We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.  T. S. Eliot - Little Gidding I have been writing for a long time about the concept of "supermind" and the "dragon". Groups of humans - armies, governments - have a life of their own and thrive at the expense of the humans that oppose them - even their own members.  These groups steal our identity and prevent us from thinking for ourselves. It's all true, of course, but what is new is the total acceptance of the situation. Comfort almost. This is the human condition. Our "minds" function as part of a whole. It may be a mistake to "analyze" - to break things down into pieces, but indulge me for a moment while I describe things that make up our "minds" that are usually regarded as something happening between our ears. The brain, especially considered as part of the body (Damasio). The functio...

(Originally posted in " The Zen of Value ") Discussions about how money originates often start with the assumption that it evolved to facilitate trade and "store value". Otherwise, so the story goes, you and I would simultaneously want something somebody else had (say, you have more fish than you need and I have extra sheep). There is scant evidence for "cash" arising out of this situation. Evidence for another narrative can be found in human behavior that naturally arises when "cash" is in short supply. Say, you go fishing and catch 5 nice big salmon. It would not be unusual at all for you to show up at my door and offer me a fresh salmon "for free". On the other hand, we would tacitly understand that this establishes a debt. Perhaps at some point, I'd mow your lawn or give you a basket of berries, or jam from my last berry picking trip. The math doesn't need to work out. If I'm in bad shape and have nothing to give in retu...

I'm wary of the term "evolution" - especially when it is used in a vaguely Darwinian sense to sprinkle scientific fairy dust over wild speculation. I think it makes sense to use "evolution" in a fairly narrow sense, in which we can see that some object, "thing" or situation exhibits the following qualities: It's in some "state" of current interest. The analysis of the "state" has some non-trivial explanatory power over the thing in question even when it is considered as a current, static object. The "thing" has obviously, necessarily undergone change over time - it wasn't always the same as it is now. It must have been in some other state, usually a simpler state, at some time in the past. There is strong evidence that the thing has undergone versions , where one version incorporates design features of previous versions. It is legitimate to ask what changes have taken place over time to get from the "simpler...