The More Loving One

Commentary: Cory Doctorow: Hell Is Other People - Locus

So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the 'burning marl.' Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS – OTHER PEOPLE! –Jean Paul Sartre, No Exit Sartre was (arguably) an optimist. It's not that other people are unpleasant: quite the contrary! There's nothing that makes the day (or, pointedly, the night) …Read More

Why major life decisions should be approached with ‘epistemic humility’ | Psyche Videos

At a crossroads in life? No matter how much you deliberate, one unknowable remains: the person you will be on the other side

Learning to Love Humans

A trip to Athens, five weeks before “the most human gathering for the more-than-human world”

I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers | Rebecca Shaw

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s desperation to be cool as they suck up to Donald Trump is so cringe it makes my skin crawl

Careless love: the unmaking of Elvis Presley

Careless Love is the full, true, and mesmerizing story …

Some Contemporary Heresies

I define a heresy as: something you believe that the people you most admire and respect don’t believe and reject out of hand.

A psychologically rich life: Beyond happiness and meaning.

Beloved

At Beloved, we inspire, support, and nourish spiritual leaders who are creating new Jewish spaces of sacred belonging.

Predictive processing frameworks for perception can explain recent drone sightings in the United States

We draw on the predictive processing theory of perception to explain why healthy, intelligent, honest, and psychologically normal people might easily misperceive lights in the sky as threatening or extraordinary objects, especially in the context of WEIRD (western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic) societies. We argue that the uniquely sparse properties of skyborne and celestial stimuli make it difficult for an observer to update prior beliefs, which can be easily fit to observed lights. Moreover, we hypothesize that humans have likely evolved to perceive the sky and its perceived contents as deeply meaningful. Finally, we briefly discuss the possible role of generalized distrust in scientific institutions and ultimately argue for the importance of astronomy education for producing a society with prior beliefs that support veridical perception.

Machines of Caring Grace

The goal should be to support humans, not to replace them.

We Chose Frictionless. It Left Us Empty.

On what my parents understood about creating relationships that we have forgotten — and why the inconvenience is the whole point.

On Dying Well: Ben Sasse and the Vocation of Suffering

Ben Sasse’s recent announcement reveals to us both goods and virtues that show in his dying a glimmer of light, a stirring of hope, and the possibility of spring even in one’s final winter.