Lifeguard Lollygagging Pt 1: The Brain as Mind
I’ve been working as a lifeguard every summer for the last five summers. It gives me a lot of idle time to think about things. It also gives the sun […]
Author Archives: Leo Kozachkov
Lessons and Themes from Common Ground 2015
The collective IQ at Common Ground 2015 is higher than average—and the attendants seem to know it. Bouncing off the walls of College Ave’s spacious Student Center, one hears conversations […]
It’s Time to Revamp K-12 Education with Vouchers
Public education is important—this much is beyond dispute. But besides that one understatement, everything else is fair game. As a core cog in American life, as a political and ideological […]
The Importance of Liberal Arts Literacy: One STEM Major’s Perspective
A few posts ago, I argued for the importance of widespread scientific literacy. I claimed that “scientific literacy—in conjunction with political, mathematical, and other literacies—is a civic responsibility”. For symmetry’s […]
On Babies and Bathwater; Or, Reflections on Broadening My Perspective
The saying goes: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Rather than a plea to protect infants, the idiom is understood to mean: “don’t reject the essential along with […]
On Mathematical Intelligence and How It Grows
TL;DR: There is no Royal Road. In his three recent and awesome posts on intelligence, Scott Alexander describes what it’s like to grow up intellectually lopsided (high verbal IQ and […]
Reason vs Religion at Rutgers: Julien Musolino Debates Mark Baker
I don’t go to public debates nearly as much as I should. This is just one of the many things I learned from attending the The Veritas Forum last night, […]
Did Interstellar Live Up to its Hard Sci-Fi Hype? Review of Nolan’s Space Opera
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE INTERSTELLAR. I just got back from watching Christopher Nolan’s new movie Interstellar in glorious, eye-popping IMAX. I’m really torn right now. I’ve written and […]
The Importance of Hard Science Fiction
For the last eighty or so years, science fiction writers have been the doormen to a strange and exciting universe replete with extra dimensions, elementary particles, time-travel, intergalactic wars, speculative […]
The Soul Fallacy: An Interview w Psychology Prof Julien Musolino
It’s not everyday you get to meet someone like Rutgers professor Julien Musolino. In our age of specialization, Julien is part of a small (but growing!) cadre of thinkers whose […]
Applied Sentience 