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Quasi-Rational Minds and the Myth of Perfect AI “Bygones are forever bygones,” William Stanley Jevons once wrote. But human minds are not blank ledgers wiped clean at each decision. We’re accumulators — of sensations, biases, and half-baked rules of thumb — and we act on them whether or not they’re still relevant. In 1996, Louis…
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Labubu isn’t just the next blind box toy collectible. According to Kyla Scanlon, it serves as a perfect specimen of a broken economy — where the only game most people can play is speculation, and anything can be for sale. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky figured out the psychology behind why people do such bizarre…
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“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly…
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“In the karaoke universe, we can be whoever we want. We express ourselves by turning into colorful and disastrous parodies of pop stars who are already appalling parodies of human beings. And somehow, that’s how we end up as our most sincere version of ourselves. When you step into the song, you’re not sure who…
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Here are my reflections on Chapter 15 of Longinus’ “On the Sublime,” using the Criticism, Rhetoric, Aesthetics, and Philosophy (CRAP) framework. Criticism Longinus begins this chapter by emphasizing the importance of phantasia, or visualization: “…dignity, grandeur, and urgency are to a very large degree derived from visualization (phantasia).” He distinguishes this from the mere production…
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In Chapter 14 of “On the Sublime” Longinus lays out one of the most radical creative challenges in literary history: “We too… should carefully consider how perhaps Homer might have said this very thing, or how Plato, or Demosthenes, or (in history) Thucydides, might have given it sublimity.” Criticism Longinus doesn’t just ask writers to…
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Longinus, in Chapter 13 of On the Sublime, offers a compelling meditation on imitation and inspiration: “[T]here is another way that leads to sublimity… It is the imitation and emulation of the greater writers and poets of the past… For many authors are inspired by the spirit of others…” Criticism Longinus views sublimity not as…
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Chapter 18 of Carl Sagan’s book “Billions and Billions” is called “The Twentieth Century” and begins with a couple of interesting quotes. I’ll reproduce them as they are quoted in full. Sagan lists three broad innovations of the twentieth century: All three Sagan says “have been brought forth by science and technology, a sword with…
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“I do believe there is life after death. But it’s nothing like the Christian belief of heaven and hell. I believe it’s more like a weird sort of purgatory. Some of our energy is passed on to other living beings. Our consciousness, I feel, drifts about, sometimes remaining anchored for a time, potentially a long…
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“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” – Cory Doctorow Jared Henderson included this quote in a July 2025 video…