Fortunately Erroneous: Bad science and the economics of happiness
Psychology has measured many things, most of them unpleasant. But in the past few decades some psychologists have started to measure pleasant things — such as happiness — and this new academic trend is...
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Human Nature: Good, Bad, and Important
Are humans nice, or are they nasty? It depends who you ask. For centuries, debate has raged across political and scientific lines over whether the fundamental nature of humans is selfish, greedy,...
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Free Will ≈ Determinism, F.A.P.P.
Free will is a topic as old as the hills. We all act as though we’ve got it, but established science gives this slim probability. Trouble is, if we admit that it doesn’t exist, what are we left with?...
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What I learned by reading 100 books in a year
Mark Twain said, “there comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.” As the youngest brother of a large family, I have...
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Who will own Mars?
Elon Musk is planning to colonize Mars. If he succeeds, it could be one of the most important changes in human history. And, based on the surprising success of his previous ventures — including Zip2,...
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How to avoid making an idiot of yourself
Intelligence* — as far as I can tell — is a variable, not a constant. It fluctuates, the same way a healthy person’s heart-rate varies over time. Graph it, and it looks like this: It wouldn’t be a...
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Revision Checklist for Essays & Short Stories
I don’t like revising. By the time I’ve finished writing a story or essay, I’ve seen each sentence so often my eyes cross and glaze over when I try to reread and revise it for the nth time. The result?...
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Disorder of Operations
Yesterday morning I saw, for the first time1, a math problem trending on Twitter: $$8 ÷ 2(2+2) = \color{#990000} \textbf{?}$$ As the co-founder of algebrarules.com, I have received several emails about...
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Save the Date
Here’s a small piece of advice, which I would like to have learned earlier: save the date. Put the date in filenames, but don’t stop there! Put it on everything: journal entries, food in the fridge,...
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