I'm apprehensive about transhumanism, and have no particular desire to live forever. A big part of the reason is that I believe happiness is precarious, and our chance at achieveing it in radically altered circumstances is not great. Read more (13 min, 2800 words).
"The Elephant in the Brain" had an interesting effect on me, which made me think up a typology of ways reading can change the structure of your mind. Read more (10 min, 2500 words).
Using the movie ”Arrival” as a jumping-off point, I rant about the ubiquity of personal drama in storytelling, defend ”flat” characters and positive emotions over negative, and criticize the ”figure it out yourself” ethos in fiction. Read more (15 min, 3700 words)
Reading David Foster Wallace’s ”Infinite Jest” over a period of six months provoked a lot of thought about what makes a good book and why I didn’t particularly care for this one. Read more (16 min, 3900 words)
Fiction works differently from reality and I think I sometimes forget that when watching movies and reading books. Other people, I suspect, often make the opposite mistake.Read more (900 words)
