Essays
A surreal, postmodern review of Ken Wilber’s book Boomeritis, which seems to be about my work at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.
March 26th, 2011
Practical epistemology: heuristics for how to think about difficult things, particularly using formal methods.
August 9th, 2013
How scientific research is like cunnilingus: a phenomenology of epistemology.
August 11th, 2013
A history of supposedly-scientific nutritional theories illustrating pathologies of rationalism (scientism), with an analogy to cognitive science.
May 31st, 2015
Nutrition offers its resignation. And the reply
A satire: all nutritionists offer their resignation, having recognized their incompetence; but their employers refuse it.
June 2nd, 2015
Nutrition: the Emperor has no clothes
Nutrition science has conclusively failed; it was myths invented to satisfy compulsive hunger for meaning. Now what?
June 3rd, 2015
Probability theory does not extend logic
Probability theory is sometimes called a complete theory of rationality, on the mistaken belief it generalizes logic. I explain why this is wrong.
August 21st, 2015
Wrong-way reduction is a logical fallacy that turns messy, tractable problems into tidy, impossible ones.
March 29th, 2016
A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse
A bridge from systematic rationality to fluid meta-rational understanding may be necessary to prevent civilizational collapse.
April 26th, 2016
Robots, as artificial people, embody our ideas of humanness. Here's a different concept of robots—and of people.
May 8th, 2016
Judging whether a system applies
Rationality requires judging whether a system of reasoning applies to a situation—but that judgement cannot be systematic!
June 7th, 2016
A first lesson in meta-rationality
A first lesson in meta-rationality, or stage 5 cognition, using Bongard problems as a laboratory.
July 22nd, 2016
What they don’t teach you at STEM school
The syllabus for a curriculum teaching meta-rational skills: how to evaluate, combine, modify, discover, and create effective systems.
November 27th, 2016
Upgrade your cargo cult for the win
Richard Feynman derided “cargo cult science” that sticks to fixed systems. Innovation requires an upgrade to fluid, meta-systematic inquiry.
December 31st, 2016
Ignorant, irrelevant, and inscrutable
Distinguishing irrational, anti-rational, and meta-rational critiques of rationalism helps reply effectively.
July 23rd, 2017
Abstract Reasoning as Emergent from Concrete Activity
Abstract reasoning is derived phenomenologically, developmentally, and computationally from embodied, situated, concrete activity.
August 4th, 2017
Circumscription: a logical farce
A musical comedy, set in 1987, about the failure of the logicist program in artificial intelligence.
June 3rd, 2018
How should we evaluate progress in AI?
Improving artificial intelligence research with scientific testing, design practice, and meta-rational choice of methods and criteria
June 30th, 2018
Podcast: Buddhism and cognitivism
A 19-minute podcast episode on the intellectual history of interactions between Buddhism and cognitive science
June 22nd, 2019
An exercise: meta-rational phenomena
An exercise in learning meta-rationality: can you give examples of these meta-rational phenomena?
September 30th, 2019
Doing being rational: polymerase chain reaction
Fine-grained analysis of a molecular biology how-to video reveals significant features of rationality in practice.
November 15th, 2019
Maps, the territory, and meta-rationality
“The map is not the territory”—what is it then? How do rational models actually work?
January 24th, 2021