In the past year or so I’ve started to notice a new feature on my phone: with simple artificial intelligence the text messaging app is able to auto-generate simple, relevant replies to text. So if someone says “hi”, you can say “hi” right on back. But it’s actually more sophisticated than it sounds. It can detect,…
Tag: technology
Your “Just a Phase”s Will Matter One Day
At various times, I’ve wanted to be a soldier a theologian, a philosopher, a musician or music businessman, and a farmer (among others, I’m sure). I spent so many hours and dollars acquiring music knowledge, raising chickens, and arguing the finer points of political philosophy. And yet here I am, doing marketing work. I must regret these passing fads, right?
Why Entrepreneurs Should Be Studying Anthropology
Farmer’s markets are back in vogue. Airbnb is connecting us to people and places outside of generic hotels. And paleo people all over the world are ditching industrialized carbs and sitting desks for alternative products grounded (supposedly) in the healthier lifestyles of earlier humans. It does seem like some things we left behind are coming back around. And there’s a reason for that.
On Government Funding of Science
Neil deGrasse Tyson was on the Joe Rogan podcast recently. Therein he defended the need for government to fund scientific advancement. His argument was that many frontiers are neither accessible nor profitable for free enterprise until government paves the way. He’s probably not wrong, but that hardly constitutes a justification for government funding sourced by coercion.
A Utilitarian Case for Incompetent Traffic Cops
Thank your lucky stars for inefficient law enforcement. When toleration fails, you’ll always be able to count on some room for social innovation. But when inefficiency fails, we’ll be in a much tighter spot.
Social Credit Ratings Won’t Work
Social credit rating systems like those portrayed in Black Mirror and The Orville are not built on objective, verifiable facts. Quite the contrary; they are built on subjective, unverifiable opinions.
Two Worlds—Politics and Everything Else
Political discourse itself is enough to make even a person of moderate intelligence run away screaming. So much ignorance is on display, so much viciousness, so much ill-disguised envy and malevolence, such unscrupulous attempts to take what belongs to other people and redirect it to those who have no just right to it. The stupidity, therefore, is not only an inability to connect real causes and effects, but also moral stupidity, an inability to do what is obviously right and decent, as opposed to predatory and criminal, albeit legal.
The First Amendment Saved the Second Amendment. What’s Next?
A free press plus rapidly proliferating DIY production technology equals the final nail in the coffin of “gun control” as a practical notion. Not that it ever really was one, what with more than 250 million guns already in the hands of more than 100 million Americans. But now it’s no longer just a lop-sided contest, it’s a done deal. “Gun control” is over.
Trump and Putin – How about Getting Rid of Your Nukes?
I was disappointed in the summit because it apparently gave no great urgency to what should be the priority by the standard of security for all the people of the world: the two powers’ alarming arsenals of nuclear weapons.
Encircled, Enclosed, and Trapped
Someone recently brought up the scenario of being encircled and trapped by other property owners so that you can either not access your surrounded property or you can’t escape from it. At least, not without giving in to the other property owner’s demands, whatever they may be.