Best Articles of 2016
According to Pocket*, I read 1700+ articles in 2016.
Here are 20 of my favorites, organized into (very) loose categories.
Personal Development / Reclaiming Our Attention
The Holy Grail of Self-Improvement
I think Tiago is the leading thinker in the world of productivity right now.
A society’s drug of choice speaks volumes about what it values. This piece focuses on nootropics and our quest to cheat time for increased productivity.
Lots of thinking on the nature of reality this year. This excerpt focuses on the interplay between sensation and perception in creating our model of the world.
How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
In the war with corporations for our attention, we are hopelessly outgunned.
Increased access to information leads to corresponding decreases in knowledge depth, authenticity, and life satisfaction.
Fat Thinking and Economies of Variety
Fully efficient execution comes at the expense of innovation and leads to stagnation.
Red Pills
Separating economic class (wealth) from social class (culture) with lots of great commentary along the way.
A fable about how the need to create narrative led to the creation of history. Impossible to summarize.
The Rituals We Perform and the Games We Play
Nihilistic and soul-crushingly accurate. If you’re unfamiliar with ritual, check posts by Sarah Perry. I hope this blogger writes their second post soon.
Rare Farnam Street foray into long-form. Harris’s theory of everything that upends many cached views on nature/nurture.
Most compressed analogy I have seen on the evolutionary advantages for harboring incorrect beliefs (Kurzban’s book is great for continued reading).
How to Legally Own Another Person
The employee/employer relationship is modern slavery, mutually agreed upon.
Politics / Current Events
Lost Girls: Women, sex, and the Arab Spring
Meanwhile, outside of our first-world echo chambers, systemic discrimination abounds and equality for all is still a pipe dream.
Geographic differences in Americans are direct descendants of the characteristics of the original settlers over 300 years ago.
Democrats are faced with a difficult choice: either democracy without rights or rights without democracy.
The Smug Style in American Liberalism
Liberals suffer from their own brand of tribalism. Mutual knowing comes at the expense of empathetic learning.
Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All
The man who knows Trump better than just about anyone panics about the monster he helped create.
Podcast / Talk Transcripts
Max Tegmark / Sam Harris — The Multiverse & You
If you can read this without your head exploding (in the best sense of the word) we need to have a conversation.
Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
Like many other nerds, I was swept up by the Unfriendly A.I. movement a couple years ago. Why were we so susceptible to this meme?
Order and Chaos on The Electronic Frontier
As a lover of science fiction, this gives me hope that my hobby has predictive value.
Author’s Note:
Restricted my list to articles published in 2016. Many of my favorite reads are from past years, I’ll create an “all-time best of” at some point.
A good rule of thumb: recency is negatively correlated with quality. Distinguish journalism from the news — if it won’t be relevant in a year, it isn’t relevant now.
- If you aren’t using a Read It Later app like Pocket, you’re doing it wrong.
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