all posts

You should try contra dancing

misc • April 2026

Impact, agency, and taste

misc • April 2025

Advice for time management as a manager

misc • April 2025

How I’ve run major projects

essay • March 2025

Categories of leadership on technical teams

misc • July 2024

Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly

misc • July 2024

How I build and run behavioral interviews

misc • February 2024

Some mistakes I made as a new manager

misc • April 2023

Leaving Wave, joining Anthropic

misc • February 2023

Why and how to write things on the Internet

misc • December 2022

Staring into the abyss as a core life skill

essay • December 2022

Be less scared of overconfidence

misc • November 2022

10x (engineer, context) pairs

tech • June 2022

Searching for outliers

essay • March 2022

What I’ve been doing instead of writing

misc • September 2021

My favorite essays of life advice

misc • December 2020

To listen well, get curious

essay • December 2020

In defense of blub studies

essay • December 2020

How to make video calls almost as good as face-to-face

misc • September 2020

Tools for keeping focused

misc • August 2020

Attention is your scarcest resource

essay • July 2020

Be impatient

misc • July 2020

Essays on programming I think about a lot

tech • July 2020

What should we do about network-effect monopolies?

misc • July 2020

My weekly review habit

misc • June 2020

DIY server-only analytics with almost no code

tech • June 2020

Wireless is a trap

misc • June 2020

No one can teach you to have conviction

essay • May 2020

College advice for people who are exactly like me

misc • April 2020

Stop your video calls from stuttering

misc • April 2020

Massachusetts should shut down immediately

misc • March 2020

Boston should begin aggressive coronavirus mitigation

misc • March 2020

You don’t need to work on hard problems

essay • February 2020

The unreasonable effectiveness of one-on-ones

misc • December 2019

Grad school is worse for public health than STDs

misc • December 2019

Your room can be as bright as the outdoors

essay • November 2019

Why and how to start a startup serving emerging markets

essay • November 2019

Why Nations Fail and the long-termist view of global poverty

altruism • July 2019

A checklist for stock option offers

tech • February 2019

Why are gradual static types so great?

tech • February 2019

The best RSS reader is Kindle4RSS

misc • January 2019

My 2018 donations

altruism • January 2019

Zero-effort habits

misc • October 2018

Small company or big company?

misc • October 2018

Think real hard

misc • September 2018

Syntax highlighting is backwards

tech • June 2018

The real problem isn’t privacy, it’s our dystopian hellscape of Skinner boxes

misc • June 2018

Unintended consequences and GDPR (but not the way you think)

tech • May 2018

Are venture capital markets inefficient?

tech • March 2018

Is treating a cold with zinc still evidence-backed?

misc • March 2018

What to care about in a job

misc • February 2018

Where, why and how I donated in 2017

altruism • February 2018

People seem very confused about 401(k) loans

misc • February 2018

The product

misc • October 2017

When simple econ models don’t work

misc • October 2017

How bad are bad fundraising terms?

tech • October 2017

Startup options are much better than they look

misc • June 2017

Surviving lots of travel

misc • June 2017

Stock options are really complicated

tech • March 2017

Don’t run code at import time

tech • February 2017

Reading lately

misc • January 2017

Where I’m giving and why, 2016

altruism • January 2017

[administrivia] Site migration

misc • December 2016

Don’t claw back employee options

tech • November 2016

I apparently got 50% better at my job last month

misc • October 2015

Back to benkuhn.net

scraps • September 2015

Strangers Drowning

altruism • September 2015

Autocomplete as an interface

essay • September 2015

Effective altruism and quantitative estimates

scraps • September 2015

Fixing Powerline in Emacs 24.5

scraps • September 2015

Programming tools I’ve recently tried

scraps • September 2015

Interface abusers

scraps • September 2015

Escape hatch examples

scraps • September 2015

Abstraction escape hatches

scraps • September 2015

Fun with code stats

scraps • September 2015

Why object-relational mapping makes me sad

scraps • September 2015

Some links (mostly software)

scraps • September 2015

Blog recommendations

scraps • September 2015

Technological dark matter

scraps • September 2015

Miscellaneous interesting quotes from Coders at Work

scraps • August 2015

How programmers start projects

scraps • August 2015

Coders at Work on finding and preventing bugs

scraps • August 2015

Study recommendations from Coders at Work

scraps • August 2015

Three interesting refrains of Coders at Work

scraps • August 2015

Bleg: programmers, what tools and practices have improved your work the most?

scraps • July 2015

The Slippery Utilitarian

scraps • July 2015

Late employee equity

scraps • July 2015

[Review] Coming Apart, by Charles Murray

scraps • July 2015

[Link] Scott Aaronson sums up my thoughts on environmentalism and divestment

scraps • June 2015

Review: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!

scraps • June 2015

Learning J

scraps • June 2015

Two interesting GiveWell updates

scraps • June 2015

Links #2

scraps • June 2015

More on civilizational inadequacy

scraps • June 2015

Against civilizational inadequacy

scraps • June 2015

Status update

scraps • June 2015

Why do linear models work?

scraps • June 2015

How do bubbles work?

scraps • June 2015

Where I’m giving: Effective Altruism Policy Analytics

scraps • June 2015

[Link] Criticism of the Gates Foundation

scraps • June 2015

Effective altruism and growth

scraps • June 2015

[Link] 50 breakthroughs needed for sustainable global development

scraps • June 2015

Frugality for EA-influenced spending patterns

scraps • June 2015

Things that screw up your causal inference

scraps • June 2015

Don’t just debias

scraps • May 2015

Absence of evidence and confidence intervals

scraps • May 2015

Blogger’s block

misc • May 2015

My opponents are all biased!

scraps • May 2015

Cheap tablets as e-readers

scraps • May 2015

Links, May 25

scraps • May 2015

Fighting conversational death spirals

scraps • May 2015

Do your homework!

scraps • May 2015

Intuition for the utility of finance

scraps • May 2015

Random selection of development economics ideas

scraps • May 2015

Reading Poor Economics

scraps • May 2015

The costs of campus construction

misc • May 2015

How useful is data science?

scraps • May 2015

Hello, world

scraps • May 2015

On being welcoming

altruism • May 2015

Year-and-a-bit in review, 2014: where I’ve been

misc • May 2015

Butchering the web for fun and profit with µBlock

misc • May 2015

Links VII: baseball stars, birthday songs, and bloggers

misc • May 2015

Links VI: money, math and macro

misc • April 2015

My literature review process

misc • April 2015

Surviving an open-plan office

misc • April 2015

I just sold half of a blog post

altruism • April 2015

Readability, hackability, and abstraction

tech • April 2015

Another restaurant replacement

altruism • April 2015

Modern methods for old-school statistics

tech • April 2015

Why I left Harvard early

misc • April 2015

Effective social norms: small groups

altruism • March 2015

The volunteering paradox

altruism • March 2015

Effective social norms: don’t eat out

altruism • March 2015

Two open-source music books

misc • March 2015

Things that have taught me statistics

tech • March 2015

Links V: Art, Aristotle and American Fuzzy Lop

misc • March 2015

Probability, uncertainty, and markets

misc • March 2015

What happened to all the non-programmers?

misc • March 2015

Donation matching survey results

altruism • March 2015

Valuing intelligence

misc • February 2015

In praise of gradient boosting

tech • February 2015

Spiders and starfish

misc • February 2015

Donation matching survey

misc • February 2015

North Korean game theory

misc • February 2015

Does donation matching work?

altruism • January 2015

Links IV

misc • December 2014

Some stories about comparative advantage

altruism • December 2014

Why squared error?

essay • December 2014

PSA: consider bunching your donations

altruism • December 2014

Spitballing EA career ideas

altruism • November 2014

Decision trees for survival analysis

tech • November 2014

A useful view of decision trees

tech • November 2014

Student group Q&A #1: Activities

altruism • October 2014

Tracking function dependencies

tech • October 2014

De-noising the inbox

misc • October 2014

Links III

misc • October 2014

Student group notes #7: advertising strategies

altruism • September 2014

Student group notes #6: lessons from the philanthropy fellowship

altruism • September 2014

Student group notes #5: outside support

altruism • September 2014

Student group notes #4: navigating bureaucracy

altruism • August 2014

Student group notes #3: getting good speakers

altruism • August 2014

Student group notes #2: don’t be embarrassed

altruism • August 2014

Student group notes #1: have two people

altruism • August 2014

Advice on running an effective altruism student group

altruism • August 2014

Effective altruism reading material for busy people

altruism • August 2014

Interview with Pablo Stafforini

altruism • July 2014

My job hunt experience

tech • July 2014

Avoiding bugs in machine learning code, part 2

tech • July 2014

How many causes should you give to?

altruism • June 2014

Avoiding bugs in machine learning code

tech • June 2014

Donation bunching for tax savings

altruism • June 2014

Giving away money: a guide

altruism • June 2014

Links II: Epistemology, &c.

misc • June 2014

CFAR, one year later

misc • June 2014

Plants, continued fractions, and the golden ratio

essay • June 2014

Thoughts on outreach

altruism • May 2014

Updates

misc • May 2014

Document how you communicate

misc • April 2014

A bunch of links

misc • April 2014

Reading lately

misc • March 2014

Channel factors

misc • March 2014

Hip tech, useful tech

tech • March 2014

What I learned from working at GiveWell

altruism • February 2014

The St. Petersburg “paradox”

tech • February 2014

General Miseducation

misc • January 2014

Email etiquette

misc • January 2014

On inclusivity in Less Wrong: a response to Scott Alexander

misc • January 2014

Replaceability arguments are overblown

altruism • January 2014

Income inequality and markets

misc • January 2014

Semester review

misc • January 2014

Conversation with Alice Yu on effective environmentalism

altruism • December 2013

A critique of effective altruism

altruism • December 2013

100 things I’m grateful for

misc • November 2013

Flanderization

misc • November 2013

Open source!

tech • November 2013

Crocker’s revisited

misc • November 2013

I declare Crocker’s Rules today

misc • November 2013

OMG evil Chinese eugenics!!!

misc • November 2013

Don’t optimize multiple things at once

misc • October 2013

Ration your judgment

altruism • October 2013

It’s not utilitarian to live in a cardboard box

altruism • October 2013

Networking can be actually useful

misc • October 2013

Actually doing things

misc • October 2013

Notes: Effective Altruism or Mobilization for Institutional Reform?

altruism • October 2013

Is X unethical?

misc • October 2013

I’m in the Crimson!

altruism • October 2013

Don’t have conversations on Facebook

misc • October 2013

Useful ideas in debate

misc • October 2013

To stressed-out altruists

altruism • September 2013

A conversation with Satvik Beri

altruism • September 2013

Squashing blips

misc • September 2013

A short rant about contra dance etiquette

misc • September 2013

My current plans

altruism • September 2013

Replaceability in altruism

altruism • August 2013

Things I’ve learned recently

misc • August 2013

Effective altruists and outsiders

altruism • August 2013

Improving Facebook

tech • July 2013

How to give good gifts

misc • July 2013

CFAR workshop review

misc • July 2013

Moral arguments

misc • June 2013

Exploration and exploitation

misc • June 2013

Common objections to earning to give

altruism • June 2013

How to have a productive argument

misc • May 2013

Doing things I’m terrible at

misc • May 2013

Spending on yourself vs. charity

altruism • May 2013

The is-ought problem

misc • April 2013

Fun linear algebra solutions, part 1

tech • April 2013

Second-order vanity

misc • April 2013

Downgrading confidence in earning to give

altruism • April 2013

Dangers of being willing to argue

misc • March 2013

Things I learned from Toby Ord

altruism • March 2013

Writing to clarify thoughts

misc • March 2013

Fun linear algebra problems

tech • March 2013

Why I’m taking operating systems

tech • March 2013

Silly semantics arguments

misc • March 2013

The www prefix

tech • February 2013

Redesign

tech • February 2013