I collect questions more than answers. Here are some I keep coming back to.
On Thinking & Psychology
- Why do smart people believe dumb things?
- What’s the relationship between understanding and doing?
- Why is changing your mind so hard, even when you know you should?
- Is there a limit to how much you can actually understand about yourself?
- How do you teach something you’ve deeply internalized? (The curse of knowledge is brutal.)
- Why does knowing about cognitive biases not protect you from them?
- What’s the difference between intuition and pattern-matching on insufficient data?
On Science & Knowledge
- Is there a limit to what science can explain?
- Why do smart people reject well-established science? (Climate, vaccines, evolution)
- How do you update beliefs properly when evidence conflicts with priors?
- What’s the relationship between mathematical truth and physical reality?
- Why is the replication crisis so hard to fix?
On Technology
- Does more compute lead to genuine understanding, or just better pattern matching?
- What would it mean for AI to actually “understand” something?
- Are we building tools or building minds?
- Why do we keep making the same mistakes in software, decade after decade?
On Work
- What’s the actual difference between a 10x engineer and everyone else?
- Why do organizations make it so hard to do good work?
- Is remote work fundamentally better, or just better for some people?
- How much of “burnout” is the job and how much is the person?
On Living
- How do you balance ambition with contentment?
- What do you actually owe other people?
- Why is discipline easier in some areas than others?
- What makes something worth doing if nobody will ever see it?
On Geopolitics & Power
- Why do empires rise and fall in predictable patterns?
- Is multipolarity more stable or less stable than hegemony?
- How much does technology actually change the fundamental dynamics of power?
- Why do democracies make such short-term decisions?
- What happens when the global order reshuffles? (We might be finding out.)
On Philosophy & Meaning
- Is consciousness fundamental or emergent?
- Why is there something rather than nothing?
- Are there questions that are genuinely unanswerable?
- What would it take to actually change the trajectory of humanity?
- How do you live well knowing you’ll die?
- Why do different cultures arrive at similar philosophical conclusions?
- Is virtue ethics actually practical, or just aesthetically appealing?
These aren’t rhetorical. If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them.
Last updated: January 2026
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See also: What I Believe | What I’m Reading | What I’m Doing Now