Essays, notes, open questions, and half-finished thoughts. Newest first.
tags: match
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
What's funneling young adults into the same narrow set of interests - algorithms, peer effects, education tracks? And what genuinely different paths are we being steered away from?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
How does synaptic plasticity actually work at the biochemistry level - LTP, LTD, Hebbian rules - and do any of those mechanisms transfer to artificial networks?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Can the environment write code into your children?
Can environmentally-triggered mutations actually reach offspring? Where's the line between germline and somatic, between an epigenetic mark and an inherited disease?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
The language of thought, before words
Before words landed in our minds, what was the language of thought? How did we communicate with ourselves before language gave us an inner voice - and what got lost or gained when speech moved in?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Is logic predicated on values?
How and why is logic predicated on values and personality? Two people can share facts and inference rules and still land in different places - what does that say about the parts of 'logic' we mistake for universal?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Why pain beats pleasure as a motivator
Why does pain-avoidance pull on us harder than pleasure-seeking? Evolutionary asymmetry, loss aversion, the design of incentives, and culture - what's primary and what's downstream?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Piaget's game of life and the substrate of reciprocity
Reciprocity is the substrate that holds iterated games together. How do Piaget's children at play translate to adult moral reasoning - and what does 'winning' mean once the game isn't zero-sum?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Predicting the brain's response to language
How can a model predict how the brain reacts to language? What does that say about language being a mostly-predictable signal - and where's the line between reading thoughts and reading correlations?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
Psychology and the cost of subjectivity
What makes psychology subjective in a way the hard sciences aren't - and what does that subjectivity actually cost (or buy) in how the field gets done?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
How do you actually verify reasoning in LLMs? Do neuro-symbolic approaches (LTNs, DeepProbLog) give us real proof structure, or just a fancier place to hide hallucinations?
- May 23, 2026 · Essay · 1 Min Read
What does the brain see in a face?
How does the brain recognise within-race face similarity even when the distinguishing features aren't obvious? What is holistic face-processing keying on that the rest of us can't put into words?
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