collection
Articles I keep thinking about
Pieces that I return to over the years. Don't necessarily agree with them but I keep thinking about them.
- 01
Dissolving the Fermi Paradox
Many hypotheses have been suggested in efforts to resolve the Fermi paradox, for example, that all other civilizations are deliberately concealing themselves, or that they all annihilate themselves before successfully traveling or communicating at interstellar distances. A major difficulty for such hypotheses is that the putative mechanism must be extremely reliable: If only 99 %99\text{\,}\mathrm{\%} of other civilizations annihilated themselves, this would do little to resolve the paradox. These hypotheses are thus highly speculative, relying on strong implicit claims about universal alien motivations or social dynamics, when we cannot claim similar knowledge of our own world. These hypotheses are entertained not out of independent scientific plausibility, but because they are seen as potential explanations of he Fermi observation.
- 02
The Web Is a Customer Service Medium, by Paul Ford
I look forward to your feedback.
- 03
Meditations On Moloch
I. Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem on Moloch:What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and u…