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未读/paulgraham.com/2026年3月26日

What You (Want to)* Want

Since I was about 9 I've been puzzled by the apparent contradiction between being made of matter that behaves in a predictable way, and the feeling that I could choose to do whatever I wanted. At the time I had a self-interested motive for exploring the question. At that age (like most succeeding ages) I was always in trouble with the authorities, and it seemed to me that there might possibly be some way to get out of trouble by arguing that I wasn't responsible for my actions. I gradually lost hope of that, but the puzzle remained: How do you reconcile being a machine made of matter with the feeling that you're free to choose what you do?

writing

未读/paulgraham.com/2026年3月26日

The Need to Read

In the science fiction books I read as a kid, reading had often been replaced by some more efficient way of acquiring knowledge. Mysterious "tapes" would load it into one's brain like a program being loaded into a computer.

writing

未读/paulgraham.com/2026年3月17日

How to Do Great Work

If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it.

writing

未读/paulgraham.com/2026年3月17日

Superlinear Returns

One of the most important things I didn't understand about the world when I was a child is the degree to which the returns for performance are superlinear.

writing

已读/paulgraham.com/2026年3月22日

How to Get New Ideas

(Someone fed my essays into GPT to make something that could answer questions based on them, then asked it where good ideas come from. The answer was ok, but not what I would have said. This is what I would have said.)

writing