The Pattern Where Populist Leaders Rise To Power And Take Advantage Of The Populace

October 23, 2025

There's a pattern that has repeated many times throughout history, which leads to countries suffering under terrible leadership. It's important to understand this pattern because it's likely to continue to repeat. Here are the steps of how this happens, as I see it, though not every one of these steps occurs in every single case: (1) Many people feel dissatisfied with the state of their society and its impact on their lives, and blame the groups that have long remained in power. (Sometime...

Understand how other people think: a theory of worldviews

June 29, 2022

This piece was coauthored with Amber Dawn Ace. A libertarian, a socialist, an environmentalist, and a pro-development YIMBY watch an apartment complex being built. The libertarian is pleased - ‘the hand of the market at work!’ - whereas the socialist worries that the building is a harbinger of gentrification; the YIMBY sees progress, but the environmentalist is concerned about the building’s carbon footprint. They’re all seeing the same thing, but they understand it differently because they ...

Time(line) of your Life!

September 30, 2017

An exercise I've found to be useful is creating a timeline of my life (I've embedded the link to the template I use below). I organized the data using a spreadsheet, with one row for each month that I've been alive. I created columns to indicate when I reached major life milestones, experienced major losses, began important relationships, finished books that had a big impact on me, etc. I update it a few times per year and try to include the best and worst things that have ever happened to ...