Steps to Phaeacia

Book Review: Bad Therapy

Abigail Shrier on why the kids suck

Aug 10 • Ben Chugg

4

2

July 2026

Book review: American Pastoral

Roth as the anti-Dostoevsky

Jul 4 • Ben Chugg

5

1

June 2026

Literature as extended thought experiment

Philosophers need to grow a pair and write some novels

Jun 8 • Ben Chugg

25

9

5

February 2026

Book Review: Gravity's Rainbow

What makes a book great?

Feb 2 • Ben Chugg

6

2

January 2026

Familiarity begets interest

A pleasant byproduct of learning new things

Jan 23 • Ben Chugg

10

3

November 2025

And the Lord said to Moses, I will rain down optimization from heaven

On the false analogy between evolution and optimization

Nov 13, 2025 • Ben Chugg

8

1

1

October 2025

The hard problem of community building

Reflections on RatFest 2025

Oct 18, 2025 • Ben Chugg

9

6

September 2025

On Recht's bureaucratic theory of statistics

Engaging in the statistics wars. Does it make sense to talk about ex ante policy on its own?

Sep 18, 2025 • Ben Chugg

20

3

2

August 2025

Book review: Stoner

John Williams' 1965 classic. Or, the best book ever written.

Aug 29, 2025 • Ben Chugg

34

16

8

Two math cultures

Math as engineering vs math as discovery

Aug 25, 2025 • Ben Chugg

10

There are no Ramanujans in Abstract Expressionism

Or: What does it take to draw a rectangle really really well?

Aug 9, 2025 • Ben Chugg

4

5

July 2025

Scientific evidence vs statistical evidence

Formal scientific evidence is impossible, yet statistics makes formal claims all the time. What gives?

Jul 26, 2025 • Ben Chugg

6

1