The Index
By @jvnixon
A collection of essays, notes, and resources on thinking, learning, and problem-solving.
Originally published at jeremynixon.github.io.
Start here: schema for how this wiki is organized.
Compiled Knowledge (wiki/)
Synthesized topic pages — the best entry points for each major area:
| Topic | What's Inside |
|---|---|
| wiki/machine-intelligence | AI/ML research landscape, breakthroughs, safety, representation learning, lab overviews |
| wiki/thinking-frameworks | Mental models, meta-cognition, contrarian thinking, rationality, decomposition, worldview building |
| wiki/learning-and-education | Meta-learning, autodidact methods, reading strategies, domain-specific learning, book notes |
| wiki/creativity-and-ideas | Systematizing creativity, idea generation, concept creation, writing, humor |
| wiki/focus-and-productivity | Attention, deep work, execution, habits, motivation, systems, health |
| wiki/career-and-ambition | Career strategy, startup ideas, reputation, wealth, communities, tech trends |
| wiki/human-nature | Language patterns, transcendence, consciousness, social dynamics, relationships, ethics |
Raw Entries by Category
Abstraction
Attention / Focus
Belief Systems
Books
- Patrick Collision's Bookshelf
- Book List
- Topos Library
- Books to Consider Buying
- Reading Lists
- Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- Great Reads
- Books I Like that I Expect <1% Of My Friends Have Heard Of
- Relentless
- Notes Elements of Statistical Learning
- Bret Victor's Library
- Patterns of Conflict
- Santa Fe Institute Library
- Jeremy Nixon's Bookshelf
- Applied Predictive Modeling
- Notes Deep Learning Textbook
- Notes Strang
- Notes The Selfish Gene
- Andreeson Horowitz Library
- Notes Meanings of Life
Canonical Success
Community
Complex Systems
Creativity
Decision Making
- Compressing Decision Making
- Winning Decisions
- Meta-Decisions
- Principles of Decision Making
- Decision Making Literature
- Decisive
Education
Execution
Games
Greatness
Habits
Heroes
Ideas
Introspection
Language Patterns
Learning
Lifestyle Design
Machine Intelligence
- Bias Variance vs. Variance, Bias Variance vs. Sensitivity-Specificity
- Metalearning the Structure of Information
- Deepmind's Path to Neuro-Inspired General Intelligence
- High-Level Machine Intelligence Reading Group
- Abstract Representation Learning
- Google Brain Research Overview
- Criticisms of Machine Learning / Deep Learning
- Generative / Causal / Hierarchical Model-Based Reinforcement Learning
- Against Embodiment, Intuitive Physics & Neuroinspiration
- Deepmind Research Overview
- Machine Intelligence Research Frontier
- Future of Machine Intelligence
- Issues in ML Research
- Relative Safety of Forms of Machine Intelligence
- Deep Learning Frameworks
- Interesting Facts in Machine Learning
- Open AI Research Breakdown
- Multi-Agent
- Recursive Self-Improvement, Task Search, AI-GAs, Powerplay [Beneficial AGI]
- NeuroInspiration / Deep RL
- Multi-Agent Conversation Notes
- Facebook AI Research Overview
- Relative Safety of Paths to General Intelligence
Media
Memes
Meta-Science
Narratives
Organizing Research
- Research Experiments, Processes and Systematization
- Miming Great Scientists
- Ideas Worth Implementing as Research Org
- Publishing Decomposition / Recombination
- Properties of Research Orgs
- Open Research
Policy
Posts
Power
Productivity
- Productivity Systems
- My Life
- Experiments List
- Meta-Commitments
- Silicon Valley Job Skilling & Acquisition Guide
- Motivation Idea Space
- LifeScore
Questions
Rationality
Relentlessness
Social
Specialness
Status
Superforecasting
Technical
- High Level Understanding Mathematics
- High Level Understanding CS
- High Level Understanding Physics
- Comprehensive Technical Machine Learning Topics
- Murphy
- Systematized Predictive Modeling
- Textbook
- OpenAI Research Overview
- Google Brain Research Overview
- Demis Hassabis Resources Aggregate
- Limitations of Mathematics
- Fields
- Mind of Demis Hassabis
- On Knowing Everything
Technology
Thinkers
Thinking / Modeling
- Models Worth Creating
- Distinctions in Conceptual Style
- Algorithmic Thinking
- Munger
- Meta-Modeling
- How to Think
- Cognitive Categorization
Thought
Tradeoffs
Visualization
Idea Lists (Upon Request)
Chronological idea lists and brainstorms — the raw exploration layer. Each links to its original Google Doc.
- 06-16-14 Hello World
- 06-17-14 Writing
- 06-19-14 Energy
- 06-21-14 Learning Programming
- 07-01-14 Website Ideas
- 07-02-14 Careers, Backward Induction
- 07-06-14 To Synthesize Reading
- 15-02-19 Experiments I should be doing
- 15-03-19 Ideas for Learning ML/AI
- 15-05-07 Ideas for Learning Algorithms
- 15-07-14 Ideas for Ingraining Thinking Framework
- 15-07-16 Idea Lists (Meta)
- 15-07-17 Intellectual Habits/Lifestyle
- 15-07-21 Writing Ideas
- 15-08-05 Data Science Projects I Would Love
- 15-08-18 Technical Hyperanalytic Posts
- 15-08-25 Getting Good at Algorithms
- 16-11-23 Guaranteeing I be Meta
- 16-12-09 Learning Maths
- 17-01-27 Synthesizing Information from Worldview Building
- 17-01-29 Ideas for topics with Sebastian
- 17-02-01 Ideas for Learning Machine Learning
- 17-02-01 Ways to Discover Contrarian Truths
- 17-02-05 Machine Learning Startup Ideas
- 17-02-09 Learning How to Focus
- 17-03-23 Unusual Startup Ideas
- 17-04-08 Systematizing Creativity
- 17-07-05 Ways to Increase Action Bias
- 17-07-07 Ways to Explain Machine Learning Algorithms
- 17-07-21 Meta-Modeling
- 17-07-25 Reputation Building
- 17-07-26 Contrarian Ideas I Have
- 17-07-26 Running Model-Technique
- 17-07-26 Things to do once a billionaire
- 17-07-27 Alignment & Control Solutions
- 17-07-28 How to Be Like Me
- 17-07-30 Expanding Attention Span
- 17-07-31 System 1 Breakdown
- 17-08-01 Examples of Structure
- 17-08-02 How to Silence the Chatter
- 17-08-04 What I would do if I didn't care about reputation
- 17-08-05 Social at ICML
- 17-08-07 Deep Problems with Machine Learning
- 17-08-08 Juicy sides to mathematics and programming
- 17-08-09 Breakthroughs leading to machine intelligence
- 17-08-10 Machine Intelligence Contrarian
- 17-08-11 Hierarchical Structure
- 17-08-14 New Types of Structure in Information
- 17-08-18 Continuing Worldview Building
- 17-08-19 Fighting back against HN
- 17-08-20 Communities to Create
- 17-08-21 Desedirata for Deep Learning Libraries
- 17-08-24 Ways to Induce Anger
- 17-08-25 Ways to Induce Action Bias in a Community
- 17-08-27 Contrarian Truths about Machine Learning (Linear Regression)
- 17-08-27 Interesting Facts in Machine Learning (Linear Regression)
- 17-08-28 Interesting Facts in Machine Learning (Logistic Regression)
- 17-08-29 Interesting Facts in Machine Learning (Decision Trees)
- 17-08-30 Deep Learning Library Ideas
- 17-08-31 Machine Learning Projects
- 17-09-02 Interesting Facts about Neural Networks
- 17-09-06 Types of Relational Structure
- 17-09-09 The Selfish Gene on Memetics
- 17-09-11 Components of Voice
- 17-09-11 Experiment Ideas
- 17-09-13 Interesting Icebreakers
- 17-09-14 Principles of Structure
- 17-09-17 Books to Write
- 17-09-17 Longevity Interventions
- 17-09-20 Persuasive Framing of FoMI
- 17-09-21 Life & Productivity Coach Ideas
- 17-09-21 Types of Temporal Structure
- 17-09-23 Common Insecurities
- 17-09-24 Upsides to Low Status
- 17-09-25 Additional Weakness
- 17-09-26 Additional Weakness Experiments
- 17-09-27 Interesting Approaches to AI Safety
- 17-09-28 Frontier Conversations
- 17-10-06 Post Religion Ideologies
- 17-10-07 Dominance Language Patterns
- 17-10-14 Interesting Facts in Machine Learning (Neural Networks)
- 17-10-16 Accomplishing Arbitrary Deadlines
- 17-10-17 Interesting Facts in Memetics
- 17-10-21 Ordered List of Breakthroughs for Machine Intelligence
- 17-10-26 Representation Learning Research Ideas
- 17-10-30 NIPS Creativity and Interpretable Representation Ideas
- 17-11-03 Differentiating Factors Between Brain and MSR
- 17-11-04 What to do with a billion dollars
- 17-11-06 Options Given a Break
- 17-11-06 Thoughts On Pinker
- 17-11-11 Potential Language Patterns
- 17-11-23 How to Control System 1
- 17-11-30 Envision Ideas To Make Happen
- 17-12-10 Operationalizing Systematizing Creativity
- 17-12-24 Questions Whose Answers Would Tweak my Goals
- 17-12-27 Map / Territory Confusions
- 18-01-02 Validation Seeking Language Patterns
- 18-01-02 Ways to Become a Billionaire
- 18-01-04 Building a Work Ethic
- 18-01-06 Future Changes in Morality
- 18-01-08 Glimpses of Reality
- 18-01-08 How to Clarify Thoughts
- 18-01-09 Fundamental Human Narratives
- 18-01-12 Counter Utilitarian Intuitions
- 18-01-13 Grigory's Compiled Creativity, Shannon
- 18-01-13 Strengths
- 18-01-16 How to Talk About Abstraction
- 18-01-22 Conversational Mental Motions
- 18-01-23 Emotion & RL
- 18-01-23 Religious Language Patterns
- 18-01-24 ML Contrarian Truths Worth Testing
- 18-01-25 Valuable Properties of Representations
- 18-01-28 What People Want, as a Function of Personality
- 18-02-04 Destroying the Ego
- 18-02-11 Workshopping Creativity
- 18-02-18 How to Become Obsessed
- 18-02-28 Implementing the Structure of Information
- 18-03-05 Metalearning Research Ideas
- 18-04-08 Wisdom Language Patterns
- 18-06-02 Grand Scientific Projects
- 18-06-07 Powerful Rituals (Ritual Design)
- 18-06-19 Vulnerability Language Patterns
- 18-06-24 Compassion Language Patterns
- 18-06-25 Admiration Language Patterns
- 18-06-25 Empathy Language Patterns
- 18-06-25 Kindness Language Patterns
- 18-06-25 Love Language Patterns
- 18-06-27 Words of Power
- 18-06-29 Honesty
- 18-06-29 Joy Language Patterns
- 18-06-29 Openness Language Patterns
- 18-07-03 x without x
- 18-07-05 Systematizing Humor
- 18-07-15 Agency Language Patterns
- 18-08-03 Generators of Great Questions
- 18-08-03 How to use my time more effectively
- 18-08-10 Ideas that most changed my decisions
- 18-08-12 Sharable Bucket List
- 18-08-15 Most Valuable Research Events
- 18-08-16 Implementations of Concepts in Representation Learning
- 18-08-21 Independent, First Principles Thinking
- 18-08-22 Types of Truth You Can't Handle
- 18-08-26 Deconstruction
- 18-08-27 New Concrete Representation Learning Ideas
- 18-08-29 Meta-concepts
- 18-08-31 Thoughts on Valuable Research Events
- 18-09-05 Sources of Contrarian Truth
- 18-09-05 Sources of Value
- 18-09-10 Counterfactuals Fact List
- 18-09-10 Words to Create (Creating Concepts)
- 18-09-15 Renaming Generalization
- 18-09-18 Rare Concepts I Think With Daily
- 18-09-19 High Value Communities
- 18-09-19 What is 'Real'?
- 18-09-22 Anti-Trends (Technologies that need to be trending but aren't)
- 18-09-22 Efficient Social Search
- 18-09-29 My Favorite Books
- 18-10-12 How to Overcome Approach / Conversation Anxiety at Brain
- 18-10-15 Funding Transcendent Enlightenment / Startup Ideas
- 18-10-22 Gradient Variance
- 18-10-29 Strengths
- 18-11-02 Transcendent Self Awareness
- 18-11-02 Types of Transcendence
- 18-11-05 People Who Know Me Best in the World
- 18-11-06 Common Mistakes in Thinking (Why it's hard to think)
- 18-11-06 Decomposing Intelligence
- 18-11-10 Properties of Relationship
- 18-11-10 Unmodelability, Mechanisms of Chaos
- 18-11-13 Powerful Concepts in Machine Learning
- 18-11-20 How to Handle the Truth
- 18-11-27 Consciousness Decomposition
- 18-11-28 Most General Concepts
- 18-11-28 The Big Questions
- 18-12-13 What is Precision?
- 18-12-17 Fields by Transferability
- 18-12-19 Fields to Create
- 18-12-22 Modes of Thought
- 18-12-28 My MI Contrarian Truths
- 18-12-29 Types of Transcendence applied to Research Labs
- 18-12-30 Extremely Useful Tools & Heuristics
- 18-12-31 Generators of Meaning
- 19-01-01 Maximizing Relationship Longevity
- 19-01-16 Places to Intervene in a System
- 19-01-18 Learning Judgment
- 19-01-20 Generating Generators
- 19-01-27 Modes of Thinking worth Internalizing
- 19-01-29 Games Decomposition
- 19-01-29 Machine Learning Interview Recombination
- 19-01-30 Different Definitions of Rationality in Use
- 19-01-30 Measuring Network Similarity
- 19-01-31 Humor Decomposition
- 19-02-01 Book Dissection
- 19-02-01 Conceptual Decomposition
- 19-02-02 Quality Examples of Newly Created Concepts
- 19-02-02 Things I Should Read Daily
- 19-02-03 How to make ideas or concepts generative
- 19-02-04 How to be way ahead of your time
- 19-02-11 Physical Connection
- 19-02-23 Counterarguments to the Learning Paradigm
- 19-02-24 Calibration (Conceptual Decomposition)
- 19-03-17 Paradigms in Machine Intelligence worth Questioning
- 19-03-25 Love Validating Questions
- 19-04-07 New Paradigms in Safety
- 19-04-08 Ideas Which Dramatically Shift Your Decision Making
- 19-04-21 Technical Worldview Breaking
- 19-04-22 Social Movements
- 19-05-01 Research Failure Stories
- 19-05-02 Recent Breakthroughs in Deep Learning
- 19-05-04 Posts / Essays / Articles to Write
- 19-05-15 Properties of Self-Reference
- 19-05-20 21st Century Major Scientific Breakthroughs
- 19-05-20 Projects Worth Doing
- 19-05-27 Examples of Transcendence
- 19-05-27 Relative Safety of Forms of General Intelligence
- 19-06-05 Research Ideas in Robustness + Alignment + Security + Long Term Safety
- 19-06-06 10 Systems Worth Having
- 19-06-11 Elements of Great Storytelling
- 19-06-11 Forms of Reappraisal
- 19-06-13 Transcendent Self-Awareness
- 19-06-15 Obviously Correct Diet Interventions
- 19-06-18 How to Become Deep
- 19-06-18 Ways to Read My Whole Library
- 19-06-20 Forms of Recursive Self Improvement
- 19-06-23 Truly Disgusting Concepts
- 19-06-24 Ways to Induce Hypomania
- 19-06-25 Kinds of Introduction
- 19-07-02 Ordered List of Great Interventions
- 19-07-14 Valuable Unexplored Communities
- 19-08-02 Landmark Language Patterns
- 19-09-14 Traps to Avoid
- 19-09-20 Ranking of Companies by Religiosity
- 19-10-05 Ways to Engage with a Presentation
- 19-10-07 Culture Tells
- 19-10-07 Language Re-Representation
- 19-10-07 Mathematical Creativity
- 19-10-07 Novel Feedback-Loop Based Machine Learning Algorithms
- 19-10-12 Ways to Improve Focus
- 19-10-24 Emotional Space
- 19-11-08 Optimization Algorithms
- 19-12-26 Worlds I know little about
- 19-12-31 Meta-X
- 20-01-01 Trans-X
- 20-01-06 Accountability Schemes
- 20-01-06 Becoming Autocatalytic
- 20-01-07 Overcoming Anxiety
- 20-01-09 Amazing Nature (Ritual Worthy)
- 20-01-09 Writing Down Culture
- 20-01-11 My Needs
- 20-01-22 Productive and Practical Research Ideas
- 20-01-29 Computational Neuroscience Theories
- 20-02-08 Innovations in Research Organization
- 20-02-10 Favorite Complement Categories
- 20-02-21 My Lifestyle Creep
- 20-02-21 Transhumanist Adjacent Communities
- 20-02-29 Deep Truths
- 20-03-09 Potential Life Updates
- 20-03-10 Questions to ask regularly / Life Reframes
- 20-04-12 Knowing Someone
- 20-04-12 Ways in which people tend to be asleep
- 20-04-30 Effectively Running Seminars
- 20-05-12 Novel Methodology
- 20-06-29 Ethics Topics
- 20-07-01 Symptoms and Drivers of Civilizational Decline
- 20-07-02 Common changes in Agency
- 20-07-05 Brain Healthy Foods Jeremy Doesn't Hate
- 20-07-10 Depth in Research
- 20-07-13 Deep Ideas in Class Discovery
- 20-07-19 Learning Tools
- 20-07-20 Reward System Options
- 20-07-28 Worthy Problems