The McDonaldization of Being
An interactive guide to the standardization of modern life, and what we can do about it.
Blog
Welcome to my blog. Here I share my latest writings, interactive projects, and thoughts on science, education, and everything in between.
Interactives
This section features my interactive, web-based projects. Explore these to engage with complex topics in a more hands-on way.
What's in a Name?
An interactive exploration of the history, diversity, and significance of naming customs.
The Braess Paradox
An interactive exploration of counter-intuitive behavior in complex systems with the example of how adding a road can actually make traffic worse.
Posts
Here you’ll find my more traditional, long-form posts, organized reverse chronologically.
AI is here. So, what do we teach?
Published:
Over the past few months, I have been forced to admit something that I refused to for the last decade, even as I saw machines continually gain abilities that I vehemently posited that they would never be able to: computers will soon be able to do any cognitive work that we humans can do. The profundity of this advent is hard to overstate and will affect every aspect of the economy, our social relationships, political structures, and much more. Fortunately, I do not have a say in how large-scale societal changes will take place, but I have been pondering how my life will change, and what my role in such a world will be.
Oppression of Revolutionary Ideas in Science
Published:
We often view scientific inquiry as a meritocratic enterprise. Science is imagined as the battlefield of ideas, each tested through empiricism and rationalism, culminating in a slow, steady march towards progress for humanity. The imagery of war is intentional here: just as soldiers are indoctrinated of the evil of their enemies, scientists are led to perceive opposing ideas as fallacious, and that the only enemy of scientific inquiry is ignorance.