Four reasons art is made – and how they shape the art world

November 11, 2023

There is something very strange about the art world, which, I think, has to do with art stemming from four different motivations that often come into tension with each other. More specifically, I suspect that art is created mainly for four reasons: 1) Urge: many artists seem to have a compulsion to create (sometimes, to create oddly specific things). They make art to satisfy this urge. In this category, I would also include art that is mainly motivated by helping the artist ach...

Who Are We Kind To, Who Do We Kill?

July 24, 2017

I've been trying to better understand and resolve two seemingly contradictory (yet I think critically important) facts about human nature: (1) Human groups have pretty much always done unspeakably horrible things to other groups (e.g., think mass murder and numerous forms of oppression). And fairly often, while it is happening, this evil seems to be condoned, supported, or only passively opposed by a large and fairly culturally representative group, rather than by just a few very bad people....

How Companies Can Cause Harm

July 18, 2017

I often have heard it said that if people buy the product a company is selling, then the company must be creating value in the world. After all, why would someone buy a product if that product were not creating value? It would be nice if this were a valid argument (since then more units sold = more societal benefit). Unfortunately, it's not valid. To help put the argument to rest, here's a list of 13 situations where a product that doesn't add net value to the world may still get bo...

The Value of the Unsaid Obvious

July 16, 2017

Some thoughts on the, potentially very large, value of ideas that are both obvious and obscure, and why I like to try to state the "unsaid obvious": The space of possible ideas is ABSURDLY, almost UNBELIEVABLY large. If we thought about a different idea every second for our entire lives, we wouldn't begin to scratch the surface. As a simple example, let's consider the number of two-player competitive games played on an 8x8 chessboard, where each player starts with 16 pieces and each piece...

Viewing Your Time As Money

August 16, 2011

Should I wait in line to get this free mug? Should I walk to dinner rather than taking a taxi? Should I drive an extra fifteen minutes to go to the cheaper grocery store? Should I keep reading reviews for another twenty minutes to make sure I've really found the best hot water bottle that $10 can buy? These questions can be quite difficult to answer without a framework for valuing our time, especially since considerations of this sort tend to trigger cognitive biases. To figure out how much w...