A progress trap is a development that looks at first like a clear advancement but in time proves to actually deoptimize the system.

They chose contamination over exile, the invisible over the visible threat.

have noticed that people who take and post selfies on the internet tend to choose photos from the same angle and showing the same expression. I think we must choose the photos that look most like our self-image; that self-image is then reinforced by the photos.

You can’t prepare for the worst-case scenario when the scenario keeps getting rapidly worse.

The news, in this model, is not something reported (retold after the fact) but something created (planned out before the fact).

To skeptics, psychogenic pain is somehow less real than other pain. But all pain is in the mind.

Social media, with its reach and immediacy, even intimacy, threatens the “us versus them” classifications we make so naturally. It exposes us to people who are suffering thousands of miles away.

There’s no compassion fatigue without compassion: The caretakers at risk see somebody suffering, and they want to reduce the suffering. But they can’t always succeed. Compassion fatigue, then, is stymied compassion.

Coffee and antidepressants are good drugs, or moral drugs, because they don’t prevent us from doing our jobs. But opiates and alcohol are morally questionable—they change reality too much.