Postscript to a Podcast

4 February, 201917 January, 2022 ~ Jnerst ~ 4 Comments

Some reflections, comments and elaborations on my appearance on the Intellectual Explorers Club Podcast. Read more (9 min, 3200 words).

A Meta-Meditation

23 January, 201917 January, 2022 ~ Jnerst ~ 11 Comments

I wrote a spontaneous piece on the tensions between cultural/intellectual accessibility and ambition that under later scrutiny wasn't quite up to snuff. Instead of publishing something sub par or discard it I used it as a jumping off point for discussing the nature of creative work, writing and thinking in general. Read more (13 min, 4200 words).

2018 in Review

29 December, 20183 January, 2019 ~ Jnerst ~ 4 Comments

I summarize 2018 as a successful year and discuss what works and what doesn't with my blogging: it's getting better but higher ambitions and awareness of a bigger audience means I still write much less efficiently than I could be. Read more (6 min, 1800 words).

The Romeo And Juliet Fallacy

19 December, 201817 January, 2022 ~ Jnerst ~ 5 Comments

We have a tendency to feel that ideas are mutually exclusive even when they aren't. Sometimes this is because their indirect implications clash with each other, giving us the impression that they clash themselves. Read more (7 min, 2000 words).

I, LPC

6 December, 201817 January, 2022 ~ Jnerst ~ 13 Comments

I make a Charge-of-the-Light-Brigade-style attempt to reclaim the words Liberal, Progressive and Conservative as terms to describe my political attitude. Read more (6 min, 2000 words)

Anatomy of Racism

16 November, 201817 January, 2022 ~ Jnerst ~ 8 Comments

I pick apart the concept of racism and find out that it's a self-driving cycle, a knot in idea-space, a bag of unrelated phenomena and an ideology that shares important properties with consciousness, intelligence and explosives. Read more (32 mins, 10700 words.)

Taste Books That Don’t Take Off

9 October, 201817 January, 2022 ~ Jnerst ~ 3 Comments

I review the book Hit Makers and go on about how it loses its point in a sea of storytelling . Read more (10 min, 3300 words).

The More the Merrier

20 September, 201817 January, 2022 ~ Jnerst ~ 8 Comments

I use pretty pictures to illustrate how we can use many partially overlapping belief systems to get a better image of reality than any one model can offer. Read more (4 min, 1100 words).

Facing the Elephant

24 August, 201817 January, 2022 ~ Jnerst ~ 7 Comments

I read The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson and discuss its implications for the structure of the mind (and how I was wrong about it), our tendency to value loyalty over expertise, my own blindness, and the future of institutions. Read more (27 min, 6800 words).

30 Fundamentals

16 July, 201817 January, 2022 ~ Jnerst ~ 23 Comments

I've spoken before about how it's difficult to interpret texts written by people with very different background assumptions, interests and preoccupations from you. Here I experiment with enumerating my basic beliefs in the hope that it'll make the meaning of my writing more transparent. Read more (13 min, 3200 words).