Rapid Fire

Basically a blog where I try to do philosophy outside.

So there’s this psychology paper I keep thinking about

It starts, like all psychology papers, with a competitor for the most boringest sentence ever: One of the essential insights from...

Getting Better at Criticism

Last week, I got to hear Wycliffe Gordon play Amazing Grace live. It was awesome. And then, he pulled out his mute. No recording’s gonna...

How to Read a Riot

So recently, Marcus Arvan invited me to pitch my forthcoming paper “How to Read a Riot” to a public-facing audience of about 2,000...

Someone could get it Wrong

I had a really interesting conversation about art criticism this week. So here we go: What does it mean to be great at jazz? Look, I know...

MVP mini-manifesto

I’m always fascinated by Most Valuable Player awards because I think they’re a great encapsulation of how we think about value in sports...

Game Values vs. Real-Life Values

My friend Kjell and I noticed there just aren’t enough podcasts, so we decided to help. Our first episode takes an early look at some of...

The Politics of Age of Empires II

I’ve been playing a lot of Stellaris lately, but as a kid, the only computer game I really played much was Age of Empires II (AoE2, as in...

I got my guy!

So here’s the mind-blowing keynote for Who’s Responsible for ChatGPT? Apparently I have a very expressive face. Anyway, I’ll give you a...

Twilight Imperium and Instrumental Convergence

I got to play Twilight Imperium last weekend and I was so powerful I didn’t know what to do. I like to describe Twilight Imperium as 8...

Complexity versus Richness

Here’s some chess jargon: pawns aren’t pieces. Your king, queen, rooks, bishops, and knights are all pieces. But your pawns are just...

Ricky Mouser