Melting Asphalt
I. In a beautiful, rollicking piece last month for Aeon Magazine, web developer James Somers ponders the question, Are coders worth it? The piece is a thinking man's struggle to understand the value of his profession. By Somers' own reckoning,…
I. In a beautiful, rollicking piece last month for Aeon Magazine, web developer James Somers ponders the question, Are coders worth it? The piece is a thinking man's struggle to understand the value of his profession. By Somers' own reckoning,…
(Originally published at Ribbonfarm.) How can 'mere' matter, properly configured, manage to be conscious? Are chimpanzees or elephants conscious? Can a computer be conscious? Today we will answer none of these questions. In fact, we won't even address them. These…
Is science a religion? No... but maybe it should be. There's a spirituality to science — something sacred in it — that sparkles if you catch it in the right light and from just the right angle. Once you've seen…
This is the second installment in a multi-part series on Post-Atheism. In the previous essay, I noted some parallels between atheism and the teenage years and argued for a more 'adult' conversation. Today we'll take a fresh look at religion,…
There are no gods. Now what? I'm ready to move past atheism. As so many have pointed out, it's a hollow belief system. Atheism is defined entirely by negation. It rejects false ideologies, but offers little in return: nothing concrete…
Today: How an understanding of brain lateralization can help us design better software. First let's clear the air. There's been a lot of cringe-worthy popular science written about the divided brain. The most nauseating are the articles that ask: Are…
(Originally published at Ribbonfarm.) In economics, a good is anything that "satisfies human wants and provides utility." This includes not just tangible goods like gold, grain, and real estate, but also services (housecleaning, dentistry, etc.) as well as abstract goods…
You probably know someone like this: Daniel is a 25-year-old software engineer described by his friends as someone who "likes to have things his own way." Food: he's picky and sticks to what he knows. Clothes: he wears the same…
Over the past few weeks I've been writing about how humans develop their social personalities. As usual, the writing process helped me see things more clearly. In particular, I realized that the same model that explains human social personalities can…
(Welcome to the second installment of a three-part series on personality. Part 1 took the agent's perspective on personality development. Part 2, below, will take the systems perspective. And in part 3, we'll generalize 'personality' to explain all sorts of…