Andrei Stoica

Another part of what Johnson preaches is staying alive to witness the miracles of the future. Johnson has a long-running love-hate relationship with artificial intelligence. He both fears it and is interested in its power. (Join the club.) He argues that many humans currently walking around Earth will have the chance to live, if not forever, then... See more

Interestingly, Hoffer also makes the repeated but less emphasized point that creative people— fulfilled creative people; Hitler was not alone among Nazi leadership in being a failed, frustrated artist—are less prone to subsume themselves in mass movements. Not because fulfilled creative people are smarter or more successful or wiser, but because... See more

The only value of cultural ideas is their ability to inform action in this true world. And because mass communication about complex new ideas is impossible, whatever ideas you have can only directly affect your own actions and those of your collaborators. This is the discipline of materialism. If you want anything of true excellence done, don’t... See more

Motivation requires that you fulfill three basic psychological needs:

- Autonomy: the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important

- Competence: the feeling that you are good at what you do

- Relatedness: the feeling of connection to other people

Notice, scientists did not find "matching work to pre-existing ability,... See more

By the time those ideas’ productivity was realized, they were relatively old ideas. As Perplexity concluded, “In conclusion, while the 1950s and 1960s saw remarkable TFP growth, this ‘golden age’ was largely built on technological innovations and research from earlier decades, particularly the 1930s and 1940s.” There was a two decade lag.

So given... See more

Not long after arriving at George Mason, Cowen read “Sexual Personae”by Camille Paglia, a buccaneering polemic about Western art across millennia. Although he didn’t agree with Paglia’s ideas, he saw this was the kind of book he wanted to write. Within months he was drafting a lively, popular history of markets and high culture. In 2003 he and... See more