My thoughts about the four economies have emerged from thinking about money and debt. Some writers, especially Graeber  do a great job of sketching what money is (debt) and prying the concept away from "value". Graeber makes dire predictions about the fate of the world based solely on the nature of money. Graeber seems to think that, by the very nature of money, debt expands to choke the "real" economy - a phenomenon he calls "debt deflation". I think that Graeber's misunderstands the way that money works and its relationship to the other economies we live in, most obviously value (which is constantly being created and destroyed) and information (which mostly grows at an exponential rate, contributing to a growing percentage of the value of everything we buy). However, Graeber's analysis is helpful in pointing out that many transactions involving money and the creation of debt take place entirely in the "money universe" without inc...

Noam Chomsky is best known for his tireless commentary on world affairs. However, once he goes to his reward and his "current affairs" become ancient history, it's possible that he will be best known as the father of Linguistics . Even here, his legacy may be in jeopardy, since, as I understand it, his fundamental theory is still somewhat controversial. I think Chomsky should be remembered as a guy who asked a really good question, rather than a guy with all the answers. His question was, What happened in the human brain to make language possible ? While traditional linguists are happy to study the elements of language, Chomsky asked what is going on in the brain of a person who utters a sound expecting somebody to hear that sound and "understand" it? And what do we mean by "understand" anyway? I would say that what was born in the brain is something like what we would call "reason", or the ability to manipulate abstract objects - "idea...

In a previous essay , I have commented on the writings of Dan Gardner, one of many writers who have entertained us with stories of the fallibility of the human mind. We use "reason" mostly to rationalize or justify decisions and opinions we make for other reasons. But what are these reasons? I see a lot of variations on a theme, which seems so obvious that it slips by without alerting our bullshit detector. The story goes that our "primitive" minds didn't need to think carefully and logically. We "evolved" thought processes that, for example, promoted our survival by encouraging "false positives" -- nobody got eaten by thinking a bush was a lion and running away, but people got eaten by thinking a lion was a bush and ignoring it. So the story goes ... You can immediately start to suspect the "head/gut" theory if you substitute "dog" for "primitive human" in Garner's elaborate tutorials on how we have "ev...

Over the last 50 years, experiments have revolutionized our understanding of the way humans make decisions.  In "Risk" and "Futurbabble", Gardner farms the futile new fields of Experimental Psychology. An excellent summary of experimental findings themselves can be found in " Beyond Pleasure and Pain - How Motivation Works ". Gardner puts on his journalist hat and works out the consequences of modern psychology in two areas. He could easily use he same approach to generate an endless series of books on, say, military history or investment advice. In "Risk", Gardner demonstrates that we are horrible at evaluating risk. We over-estimate most risks (such as terrorism) while accepting greater ones (car accidents). We create theories about risks, such as the "danger" of breast implants and use "confirmation bias" to cherry-pick evidence that confirms our theories. In "Futurebabble", Gardner uses the same approach to destr...

Looking back in history, we find that virtually all cultures have a central body of myth that defines, in broad terms, the role of the human being in the Universe. Supernatural beings called "gods" feature prominently in these myths, but they don't have enough in common to allow us to define what we mean by a "god". When we speak of another culture, especially a dead culture that can no longer speak for itself, we can clearly see that these myths and the characters that inhabit them are the works of human imagination. I see no reason to suspect that the popular myths of major religions are any different. One interesting thing we see in our own "Judaeo/Christian" tradition is the constant free-wheeling re-definition of God. Paradoxically, our tradition frowns on thinking of God as strictly mythical or metaphorical. Yet we seem to be free to re-define what we mean by God - sometimes in an openly political process. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity...

It has been pretty obvious for centuries that all we know about the world comes to us by means of our senses. Even the vast new body of knowledge about the universe that Science has provided lately comes indirectly through indirect "evidence" and human reasoning, which turn out to be the most powerful of our senses in the long run. But if anyone suggests to me that this means that the "real world" is entirely a matter of our imagination and there is really nothing "out there", I will suggest that he (it's always a "he") take another drag of on his funny cigarette and go lie down somewhere. Let the rest of us talk seriously. What is an endless subject of fascination is the surprising difference between what we perceive and what we can subsequently learn is "really" happening. We learn that we do, indeed, see the world through very foggy lenses and that the more we learn about the world, the more we find out how little of it is perc...

In a previous post  I sketched out the importance of being a bit more imaginative when we ask the difficult question, What is the mind like . It's time to abandon the ancient assumptions that I have a little person inside my head  that's the "real me" and somehow, perhaps this little person (the soul) will survive death. It's obviously not like that. There is "nobody home" in the brain, nothing "controlling" it. The "self" is what it feels like to be a brain. That is still a big mystery, but progress nonetheless. Here, I'd like to discuss another aspect of the ancient view. Is there only one "self" running around in my brain? And, while we are at it, is there more to the "self" than this entity that seems to be looking out my eyes? Is there more to "me" than the "me" I feel writing these lines? Mountains of experimental evidence says there is. Lots more. I have always been very interested i...