Good things often get taken too far. They can take on a life of their own through self-perpetuation, get over-zealously applied, or become hijacked. This often turns good things into mixed things and sometimes even corrupts them into bad things. Here are four interesting examples: (1) Zoning laws in the U.S. helped solve problems (like keeping pollution-spewing factories away ...

Becoming wiser seems like one of the most important things we can aim for. Yet, there's something extremely odd about wisdom: nobody agrees on what it means. Here are six thought-provoking definitions of wisdom that l find it useful to reflect on: 1) Wisdom as self-consistency:  Wisdom is an equilibrium where you find alignment between all combinations of your: • values ...

Even many of the smartest people that have ever lived convinced themselves of false things (just like the rest of us). Here are some fun and wild examples: (1) Linus Pauling won TWO Nobel prizes - one in peace and one in chemistry. Unfortunately, he eventually became obsessed with and widely promoted the false (and sometimes still repeated) idea that high-dose vitamin C cures many disease...

Some people claim that the idea of technology or science being slowed down is ridiculous - that they march forward at their own pace. But this is not always true - there are a number of interesting examples of tech, tech adoption, and science being greatly slowed down: 1) Psychedelics: In 1966, LSD was banned in CA, and in 1968, a U.S. law came out banning psilocybin (the chemical in "magic mu...

What countries have the most unicorns (i.e., billion-dollar startup companies) per capita (i.e., per person)? Oddly, I couldn't find this anywhere, so I calculated it. The winners: Singapore Israel the United States Estonia Ireland Here's the full chart I created: Interestingly, the top of the table pretty closely follows the amount of startup investment ...

1) What do you do when a predatory journal keeps spam emailing you to get you to make a submission? Submit this paper to their journal:  2) To succeed in academia, you need lots of publications. But the order of authors' names on a paper impacts who gets the credit. Thankfully, there's a technological solution to make every author the first author: ...

You're on a mountain range, trying to reach the highest mountain peak you're capable of reaching. That peak reflects the total sum of your achievements according to your intrinsic values. This may include, for instance, your happiness, the happiness of your loved ones, your positive impact on the world, living virtuously, achieving your deeply meaningful goals, and so on. Unfortunat...

I've often heard software/start-up folks say they need a "designer." Few realize how hopelessly vague this is. I think there are at least four different (unrelated) start-up "design" skills that are rarely all found in one person. Four types of "designers" for software start-ups: 1) Artist Designers (a.k.a., Graphic Designers) They usually know Adobe Illustrator, can draw by hand beauti...