I came across this essay recently on "The Power of Our New Pop Myths," which makes the argument that franchise-based storytelling in the style of Star Wars or Marvel is popular because it fulfils the same societal needs that have historically been filled by religious storytelling.
Causing Correlation
I promised you a post on causation and correlation way back when we reviewed The Art of Thinking Clearly, and as you longtime readers know, I usually eventually get around to keeping those kinds of promises.
Blood and Dragons “Behind the Scene”
This is your spoiler warning. If you haven't already read both parts of Blood and Dragons, I do not suggest that you read this post.
Society’s Origins
When I unearth an article that I can make applicable to writing and storytelling, I have no compulsions against sharing it with you. This week, that’s a paper from Science Advances on how societies initially arose: “Disentangling the Evolutionary Drivers of Social Complexity: A Comprehensive Test of Hypotheses.”
Logical Fallacies
A logical fallacy is a systemic flaw in the sequential process of deriving conclusions that can occur in any application of that method of deliberation, and can result in achieving erroneous end states. Significantly, it does not include cases of failure to implement logical processes in the first place, nor does it apply in most cases to innate traits of neurophysiology.
Definition, Connotation, and the Function of Language
A long time ago, there were no dictionaries, no modern language associations, no Oxford standards. Language is a fundamentally organic system that has been evolving for thousands of years, as complex and intricate as something like the economy, and for most of its existence its rules have not been explicit.
Number Systems
This is one of those concepts that is both simple and mind-bending, so I will being doing my best to explain and explore it for you here. As always, if you have any questions following this discussion, I’m more than happy to engage further in the comments.
A Crisis of Responsibility
A very good friend of mine recently suggested that we as a society are currently suffering from a crisis of responsibility, and ever since then I have been finding it a remarkably insightful lens through which to analyze current events, perspectives, and opinions that I observe being promulgated.
Microbiome Feature Issue
When did probiotics become trendy? When did they become legitimate science and medicine? How do we differentiate between the pseudoscience of “raw food” movements and the clinical science of potential treatments for diseases from Alzheimer’s to ALS?
Private Matters
What separates human beings from other animals? What makes us distinct, different, unique, what traits do we alone have who have done things that no other species has on Earth? For that matter, what is different between a person hunting for subsistence and a person settling the Fertile Crescent?
IGC Publishing 