New SF author Karl Gallagher dropped me a note last week that offered me copies of his first work, a novel sequence: Torchship, Torchship Pilot, and Torchship Captain. He explained that the ideas I expressed in The Deep Norms of SF helped form his ideas about writing. Since that is part of the effect I… Continue reading The Torchship Trilogy
Month: September 2017
Unlearning history
In some circles there’s lately a vogue for vandalizing or pulling down Confederate statues. The people doing it think (or say they think) that they’re striking a blow against racism. I think they’re, at best, engaged in a dangerous reopening of old wounds. At worst they’re threatening to inflict serious new ones. I’m a Yankee… Continue reading Unlearning history
The brain is a Peirce engine
There comes from Scott Alexander’s blog news of a new unified theory of neural cognition called the “predictive processing model”. Read his review of the book “Surfing Uncertainty” before proceeding further. This model seems to solve a whole raft of longstanding problems about how the brain does what it does, offer insight into how various… Continue reading The brain is a Peirce engine