Continued elsewhere

I've decided to abandon this blog in favor of a newer, more experimental hypertext form of writing. Come over and see the new place.

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Blogyear 2014 in review

There were dramatically fewer posts this year (23 or so, from 46 in 2012 and a high of 84 in 2008). A number of possible reasons:  I spent a lot of time in chatter on Twitter and in closed Facebook groups; going to Burning Man did a lot for me but didn՚t do much for my output of prose; I am simply less engaged by politics. Last year՚s blogging residency gave me illusions of writing more seriously, which may have suppressed actual output.

Yet some thematic clusters emerge, if you can call two posts a cluster.

Not sure what the next year will bring to the blog. I may try writing on a more regular schedule, may try some experiments. It՚s time to level up, or so the spirit of new year՚s resolution tells me. That spirit, of course, has notably little power once the holiday season is past.


Objective/subjective

Both these posts try to get at (in quite different ways) the tension between the depersonalized view-from-nowhere of mainstream science and the situated and subjective view of the cosmos we naturally start with. A topic I՚ve touched on before.

Romantic Science
Accursed Ipsissimosity


Philosophy of software

Software is eating the world despite the fact that nobody seems to really understand it very well. Given that this is the one area where I might claim to have some degree of privileged expert insight, I should probably write more about it.

Thoughts on Ted Nelson
Software Studies
Lambda the Ultimate Incantation


The political abstract

I don՚t bother writing much on day to day politics – there are just too many other people doing that. But occasionally I cough up something on the nature of politics, coalitions, conflict, etc.

Vertical and Horizontal Solidarity
Refactoring War


Encounters with rationalism

I have been hanging around a lot with LessWrong people and their ilk (and somewhat cavalierly using them as foils for writing posts that go off on my own tangents). They certainly are a lively bunch and even if I can՚t get down with their program it is usually useful for me to try and articulate the whys and wheres of our differences.

Superintelligence
Reading Recommendations for Rationalists


Encounters with the sacred

The most important things are the most difficult to write about.

Embodiments of the Word
Trip Report
The Sacred and the Rational
Death and Dualism
Death. Thou Shalt Die

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