In the previous post we looked at phenomenology and the thinking that motivates it. We saw that it is based on taking a naive, skeptical, beginner’s view to asking “why?” and choosing to address the question using only knowledge we can obtain from experience. We also saw that…

The development of smarter-than-human artificial intelligence poses an existential and suffering risk to humanity. Given that it is unlikely we can prevent and may not want to prevent the development of smarter-than-human AI, we are faced with the challenge…

Doxa, Episteme, and Gnosis Revisited

Exactly two years to the day I started writing this post I published Map and Territory’s most…

I’ve never much felt like I was part of a cultural movement. I’m too much a “digital native” to be fully part of Gen X. I’m insufficiently idealistic to be a Millennial. I’m part of the transhumanist, the rationalist, and the effective altruist subcultures, but in a weak way that more…

The first time I received truly life-changing advice was when a friend pointed me in the direction of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I was in the middle of getting my graduate degree, struggling to keep up with the demands of school, teaching, friends, and romance…

Cognitive Empathy and Emotional Labor

The concept of emotional labor has been popularized in the last couple years as a way of…