Duplicates not rewarded
I am in High School, speak English, am a boy, and I am interested in STEM and some social sciences. I am especially interested in city planning and civil engineering. I am learning Spanish and Polish.
For books I mainly read non fiction, and I don’t like romance novels, most realistic fiction, or historical fiction.
I am very smart for my age so I like informative content.
After I check them out and they’re good I’ll reward more.
These are all youtube channels. It started off as a list from best to worst but it gets pretty free-form after the first few.
Cody's Lab - The all time goat. Such feats as making yellow cake, throwing cesium into a pond, and standing in a bucket of mercury.
Thought emporium - Insane genius. Built a machine that can coat anything in metal. Is attempting to grow brain cells to play Doom on it.
Robert Murray Smith - God tier inventor and tinkerer. Is constantly proving, replicating and modifying power generation ideas and other electromechanical technologies for educational purposes.
Primer - Statistical and theoretical explorations of environmental factors on populations and contexts.
Folding ideas - In depth investigations into digital and tech events
Friendly Jordies - Australian specific investigative journalist. Deep investigations into government corruption and criminal activities. Has house firebombed twice because of it.
Channel 5 - American investigative journalist. Relevant to current affairs and valuable information and perspectives.
Robert Miles - One of the leading youtube personalities on AI alignment. Has been featured on either or both of Numberphile and Computerphile.
Cool Worlds - Astronomy lab which publishes research and does analysis on relevant current events.
Steve Mould - Investigates interesting science and physics curiousities.
David Shapiro - AI alignment and development researcher. Discusses a lot of theoretical issues relevant to current and potential future events in the space.
Bryan Johnson - Mega rich man attempting to live forever. Is the most measured man in history. Has a team of medical staff to curate his life and measure his biomarkers. Currently ranked 7 in rejuvenation olympics.
Mental Outlaw - General cybersecurity and alternative tech current events.
Henry Segerman - Fantastic geometric puzzles and curiosities based on advanced mathematical knowledge.
Code Parade - Higher dimensional game designer. Also sometimes knits.
Zeno Rogue - Explore weird higher dimensional animations.
Stand Up Maths - Stand up comedian who is also a mathematician. Various investigation type videos into interesting or strange math phenomenon and applications.
Rational Animations - Animations about common topics in online rationalist discourse such as AI and aliens. Sometimes works with Robert Miles.
Geo Wizard - Has walked in a straight line across several countries and nearly died doing it.
Jreg - Very strange deep in the memes content but very strangely deeply on the money about a lot of things.
Some quick things that come to mind:
Some (imo) underrated youtube channels (not including too famous ones like 3b1b or numberphile):
Machine Thinking
No Boilerplate
Reducible
PeakMath
Books (nonfiction):
Feynmann lectures (guessing you know these, but are good enough to mention just in case you don't)
Where Mathematics comes from - Lakoff, Nuñez - Changed my view on mathematics completely,
from a subject of pure reason to something we evolved and invented; among other things.
Gödel, Escher, Bach (another well-known classic)
Nietzsche - Genealogy of morals (not a STEM book, but very very explanatory and applicable to the influence of religion on society; still relatively elementary and readable for Nietzsche)
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
Make it stick - The Science of Successful learning
Benedict Carey - How we learn
Arnold Bennet - How to live on 24 Hours a Day
Books (fiction)
R. Scott Bakker - The Darkness that comes before
The Dune series (again, really well known)
Anything by Philip K. Dick
Some nonfiction books I've really enjoyed
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark
Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
Think of a Number by Malcolm E Lines
A Number for Your Thoughts by Malcolm E Lines
The Wonderful World of Relativity
Some super inspirational short stories about philosophy I wish I had read/watched when I was younger
Fable of the Dragon Tyrant:
https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVYThe Egg:
https://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI500 Million And Not One More:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jk7A3NMdbxp65kcJJ/500-million-but-not-a-single-one-more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljmifo4KlssNo Silver Bullet To The Werewolf Problem:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YqMsH9LH9C26mahue/no-silver-bullet-solutions-for-the-werewolf-crisisThe Unweaving Of A Beautiful Thing:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mCtZF5tbCYW2pRjhi/the-unweaving-of-a-beautiful-thingThe Goddess Of Everything Else:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/17/the-goddess-of-everything-else-2/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbwp4PbWYzw&t=35s
news YouTube:
I don't like Kings and Generals, but their Ukraine series has been informative for me.
Real Life Lore's Modern Conflict series informed me about the worst places on earth right now, his best content requires a Nebula subscription.
historical youtube:
I don't like Historymarche (too much focus on war) except their (yet-unfinished) Hannibal series is amazing.
Kraut (the parrot) tends to say stuff I hear nowhere else
M. Lazer History has nice in-depth videos about niche topics
Historia Civilis covers ancient Rome in depth
Overly Sarcastic Productions does a lot, but Red's mythology series is quite unique and she has taught me many new myths.
non-fi:
Rationality A-Z, a collection of Yudkowskys blog posts about biases and how to address them.
Influence by Cialdini goes into exploiting people's biases to get them to do what you want.
I'm reading the entirety of Scott Alexander's blog, ACX now, I'm nearly at year 2018 (reading backwards) and it's very well written and probably well researched (I don't check his sources).
The book of Why by Judea Pearl, this one is very accessible, at least familiarize yourself with the math of causality in some shape or form.
John Wentworth's posts on LessWrong tend to be good.
https://aisafetyfundamentals.com/alignment-course-details/ is a good introduction to AI Safety.
carado.moe has some good posts.
rat-fi:
UNSONG, a magic system obsessed with language. If you like lingual quirks you must read this, it's still a decent read otherwise
Worth the Candle, if you like TTRPGs and world building. I personally like all Alexander Wales's works, it tends to be fantasy.
sci-fi:
Hyperion, it's like Dune but there's more stuff.
The Martian, and if you like that Project Hail Mary (same author), they read fast and smooth and the author seems to know a lot about NASA and their technology.
I second Children of Time.
Moonwalking With Einstein, a book about memory and psychology
Vox's Youtube channel for video essays
Larry Lawton's channel, an ex jewel thief who now talks about prison reform and what prison life was like for him
For an app, Marvel Snap is a fun little card game that only takes like 4 minutes per game.
YouTube channels
Reducible
Angela Collier
Non-fiction books
The Quark and the Jaguar, by Murray Gell-Mann. May be a heavy at times, but the general discussions are great.
What if?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, by Randall Munroe
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Khaneman
Realist fiction books
(May I preface this by saying that I like my realist novels to leave me overthinking and generally sad for days after I'm done with them)
Epitaph of a small winner, by Machado de Assis
No longer human, by Osamu Dazai
Hard scifi:
Permutation City, Greg Egan - novel about brain uploads, and some philosophical consequences of that
Axiomatic, Greg Egan - very good short stories
Diaspora, Greg Egan - another brain uploads book from far future, hard to describe without spoilers, but very good
Dragon's Egg, Forward - novel about creatures living on the surface of a neutron star
I would recommend doing a lot or reading on Polio. I did a large report on it, and it was very fun to do. I don't know your interests, but I thought that topic was awesome.
Another idea if you didn't like that one, is watching all of the NOVA episodes. I have done this and learned a lot from them. They have a broad range of topics to interest you.
I can give you a few good book recommendations if you would like.