Meditations

Having attended compulsory Mass, in Latin no less, six days a week in elementary and junior high school, I learned a thing or two about guilt. By my later teens…

Here’s an interesting thought experiment. Imagine the beginnings of planning in human evolution. When did the first people communicate to each other, undoubtedly through signs: “I’ll go this way, you…

Perhaps in part because I haven’t had children, I recoil when I hear a parent say something like, “kids questions reflect that time between innocence and experience.”

Nature envelops one on a rainy day in spring more than on a sunny one. Even in a narrow strip of municipal parkland, the earth returns and belongs to its…

We are being told by futurist Ray Kurzweil and his ilk that “merging with future superintelligent A.I.s is our best strategy for ensuring a beneficial outcome” for humanity. That’s not…

Random processes notwithstanding, evolution has a lot invested in the human brain. But nature knows how and when to cut her losses, and we’re pushing our limits as a sentient,…

Woodland hawks screech from all directions in the parkland, and birds sing raucously. Friendliness and joy are reflected on the faces of the many people using the park for every…

“Ignorance is our natural state; it is a product of the way the mind works.” Statements like that, proffered by cognitive scientists Philip Fernbach and Steven Sloman in the New…