Earlier this month, I underwent a cataract surgery. Today, we take it for granted that cataract removal is a simple outpatient procedure. But for nearly two millennia, blunt couching—pushing the cloudy lens to the back of the eye—was the standard. It was not until the Enlightenment era that lens extraction was pioneered. In the 20th… Continue reading The Beginning of Infinity
Category: Information
The Technology of Immortality and a Galactic Future
Decentralized science is disrupting the stagnation in science and ushering in a new era of human progress. Guided by the philosophy of Cosmism, now is the time to be bold in our ambitions: to transcend death and expand across the cosmos. CryoDAO is spearheading the charge to cosmical fulfilment and the awakening of consciousness, moving us one step closer to a morality of interplanetary immortality.
If We Live in a Borgean Simulation
If we live in a simulation in Jorge Luis Borges’s world, an infinite series of Babylon Lottery determines each of our next move in the infinite Garden of Forking Paths, and each of our next expression drawn from the infinite Library of Babel.
The Great Turnings
As Vladimir Lenin said, there are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. What makes our times particularly turbulent is that we are simultaneously at the late stages and transitional moments of three big cycles: Carlota Perez's technological revolutions / financial capital cycle (50-60 years) Strauss–Howe generational cycle (80-100 years) Ray… Continue reading The Great Turnings
Bitcoin as a Portal of Ideas
As a polymath and Bitcoin maximalist, I see Bitcoin as a portal to ideas of great thinkers of which I'm a student: Gustave Le Bon's crowd psychology, Eric Hoffer's fanatical mass movements, Nassim Nicholas Taleb's antifragility and skin in the game, Friedrich von Hayek's distributed knowledge and monetary competition, Jorge Luis Borges' illusion of reality,… Continue reading Bitcoin as a Portal of Ideas
Borges on Bitcoin Forks
How I imagine Jorge Luis Borges would write about Bitcoin: In Bitcoin we find the idiosyncrasies of each of its forks to a greater or lesser degree. Every fork modifies our conception of the original Bitcoin, as it will modify the future. If the forks had never existed, we would not perceive the qualities in… Continue reading Borges on Bitcoin Forks
Architecture in a Post-Truth World
Büro Ole Scheeren took the needle of the tower and bent it back into itself to create a loop. There is no beginning or end. Walk around the base of the tower, and you see it go from strong and imposing to unstable and fragile. It’s the perfect symbol for a post-truth world.
How to Hide a Secret in the Information Age
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, as Herbert Simon said. When attention is scarce, secrets can be hidden. Dialogues from G. K. Chesterton's The Sign of the Broken Sword illustrate this vividly. Father Brown: Where does a wise man hide a pebble? Flambeau: On the beach. Father Brown: Where does a wise man… Continue reading How to Hide a Secret in the Information Age
The Half-Life of Information
Facebookers write for the next few minutes or hours. Newspapermen write for the next few days. Corporate entertainers (consultants, economists, and all sorts of "thought leaders") write for the next few months or, more rarely, years. A minority of academics write for the next decade or beyond. Men of letters write for time and for… Continue reading The Half-Life of Information
Two Parables on the Information Economy
1. Immanuel Kant's observations on student note-taking in 1778: Those of my students who are most capable of grasping everything are just the ones who bother least to take explicit and verbatim notes; rather, they write down only the main points, which they can think over afterwards. Those who are most thorough in note-taking are… Continue reading Two Parables on the Information Economy
Andy Yee 