All essays

How neuroscience, philosophy, and criminal law are colliding over the question of free will — and what it means for blame, punishment, and moral responsibility.

Van Valen, Schumpeter, Barabási, and Simon developed their theories independently, in different disciplines, on different empirical problems. What they share is a structural property that makes their convergence significant: in each case, the system's filtering mechanism operates independently of the absolute quality of what is being filtered. Understanding the mechanism is the prerequisite for operating within it.

India built a health insurance system that works beautifully for the people who need it least. A cardiac bypass costs fifteen years of disposable income for a family earning ₹60,000 a month. One hundred million families sit in the gap between PM-JAY and the comfortable. Narayana Health Insurance was built for that space.

"Money has no intrinsic biological value. Yet it sorts human beings — sharing 99.9% of their DNA — into divergent worlds of health, power, and possibility. An investigation across evolutionary biology, neuroscience, five millennia of history, and political science."