What does it want?

A useful way to understand an evolved organism or system is to ask what it wants. What actions does it need to evoke to survive or thrive? The flower wants bees to visit, the berries want to be eaten by birds. Obviously, they don’t have conscious intent, but this desire guides their progression through the

Read More

After the chores

Each day, I have about 8 hours of tasks to do. Empty the dishwasher, bring in the paper, answer emails, queue up a blog post… it’s a very long list. I’m sure you have one as well. If we’re good at the chores, we’ll be offered new ones. And of course, it’s possible to find

Read More

Contagious emotions

Emotions are personal and most of the time, we can put effort into creating them (or avoiding them). But in a community, emotions spread. And not at the same rate. Consider these emotions, roughly sorted by their virality: If we want to share the emotions near the bottom of this list, we’re going to have

Read More