Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Every scientific advance is based on the work of others and so we need to know what scientific work is accurate so…
Blog Archives
Argument from authority is necessary for scientific progress.
Posted in Culture, Philosophy and ethics
Abolish Daylight Wasting Time
Updated 11.01.2019 This Sunday begins the season of Daylight Wasting Time which wastes daylight for most Americans. The median American gets out of bed a little after 6:30AM and goes to bed around 11PM according to Jawbone’s sleep sensors and…
Posted in Culture
Stuart Russell says to give up on deontologies
Stuart Russell wrote a new book about managing the coming artificial intelligence revolution called Human Compatible. He believes that the main danger of AI is not that it will become conscious and decide to maximize its own well-being at the…
Posted in Philosophy and ethics
Inequality & The Good Place
I’ve been watching the first season of The Good Place on Netflix which is a sit-com (with super-high ratings on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes) about two people who are mistakenly sent to heaven and must learn moral philosophy to be…
Posted in Philosophy and ethics
Is reading the most efficient way to consume information?
The average reader is a speed reader. Medium.com says they assume their average readers read at 275 words per minute (wpm) (or sometimes they claim 260 wpm). I averaged their estimated reading speed for nine essays and they really estimated…
Posted in Culture, Personal (not econ)
Myth, religion, and fascism
Yuval Noah Harari is the author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. The basic thesis of the book is: The truly unique trait of Sapiens is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe…
Posted in Philosophy and ethics, Public Finance
Why is extreme selfishness funny?
Here is a screenshot of a to-do list that the author undoubtedly meant as a joke, but I wonder why some people would post this kind of thing or find it funny. The first point is being spiteful to his…
Posted in Culture, Philosophy and ethics
