How do you graph a song? The seeking bar is a 1-D line that graphs it purely on time elapsed. Used to be the standard design that on the left you’d have the time elapsed that moved dynamically, and on the right you’d have the total length of time that remained the same. Now on every streaming site I see only 2 dynamic figures, the elapsed time on the left and the remaining time on the right. In terms of behavioral design, this has become the norm, because of the drive linked with scarcity. We are excited (not positively, just…
I saw a post recently with this chart on the skyrocketing levels of atheism among Gen Z. It was shocking not just because the absolute % of religious folk was so low, but because the curve that showed its recent trajectory was so steep compared to the modest decline of belief among millennials. The obvious upshot of this is of course Nietzsche’s nihilism and the two world wars that sprung from it. But there’s a more optimistic upshot. Consider the optimism inherent in the straight line that connects Schopenhauer, who was all misery, to Nietzsche who was an individualized ball…
Technophobia should really be three mutually exclusive phobias.
- Autotechnophobia: What is tech doing to me?
To my brain, to my pleasure and pain systems, to my memory and learning, to my emotions and homeostasis. …
It is not self-evident to me that Plato’s Cave should have become so strongly associated with Cartesian dualism, and the modern victory of logical positivism over phenomenology. Consider a different interpretation of the allegory. The problem is that we have kept both the physical figure behind the fire, as well as the shadows cast on the wall, within the constraints of the physical world, amenable to the laws of physics, in this case, light and space. But perception and apperception are not confined to the physical world, they are an internal Lebenswelt produced by consciousness, which is less the observer…
We suck at statistics. Statisticians suck at statistics. It’s been 50 years since Tversky/Kahnemann’s paper on the belief in the law of small numbers. 50 years. Another failure of statistical intuition, to not realize just how long we’ve been living with knowledge of these results. But why do we suck at statistical intuition? Seems like a poor adaptation, to draw incorrect and incomplete conclusions about the world. It’s likely easier to ask what is different about statistical problems that lead our finely tuned minds into error, where before (or otherwise) they have strong functional bases. More generally, under what circumstances…
The problem with socialism is it distracts from the underlying problem. A lot would be solved if we internalized more precisely the difference between Marxism, a philosophy of society, and Communism, a political system of government that seeks to solve the issues Marxist philosophy uncovers. The underlying problem is not going away, and the fact that we believe socialism and communism are poorly constructed, unimaginative and short-term options, potential solutions rather than expressions of the problem, is merely distracting us from that underlying problem.
Here’s the simplest form of that problem, getting progressively more complex: Let’s say all men are…
A cooperative society is one where individuals share values. Either these are extrinsic, we are told to share values given to us by priests, kings, or governments. Or these are intrinsic, where we innately value certain things, and we tend to form groups of people who value the same things to the same extent that we do. Whether this is the value of materials, of labor, or of abstract things like morals, makes no difference. John Locke held that we could know of morals either by inscription, tradition, sense-experience, or revelation, of which he rejected all but sense-experience.
Beyond constitutional…
Might conspiracy theories be the expression of a paradigm shift in our morality, an Enlightenment 2.0?
Conspiracy theories are Veblen goods. Their value goes down with popularity. So to the casual dabbler during the innocent 2000s, they used to be fun and kooky, harmless exercises in pareidolia and synchronicity. Now conspiracies are the mainstream view to explain any phenomenon we don’t like, and that’s taken all the fun out of calling the Queen a reptile, Bush a puppet, and everyone else a cuck. Conspiracy theories attracted two kinds of people, 1) Veblen snobs who enjoyed the feeling of knowing something…
An anarchist’s derivation and solution for the phenomenon of inherent prejudice in the hands of a powerful monopolistic state.
Say P=100. Group A,B, each 50. X=30, where X is a negative quantity like crime. a , b are the proportions of respective populations to crime such that aA + bB = X = 30.
- Suppose a>>b. For instance, a=50%, b=10%. This unfortunately translates into general human psychology, but more damagingly law enforcement, treating each individual of A as having a 50% chance of being X, and every B as having a 10% chance. When instead each individual is either 100%…
We’re a conceited species that is convinced people will want to know what we experience. So we write memoirs and journals and ledgers. We keep records of our deeds, our things, and our thoughts. Most of the time we aren’t aware of our thoughts, or our actions until a pattern emerges and makes itself clear, as Hesse says about finding our calling or vocation — ein Stück Wirklichkeit dasteht und eingreift: A portion of reality presents itself and makes its claim.
Similarly, suddenly a portion of our lived reality presents itself in all its detail, and claims significance, meaning, and…
