robotelvis

I’ve gone Phoneless. I still own an iPhone 14, but I mostly don’t use it. It lives on a charger by my front door and I only use it a few times a week to do things that sadly still require it. So far the results have been great. I’m...

A lot of noise has been made about the admissions policies of elite colleges. Are they really selecting the most deserving? Do they prioritize the wealthy and well connected? Should they be selecting students by race? I think it’s important to understand what colleges are actually for, and why they...

It’s become fashionable recently to say that the purpose of a system is what it does - the true purpose of an institution is often different from what it publicly claims, and is better determined by observing what it does. Scott Alexander wrote a thoughtful takedown of this, claiming “Obviously...

A common pattern I’ve observed is that people find themselves stuck in careers they don’t really like because what they are doing feels high status. The college professor who thinks their academic field contributes little to society and earns a pittance teaching it but feels they would be a failure...

I’m not Christian now, but I used to be. I parted ways with Christianity because I came to identify as more of an Empiricist - believing that knowledge should come from experiment and observation, not writings in old sacred texts. But some of the writing in those old sacred texts...

People like to categorize things as being good or bad. Motherhood and apple pie are good. Ebola is bad. Kittens are good. Hitler was bad. Sometimes this is a reasonable model, but a lot of the time this “good/bad” framework breaks down. Because pretty much everything we think of as...

Education in the US is a big big deal. It takes up 18-30 years of our lives, employs over 10% of our workforce, and is responsible for 60% of non-mortgage/non-car debt. Even a minor improvement to education could be a big deal. Education is also something that has changed massively...