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Tim Urban's accessible exploration of the question of why we haven't found extraterrestrial life — covering all major hypotheses from the Great Filter to the Zoo hypothesis.

“The best introduction to the Fermi Paradox that exists. If you only read one thing about astrobiology this year, make it this.”

Emily Bender and colleagues on stochastic parrots — why LLMs aren't 'understanding' anything and why that gap matters deeply.

“A necessary counterweight to anthropomorphizing LLMs. The arguments in here are going to matter more and more as these systems become infrastructure.”

Farnam Street's comprehensive overview of mental models from across disciplines — the latticework approach to thinking that Charlie Munger made famous.

“A good entry point into the Munger approach to reasoning. The actual value is in following the links — FS has expanded each model into much deeper posts.”

Cedric Chin's careful examination of where deliberate practice research holds up and where it doesn't — an important corrective to the popularized version of Ericsson's work.

“Ericsson's own work is being systematically misread. If you've read Outliers or Peak and think you understand deliberate practice, read this first.”