“A strange new light can be just as frightening as the dark.” —Westworld, Season 2, Episode 2
Aztec moral philosophy has profound differences from the Greek tradition “While Plato and Aristotle were concerned with character-centred virtue ethics, the Aztec approach is perhaps better described as socially-centred virtue ethics. If the Aztecs were right, then ‘Western’ philosophers have been too focused on individuals, too reliant on assessments of character, and too optimistic about […]
The Origins of WEIRD Psychology “First, we hypothesize that, in adapting to the social worlds created by intensive kin-based institutions, human psychology shifts in ways that foster greater conformity, obedience and sensitivity to relational contexts but less individualism, analytic thinking and cooperation with strangers. Second, to account for part of the variation in kinship intensity, […]
Animal pain is about communication, not just feeling “Yet there’s plenty of evidence that the non-human urge to display pain has profound and intrinsic communicative value. Take the cries of lambs or rat pups, which will fetch their mothers to groom and lick them. Or the way squeaking and writhing mice will draw a cagemate […]
Mr. Rogers and Why Kind Men Freak Us Out “The idea that Fred talked about the most was the idea of grace. The idea of grace in the Bible is the undeserved goodness bestowed upon you by God — meaning that God, or anyone, should be kind and good to people, whether or not you get anything […]
Why the Best Things in Life Are All Backwards “Effort and reward have a linear relationship when the action is mindless and simple. Effort and reward have a diminishing returns relationship when the action is complex and multivariate. But when the action becomes purely psychological—an experience that exists solely within our own consciousness—the relationship between […]
The Hole in my Soul “It must be maddening to see his baby brothers so blithely unconcerned about the unending torment that awaits. But that’s how you know you’re an atheist: when the stories have no power. It’s like leaving a relationship. You realize the love is gone, or maybe never was there, and you […]
Essay on Corporations and Platforms “But what if the nature of the economic puzzles that corporations evolved to solve have shifted? Thanks to software, the internet and artificial intelligence, the expenses that Coase identified can now be reduced just as well with tools from outside the company as they can from within it. Finding freelance […]
To get a grip on altruism, see humans as molecules “In semiconductors, changes in the microscopic structure of a metal can affect how much electricity must be applied to ‘activate’ it, such that the amount of current passing through jumps from zero to a particular number. Similarly, a recent paper in Nature written by my […]
Inference of ecological and social drivers of human brain-size evolution “Our model predicts the evolution of adult Homo sapiens-sized brains and bodies when individuals face a combination of 60% ecological, 30% cooperative and 10% between-group competitive challenges, and suggests that between-individual competition has been unimportant for driving human brain-size evolution. Moreover, our model indicates that […]
Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis “THEREFORE, WE REJECT “America first” as a theological heresy for followers of Christ. While we share a patriotic love for our country, we reject xenophobic or ethnic nationalism that places one nation over others as a political goal. We reject domination rather than stewardship […]
Kerr and Draymond’s Relationship Nearly Destroyed Warriors; Now It Fuels Them “There’s so many times in life people try to change you,” Green says. “And sometimes, although someone may think they’re changing you for the better, it could be for the worse. And where [Kerr] helped me was, he didn’t try to change me. His […]
Ancient Wisdom Reveals 7 Rituals That Will Make You Happy Life isn’t the problem. Your interpretations are. Step back. Accept. The mind requires training. Feeling is the only way through. Focus on the present. People are ridiculous. Love them anyway.