Juan Orbea

Unlike most who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, nonconformist, analytical and control-oriented. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically peculiar? What part did these differences play in our history, and what do they mean for our collective identity?

The first idea is you can think about any social system using those layers. The second idea and (the more important point) is to think about the way that the layers can actually be traded off against each other.

The Intuitive Linear View versus the Historical Exponential View

Synthetic biology is the ability to engineer the substrates that makes us. We live in a big ball of biology floating in space and we have very limited ways to work with this stuff.

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