How do you persuade someone that your point of view is right? For the last 3000 years, Western philosophy has had the same basic answer: look to Socrates. Make compelling arguments like he did. I’m here to say, don’t argue like Socrates! He was a dick. …

There are times when fairly-elected democratic governments will act against the will of the people who elected them. We’ve been taught that this should be impossible; if a representative goes against the will of the majority, the majority will just vote them out next election. So why does it happen…

This seems like a vague memory now, but I remember talking about GMOs in ethics class back in the early 2000s. The question was about whether or not DNA should be patentable. Since then, the rulings have varied from country to country but have mostly been ‘yes’ with a few…

One of the most-cited benefits of of ‘free-market’ capitalism is that it creates better value for consumers through darwinistic competition. You buy a phone from Nokia at a certain price and get a certain value out of it. Apple sees how huge that market is, and is incentivized to take…

Teenagers throughout history have spent most of their time trying to map out their social world and their standing in it. They’ll notice that some of their friends are seen in a positive light, and others are… not. They’ll try to impose some sort of logic to these observations, and…

The other day, I saw a post titled “Things you can’t say in Silicon Valley” (link omitted). I was looking forward to one of those “it’s funny because it’s true” critiques of the groupthink in the tech industry. Instead it was something…very different. So, I wrote the list I was…

Job interviews are the worst, especially with the strange lies people are forced to tell each other. I’ve written before on what happens if you take a “traditional” job interview question to its logical extreme, and it’s not pretty either. Here, I’d like to give helpful advice when a question…

It’s 2017 and I still see this guy everywhere I look: Technically, it’s webkit’s default textarea in focus, but let’s call it by what we know it represents: A comment box. An empty comment box. In some form or another, it dots the bottom of most content on the internet…

I just read a Times article about the “bro” culture in Silicon valley. Basically, it’s the idea that many startups are run, and feel, a bit like a frat house more than a company, and that this is the main problem with them. I agree wholeheartedly, but the author has…