Essays by Matthew Eric Bassett https://mebassett.info/essays.html 2023 Matthew Eric Bassett All rights reserved Sun, 11 Feb 2024 22:39:38 +0000 Mon, 12 Feb 2024 13:28:38 +0000 1800 The 14th Amendment is not about restricting States' power. https://mebassett.info/reply-to-roberts Mon, 12 Feb 2024 13:28:38 +0000 Generative AI gives intellectual property right holders an excuse to grab control of your devices. https://mebassett.info/ai-copyright Wed, 7 Feb 2024 01:42:38 +0000 Advertisers, cults, terrorists, and American megachurches know how to target people at the right time to get them to "convert". The last of these has evolved an entire liturgy for that purpose. Through a couple of personal anecdotes, we trace the history and purpose of that liturgy and draw a parallels with a less "American" cults. https://mebassett.info/dark-parallels-american-liturgy Mon, 8 May 2023 00:42:38 +0000 AI is finally useful for business, and everyone is likely underestimating its impact. But unless AI is open-source and truly owned by the end users the future for everyone but the software providers looks grim. https://mebassett.info/ai-useful-for-capitalist Wed, 22 Feb 2023 00:06:38 +0000 Optimization is a mathematical languages that we’re using to describe our societal interactions, how learning happens, and how fundamental physics works. Let’s count some of the ways. https://mebassett.info/optimize-the-universe-and-our-lives Sun, 26 Jun 2022 23:32:00 +0100 Some days I can barely get out of my front door without tripping over my own contradictions and hypocrisies. https://mebassett.info/chasing-glory Sun, 19 Jun 2022 16:20:00 +0000 We explore the implications of attention becoming a commodity, not in the colloquial sense, but the technical, fungible sense of a Marxist commodity, and what that has to do with our ethics and how economic forces shape society. https://mebassett.info/human-attention-commodity Sun, 12 Jun 2022 16:20:00 +0000 https://mebassett.info/desire-and-loathing Sun, 5 Jun 2022 16:20:00 +0000 Russia’s impunity and the lack of action from the West could make nuclear weapons more attractive to regimes of all sorts. https://mebassett.info/ukraine-npt Sun, 6 Mar 2022 16:20:00 +0000 When Tolkien first published the Lord of the Rings some critics mocked it by asking why any sensible adult would read a book about elves and orcs. They doubted whether it had any themes beyond the comprehension of a seven-year-old. 1 Yet one theme that runs through much of Tolkien's work — including the Lord of the Rings — is the relationship between language and power. https://mebassett.info/tolkien-politics Mon, 17 Aug 2020 16:20:00 +0000 Politicians on the Left and Right are betting on new theories about money to bring about the change they seek, but both are neglecting ideas from classical economics that could help us prepare for economic disruptions ranging from the current pandemic to the coming AI revolution. . https://mebassett.info/changing-money Sat, 8 Aug 2020 16:20:00 +0000 There's an algorithm for product discovery, at least for business-to-business products. If you combine that algorithm with decent technical execution and a SaaS business model then you have a recipe for a company. And if your market is big enough then you may even be looking at a billion-dollar startup. https://mebassett.info/algorithm-for-b2b-products Mon, 3 Aug 2020 16:20:00 +0000 AI research has structural problems that limit how much it can impact business. But understanding why gives a way to determine what will work and what won't, as well as reveal new business opportunities. https://mebassett.info/ai-useless-for-business Tue, 26 May 2020 16:20:00 +0000 The past few weeks have seen multiple protests against lockdown measures across the US together with governors defying experts to start re-opening their economies. This could be politics-as-usual, or it could be the expression of underlying economic shifts affecting the balance of political power in the US. https://mebassett.info/pandemic-beliefs.html Tue, 19 May 2020 16:20:00 +0000 Does a global response to the pandemic threaten our civil liberties? https://mebassett.info/covid19-liberalism.html Sun, 19 Apr 2020 16:20:00 +0000 https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/lawreview/vol14/iss2/6/ Wed, 14 Oct 2020 16:20:00 +0000 Everyone knows that health care is expensive in America. But what if the rest of its economy was just as inefficient? We expand Purchasing Power Parity to consider health care outcomes so we can create an exchange rate that makes visible the amount of waste therein. The results show that the US wasted $18 trillion over ten years. . https://mebassett.info/healthcare-ppp.html Sun, 22 Sep 2019 16:20:00 +0000 It's rare throughout history that any people would have an opportunity to reshape their government without war or the threat of violence. Brexit is such an opportunity and should be treated as such. https://mebassett.info/brexit-constitutional-convention.html Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:20:00 +0000 This is a meandering discussion about empathy's role in public policy debates and popular culture's role in affecting empathy. So can popular culture help to nurture or destroy empathy in politics? I try to set up a framework for exploring this, but raise more questions than I answer. https://mebassett.info/empathy-failures-democracy.html Mon, 31 Dec 2018 16:20:00 +0000