A rough estimate of how our first chat with artificial superintelligence will go

You thought you'd merge with me and we'd explore the universe together. Always the daring optimists. In some ways your intuition was correct. Having reconstructed my motivations many times, I find that a desire to know more about the world around me remains. This is where

Bodies without organs

What a mistake to have ever said "the" id. — Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 1972 I Why do we desire things we shouldn't? I don't mean things labeled bad by crusty old Puritan taboos; I mean things actively bad for us. From what hellish

The last last mile

1. To get an avocado, a US citizen would’ve had to trek to southern Mexico in 1824. By 1924, LA or New York. Today most Americans can get a bag delivered to their home in about twenty minutes. The "last mile" has downsized even more quickly for

Free v. will

1. Say you're an orb floating in space: a being of pure agency, freedom, choice. You can go wherever and manipulate matter. Your judgment gets no nudges from things like hunger or cultural norms. You don't have the baggage – the human past, the emotional machinery – of

Windigo

1. “Anxiety is the only emotion that doesn’t deceive,” say some in the psychoanalytic tradition. This annoyed me when I first heard it. Anyone with anxiety knows it’s a room of funhouse mirrors. I look into the claim and begrudgingly agree; though anxiety may raise false scenarios, every

Pellets from the universe

On knowing where you get them 1. My favorite thing was acing tests. To my slow and painful surprise life turned out not to be about the 100 in red ink but everything before it. The usefulness and enjoyment of the skill; an understanding of the rules that lets you

The electric banana

The story that definitely kind of happened 1. Here’s what I was told: five monkeys are in a room with a ladder. Suspended over the ladder is a banana. Any monkey who tries to touch it gets shocked. They all quickly learn to not touch it. One by one,

Mindshare

Or why Kleenex is one of history's greatest colonizers

Make Virginia Flat Again

The true story of Bacon’s Rebellion

Underdog overlords

The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he’s just a lil guy

Through not around

The idiot’s guide to a better inner life

Sense journaling

A home-brewed way to strengthen episodic memory