Embryo selection has been in the news lately. I wanted to unpack what we can and can’t do with it today, which I hope will provide a more grounded foundation for discussing its ethics.| nayafia.substack.com
I was motivated to write Antimemetics in part because I felt dissatisfied with how we’ve unthinkingly glommed onto memetic warfare as a terminal explanation for why people do what they do.| nayafia.substack.com
When I first pitched a magazine piece about a meditation subculture surrounding the jhanas at the beginning of this year, there hadn’t been any media coverage of the practice yet.| Monomythical
I was rather confused when sociologist Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, came out earlier this year, which examines the harmful effects of phone and social media use among children and teenagers.| Monomythical
After the early crypto boom of 2017, I spent a few years dabbling at its edges.| Monomythical
Nearly a year ago, an editor reached out to me about writing a piece on effective accelerationism, or e/acc.| Monomythical
I'm just coming out of the black hole of this summer, which was very writing- and research-intensive, between participating in the Summer of Protocols program, some private research work, and a couple of other projects that I hope to be able to share with you soon.| Monomythical
I was bummed when I read GitHub’s February announcement that it would permanently close its San Francisco headquarters.| Monomythical
If you’ve paid attention to the news in the last decade, you’ve probably noticed a negative turn in sentiment towards the tech industry, sometimes called the tech “backlash.”| Monomythical
I was recently asked to explain what it means when people say that, for example, “There are only [10-200] people in the world who can do what [highly-paid AI researcher] does.” Why can’t more people be trained to do these jobs?| Monomythical
A fun fact about startups, if you've never worked for one, is that employees don't typically get equity in the company.| Monomythical
The geopolitical concept of hegemony is implicitly a game of keep-away: a smattering of nation states who've divided their mountains and oceans among themselves, battling for dominance in a constrained landscape.| Monomythical
Once upon a time, I thought I wanted to work in climate.| Monomythical
Fertility rates are declining in developed countries, dipping below replacement rates.| Monomythical
In my last post, I wrote that "effective altruism, despite its popularity, cannot singlehandedly meet the civil purpose of philanthropy.” I thought I was being coy, but a bunch of people have asked me what this meant, so I will be less coy and explain why I think effective altruism has limited impact.| Monomythical
In the last two years, there’s been several billion dollars’ worth of new initiatives that aim to improve how science is done.| nayafia.substack.com
I've published a book about online communities, told through the story of open source developers. It's called Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, now available for pre-order on Amazon.| nayafia.substack.com
POV: You're a guest at a house party filled with Nadias| nayafia.substack.com
It's easier than ever to share ideas.| nayafia.substack.com
When researchers were trying to understand the effects of LSD in the early 1960s, a team in Toronto strapped and blindfolded their subjects in sterile rooms before administering a dose and walking away.| nayafia.substack.com
Kevin Kwok has a schtick about how friend groups underinvest in themselves. A group of people with high mutual trust, shared interests, and low coordination costs have already solved for many of the issues that otherwise prevent humans from accomplishing great things.| nayafia.substack.com
I wrote about the crash of our social markets at the start of the pandemic. While much has been made of the recovery of our financial markets, considerably less public discourse has been allocated to discussing a recovery plan for knowledge.| nayafia.substack.com
