NonTrivial

In this episode I take a look at the nature of time, try to figure out what it is, what today’s physics can and cannot tell us, whether or not it’s an illusion, and how memory and consciousness might…

AI is a promising and inevitable technology. But today’s AI is too brittle to trust fully, and without trust we cannot push the needle on AI progress. So, must we wait around until AI is good enough …

We define a thing’s value by its characteristics; what it does and doesn’t do. But a thing cannot adequately be defined outside its environment. There are countless dependencies that make a thing, a …

Economists are known for attempting to treat economics like a genuine science. But upon closer inspection it becomes obvious that their methods are quite outdated. As a consequence, most of today's e…

We've looked at one side of the equation, the changes we put in place at the societal level to possibly solve the gun problem in America. But what about the individuals who commit crimes in the first…

The gun debate is one of America’s most polarized issues. Large mass shootings always bring this debate to the forefront, eliciting strong emotions from both sides of the aisle. Many believe the answ…

NonTrivial is of course free for all listeners, but I do offer bonus content to my Patreon subscribers. I'm publishing this week's bonus talk for free so regular listeners can get a taste of what thi…

Many argue that the internet has destroyed more jobs than it’s created, and that as such our information economy has obliterated the middle class. The common “solution” proposed for this problem is t…

In part II of Imprecise Destinations we continue our look at democracy by discussing so called "monitory democracy" as it exists today. We'll see both its strengths and weaknesses, and lead into some…

In this episode I take a look at the topic of democracy. Using John Keane's book The Life and Death of Democracy I show that the usual Western narratives we've been taught about democracy fall short …

In this episode I take a look at leadership, specifically the idea of the “strong” leader. Those individuals who stand by their convictions, and dominate the room with their charisma and commanding a…

In this episode I look at the "delusions" that happen when a large number of people get together in groups. We'll explore a number of prominent economic bubbles and end-of-times cults to reveal the c…

In this episode I take a look at the sordid history of the library. The library has been a beacon of knowledge, and a marker of civilization for hundreds of years. But the library’s journey from the …

David Deutsch, in his book, The Beginning of Infinity, argues that “good” explanations are how knowledge grows, and thus good explanations are what lead to progress. Deutsch believes that the Enlight…

In this episode I talk about the role that magic, superstition, irrationality has played in human progress, specifically the so-called Enlightenment. I will use the life of Paracelsus, the Swiss phys…

The way we normally think of technology is as an extension of what humans do in the absence of technology. Technology extends our eyes, ears and muscles, and also our memories and even our thinking. …

In this episode I talk about systems that reach out into their environment for new resources, but are unable to backfill their growth with sustainability. This is a common pattern throughout many fie…

Now that we’ve discussed many of the core patterns at the intersection of science, complexity and philosophy, I want to showcase how these patterns play out across countless areas in life. To do this…

In this episode I talk about the current paradigm of science, and challenge it, by arguing that much of today's science is not growing knowledge over time, contrary to what most people assume. That w…

In this episode I talk about snowballs, more specifically, the runaway process that happens when we take an action we think is confined to that instance but ends up becoming something so much bigger.…