Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“In other words: The only type of culture that can thrive is one in which there is prevalent trust, and in which there is also prevalent contempt and rejection of cheaters. But what happens when the person who is held in contempt is not the cheater, but the cheater is instead more often admired because…
“But there is no society in isolation…The environment, together with the society in question, must form a larger society in respect to more general characters than those defining the society from which we started. Thus we arrive at the principle that every society requires a social background, of which it is itself a part.” —…
“It is only in the past few decades that scholars have come to grips with how slavery and capitalism intertwined. But for the 18th-century French thinkers who laid the foundations of laissez-faire capitalism, it made perfect sense to associate the slave trade with free enterprise. Their writings, which inspired the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith’s Wealth…
“Right-wing ideologies are deliberate and conscious efforts that seek to “defend power and privilege against movements demanding freedom and equality.”” As much as I try to avoid them, occasionally a video or article comes across my radar that makes me shake my head in disgust. The latest one is a video clip of Joe Rogan’s…
Episode 2 of Increased Capacity is here! Dan and I are back talking about all things that have to do with beauty, truth and goodness. In this episode we talk about cilantro, quantum theory, and web comics (among other things…). Enjoy! This week’s picks: Jesse’s Beauty pick Jesse’s Truth pick Jesse’s Goodness pick Dan’s…
So I’m doing a new podcsast and the first episode is now out! The show is a talk-show format and, full disclosure: I’ve never done a talk show before. I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been, plus I was nervous because we were broadcasting live, so It’s a little shaky in places,…
“To see why the quantum state might represent what someone knows, consider another case where we use probabilities. Before your friend rolls a die, you guess what side will face up. If your friend rolls a standard six-sided die, you’d usually say there is about a 17 percent (or one in six) chance that you’ll…
“For the past few years, “free speech” has become a shortcut for shifting the frame of argument away from the content of bigoted speech itself and toward broader discussions of the value of free expression—a value we all share. The strategic advantage is obvious: It’s much easier to defend the right to bigotry with grandiose…
“The idea is the same: Truth is not found, but made, and making truth means exercising power […] The reductive version is simpler and easier to abuse: Fact is fiction, and anything goes. It’s this version of critical social theory that the populist right has seized on and that Trump has made into a…
“Let’s take a look at this post-truth meme, this word of the year which the Oxford Dictionary defines as: ‘Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’ Now, I would argue that the mode of communication and influence that they’re…