Thinking with Lego
A wonderful little video about the power of progressive tinkering to solve increasingly more challenging problems. A Lego car is re-engineered to cross ever-larger gaps, and it’s compulsive viewing. There’s also another one about climbing over a growing pile of books.
Many years ago I wrote a column about Lego the company, which ended up being quoted in a book on creativity. The Danish toymaker had a fascinating ride back to profitability, partly by letting tinkerers freely invent what to build next with its bricks. There’s clearly no end in sight.
A wonderful little video about the power of progressive tinkering to solve increasingly more challenging problems. A Lego car is re-engineered to cross ever-larger gaps, and it’s compulsive viewing. There’s also another one about climbing over a growing pile of books.
Many years ago I wrote a column about Lego the company, which ended up being quoted in a book on creativity. The Danish toymaker had a fascinating ride back to profitability, partly by letting tinkerers freely invent what to build next with its bricks. There’s clearly no end in sight.
What’s lurking on the dark side?
Is it a “space hut”? Is it a cube? It’s probably a strangely-regular boulder, but China’s moon rover has spotted a curious object hiding on the dark side of the moon.
Sadly it will take a couple of months before the rover can get close enough for a decent look and burst sci-fi dreams of a monolith straight out of Arthur C Clarke’s 2001.
On the other hand, the US government appeared to acknowledge the reality of UFOs earlier this year, so who knows?
Is it a “space hut”? Is it a cube? It’s probably a strangely-regular boulder, but China’s moon rover has spotted a curious object hiding on the dark side of the moon.
Sadly it will take a couple of months before the rover can get close enough for a decent look and burst sci-fi dreams of a monolith straight out of Arthur C Clarke’s 2001.
On the other hand, the US government appeared to acknowledge the reality of UFOs earlier this year, so who knows?
A creativity lesson from The Beatles
The epic Beatles documentary Get Back is a long but inspiring watch. For those without a Disney+ subscription, this incredible clip is one of the most exciting moments, as Paul McCartney creates Get Back from thin air.
And for larger lessons about how to be productively creative, from someone who’s watched the whole thing for you, this piece is worth a read.
The epic Beatles documentary Get Back is a long but inspiring watch. For those without a Disney+ subscription, this incredible clip is one of the most exciting moments, as Paul McCartney creates Get Back from thin air.
And for larger lessons about how to be productively creative, from someone who’s watched the whole thing for you, this piece is worth a read.
Friday Cocktail: Celebration
Sip: on a Celebration. Happy advent.
Weekend browsing:
AI helps advance the frontiers of mathematics (it can also make you an artist)
Great books online, with a nice (and free!) layout
Listen: The Beatles, Something In The Way She Moves
“Something in the way she knows
And all I have to do is think of her
Something in the things she shows me…“
Have a great weekend.
Sip: on a Celebration. Happy advent.
Weekend browsing:
AI helps advance the frontiers of mathematics (it can also make you an artist)
Great books online, with a nice (and free!) layout
Listen: The Beatles, Something In The Way She Moves
“Something in the way she knows
And all I have to do is think of her
Something in the things she shows me…“
Have a great weekend.
Jimmy Carr: philosopher?
Jimmy Carr has a book out and he gives a wide-ranging and very interesting interview here. Lots of unexpected insights into his life and more generally on success, how to get it and how to cope with it.
In one fascinating aside, Carr describes becoming better at schoolwork after some years being a rebel. He says he approached it not just by applying himself to subjects but instead by understanding the cultural code he was being asked to perform, a topic the economist Tyler Cowen also focuses on. Carr says that getting an A for a history essay is about understanding the form and what it needs to be, less than about knowing history. As a meta-insight, in the hands of an obviously very bright guy, I suspect that has stood him in good stead for all kinds of challenges.
If you’re interested in how to approach cultural code-cracking as a practice, try this.
Jimmy Carr has a book out and he gives a wide-ranging and very interesting interview here. Lots of unexpected insights into his life and more generally on success, how to get it and how to cope with it.
In one fascinating aside, Carr describes becoming better at schoolwork after some years being a rebel. He says he approached it not just by applying himself to subjects but instead by understanding the cultural code he was being asked to perform, a topic the economist Tyler Cowen also focuses on. Carr says that getting an A for a history essay is about understanding the form and what it needs to be, less than about knowing history. As a meta-insight, in the hands of an obviously very bright guy, I suspect that has stood him in good stead for all kinds of challenges.
If you’re interested in how to approach cultural code-cracking as a practice, try this.
What happens if we find a cure for ageing?
A new study from the online US journal Aging sounds too good to be true.
“the nearly 8-year reversal in the biological age of individuals taking Rejuvant® for 4 to 10 months is noteworthy, making the natural product cocktail an intriguing candidate to affect human aging”
Things too good to be be true usually are, but even if this particular supplement doesn’t work, the evidence seems to be mounting that ageing can be treated as a disease and quite possibly slowed, if not reversed. Over the years ahead, it may well be that healthspan (the portion of life spent in good health) will be extended radically, and perhaps even lifespan as well. That would be wonderful, but also bring huge social disruption. Are we thinking hard enough about what will happen if we actually get there?
A new study from the online US journal Aging sounds too good to be true.
“the nearly 8-year reversal in the biological age of individuals taking Rejuvant® for 4 to 10 months is noteworthy, making the natural product cocktail an intriguing candidate to affect human aging”
Things too good to be be true usually are, but even if this particular supplement doesn’t work, the evidence seems to be mounting that ageing can be treated as a disease and quite possibly slowed, if not reversed. Over the years ahead, it may well be that healthspan (the portion of life spent in good health) will be extended radically, and perhaps even lifespan as well. That would be wonderful, but also bring huge social disruption. Are we thinking hard enough about what will happen if we actually get there?
HAL, draw me a picture…
A new capability for our new robot overlords servants. With the Pixray tool you can type in a description and let the AI generate a picture for you. It will even do its best to imitate an artist’s style if you ask.
Requests produce somewhat mangled results, one part astonishingly good, one part mutant horror that belongs dead. But it’s an impressive start. AI could already write your emails and even program computers for you. Now it can make you into a kind of conceptual artist.
Try this one yourself. Just be polite, in case Skynet is watching.
A new capability for our new robot overlords servants. With the Pixray tool you can type in a description and let the AI generate a picture for you. It will even do its best to imitate an artist’s style if you ask.
Requests produce somewhat mangled results, one part astonishingly good, one part mutant horror that belongs dead. But it’s an impressive start. AI could already write your emails and even program computers for you. Now it can make you into a kind of conceptual artist.
Try this one yourself. Just be polite, in case Skynet is watching.
Transcendence and giant rodents in Argentina
My friend Dominic Hilton on form in Perspective Magazine, writing about his trip to see a physiotherapist in Buenos Aires but also about life, God, giant rodents and home invasions.
“My seventy-three-year-old physiotherapist, Sylvia, is a tiny, birdlike woman who wears flesh-coloured spandex onesies that leave painfully little to the imagination. Her hair is blue-purple and clearly not real, while her bustling surgery in an unfashionable barrio of Buenos Aires is dark and subterranean, like Hitler’s bunker. The walls of the waiting room are crowded with dozens of yellowing certificates awarded decades ago by something called the Argentina Society of the Shoulder and the Elbow. A rickety school desk is home to two wartime field telephones, and behind it stands an improbable antique switchboard with multicoloured jacks and plugs, alongside what looks like an Enigma machine, held together by strips of adhesive tape.”
The whole thing is never what you expect. Recommended.
My friend Dominic Hilton on form in Perspective Magazine, writing about his trip to see a physiotherapist in Buenos Aires but also about life, God, giant rodents and home invasions.
“My seventy-three-year-old physiotherapist, Sylvia, is a tiny, birdlike woman who wears flesh-coloured spandex onesies that leave painfully little to the imagination. Her hair is blue-purple and clearly not real, while her bustling surgery in an unfashionable barrio of Buenos Aires is dark and subterranean, like Hitler’s bunker. The walls of the waiting room are crowded with dozens of yellowing certificates awarded decades ago by something called the Argentina Society of the Shoulder and the Elbow. A rickety school desk is home to two wartime field telephones, and behind it stands an improbable antique switchboard with multicoloured jacks and plugs, alongside what looks like an Enigma machine, held together by strips of adhesive tape.”
The whole thing is never what you expect. Recommended.
Friday Cocktail: The Pilgrim
Sip: on a Pilgrim (Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!)
Weekend browsing:
Listen: Winter Poem, by Robert Bly
“…the way of those
who are wounded and want to live:
…”
Have a great weekend.
Sip: on a Pilgrim (Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!)
Weekend browsing:
Listen: Winter Poem, by Robert Bly
“…the way of those
who are wounded and want to live:
…”
Have a great weekend.
Men are more violent. Are women more intolerant?
The economist Tyler Cowen is very interested in the feminisation of society as women gain more positions of power. It’s a trend Cowen sees as strongly net positive for men and women, although he is open to the downsides that inevitably come with it.
One of those unexpected downsides is raised in a controversial new Substack essay from Noah Carl, suggesting that the increase of women in academia has made the problem of wokeism worse.
To put the dilemma crudely: we know men are, on average, more violent; are women, on average, more intolerant?
Carl got drummed out of Cambridge for his interest in questions like these, although he received plenty of mainstream support in the wake of his sacking, including from The Times. That doesn’t mean any of his actual conclusions are right, of course.
Here, Carl draws on a number of sources to support his case that there is a particular gender divide in academia, with female academics more likely to support imposing diversity quotas and the cancellation of threatening viewpoints, as against academic rigour and freedom of thought. Carl’s sources include a report by Eric Kauffman. Having checked out the original, Carl seems to over-egg Kauffman’s more nuanced conclusions. Still, it’s not the only piece of evidence he presents.
As it happens, I came across an astonishing data point recently in my own researches. The University of California’s Higher Education Research Institute regularly surveys American college teachers. In 2007-8, for the first time they asked full-time undergraduate faculty members how many thought it was very important or essential for undergraduates to be “encouraged to become agents of social change”. Male faculty were split, with 49% in favour (just 44.6% among full professors, with junior staff more sympathetic). However, a remarkable 75% of female faculty supported politicised teaching (71.6% even among full professors).
Whether we need to explain that difference by summoning “Just-So” stories of evolutionary biology as Carl would is another matter. Women, especially in the more radical corners of academia (where they are over-represented), see their status as under threat from discrimination and ally with other victim groups to fight back. It would be surprising (sexist?) to expect women not to make common cause and further their own interests. Arguably, the real problem is that no one has been maintaining the guard-rails set up to prevent the politicisation of education.
In any case, surveys like Kauffman’s show that age is a huge and salient predictor of attitudes among academics, male and female. Wokeism is going to gain ground on campus as the younger generation rises in seniority. What to do about that is a far harder question.
The economist Tyler Cowen is very interested in the feminisation of society as women gain more positions of power. It’s a trend Cowen sees as strongly net positive for men and women, although he is open to the downsides that inevitably come with it.
One of those unexpected downsides is raised in a controversial new Substack essay from Noah Carl, suggesting that the increase of women in academia has made the problem of wokeism worse.
To put the dilemma crudely: we know men are, on average, more violent; are women, on average, more intolerant?
Carl got drummed out of Cambridge for his interest in questions like these, although he received plenty of mainstream support in the wake of his sacking, including from The Times. That doesn’t mean any of his actual conclusions are right, of course.
Here, Carl draws on a number of sources to support his case that there is a particular gender divide in academia, with female academics more likely to support imposing diversity quotas and the cancellation of threatening viewpoints, as against academic rigour and freedom of thought. Carl’s sources include a report by Eric Kauffman. Having checked out the original, Carl seems to over-egg Kauffman’s more nuanced conclusions. Still, it’s not the only piece of evidence he presents.
As it happens, I came across an astonishing data point recently in my own researches. The University of California’s Higher Education Research Institute regularly surveys American college teachers. In 2007-8, for the first time they asked full-time undergraduate faculty members how many thought it was very important or essential for undergraduates to be “encouraged to become agents of social change”. Male faculty were split, with 49% in favour (just 44.6% among full professors, with junior staff more sympathetic). However, a remarkable 75% of female faculty supported politicised teaching (71.6% even among full professors).
Whether we need to explain that difference by summoning “Just-So” stories of evolutionary biology as Carl would is another matter. Women, especially in the more radical corners of academia (where they are over-represented), see their status as under threat from discrimination and ally with other victim groups to fight back. It would be surprising (sexist?) to expect women not to make common cause and further their own interests. Arguably, the real problem is that no one has been maintaining the guard-rails set up to prevent the politicisation of education.
In any case, surveys like Kauffman’s show that age is a huge and salient predictor of attitudes among academics, male and female. Wokeism is going to gain ground on campus as the younger generation rises in seniority. What to do about that is a far harder question.
What if we could cure obesity?
What to make of the intractable, growing problem of obesity? According to The Lancet:
“Unlike other major causes of preventable death and disability, such as tobacco use, injuries, and infectious diseases, there are no exemplar populations in which the obesity epidemic has been reversed by public health measures.”
What if the reason obesity is proving so hard to counter is that we don’t have a good model of what’s causing it? It would hardly be the first time. And there are some odd data points that don’t fit with a model that focuses on willpower, exercise and our changing diets, such as the great fattening of lab animals under tightly-controlled conditions, and a number of other mysteries.
The last in a remarkable series of online essays lays out the possibility that the obesity epidemic is the result of environmental contamination, and proposes an experimental program to assess if this hypothesis is true. The best way to prove it? Remove contaminants and see if that cuts obesity.
“The contamination theory of obesity has to be possible, in the sense that we know chemicals can cause weight gain and we know various chemicals are in the environment. […] If this theory is correct, then we have a good shot at doing what we really want to do — actually curing obesity — and no result could be more convincing than that.”
This is a crazy idea, and it might well be wrong. But curing obesity is an enormous prize. In the face of a big problem no one knows how to solve, maybe a crazy idea can break the deadlock.
What to make of the intractable, growing problem of obesity? According to The Lancet:
“Unlike other major causes of preventable death and disability, such as tobacco use, injuries, and infectious diseases, there are no exemplar populations in which the obesity epidemic has been reversed by public health measures.”
What if the reason obesity is proving so hard to counter is that we don’t have a good model of what’s causing it? It would hardly be the first time. And there are some odd data points that don’t fit with a model that focuses on willpower, exercise and our changing diets, such as the great fattening of lab animals under tightly-controlled conditions, and a number of other mysteries.
The last in a remarkable series of online essays lays out the possibility that the obesity epidemic is the result of environmental contamination, and proposes an experimental program to assess if this hypothesis is true. The best way to prove it? Remove contaminants and see if that cuts obesity.
“The contamination theory of obesity has to be possible, in the sense that we know chemicals can cause weight gain and we know various chemicals are in the environment. […] If this theory is correct, then we have a good shot at doing what we really want to do — actually curing obesity — and no result could be more convincing than that.”
This is a crazy idea, and it might well be wrong. But curing obesity is an enormous prize. In the face of a big problem no one knows how to solve, maybe a crazy idea can break the deadlock.
The law that launched wokeism
An essay in American Affairs by the ever-interesting Richard Hanania on Vivek Ramaswamy’s new book Woke Inc. turns out to be much more than a book review. It’s actually a good overview of Hanania’s thesis (developed at more length here) that woke capitalism, and wokeism more generally, has its roots in the legal consequences and subsequent executive orders and related regulations that follow America’s Civil Rights Act in 1964.
“The main components of wokeness can be traced to legal developments in the 1960s and 1970s: among them the ideas that disparities imply discrimination; that offensive speech must be curtailed; and that people must be conscious of race throughout their daily lives. Surely wokeness has intensified in recent decades, but civil rights law can help explain why no institution wants to be the one to stand up to woke mobs. If every other company is making investments in DEI and inviting critical race theorists to speak, how does it look if yours is the one business that does not? This can be seen as a collective action problem, in that while businesses would have fewer costs if they did not have extensive HR and diversity bureaucracies, every individual company has an incentive to do at least as much as everyone else to prove to governments and the courts (as well as NGO activists, elite university graduates, the media, and so forth) that they are sufficiently fighting “discrimination.” One way to understand the “Great Awokening” of the last decade is that culture, aided by social media, is finally catching up to fundamental assumptions of the law.“
There’s much more that could be said on this topic, especially about how these legal changes interacted with America’s universities, given Hanania’s focus is the workplace. But as Hanania explores in this essay, the astonishing thing is how blind most people are to the legal background of the woke revolution. Railing about wokeism without understanding the core issues is a recipe for futility. Not that Hanania is exactly an optimist.
“A worldview that has captured every institution, from the federal government and health organizations to fashion magazines, is not going to be extracted from American society. […] This might be a depressing message, but when one side controls virtually everything, survival is the best any remaining opponents can realistically hope for in the short term.
An essay in American Affairs by the ever-interesting Richard Hanania on Vivek Ramaswamy’s new book Woke Inc. turns out to be much more than a book review. It’s actually a good overview of Hanania’s thesis (developed at more length here) that woke capitalism, and wokeism more generally, has its roots in the legal consequences and subsequent executive orders and related regulations that follow America’s Civil Rights Act in 1964.
“The main components of wokeness can be traced to legal developments in the 1960s and 1970s: among them the ideas that disparities imply discrimination; that offensive speech must be curtailed; and that people must be conscious of race throughout their daily lives. Surely wokeness has intensified in recent decades, but civil rights law can help explain why no institution wants to be the one to stand up to woke mobs. If every other company is making investments in DEI and inviting critical race theorists to speak, how does it look if yours is the one business that does not? This can be seen as a collective action problem, in that while businesses would have fewer costs if they did not have extensive HR and diversity bureaucracies, every individual company has an incentive to do at least as much as everyone else to prove to governments and the courts (as well as NGO activists, elite university graduates, the media, and so forth) that they are sufficiently fighting “discrimination.” One way to understand the “Great Awokening” of the last decade is that culture, aided by social media, is finally catching up to fundamental assumptions of the law.“
There’s much more that could be said on this topic, especially about how these legal changes interacted with America’s universities, given Hanania’s focus is the workplace. But as Hanania explores in this essay, the astonishing thing is how blind most people are to the legal background of the woke revolution. Railing about wokeism without understanding the core issues is a recipe for futility. Not that Hanania is exactly an optimist.
“A worldview that has captured every institution, from the federal government and health organizations to fashion magazines, is not going to be extracted from American society. […] This might be a depressing message, but when one side controls virtually everything, survival is the best any remaining opponents can realistically hope for in the short term.