jacob news

I have spent very little time in San Francisco for living in such close proximity. So I am spending some time with it to get to know it better. It's dirty, it's smart, and it's expensive. I have no idea how the townies make ends meet. Tonight I am hanging out in Noisebridge, a community hacker space in the Mission district.

I watched �The Game� on Netflix with some friends this week. It�s an entertaining movie, but something about Michael Douglas�s character bugged me. Hollywood writers like to portray successful businessmen as lonely, misanthropic creatures. Call it the �Scrooge� archetype. Of course, writers only do this because audiences lap it up. Average people like to believe that we have something that makes us superior to wealthy folk. They may have lots of expensive possessions, but we assuage our envy by telling ourselves that their lives are cold and loveless. Unfortunately, this story is mostly false. In my personal experience rich people for the most part have abundant social circles. Success is attractive and successful people are constantly surrounded by family and friends. Even rich people who fit the abrasive, nasty Hollywood stereotype have crowds of people around them who look past the insults in hopes to befriend them. You may think that you would never suck up to a rich asshole, but y...

The idea of God is a picture painted with negative space. He is the man that is missing, the things we wish for that do not exist. We hunger for justice, love, and purpose, so these are the qualities we give to God. But there is no god and these ideals are not intrinsic qualities of the universe. So if we want them, we must fight for them. We must build them ourselves. Religion crystalizes these ideals in the personage of God and keeps them in the forefront of our mind. It provides a pedal tone, a fixed point that permeates the symphony of our lives. It reminds us of what we ought to be striving for. Our hearts burn for justice. They cry out for love. They bleed for purpose. So when you are confronted with the Christian gospel, what else is there to do but to think "of course"? Of course, this is the religion that humans would create. This is the shape of the hole in our hearts. We should all be more godly. Even atheists like me.

Justice is a tasteless dish, fibrous and unfilling. The wise seek mercy, not justice. It is not given unto humanity to see perfect justice in this lifetime. Religions know this and promise it for the next. They know the hunger for justice in people's hearts and they know it cannot be sated. The cost of justice is too great. Some people sell their entire future for a single morsel. Only seek it if the hunger is so unbearable that it is worth everything to you. Some of history's biggest winners were terribly unjust. Murdering the families of your enemies turns out to be a spectacularly successful strategy. If you love goodness, you must pick your battles and take the long view. Seek to spread the love of goodness in the hearts of men. The nihilists are too powerful to face in a set-piece battle. They are far more cunning and effective than those constrained by morality. Every age has its evil. It is the task of the righteous to work towards its lessening over time, not its immedi...

Tyler Cowen TEDx talk on why you should be skeptical of stories people tell you.

A man living in a box thinks box-shaped thoughts. The tiny rip in the corner, the stain on one side - these are the stuff that occupy his mind. If a mold starts to grow on a piece of the box then the highly-evolved calculating machine in his skull will run in endless loops on the topic of mold. You will not be able to teach such a man any thoughts about the world outside his box. He will not care to think them. The box is the world. If you want to get through to him, first you have to get him to step outside of the box. We feel superior to the poor slob stuck in the box. But each of us lives in our own box. It is made by the boundaries of polite opinion, the range of philosophical and political beliefs held by our peers. It is a strange man who holds a belief not shared by a large portion of his friends. He probably has at least a low-grade mental illness. If you seek to implant alien ideas into someone's head, then logical argument will not suffice. You first have to acclimate the...

The 1950s gave us working for The Man. The 1960s gave us the cliche of the young person rebelling against The Man. Since then, these things come and go in cycles because kids generally hate their parents and vow to be as unlike them as possible. FreedomTwentyFive is the chronicle of a 25 year old guy checking out of his day job working for The Man, unsatisfied with the life that our culture offers him. His earnest and wide-ranging search for meaning, his boldness in his personal life, and the several interests and influences he shares with me makes me attracted to his story. Normally I get bored with earnest 20-somethings doing cliche things like "saving the world", protesting, or rebelling against the man. But Frost (the author) is thoughtful enough to get past my bullshit filter and make me think. I wish him luck. Check out the best of his blog.