Opinion

A Blogger’s Guide To The 21st Century

​Published on November 30, 2025 8:20 AM GMTHere’s a fun format: get a big white board, and write the years of the 21st century. Write a category; something that has many variations come out every year. Next, write your picks or favourites. Now invite everyone attending to replace a year’s pick if they want and replace it with something they like.This was a rolling game played last month at Lighthaven. I put up “Best blog post of every year” when the opportunity arose.2000My pick: Painless Software SchedulesThis Joel SPolsky piece is applicable to far more than software. It’s been the foundation or ancestor of all my good project management.Crowd pick: Why the Future Doesn’t Need UsBilly Joy writes with foresight about new technologies and their ethical dimensions.2001My pick: Suck in the Middle with BruceA stream of conciousness, half manic fever dream, half calculatingly ruthless ode to victory. Don’t worry about the Magic: The Gathering details, they don’t matter.Crowd pick:2002My pick: Taste for MakersPaul Graham had not yet learned brevity, but he had learned design. This is a beachhead of aesthetic – perhaps just the legible outcrop into software engineering.Crowd pick:2003My pick: Welcome To The SiteAh, Cory Doctorow. Never change. Here is the first high profile use of creative commons, which (along with other licenses) should be internet lore.Crowd pick:2004My pick: What You Can’t SayPaul Graham taking an early swing at intellectual conformity. I like it as a message in a bottle to today’s culture wars.Crowd pick: Mind the GapPaul Graham taking a swing at communism. Wealth creation is cool, liberalism lifts people out of poverty and elevates humanity. Most saliently; you can create wealth! Go out and make something people want!2005My pick: Fable of the Dragon TyrantA fairy tale of defying our limitations. A bit preachy, and I wish there was more characterization, but it has a nice cadence.Crowd pick:2006My pick: The Martial Art of RationalityFor me, this is the central post of the entire rationality project. Everything else is cruft, addons that either distract from or build on this thesis.Crowd pick:2007My pick: Policy Tug of WarRobin Hanson introduces the concept of tugging the policy rope sideways. It’s neat to look back and fee footprints of people doing this.Crowd pick: The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito TunnelA masterful pastiche of engineering blog posts. Plus burritos make everything better. Macej Ceytowski hits it out of the park.2008My pick: Security MindsetBruch Schnier is the information security blogger, and this is the post on thinking through the security implications of the world. CW: Ants.Crowd pick: 37 Ways Words Can Be WrongEliezer’s Best post – the prereq to all advanced study of language.2009My pick: Descent: The Game That Ruined MeShamus Young lays out, in an understated warning, the dangers of learning the wrong way. It’s insidious! Once you have bad habits, fixing them can be harder than starting fresh.Crowd pick:2010My pick: Ureshiku NaritaiWanna be happier? Course you do. Alicorn’s capstone of the Luminosity sequence lays out how she step by step built a happier life. I can’t promise it will work for you – but it worked for me!Crowd pick:2011My pick: Hack Away At The EdgesLuke makes an underrated point here about how to work on hard problems. There’s a lot of things to big to eat in one bite – that’s why we can chew!Crowd pick: The Alouside BoytmendTLP is a generational blogger- no spoilers2012My pick: Participation in the LW Community Associated With Less BiasThis. This fucking post right here. This is what I think someone should have been following up on full time, or at least 2x a year. If true, then why? If false, how to fix it?Crowd pick: Salary Negotiation: Get paid more, be more valuedPatrick McKenzie gives career advice to SWE’s that generalizes to workers in many disciplines. A large portion of my net worth (and current income) is downstream of this post, which also serves as a practical guide to “understanding your counterparty and their incentives.”2013My pick: The Lottery of FascinationsScott manages to succinctly describe a really relevant dynamic for a big community of nerds. Many of us have that one fascination.Crowd pick:2014My pick: The Control Group Is Out Of ControlThe idea of a control group for science is still a funny idea, and also useful! Talking about parapsychology is a good innoculation against trusting everything in a journal article.Crowd pick: Meditations on MOlochMoloch, whose mind is pure machiner!Moloch, whose blood is running money!There, in Las Vegas, I saw Moloch.2015My pick: Not Because You “Should”Nate Soares outlines a common. . . is it a motivation? This persistant ‘should’ that crops up in our internal monologues and explanations of our behavior?Crowd pick: The Value Of A LifeNate Soares writes a version of Fable of the Dragon Tyrant but EA: To save lives and defeat the dragon, you have to put a price tag on a life saved, and do what life savers need and want, including the whole economy. (This description does not give it justice.)2016My pick: The Pyramid and the GardenScott Alexander manages to give useful advice for conspiracy theories, normal science, and also a good idea for a fiction novel!Crowd pick: A Possible Way To Achieve All Your GoalsMeditation stuff tells you how to win at life with marginal effort.2017My pick: Melting Gold, and Organizational CapacityRaemon points at a problem across many domains, one which only rears its head when its too late for an organizing team to fix.Crowd pick: The Face Of The IceSara Constintin’s tight, hard hitting meditation on the rubber hits the road, gearsy, final boss rationality of human survival if its inherent humanism. The real world can kill you. Say something to your fellow travelers.2018My pick: Write a Thousand Roads To RomeSelf plug, deal with it, I made the list.This is my standing answer to people asking why I’m writing about something someone else covered.Crowd pick:2019My pick: Asymetric JusticeZvi writes a lot of text. I would argue under all those words he has two through lines, and how good things come to times and places that don’t prevent them is one.Crowd pick:2020My pick:Crowd pick: Pain is Not the Unit of EffortHere’s a post that some people need printed out, rolled up, and whapped with like adog with a newspaper. It’s common to make this mistake!2021My pick: Self Integrity and the Drowning ChildEliezer, having seen the outcome a decade on from the community he created, has some pointed advice on being happier and saner.Crowd pick: Willingness to Look StupidI think about this post twice a week. I catch like 10% of the opportunities in my life to look stupid, and it has made me smarter and more effective. Onward and upward!2022My pick: SazenAn essay on essay writing. Too much of this is self indulgent. Sazen comes with an advice and a warning of how you can misunderstand and be misunderstoodCrowd pick:2023My pick: Things I Learned By Spending Five Thousand Hours In Non-EA CharitiesJenn’s piece here is worth it if it only had the line “what is your fantasy complement organization?” And then there are lots more good bits! A great bridge between two worlds.Crowd pick:2024My pick: Situational AwarenessLeopold Aschenbrenner changed the posting game with a giant, one-site one-essay work that came out of nowhere. This is a high production value blog post. It comes to put AI on a government radar, and succeeds.Crowd pick: No Good AlongBy internet princess. There is a narrative you might encounter on the internet and inside of you. It insists you must be a healed person before you get to participate in society. Reyne lays out why this is wrong, and why it’s important not to shut yourself away, even if it means that others can hurt you further, and even if you might end up hurting them back. After all, we are no good alone.2025My pick: On PriesthoodsNot about cults!This is a frank discussion on communication within and without the public eye.Crowd pick: An upcoming post by one of Inkhaven ResidentsHopefully! Write good posts!Discuss ​Read More

​Published on November 30, 2025 8:20 AM GMTHere’s a fun format: get a big white board, and write the years of the 21st century. Write a category; something that has many variations come out every year. Next, write your picks or favourites. Now invite everyone attending to replace a year’s pick if they want and replace it with something they like.This was a rolling game played last month at Lighthaven. I put up “Best blog post of every year” when the opportunity arose.2000My pick: Painless Software SchedulesThis Joel SPolsky piece is applicable to far more than software. It’s been the foundation or ancestor of all my good project management.Crowd pick: Why the Future Doesn’t Need UsBilly Joy writes with foresight about new technologies and their ethical dimensions.2001My pick: Suck in the Middle with BruceA stream of conciousness, half manic fever dream, half calculatingly ruthless ode to victory. Don’t worry about the Magic: The Gathering details, they don’t matter.Crowd pick:2002My pick: Taste for MakersPaul Graham had not yet learned brevity, but he had learned design. This is a beachhead of aesthetic – perhaps just the legible outcrop into software engineering.Crowd pick:2003My pick: Welcome To The SiteAh, Cory Doctorow. Never change. Here is the first high profile use of creative commons, which (along with other licenses) should be internet lore.Crowd pick:2004My pick: What You Can’t SayPaul Graham taking an early swing at intellectual conformity. I like it as a message in a bottle to today’s culture wars.Crowd pick: Mind the GapPaul Graham taking a swing at communism. Wealth creation is cool, liberalism lifts people out of poverty and elevates humanity. Most saliently; you can create wealth! Go out and make something people want!2005My pick: Fable of the Dragon TyrantA fairy tale of defying our limitations. A bit preachy, and I wish there was more characterization, but it has a nice cadence.Crowd pick:2006My pick: The Martial Art of RationalityFor me, this is the central post of the entire rationality project. Everything else is cruft, addons that either distract from or build on this thesis.Crowd pick:2007My pick: Policy Tug of WarRobin Hanson introduces the concept of tugging the policy rope sideways. It’s neat to look back and fee footprints of people doing this.Crowd pick: The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito TunnelA masterful pastiche of engineering blog posts. Plus burritos make everything better. Macej Ceytowski hits it out of the park.2008My pick: Security MindsetBruch Schnier is the information security blogger, and this is the post on thinking through the security implications of the world. CW: Ants.Crowd pick: 37 Ways Words Can Be WrongEliezer’s Best post – the prereq to all advanced study of language.2009My pick: Descent: The Game That Ruined MeShamus Young lays out, in an understated warning, the dangers of learning the wrong way. It’s insidious! Once you have bad habits, fixing them can be harder than starting fresh.Crowd pick:2010My pick: Ureshiku NaritaiWanna be happier? Course you do. Alicorn’s capstone of the Luminosity sequence lays out how she step by step built a happier life. I can’t promise it will work for you – but it worked for me!Crowd pick:2011My pick: Hack Away At The EdgesLuke makes an underrated point here about how to work on hard problems. There’s a lot of things to big to eat in one bite – that’s why we can chew!Crowd pick: The Alouside BoytmendTLP is a generational blogger- no spoilers2012My pick: Participation in the LW Community Associated With Less BiasThis. This fucking post right here. This is what I think someone should have been following up on full time, or at least 2x a year. If true, then why? If false, how to fix it?Crowd pick: Salary Negotiation: Get paid more, be more valuedPatrick McKenzie gives career advice to SWE’s that generalizes to workers in many disciplines. A large portion of my net worth (and current income) is downstream of this post, which also serves as a practical guide to “understanding your counterparty and their incentives.”2013My pick: The Lottery of FascinationsScott manages to succinctly describe a really relevant dynamic for a big community of nerds. Many of us have that one fascination.Crowd pick:2014My pick: The Control Group Is Out Of ControlThe idea of a control group for science is still a funny idea, and also useful! Talking about parapsychology is a good innoculation against trusting everything in a journal article.Crowd pick: Meditations on MOlochMoloch, whose mind is pure machiner!Moloch, whose blood is running money!There, in Las Vegas, I saw Moloch.2015My pick: Not Because You “Should”Nate Soares outlines a common. . . is it a motivation? This persistant ‘should’ that crops up in our internal monologues and explanations of our behavior?Crowd pick: The Value Of A LifeNate Soares writes a version of Fable of the Dragon Tyrant but EA: To save lives and defeat the dragon, you have to put a price tag on a life saved, and do what life savers need and want, including the whole economy. (This description does not give it justice.)2016My pick: The Pyramid and the GardenScott Alexander manages to give useful advice for conspiracy theories, normal science, and also a good idea for a fiction novel!Crowd pick: A Possible Way To Achieve All Your GoalsMeditation stuff tells you how to win at life with marginal effort.2017My pick: Melting Gold, and Organizational CapacityRaemon points at a problem across many domains, one which only rears its head when its too late for an organizing team to fix.Crowd pick: The Face Of The IceSara Constintin’s tight, hard hitting meditation on the rubber hits the road, gearsy, final boss rationality of human survival if its inherent humanism. The real world can kill you. Say something to your fellow travelers.2018My pick: Write a Thousand Roads To RomeSelf plug, deal with it, I made the list.This is my standing answer to people asking why I’m writing about something someone else covered.Crowd pick:2019My pick: Asymetric JusticeZvi writes a lot of text. I would argue under all those words he has two through lines, and how good things come to times and places that don’t prevent them is one.Crowd pick:2020My pick:Crowd pick: Pain is Not the Unit of EffortHere’s a post that some people need printed out, rolled up, and whapped with like adog with a newspaper. It’s common to make this mistake!2021My pick: Self Integrity and the Drowning ChildEliezer, having seen the outcome a decade on from the community he created, has some pointed advice on being happier and saner.Crowd pick: Willingness to Look StupidI think about this post twice a week. I catch like 10% of the opportunities in my life to look stupid, and it has made me smarter and more effective. Onward and upward!2022My pick: SazenAn essay on essay writing. Too much of this is self indulgent. Sazen comes with an advice and a warning of how you can misunderstand and be misunderstoodCrowd pick:2023My pick: Things I Learned By Spending Five Thousand Hours In Non-EA CharitiesJenn’s piece here is worth it if it only had the line “what is your fantasy complement organization?” And then there are lots more good bits! A great bridge between two worlds.Crowd pick:2024My pick: Situational AwarenessLeopold Aschenbrenner changed the posting game with a giant, one-site one-essay work that came out of nowhere. This is a high production value blog post. It comes to put AI on a government radar, and succeeds.Crowd pick: No Good AlongBy internet princess. There is a narrative you might encounter on the internet and inside of you. It insists you must be a healed person before you get to participate in society. Reyne lays out why this is wrong, and why it’s important not to shut yourself away, even if it means that others can hurt you further, and even if you might end up hurting them back. After all, we are no good alone.2025My pick: On PriesthoodsNot about cults!This is a frank discussion on communication within and without the public eye.Crowd pick: An upcoming post by one of Inkhaven ResidentsHopefully! Write good posts!Discuss ​Read More

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