Joseph

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race"-the constant... See more

It’s another one of the economic dynamics where non-professionals sometimes have an economic advantage over professionals. This is just one example.

The best reason for the layman to spend time studying culture is th at he can learn something useful and enlighten-ing about himself. This can be an interesting process, at times harrowing but ultimately rewarding. One of the most effective ways to learn about oneself is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you to pay attention to... See more

Entropic Apex

“And I think it was memory that saved us. You see, we have already known that

When you see the context in which something was written and you know who the author was beyond just a name, you learn so much more than when you find the same text placed in the anonymous, faux-authoritative, anti-contextual brew of the Wikipedia. The question isn't just one of authentication and accountability, though those are important, but... See more

I know that many of these virtues have to do with the ways in which the pieces handle and respond to the tsunami of available fact, context, and per-spective that constitutes Total Noise. This claim might itself look slippery, because of course any published essay is a burst of infor-mation and context that is by definition part of 2007’s overall... See more

Functional just means expertise-based, not general management-based.