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A collection of 38 issues

How Many People Does It Take …?

A 700,000 square meters Hindu temple—the world’s second-largest Hindu temple—was recently inaugurated in New Jersey. The sect that built the temple is known for building many other elaborate temples, see, for instance, the temple in Delhi (TripAdvisor rates it as the second biggest attraction in Delhi)

Against Complacency

Even the best placed among us are to be pitied. Human lives today are blighted by five things: 1. Limited time. While we have made impressive gains in longevity over the last 100 years, our lives are still too short. 2. Less than excellent health. Limited lifespan is further blighted

Explore Exclusive Exploitation: The Billboard Top 100 Method of Learning

The optimism in Internet browsing is palpable. Browse long enough, and you will have a ‘hit.’ Like gambling, which it mimics, lay browsing is a losing proposition. A better way to spend your time is to focus on known knowns—excellent teachers, communicators, etc.—and core ideas, insights, and big

Sense and Selection

The following essay is by Chaste. The article was written in early 2018. ——— I will discuss the confounding selection strategies of England, India, and South Africa in the recently finished series. I won’t talk about minutiae like whether Vince’s technique is suited to Australian conditions or whether Rohit

What’s the Next Best Thing to Learn?

With Gaurav Gandhi Recommendation engines are everywhere. These systems recommend what shows to watch on Netflix and what products to buy on Amazon. Since at least the Netflix Prize, the conventional wisdom is that recommendation engines have become very good. Except that they are not. Some of the deficiencies are

Advice that works

Writing habits of some writers: “Early in the morning. A good writing day starts at 4 AM. By 11 AM the rest of the world is fully awake and so the day goes downhill from there.” Daniel Gilbert “Usually, by the time my kids get off to school and I

Searching for Great Conversations

“When was the last time you had a great conversation? A conversation that wasn’t just two intersecting monologues, but when you overheard yourself saying things you never knew you knew, that you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that found places within you that you thought you had lost,

That's Smart! What We Mean by Smartness and What We Should

Many people conceive of intelligence as a CPU. To them, being more intelligent means having a faster CPU. And this is despairing as the clock speed is largely fixed. (Prenatal and childhood nutrition can make a sizable difference, however. For instance, iodine deficiency in children causes mental retardation.) But people

Star Trek: Trekking Uncertainly Between Utopia and Twentieth Century Earth

Star Trek (and its spin-offs) are justly applauded for including socially progressive ideas in both, the themes of their stories, and the cultural fabric of the counterfactual imagination of the future. For instance, women and minorities command positions of responsibility, those working for the ‘Federation’ take ethical questions seriously, both

Delay Shooting the Help

Procrastination Procrastination, delaying without reason doing something that one has to do, makes little sense. If the voluntary delay also causes anxiety, which in most cases it does, it may be particularly pointless. Yet a lot of people procrastinate at least some of the times. Why? One can make a