Just about every way you can measure, the world is a better place today than it was before. Life expectancy is up, poverty down, even most environmental indicators aside from greenhouse gases have improved. Yet this is never the story. The story is always how the world, despite the nearly consistent progress over the last […]
Why It’s Hard Not to Be a Hypocrite
I recently came upon this quote from the social-news aggregator reddit: “What I’ve seen is that in the museums and in the textbooks, whenever they claim to show the evolutionary differences from one species to another, it relies on illustrations and drawings… not any material evidence.” – Wendy Wright The comments mock the obvious hypocrisy […]
The Danger of “-isms”
One of my bigger regrets is publicly declaring myself an atheist. Not because I’ve made a recent conversion to faith—I’m still confident in my original opinion. Rather, because I believe “-isms” are dangerous, whether it is theism, atheism, vegetarianism, Buddhism or any other philosophy. When a belief becomes an “-ism” it generally becomes a part […]
Is It Better to Read Books You Disagree With?
In the last two weeks I’ve been reading Friedrich Hayek’s, The Road to Serfdom. Hayek argues in this book that any form of collectivism (whether left or right) inevitably leads to a totalitarian state. My views are mostly libertarian, so I agree with almost all of the arguments Hayek presented. Reading through the book, however, […]
I'm a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, podcast host, computer programmer and an avid reader. Since 2006, I've published weekly essays on this website to help people like you learn and think better. My work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, TEDx, Pocket, Business Insider and more. I don't promise I have all the answers, just a place to start.