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10 years ago I was living at the abandoned, beer-spattered house of the Ultimate Frisbee team over winter break at Wake Forest University, having recently been kicked out of my parents' home for leaving the Jehovah's Witness faith. I read "The Fountainhead" and in Ayn Rand I found an author with a kindred spirit. I became an atheist Randian libertarian. My isolated Jehovah's Witness upbringing left me unskilled at negotiating personal relationships. I expected the world to become my friend upon my emancipation and I was disappointed to find out how hard it would be to make friends. There is no doubt that I was/am weird and that weirdos have a hard time making friends.  But my earnest naivety must have been endearing to some people. I made a few friends, fewer close ones, and went on my first dates. For the first and only time, I even briefly fell in love with a girl that loved me back. I worked my way through college as a waiter at an Italian restaurant chain and ...

My goal for this year is to never use an angry tone when discussing politics. Anger is powerful for rallying the base but it is useless in convincing others to come to your perspective. As someone with extremely heterodox politics I have no base to rally, so anger has no utility for me. Living in the SF Bay Area, I'm often exposed to bad arguments against fracking, GMOs, or whatever is causing the latest environmentalist panic (environmental issues tend to tug at the heart and therefore silence the brain more than other issues). I need to prevent my frustration from wearing through. In any given conversation, it may be the hundredth time I am hearing their perspective but it is likely the first time they are hearing mine. This quote from the year's best rationality quotes leaps to mind: [About the challenge of skeptics to spread their ideas in society] In times of war we need warriors, but this isn't war. You might try to say it is, but it's not a war. We aren't t...

Democracies struggle with the oppression of minority populations - it's a problem built into the idea of majority rule. But the modern world is a strange place where everything is flipped upside down.  Aaron Swartz  fought for the oppressed majority. A tiny elite has access to the results of publicly funded science published in academic journals. These are the privileged few who are employed by a major university or who pay upwards of $40,000/year for temporary residency at one. The remaining 99% of the world's population is cut off from the mechanism of scientific progress. If scientific progress is so vital for the future of humanity then why do we turn away the vast majority who want to partake in it? I dream of a world where the scientific enterprise grows beyond academia. I dream of a world where the collective intelligence of humanity can be brought to bear on humanity's most important problems. I dream of a world where the conversation of science is conducted in inde...

The startup ecosystem depends on the recycling of the profits from successful startups into new angel investment, venture capital funds, and bootstrapped ventures. This flow of capital is the lifeblood of Silicon Valley. The story of Elon Musk is a well known example. When Paypal was bought by eBay, his stake in the company was liquidated for $180 million after tax. Musk resisted the urge to retire to a nice beach and reinvested every last dollar he owned into three daring and innovative new companies: Space X, Tesla, and Solar City. Exhausting his once-mighty bank account, he  borrowed money from friends to pay his rent . Today, those three new companies look like three winners. Musk's story shows how the world-changing ventures of today rely on seed capital from the successes of five years ago. This process depends on the ability of founders to keep their winnings from the startup game so that they can play again. That is why the rate of the capital gains tax is so important...