Jared Diamond
-
On ‘The Overstory.’
Trees made our world livable. Will we show gratitude … or destroy all the forests, wrecking our own chances of survival in the process?
AI, algorithms, artificial intelligence, atmosphere, bees, biomass, book review, brains, carbon, carbon cycles, chemical communication, climate, climate change, cognition, Collapse, communication, computers, consciousness, cycle of life, deforestation, Earth, environmentalism, environmentalist, evolution, extinction, forest, Fruitful Labor, global warming, Go, greenhouse gases, Jared Diamond, Mike Madison, nature, neural networks, neurology, neurons, old growth forest, origin of consciousness, oxygenation, plant communication, Richard Powers, robots, science fiction, smartphones, speed of life, sunlight, tech, technology, technology addiction, The Overstory, The Overstory review, tree communication, tree talk, trees, vegan, Walden, woodlands, woods
-
On the sounds of aberrant ecosystems
The world humans are born into inevitably seems normal, no matter how hot, or loud, or empty of animals…
acidity, anthropocene, birds, buffer, buffering, climate change, climate destabilization, Collapse, cultivation, cultural extinction, David Haskell, deforestation, depopulation, directed evolution, domestication, Easter Island, endangered species, environmentalism, evolution, extinction, global warming, Goblin Nabob, Herman Melville, industrial revolution, innovation, Jared Diamond, landscape amnesia, loss of diversity, Magic, Magic the Gathering, mass extinction, Michael McCarthy, Moby Dick, natural renewal, noise pollution, ocean, outdoor cats, overpopulation, population crash, progress, renewal, songbirds, sperm whale, Squee, technology, The Moth Snowstorm, The Songs of Trees, vegan, veganism, whale, where have all the insects gone, windshield phenomenon
-
On free-market economics & the actual meaning of words.
Despite being rather politically liberal, I consider myself a free market economist. (Maybe it’s unfair to self-describe as an economist, though? I did the coursework for a master’s degree in economics… but couldn’t get a degree because I didn’t complete the residency requirement. I was enrolled as an undergraduate at the time, and apparently would’ve…
basic research, beekeeping, CAFOs, cap and trade versus carbon tax, capital gains tax, carbon tax, Collapse, definition of fortuitous, definition of peruse, do taxes make people work less, Easter Island, economics, education spending, fortuitous, free market, free market distortions, free market economist, free-market fundamentalist, government subsidies, health spending, infrastructure, infrastructure spending, James Surowiecki, Jared Diamond, Joseph Stiglitz, market solutions, market solutions versus government solutions, mis-used words, misused words, New York Review of Books, patent protections, peruse, politicians misusing words, politics, pollution, positive externalities, pro-life, progressive taxation, right-wing economist, Stiglitz, subsidies, tax on high earners, taxation, taxing negative externalities, Thomas Friedman, tragedy of the commons, why does Easter Island have no trees, Why I Am Pro-Life, Why the Rich Are So Much Richer
-
On watchful gods, trust, and how academic scientists undermined their own credibility.
Despite my disagreements with a lot of its details, I thoroughly enjoyed Ara Norenzayan’s Big Gods. The book posits an explanation for the current global dominance of the big three Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Instead of the “quirks of history & dumb luck” explanation offered in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, Norenzayan suggests…
Abrahamic faiths, Abrahamic religions, animal cognition, Ara Norenzayan, atheism, Automaticity of Social Behavior, Bargh, Big Gods, climate change, credibility, Daniel Dennett, experimental psychology, false positive, False-Positive Psychology, Freedom Evolves, Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond, John Bargh, Joseph Simmons, Jurgen Osterhammel, Kanesh, Leonard Wantchekon, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Nathan Nunn, priming, religion, replication, scientific method, scientific publishing, social psychology, statistical significance, statistically significant, survivor bias, The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa, The Transformation of the World, trust, truth, unethical research
Frank Brown Cloud 