These are short exoteric essays on flaws in the "big" ideas running our lives.
Exoteric is the opposite of esoteric, aimed at many, not few.
In few words (typically under 500) they aim to sow conversation seeds.
Sometimes incomplete, they provide parts you can build with (good thinking is cothinking).
Transdisciplinary thinking tools and unusual ingredients are needed...
How To Avoid Your Own Brain's Biases: Use heterospective. Big Think
Thinking, like seeing, has built-in blind spots. An old parable and Husserl’s matchbox can illuminate these geometric, biological, and cognitive limits. We can't evade their unseen dangers unaided
Changing Minds Isn't Like Changing Light Bulbs: Big Think
Changing minds is hard because they're usually not empty....Division of mental labor is as useful as any other kind. Most make neither their own shoes, nor much of what’s in their own minds. We choose among shoes and thought patterns built by others.
Nerdier News And Plato's Math Error: Big Think
The nerdier news must recall what math and the data can't do. Tools, honed in the “olicausal sciences” (oli = few), aren't always suited to the polycausal complexities journalism aims to handle. Much remains that can't be captured in the numbers. Like every one of these sentences...
The Poetics of Data: Big Think
Science and poetry both depend on metaphor. Science typically uses at least two. The first is usually Pythagoras’s astonishingly fruitful, but also limiting, “all things are numbers.” The second shapes what “the data” is taken to mean. Data can only be as good as its underlying metaphors.
The Logical Limits of Liberty & Needism: Big Think
Your needs can’t all be as easily fenced off as land. But that map-like model lurks behind unbalanced ideas about private and public interests. The “public good” is both bedrock and climate to all private interests. No logic of liberty should ignore their inalienable interdependence.
Markets & Curing Spontaneous Disorders: Big Think
Is the “invisible hand” always benign? Or can it be bad? Free-market fans love the idea that “spontaneous order” emerges from local decisions. But what prevents “spontaneous disorder”? Does prudence reliably trump profit? Disorderly superbug and climate change situations say no.
Kahneman's Mind-Clarifying Strangers: System 1 & System 2: Big Think
Feeling is a form of thinking. Both are ways we process information, but feeling is faster. That’s the crux of Daniel Kahneman’s mind-clarifying work. It won a psychologist an economics Nobel. And strange labels helped.
What "War on Reason"? Kahneman's Truce: Big Think
Are reason and emotion sworn enemies? Many expert reasoners feel they are. But these supposed opposites overlap, emotions have logic and reason often blunders. Plato’s chariot and the anti-Freud can clarify.
Data vs. Stories: Incalculable Consequences: Big Think
"Be suspicious of stories," warns economist Tyler Cowen. Stories lower “your IQ by 10 points or more,” by seducing you into simplistic “good vs. evil” thinking.” Life is too messy to “filter” through the limited plots of stories, so Cowen relies on data and “a matrix of computation."
But wait, isn’t economics full of simplifying, filtering stories?
Human Brain = "Sexually Selected Ornament": Big Think
Love might be blind, but she is rarely deaf: Language and love have always been intimately entangled. Indeed Darwin believed love was one of the main reasons we have language and why it's so witty and ornamental.
The 1% and Good Rich vs Bad Rich: Big Think
Much talk about “the 1%” ignores three key issues. First, not all inequality is equally bad. Second, the rich are mostly as replaceable as you and me. Third, if the rich succeed because they’re strong, surely they’re strong enough not to need special treatment.
Markets, Unnatural Laws and Choices: Big Think
We’re letting unnatural laws unduly influence us. A fuss about “simple economics” can remind us that markets aren’t like gravity, and their so-called laws are neither laws of nature nor commandments carved in stone. Ask yourself: should markets fit our needs, or should we fit theirs?
Moral Math And Team Logic: Big Think
Morality has a certain math-like and logical rightness. Old language and loose thinking-tools hide that morals are vital social rules, and that some objectively work better. We’re born with tunable and extendable social-rule processors, just like our language-rule processors.
What If The Price Was Never Right?: Big Think
Prices are the magic in free-market stories. But what if prices were never right? Then free markets wouldn’t work as their fans claim. The ‘markets in everything’ crowd don’t tackle the following three issues well. First, the “invisible hand” can’t benignly solve every problem, rather it creates ills that need nonmarket cures. Second, self-interest often obstructs voluntary solutions. Third, self-interested winners often distort free markets.
The Science of Martin Luther King & Justice: Big Think
The science behind two Dr. Martin Luther King quotes deserves more attention.
One is famous: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
The other should be more widely known: “Darwin was no Darwinian.”
Both are important, especially when combined, because, to paraphrase King:
The arc of our evolution has long bent towards justice.
Darwin's Wedge & Dumb Competition: Big Think
“Competition creates efficiency,” is preached as if it were a law of nature. But nature itself teaches a different lesson. Biological competition can create foolish costs, and collective doom. “Darwin’s Wedge” shows why and reminds us of the point of being human
Modeling The Muddling Masses: The Newton vs Darwin Pattern: Big Think
Few maximize. Most muddle. Yet economists mainly model the happy few. The math is easier, but unrepresentative. Using less math and more logic, we can model the muddling masses. Reality’s richer patterns require better metaphors and methods. And grasping how Newton and Darwin differ.
Our Unfaithful Cardinals of Capitalism: Big Think
What capitalists and lawmakers can learn from Catholic errors: However troubling economic inequality is, naked ethical inequality can be worse. Unequal treatment before the “law,” especially of over-indulged elites, is unfair and risks revolt. History and some little played Shakespeare shows why.
Beware The One Trick Hedgehog: Big Think
The difference between the Newton Pattern and the Darwin Pattern can improve your expertise in expert picking. Beware the man of a single book, or model. In many contexts there is not (known) One True Theory. So it pays to diversify your expert portfolio.
How Market Lovers Commit The Fallacy of Composition: Big Think
The pop logic of free markets is fatally flawed. And many professional market lovers are so besotted, they’re blind to their beloved’s faults. Worse, many hate what their love needs to be healthy. Seen clearly, “invisible hand” logic demands this love-hate be reconciled. Markets, without perfect prices, are like doctors whose tests are inaccurate. They can’t decide what’s best.
Sloppy Science Jargon Gets Nobel: Big Think
We aren’t as well behaved as atoms. And markets aren’t like gravity. That makes Economics harder than Physics....
Pop-physics doesn’t change how nature works. But pop-economics shapes our democracy. And influences the laws within which we allow “market forces” to operate.
"Rational" is Now Our Most Dangerous Jargon Virus: Scientific American
Alarmingly, the econo-rational can oppose the human-rational. Econo-rationality creates the supposedly inevitable tragedy of the commons, but Elinor Olstrom has shown how human-rationality can avoid it by simple coordination. Econo-rationality condones maximizing self-interest by exploiting ‘the commons.’
Is Breaking Bad Darwinian?: Scientific American
“Darwin was no Darwinian.” Martin Luther King Jr said that before me. He was correct historically, scientifically, and morally. It’s a bad break for Darwin, and us, that his name is used to distort his ideas. Particularly as applied to humans. And TV shows.
Words Are Thinking Tools: Praxotypes & Cognotypes: Scientific American
Emily Dickinson declared, “The Brain—is wider than the Sky.” Similarly, our praxotypes are wider than our biology. And our sky-containing skulls contain opinions that exert forces on our physiology, scripting its reactions.
Non-Grapefruit and Fruitful Non-Science: Scientific American
Reason is larger than science. Not all non-science is nonsense, some is very reliable. And much remains unscience-able
Food For Rethinking Markets: Scientific American
No perfect rationality is needed to see that markets often don’t work as advertised. But without perfect rationality, and other utopian conditions, the math of market theory doesn’t work. Businesses often ignore such unrealistic theorizing. So should we.
Maxims Are Fitter Than Maximization: Scientific American
Maxims matter more than maximization. Much in life isn’t quantifiable, much less numerically maximizable. Words, logic, images, and patterns all can express more than numbers can. We need more than numbers and mathematics in our thinking tool kits.
Is Economics More Like History Than Physics?:Scientific American
Is economics like physics, or more like history? Steven Pinker says, “No sane thinker would try to explain World War I in the language of physics.” Yet some economists aim close to such craziness.
Economics vs Fiction on Human Nature: Scientific American
Economics and fiction both seek to describe and explain our behavior. Measured against what makes fiction feel realistic, the tales of mainstream economists aren’t believable. Their mono-motivated cartoon characters don’t ring true, matching neither experience, nor experiment.
Evolutionary Economics And Darwin’s Wedge: Scientific American
Economics is in our nature. But not the narrowly self-interested kind. We evolved to survive collaboratively. Models of us that exclude our interdependence are fatally flawed. “Darwin’s wedge” can provide fitter models.
Greek Myths About Human Origins And Foresight: Scientific American
We are ill-fated idiots. That’s what some popular and supposedly scientific ideas suggest. The ancient Greek meaning of idiot, along with their myths, can help us avert a modern tragedy of reason. Somehow a sub-natural view of rationality ignores evolutions great gifts to us: our capacities for forethought and cooperation.
Science’s Mobile Army of Metaphors: Scientific American
Metaphors are our shortest stories. They are economical explanations that shape our understanding (which is itself a “mobile army of metaphors”). But badly mixed metaphors from physics and biology animate economics, creating “confusion’s masterpiece.” Another Shakespearean phrase, “invisible hand,” is partially to blame.
Revolutionizing Economics by Evolutionizing it: Scientific American
Our survival foreseeably requires adapting the assumptions, methods, and goals of economics to better fit empirically observed humans.
Every Day Is Interdependence Day: Scientific American
We see with our ideas. That idea can open our eyes to key questions about modeling human nature. Varying blues and illusions illuminate a weird sampling error at the heart of a heartless economic worldview. And suggest a fix.
Moral Sciences Are Back: Golden Punishments: Scientific American
Natural laws of ethics, envisioned early in the Enlightenment, can now be studied objectively and scientifically.
Shakespeare Knew Better Than Economists What Rational Really Means: Scientific American
The label “rational” is becoming illogical. Economists, even the better behavioral kind, use it particularly badly. That great scholar of human nature, Shakespeare, knew better. We evolved to be relationally rational.
“Selfish” Genes That Don’t Cooperate Don’t Survive: Scientific American
There are evolutionary limits to selfishness. Nature dooms all that damages what it depends on. The science and pop-science of selfishness needs an upgrade
Happiness Should Be a Verb: Scientific American
Flourishing should be the new happiness. What most pursue now ignores old wisdom and the logic of our biology. A verb capturing the required recurring effort is better than a noun describing the desired static state—by nature, not a thing we can be or get but that we do. It is perhaps better harvested than pursued.
Game Theory And Moral Math: Scientific American
Game theory is to the behavioral universe what the telescope was to Galileo, or calculus to Newton. It can help us to the moral math. Certain sets of social rules are more productive.
Justice Is in Our Nature: Scientific American
Social contracts are written into our biology. As is the justice they need. The arc of our evolution has long bent towards the justice of “laws” fittest for team survival. We bred ourselves, by artificial selection, to internalize and feel strongly about social rules.
Colonoscopies Clarify Inner Workings of Minds: Scientific American
Memories are story shaped. As are understandings. To remember, or make sense of, a thing is to have a story about it. Colonoscopies and correcting cathartic errors can probe the inner workings of these stored stories.
The Cognitive Science of Star Trek: Scientific American
Star Trek needs more advanced cognitive science. The research of Kahneman can augment one of its central philosophical themes. Emotions are fast thinking. Intuitions are recognition.
It Is In Our Nature To Fit Nature To Us: Evolution is a Two Way Street: Scientific American.
It is in our nature to fit nature to us. We are best at it, but other species do it. A better framework for evolution is needed. An obvious but overlooked factor contradicts the conventional view of evolution:
What Rational Really Means: Scientific American
The word rational is widely misused. Scientists often apply it unnaturally, in ways that conflict with our biology.
Tools Have Changed Our Genes For Millions of Years: Scientific American.
It is in our nature to need tools. For more than a million years we've not been able to live without them.
Kahneman’s Clarity: Using Mysterious Coinage in Science: Scientific American
Feeling is a form of thinking. Mysterious coinages helped make clear our "theory induced blindness."
It Is In Our Nature To Need Stories: Scientific American
We are adapted to physiologically interact with stories. They configure our biology, and how we feel, in ways long essential for our survival.
Plato’s Pastry & Rescuing Science from Bentham’s Bucket Error: Scientific American
We need a new happiness. The one most people use now is confusing even our smartest scientists.
It Is In Our Nature to Need Rules: Scientific American
Chimps are more "rational." But this limits them in ways we wisely avoid.
Second Natures Are in our First Nature: Scientific American
We are habit-forming and habit-farming animals
Self-Deficient by Nature: Biology Defying Individualism: Scientific American
It is in our nature to be self-deficient, initially, chronically and inalienably.
The Loose Language and Lax Logic of Libertarians: Huffington Post
The core claim of libertarians doesn't hold up empirically or epidemiologically.
Poetry and Calculation in Science: Scientific American
In science, as in life, we see with our ideas. We need more than just mathematical ways of seeing. E.O.Wilson says scientists should "think like poets and work like accountants."
The Better Models of Our Nature: Scientific American
Why popular evolutionary psychology is irresistibly wrong.
How We Evolved to Be Moral: Wilson Quaterly
Review of Moral Origins by Chris Boehm
It is in our nature to need social rules. They make us human and more productive.
Reasoning Against The Role of Reason: Wilson Quarterly
Review of Social Animal by David Brooks
Old dualisms must now duel with data: it's clear reasons role in our lives is limited
Love Might Be Blind, but She Is Rarely Deaf: Huffington Post
Love leads us to use language to advertise our impressive brains, and our access to expensive resources like education and leisure time.
We The People Forget: Huffington Post
We need more we-ness in our lives. Or the nations politics won't work.
The Rational History of the Cardinal Virtues: Huffington Post
Cardinal virtues did not come from cardinals.
History of Political Idiots: Huffington Post
Being "political" now often means behaving like an idiot. The history of those words can help us stop this madness.
Whiny Tiny-Minded Titans & Loophole Logic: Huffington Post
OK titans, forget the fabled free lunch, there's no such thing as a free infrastructure either.
Wealthy Should Give Thanks for Their Welfare Benefits: Huffington Post
How the wealthy benefit from welfare: we subsidizing their low cost employees.
Competition in Nature Tell Us Markets Shouldn't Be as Dumb as Trees? Scientific American
Competition in nature frequently creates foolish costs and undesirable outcomes. Same goes for markets, which is why we need guided competition.
Good Rich, Bad Rich: Huffington Post
The rich are mostly as replaceable as you or I.
Prehistoric Politics & Today's Teams & Taxes: Huffington Post
Prehistoric politics can teach us how to prevent present-day errors. Human survival has been a team sport for 10,000 generations. It still is.
Interview with Book Slut
On surreptitious science and why we're not rational. Also joining "humor as a necessary counterweight to the hegemony of reason."
I Am A Language Addict: The National Post Canada
I’m a language addict. I’m not pulling your leg. I seek the thrill of a novel turn of phrase, a surprising sentence or a marvelously unexpected meaning. The resulting high can be one of life’s most necessary pleasures. But it’s not just me. We are all addicted, all dependent, to some degree. It’s our most ubiquitous mind altering drug
The Linguistic Peacock-Tails of Love: The Guardian
The excesses of romantic language derive from the same evolutionary pressures that produces peacock tails.
The idiotic joys of idioms: The Guardian
Idioms can show how our minds aren't as rational as we'd like to think.
Exoteric is the opposite of esoteric, aimed at many, not few.
In few words (typically under 500) they aim to sow conversation seeds.
Sometimes incomplete, they provide parts you can build with (good thinking is cothinking).
Transdisciplinary thinking tools and unusual ingredients are needed...
How To Avoid Your Own Brain's Biases: Use heterospective. Big Think
Thinking, like seeing, has built-in blind spots. An old parable and Husserl’s matchbox can illuminate these geometric, biological, and cognitive limits. We can't evade their unseen dangers unaided
Changing Minds Isn't Like Changing Light Bulbs: Big Think
Changing minds is hard because they're usually not empty....Division of mental labor is as useful as any other kind. Most make neither their own shoes, nor much of what’s in their own minds. We choose among shoes and thought patterns built by others.
Nerdier News And Plato's Math Error: Big Think
The nerdier news must recall what math and the data can't do. Tools, honed in the “olicausal sciences” (oli = few), aren't always suited to the polycausal complexities journalism aims to handle. Much remains that can't be captured in the numbers. Like every one of these sentences...
The Poetics of Data: Big Think
Science and poetry both depend on metaphor. Science typically uses at least two. The first is usually Pythagoras’s astonishingly fruitful, but also limiting, “all things are numbers.” The second shapes what “the data” is taken to mean. Data can only be as good as its underlying metaphors.
The Logical Limits of Liberty & Needism: Big Think
Your needs can’t all be as easily fenced off as land. But that map-like model lurks behind unbalanced ideas about private and public interests. The “public good” is both bedrock and climate to all private interests. No logic of liberty should ignore their inalienable interdependence.
Markets & Curing Spontaneous Disorders: Big Think
Is the “invisible hand” always benign? Or can it be bad? Free-market fans love the idea that “spontaneous order” emerges from local decisions. But what prevents “spontaneous disorder”? Does prudence reliably trump profit? Disorderly superbug and climate change situations say no.
Kahneman's Mind-Clarifying Strangers: System 1 & System 2: Big Think
Feeling is a form of thinking. Both are ways we process information, but feeling is faster. That’s the crux of Daniel Kahneman’s mind-clarifying work. It won a psychologist an economics Nobel. And strange labels helped.
What "War on Reason"? Kahneman's Truce: Big Think
Are reason and emotion sworn enemies? Many expert reasoners feel they are. But these supposed opposites overlap, emotions have logic and reason often blunders. Plato’s chariot and the anti-Freud can clarify.
Data vs. Stories: Incalculable Consequences: Big Think
"Be suspicious of stories," warns economist Tyler Cowen. Stories lower “your IQ by 10 points or more,” by seducing you into simplistic “good vs. evil” thinking.” Life is too messy to “filter” through the limited plots of stories, so Cowen relies on data and “a matrix of computation."
But wait, isn’t economics full of simplifying, filtering stories?
Human Brain = "Sexually Selected Ornament": Big Think
Love might be blind, but she is rarely deaf: Language and love have always been intimately entangled. Indeed Darwin believed love was one of the main reasons we have language and why it's so witty and ornamental.
The 1% and Good Rich vs Bad Rich: Big Think
Much talk about “the 1%” ignores three key issues. First, not all inequality is equally bad. Second, the rich are mostly as replaceable as you and me. Third, if the rich succeed because they’re strong, surely they’re strong enough not to need special treatment.
Markets, Unnatural Laws and Choices: Big Think
We’re letting unnatural laws unduly influence us. A fuss about “simple economics” can remind us that markets aren’t like gravity, and their so-called laws are neither laws of nature nor commandments carved in stone. Ask yourself: should markets fit our needs, or should we fit theirs?
Moral Math And Team Logic: Big Think
Morality has a certain math-like and logical rightness. Old language and loose thinking-tools hide that morals are vital social rules, and that some objectively work better. We’re born with tunable and extendable social-rule processors, just like our language-rule processors.
What If The Price Was Never Right?: Big Think
Prices are the magic in free-market stories. But what if prices were never right? Then free markets wouldn’t work as their fans claim. The ‘markets in everything’ crowd don’t tackle the following three issues well. First, the “invisible hand” can’t benignly solve every problem, rather it creates ills that need nonmarket cures. Second, self-interest often obstructs voluntary solutions. Third, self-interested winners often distort free markets.
The Science of Martin Luther King & Justice: Big Think
The science behind two Dr. Martin Luther King quotes deserves more attention.
One is famous: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
The other should be more widely known: “Darwin was no Darwinian.”
Both are important, especially when combined, because, to paraphrase King:
The arc of our evolution has long bent towards justice.
Darwin's Wedge & Dumb Competition: Big Think
“Competition creates efficiency,” is preached as if it were a law of nature. But nature itself teaches a different lesson. Biological competition can create foolish costs, and collective doom. “Darwin’s Wedge” shows why and reminds us of the point of being human
Modeling The Muddling Masses: The Newton vs Darwin Pattern: Big Think
Few maximize. Most muddle. Yet economists mainly model the happy few. The math is easier, but unrepresentative. Using less math and more logic, we can model the muddling masses. Reality’s richer patterns require better metaphors and methods. And grasping how Newton and Darwin differ.
Our Unfaithful Cardinals of Capitalism: Big Think
What capitalists and lawmakers can learn from Catholic errors: However troubling economic inequality is, naked ethical inequality can be worse. Unequal treatment before the “law,” especially of over-indulged elites, is unfair and risks revolt. History and some little played Shakespeare shows why.
Beware The One Trick Hedgehog: Big Think
The difference between the Newton Pattern and the Darwin Pattern can improve your expertise in expert picking. Beware the man of a single book, or model. In many contexts there is not (known) One True Theory. So it pays to diversify your expert portfolio.
How Market Lovers Commit The Fallacy of Composition: Big Think
The pop logic of free markets is fatally flawed. And many professional market lovers are so besotted, they’re blind to their beloved’s faults. Worse, many hate what their love needs to be healthy. Seen clearly, “invisible hand” logic demands this love-hate be reconciled. Markets, without perfect prices, are like doctors whose tests are inaccurate. They can’t decide what’s best.
Sloppy Science Jargon Gets Nobel: Big Think
We aren’t as well behaved as atoms. And markets aren’t like gravity. That makes Economics harder than Physics....
Pop-physics doesn’t change how nature works. But pop-economics shapes our democracy. And influences the laws within which we allow “market forces” to operate.
"Rational" is Now Our Most Dangerous Jargon Virus: Scientific American
Alarmingly, the econo-rational can oppose the human-rational. Econo-rationality creates the supposedly inevitable tragedy of the commons, but Elinor Olstrom has shown how human-rationality can avoid it by simple coordination. Econo-rationality condones maximizing self-interest by exploiting ‘the commons.’
Is Breaking Bad Darwinian?: Scientific American
“Darwin was no Darwinian.” Martin Luther King Jr said that before me. He was correct historically, scientifically, and morally. It’s a bad break for Darwin, and us, that his name is used to distort his ideas. Particularly as applied to humans. And TV shows.
Words Are Thinking Tools: Praxotypes & Cognotypes: Scientific American
Emily Dickinson declared, “The Brain—is wider than the Sky.” Similarly, our praxotypes are wider than our biology. And our sky-containing skulls contain opinions that exert forces on our physiology, scripting its reactions.
Non-Grapefruit and Fruitful Non-Science: Scientific American
Reason is larger than science. Not all non-science is nonsense, some is very reliable. And much remains unscience-able
Food For Rethinking Markets: Scientific American
No perfect rationality is needed to see that markets often don’t work as advertised. But without perfect rationality, and other utopian conditions, the math of market theory doesn’t work. Businesses often ignore such unrealistic theorizing. So should we.
Maxims Are Fitter Than Maximization: Scientific American
Maxims matter more than maximization. Much in life isn’t quantifiable, much less numerically maximizable. Words, logic, images, and patterns all can express more than numbers can. We need more than numbers and mathematics in our thinking tool kits.
Is Economics More Like History Than Physics?:Scientific American
Is economics like physics, or more like history? Steven Pinker says, “No sane thinker would try to explain World War I in the language of physics.” Yet some economists aim close to such craziness.
Economics vs Fiction on Human Nature: Scientific American
Economics and fiction both seek to describe and explain our behavior. Measured against what makes fiction feel realistic, the tales of mainstream economists aren’t believable. Their mono-motivated cartoon characters don’t ring true, matching neither experience, nor experiment.
Evolutionary Economics And Darwin’s Wedge: Scientific American
Economics is in our nature. But not the narrowly self-interested kind. We evolved to survive collaboratively. Models of us that exclude our interdependence are fatally flawed. “Darwin’s wedge” can provide fitter models.
Greek Myths About Human Origins And Foresight: Scientific American
We are ill-fated idiots. That’s what some popular and supposedly scientific ideas suggest. The ancient Greek meaning of idiot, along with their myths, can help us avert a modern tragedy of reason. Somehow a sub-natural view of rationality ignores evolutions great gifts to us: our capacities for forethought and cooperation.
Science’s Mobile Army of Metaphors: Scientific American
Metaphors are our shortest stories. They are economical explanations that shape our understanding (which is itself a “mobile army of metaphors”). But badly mixed metaphors from physics and biology animate economics, creating “confusion’s masterpiece.” Another Shakespearean phrase, “invisible hand,” is partially to blame.
Revolutionizing Economics by Evolutionizing it: Scientific American
Our survival foreseeably requires adapting the assumptions, methods, and goals of economics to better fit empirically observed humans.
Every Day Is Interdependence Day: Scientific American
We see with our ideas. That idea can open our eyes to key questions about modeling human nature. Varying blues and illusions illuminate a weird sampling error at the heart of a heartless economic worldview. And suggest a fix.
Moral Sciences Are Back: Golden Punishments: Scientific American
Natural laws of ethics, envisioned early in the Enlightenment, can now be studied objectively and scientifically.
Shakespeare Knew Better Than Economists What Rational Really Means: Scientific American
The label “rational” is becoming illogical. Economists, even the better behavioral kind, use it particularly badly. That great scholar of human nature, Shakespeare, knew better. We evolved to be relationally rational.
“Selfish” Genes That Don’t Cooperate Don’t Survive: Scientific American
There are evolutionary limits to selfishness. Nature dooms all that damages what it depends on. The science and pop-science of selfishness needs an upgrade
Happiness Should Be a Verb: Scientific American
Flourishing should be the new happiness. What most pursue now ignores old wisdom and the logic of our biology. A verb capturing the required recurring effort is better than a noun describing the desired static state—by nature, not a thing we can be or get but that we do. It is perhaps better harvested than pursued.
Game Theory And Moral Math: Scientific American
Game theory is to the behavioral universe what the telescope was to Galileo, or calculus to Newton. It can help us to the moral math. Certain sets of social rules are more productive.
Justice Is in Our Nature: Scientific American
Social contracts are written into our biology. As is the justice they need. The arc of our evolution has long bent towards the justice of “laws” fittest for team survival. We bred ourselves, by artificial selection, to internalize and feel strongly about social rules.
Colonoscopies Clarify Inner Workings of Minds: Scientific American
Memories are story shaped. As are understandings. To remember, or make sense of, a thing is to have a story about it. Colonoscopies and correcting cathartic errors can probe the inner workings of these stored stories.
The Cognitive Science of Star Trek: Scientific American
Star Trek needs more advanced cognitive science. The research of Kahneman can augment one of its central philosophical themes. Emotions are fast thinking. Intuitions are recognition.
It Is In Our Nature To Fit Nature To Us: Evolution is a Two Way Street: Scientific American.
It is in our nature to fit nature to us. We are best at it, but other species do it. A better framework for evolution is needed. An obvious but overlooked factor contradicts the conventional view of evolution:
What Rational Really Means: Scientific American
The word rational is widely misused. Scientists often apply it unnaturally, in ways that conflict with our biology.
Tools Have Changed Our Genes For Millions of Years: Scientific American.
It is in our nature to need tools. For more than a million years we've not been able to live without them.
Kahneman’s Clarity: Using Mysterious Coinage in Science: Scientific American
Feeling is a form of thinking. Mysterious coinages helped make clear our "theory induced blindness."
It Is In Our Nature To Need Stories: Scientific American
We are adapted to physiologically interact with stories. They configure our biology, and how we feel, in ways long essential for our survival.
Plato’s Pastry & Rescuing Science from Bentham’s Bucket Error: Scientific American
We need a new happiness. The one most people use now is confusing even our smartest scientists.
It Is In Our Nature to Need Rules: Scientific American
Chimps are more "rational." But this limits them in ways we wisely avoid.
Second Natures Are in our First Nature: Scientific American
We are habit-forming and habit-farming animals
Self-Deficient by Nature: Biology Defying Individualism: Scientific American
It is in our nature to be self-deficient, initially, chronically and inalienably.
The Loose Language and Lax Logic of Libertarians: Huffington Post
The core claim of libertarians doesn't hold up empirically or epidemiologically.
Poetry and Calculation in Science: Scientific American
In science, as in life, we see with our ideas. We need more than just mathematical ways of seeing. E.O.Wilson says scientists should "think like poets and work like accountants."
The Better Models of Our Nature: Scientific American
Why popular evolutionary psychology is irresistibly wrong.
How We Evolved to Be Moral: Wilson Quaterly
Review of Moral Origins by Chris Boehm
It is in our nature to need social rules. They make us human and more productive.
Reasoning Against The Role of Reason: Wilson Quarterly
Review of Social Animal by David Brooks
Old dualisms must now duel with data: it's clear reasons role in our lives is limited
Love Might Be Blind, but She Is Rarely Deaf: Huffington Post
Love leads us to use language to advertise our impressive brains, and our access to expensive resources like education and leisure time.
We The People Forget: Huffington Post
We need more we-ness in our lives. Or the nations politics won't work.
The Rational History of the Cardinal Virtues: Huffington Post
Cardinal virtues did not come from cardinals.
History of Political Idiots: Huffington Post
Being "political" now often means behaving like an idiot. The history of those words can help us stop this madness.
Whiny Tiny-Minded Titans & Loophole Logic: Huffington Post
OK titans, forget the fabled free lunch, there's no such thing as a free infrastructure either.
Wealthy Should Give Thanks for Their Welfare Benefits: Huffington Post
How the wealthy benefit from welfare: we subsidizing their low cost employees.
Competition in Nature Tell Us Markets Shouldn't Be as Dumb as Trees? Scientific American
Competition in nature frequently creates foolish costs and undesirable outcomes. Same goes for markets, which is why we need guided competition.
Good Rich, Bad Rich: Huffington Post
The rich are mostly as replaceable as you or I.
Prehistoric Politics & Today's Teams & Taxes: Huffington Post
Prehistoric politics can teach us how to prevent present-day errors. Human survival has been a team sport for 10,000 generations. It still is.
Interview with Book Slut
On surreptitious science and why we're not rational. Also joining "humor as a necessary counterweight to the hegemony of reason."
I Am A Language Addict: The National Post Canada
I’m a language addict. I’m not pulling your leg. I seek the thrill of a novel turn of phrase, a surprising sentence or a marvelously unexpected meaning. The resulting high can be one of life’s most necessary pleasures. But it’s not just me. We are all addicted, all dependent, to some degree. It’s our most ubiquitous mind altering drug
The Linguistic Peacock-Tails of Love: The Guardian
The excesses of romantic language derive from the same evolutionary pressures that produces peacock tails.
The idiotic joys of idioms: The Guardian
Idioms can show how our minds aren't as rational as we'd like to think.