Psychological Egoism

Essays

Okay you know the drill. This is a paper I turned in today for my Ethics class. It deals with psychological egoism, and if you have any leanings toward this moral theory I’d be interested in hearing your feedback on this. My language is strong in the paper, but that doesn’t mean my mind isn’t open. I didn’t have as much time to put into the print (PDF) version of the paper this time, but it’s still a nicer way to read it than the HTML below.

Every human action is at its root a selfish act; even acts that are altruistic on the surface are primarily motivated by a deeper selfishness — or so a psychological egoist would say. Psychological Egoism is a descriptive theory that rather than suggesting, as ethical or rational egoism does, how people ought to live, suggests how people actually go about their lives. The assumptive nature of the theory introduces a number of possible avenues for refutation, some of which are very compelling. Continue reading Psychological Egoism →

Books in 2017

Books

Here’s what I ended up reading this year, in roughly chronological finishing order. (I usually have 3-4 books going on at once.)

  1. Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss.
  2. The Art of Stillness by Pico Ayer.
  3. Out of Your Mind by Alan Watts (audiobook, really a series of lectures).
  4. Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Mushashi (audiobook).
  5. Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien.
  6. The Best American Short Stories 2016 edited by Junot Diaz.
  7. Feynman by Jim Ottaviani.
  8. My Gita by Devdutt Pattanaik.
  9. From Plato to Post-modernism: Understanding the Essence of Literature and the Role of the Author by Louis Markos (another lecture series).
  10. The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy.
  11. The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam.
  12. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.
  13. Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles.
  14. When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain: History’s Unknown Chapters by Giles Milton.
  15. Widow Basquiat: A Love Story by Jennifer Clement.
  16. 32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line by Eric Ripert.
  17. Identify: Basic Principles of Identity Design in the Iconic Trademarks by Chermayeff & Geismar.
  18. Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch (audiobook).
  19. The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World by Brad Stone.
  20. The Leavers by Lisa Ko.
  21. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. (Update: On Obama’s 2019 book list.)
  22. Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman.
  23. The Executive’s Compass by James O’Toole.
  24. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.
  25. Dance of the Possible by Scott Berkun.
  26. The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (short story).
  27. Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss.
  28. After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley by Rob Reid.
  29. Principles by Ray Dalio.
  30. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (audiobook).
  31. The Undiscovered Self: With Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams by C.G. Jung.

A fairly random selection, and hopefully I can get a few more in next year.

All book years: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020–2023.

Virgin Wifi

Asides

I’m on a Virgin America flight from Las Vegas to San Francisco and there’s wifi! I was on one of the test international flights where they did wifi like 5 years ago but I haven’t been on a flight that has had it since. I wish this flight was actually longer. I’m getting 140ms ping times to wordpress.com, it’s a great connection.

USF using WordPress

Asides

Mark Jaquith wrote in to say “The University of South Florida in Tampa is using WordPress to run student blogs. http://blog.usf.edu/ The blogs are available to each of the school’s 42,000 students! The blogs have some pretty slick features like an included Gallery photo album, a unified login system, del.icio.us integration, Flickr integration, and pre-installed CSS varieties. They even provide unified RSS/Atom feeds for all of the blogs.” I don’t know what to add to that, except that this is fantastic. I wonder how long before other universities start to follow in their footsteps?

The Most Frustrating Thing

Design, Google, Zeldman,

It’s Friday, so I’m going to take a few minutes to describe the most annoying concept I see espoused by 95%+ of blogs I read, people I talk to, and friends I have. The problem is until you let go, you’ll never be able to build something truly useful to a non-trivial audience.

Technology doesn’t matter. Design doesn’t matter.

There, I said it.

Continue reading The Most Frustrating Thing →

CNN on WP

Asides

Many of you have written in that CNN’s new Political Ticker blog is on WordPress. We know! They’re part of our VIP program which allowed them to launch quickly and serve millions of pageviews with no problems. The team there has launched dozens of blogs on the system, including ones for Fortune.com and CNN Money and is a real pleasure to work with. To the extent blogs are going to have an impact on the 2008 election they need to be able to reach millions of people in a short period of time without problems, I hope that WordPress.com provides that platform for folks.