The essence of business is pragmatism. But that pragmatism inevitably slides into cynicism. Pragmatism means accepting the world at face value. Business involves people, materials, and production. “Materials” comes from nature. Pragmatism means ignoring any aspects of nature except its usefulness to people. That generally means dismantling for its parts, to be fed into the production machine. ... [Read More]

Society is a set of relationships. Many people. Far more relationships. What are relationships? I’ll let you think about that. But I want to consider the practical side of relationships: agreements. From the simple, informal, everyday agreements, to complex, contractual, slowly negotiated agreements, society is built out of agreements between its members. An agreement between people is specifica... [Read More]

Let’s consider the idea of “progress”. We use the word to mean a lot of different things. I’m not a linguist or etymologist, so I won’t waste time quoting dictionaries or encyclopedias. I think most people have a reasonably good intuitive sense of the term. But we should try to distinguish the different senses. Progress can be directed or undirected. It can be absolute or relative. It can be end... [Read More]

The future looks increasingly Orwellian. What is a dystopia, really? It’s a world where the majority believe in the necessity of violence and conflict. It’s a world where those who have vision, and motivation, choose violence and related means to achieve it. Meanwhile, as the poem says, “the best lack all conviction." W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming Are we stuck in a cycle of history, without ho... [Read More]

There is no absolute “truth”. Instead of truth, we have models. Models help us make predictions. Some models are better than others. Some work better in different situations. There is no comprehensive model. There can be no perfect model, because it would not fit in our heads. Every model is a simplification. We also have “facts”—which is to say, observations. We can’t be certain about events, a... [Read More]

Sometimes I think I'm looking for understanding. But then I also worry that I'm looking for easy answers. When that happens, I try to go back to basics. I observe that there is too much misery in the world. Worse, there are many trends that threaten to increase it. Most people don't have time to worry about future misery—they are miserable now. Some fixate on one trend that they believe is the... [Read More]

Social issues are complicated and frustrating. On so many levels. But we should still try to understand them. Is society getting worse? It depend on what we measure, on what timescale. Most metrics will follow a random walk; it will look erratic. Zoom out, and it will appear stable. Zoom out further, and it will look noisy again. Many trends play out over long periods, sometimes decades. And the... [Read More]

Subjectively, life is a repetitive process. You feel an urge, or an appetite, and you act. Sometimes you feel multiple drives at the same time, and you have to prioritize them. Other times, you have drives that you cannot satisfy. That creates frustration and pain. One of our drives is to make sense of the world. Including people. But, we can’t understand everyone. Not fully. The world is too bi... [Read More]

How do you say anything definitive about the future of human civilization? About the fate of humanity?Without either being alarmist or dismissive; downplaying or exaggerating? The systems of the world—including aspects of both the physical and the social environments—are constantly changing. Human welfare depends on both the nature of change and the rate of change. The changes we see in the world... [Read More]

Everyone wants a good world. But what does that mean? It’s amazing that people get along at all. We all want different things. Even though, superficially, it seems like we all want the same things. But while we want similar things for ourselves, we don’t always care so much about how things are for others. Especially our enemies. It’s kind of weird, and unfortunate, that so many people still see... [Read More]