284 results found
Posted: July 10, 2019
I recently watched an older debate between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson in which I saw Sam admonishing Jordan for creating an opening for foolish beliefs. He took a poll…
Posted: April 27, 2019
I think what’s happening to America right now can best be captured as a catastrophic loss of meaning. Bowling Alone is the canonical work on the loss of community in…
Posted: December 23, 2017
The idea is that there are two ways for humans to derive happiness: This will be a stream of consciousness thought process that will likely lead to an essay later.…
Posted: October 22, 2017
As I write about in the philosophy of Westworld, life is really about meaning loops. They’re the structures that make us want to strive and improve, and that make life…
Posted: October 12, 2017
I recently learned the origin of the world “school”, and was reminded of the origin of the word “company”. We know school as a place to train for future life—to…
Posted: May 20, 2017
It’s pretty obvious that people need meaning in their lives, but I wonder if the rise of suicide and opiates use can be seen in this light. The way I…
Posted: September 11, 2016
This is a half-formed idea. Walk with me. Meaning for humans is all centered around story. Narrative. Boy meets girl. Family is reunited. War ravaged the land. Story matters to…
Posted: May 29, 2016
I realized something a few months ago about youth and meaning. I think the reason we feel more alive when we’re young, and the reason that everything feels more significant,…
Posted: December 24, 2014
Evolution is a clever thing. We all know it made us what we are by blindly selecting the most successful among a steady stream of changes. But what we don’t…
Posted: December 9, 2014
In IT we talk about something called a stack, which is basically the set of technologies that a given solution is built upon. I was just thinking about something similar…
Posted: December 22, 2013
Waiting for Meaning, by Marlene Dumas While residents of wealthy nations tend to have greater life satisfaction, new research shows that those living in poorer nations report having greater meaning…
Posted: October 23, 2013
I go to war that my son may be a politician, that his son may be a merchant, that his son may be an artist. ~ Ben Pieratt As I…
Posted: April 12, 2013
I often challenge people to describe why their lives have meaning. In most cases, the answers are deeply unsatisfying, both to me and to the person answering. Most people describe…
Posted: January 28, 2013
This is a brilliant piece about the difference between happiness and meaning, or, more specifically, the difference between pursuing a happy life vs. pursuing a meaningful life. I suggest you…
Posted: December 4, 2010
I have many smart conservative friends who take pride in two things in their lives: Having a mainstream, corporate job, and raising their children well. When we have conversations about…
Posted: November 11, 2010
I have a basic test I put myself through when I think about whether my work and/or my life has meaning at any given moment. Consider what would happen if…
Posted: August 20, 2009
It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that life and existence are eternally justified. — Nietzsche I saw this quote on Reddit recently, and it resonnated with me. It reminded…
Posted: December 26, 2008
[ Published: Dec 26, 2008 ] A and B are exactly the same shade of gray. This essay is about the meaning of life, and how realizing there is none…
Posted: December 21, 2008
I think if I were to have to guess, I would say that the reason we exist–or, to be more precise–the cause of our existence, is the creation by another…
Posted: July 4, 2019
Marcus Hutchins wrote a great essay recently about YouTube’s new ban on “hacking” videos. He writes: One major problem here is that hacking tutorials are not inherently bad. There exist…
Posted: June 3, 2019
This is a Member-only episode. Members get the newsletter every week, and have access to the Member Portal with all existing Member content. Non-members get every other episode. Sign in…
Posted: June 2, 2019
A sci-fi trilogy called The Three Body Problem included a powerful concept called Dark Forest Theory, which basically says it’s a bad idea for people who don’t know about their…
Posted: April 13, 2019
Unsupervised Learning is my weekly show that provides collection, summarization, and analysis in the realms of Security, Technology, and Humans. It’s Content Curation as a Service… I spend between five…
Posted: April 11, 2019
I recently wrote a well-received piece about the political positions of the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), and a ferocious discussion erupted in the comments regarding Dave Rubin‘s political philosophy. To…
Posted: April 9, 2019
This is a Member-only episode. Members get the newsletter every week, and have access to the Member Portal with all existing Member content. Non-members get every other episode. Sign in…
Posted: March 14, 2019
When I saw Yuval Harari live with Sam Harris in San Francisco, I heard a lot of interesting things. But the most interesting thing I heard that night was from…
Posted: March 6, 2019
RSA was good this year, but I didn’t really notice any major new trends. Nothing on the scale of—say—AI, or blockchain. But there were some disruptions that looked quite interesting.…
Posted: February 25, 2019
This is a Member-only episode. Members get the newsletter every week, and have access to the Member Portal with all existing Member content. Non-members get every other episode. Sign in…
Posted: February 21, 2019
Unsupervised Learning is my weekly show that provides collection, summarization, and analysis in the realms of Security, Technology, and Humans. It’s Content Curation as a Service… I spend between five…
Posted: February 17, 2019
I love thinking about how technological advancement will intersect with our desires as humans. My book on this topic is called The Real Internet of Things. We have all these…
Posted: February 10, 2019
Benedict Evans is one of my favorite tech analysts. His content is usually great, I often agree with it, and his presentation style is quite unique. His annual presentation on…
Posted: February 10, 2019
This page is where I collect all my lifestyle-oriented items, meaning material things I enjoy collecting or enjoying in some way. These are things like, watches, cars, beverages, foods, travel…
Posted: February 6, 2019
I’m in cybersecurity, so when I write about topics like health and psychology, I try to do so with the humility of a layperson. I write a lot about happiness—not…
Posted: February 2, 2019
People debate constantly about the the different kinds of security assessment ,and the one that’s perhaps least understood is the Purple Team. Origin and meaning If you have a dedicated…
Posted: December 18, 2018
One of the most frustrating things to me as a security person is having sales and marketing types confuse the different types of security assessment. Similarities And among those types…
Posted: December 15, 2018
Brian Krebs ran a story recently about how FICO has a new service for rating the Cybersecurity risk level of various companies. Problem is, in one of their marketing communications…
Posted: December 9, 2018
There’s a lot of confusion about the term Postmodernism. To people on the far left, it’s their shadow religion—basically a healthy disregard for any value system that has exerted influence…
Posted: December 4, 2018
This is a member-only even episode. Members get the newsletter every week, as well as access to all previous episodes, while free subscribers only get odd episodes every other week.…
Posted: October 20, 2018
It’s interesting to think about all the different trends happening at the same time right now: This is obviously not a complete list. Testosterone has been falling in men for…
Posted: October 6, 2018
Some friends just commented about a video on Twitter where a watch guy basically described why real watches are real watches, and technology-based watches like the Apple Watch don’t qualify.…
Posted: September 5, 2018
If you follow the work of either Jordan Peterson or Sam Harris you’ve no doubt seen them engage each other in various ways over the past year or so. Jordan…
Posted: September 4, 2018
Subscribe here to get this in your inbox every week. Security News 😮 The governments of the “Five Eyes” (US, Australia, UK, Canada, and New Zealand) have asked the world’s largest…
Posted: September 1, 2018
As I covered in this earlier piece, despite having massive respect for Steven Pinker, and loving his latest book, Englightenment Now, I think he’s very, very wrong about the current…
Posted: August 31, 2018
I think it’d be a useful exercise to try to capture the most important questions in the world. Here’s an initial attempt: If we don’t have free will, how should…
Posted: July 30, 2018
This week’s topics: Air marshal surveillance, Russians hacking control systems, Google 2FA, 23andMe sharing your data, Pentagon’s DoNotBuy list, technology news, human news, discovery, notes, recommendations, and the aphorism of…
Posted: July 27, 2018
America is struggling in a way that it never has before. This is not like the last times. It’s not a recession. It’s not even a depression. It’s a catastrophe. Here’s…
Posted: July 26, 2018
These book summaries are designed as captures for what I’ve read, and aren’t necessarily great standalone resources for those who have not read the book. Their purpose is to ensure…
Posted: July 20, 2018
I recently finished Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, which was remarkably well done. I particularly loved the later chapters on science and reason, which talked about how far these have brought…
Posted: July 14, 2018
Capture The world is far better than people think it is These book summaries are designed as captures for what I’ve read, and aren’t necessarily great standalone resources for those…
Posted: July 14, 2018
I just finished Steven Pinker’s latest book, Enlightenment Now, which turned out to be fantastic. I was frustrated in the first two-thirds of the book for reasons I won’t go…
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