What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence By: Michael Pollan Published: 2018 Read: 2019 Summary: Over the past two decades, science has renewed its interest in the potential benefits of “psychedelic therapy”
On: Alchemy. Episode: N/A Date: November 2019 Background: Advertising executive and author of “Alchemy”. Key Subjects: Markets are inventive, not necessarily efficient. Markets allow for trial and error, testing ideas, discovery. Leads to finding more than one solution for one
On: Waldenponding. Episode: N/A Date: November 2019 Background: Writer and management consultant. Key Subjects: Waldenponding: Various levels of retreating from technology. (Thoreau: virtues of retreating from social contact, leading a quieter life at Walden Pond.) Historically common response to emerging
By: Gary Taubes In: MIT Technology Review Date: August 28, 2018 Key Quotes: Epidemiology. Study and analysis of the distribution, patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in defined populations. How often diseases occur in different groups of people
On: Dignity. Episode: N/A Date: July 2019 Background: photographer, author, and former Wall St. trader. Traveled across America photographing and getting to know the addicted and homeless who struggle to find work and struggle to survive. Key Subjects: Human need for community
How the Japanese Wake Up to Joy and Purpose Every Day By: Ken Mogi Published: 2018 Read: 2018 Summary: Ikigai is sometimes described as the reason you get out of bed in the morning. It usually is shown as being
Paths, dangers, strategies By: Nick Bostrom Published: 2014 Read: 2016 Summary: Intelligence: skill at prediction, planning and means-ends instrumental reasoning (not: normative, rationality or reason). General intelligence: possessing common sense and an effective ability to learn, reason, and plan to
By: John Cochrane In: The Grumpy Economist Date: October 2019 Key Quotes: Knowledge externalities: When one person learns how to do something, and when he or she can and does communicate that knowledge to others, the others can quickly benefit from
The evolutionary origins of a good society By: Nicholas A. Christakis. Published: 2019 Read: 2019 Summary: Natural selection has equipped us with the capacity and desire to form and join groups. It is argued that humans universally evolved a set
By: David Perell In: Blogpost Date: July 2019 Key Quotes: Humans have a drive to imitate. “The human brain is an enormous imitating machine.” “Imitation is a rare ability that is fundamentally linked to characteristically human forms of intelligence, in