What Comes Next_
Thoughts on AI, predictive text, technological metaphors, and the string of thought.
🖨️Reclaiming the Cliché
What is it that makes the output of large language models and other varieties of generative AI so interesting, and then so boring? For me the most useful operative metaphor for AI’s promise and problems is the cliche.
✍️Blog Resurrection
Using LLMs to pull thousands of old blog posts back from a grave of mangled database text and rotten links
🤪Limerickipedia
I built this — an online encyclopedia where every entry is a limerick. And it's all generated on the fly by LLMs, of course.
🌉Doves Type
In 1909 T.J. Cobden-Sanderson laboriously destroyed the renowned typeface he had helped create for the Doves Press, lest it ever be used in mechanized reproduction. The destruction didn't take, though, and these words are set in Doves Type. Here's why I chose it (with fear and trembling) for my own dredged-up, AI-reinvigorated online repository.
🔮Future Selves, Future Others
Explore how our connection to future selves influences decisions today, from Malthus's theories to modern psychological experiments.
🧠Freud & Jung, The Original Dream Team
Talking cures, death wishes, and the fraught origins of modern psychology.
⚡Tesla Electrifies the World
Nikola Tesla lit up Philadelphia, shooting sparks and lighting bulbs, offering a glimpse of the powered world to come.
🎤Is it ethical to clone FDR's voice? What if it's really, really funny?
Or, a joke that shall live in infamy...
🩺When America Almost Had Universal Healthcare
How universal healthcare was nearly enacted under FDR, only to face fierce opposition from the AMA.
🤔Could the Challenger Disaster Have Been Prevented?
On a freezing Florida morning, NASA launches Challenger despite engineer warnings. How did it happen, and what happened in the aftermath?
💥How to Stop an Avalanche? Blow Up a Mountain
Alta, Utah launches its first ski lift in 1939, sparking a need for extreme measures—including explosives—to control deadly avalanches.
🗣️In Order to Form a More Tongue-Tied Union
Transforming solemn political promises into a verbal obstacle course
🔮Future-Mindedness
The past, present and future of thinking about the future.
🇨🇺A New Year, A New Cuba
Step into Batista's final New Year's party in 1958 Havana. Feel the anxiety as revolution brews and a new Cuba is about to dawn.
📚Bad Education
How self-discipline impacts educational outcomes and why it may favor girls over boys in school performance. But is it always an asset?
👑Alexander the Great Finds His Destiny
How the 24-year-old king shifted from conqueror to ruler.
🧠Wise Guise
People have been debating what counts as wisdom for a long, long time. Indeed, arguably the oldest literature we have is wisdom literature.
🌋The Last Regular Day in Pompeii
People just going about their lives, about to get buried in ash.
🍷A Glass at Least Half Full
Explore how cultures embody optimism through literature and debate whether this outlook is rational or delusional in our latest study review.
🎈Cleveland Balloonfest ’86
Launching 1.5 million balloons ... what could go wrong?
🌍Origins of Life
Explore the fascinating theories behind the origins of life, delving into scientific insights and philosophical inquiries that challenge our understanding of existence.
🗣️What’s the Word?
How gossip evolved from a term of kinship to a tool for social bonding and information sharing, tracing its journey from Shakespeare to evolutionary psychology.
💎Nine Ways to Make a Diamond
Explore how minerals shape life on Earth and beyond in our latest study, revealing nine unique ways to create a diamond.
💀Dying Fast and Slow
Explore the borders of life and death as scientists debate the intricate dance of dying cells at a groundbreaking NIH workshop.
🎭The Overconfidence Game
Explore the Dunning-Kruger effect's latest revelations as experts and non-experts test their limits of self-awareness in new, illuminating experiments.
🎨A Rose By Any Other Name
Explore how a groundbreaking study using paint chips reveals universal patterns in how cultures distinguish colors.
🕊️Forgiveness
Exploring the science of forgiveness.
⏳A Most Taxing Delay
Why, oh why, do we wait? Tax procrastination and its costly psychological underpinnings.
🐦The Surprising Importance of Bird Nest Architecture
Explore how birds' nest designs reveal an evolutionary arms race driven by the cunning strategies of brood parasites like cuckoos.
🕰️Timeless Truths
Does time even exist? Investigating a mind-bending paradox at the heart of our reality.
🤔Intellectual Humility
Psychologists and philosophers are working to tease apart the ways we respond to new ideas and information — and the possible benefits of intellectual humility.
🧠Positive Neuroscience
How our brains are wired for joy, resilience, and well-being.
🔧Fine-Tuning and Foundational Questions
Is the universe fine-tuned for life? The Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) reviews the latest research.
🏞️John Muir's Quest to Save the Great Outdoors
The Sierra sunrise that sparked John Muir's quest.
🤔Q&A with Nathan Ballantyne
Nathan Ballantyne shares insights on enhancing human judgment.
🧬What Is Epigenetics?
How epigenetics shapes our biology beyond DNA, influencing traits across generations through mechanisms like DNA methylation.
🎤Ma Rainey's Mic Drop
Blues legend Ma Rainey turns scandal into song, recording her defiant "Prove It On Me Blues" in 1928 after rumors swirl about a raided party.
🎵Call and Response
How music's rhythmic bonds shape social behaviors and foster connections, from toddlers to adults.
🧬Extended Evolutionary Synthesis
Evolution has evolved since Darwin, and an emerging new synthesis expands our understanding of what it is and how it functions.
🧬What Is Organism-Centered Evolution?
Explore how organisms evolve beyond genetics, delving into forces like epigenetics and cultural behaviors that shape their development and adaptation.
🪞Polishing the Mirror
Explore how Rumi's poetic mirrors reflect the soulful journey of Sufism, blending divine love with psychological insights.
👑The Coronation of King Charles III
The nearly 1,000 years of tradition behind Britain's first crowning in 70 years.
🍦Who Invented Ice Cream?
From ancient China to American tables, uncover the frosty journey of history's favorite frozen delight.
🌍Five Questions with Matt Warner
Matt Warner, president of Atlas Network, talks about promoting global freedom and human flourishing.
🔮What Is Future-Mindedness?
Prospection, a blend of memory and imagination, shapes our decisions and survival strategies through "mental time travel."
🤔Free Will
Choice matters - New insights into the philosophy, psychology, theology, and neuroscience of free will
🔬Research on Emergence
Explore the intriguing world of emergence where simple elements form complex systems, a concept transforming our understanding across disciplines.
🌀What Is Emergence?
Explore the fascinating concept of emergence, where simple elements unfold into complex systems, from galaxies to societies.
🧠The Power of Positive Self-Talk
Discover how Ethan Kross applies groundbreaking psychology to transform middle school education with the power of positive self-talk.
🧩Complexity
Explore the stories from our three-part research series on complexity from the Santa Fe Institute, a leader of groundbreaking, multidisciplinary research on complex systems.