I think I’m just wired to wonder how things work, and to figure out the underlying patterns.

One thing does come to mind though. An influence for me was Elizier Yudkowsky and to a lesser extent, Robin Hanson.

I was researching something called “Radical Honesty,” and the blog they wrote called OvercomingBias.com came up. I got hooked during a period of about a year in which Eli wrote mind blowing posts every, single day. I still don’t really get how he did that. It became a sort of addiction.

They have since moved over to LessWrong.com which is a little different format, but I think it’s also valuable. I stopped reading right around that transition, not because the quality diminished, but more because after a year of reading I think I finally “got” the thought process being used, so the marginal utility of reading new posts had diminished enough to more or less stop reading.

That would encourage the readers to explore these ideas more deeply.

Similarly, which books,philosophers on social nihilism influenced you?
Ray