Escaping Flatland

Hi, I’m Henrik.

I write personal essays—attempts at thinking through important topics in a way that is richly grounded in my personal experience. Being a father of two daugthers, I’ve written quite extensively about education, learning, and the childhoods of exceptional people. I also write about relationships, dialogue, anthropology, and social graphs.

My writing has been featured on Marginal Revolution, reprinted in The Spectator, upvoted to the top of Hacker News, and been recommended by Jonathan Haidt, Sahil Bloom, Gwern, Austin Kleon and Brad Delong. Here are some cute things people have said:

Michael Nielsen @michael_nielsen

@phokarlsson This made my week. Thanks for your openness and generosity in writing it!

7:48 AM ∙ Jan 18, 2023

Molly Mielke @mollyfmielke

@phokarlsson i..... loved this so much

10:33 PM ∙ Jan 17, 2023

Here are some essays of mine that I personally like a lot:

A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox

Henrik Karlsson

·

October 5, 2022

I was born in July 1989, which means I am of the last generation who will remember the time before the internet. The cables and data centers and hyperlinks grew up around me; they grew with me. I find it hard to disentangle the evolution of my psyche from that of the internet.

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Childhoods of exceptional people

Henrik Karlsson

·

Feb 6

Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa, in the 1890s Let’s start with one of those insights that are as obvious as they are easy to forget: if you want to master something, you should study the highest achievements of your field. If you want to learn writing, read great writers, etc.

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Looking for Alice

Henrik Karlsson

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Jan 17

Alice B. Toklas

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I hope you find something interesting. If you like anything you read, stick your email in the box below and push the button. I publish 2-5 times per month, whenever I feel like I have something beautiful or interesting to share. Paying subscribers make my work possible and get access to the archives and about twice as many essays per year.

You can also find me on Twitter, where I tend to incubate ideas before they are ready to spawn here.

Warmly,
Henrik