Orca & Fishbowl

peer support

Break the fourth wall and start petting the elephant

Feb 11, 2026

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9 min read

Break the fourth wall and start petting the elephant

aka: how to have more authentic, rewarding conversations with other people

Alex Libre

psychology

+13

You can probably just tell the truth much more often than you think

Jan 25, 2026

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2 min read

You can probably just tell the truth much more often than you think

On white lies, tactful honesty, and why most people’s intuitions here are (understandably) incorrect

Alex Libre

writing

+11

Jan 5, 2026

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1 min read

If you're not yet using AI to get feedback on your human writing, you should start

Especially considering a humanities professor at Dartmouth once admitted to me that he and most of his colleagues "honestly just kind of skim [the essays students submit for their courses]".

Alex Libre

technology

Everything worth inventing has not, in fact, already been invented

Jan 3, 2026

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4 min read

Everything worth inventing has not, in fact, already been invented

There are good reasons to believe that education could be a lot better than it currently is in most school systems. Freddie deBoer is, as he often is, confused about this.

Alex Libre

peer support

Oct 25, 2025

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2 min read

It’s All Bonus Points from Here on Out

Reflections on life moving forward.

Alex Libre

openAI o3

+20

Dec 22, 2024

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7 min read

Rebutting Sean Carroll on LLMs and AGI

New evidence from the past week (e.g. Anthropic's "alignment faking" paper + OpenAI's new o3 model scoring 87% on ARC-AGI) gave me the courage to speak truth to podcast.

Alex Libre