We rely daily on science and its models to guide everything from what we eat, to the medicines we take, to the construction of the machines we use to get to work and back.

But are the models 100% certain? Are they True with a capital T?

That question misunderstands how science works.

• There are all sorts of stories about how the world works.
• If your story is going to be Science, you need to be able to use it to generate bets.
• The bets need to be bets you can settle using something observable.
• The outcome has to be…

I write from my disparate obsessions and don’t expect much of anyone to actually find all of it interesting. Hence, a tool to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Outline
Tribes — our evolutionary heritage will save us or sink us
Free Will and Consciousness — thoughts & tirades
Personal Growth Etc. — individual & archetypal
Story of Story — a lifelong obsession
Emotional Truths / Political Lies — wtf is going on
Amalgamated Amalgamations: Strengthen the Tribe, Build Bridges (a collaborative exploration)
Random — science, mathematical modeling, privacy, etc

_ _ _

Tribes

Evolution forged into highly cooperative tribes in lethal competition with…

…Ray Charles was shot down / But he got up…
-Van Morrison

What family stories do your kids know?
What stories do you remember from your grandparents?
Which grandparent stories do you think your grandchildren should know?

These are important questions simply because knowing the family narrative is a key to resilience in children and young adults…and likely all of us.

…researchers at Emory did a study that showed that the kids who know more about their family history had a greater belief that they could control their world and a higher degree of self-confidence. It was the number one…

Bliss, Disquiet, Enlightenment, and False Satoris

The apparent religiosity of James and Jung can obscure their fundamental scientific rigor.
-J. Allan Hobson, The Dreaming Brain

Life is not a matter of holding good cards but of playing a poor hand well.
- Robert Lewis Stevenson

This article started as a section in a story looking at the paradoxes of tribalism. I wanted to say all of the below in a few paragraphs.

Then it careened completely out of control.

The big italicized text aren’t quotations but part of the text…a running tl/dr as it were.

I suggest scanning quickly down…

Science and Religion. You can apply one, the other, or both to guide action. But as views of the universe, they contradict.

Someone created the universe. Or Someone didn’t.

How to resolve the contradiction?

I don’t.

Science and Religion. You can apply one, the other, or both to guide action. But as views of the universe, they contradict.

The metaphor I use to think about this is as follows:

• There is a house on the beach of a jungle island.
• The house is large and rectangular.
• Two sides are parallel to the waterline with floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
• The view toward…

Over the past few months, I’ve added a fairly rigorous discussion of Free Will and a two-part rant on Consciousness to Medium. During the process, I made a point of reading what others had posted on the topics, adding Claps and trading comments with a variety of interesting folks.

I did notice a certain muddiness in some of the discussions...not surprising when words like Free and Consciousness are involved.

Asking questions of other writers and, even more so, being asked questions led me to isolate a series of ‘pivot point questions’ that seem to distinguish the different stances. …

I’m interested in the stories you choose to tell to friends and family because, without understanding why exactly, they feel important.

There’s a lot of focus on stories now. Ads or pitches must tell a story…or so the story goes.

I’m uninterested in the story Pepsi tells you or in learning how to craft such stories.

I am interested in the stories that your grandmother told you.

I’m interested in the stories you choose to tell to friends and family because, without understanding exactly why, they feel important.

This is the first in a series of posts that aim to…

Enough!

I confess. I am, at heart, a technical writer — my objective is a lucid presentation of ideas.

This is a departure. This is a rant.

That feels a bit wrong…but it has allowed me to connect my callow young grumpiness with the seasoned grumpiness I’ve achieved over time. So…

Slowly I turned

The last decade has seen a recrudescence of the idea that consciousness, conscious thought, and considered choice have no real impact on behavior and may not even exist.

Godin likens ‘consciousness choice’ to a play-by-play announcer commenting on pre-existing events.

Here’s a recent example of that sort of thing from…