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Jason Cheong-Kee-You edited this page Jul 4, 2026 · 1492 revisions

History

Sapiens
Humanity invents gods, nations, money, and corporations — then believes in them so hard they become real. Colonialism, religion, finance: all shared hallucinations that scaled.

Zealot
Jesus: radical Jewish preacher in an occupied land. Christianity: the strange machine built afterward.

Origin Story
The universe likes complexity. Atoms become molecules, molecules become life, life becomes minds, and minds invent stock markets.

Philosophy

Tao Te Ching
Stop thrashing. Stop judging. Stop grasping. Harmony shows up when the ego shuts up.

Meditations
Audit your habits like a ruthless accountant.
Align behavior with values.
Freedom = escape from stupidity and emotional chaos.

Finite and Infinite Games
Power itself isn’t evil. The expression of power is where the trouble begins.

A Guide to the Good Life
Stoicism: emotional shock absorbers for reality.

The Stoic Challenge
Every disaster is a test from imaginary Stoic gods.
Not: “stay calm despite pain.”
Instead: “experience pain without suffering.”

The Socratic Method
A toolkit for dismantling your own bullshit thinking.

How to Be Perfect
Three big moral engines:

  • Virtue ethics
  • Deontology
  • Utilitarianism

Virtue grows through practice.
Every virtue has two cliffs: excess and deficiency.
Stay flexible. Curiosity is a moral discipline.

How to Survive the Modern World
A manual for staying sane inside systems nobody designed for humans.

Biography

Benjamin Franklin
A walking self-improvement experiment.

His virtues read like a productivity app:

  1. Temperance
  2. Silence
  3. Order

Eat lightly. Speak carefully. Put your damn things away.

The Story of a Soul
Radical interior spirituality.

The Story of My Life
Helen Keller breaks every assumption about human limits.

Man's Search for Meaning
In a concentration camp, imagination becomes survival.
Love becomes a psychological shelter.

Pimp
Iceberg Slim documenting the machinery of exploitation.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman
Scientific curiosity as recreational chaos.

Moneyball
Data humiliates tradition.

The Year of Magical Thinking
Grief bends reality.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Running as psychological detox.
Pain is mandatory. Suffering optional.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
Consistency beats passion. Passion makes people irrational.

Hillbilly Elegy
Culture traps people as effectively as economics.

Can't Hurt Me
Suffering builds psychological calluses.

Educated
Escaping intellectual isolation.

Between Two Kingdoms
Illness as identity earthquake.

The Message
The strange power of storytelling.

Culture

The Selfish Capitalist
Wealth explodes upward. Anxiety spreads everywhere else.

Pound Foolish
“Personal finance” is an industry selling anxiety management.

Drug Dealer, MD
Modern culture pathologizes pain and difference.

Democracy Needs Religion
Societies need shared moral scaffolding.

The Trading Game
Markets as competitive theater.

The Certainty Illusion
Fake science. Fake certainty. Fake reviews. Fake authority.

The Coddling of the American Mind
Three catastrophic lies:

  1. What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker
  2. Always trust your feelings
  3. The world is good people vs evil people

Also: kids need less screens and more unsupervised woods.

Attention

The Shallows
The internet dissolves deep thinking.

Irresistible
Addiction hijacks ancient reward circuits meant for survival.

Stolen Focus
Attention collapse caused by:

  • information overload
  • surveillance capitalism
  • constant digital stimulation

Possible fixes:

  • charge for social media
  • four-day work week
  • right to disconnect

The Anxious Generation
Rules for childhood survival:

  • No smartphones before high school
  • No social media before 16
  • Phone-free schools
  • Wild childhoods

Math

Arithmetic
The human species invents numbers and begins measuring the universe.

Design

A Pattern Language
Good architecture balances invisible design forces until spaces feel alive.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Envisioning Information
Visual Explanations
Data deserves elegance.

Beautiful Evidence
PowerPoint is a crime against thought.

Building the Cycling City
Design rule:

  1. Pedestrians first
  2. Cyclists second
  3. Drivers last

The Design of Everyday Things
Great design aligns the user’s mental model with the designer’s.

Don't Make Me Think
Usability is mercy.

Health

Sleep

Why We Sleep
Sleep like your life depends on it.
Because it does.

Rules:

  • 7 hours minimum
  • dim lights
  • no screens in bedroom
  • lights out at 10

Sleep debt is permanent damage.

Nature never evolved a defense against sleep deprivation.

Food

The China Study
Plants: good.
Animal products: less good.

In Defense of Food
Eat food.
Not too much.
Mostly plants.

How Not to Die
Whole plant foods dominate.

The Ageless Brain
Protect the brain:

  • plant-heavy diet
  • exercise
  • novelty
  • sleep
  • reading

Neurology and psychology are basically the same system.

Exercise

The Time-Saver's Workout
Simple brutal routine:

3 sets of 10
minimal rest

Machines or free weights.

Lift. Leave.

Posture

Becoming a Supple Leopard
Pain = bad movement patterns.

Deskbound
Chairs don’t save you.
Movement does.

Psychology

The Road Less Traveled
Love requires strong ego boundaries.

The Developing Mind
The brain evolved for social navigation.

Children grow in the emotional climate around them.

When the Body Says No
If you refuse boundaries, illness will enforce them.

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
Addiction often begins with childhood misattunement.

Far From the Tree
Humans can transform adversity into meaning.

The Tools
Face pain.
Love actively.
Integrate the shadow.

Positive Psychology
Character strengths:

  • wisdom
  • courage
  • love
  • justice
  • temperance
  • transcendence

The Body Keeps the Score
Trauma is not a memory problem. It’s a nervous system problem.

The brain forgets the story, but the body keeps the receipt.

Heart rate. Muscles. Hormones. Startle reflex. Nightmares. The quiet permanent hum of danger in a room that is objectively safe.

Trauma rewires the operating system.
The past keeps interrupting the present.

Healing means retraining the body:

  • safety
  • connection
  • movement
  • breath
  • attention

Not just talking about the past, but teaching the nervous system that the war is over.

Self-Deception

Sperm Wars
Evolution designed humans for opportunistic reproduction.

The Red Queen
Sexual selection drives intelligence.

Brains are peacock feathers.

The Moral Animal
Humans lie to themselves constantly.

The Handicap Principle
Wasteful behavior signals status.

The Robot's Rebellion
Reason exists to resist manipulation by genes and memes.

The Scout Mindset
Accuracy over ego.

Meaning

Stumbling on Happiness
Humans are terrible at predicting what will make them happy.

The Happiness Hypothesis
Adversity builds meaning — but only at the right time in life.

Relationships

Give and Take
Happy givers:

  • generous
  • but ruthless about cutting off takers

Stop the Fight
Rules for conflict:

  • “I” statements
  • no judgment
  • assume good intent
  • pause when flooded

Productivity

Digital Minimalism
Renunciation can create freedom.

But only if you know what you’re optimizing for.

Dopamine Nation
Pleasure addiction leads to numbness.

Four Thousand Weeks
Productivity is often a distraction from mortality.

Slow Productivity
Do fewer things.
Work slowly.
Obsess over quality.

Organization

Getting Things Done
Your brain is terrible at storing tasks.

Tidying Up
Minimalism with emotional honesty.

Bullet Journal
Short lists. Concrete language. Track habits.

Reading

How to Read a Book
Active reading beats passive reading.

The Pleasures of Reading
Read what you like.
Reread great books.
Ignore literary snobs.

Habits

Miracle Morning
Measure yourself.

Better Than Before
Know your tendencies.

Atomic Habits
Identity and behavior reinforce each other.

Self-Help

Affluenza
Replace status motives with intrinsic ones.

12 Rules for Life
Carry as much responsibility as you can.

From Strength to Strength
Trade youthful intelligence for wisdom.

Let Them
Let people behave as they will.
Focus on your response.

Critical Thinking

Good Strategy / Bad Strategy
Strategy requires:

  1. diagnosis
  2. guiding policy
  3. coherent action

Communication

Language is slippery.

Writing should be:

  • clear
  • direct
  • concrete

Speaking should be:

  • human
  • narrative
  • emotionally resonant

Business

Build teams that can fight constructively.

Use rapid feedback loops.

Prefer simplicity over complexity.

Respect attention as a scarce resource.

Parenting

Kids need:

  • dirt
  • books
  • freedom
  • emotional attunement

Hold them when small.
Let them roam when bigger.

Validate feelings.
Maintain boundaries.

Repair after mistakes.

Literature

Fantasy

Science Fiction

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