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The Open Society as the Enemy
The interaction of our embodied selves with the world creates cognitive structures that instantiate preferences, values, dispositions, and skills. Much of this requires neither thought nor justification. One can choose to attach reasons to liking steak more than pork, or blackjack more than poker, but the exercise is post-hoc and unnecessary. This isn’t to say…
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Longtermism: A Lot Less Rational Than It Might Seem
In What We Owe The Future, William MacAskill presents the case for longtermism, the idea that we should place much more moral weight than we do on the very long-term future. It’s an intriguing book, well and clearly written, with interesting things to say about issues as diverse as AI, the value of having children,…
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The Role of Reinforcement Learning in Transformative Decision-Making
Cognitive science can’t settle questions of right and wrong. But it can set the table for theories of rational decision-making and ethics. And the one thing we know for sure about how we think is that, at the most fundamental level, our brains are connection systems that are changed by experience.This matters; transformational experiences and…
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Problems in Cognition and the Work to be Rational (Post)
For a decision-maker, the nature of human cognition creates the challenges of transformational experience and the necessity for self-altering decisions. But the nature of connection systems also creates a series of important hurdles to both optimal decision-making in preference optimization and thoughtful decision-making around self-change. Since connection systems can do amazing things (like become unbeatable…
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Samuel Adams Revolutionary
At a recent Berkeley concert featuring Daniel Hope and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Hope introduced Max Richter’s Four Seasons Recomposed (which formed the second half of the concert), recounting the story of the piece’s creation. Richter wrote it for Hope and when he first broached the idea, Hope says he rather flippantly asked Richter what…
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Dr. Fauci and the Public Life
The recent retirement of Dr. Anthony Fauci is a good time to reflect on the virtues and perils of a public life. Because so much of that life and our knowledge of it is colored by the last few years and the Covid pandemic, during which he became nearly as recognizable and almost as ubiquitous…
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Before the Coffee Gets Cold
A few years back we somehow got signed up for a Boksu subscription – a monthly box of seasonal Japanese snacks – that just kept going month after month for years. The boxes are lovely and crafted in way that seems utterly unique to the Japanese as are many of the snacks, and everyone in…
We are not rational animals, we are animals that must work to be rational
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