Unknown Knowns

Recently I came across the potato famine and how it contributed or even caused the revolutions of 1848. I wondered if this is an good example to show how cascading failures lead from an natural event to an agricultural crisis, to an economic crisis, to an financial crisis and finally... [Read More]

Knowledge is fractal. Every time I wander into a new field of knowledge I am fascinated that it has its own tales, language, heroes, secrets and traditions. However, it does not stop at this scale. Every field had its own subfields and again we find exactly the same thing. You... [Read More]

Diversity is important. Not only inherently, but instrumentally as well. Based on ideas from the book “Why Trust Science?” by science historian Naomi Oreskes this post argues for increased diversity as a chance to produce more reliable knowledge. The main argument is that a more diverse community has more diverse... [Read More]

Why do civilizations collapse? For some civilizational collapses in the past there is one striking event that leads to a quick end, like environmental damage for the people on the Easter Islands. For other civilizations, several causes interact with each other, as it happened for the Maya, where environmental damage,... [Read More]

Every so often, I have more free time on my hands than usual. Maybe it is a long weekend or a vacation with shitty weather. On those days, I often get into a kind of weird limbo state. What do I do with those extra hours? Easy, you could say,... [Read More]