Symbology, Fictions, Hierarchies, and the unquantifiable power they grant humanity — Why do humans have such power over the earth? Or perhaps a better question to ask is: why don’t other species hold such power? Other species are certainly intelligent. …

With this simple equation―and an analogy―the evidence for God is strong enough to present in a court of law The concept of faith has been somewhat at odds with the concept of science since dawn immemorial, or at the very least, since the Enlightenment. When you add the rigors of the Scientific Method, and in particular the burden of finding transparent reproducibility, it seems that the concept of belief―particularly…

How an enhancement to our dorsolateral prefrontal right cortex might allow a person to bypass the laws of physics, go back in time and change the entire universe, for everyone — Can we travel back in time? Short answer: the laws of physics seem to suggest the answer is no. In this essay however, we won’t deal with the observable laws of physics — at least not directly. Instead, we’ll examine our powers of perception, explore how enormous those powers are…

Duke of Urbino — meet the Internet. Florence-born oligarch Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici got into a bit of hot water after one of his Tweets gathered a bit more contempt than he may have initially schemed for. The Tweet shows an image of the Duke surrounded by grateful and loyal vassals, with the text: Just won…

How Albert Camus’ The Stranger Suggests Humanity’s True Purpose — The Stranger Albert Camus published a short, accessible tale called The Stranger in 1942. It is an absurdist, existentialist tale — and though Camus rejected the existentialist label, The Stranger certainly carries themes that explore the very nature of human existence, and perhaps existence itself. And this tale might suggest humanity’s true…

Anne Rice’s Louis has no phobias, and neither should I — The moment when I began to fear spiders When I was in the third grade, I opened a large textbook at random, and what I saw frightened me so thoroughly that it gave me a phobia for the next two decades. It was a two-page spread of a tarantula — its eight legs were splayed out across the…

How the transition from speech to text turns us all into temporary psychopaths — One of the problems we have in these times is that global empathy is on the decline. A study by Sara Konrath shows the downward trend in empathy is measurably the case, and there are certainly quite a few variables contributing to this phenomenon. Let’s focus on one — one…

How introducing human safeguards and Focusing on the Outputs might save us all — Part 3 of a 3 part series — The Perils and Promise of Data In Part 1, we showed how data can lead anyone, including you, into a state of psychopathy. In Part 2, we showed how algorithms can lead anyone, including you, into a state of bias. So what do we do?

Partisan outrage gets attention. Recognizing your opponent’s humanity gets results. — In this day and age, there is a lot of pressure to ‘pick a side,’ and if you consume any type of media, it’s often quite easy to do this. Opposing political figures and pundits say outrageous and reprehensible things, and all you have to do is experience the human…