Weekly Newsletter

Education #

A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses
Phenomenal piece that profiles an unconventional teacher in a poor Mexican border town. Uses this to broadly discuss the changing role and viewpoint on education. I’m a total convert to the idea that children need to be allowed to explore rather than have information forced down their throats.

Business #

When Software Eats Bio
The leader of Andreessen Horowitz new bio arm gives a Q&A about the motivations and direction they will take.

Neuroscience #

Single Artificial Neuron Taught to Recognize Hundreds of Patterns
Profiles a new discovery about how neurons represent information. May explain why and how chunking happens in the brain. Chunking is the scientific term for the reason why you can remember a sentence more easily than 7 numbers in sequence.

Other Contributions #

The Misleading Video Interview With a Rapist at the Heart of the Campus Sexual Assault Freakout
Baird sent me this description along with the article:

“Reason continues to examine the background behind claims made by David Lisak, a widely-cited “expert” on rape. I use quotation marks because, as this piece makes clear, Lisak has not conducted original research on the topic in thirty years, and the claims he makes are based on an intentional misrepresentation of his dissertation. We should all want to prevent sexual assault, but creating a narrative meant to provoke visceral reactions at the expense of factual evidence does that cause a disservice. That David Lisak has done so (to his profit) for the past three decades will hopefully lead people to question his influence.”