– what is the optimal ratio of teachers to doers in a healthy society? insofar as occupational and social roles overlap, assume ‘teachers’ are people who primarily pass along established curricula and ‘doers’ are tinkerers, creatives, people who primarily work to further knowledge. without teachers, the next generation flounders; without doers, society doesn’t advance.
– how to de-escalate the presence of disinformation in our daily media algorithms? society hasn’t yet figured out the guardrails needed for electronic dialogue. corporations driven by click metrics have created a diseased deluge.
– regarding randomized control trials in evolution: in the early mammal branch, what happens if you extinguish a species? if therapsids had been universally culled, what creatures would have filled the sans mammalia? how predictable is the evolutionary next step? in the tree of life, are there multiple avenues to structural invention – like calculus – or does biological success only have one legitimate shot before competitors prevail?
– how rigorously should the boundaries of meaning be patrolled? believe the answer is not very. ex. racist. the word shouldn’t be used lightly but that doesn’t preclude it from being used broadly. still, must retain the integrity of its coinage. allow a word like that to become cheap, you lose an important term of condemnation, gain a vulgar abuse.
– grasped for the name of the scientific field most necessary for the survival of modern civilization, perhaps it’s not yet been coined? what would a university call a researcher who studies the combination of demography and energy? malthusian studies sounds both too bleak and too campaign-like so what’s the technical term? disciplines like petroleum engineering do not quantify the demand, and demography does nothing to understand the future supply. environmental studies departments examine the effects, not the causes, and not the future trends. resource depletion and scarcity drives most every human conflict, how is this not a formal field of rigorous inquiry? population pressure science
– ask for contingency plans for the world economy. if industrialized nations fail, how do citizens re-write their constitutions? we might be better off thinking through our modern ideal now rather than junking together a revised rulebook in time of duress.
– is western civilization better off for there having been a robust christian faith?
– did orwell resign his commission from the police force because he understood there was something pornographic about fascism? see “thoughts on…orwell”
– are we moving towards a state where a human brain in a liquid jar experiences perpetual pleasure?
– if a manhattanite born 100-150 years ago walked fifth avenue today, would they be more surprised by the bright lights or the share of the elderly with their teeth intact?
