I'm not a fan of the popular Political Compass. Here I explain why, list what makes a good 2-by-2 and rederive the meaning of the political left and right. Read more (10 min, 3300 words).
The Tilted Political Compass, Part 1: Left and Right
Tag: psychology
The Romeo And Juliet Fallacy
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).
30 Fundamentals
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).
A Deep Dive into the Harris-Klein Controversy
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)
A Lament on Simler Et Al
In response to an article by Kevin Simler I complain about how often people mistake "selfishness" in an evolutionary sense for selfishness in the normal sense. Read more (12 min, 2900 words).
My Week in the Real World
I spent a week without a smartphone, prompting nostalgia about how things used to be done in the past and thoughts about smartphone addiction and what it does to our relationship with reality. Read more (12 min, 2900 words)
The Nerd as the Norm
What sort of people would be considered weird if nerdiness was the norm? Read more (14 min, 3400 words)
