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Thinking, Fast and Slow; and Other Summer Readings
This summer’s reading list was a bit unusual, and the following books all have something in common: Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman The Stuff of Thought, by Steven Pinker When Genius...
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Is the Virtual World Really An Escape from Reality? (Part 2)
On September 17th, Blizzard announced that they would be removing the auction houses in Diablo 3. For gamers, this may seem like a very strange move. It is very rare that a company will remove a...
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Standing Up in a Crowded Theater, Studying for Tests, and Other...
Everyone is sitting down in a crowded theater, comfortably seated and with a good view. All is well until one person decides his view is not good enough, so he stands up to get a clearer view. This...
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When Does Not Deciding Count as a Decision?
This week’s topic is whether not deciding is itself a decision. Let us start by escalating things quickly: consider the classic trolley problem. There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway...
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Slavery, Sochi, and Steroids: When Does Competition Go Too Far?
In the Olympics (and sporting in general), it is generally considered wrong for an athlete to take performance-enhancing drugs. Let us take one step back and ask, Why? Is there any a priori reason...
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Thinking Like an Economist
I recently read two things related to economics: some economics blogs (particularly Marginal Revolution), and a list of economics jokes. For someone like myself who doesn’t see everything in economic...
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Are First World Problems Justified?
One thing that often happens in debates I’ve seen is when someone points out a problem with the world, another answers that there is something worse. Depending on its context, this is the fallacy of...
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2015 and What I’m Thinking About
Effective Altruism One thing I’ve never discussed on this blog is effective altruism. It is basically a movement to optimize doing good, and it does so by number crunching rather than by random...
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Bots, Markets, and Assortative Mating
Tay, AlphaGo, and News Feed Algorithms AI reached two milestones last month: beating the top human player in the world at Go, and creating a “teen girl AI” that “became a Hitler-loving sex robot.” As...
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Postmodernism, Progress, and Social Justice
My very simplified story of human progress is this: Humans have improved their conditions over time, with incremental growth for most of history and exponential growth in modern times. These...
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