Understanding Society

Image: a poor solution to the stopping problem In earlier posts I discussed the question of "rational plans of life" ( link ...

We often think of intelligent action in terms of a number of ideas: goal-directedness, belief acquisition, planning, prioritization of ...

Image: detail from Family Portrait 2 1965  (Creative Commons license, Richard Rappaport) Herbert Simon made paradigm-changing con...

Why is it so difficult for leaders in various industries and sectors to seriously address the existential threats that sometimes arise? ...

When I first posted on cephalopod intelligence a year or so ago, I assumed it would be a one-off diversion into the deep blue sea ( link )....

A biography is a narrative of a person's life. The biographer wants to tell the story of how the subject made it from childhood to a...

Recent posts have raised questions about formulating a rational plan of life. This way of putting the question highlights "ration...

There isn't a clear philosophy of life-planning in the literature. So let's start from scratch. What do we need in order to make a ...

How should researchers attempt to investigate non-human intelligence? The image above raises difficult questions. The octopus is manipula...

image: Dietrich Bonhoeffer with his students Millions of words have been written on the topic of rationality in action. Life involves c...