Life is the mechanism information uses to reproduce itself.

“We make our world what it is, and we become the kind of people who live in it.”

Morality is more than just right and wrong: its the evolutionary result of a range of competing moral intuitions. The failure to appreciate this is a major cause of political partisanship and deadlock.

I enjoy caffeine and alcohol for their symbolic as well as chemical effects, but giving them up for six weeks wasn’t as difficult as I’d imagined, and even felt good.

On the completion of my 29th year of life.

Religions have survived and thrived because of a deep understanding of our human nature. The secular world should not abandon that wisdom because of a minor quibble over the definition of a soul.

Might catastrophe be used as a form of population control?

When civilizations collapse from environmental degradation, it's often because they're unable to reconcile their values with those required for adaptation.

Like technology today, medicine is great at optimizing for simple, narrow goals, but human beings need more.

With philosophical and theological intrigue, a critique of late capitalism, and a badass female protagonist, Max Gladstone’s debut is unlike any fantasy novel I’ve ever read, and in all the right ways.

Power is a game of options.

Life is too important not to experiment on.

We must waste what little time we can with all our heart.

Is citizenship really priceless?

Societies and individuals obey different, sometimes conflicting, moral systems.

Privilege is less about perks you receive than about problems you don't have.

Debt has been transformed from something that ties us together into something that isolates and alienates us.

Sometimes, it is better to be influential than powerful.

We’re naturally poor judges of probability. Correcting our flawed intuitions about chance would leave us feeling less guilty, more grateful, and generally happier.

Information wants to be promiscuous.