One of the greatest challenges of our age is the gulf between “left” and “right”; however one defines those terms. It’s worth noting that many American conservatives regard today’s Republican party not as conservative but rather authoritarian. In other democratic nations, the word conservative connotes political positions that are, if anything, toward the center or…
So-called “high-functioning” psychopaths are, perhaps, the most destructive people on Earth. Lacking in empathy, they learn to mimic human caring and empathy very well, while using others as normal people use objects. Generally speaking, the best book I’ve found on this subject is The Psychopath Next Door by Harvard Prof. Martha Stout. Stout has devoted her career…
None yet exist, at least as we define it. My allies and I regard our model as the best example, because of the following attributes: 1) Non-utopian. We are well aware of our own limitations. Perfection is an aspiration, not an attainment. 2) Evolutionary. Given that there are and ever will be mistakes and possible…
As I’ve written elsewhere, my life has been inspired and guided by a vivid and detailed dream I had at age 14, over half a century ago. While many people have such dreams, this was the only one in my experience that was confirmed by empirical evidence. Five years after my dream, I discovered another…
The most substantive criticism of a Celebration Society is that such societies will take too long compared to how fast accelerating automation will eliminate jobs. It has long troubled me. If major think tanks like Brookings, Nomura, and others are right, we’ll start seeing massive displacement of workers in the 2020s, reaching permanent Great Depression…
A recent misstatement of this book’s title in a public forum got me thinking. Could there be such a thing as a “celebration economy”? In a sense, it already exists. Tourism is the 6th largest industry worldwide, and tourism is often interwoven with celebration. From that standpoint, a case can be made. On the other…
Researchers have recently figured out how to impart hive learning capabilities to robots. It’s particularly applicable to the kinds of complex tasks that require observation, trial, error, learning and further trials. This will enable them to collectively learn, in weeks, tasks that would have individually taken the robots years. Essentially, a group of identical robots…