A long postmortem of the conflict between Sam Harris and Ezra Klein over Harris's podcast with political scientist Charles Murray. I explain their disagreement as stemming from differences in interpretation of the original podcast, cultural expectations and psychological tendencies. Read more (36 min, 9100 words)
If all claims are mixtures of "is" and "ought", what does it mean to "believe" them? In practice it comes to mean endorsing models, while emphasizing the "is" aspect (and downplaying the "ought") for rhetorical purposes. Unfortunately this ruins the word for neutral, non-rhetorical use. Read more (8 min, 1900 words).
Our words' relationship to reality is far more complicated than we realize. Thus, when we say things we think we state facts but we also endorse certain uses of words. That has consequences, which causes public discourse to become a war zone where we fight for control over our common pool of mental and social equipment. Read more (13 min, 3300 words).
I discuss what happened on the blog in 2017 and what I'm aiming for in the future. Read more (8 min, 2100 words)
The truth often lies somewhere between two opposing views. But even among people whose opinions are moderate and balanced, it matters a great deal which of the two sides come first and which is simply a moderation of the other. Read more (15 min, 3800 words)
What sort of people would be considered weird if nerdiness was the norm? Read more (14 min, 3400 words)
An article I received from the future, making a passionate argument about gene editing and inequality. Read more (5 min, 1200 words)
We feel there should be a clear answer to the question of whether some thing exists or not. I argue that often there isn't, because follwing our self-contradictory intuitions leads us to weird places. Instead we should interpret talk about what exists as talk about how we best represent the world. Read more (12 min, 3100 words)
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" it's said. Here I try to explain how and why. Read more (5 min, 1100 words)
Part 2 of a series adapted from my 2009 Bachelor's Thesis in philosophy. Describes the traditional view of the self, using the philosopher C.A. Campbell as a representative. Read more (11 min, 2800 words)
Everything Studies 