Why do anything, when it’s easier to just complain? I complain a lot. Mostly inside my own head. Complaining is another one of those things that’s analogous to eating junk food. In the moment, it feels effective, but the feeling is wrong. Junk food is most harmful, and not very nutritious. Complaining has very little chance of making things better, and risks antagonizing the people you are compla... [Read More]

Why do we suffer? How do we find relief? For all of our science and technology, we still have no definitive explanation for suffering. As long as suffering has existed, humans have been driven by it, and the need to make sense of it. Perhaps that drive is itself an answer. But, like many other theories, it is not altogether satisfactory. Even if we can scientifically explain the cause of sufferi... [Read More]

Can you fix everything by fixing all the small things individually? Maybe not. Not all things can be improved iteratively. Whether you can even “fix" a complex system is itself a difficult question. The answer is probably “no”. But most likely, it depends on the system. Is culture a system? No. Culture is the aggregate of all the subjective opinions, preferences, and values of the people who ide... [Read More]

Every new thing means the end of some old thing. Perhaps many old things. I’m haunted by this fact. It’s so easy—for some people—to focus on what matters to them. To the exclusion of all else. If nobody cares, why does it matter? It’s a strange assumption. It’s consistent, though. Humans are arrogant. They have great certainty of the importance of their own opinions. This arrogance is both featu... [Read More]

I would like to have a clearer vision of social progress. Do you ever get the feeling that different forms of progress are in competition? That they are, in fact, interfering with one another? Progress is subjective. But could it be objective? Is there a (better) way to translate the disparate interests of a diverse population into collective decisions? Of course there is voting. But people are... [Read More]

I’ve always been interested in space exploration. But I get impatient with excessively fantastic stories. What makes it exciting is the possibility, the challenge. Simply waving an authorial wand, to summon the necessary magical technology, is cheating. If you have any respect for science, engineering, and the real work of technological research and development, then it must be believable. The pu... [Read More]

I didn’t know what to call this post. It would almost be better as poetry. The subject is naturally metaphorical, impressionistic, interpretive. Information is all around us. Light, sound, temperature, pressure, smells, tastes. Life is information, both figuratively and literally. DNA encodes the information that makes life possible. Organisms live or die based on their ability to interpret and ... [Read More]

The biggest challenge in life is getting along with other people. When times are tough, the challenge increases, and you find out just how bad we all are at it. We’d rather fight and kill–and maybe get killed—than find compromises. Not everyone is quick to violence. Like most human qualities, we have different tolerances. Most people are somewhat tolerant. A few are very tolerant or intolerant. B... [Read More]

Is it safe to say that conflict is the main source of human misery? It seems to be a major cause. Human relationships are rife with conflict. We disagree about virtually everything. One question over which we often disagree is who gets what. In general, we always disagree over how to best use our finite time and resources. The disciplines of political science, business management, and economics ... [Read More]

It’s all too much. The world. The people. The noise. The chaos. The complexity. Can it be measured? This overwhelming scale? We know many facts, at least approximately: the area of the Earth’s surface; the number of humans; the biomass of wild versus domesticated animals; the energy expenditure of human activity; the dollar value of (legal) global transactions; the logistical quantities (in mass ... [Read More]