Good principles for life. “Before you proceed with memorizing individual facts and rules, you need to build an overall picture of the learned knowledge. Only when individual pieces fit to build a single coherent structure, will you be able to… Read More »Effective learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge
Diplomacy has changed many times in the past. Why should it stay the same now? “A new chapter started with a bang. In 1814, the Austrian foreign minister Prince Klemens von Metternich was convinced that diplomacy had to make a… Read More »We need a planetary system of diplomacy for the 21st century
How technology spreads. “For a given technology, Rogers identified five crucial factors that influence adoption rates: relative advantage (the perceived benefits of using a new technology over existing alternatives), compatibility (alignment of the technology with existing social values and needs),… Read More »The Diffusion Dilemma
Nice explainer how encyclopedias in general are supposed to work. “If Wikipedia had been available around the sixth century BC, it would have reported the view that the Earth is flat as a fact without qualification. It would have also… Read More »Why Wikipedia cannot claim the Earth is not flat
As my high school teacher used to say, not everything is on the internet, because I have not put it there. “For many people, GenAI is becoming their primary way to learn about the world. A large-scale study published in… Read More »Generative AI has access to a small slice of human knowledge
Good tips to get yourself educated. “My recommendation is to pick three very different historical periods that you find fascinating. They can be any three, really, but ideally they will be a bit separated from each other in space, time,… Read More »A Study Guide for Human Society, Part I
A great framework to think about history. “And that’s exactly the problem with zero-dimensional history: a true point contains very little data. A single painting can’t capture the full significance of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, in which… Read More »The Four Shapes of History
Is it magic tough? “Humans’ first big meta-innovation, roughly speaking — the first thing that lifted us above an animal existence — was history. By this, I don’t just mean the chronicling of political events and social trends that we… Read More »The Third Magic
Or more about sports business models. [Freakonomics Radio] 649. Should Ohio State (and Michigan, and Clemson) Join the N.F.L.? #freakonomicsRadio https://podcastaddict.com/freakonomics-radio/episode/208341900 via @PodcastAddict
War is more complicated than shown in movies. “Victory, then, is not always the annihilation of enemy forces—it is the collapse of the enemy’s will to resist.” https://mwi.westpoint.edu/a-clausewitzian-lens-on-modern-urban-warfare/