Contrary to President Trump’s declaration, we have an inescapable need to have laws that coerce, dominate, and control our lives. There may be some people who think they can live without those laws, but I suspect that will only work when they are on an island isolated from any dissenting peers. There is something deep within us that recognizes that the rule of law is essential to our being humans.
An example is coming to the rescue of someone who is in a perilous condition such the case of a drowning person. If suitably capable, both men and women will come to the rescue. However, I believe they are drawing upon fundamentally different instincts: the woman will be drawing on the compassion to relieve the person, while the man will be drawing upon the recognition that the drowning person needs to be mercifully extracted from a lost battle against nature. Once the person is saved, he would receive reassurance type comfort from a woman, but probably will receive from the man a word or two of advice about how to avoid that situation in the future.
Most of the history of rise and fall of human advancement comes from the combination of a man having a plan he is willing to fight for and that fight being delayed by other men taking the time to evaluate whether it is a plan that needs to be fought against.
Underlying the proposal to ban toxic aggression is the untested proposition that major improvements for our descendant’s future can result from such a ban.
Over the four decades of my adult life there has been a recurring theme in my education and profession and that theme is that the world works on fundamental principles and atomic units. In college, I recall the confidence that we can understand everything from quantum mechanics if only we had the computing power to…
I anticipate a future where we redefine a work-week as the duration of a specific just-in-time gig, a weekend as the gap between gigs, vacations as opportunities presented by anticipation of long gaps but subject to sudden termination when new opportunities occur. The day itself will have break times that will vary day to day and may arise with no advanced notice, leading us to arrange social encounters with near-strangers who happen to share something in common including the fact that they are free at the same time.
My hypothesis is that men do have a tendency to prefer male voices for topics of high interest or importance, and that tendency is a consequence of the opportunity for a fruitful counterargument when we disagree. I follow more male voices than female voices, because there are many more people I disagree with than I agree with. I will listen to both sexes if I agree with them, but I will only follow men if there is a potential that I will disagree with them. It is only with other men that I can have any chance of gaining anything through argument.
The rise of civilizations is from rapid adaptation of first-hand observations. The fall of civilizations occurs when theories override contrary observations. Government by data and urgency can restore the original vitality that created this civilization, and can prevent the inevitable decline resulting from theory-driven decision making.
