I am fascinated by how the ways we think about things change over time. Big things. Things like human equality, what people should be doing with their lives, etc. We used to think, as humans, that the goal was to not get eaten by stuff. Then there was some point when we thought it was to do exactly…
Archives for March 2014
Anatomy of a Perfect Life Together
My girl and I were talking the other day about getting old together. We don’t have or want to have children of our own, so it’ll just be us, and I asked her what she thought a Good Life would be. We ended up in the same place, and here’s what that looks like: We live in a…
An Introduction to Basic Income
If you’ve not heard of the concept of Basic Income, you should get familiar. It’s about to become a central topic within all modern societies. Key points The jobs are going away, and they’re not coming back. Any narrative that doesn’t convey this is either ignorant or deceitful. We keep adding people. Faster and faster. It’s accelerating. We…
Free Markets, Disruption, and Hypocrisy
So if you needed evidence that “free” markets, and lobbying, and the conservative right were a bad mix, your search has ended. Earlier this week Chris Christie moved to keep Tesla out of New Jersey, essentially because of lobbying by the car dealerships. And the same thing is true in Texas as well. Here you have two Republican…
Why I’m Angry With China
This will be a rant. I’ll clean it up later if I want to turn it into an actual essay. I’m angry with China. This is true mostly because of how they think of and treat the world. And let me just state outright that I’m talking about specific attitudes and behaviors here that I associate with China—not…
Backstage with Tool
My girl took me to see Tool for our 20th anniversary of being together. Despite Tool being my favorite band since…well, since I had a favorite band, it was my first time seeing them live. And she didn’t just get us tickets—she got the VIP package. I wasn’t overly enthused about the VIP thing, actually. In most cases…
A Dualist Theory of Gender and Equality
I was driving home today on the 101 and was struck by a thought. What if we were to think of individuals—men and women, as two different beings? So a man would be both a gender (male) and non-gender (intellect), and a woman would be the same. What I think this explains about our situation, that other models…
Personal Daemons and Customization
I’ve been thinking and writing for years now about what I call Personal Daemons. These are sets of preferences, attributes, and interests that are “broadcasted” to others everywhere you go. The key component of these daemons is that they interact constantly with other daemons that are physically near them, e.g. people, restaurants, homes, businesses, entertainment venues, etc. This…