The Torchship Trilogy

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

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

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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