Wondering how to make clear our cultural drift problem, it occurred to me that historical fiction, especially using time travel, could make vivid how key norms and values have actually changed greatly over time, and not always in obviously good ways.

Most of our activities can be seen as nested plans, to achieve nested goals.

Christians often ask themselves, as a guide to living, “What would Jesus do?” In her new book Open Socrates, my podcast-cohost Agnes Callard suggests we instead ask “What would Socrates do?”

As I’ve attributed a large fraction of human behaviors to signaling incentives, I feel I should address a key signaling question, about which I was recently reminded.