The Curious Engineer

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Naval

nav.al

Essays / personalTech news / industrySociety / politics / economy

’05’10’15’20’25
Posts
240 from 29 Nov 2005 to 3 Jul 2026
Posting
monthly (10 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://nav.al/feed

2026 9

  1. Live in the Future
  2. The AI Industrial Revolution
  3. The Regulatory Frontier
  4. Vibe Coding Hardware
  5. Waste Tokens, Save Time
  6. Sell the Truth
  7. ‘Nothing Ever Happens’ Is Over
  8. A Return to Code
  9. A Motorcycle for the Mind

2025 17

  1. Curate People
  2. In the Arena
  3. Find the Simplest Thing That Works
  4. Good Products Are Hard to Vary
  5. Most Books Should Be Skimmed, A Few Should Be Devoured
  6. The Best Authors Respect the Reader’s Time
  7. It Is Impossible to Fool Mother Nature
  8. Blame Yourself for Everything, and Preserve Your Agency
  9. Pause, Reflect, See How Well it Did
  10. Hiring a Podcast Editor and Personal Chief of Staff
  11. You Have to Enjoy It a Lot
  12. Find Your Specific Knowledge Through Action
  13. When You Truly Work for Yourself
  14. In Most Difficult Things in Life, The Solution is Indirect
  15. If You Want to Learn, Do
  16. Life is Lived in The Arena
  17. Inspiration All the Way Down

2024 4

  1. The Deutsch Files IV
  2. The Deutsch Files III
  3. The Deutsch Files II
  4. The Deutsch Files I

2023 2

  1. David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 2
  2. David Deutsch: Knowledge Creation and The Human Race, Part 1

2022 2

  1. Vitalik: Ethereum, Part 2
  2. Vitalik: Ethereum, Part 1

2021 59

  1. The Beginning of Infinity, Part 2
  2. To a Caveman Very Few Things Are Resources
  3. Knowledge Makes the Existence of Resources Infinite
  4. Groups Never Admit Failure
  5. Making Something Social Destroys the Truth of It
  6. Free Markets Provide the Best Feedback
  7. The Poverty of Compromise
  8. Innovation Requires Decentralization and a Frontier
  9. Don’t Rely on Credibility Stamps
  10. One Einstein Is Worth A Legion Of PhD Drones
  11. Ideas Are the New Oil
  12. Aliens Would Visit for Knowledge, Not Resources
  13. Aliens Might Just Be Too Far Away
  14. If You Can’t Program It, You Haven’t Understood It
  15. The Probability of Human Existence Is Infinitesimally Small
  16. Intelligent Species Have Risen Only Once on Planet Earth
  17. Where Are the Aliens?
  18. It’s Mind Blowing That Our Minds Can’t Be Blown
  19. More Compute Power Doesn’t Produce AGI
  20. We Are Qualitatively Different From Other Species
  21. Humans Are Exceptional
  22. Genetic Evolution Was a Prelude to Memetic Evolution
  23. There Can Be No Final Theory of Gravity
  24. No Truth Can Be Justified
  25. With a Good Theory of Knowledge, You Can Decide What Else Is True
  26. The Beginning of Infinity, Part 1
  27. Rational Optimism Is the Way Out
  28. Pessimism Seems Like an Intellectually Serious Position
  29. It’s Easy to Extrapolate How Things Will Get Worse
  30. We’re All Equal in Our Infinite Ignorance
  31. It’s Rare to Have Competing, Viable, Scientific Theories
  32. Science Advances One Funeral at a Time
  33. Make Bold Guesses and Weed Out the Failures
  34. Theories Are Explanations, Not Predictions
  35. Science Is an Error-Correcting Mechanism
  36. Science Expands Our Vision of Reality
  37. We Explain the Seen in Terms of the Unseen
  38. The Multiverse
  39. Is Light a Particle or a Wave?
  40. Probability Is Subjective
  41. We Can’t Prove Most Theorems with Known Physics
  42. Every Theory Is Held Inside a Physical Substrate
  43. Is the Universe Discrete or Continuous?
  44. All Knowledge Is Conjectural
  45. The Methods of Mathematics Are Fallible
  46. There Is No Settled Mathematics
  47. There Is No End of Science
  48. Good Explanations Are Hard to Vary
  49. Good Explanations Are Acts of Creativity
  50. Humans Are Unique in Our Ability to Understand Things
  51. It’s Impossible to Predict the Growth of Knowledge
  52. People Are a Force of Nature
  53. We’re at the Beginning of an Infinity of Knowledge
  54. Happiness
  55. Read the Best 100 Books Over and Over Again
  56. Explanations That Reach the Entire Universe
  57. Nullius in Verba
  58. This Book Changed the Way I Think
  59. Science Is the Engine That Pulls Humanity Forward

2020 21

  1. The Box
  2. Matt Ridley: How Innovation Works, Part 2
  3. Matt Ridley: How Innovation Works, Part 1
  4. How to Angel Invest, Part 2
  5. Kapil Gupta: Conquering the Mind
  6. The Path to Peace Is Truth
  7. Groups Search for Consensus, Individuals Search for Truth
  8. The Closer You Are to the Truth, the More Silent You Become Inside
  9. Happiness Is Peace in Motion
  10. Finding Peace from Mind
  11. Breaking Addiction Is Socially Unacceptable
  12. The Modern Struggle Is Fighting Weaponized Addiction
  13. Work the Least for It
  14. Being Unhappy Is Extremely Inefficient
  15. If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?
  16. Desire Is a Contract You Make to Be Unhappy
  17. Happiness Is a Skill You Can Develop
  18. Happiness Is Not Science or Math
  19. Happiness Without Material Comfort Is Playing on Hard Mode
  20. Live Long Enough and You’ll Become a Philosopher
  21. Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

2019 56

  1. How to Get Rich
  2. How to Angel Invest, Part 1
  3. Externalities: Calculating the Hidden Costs of Products
  4. Net Present Value: What Future Income Is Worth Today
  5. Consumer Surplus: Getting More Than You Paid For
  6. Price Discrimination: Charge Some People More
  7. Compounding Relationships Make Life Easier
  8. Turn Short-Term Games Into Long-Term Games
  9. Schelling Point: Cooperating Without Communicating
  10. Kelly Criterion: Avoid Ruin
  11. Principal-Agent Problem: Act Like an Owner
  12. Envy Can Be Useful, or It Can Eat You Alive
  13. Being Ethical Is Long-Term Greedy
  14. We Should All Be Working for Ourselves
  15. Accountability Means Letting People Criticize You
  16. Productize Yourself
  17. There Are No Get Rich Quick Schemes
  18. A Calm Mind, a Fit Body, a House Full of Love
  19. Reject Most Advice
  20. Eventually You Will Get What You Deserve
  21. Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes
  22. Escape Competition Through Authenticity
  23. Keep Redefining What You Do
  24. Be Too Busy to ‘Do Coffee’
  25. Work As Hard As You Can
  26. Set an Aspirational Hourly Rate
  27. Judgment Is the Decisive Skill
  28. Example: From Laborer to Entrepreneur
  29. Pick a Business Model With Leverage
  30. Product Leverage is Egalitarian
  31. Product and Media are New Leverage
  32. Labor and Capital Are Old Leverage
  33. Take Accountability to Earn Equity
  34. Embrace Accountability to Get Leverage
  35. There’s No Actual Skill Called “Business”
  36. The Foundations Are Math and Logic
  37. Read What You Love Until You Love to Read
  38. Learn to Sell, Learn to Build
  39. Specific Knowledge Is Highly Creative or Technical
  40. Arm Yourself With Specific Knowledge
  41. Partner With Rational Optimists
  42. Pick Partners With Intelligence, Energy and Integrity
  43. Play Long-term Games With Long-term People
  44. The Internet Has Massively Broadened Career Possibilities
  45. Give Society What It Doesn’t Know How to Get
  46. Live Below Your Means for Freedom
  47. You Won’t Get Rich Renting Out Your Time
  48. Make Luck Your Destiny
  49. Making Money Isn’t About Luck
  50. Free Markets Are Intrinsic to Humans
  51. Make Abundance for the World
  52. Seek Wealth, Not Money or Status
  53. The Need for Indifference
  54. A Founder’s Anxiety
  55. On Humility
  56. On Meditation

2018 1

  1. The truth about hard work

2016 2

  1. American Fall
  2. American Spring

2013 1

  1. A Venture SLA

2012 1

  1. Build a Team that Ships

2011 3

  1. Why You Can’t Hire
  2. Towards a Literate Nation
  3. Google should pull an Android on Facebook

2010 14

  1. There is No Angel Bubble. There are Many Angel Bubbles.
  2. The Unbundling of the Venture Capital Industry
  3. Funding Markets Develop in Reverse
  4. Privacy Violations
  5. Interview on Entrepreneurship up at GigaOm TV
  6. Why (Private) Investors are Herd Animals
  7. Who has time for meetings?
  8. Venture Hacks Meetup and Panel at SXSW
  9. Docverse and Mixer Labs exit stage right
  10. Self-Promotion
  11. The iPad is imPortant
  12. Y Combinator vs. Graduate School
  13. Why You Need to be in Silicon Valley
  14. Live Appearance

2009 6

  1. How to Pick a Co-Founder (at Venture Hacks)
  2. The returns to entrepreneurship
  3. Extrapolating Computing
  4. The Foundations of Cooperation
  5. Mencken on Politics
  6. New Blog and Feed Address

2008 12

  1. Users bring you traffic
  2. Charlie Munger on Getting Ahead
  3. Warren Buffett on Effort and Value
  4. Samuel Adams on Freedom
  5. Keynes on the Currency
  6. Tumblr customer service blows me away
  7. Yahoo!’s Search Brand is Done
  8. Perpetual Stimulation Machine
  9. New year, new blog
  10. A User Model for Social Software
  11. Churchill on Persistence
  12. Life Formulas I

2007 5

  1. The Aging Entrepreneur
  2. STIRR discovers Price Discrimination
  3. Venture Hacks is Hiring – One Man Developer Army
  4. Two More Hacks
  5. Introducing: Venture Hacks

2006 12

  1. Be Chaotic Neutral
  2. Why We May Think
  3. Bill Burnham on the future of Google Base
  4. Vast.com launches Credit Card Search!
  5. Web 2.0 Meme Wars Begin
  6. Mobbin’
  7. Something Vast This Way Comes
  8. Web 2.0 + Web 2.0 = Web 3.0
  9. Craigslist is Worth More than EBay
  10. Dare Microsoft Kill Google? (updated)
  11. Job Opening at my New Company
  12. Craigslist takes on Sand Hill Road

2005 13

  1. Fix the Search Interface First
  2. Isn’t it obvious what Web 2.0 is?
  3. Yes, the bubble is back
  4. How Microsoft can Obliterate Google
  5. VC Bundling
  6. Lawyers or Insurance Salesmen?
  7. The 80-hour Myth
  8. Securitize Citizenship!
  9. Unquantifiable Risk
  10. Do Animals Laugh?
  11. Natural Beauty
  12. Hong Kong is Civilized
  13. American Culture