Introduction: An Alternative History Under scrutiny from Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the leader of the USSR space program, the Soviets landed the first probe on the moon in 1966. Soon after, in 1968, Korolev applied his innovative approach to space technology to sacrifice a rocket launch to static test the N1 rocket. Thus the Soviets famously… [Read more]
This question arguably bears an assumption: that reading philosophy classics has been useful to science before, whereas now reading them for use is dubious. Granted, many first-rate physicists dismiss philosophy. An assumption that philosophy has no value to offer ‘actual’ science today is common. Stephen Hawking said, “Philosophy is dead”. And Richard Feynman and Lawrence… [Read more]
I have been asked to write on how tech influences inequality. The online feeds give the impression tech is good, whereas similar talk of the 1% suggest tech is bad. To much chagrin, I think neither is correct. The picture is more complex than that, as I write below: This headline’s question bears assumptions. It… [Read more]
This question implies safety can be solved, that safety instead of danger is what needs to be solved or diminished. When in fact, the increase of safety means merely mitigating danger to a workable minimum. Because in a chaotic, open, largely unpredictable world, driverless cars will never be 100% safe, they cannot ‘solve’ the road… [Read more]
Climate change kills 200 species every day. Contrary to voices like Naomi Klein calling for complex solutions to a complex problem, a carbon tax is the most effective and parsimonious solution to global warming. All the democratic and widespread media talk does is induce a bystander effect whereby no worldwide solution is enacted. When the… [Read more]
Sing, sing, sing all you want. We each grow up patterned by circumstance: each of us learned, not at one point but, at successive subtle points that there are singers and then there are listeners. Most of us are the listeners. Yet this listener and singer arrangement is abnormal, rare with all societies ever taken… [Read more]
The term ‘development’ implies betterment through change. Some aspects of development – like clean drinking water and reduced child mortality – are inarguable. The tasks of mitigating poverty and reducing violent corruption in developing countries are also admirable. The implication of betterment, however, becomes problematic when basic necessitates are met and pains relieved. When the… [Read more]
Oscar Wilde said a banal tragedy of life is how much is spent in friction. People like Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf who never had to work in retail for a living, had the time to become great writers. Instead of managing writing between night-shifts and scuppering together dinner Wilde read Robert Browning and Ovid… [Read more]
Star Trek fans have higher IQs than most. This false fact seemed believable to my younger and stupider teenage self, because the show boasts fascinating discussions and thought experiments. I am a fan, too, which gives me embarrassing bias. Yet if you asked me to name which series episode X is in, or how I… [Read more]
Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that… [Read more]
