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.

I don’t think most people are good, or bad, for that matter. I think people are neutral. From a distance, they look almost interchangeable. It seems to me that “good people” can become “bad people” when provided the opportunity within an existing power structure—to claim and exert power at a deadly cost to others and get away with it.

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.

The NIH also notes that Tourette’s syndrome is more common in men, which makes me wonder if it’s a form of conversion disorder we’ve simply decided to take more seriously.

A crowded world, then, has a dangerous opacity, providing cover for cruelty and corruption.

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

In this light, compassion is a matter of aesthetics.

In creating new technology to address known problems, we unavoidably create new problems, new unknowns. Progress changes the parameters of possibility.