Roland-Allen.com
Home of the author of THE NOTEBOOK: A HISTORY OF THINKING ON PAPER, available now
Early Tools for Thought, Mark Bernstein @ Tools For Thought Rocks
Lessons Answer.AI can learn from history’s greatest R&D labs
Today’s piece was put together with the help of several conversations with Answer.AI co-founder Jeremy Howard.
Tools for Thought as Cultural Practices, not Computational Objects
On seeing tools for thought through a historical and anthropological lens
Refine
I recently tried refine, an AI tool for refining academic articles, developed by Yann Calvó López and Ben Golub.
On thinking machines
While Chiron Codex is about the application of LLMs and AI-augmented tools, we also need to understand their meaning to us, each other, and society. I have three topics: intelligence,...
Don't Take the Black Pill - Andrew Kelley | SSW 2026
A taxonomy for next-generation reasoning models
Where we've been and where we're going with RLVR.
elvis on Twitter / X
arXiv Papers → LLM ArtifactsThis is how I keep up with AI research now.It's like having access to the most personalized arXiv feed.Automations run everyday to curate papers based a set of rules and insights.Curated papers are indexed and power the artifacts.Agent… pic.twitter.com/5UCxF8ZsT0— elvis (@omarsar0) May 6, 2026
Re-Engineering Wimsatt for Limited Beings
Science is the best way to produce facts about reality. The best, at least, that limited human beings have devised so far. Yet, not even scientists quite seem to understand how scientific knowledge is generated. This is not only a philosophical but also a practical problem, as our misunderstandings affect the quality of our research and limit the directions it can take. In light of this, it may be good if we reflected a bit more on how we do science — to become better researchers through philosophy. Here, I provide an accessible introduction to a philosophical approach that achieves precisely this: William Wimsatt’s multi-perspectival realism. It disabuses us of widespread but misleading myths and idealizations about science, such as the idea that everything in the world can be reduced to a fundamental level, or that we can approach a “view from nowhere” — complete and objectively detached knowledge of the world. Wismatt proposes an alternative view based on his thorough studies of actual research practice. It cuts deeply into the layered yet messy structure of reality, and the improvised but potent tools we have available, as limited and evolved beings, to explore it. Wimsatt reframes science as an irregular yet adaptive process rather than a cumulative repository of unalterable facts. His philosophy provides a workable and grounded middle way between radical skepticism and naïve belief in the objective truth of science. It explains how knowledge is conceptually constructed by humans, but still connects us to reality in a trustworthy way. We need such a new view of science, not only to improve our research practices and outcomes but, more generally, to gain a more realistic understanding of ourselves, the world, and our place and role within it.
elvis on Twitter / X
Building a personal knowledge base for my agents is increasingly where I spend my time these days. Like @karpathy, I also use Obsidian for my MD vaults. What's different in my approach is that I curate research papers on a daily basis and have actually tuned a Skill for… https://t.co/4AQSFOv4PV pic.twitter.com/YI5cWUhqT3— elvis (@omarsar0) April 2, 2026
Thinking with Sand: A Talk Series Exploring New Software Tools for Creative Exploration and Augmented Thinking At the MIT Media Lab
Convivial Computing
In 1973, Ivan Illich published Tools for Conviviality, a book about man's relation to tools 1. Illich pleaded for a pluralism of responsibly limited tools that guarantee an individual’s right to work with independent efficiency, the development of which is "as unpredictable, creative and lively as the people who use them" (Illich, 1973) 2. He pointed to overgrowth and overproduction threatening the right to a liveable environment, which unfortunately led him to ideas on gender and population control that are highly problematic 3. His ideas are included in the Catalog because of their influence on other practices, that picked up on his ideas about limited tools and turned a blind eye to the less appealing parts of his writing.
Intrigued by @semble.so as a potential research tool for creatives as well as encouraging deeper thinking, making connections between ideas. For me, I can see using it alongside @obsidian.md (which I use similarly, but for my private use). Also love how responsive the developers are to questions.
