I am, by most measures, a progressive—or a liberal—depending on who’s doing the labeling. Reproductive rights, gender equality, protection of the environment, believing that the influence of the rich and powerful is more dangerous to human happiness than government waste, believing that its the responsibility of the well-off to help the poor, etc. Down the line, I’m mostly…
In Search of True Female Equality
The struggle for female equality suffers from a fundamental problem: it quibbles over the appearance of a building that has a rotten foundation. Many of the “core issues” in women’s rights today—at least in the west—are things like the number of women in science and technology fields, equal pay for equal work, and the fight against sexualization of…
Do Women Make Better Leaders?
I think women may turn out to be better leaders than men. I’ve been reading a lot about personality measurement, and the science has moved forward significantly since the discovery of the Big 5 (6 if you include general intelligence). The science-backed traits are: Intelligence Conscientiousness Openness Agreeableness Stability Extroversion Women score higher than men in conscientiousness and…
It’s Time for a Free Press National Holiday
We have holidays for all manner of things. Staplers, kittens, dead presidents—whatever. I don’t keep track. I propose we create a new one for free speech, where every year on January 7th, the country’s media organizations, newspapers, bloggers—and anyone else who wants to participate—comes together to post content that would-be-banners object to. When Charlie Hebdo was hit there…
Our Founding Fathers Didn’t Go to Trade School
Like Reagan, the GOP is increasingly going after liberal education as superfluous and artsy. They want to make education all about preparation for work, and this is precisely the short-term, profit-oriented thinking that has the United States in its current position. Let me state this plainly: Education without the liberal arts is called trade school. Trade schools are…
Life Through the Lens of Evolutionary Psychology
There are many lenses with which to look at the world—many ways to explain why it is the way it is. You can see the world as a series of economic incentives, and map how they interact One might see it as a constant drive to power and advancement, where the strong perpetually dominates the weak Or perhaps…
The Reason Many Men Are Attracted to Unintelligent Women
When I see a social force I tend to wonder what the cause is. One such force is men being attracted to less intelligent women. Behind closed doors it’s quite accepted that many/most men do not like a woman who’s what’s called “too smart”. There’s plenty of conventional wisdom out there on the matter, much of which is…
Are More Women in STEM in Gender-equal Countries?
I had a thought about gender equality in tech this morning. It’s my understanding that there are statistics of varying quality for the following two things: Gender equality by country Percentages of women in STEM fields by country And since the prevailing theory is that women are under-represented in STEM due to negative and unnatural forces—a point I…
My Current View on Prostitution
I just read an article about how Sweden has all but eliminated prostitution within its borders. I don’t think much about prostitution, but Sweden’s method of accomplishing this feat has forced me to evaluate my position on it. The way they did it was elegant and fascinating: they made it illegal to purchase prostitution, but decriminalized being a…
Producers vs. Nurturers
It may be that the most fundamental distinction in how humans spend their life on Earth may reduce to whether they are primarily producers or primarily nurturers. Producers in this context are those who strive to mark the world with their presence. They choose one craft or many and place into that craft the force of their essence.…
Mixing Profit and Kindness
Perhaps one of the most fundamental conflicts in society is the mixture of profit seeking with human kindness. I was struck the other day with an unbelievable thought: it’s virtually impossible for non-rich people to become doctors in the United States. Think about that. Think about how many people in our country have a genuine and powerful desire…
American Doctors Upset They’re No Longer Rockstars
In recent years I’ve seen both many physicians complaining that their jobs aren’t what they used to be. They blame Obamacare. They blame high taxes. They blame all sorts of progressive policies. Here’s my summary of the chorus: I went to medical school to be revered in society. I went to have the most respect of anybody. The…
Corporations > Workers
A new survey from human-resources services firm Aon Hewitt found that companies are spending a record share of their payroll on performance-based bonuses, signaling a shift away from longer-term salary increases.via Bonuses Are the New Raises – At Work – WSJ. Contractors are the new employees, and bonuses are the new raises. Both are part of a work…
The Poisonous Underside of the Sharing Economy
It’s easy to celebrate the new (sharing, or peer) economy that’s emerging from companies like Uber, TaskRabbit, etc. Workers appear to have all sorts of freedom. They can decide when to work, when not to, which jobs to take, and which to pass on. Sounds brilliant, but there are thorns on that rosebush. The most prickly of the…
Humans Leave Earth as Computers
I think humans will leave earth as computers. What does that mean? People have wondered about immortality for centuries. It’s not as nebulous or unattainable as people imagine. It’s just that the form it will likely come in may be unsatisfactory to those living now. Humans will become immortal by changing the definition of humanity. It starts and…
The Perfect Analogy For Women Constantly Being Hit On
From Reddit: Take a moment and imagine that you and a bunch of your friends are being invited to a party. They’re mostly nice dudes and they’re offering you some free food, but every time you go, someone always ends up asking if you want to help them move their furniture. Now you don’t hate moving furniture, in…
The Open Source (Political) Revolution
Open source everything, in this context, offers us the chance to build on what we’ve learned through industrialisation, to learn from our mistakes, and catalyse the re-opening of the commons, in the process breaking the grip of defunct power structures and enabling the possibility of prosperity for all. ~ Robert David Steele This article is phenomenal. This guy…
Corporations Control Our Free Time
I’ve only been back at work for a few days, but already I’m noticing that the more wholesome activities are quickly dropping out of my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditating, and extra writing. The one conspicuous similarity between these activities is that they cost little or no money, but they take time. ~ FilmsForAction This is a brilliant…
CNN Using Tabloid Tactics
Wow. Yeah, talking about what can give you cancer should get someone to click on it. The use of caps for THIS was a nice touch, too. It’s quite sad when one of the country’s main sources of news is becoming little more than a linkbait generator. This is yet another sign that when it comes to a…
The Rise of the Servant Class
I think we’re about to see the creation of a servant class in the United States. With increasing incoming inequality, and a decreasing number of jobs to be had (that can’t be done by computers or robots), there will be a massive pool of people at the bottom that have little to offer the market. Except helping those…
How the U.S. Military Manufactures Consent Using Movies
Have you noticed the number of movies over the last five years that are overwhelmingly pro-military? They all kind of feel the same. Maybe it’s the Navy taking out aliens in the ocean, or the Air Force sparring with Iron Man, or the Army in Godzilla. But the feel is nearly identical.
Minorities Aren’t Reading
The reading scores among 17-year-olds, however, remained relatively unchanged since the 1970s.About 46 percent of white children are considered “proficient” in reading, compared with 18 percent of black children and 20 percent of Hispanic kids. ~ Reuters
Measuring the Quality of a Culture
I think a lot about the various influences that interact to create the future of humanity. Culture is one of the most powerful of these, as it determines how we view others, how we raise our children, and what we value in our lives. I believe it to be both possible and necessary to understand what affects various…
Anatomy of the Corporate Soldier
I’ve been frustrated lately with our education system. It’s not a new idea, but it seems increasingly obvious that our high schools and universities are becoming corporate employee farms instead of learning institutions.
The Asshole and the Mediocre
It struck me recently that those who accomplished the most throughout history are pretty bad people by today’s standards. And even more disturbing, it may continue that way. Who gets respect in this world, is what I’m asking. Great Britain (no description needed) Merica (we’ve done some pretty abhorrent shit) China France Spain Etc. Basically, if you’re any…
The Post-work Epoch
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…
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…
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…
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…
Why We Have Abysmal Broadband in the U.S.
What bothers me about the U.S. broadband situation isn’t how bad it is, but that many people seem to think the reason is a mystery. Other advanced nations are providing tens, hundreds, and even gigabits of bandwidth to their citizens, while we wallow in the relative modem-ages. People enjoy saying it’s the size of the country that matters,…
The Poor Have More Meaning in Their Lives
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 in life. (source) This fails to surprise me. Here’s my explanation: The poor live within an insulated bubble of meaning and ignorance, and you lose both when that…
Controlling the Slide of Hacker News
There’s a natural cycle to niche blogs that make it big. They start out niche, they attract more users, and the topics slowly migrate to the more general. Then, sometime in the future, it becomes a repository of pet-related animated gifs. Hacker News isn’t at the final stage yet, but I think it’s firmly left its original roots…
5 Reasons to Expect Many More Public Shootings
There are five interconnected reasons that you should expect the number of public shootings to rise like a meteor doesn’t.
The Dating Power Flip at Age 30
Talking to many women like her, it’s intriguing how many look back on past relationships where they let good men get away because they weren’t ready. American journalist Kate Bolick wrote recently in The Atlantic about breaking off her three-year relationship with a man she described as ”intelligent, good-looking, loyal and kind”. She acknowledged ”there was no good…
Work and Meaning
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 wrote before in Parent to Child Propagation of False Meaning, I am skeptical of most justifications for parenthood.
A One Minute Summary of Obamacare
Most people are either for or against Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) without knowing much about what it is. Let’s solve that in 1 minute.
I Just Saw a 90 Minute Navy Commercial Starring Tom Hanks
I thought Tom Hanks was doing pretty well with the movie career, but evidently he decided to get into commercials. Seriously, though, as someone who used to be an adolescent boy, I know the draw of what’s being done with these movies that highlight the military. It’s the biggest conspiracy that I know of that isn’t actually a…
Skills of the Future
I enjoy thinking about what the future will require from humans in terms of skills. With computers taking more and more from us, and humans having fewer and fewer jobs (just because so much will be automated), the question is simple: What jobs will still be dominated by humans vs. computers? It really does put some focus on…
Step Zero in the Evolution of Humanity
I strongly believe that the maturity of humans starts with understanding three main things: We are floating around in a galaxy of 100 billion suns, which is in a universe of 100 billion galaxies We are a product of evolution, and we are animals sharing much in common with the others here We do not have (absolute) free…
The School Problem is a Parenting Problem
On a major project, that was something like 5-10% of their grade, they could get every question wrong, but if they hit all the right bullet points they could still get a 80%. They could get a B without knowing any of the content….and many still failed. While it can be hard to tell socioeconomic status by looking…
The Irony of Opposing Government Programs
Many are vehemently opposed to government social programs, with supposedly good reasons. They complain about inefficiency, which I can get behind as well, but most critically they claim that it’s a moral offense to ask one person to pay for services that go to someone else. It’s sad to see good people take such a stance, but apart…
Wuffie and Wireless Power
In Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory Doctorow wrote about the concept of Whuffie, which is basically a universal reputation currency. Everywhere one goes, they’re displaying their wuffie on them, and others are free to view it. The idea (or part of it at least) is that knowing your treatment by others will be based on…
Future Trends
Here are some predictions that I think may be useful as seeding for thought on the potential states of the future: The jobs are going away. In the future people will be paid to simply not be violent. They’ll receive sustenance and entertainment credits. Nano-technology will become the future of warfare. You’ll have a vast marketplace for both…
A Simple Answer to the Question of Whether Guns Make Us More or Less Safe
As expected, gun advocates believe guns make us more safe, and those against guns think they make us less so. Interestingly, both groups seem to have data to support their positions. I’ll say first of all that there isn’t an overwhelming amount of quality on the topic data because the NRA has lobbied against gun research, but that’s…
The Connection Between Superman, The Matrix, and Jesus
I’m fairly stupid for Superman. Always have been. And when Matrix came out I was absolutely enthralled. One thing that’s fascinated me since The Matrix was how many ways it ties in with Superman, and, oddly, how much they both tie in with Jesus. Here are a few connections that I know of, and hopefully readers will have…
Why It’s Dangerous To Call Whistleblowers Heroes
Exposing blatant criminal activity is generally a good thing. This is especially true when it’s being financed by, and wielded against, the same group–e.g., the American people. The Manning and Snowden cases are dissimilar in a number of ways, but in both situations they are being labeled both heroes and traitors. Neither label is good, while both probably…
Predictions and Inevitabilities
This will be in a highly unedited format. Please pardon the writing. Paid to Be Good Citizens The jobs are going, and they’re not coming back. Right now they’re going overseas, but the reality is that they’re going away permanently. Machines are taking them. Computers are taking them. Technology is taking them. Essentially, technology makes it so fewer…
Big Oil and Science Fiction
There’s a concept in good science fiction whereby viewers are asked to accept one main fiction as truth, and most other things in the work should then be credible. For example, in a story about time travel, we should only be asked to accept the mechanism by which time travel is possible, and the rest of the story…
American Poverty
I read a nearly unbelievable statistic today: Average income for the bottom 75% of households is $39,000. And yet Republicans want to remove overtime. They fight against increasing the minimum wage. And now they’re trying to remove food stamp support. I get the idea of wanting to encourage welfare queen types to work rather than suck off the…
On Hugs vs. Handshakes for Female Work Associates
When I run into a male acquaintance, I know exactly how to greet him: shake his hand. Doesn’t matter how long we’ve known each other. I even shake my dad’s hand.But with females, I feel like I’m trapped between two walls of a deep-space garbage compactor. On the first meeting, we shake hands. Easy. But the next time…