A quick-and-dirty piece on what the hell people mean by "eugenics", promted by the fallout from a tweet by Richard Dawkins. Read more(7 min, 1700 words).
Picking Apart Eugenics
Author: John Nerst
It’s Not So Only
Are mental illnesses actual illnesses or are they unusual preferences? Or maybe this is a non-issue because it's only about words? Well, that's not so only. Read more (8 min, 1900 words).
The End of 2019
I try to sum up 2019, a year that started out well but took a weird turn about a third of the way through. Read more (6 min, 1400 words.)
Erisology, Round Three
Third attempt at a relatively user-friendly introduction to what "erisology" means. Read more (10 min, 2600 words).
Cat Couplings
"I prefer honest argumentation to dishonest rhetoric." Do I mean that rhetoric is essentially dishonest, or am I talking about the kind of rhetoric that's dishonest? That's a cat coupling. Read more (7 min, 1800 words).
Interpretation Matrix: Free Trade Benefits Everyone
Many disagreements are complicated by terms having several meanings. What if a claim is made up of more than one such term? How would we deal with that complexity? I look at an example about the benefits of free trade. Read more (7 min, 1800 words).
The Prince and the Figurehead
When we misrepresent other people, is it a mistake or do we do it on purpose? Neither explanation feels right to me. Rather, I think we should consider that we often perform "semitentional" actions, which is the result of our agency being more distributed than we think. Read more (6 min, 2900 words).
