Juan Orbea

"On or about December 1910 human character changed," Virginia Woolf famously declared. Gone, she wrote, were the old certainties, the old manners, the deference to nineteenth-century authority. Instead human beings—at least the ones in Woolf's circle—were starting to see the world as full of chaos and discontinuity. Einstein smashed the notion of... See more

He dispels common misconceptions, such as the belief that IQ tests are biased or meaningless, and debunks simple interventions alleged to increase intelligence. 

According to legend, in 1876 the first sounds transmitted down a wire were Alexander Graham Bell saying "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." Compared with Morse's "What hath God wrought!'' this is disappointingly banal—as if Neil Armstrong, setting foot on the moon, had uttered the words: "Buzz, could you toss me that rock hammer?'' It's as though... See more

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that global energy consumption in 2050 will increase by 50%, but we absolutely can’t afford to meet this incredible level of energy consumption with our current greenhouse gas-laden methods for energy generation: The consequences to our environment would be dire. 

We can organize these observations into what I call the law of accelerating returns as follows:Evolution applies positive feedback in that the more capable methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage. Over time, the “order” of the information embedded in the evolutionary process (i.e., the measure of... See more