ESSAYS
Original research and thinking on human development
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Abdicating Our Advantage
Cultivating Our Cognitive Advantage Part III
For the first time, global-scale coordination is technically and materially feasible. The major barrier is not raw capacity but the abdication of our cognitive capacity to solve problems well. The philosophy defending extraction sounds eloquent and well-reasoned. It is the flailing of a mind driven by stress and the fears it produces — of the other, of scarcity, of submission.
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Intelligence
The Context Problem at the Heart of LLMs
The problem with AI isn’t technical. It’s that we handed the wrong thing the wrong job and called it intelligence. Intelligence is far more than what those claiming they’ve invented the artificial version actually is. LLMs, for all their sophistication, are still in a pre-neuroscience era of their own development. Context isn’t a feature. It’s the whole game.
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Interdependence: The Biological Imperative of Society
Cultivating Our Cognitive Advantage Part II
Humans evolved a costly advantage: higher-level cognition. But it does not develop, or function well, in isolation. Society is the developmental habitat of the human mind: a coordination ecology of shared norms, cumulative teaching, and institutions that store knowledge beyond any one person. The practical implication is stewardship—of selves, communities, and the scaffolds that make a coherent life possible.
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Neurodivergence: Responsibility and Opportunity
Clinical meaning, personal responsibility, and the practice of deliberate skill.
Neurodivergence isn’t an excuse, identity, or diagnosis; it’s an umbrella term that matters only when it points toward action. Diagnosis is pursued when symptoms are intense, persistent, and impair daily functioning enough to warrant support. From there the real work begins: stabilizing wellbeing through strategies that make executive skills reliable, often by externalizing the brain into cues, routines, and community.
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Coherence: Humankind’s Advantage and Developmental Imperative
Cultivating Our Cognitive Advantage: Part I
Humans are not unique in intelligence or cooperation, what is distinctive is how these evolved in our biology: language, metacognition, and the capacity to model reality, revise beliefs, and coordinate at scale. Our challenge is integrating our impulses. Coherence is the trainable coordination of many signals across time, shaped through executive function and social scaffolding into stable, adaptive capability.
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The Ecology of the Brain
Cultivating Mental Health & Revealing Human Potential
Tending your unique mind as a living ecosystem is the primary act of well-being, the one discipline from which human potential and a truly thriving society emerge.
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When Will You Begin Your Magnum Opus?
Meaningful work isn’t a luxury, it’s the brain’s natural operation.
Your magnum opus begins when your experience, values, and way of making meaning align with work that genuinely contributes something to the world. Meaningful work isn’t a luxury reserved for later. It is part of how the brain regulates, organizes, and sustains life. The real task is not waiting to be ready, but turning your purpose into coherent, lasting impact.
Browse by Thread
The Neurological Ecosystem
Tend your mind as a living ecosystem, not a machine to fix.
- The Ecology of the Brain
- Cultivating Our Cognitive Advantage: Part I
- Cultivating Our Cognitive Advantage: Part II
Function & Wellbeing
The conditions that make a stable, sustainable life possible.
- Losing the Compass in a Storm of Digital Noise
- The Stars Within You
- Developing the Art of Celestial Navigation