Complexity
Aemula Writer Spotlight - 11.21.24
We live in an infinitely complex, impossible to understand world. To communicate and interact with one another, we rely on abstractions to make sense of the complexity. While necessary, these simplifications inherently leave out significant details, limiting our ability to truly understand the intricacies of everything going on around us.
When we share information, our personal biases naturally influence the facts and perspectives we present — and what we leave out. As long as we are human, we will not be able to eliminate these biases entirely. Rather than fight this force, the only way to mitigate the negative effects of bias is to accept the full diversity of perspectives. By embracing all points of view, the individual errors can balance each other out and lead to a more complete picture.
Our current media infrastructure incentivizes a race to the bottom as publications compete for the attention of increasingly niche audiences. By breaking this narrative and creating new incentive structures, we can allow readers to discover information directly from diverse sources, learning from the experts who hold deep expertise in specific fields. Not only does this intellectual exploration broaden our worldviews, but it also fosters curiosity and critical thinking — essential for understanding the nuances of the unique storylines in today’s news.
At Aemula, we believe that a diverse ecosystem of writers and readers committed to sharing high-quality information is the key to navigating our complex world. This week, we highlight writers who fulfill this role of writing from their expertise, demonstrating the value of promoting individual voices on the topics they know best.
The Etymology Nerd
Written by Adam Aleksic, a Harvard graduate in linguistics, content creator, contributing writer for The Washington Post, and author of Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language.
“whenever people present some neatly packaged explanation on social media, whether it’s political or educational or whatever, take it with a grain of salt. It might be part of the actual story, but the map is never the territory.”
Am I Stronger Yet?
Written by Steve Newman, a software engineer, serial startup founder (including co-founding Writely, which became Google Docs), and experienced blogger.
“I learned to program in 1975, and never stopped, meaning I’ve been generating bugs for close to half a century. If “that which does not kill me makes me stronger”, then I’ve had a lot of chances to get stronger.
In this blog, I’ll be sharing thoughts on a variety of technical topics, from the perspective of someone who likes to think he has made pretty much all of the mistakes there are to make, though somehow new ones keep arising.
To begin with, I’ll be exploring the trajectory of AI: how capable are these systems today, where are they headed, how worried or excited should we be, and what can we do about it?”
Experimental History
Written by Adam Mastroianni, an experimental psychologist with a PhD from Harvard, with publications in The New York Times and The Atlantic, and covered by many top blogs and publications.
I think science should be done out in the open, unfiltered, and reviewed by anyone who cares to comment. I think it should be exciting and funny. I think it should take things people care about and try to understand them better. Sometimes that means gathering a bunch of original data, and other times that means thinking about an idea really hard until it cracks open like a walnut. That’s what Experimental History is all about.
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