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The Information
Life is the mechanism information uses to reproduce itself.
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When We Build
“We make our world what it is, and we become the kind of people who live in it.”
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The Righteous Mind
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.
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Experiment #1: No Coffee or Alcohol
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.
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29
On the completion of my 29th year of life.
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Religion for Atheists
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.
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The Peripheral
Might catastrophe be used as a form of population control?
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Collapse
When civilizations collapse from environmental degradation, it's often because they're unable to reconcile their values with those required for adaptation.
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Being Mortal
Like technology today, medicine is great at optimizing for simple, narrow goals, but human beings need more.
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Three Parts Dead
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.
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The 48 Laws of Power
Power is a game of options.
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Experiments
Life is too important not to experiment on.
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Madness, Rack, and Honey
We must waste what little time we can with all our heart.
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Citizenship is the Right to Have Rights
Is citizenship really priceless?
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The Alchemist
Societies and individuals obey different, sometimes conflicting, moral systems.
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The Nature of Privilege
Privilege is less about perks you receive than about problems you don't have.
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Debt: The First 5,000 Years
Debt has been transformed from something that ties us together into something that isolates and alienates us.
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The House of Medici
Sometimes, it is better to be influential than powerful.
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The Drunkard’s Walk
We’re naturally poor judges of probability. Correcting our flawed intuitions about chance would leave us feeling less guilty, more grateful, and generally happier.
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Anathem
Information wants to be promiscuous.