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Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 369 posts.
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Why read old philosophy?
I’m going to try to explain a mystery that puzzled me for years. This answer finally dawned on me in the middle of one of those occasional conversations in which non-perplexed friends patiently try…
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Unquantified
The only real valuable thing is intuition. – Albert Einstein A year ago I got rid of my scale, a simple act that turned out to be the catalyst for a year’s worth of quiet introspection and experimentation in removing quantification from my life. A year later I’m quantifiably more ignorant about myself than I have been…
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Jobs Inside the API
If someone is worse at their job than a drunk person with Google, why do they still have their job?
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How to Get Rich (1999)
[JARED DIAMOND:] In Guns, Germs, and Steel I asked why history has unfolded differently over the last 13,000 years in Eurasia, in the Americas, in sub-Saharan Africa, and in Aboriginal Australia, with the result that within the last 500 years Europeans were the ones who conquered Native Americans and Aboriginal…
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How a Month Without Computers Changed Me
I’ve sent a message to my family and delegated my open source projects to my friends. With my last tweet sent, I turn off my laptop, phone, and tablet. My Digital Sabbath begins in 10 minutes: no digital devices for the next month.
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Sick Building Syndrome
Find out about sick building syndrome (SBS), including symptoms, things you can do to ease symptoms and possible causes.
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Being a perfectionist is an obstacle and how to beat it
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How to read Plato (1995)
This page is part of the "e-mail archives" section of a site, Plato and his dialogues , dedicated to developing a new interpretation of Plato's dialogues. The "e-mail archives" section includes HTML edited versions of posts that I submitted on various e-mail discussion lists about Plato and ancient philosophy. Note: I…
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Varieties of Argumentative Experience
In 2008, Paul Graham wrote How To Disagree Better, ranking arguments on a scale from name-calling to explicitly refuting the other person’s central point. And that’s why, ever since 200…
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2018 Engineering Gift Guide
The INSPIRE Research Institute for Pre-College Engineering is a research center in the School of Engineering Education (the world's first) at Purdue University focusing on pre-college engineering education research and integration with science, technology, mathematics and literacy.
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Leveraging Introversion as a Career Strength
Being an introvert doesn’t mean you lack great management potential—but you need to play to your strengths
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How to Be Wrong (2016)
“To be wrong, or not to be wrong?” That is the wrong question. You are going to spend a lot of your time being wrong, especially if you become a scientist or mathematician. The question…
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The Importance of Having Your Pain Be Legible
How to deal with ideological censorship in a community? Who gets empathy and who is humanized the most? Does contemporary rhetoric about toxicity hold up to scrutiny? “When you keep rewarding…
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Making Slides
I was asked to give a short talk in my Departmental Proseminar yesterday on the topic of giving presentations, and specifically about making slides effective. There is more than one way to give a good talk, and there is more than one way to make “good slides” or—better—make good use of slides and other material you…
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How to Name a Baby (2013)
Meet the Name Fad. In 30 years, the names Natalie, Chelsea, Samantha, and Lindsay will sound how Nancy, Cheryl, Susan, and Linda do today. And in 60 years, the names Ethan, Cody, Brandon, and Matthew will be Earl, Chester, Bernard, and Melvin.
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New Car: An Accessible Minivan
We have a new vehicle, a Honda Odyssey Elite customised for my wheelchair, and for me to drive with hand controls.
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I've just learned Rust and I think I'm in love
I’ve decided to learn some Rust recently while working on the Stanford’s experimental course on operating systems. R...
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Notes on Resonance
Resonance occurs when two sources of excitation fall completely in sync, and reinforce one another endlessly. In this state, the sources convey an unbounded amount of energy over time.
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This Thing for Which We Have No Name (2014)
It's not my job to be a behavioral economist; my job is to actually popularize behavioral economics. The interesting thing to me—as someone who has a brother who's an academic—is that academics, however brilliant, are the worst marketers in the world. And there's a reason for this, which is they, of course, possibly…
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Consider applying for grad school
9 reasons to apply to grad school right now, and 8 reasons not to.