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A Race of Storytellers

In the 1960’s, neuroscience researcher Michael Gazzaniga performed a series of now-famous experiments upon a set of patients who had had their corpus callosum—the thick body of nerve fibers which...

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When Science Looks Like Religion

The battle for the claim to which tribe is truly “scientific” has again heated up. Fueled by a prickly exchange between Michael Shermer, assuming the liberals-are-anti-science corner in Scientific...

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Government: Once Necessary, but Not Inevitable

Most people accept the desirability and necessity of a centralized state to maintain order and provide a basic standard of living for its wards. Like the old David Foster Wallace riff about the fish...

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Clans, States, and Individual Liberty

Imagine a society without a centralized system of law. In this world, people form social groups associated by kinship, marriage, and religious affinity. Through repeated interactions and shared...

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The Economics of ‘Slut-Shaming’

From the prim Puritan vengeance wracked upon the steadfast Hester Prynne to the targeted sexual critique of Ke$ha’s (self-described) “positive, fun” music, libidinous ladies can never seem to get much...

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The News and The Newsroom

Will McAvoy is on a mission to civilize. The lead anchor of the fictional Atlantis Cable News channel is mad as hell—and he’s not going to take it anymore. The self-satirized Republican in Name Only...

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Portrait of an Irrational Mind

The great tragedy of Don Quixote was not that he was a madman. The tragedy was that he realized this, at the very end of his life, when he was powerless to do anything. He lived just long enough to...

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Your Media Diet is Immoral

Moral determinations require context. Modern journalism, which faces a powerful tension between the context that is morally relevant and the context which makes a good narrative, has to cope with...

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Bitcoin Is Great, But It Won’t Fix Our Monkey Brains

Bitcoin is now generally understood to be A Thing, and a particularly exciting one at that. Once-fashionable skepticism for its own sake is quickly becoming less click-worthy than this gripping...

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A Gentle Introduction to Neoreaction (for Libertarians)

A puckish new brand of right-wing radical subverts the postmodern power machine each day over Twitter and RSS for fun and praxis. It’s a real hoot to watch. These rudely triggering firebrands are...

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