Introduction Looking back at yourself as a student is a strange exercise. You’re trying to understand someone who had less information, fewer skills, and a different set of pressures than you do n...

Introduction Ken Thompson’s 1984 Turing Award lecture, “Reflections on Trusting Trust,” makes a deceptively simple argument: you cannot fully trust code you did not write yourself, because the com...

Introduction Changing your mind is supposed to be a virtue—a sign of intellectual honesty and willingness to update on evidence. But in practice it’s uncomfortable, because our beliefs are entangl...

Introduction The explore/exploit tradeoff is a concept from computer science and decision theory: when do you keep searching for something better versus committing to what you’ve found? It maps su...

Introduction In Brave New World, soma is the drug that keeps citizens content, compliant, and untroubled by the weight of real experience. When I started taking Zoloft, I worried about something s...

Introduction The debate between big and small government often misses the more important question: capable versus incapable government. A state that lacks the capacity to implement its own policie...

Introduction Anxiety and depression are often described in clinical terms—symptoms, diagnoses, treatment protocols. That framing is useful but incomplete. What they actually feel like from the ins...

What This Series Is About State governments occupy a fascinating and underappreciated position in American governance. Unlike the federal government, they cannot print money, must generally balanc...

Introduction This post will explore the psychology behind habit formation and how understanding these mechanisms can help us build better routines. Key Points Explain the habit loop: cue, rout...

Introduction This post will explore the concept of transaction costs in the context of social anxiety. Key Points Define transaction costs and their relevance to social interactions. Discuss...