I’ve been thinking a lot about the distant future. It is scary, and exhilarating, to wonder how my choices, when added to all of our collective choices, might shape that future. Thankfully, I am optimistic by nature, and I have a strong conviction that life, and the universe, are evolving in beneficial ways towards individual […]
FQXi continues to probe at the frontiers of knowledge in their 2020 essay contest on Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability. I have offered an answer in “The Door That Has No Key“. Yes, there are serious limits to what we can understand about the world, but these limits are “a feature not a bug”! The limits […]
In the past two weeks I have been shocked by statements from some pundits and politicians that seem to deny the reality of the COVID-19 epidemic, even as the evidence of its lethal and catastrophic potential rises exponentially. Denialism is the insistence on believing something because you want to, regardless of the facts (see: Denialism and its […]
I gave the following 5-minute talk titled “The Secret Sauce of Human Thriving” at the Long Now Boston Flash Talks event January 6, 02020. The inspiration was the challenge to “envision the future” – and to present a case for continued advances in human thriving 100 years in the future. I chose to focus on […]
In May I posted the Delicate Intricacies of Sex and Gender, noting some of the latest findings in science relevant to the cultural disputes dealing with sex and gender. I concluded that our cultural precepts about gender need to change. Needless to say, that is a huge challenge. Historically, one of the key drivers of […]
