I'm Thomas, and this is my digital garden 🌱 where I learn in public 👀. You have reached a journey 🚀, not a destination 🏁. Here, I plant seedlings of thoughts 💭 (atomic notes) that I consider worthy of tending 👨‍🌾. They stem from reading 📚, conversations 💬, and random shower thoughts 🛀. Some may wither 🥀, neglected and unloved 💔. Others may bloom 🌹 and further extend their tendrils 🕸️ (relational links, tags) as I fertilize them with elaboration. A few may pollinate 🐝 and serendipitously 🎲 turn into chimeras 🧬 (original, meta ideas) that are greater than the sum of their parts 🧩. I believe that connecting unrelated ideas 💡 in a reasoned and systematic way leads to emergent insights 🎆 that can be harnessed ⚡️ for better thinking ⚙️. I also believe that offloading those ideas to an exobrain 🤖 (whether analog, like a [[Zettelkasten]] 🗄️, or digital ☁️, like here) frees up the mind 🧠 to go deeper into its exploration of interrelatedness. It’s like playing chess ♟️ — I can only hold a few moves ahead in my head at a time 😶‍🌫️, but if I was able to jot them down and free up my working memory as I went, I would be able to explore the search space far deeper ♾️. I am, however, undecided on whether ideas are more like building blocks 🧱 that can be stacked together, or clay 🪨 that must be mixed and shaped — in other words, if ideas are discrete or continuous. Perhaps I will develop a view after tending this digital garden. The *stated* purpose of this website is to build a personal repository of ideas and mental models that help me better understand the world and become a better version of myself. The *revealed* purpose of this website is to apply the [[Plastic platypus learning|Feynman technique]] to self-learning: 1. pick a topic of interest, 2. teach it to myself by writing (in this case, publicly) what I have gathered about it, 3. return to the source materials when I get stuck or need to probe deeper, and 4. simplify my explanations and create original analogies. Topics on this site mostly map onto my own interests, which include decision-making, fallacies, futurology, ethics, logic, [[Riemann hypothesis|mathematics]], mental models, [[Moloch]]-fighting strategies, paradoxes, philosophy, physics, rationality, the [[Technological singularity|technological singularity]], and [[Transhumanism|transhumanism]], among others. Here's a sitemap to get you oriented: 👋 About [[me]], my [[researching|research]], my [[speaking|speaking engagements]], my [[working|work]], this [[colophon|website]], and [[about/learning|why I keep learning]]. 💡 My [[interests/index|interests]] comprised of [[resources/bookmarks/index|bookmarks]] 🔖 that I draw inspiration from, [[resources/books/index|books]] 📚 that I've read (not exhaustive!), [[notes/index|notes]] 🗒️ that I curate (the heart 💚 of my digital garden 🌱), and [[resources/papers/index|research papers]] 🔬 that I've found interesting. ✍️ My [[blog/index|blog]].