First Blog

  You are free to rebel against AI, but you will soon be passed by, or more correctly, blown by. It is just too powerful: first, as an incredible encyclopedia; second, as a synthesizer, putting together information from diverse areas; third, as a problem-solver; and finally, as an assembler of information into credible essays and/or answers. It will also clean up drafts with extraordinary skill. It can save hours of research in libraries. On the downside, it will totally alter education in ways we cannot yet fathom. By analogy, consider the introduction of calculators only decades ago. With them, students can now compute numbers with ease. However, they have lost any sense of numbers, magnitudes, and checks against plugging in wrong numbers (easy to do). Mental math is dead. For example, you can see people using a calculator to compute a 10% tip. Not good. Finally, if you really want to rebel against AI, you need to learn how. But how do you do it? I don’t know. So, I asked AI how,...

When I watch old movies from the 1950s and 1960s, I feel the world as it once moved, its manners, its hopes, its entertainments, its quiet politics embedded between the lines. These films are not just stories; they are reflections of how people once understood themselves and their moment in history. As I watch, I can’t help but turn the mirror toward the present. The characters on the screen, long gone in any physical sense, feel no less real than we do now. They exist within the same fabric of time and meaning, only seen from a different angle. I imagine someone fifty years younger than me, watching our era’s films half a century from now, having the same realization. In that thought, life gains a strange reassurance: a sense of continuity, a shared human community that stretches across generations. Time moves forward, but the pulse of human experience, its questions, performances, and quiet longings, remains remarkably intact.

In the landscape of political movements, a recurring pattern emerges: the rise of parties dominated by a self-anointed elite who wield power under the guise of benevolence. These elites proclaim equality for the masses while positioning themselves as the enlightened shepherds guiding the flock. This dynamic is not merely a flaw in human organization but a deliberate trap, often cemented by the allure of intellectualism. Intellectualism, as a state of mind distinct from emotion, faith, belief, logic, intuition, or instinct, serves as a fragile yet seductive glue that binds followers to the cause. It promises superiority and certainty, yet it sows the seeds of corruption and decline. This essay explores how intellectualism becomes a self-set trap in political parties, examining its role in justifying elite dominance, sustaining loyalty, and ultimately inviting downfall. At the heart of these political entities lies a profound hypocrisy. Leaders espouse egalitarian ideals, insisting tha...

To kids. Your life greatly depends on your earliest influencers and teachers, your parents. You'd better hope they’re good. To parents. Like many of us, your greatest contributions may be raising your kids. So, do a good job of it.

  Introduction. When dealing with ideas, patterns, intuition, and brainstorming, we need operations or rules not unlike those of arithmetic. The goal is not proof, a finished device, or a fait accompli , but rather a foundation for further investigation and study. In some cases, these operations may yield a proposition, that is, something capable of being proved. In this sense, they form a practical logic of intuition. The article concludes with a few select examples from a variety of venues. Setting. We are working with a given idea, problem, or project, or simply just thinking. Our aim is to discover pathways, patterns, or conceptual connections that may be useful. The following operations describe ways in which ideas and patterns can be generated, transformed, or refined. These also work toward understanding the imagination. Yet, this framework is distinguished from formal logic and proof. We are tempted to call them as “soft logic” because while nothing is proved, reasons...

Introduction. For centuries, the legal profession has been one of society’s most stable and respected institutions. Law prizes precision, logical reasoning, and fidelity to precedent. Lawyers are trained to analyze complex facts, apply abstract rules, and argue persuasively within rigid procedural frameworks. Yet today, the rapid advance of artificial intelligence raises a serious and unsettling question: is the legal profession approaching obsolescence or transformation? Artificial intelligence now performs many of the cognitive tasks once thought to be uniquely human. Modern AI systems can read and synthesize millions of pages of legal text, identify relevant precedents, detect inconsistencies, and generate structured legal arguments. When AI systems demonstrated the ability to pass bar examinations (GPT-4), it marked more than a technological milestone; it revealed that large portions of legal reasoning are pattern-based and computational in nature. But the true disruption lie...

A.   Influencers do not teach. They influence. Know the difference. B.   It is unwise to vest your happiness upon the misfortunes of others. C.   What the church is to religion, the library is to learning. 

A.     Flattery is the art of getting what you want without asking for it. B.     Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions. --- Winston Churchill.  C.     Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, and then blaming it on your opponent. *Note. A. is not original, but I can find no source. C. is an adaptation ala Groucho Marx.

  A.    Doubt is like a battery tester for truths. Use it often. B.   E xperience and knowledge are the handmaidens of understanding. For example, you may know plenty about love but never understand it until experienced. C.    To help another succeed qualifies as a legacy – and an unqualified generosity.

 

A.   When you build your house, you need not feel guilty about living in it. B.   Learn not for its utility, but for its delight. C.   Intuition does not grow from nothing. Experience and learning fertilize its beautiful flowers.

Introduction.  Much of life involves problem-solving of some sort. Many are routine, some take time, and others seem nearly impossible. The important fact is that we don’t solve them all, or, even worse, we offer ineffective or poor solutions. Most problem-solving books available suggest how to solve problems. In this brief essay, we discuss the barriers to solving a given problem. Here is a list of common "enemies" of problem-solving, also called the psychological, cognitive, and practical barriers that prevent us from effectively addressing and resolving them. These are drawn from psychological research and productivity insights. The List . Every problem solver should be aware of these barriers. Team leaders should monitor closely to prevent their team from falling for any of them, particularly #6 on confirmation bias and #8 about unnecessary constraints. 1.      Lack of Knowledge or Information: Without sufficient understanding or data about the...