In their recent book Warnings, former US national security advisors Richard Clarke and R.P. Reddy take an evidence-based approach to identifying persons they call Cassandras. Cassandras are credible forecasters, with solid track records in their…
As I was watching The Late Show with my wife, the topic of the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie divorce came up on the show. I realized that this is a traumatic event for many people. Then…
As my wife recently pointed out, there is a particular error to which meritocracies are prone. While they start out with clear principles favoring merit as the basis for advancement in society, inevitably some of…
I am an admirer of Peter Diamandis. He and Steven Kotler have been largely responsible for shifting the planetary conversation from endless doom and gloom within a context of scarcity to the possibility of sustainable…
Meat consumption is a problem is many ways. A substitute for industrial “farming” of animals is needed. This could take the form of vegetable “meats” (more on this below) or a 21st century alternative to…
While some believe that money is necessary to motivate behavior, this is false. Significant organizations exist that operate on the basis of voluntary, mutually supportive service. That service is unpaid, and can be highly effective.…
Those of us who are old enough will remember the 1950s, when “Japanese import” meant balsa wood trinkets. Several decades later, the first Japanese cars started appearing in the US. They were widely derided as…
Psychologists have noted that many people, when presented with evidence that contradicts a belief of theirs, simply ignore or rationalize away that evidence, holding even more tightly to their existing beliefs. If we are to…
Imagine, if you will, aliens exploring Earth. They visit a chess tournament. They see rows upon rows of players, hunched over chess boards, facing each other. Silence prevails, but it is an intense silence. The…
The AI researcher Jurgen Schmidhuber has argued in a talk that there is a precise way to optimize a self-improving superintelligence based upon Godel’s mathematics. He further explained this in a paper audaciously named “Formal…