Sorry for the clickbait headline but this is a question I’ve thought about often over the course of my adult life. You’ve no doubt heard of the famous Stephen Colbert quote “Reality has a well known liberal bias.” (That quote is nearly 16 years old now, which is scary.) And you might be familiar with …
Tag: Society
70 Million Americans Voted to Re-Elect a Con Man to the Presidency [Updated]
In August of 2016, before his election to President, I wondered whether or not Donald Trump was the Greatest Con Man of All Time. (The GOAT-Con? The Con-GOAT? The GCMOAT?) A year and a half later, still mystified by his support, I wondered how people continue to trust him, as he burns one after the …
The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel (2020, Jennifer Abbott, Joel Bakan)
I saw the original Corporation sometime back in the aughts. I have no idea whether or not I would like it now. This film is infuriating, both because of the problems in the world it reminds us of, and because of how unfocused it is. In many ways, it feels like two movies, the sequel …
Essentialism: The Terrible Legacy of Western Philosophy
In 2017 I wrote a piece about the root of so-called “alternative facts.” I blamed the ability of people to accept alternative facts as truth on Western Philosophy, but specifically on Plato’s essentialist view of reality. The piece became my most widely read ever, dwarfing my books and anything else I’ve published online. Frankly, I …
Time to Abolish Juries?
A recent season of Undisclosed details the arrest and conviction of Fred Freeman for the murder of a community college student in 1986. Freeman was living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at the time, and the murder occurred in Port Huron, a 6.5 hour drive away. Witnesses claim to have seen Freeman in the …
Journal of the Plague Year: Blood on Their Hands
If you had asked someone in Autumn 2019 which country would be best equipped to handle a pandemic, they might have answered “The United States”. They have the most resources of any country in the world. Of course, given who is in power, they might have expressed doubt. But ask the question in Autumn 2015, …
Diary of the Pandemic Year: Nobody Follows the Rules
“Nobody is following the rules!” That is what literally everyone is saying. So many people are saying it that some of the people who are saying it must also not be following rules. As Jenn put it, each of us thinks we are following the rules better than everyone else. And we want everyone else …
Diary of the Pandemic Year: It’s Oh So Quiet
Time has lost all meaning. Weekdays feel like weekends and weekends feel like weekdays. The only thing that lets me figure it out is consciously thinking about it. I have a weekday work schedule, which helps too. But I still have to think to myself “This is a weekday” in order to start it. So …
Diary of the Pandemic Year: Day 42
The Americans want to reopen things. But of all countries, the US is worst hit in terms of total numbers: they will hit 1,000,000 confirmed cases sometime week and they will likely hit 50,000 dead by the day after tomorrow (April 24).
The Problem of Subjectivity
Throughout most of human history, we haven’t done a good job of understanding objective reality. Learning about objective reality has been a slow, difficult process, with many setbacks, but which has rapidly accelerated in the last few centuries, especially the last one. If you compare the growth of scientific knowledge about the universe versus the …
UBI Now
COVID-19 is causing all sorts of economic problems. Rather, reactions to COVID-19 are causing all sorts of problems. Behaviour that is good for reducing the spread of this virus is bad for the economy. Nobody is quite sure what to do or how to moderate the inevitable recession. Our government has a plan, this plan …
Born On Second
I was born on second but I don’t think I got a double. I have had an extraordinarily privileged and lucky life. It is my hope, by exposing my privilege, I help others like me see how lucky they’ve been.
We Need to End Inheritance
Life is unfair. However, life is more unfair for more of us than a small group of people who have less unfair lives. And there’s no good reason why it’s more unfair for some of us than others. Because none of us actually deserve to be here.
Remembrance
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we remember people lately, particularly since John McCain died. To read the American media’s coverage of McCain’s death, he was some sort of saint. Yet, in reality, he was human, just like the rest of us. Worse, he was a Republican, and a successful Republican at that; a …
Bully (2011, Lee Hirsch)
This is one of those advocacy documentaries, as I’m sure you’re aware. And you cannot go into it expecting something other than that.
The Nano-Fabricator Will Solve All Our Problems
The nano-fabricator (or molecular assembler, if you prefer) is coming in about half a century. It will totally transform our world. Are you ready?
The Peep Diaries (2009) by Hal Niedzviecki
This book is a relatively interesting and amusing book about how modern technology and modern culture have created a brave new world that we don’t really understand how to navigate – and which could have all sorts of unintended consequences for us. However, the book suffers from a number of problems which make it not …
The Age of Stupid (2009, Franny Armstrong)
Somewhere in this movie there are the makings of a great “message” documentary about climate change. With some more money and a different “director” – if it was indeed directed by one person – maybe this could be the movie they wanted it to be, the movie some critics apparently thought they saw. But this …
On the sanity of living with another human being
I have vivid dreams. I mean: really, really vivid. Sometimes they are so vivid I am convinced I am living them, until I wake up. Sometimes they are so vivid they take the place of my memories and I occasionally get confused about whether or not something realistic that happened in a dream actually happened …