For millennia, religion and culture have tried—mostly unsuccessfully—to change human nature. Is it time for us to go to the root of the problem?
The myth of age and wisdom
What if our increasing years actually close our minds and make us less wise?
Is living in the moment overrated?
In our quest for greater mindfulness, are we neglecting something just as important?
The other road
We can never know if the road we chose was for the best. Maybe that’s a good thing?
A commitment to giving
Peter Singer changed my life over ten years ago when he convinced me to reject factory farming. He’s changed it again by convincing me (and hopefully you) to embrace effective altruism.
Bouquet (No. 1)
This first bouquet brings together various flowers of thought, tastefully arranged for your consideration.
When the present judges the past
Many of us are quick to declare the sins of our ancestors without realizing that we, too, will someday be found guilty.
Can humanity survive?
What if the instincts that served us well in the past have become a ticking time-bomb that threatens to destroy our future?
The tyranny of the future
“Yet a day comes when a man…situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it.” —Albert Camus
Taking responsibility vs. accepting blame
Maybe we’re not responsible for the sins of the past. But we are certainly responsible for the world we give to the future.
Is it rioting or is it revolution?
Turns out that we Americans are a bit inconsistent in our attitudes towards violent protests.
Death of the dialectic
We have some very unhealthy ideas about ideological conflict. What if our concept of “victory” is in fact a kind of defeat?
Knowing vs. questioning, and the challenge of expertise
How is our desire to know things, and our attitude towards experts, hurting us in this time of troubles?
Will COVID-19 really change things?
Will the current pandemic really reshape our society, or can a dynamic duo of psychological factors halt the change?
Where are my nanobots?
Just as Dire Straits (with a cameo from Sting) once wanted their MTV, I am really wanting some nanobots right now.
Learn the rules so you can break them
If the first step towards knowledge involves learning the rules, should the second step be finding ways to break them?
Cathedral thinking is dead. Long live cathedral thinking!
The golden age of cathedral building is gone. But we can rediscover our ability to achieve such multi-generational projects if we embrace important concepts like purpose, mastery, and autonomy.
Ideology: or, how to lose friends and irritate people
What happens when our devotion to a cause annihilates our capacity for personal relationships?
Knowing alien minds
Might it be foolish to think that we could ever truly comprehend the mind of an AI or an alien species?
About white men
It’s not hard being a white man in 2019 America—please stop pretending it is.