Altruism, at a large scale, often hinges on a chain of assumptions/requirements, such as:

A & B & C & D & E

One broken link in the chain means it looks like you’re doing good but you’re not really doing it.

For example, to help the world by delivering medicine, the chain might look like this:

The medicine reliably cures the disease

& the side effects are not worse than being ill

& many people are ill with the disease in that area

& you can deliver the medication to them cheaply

& they take the medicine

& they don’t already have access to an effective medication

A deep causal understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve, and a frequent refocusing on the value you’re trying to produce (not getting lost in intermediate goals), is really important when it comes to actually producing a broad positive impact.

This piece was first written on September 11, 2020, and first appeared on my website on June 24, 2026.

Here are five uncommon but highly effective learning techniques:

1. Intuition Flooding

To understand something well on a gut level, spend hours looking closely at a huge number of examples, until your intuition forms a predictive model.

I do this fairly often but don’t think I’ve heard it discussed!

Example: Look carefully at 100 user interfaces.

2. Expert Observation

Ask an expert if you can watch them apply a skill. Ask them to verbalize each choice they make (and why they made it) as they go. Ask them to slow down when they do a step so fast you can’t understand it.

Example: Observe a chess master play an A.I. in chess.

3. Immersive Reading

Get both the eReader (or web/print) version of a book AND the audio version. Listen to the audio book as you read. Gradually increase your speed. This can increase your flow state and enable you to read faster than ever!

Technique from @EmersonSpartz

4. Tweet the Core

After learning something important/having an idea, try to turn it into a tweet capturing the most important part. This will oversimplify, but forces you to think about what the core truly is, and adds value for others.

Example: Explaining hindsight bias in 280 characters.

5. Diagram Learning

As you start to understand an idea, attempt to draw a picture representing it. E.g., make an oval for each sub-concept, connect them with lines based on relationships (e.g., an arrow means “causes”, a line means “correlated”, etc.).

Example: Draw a diagram of your understanding of Karl Marx’s theory of society. (Incidentally, we just launched a site called Society Explained where you can explore diagrams of more than 100 thinker’s theories).

This piece was first written on September 6, 2020, and first appeared on my website on June 25, 2026.