Sep 12Member-onlyWhy You Shouldn’t Value Everything in Dollars and Cents“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” — Oscar Wilde Money makes the world go around. …Psychology4 min readPsychology4 min read
Published inCollosum·Aug 22Member-onlyThe Illusion of Moral DeclineWe disagree a lot on what’s right and wrong, good and bad. We disagree between individuals, cultures, and countries. And our views on these matters change over time. Actions once deemed off-limits have become admissible, and vice versa — take attitudes on same-sex marriage, slavery, drugs, assisted suicide, animal rights…Morality6 min readMorality6 min read
Published inOneZero·Jun 20, 2022Member-onlyAI Doesn’t Understand Much—But Maybe A LittleIn only the last few months, we’ve seen a number of developments in artificial intelligence making headlines: OpenAI’s DALLE-2 can generate incredible images from simple text prompts. Google’s PaLM appears to reason and solve problems. DeepMind’s Gato tackles a range of tasks and could be an example of general AI. …Artificial Intelligence9 min readArtificial Intelligence9 min read
Published inEd-Tech Talks·Apr 5, 2022Member-onlyWhat Degree of Wrong Are You?If you’re not right, then you’re wrong. Right? Isaac Asimov considered this in his essay ‘The Relativity of Wrong,’ which appeared in his book by the same name and the Skeptial Inquirer in 1989. The essay is a response to a letter received from an English Lit major who argued…Knowledge3 min readKnowledge3 min read
Published inOneZero·Mar 21, 2022Member-onlyHow To Survive AutomationWhere’s your place in the future of work? — Automation anxiety isn’t new. In response to Luddites breaking and destroying the technologies they feared would take their jobs, the British parliament passed the ‘Destruction of Stocking Frames, etc. Act’ in 1812, which made such destruction punishable by death. Long before that, Aristotle considered how if all our tools could…Artificial Intelligence15 min readArtificial Intelligence15 min read
May 20, 2021Member-onlyThe Trouble With Improving Our StereotypesPeople are quick to make certain judgements. Our minds have evolved to excel at drawing conclusions from minimal data and thinking quickly using heuristics and mental models. But some judgements are more reliable than others. …Stereotypes6 min readStereotypes6 min read
Mar 11, 2021Member-onlyGambling on the GodsBorn in France in 1623, Blaise Pascal’s intellectual prowess was evident early. He was writing about projective geometry and laying the groundwork for probability theory in his teens, and by his early twenties had built a calculating machine (the Pascaline) to help his father do his taxes. When he hit…AI6 min readAI6 min read
Dec 10, 2020Member-onlyThe Neuroscience of PatienceDeep inside the brain is a bundle of around 165,000 neurons, called the dorsal raphe nucleus. When prompted into action, the nucleus produces the neurotransmitter serotonin, which acts as a messenger to other areas of the brain. Two areas often in communication with the dorsal raphe nucleus sit just behind…Neuroscience3 min readNeuroscience3 min read
Nov 17, 2020Member-onlyIs Technology Neutral?Technology is all around us. It is at once so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, and in other areas so remarkable as to grab the world’s attention. From ceramic cups to nuclear weapons; from the springs in your mattress to immersive virtual worlds; from paper and pencils to intelligent…Technology10 min readTechnology10 min read
Sep 1, 2020Member-onlyWhy We Leave Our Best Ideas UndiscoveredIt’s always nice to have a good idea, but good ideas aren’t always easy to find. They’re often seen as something mystical, not reducible to a simple process but something that we wait and hope will burst up from the back of our mind. This might be true to an…Creativity3 min readCreativity3 min read
