Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
I treat questions of right and wrong as having correct answers, at least in principle. We should admit the existence of significant moral grey areas, but right and wrong are a kind of “natural fact,” as many philosophers would say. To put it bluntly: there exists an objective right and an objective wrong. Relativism is a nonstarter, and most people
... See moreTyler Cowen • Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals
People who didn’t know Daryl Morey assumed that because he had set out to intellectualize basketball he must also be a know-it-all. In his approach to the world he was exactly the opposite. He had a diffidence about him—an understanding of how hard it is to know anything for sure. The closest he came to certainty was in his approach to making decis
... See moreMichael Lewis • The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
Adam Mastroianni • Science Will Only End Once We've Licked All the Objects in the Universe
The Anarchist and the Hockey Stick
experimental-history.comBentham's Bulldog • Losing Faith In Contrarianism
It is a terrible spectacle when irrationalism becomes popular. One feels that disaster is imminent, a disaster such as the one-sided overvaluation of reason could never bring about. The overvaluation of reason can be comical in its optimistic pedantry and can be made to look ridiculous by the deeper powers of life. But it does not evoke catastrophe
... See morePsychologist Jonathan Haidt summarizes the dilemma in The Righteous Mind, when he writes, “We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs, but other people do us this favor, just as we are good at finding errors in other people’s beliefs.” It’s easy enough for most of us to spot the flaws in the fairies, because we have no emot
... See moreMaria Konnikova • Mastermind
Studies of famous scientists’ personalities and their receptivity to offbeat beliefs show that excessive cynicism actually stymies discovery. Science writer Michael Shermer found that iconic brains like paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and astronomer Carl Sagan scored off the charts in both conscientiousness and openness to experience, indicating a
... See moreAmanda Montell • Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
By altering the ingredients of the idea menu they are exposed to, we might, in turn, minimize the dangerous inputs to the processes of belief and network updating.