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Complete Archive

Every article we've published, organized chronologically. Explore years of thoughtful writing on thinking, learning, technology, and culture.

172 Total Articles
2 Years Publishing
1 Contributors

First Principles Thinking Explained

Learn first principles thinking—breaking problems down to fundamental truths and reasoning up—with practical examples and when to use it.

Deliberate Practice Explained

Learn what deliberate practice is, how it differs from regular practice, and why it's the key to developing expert-level skills.

Tradeoffs as a Universal Law

Understand why tradeoffs are fundamental to decision making, how to identify and evaluate them, and why 'having it all' is usually impossible.

How Goodhart's Law Breaks Metrics

Explore Goodhart's Law—when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure—and how to design metrics that resist gaming.

Feedback Loops Explained

Learn how feedback loops work—reinforcing and balancing—and why they're fundamental to understanding system behavior and change.

Heuristics Explained

Learn what heuristics are, why the mind uses mental shortcuts, when they work well, and when they lead to systematic errors.

Cognitive Biases Defined Simply

Understand what cognitive biases are, how they affect thinking, and why even smart people fall prey to systematic errors in judgment.

How Ethical Failures Actually Happen

Understand the common patterns behind ethical failures—not just bad actors, but systems, incentives, and incremental drift that corrupt good people.

How Values Shape Decisions

Explore how personal and organizational values influence decision making, often unconsciously, and why clarifying values improves judgment.

Moral Frameworks Explained Simply

Understand the major moral frameworks—consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, and more—with clear examples of how they guide decisions.

Framework Overload Explained

Understand the paradox of too many frameworks—when collecting mental models becomes counterproductive and how to focus on what matters.

Analytical Models vs Intuition

Understand when to trust analytical models versus intuition, how they complement each other, and the dangers of over-relying on either.