I try to discover and distill the most impactful knowledge over a long time.
I am interested in almost anything but organically gravitate towards topics like cognitive biases, epistemology, mental models, collective coordination and decision-making, view quakes, well-being, rationality and effective altruism. I don’t normal write, but I care about being simple and precise. Read more in about.
Databases (enter at your own risk)
<aside> 💡 Stream is were all newest things from this website flow down to. One spot to see all the new updates, notes, definitions. See the newest entries below
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March 25, 2025
Averaging multiple independent guesses tends to produce more accurate results than individual estimates. This applies both to groups of different people and, to a lesser extent, to multiple guesses from the same person.
March 14, 2025
Mistaken believe that past random events affect future probabilities
March 14, 2025
March 3, 2025
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I've made a small change: this page, previously called Notes, has been renamed to Stream. All notes and wiki entries can now be found in this single location.
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March 3, 2025
February 22, 2025
Do you tend to overfit or underfit? It’s a valuable self-calibration question. Asking it myself I realized I have a habit of overfitting—I tend to apply a theory to a wide range of observations, sometimes too generously. I let the idea frame stretch too far, allowing it to absorb more than it probably should. If I have a theory, I’ll just keep shoving different inputs into it, without being critical enough about how specific or distinct their properties actually are.
Asking this question can also help calibrate thinking on any specific topic. For example if you try to teach me a concept of emergence
Overfitting is assuming all biological processes must involve emergence - like claiming cell division is emergent when it's actually a well-defined mechanical process. Treating any collective behavior as emergence (misses that emergence requires new properties not present in individual components)
Underfitting is assuming emergence only occurs in specific phenomena like consciousness emerging from neural connections. This view fails to recognize that emergence is a broader concept that can occur across many different types of systems
Idea via reading https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-canal-papers
December 30, 2024
But there is more! Check the entire page…
<aside> 💡 Here are things I am reading some have summaries, 1-min reviews or fav excerpts.
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<aside> 💡 Hello to my wiki! Custom icons mark more extended notes
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Emotions trough evolutionary psychology
Timeline of historic invention
Value of life years – QALY and DALY
Brain has a window for language learning roughly from 7 to 13 years old
Enlightening perspectives from other cultures
Coordination and epistemic tools