The selection of people who we choose to inspire us is one of life's most important choices.

Who you interact with shapes you irrevocably. What you engage with, you internalize.

In Henrik's piece on first we shape our social graphs, then it shapes us:

You see the same pattern with top performers in many domains—researchers, programmers, painters. Often they spend a great deal of thought on how to structure their milieu: whom to interact with, and what work to study and learn from. You can do this for soft values too, training yourself to be generous by surrounding yourself with generosity

Inspired by Nix's piece on "who do you admire?".

This is a living document housing the list of the people who I admire.

Here's a good limus test from Nix for curating your own source of inspiration:

do your inspirations, online and offline, make you feel more vital (do they strive in a way that feels ambitious, dynamic and meaningful?), conscious (do they evoke reflection?), free (do they expand what you think is possible?)

Inspirations

some curius people

• Jacky Zhao – his quartz project and independent researching
• Anson Yu – inspired me to be more curious and ambitious, found out about curius from her which changed my life
• Arielle Lok – her syllabus is cool
• Eric Zhang – god-tier programmer and his systems reading group
• James Quiambao – inspired me to write everyday
• Alicia Guo – her nuggets and artifacts
• Marley Xiong – fire, photons, and neuro
• Katherine Huang – things learned in college
• Jennifer Tsai – everything's beautiful
• Vincent Huang – ai researcher with stacked resume

some substack people I admire

• bookbear express – how to avoid half-heartedness, making and keeping friends, effort
• Escaping Flatland – childhoods of exceptional people, looking for alice, A blog post is a very long and complex search query...
• What Do We Do Now That We're Here? – the friendship problem & how to be online
• Experimental History – good conversations have a lot of doorknobs, why smart people aren't happier
• Griefbacon – movie night, nothing stops
• Bits of Wonder – making lots of friends, long-term close friendships, self-help, listening, how to think well and understanding things
• starting from nix – finding the right people, old friends, loving and letting go, who do you admire?
• Mind Mine – crushes are misplaced ambition, modern dating, "clicking" with people
• Life with MD – making hard decisions, committing, the love you deserve
• box. – tools for life, getting stuff done, building communities
• visa's voltaic verses – are you serious?
• sasha's newsletter – making normal conversations better, advice from smart people, what you learn dating Cate Hall
• Noahpinion – homelessness, Japan, Ireland, Singapore
• The Map is Mostly Water – agency, religion, reading, creation, intimacy
• Dynomight internet newsletter – taste, reasons to be thankful (I, II, III), interacting with humans, feelings, gratitude, hotness
• half-baked futures – trying hard, audience of one, 2022 review
• Rabbit holes – a beautiful newsletter with words and art for the soul

Some more inspirations off the top of my head as I write this. this list is very much non-exhaustive.

artists

• Claude Monet – his Garden and landscape paintings
• Katsushika Hokusai – the great wave

bloggers

• Alexey Guzey – lifehacks, questions, productivity thoughts
• The Marginalian – life-learnings, resolutions, antidote to anxiety, science of stress, hope

AI people

• Lil'Log
• Andrej Karpathy
• Andrew Ng – GOAT teacher in ML and deep learning

Programmers

• Sindre Sorhus – made many useful ios and macos apps and gave them away for free

Entrepreneurs

• Elon Musk – his vision and grit
• Steve Jobs – his presentation skills

Scientists

• Andrew Huberman – learning so much from his podcast

Designers

• Dieter Rams – Braun design

Last updated: Dec 30, 2023