Analects

Filter by type: All · Articles · Audio · Marginalia

Filter by anthology: All · Betterment · Gratification · Connection · Somatic Architecture · Spiritual Architecture · Thought Architecture · Wealth Architecture · Digital Architecture · Collective Architecture

Betterment — On achievement and excellence

• [audio] Eerie Coincidences Aren't That Eerie — 17 Oct 2026
  Your phone probably isn’t listening. Your brain is just built to notice all the ads that surprise you, and forget the thousands that don’t. I reckon most eerie coincidences are like this.
• [audio] Why Stupid Leadership Retreats Work — 3 Oct 2026
  Leadership retreats don’t work because of what happens on them. They work because a change of scene forces new ways of thinking and acting. Win over the people everybody copies while you’re there, and the change will survive the trip home too.
• [audio] AI is kind of scary — 19 Sep 2026
  The AI panic mostly represents old problems: machines acting on a proxy of the world, to serve a proxy of our purpose. We’ve got a century of research solving those frictions. The new thing is that they’re running human social scripts without human stakes. Kind of scary.
• [audio] On Motivation — 5 Sep 2026
  Motivation seems simple until you notice that all of psychology describes what motivates us. I think three buckets make things easier: what motivates us, how it motivates us, and how motivation is sustained.
• [audio] AI Isn't That Scary — 22 Aug 2026
  AI is human-like, not human. Its output looks like ours but its purpose doesn’t, and purpose is what builds a mind. It isn’t heading towards us—it’s heading sideways, somewhere stranger and probably more benign.
• [audio] The Value of Ritual — 25 Jul 2026
  You don’t get a choice about whether you ritualise. Only about whether you chose the ritual.
• [audio] The Neuroscience Con — 11 Jul 2026
  Brain-words are cosmetic filler. Strip the neuroscience out and the advice means exactly what it did before—so learn to strip it out.
• [audio] Meditation Isn't For Everyone — 30 May 2026
  Meditation can harm you, and it isn’t for everyone. Strip the branding and it’s just trained attention—half of what you already do—so the only real variable is what you point it at.
• [audio] Sages and Wisdom — 16 May 2026
  The doctor and the guru run on the same authority structure. We just pick which one to trust by its costume. Choose by what sits under the coat or you lose to charlatans.
• [audio] The Scientific Ritual — 2 May 2026
  Science isn’t the opposite of belief. It’s a ritual—and like any ritual it misfires, which is how a method built to find truth becomes a machine for manufacturing exaggerations.
• [audio] Overengineering calming down — 4 Apr 2026
  Pop neuroscience is just “calm down” in a lab coat. The theories are scaffolding around trivial advice, attractive because they make your problems someone else’s fault, and the scaffolding hides what actually matters.
• [audio] Bias is Good — 21 Mar 2026
  Bias isn’t a flaw in your thinking. It’s a precision instrument. The brain trades variance for consistency because the world is noisy, so don’t fight the bias, find the belief driving it.
• [audio] The Amygdala is Not the Fear Centre — 7 Mar 2026
  Your amygdala doesn’t decide your fear. You do. It’s not a fear centre, it’s an intensity detector, and calming it down is solving the wrong problem. Watch how you respond instead.
• [audio] Atavism Isn't the Answer — 7 Feb 2026
  Seed oils, raw milk, cold plunges, tradwives—one template runs them all: name a modern ill, invent an ancestral past, sell the return as cure. It’s built on a fantasy we can’t verify.
• [audio] Values Don't Matter — 24 Jan 2026
  Values don’t shape behaviour. The room does. They’re virtue ethics relabelled—and courage for a soldier isn’t courage for a teacher. Build the context; drop the list.