I just had an amusing incident. I was on BART on my way to work, and was lounging in a seat reading my Economist with my music playing. Somebody taps my leg as they’re walking by. I look up, see a guy smiling at me, and I know I recognize him, but I have no […]
Category: thoughts
Mental models as tools
After the disjointedness of my last post, it’s probably worth going to check out the comments, because I think I clarified some of what I was thinking with the help of my commenters. What I want to talk about today is how we use classification systems, and more broadly, mental models. Let’s start with the […]
Stereotypes and Classification Systems
I was having an email discussion earlier today with a friend where the topic of stereotypes came up. As is common, my friend said that stereotypes are bad, and we should judge people based on their own individual characteristics. This gave me an excuse to launch into a longstanding rant of mine, wherein I defend […]
Filtered world views
This is the next post in the Latour series so feel free to skip it if you found the other posts boring. I’d actually started writing this post several weeks ago, when I noticed that while I was reading Latour, certain points resonated very strongly with me, and others I was just kind of skimming […]
Politics of Nature part 3
Okay, I said yesterday that part 2 would end my book review, but I lied. There is one crucial aspect of Latour’s book that I didn’t cover yet. To review, part 1 essentially covered chapters 1 and 2, part 2 covered chapters 3 and 4, and today we’ll cover chapter 5, which covers how to […]
Politics of Nature part 2
Continuing yesterday’s summary of Politics of Nature, by Bruno Latour. Today’s subject: Latour’s proposal for a “Constitution” on how we construct reality in a democratic fashion via due process, one that cuts across science and politics and multiculturalists and facts and values. I’m going to sketch out the process first, and then go back and […]
Politics of Nature, by Bruno Latour
Amazon link I started this book more than a month ago, as I mentioned at the end of this post. It’s incredibly dense. I don’t think I could have even started on it without having been trapped on that crowded bus with no other options for a few hours. Even once I got started, it […]
Crime pays, or why people suck
Two days ago, a woman was mugged at 6pm about 50 yards from my front door. My friend and I were walking up the hill from dinner when we heard a commotion up ahead – about half a block up, two black men ran across the street and jumped in a car, chased by a […]
Mercedes sucks more
Update on the car: Mercedes sucks more. They called me a couple days after I brought the car in and said that they were refusing my demand that I get my money back under the lemon law. Corporate headquarters refused to pay up without knowing what was wrong with the car. Of course, if they […]
Being all I can be, whatever that may be
Question of the day – where’s the balance between accepting who you are and pursuing paths that leverage that identity, and striving to be a different person? I was writing email to a friend last night and made the claim that a lack of self-acceptance drives American culture, from our dieting crazes to our willingness […]
