Consensus in a Post-Truth World
Consensus in a Post-Truth World What Happens When We Don't Examine Our Opinions? Imagine you’re in the Louvre with your crew. The six of you have fought your way through the politely manic Japanese [...]
Transhumanism and Inequality
Transhumanist Inequity What Happens When the Wealthy Upgrade Mind and Body? I recently wrote a piece about a not-that-distant future in which the majority of us either don’t need to or can’t work for [...]
An Employment Shift is Coming
The Coming Employment Shift What Happens When Work is Not Needed? I like to think I have a philosophical temperament. What does that mean? Well, among other things, it implies a capacity for detachment, [...]
A Little Blurry
“Blurry’ is not the first documentary to deal with the perils of a rapid ascent to super-stardom. It is the first created by an award-winning filmmaker that deals with fame in the social media age. Paul McCartney was famous, Bono was famous, Kurt Cobain was famous, but none of these icons had 77-million Instagram followers and 40-million YouTube subscribers ready to pounce on everything they said and did.
Is Rock Dead?
Is Rock Dead? Or is it just today's Jazz? There is a great deal of online comment on music sites about the “ death of rock/metal music.” (Google “Is rock dead”, [...]
Truth in Fantasy
Truth in Fantasy The Bard Would Applaud Buffy Some people have trouble with fantasy as great drama. I've never understood why. Realism in art does not necessarily mean a [...]
Music in the Digiverse
I recently wrote a piece on changes in the music industry brought on by the migration of virtually everything from creation, through promotion to distribution and consumption online. I used the rise of Gen [...]
Why We Believe
In our journey upriver to wisdom, we are confronted with the shoals and shallows of bias, authority, emotion, fallacy and conventional wisdom. To navigate these potential perils and credibly argue our positions, it is important to understand four pillars upon which our beliefs are built -- authority, intuition, results, reason.
Meditation on Happiness
A Meditation on Happiness Vital Powers. Excellence. Scope. I have always believed that happiness will elude you if you seek it too directly, too face-on. It seems to me that ‘happiness’ is a by-product of meaningful activity, acquired the way the British acquired their Empire - in a fit of absence of mind. Let’s go through the side door and define ‘meaningful activity,’ a somewhat less slippery concept than happiness. My favorite words on this subject come from those ancient Greeks, and they loosely translate as follows, “The Good Life requires [...]
A Tale of Two Lawns
A Tale of Two Lawns Aristotle Made Me Not Do It On my morning walk today I found myself stopping and staring at two lawns, and it made me think of Aristotle. (Please stifle your barbed witticisms, I already know I’m odd.) The two lawns were side-by-side -- one was your conventional, vigorously clipped piece of grass, its neighbour had been allowed to go completely wild, and was a tangle of dandelions, grasses gone to seed, various healthy weeds and the occasional wild flower and leftover random tulip. The wild lawn was rather [...]
The Importance of Evidence
The Importance of Evidence And Bayesian Inference I continue to be preoccupied with the question of evidence -- what constitutes evidence that actually supports the many, oh so many, opinions we throw out into the world either digitally or over a glass of wine with friends. This link will take you to one of the more useful TED talks I have watched in some time. It touches on bayesian inference; but before you run screaming from your computer,the concepts explained here require no great statistical fluency and are remarkably useful. Why are anecdotes [...]
Camera Obscura
Camera Obscura I Have Cobwebs in My Eyes I have cobwebs in my eyes -- real or metaphorical? Real says the white coat -- fluid detaches, hardens, black strings float like spastic spiders on the edges of my view. What of my mind’s eye -- something skitters in there too. Intimations, divinations flicker and dance I seek for clarity, a more piercing glance, I have cobwebs. - by C. Christian Dick