Category: Theory
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How to end Western civilization
[A video version of this post is at the bottom of the page.] I was reading Climbing Parnassus, a book-length defense of learning Greek and Latin, and it goes into historical depth about the role of education as a preserver of the best of culture. This resonated strongly with me, because I think it explained…
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Why There Is Free Will
I. Some quick preliminaries I believe there is free will. I am a compatibilist. In this essay I will defend this view. I’ve taken this line ever since college, but have never taken the time to elaborate it since then. Especially with neuroscientists and other scientists asserting that free will doesn’t exist, and others buying…
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Why Edward Snowden deserves a pardon, explained in 10 easy steps
Let me put this briefly and simply. The government should not be snooping on us. But they started anyway. That was wrong and unconstitutional. When they did, they made their snooping program secret. That was wrong twice over, a cover-up of a wrong. Then they actually lied about the existence of the program to Congress,…
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Who might you find in the lowest circles of hell?
I liked my answer to this Quora question so much that I had to put it here on my blog as well. I also used it to answer the question, “Why is murder a crime?” N.B. I do not believe in hell. Murderers, particularly mass murderers, must occupy the very lowest circle. This sounds like…
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Is it time to establish Internet user unions?
Since everybody and his grandma have gotten on the Internet in a big way in the last few years, the social influence of giant Internet companies has skyrocketed. Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Amazon, Twitter, and many more wield enormous power over us. We have given them that power. Their success is built on participation, and we…
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An assortment of things that should exist
Occasionally I wish I had time to write a book to explain these ideas in detail. (Some of these are actually book ideas. Some of them are project ideas.) 1. A tutorial system, independent of any university, managed via a neutral online database; and an expanded system of degrees by examination. 2. Textop! I love…
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Why is spaced repetition not better known?
Suppose a method let you remember things with a 95% success rate–in other words, whatever information you’ve put into a system, you’d have a 95% chance of recalling it–and this effect is permanent, as long you continue to use the method. That would be quite remarkable, wouldn’t it? Well, there is such a method, called…
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How not to use the Internet, part 4: how “social” is social media?
<< Part 3: How the Internet’s current design philosophy fails 4. How “social” is social media? A person who is “social,” we think, gets along with others and does not always stay at home. They mix well. This is, we hope, because they like other people, not because they’re trying to take advantage of them. They…
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How not to use the Internet, part 3: how the Internet’s current design philosophy fails
<<Part 2: The pernicious design philosophy of the Internet 3. How the Internet’s current design philosophy fails. Websites compete for the really limited commodity online, namely, attention. That much is understandable, and not likely to change. How they compete is the problem. Putting lots of menus, internal links, feeds, and self-promotional media on pages drives traffic…
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How not to use the Internet, part 2: the pernicious design philosophy of the Internet
<< Part 1: It’s a problem that the Internet distracts us 2. The pernicious design philosophy of the Internet. The way that the Internet is designed—not graphic design, but overall habits and architecture—encourages the widespread distractability that I, at least, hate. This basic notion is not my idea; I freely admit that I learned it from…