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Debates over January 6, 2021 often founder on the basic question of how “serious” the insurrectionists really were. While many analysts are at least minimally willing to admit that Trump instigated the mob to attack, they still ask whether was all just a product of mass delusion. The mobbing is often lumped in with the broader trend of “dreampol...

I devoted a small portion of a previous post on technology and human values a while back to the science fiction drama Ex_Machina. Here I want to explore a dramatically different dimension of Ex_Machina, less concerned with the film’s treatment of existential questions – robots and the end of humanity – and more on rather unsettling interpersonal...

The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban is beginning – or rather accelerating – a process of re-alignment. Some aspects of this are normal or even healthy; change should occur after a very public and humiliating disaster. Other parts are more dubious. This brings us to Thomas Bruscino and Mitchell G. Klingenberg’s recent call in City Journal to p...

For many, September 11, 2001 was not just a terrible tragedy. It was also a moment of national rebirth. Suddenly joined together in spirit, the American people would put aside petty differences to pursue a grand crusade. Though this moment was squandered, some still long for it and wonder if it will ever return. For others, it was actually a pe...

How do you solve an intellectual problem like vampire-hunting? The problem inherently combines three subproblems: Obtain and use knowledge about something poorly understood, difficult to investigate, and lacking in clear “lanes” of expertise. Responsibly control the study of something intrinsically dangerous and capable of harming investig...

If you are watching the current chaos sparked by the January 6 attack on the capitol, you may be feeling – like many Americans and foreign friends of America – shocked and terrified. But the full implications of what has just occurred have yet to sink in. Perhaps because they, at heart, deal with brute issues of power and force that have largely...

Early on in the pandemic, it became mandatory to wear a mask indoors outside of my apartment when walking through my apartment complex. Because COVID spreads more readily indoors, it is prudent to mask up even when merely walking through the hall. I also got used to habitually avoiding elevators and other confined spaces where I might encounter ...

Economist Noah Smith is fed up with generic critiques of technological “solutionism,” specifically what he calls the “2010s consensus that technology is a sideshow compared to social movements.” In the last decade, we’ve basically been taught to deride “solutionism” — while Silicon Valley techbros were bending their genius toward figuring ou...