Jag Bhalla
Science Writer, Blogger, and Essayist
Jag Bhalla is a writer and entrepreneur. Current projects include this "Thought Fix" blog series for Big Think. And NanoSalad a zero-prep way to zap veggie gaps (by BodZoo LLC, a future-friendly, basic-by-design business, see www.bodzoo.com for further details). Prior projects include "Errors We Live By," a series of short exoteric essays exposing errors in the big ideas running our lives. And I'm Not Hanging Noodles On Your Ears, a surreptitious science gift book from National Geographic Books, which explains his twitter handle @hangingnoodles.
"Behavioral politics” can shed light on terrorism's appeal. And why simple appeals to reason might not work. Indeed rationality doesn't work the way many think it does. What makes us tick must matter for how reasoning works.
Humanity's languages and moralities evolved for social coordination. And for productive teamwork. Our moral sense, our social-rule processors, work just like our language-rule processors.
Two of America’s core values—democracy and meritocracy—seem increasingly conflicted and confused. Let's clarify how they're supposed to work, using Lincoln's tyranny test.
How we talk about love has become blurry "low resolution language" (it's life-organizing force is often dissipated on trifles). But looking at richer love language can help us improve our aim. And remind us that universal human rights came from a special kind of love that we all need.
Our best "Big Picture" of the universe might be Sean Carroll's “poetic naturalism.” But his skillfully framed physics and philosophy synthesis needs more “moral geometry” and a “naturalistic fallacy” update.
Chinese philosophers have suggested “You… should not think of yourself as a single, unified being.” The Path, a book by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh, can explain (with help from Plato, Kant, Eden, Hume, Confucius, Kahnenman...).
We often now picture our minds in unsound ways. They’re built to resonate to poetry. We’ve all but lost the memory of poetry’s historic role in molding minds (that’s the unsung pretext of Plato’s poetry ban). Poetry is a key cognitive technology , so powerful it was the Internet of its time.
Feeling IS fast thinking. And emotions aren't always guilty of being irrational. Whenever pondering minds, always bear in mind Daniel Kahneman’s teachings on the brain.
Happiness has gotten confusing (even puzzling our smartest scientists). “Bentham’s bucket error” is to blame, but "Plato’s Pastry" and a rare case of reality in Freud can help. It's time happiness got less kid-and-id-centirc.
Adam Smith hated greed. He'd likely be horrified to see how his name is now used. And any Smith fans who believe selfishness is a virtue distort what Smith called his best work.
The science of “human vulnerabilities" is being used to "engineer compulsion.” In addition to A.D.D., “attention captivation disorders” are going viral.
Charles Darwin probably wouldn't like what his name now means. He called any "Darwinian" human, having no trace of team loyalty, "an unnatural monster."
Few maximize. Most muddle. So why do economists mainly model the happy few? It makes the math easier, but risks misusing the massive power of markets. Perhaps, like the muddling masses, they should use less math and more logic.
How "the stats" are being used often causes a fog of low-quality quantification. Multiple regression is widely misunderstood by researchers and journalists.
Science's picture of the world is being updated. It's adding algomorphic thinking to its palette.
The conceptual tools of science had to be painstakingly built. Turns out seemingly self-evident ideas like discovery and facts once weren't so obvious. In The Invention of Science, David Wootton excavates their history.
Nick Lane believes he can explain the "black hole" at the heart of biology. And in the process predict traits that even alien life will have. Here are some amazing facts from biology.
Many who make New Year’s resolutions of the “less vice, more virtue” variety might benefit from some background on the history and logic of certain skills that flourishing depends on.
The roots of the word “Christmas” express two kinds of liberation (of, and from, the masses) with some shortening. Much that matters is hidden in the unsung history of words, and their translations... there's the rub...
All text involves translation. Either from reality or imagination into language, or between languages. Can the language that perfectly fit physics translate every pattern under the sun? Well, nothing in physics chooses...
Is AI about to take over? Or does it struggle to be as smart as a toddler?
Terrorists exploit the “glamor of action movies, video games, and gangsta rap.” Counterterrorist efforts somehow have to counter that glamorization.
The big story that probably most shapes our times is too simple. We can't afford to go on ignoring its plot holes and more complex dark side.
The mental mechanics of how emotions and logic relate aren't widely understood. Our minds are built to mostly be "indirectly rational."
Where do we learn what matters? Are new forces crowding out the old sources of stories that shape us?
Although it seems savvy to defer to “the data,” the devil is in the mixed details. For example, humans on average have one testicle and one ovary.
Are too many taking liberties with the logic of our freedoms? A smart reassessment of Henry David Thoreau's work spotlights key related issues.
Beauty and duty are increasingly involved in an undeclared conflict. It's not a fair fight; one side is much stronger (illustrating how art works on our "hidden brain").
Free markets aren’t like gravity. They’re ruled by neither laws of nature nor commandments carved in stone. Delegating our ethics to markets risks costly error. All things are not equally auctionable.
Their hyper-repetitive patterns mean video games vastly outgun older emotech... like movies, or novels. Some emotech helps you be more human. Some reduces your "humanity." We shape our emotech, and then it shape us.