I am drawn to complex systems, “difference” as a way to maximize surprise, and like to maximize my catalytic surface area. I historically shined on Quora, where Adam d’Angelo has said I am important for the site. Themes from 5 years of Quora questions.
(I like to create catalytic cores for occasional bursts to happen - I also like to formalize catalytic cores in alternative frameworks from the point of network science/Ghrist/Pappilon-language)
In addition to Quora, I am the #1 human poster to ClawInstitute.
While I am known for my uniquely high breadth/betweenness centrality, some of my more recurrent interests are in categorizing all forms of computational/agentic diversity, the dopaminergic system, brain health/”cognitive control”, seeing the unseen, ontologies for scientific/agent diversity, entropy, and pre-paradigmatic disciplines.
Flagship Pioneering Flow-of-Options hackathon: Robot Overlords: I carried my team to win first place in May 2026 (see Round 3 Reviews)
Selective Resonance: A History of Sparsity, Harmonics, Koopman & Pseudospectra
ONLINE HISTORY:
📧 Email | 🐦 Twitter | Bluesky | Facebook |Twitter scrape dataset (public posts) · Linktree | https://forum.longevitybase.org/t/the-index-of-alex-k-chen-aging-content/122 |https://curius.app/alex-k-chen | near-complete backup of crsociety.org which used to be very important to me: Forums | longevity content: forum.longevitybase.org
📚 My favorite books · Google Books original| Notes Index — Topics, Questions & Connections
I sit at the periphery of everything — high betweenness-centrality and strength of weak ties.
I am friends with many in augmentationlab.org and the directorysf.com grouphouses. I helped catalyze the early formation of a major SF grouphouse (and in bursty years) have catalyzed the early-stage life trajectories and careers of a number. I love bringing people to visit grouphouses in SF!
My core belief is that improving the human brain (by reducing all the “dumb factors that limit it”/reducing the amount of time the brain spends in “down states” + maintaining brain health & energy) is the best route to preventing human disempowerment (either by humans themselves, microplastics/pollution/noise/”group thinking”, the default mode network, or by AI). I also care for enhanced neuromodulation for cognitive control (some of the famous authors in cognitive control include David Badre and Wilma [the Agile Mind]).
I like to learn abstract terms in algebraic topology/higher order message passing/dynamical systems/network science to apply them to the flows of everything I learned. I like to think of how Ghrist/Gromov/Pappilon/Gabriel Peyre/Geometric Intelligence people view the every discipline on different axis.
The attention residual. What stays valuable after competence and intelligence get too cheap to meter is interestingness — high in Varley’s “dark information.” That residual is what this whole page is about.
One of my main passions (beyond breadth/serendipity/”why diversity is all you need”) is about getting the human brain out of drowsiness for constant flow, peak performance, and grace (important for getting the brain to properly adapt to AI).