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

Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think

We all care way too much what other people think of us. Here's why.

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

Americans Have One Very Strange Cognitive Bias

Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love The People.

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

Never Underestimate the Ignorance of the Powerful

When you’re a star, people let you think you're smart

Opinion | Love People, Not Pleasure (Published 2014)

What do fame, wealth and lots of sex bring? Exactly the opposite of what you think.

Loathe thy neighbor: Elon Musk and the Christian right are waging war on empathy

Trump’s actions are irreconcilable with Christian compassion. But an unholy alliance seeks to cast empathy as a parasitic plague

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.

The empathy paradox

There’s an image of empathy we all know that is beautiful: the fullness of completely understanding someone else, the symbolic walk in shoes that are not one’s own. The knowledge that someone else can share a pain so acute that would otherwise seem unbearably solitary. It’s an image inherent to empathy’s definition, an image many believe in wholeheartedly. Several studies conducted by Stanford researchers alone suggest people are motivated to feel empathy, that empathy is highly associated with social desirability, that it is as beneficial as it is admired.

Death to Bullshit

If you think about it, our attention is the only thing we truly own in our lives. Our possessions can go away. Our bodies can be compromised. Our relationships can fall apart. Even our memories and intellectual capacity fade away.