take It Seriously

There's a saying commonly attributed to Charlie Munger that goes 'Take a Simple Idea and Take It Seriously'. Work out all the implications. Seek out all the case studies. Here's a story of two investors who did exactly that.

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Against Single Narratives in Crypto

Why it's important not to hold too tightly to any one explanatory narrative during a period of high uncertainty.

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What I Learnt From Complexity

M. Mitchell Waldrop's book on the Santa Fe Institute is a gateway drug to a powerful if subtle idea. Here's why it matters.

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A Narrative About Crypto

Sensemaking is hard. Sensemaking around a possible paradigm shift is even harder. What's the narrative for crypto? What is crypto good for?

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