Rather than fighting to bend government to our ideologies, we should treat policy as what it is—one of the many sources of randomness in our lives.
Two Umlaut pieces from this week dealt with NSA-gate and they both indirectly demonstrate how unlikely it is that we will see any major reversals of surveillance policy in the near future.
Ubiquitous surveillance doesn’t just help enforce the law; it changes the kinds of laws that can be enforced.
Welcome to a world with no expectations of privacy. Let’s talk encryption.
Elections are determined by what party we feel loyal to, and whether we feel economically sounder and more secure than we did before the incumbent’s term.
The paleo diet is an elite superstition, godless people inventing dietary rules for the morally-neutral Wilderness.
Hangouts is Google’s attempt to unite all of their chat platforms. It’s succeeded in some important ways but failed miserably in others–mainly the ability to feel a meaningful connection with the person you’re chatting with.
Rules conserve attention—so we should consider having fewer rules in complex systems that require a lot of attention.
Our attitudes toward adiposity have more to do with weight loss conglomerates’ bottom lines and our cultural biases against larger waist lines than with health.
Economists have done extraordinary work highlighting the nature of trade-offs and the gains from trade, but continue to cling to a notion of an objective optimal that is unscientific and smuggles in ethical assumptions.
Sometimes real progress means innovating not just on top of a protocol, but rethinking the protocol itself. Redesigning an open protocol is a slow collaborative process built on consensus. Could it be that open protocols, despite all their obvious benefits, have costs as well? Could it be that they can stand in the way of innovation?
Paul Krugman Is Brilliant, but Is He Meta-Rational?March 13, 2013The Notion of the Overall Optimal is Intellectually BankruptJune 3, 2013
Why is Communist Iconography Still Cool?May 8, 2013
‘Binge Learning’ is Online Education’s Killer AppMarch 6, 2013
Not Doing Better Than Our Parents and Loving It (Or, Why Keynes Was Right)April 1, 2013
