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Jag Bhalla

Science Writer, Blogger, and Essayist

Jag Bhalla is a writer and entrepreneur. Current projects include this "Thought Fix" blog series for Big Think. And NanoSalad a zero-prep way to zap veggie gaps (by BodZoo LLC, a future-friendly, basic-by-design business, see www.bodzoo.com for further details). Prior projects include "Errors We Live By," a series of short exoteric essays exposing errors in the big ideas running our lives. And I'm Not Hanging Noodles On Your Ears, a surreptitious science gift book from National Geographic Books, which explains his twitter handle @hangingnoodles.


All meaning is relational (otherwise it’s potentially useless and unhealthy). That’s true for both senses of meaning, and Nozick’s “Pleasure Machine” shows why workable individualism must be relational. 1. Individualism’s […]
You are by nature self-deficient. Your constitution guarantees it, initially, chronically, and inalienably. Biology defying individualistic ideas now hide these once self-evident truths. 1. Though the opposite is claimed, no […]
Our ruling ideas grow evermore ethically evasive. Ignoring evident big picture problems, they have us mindlessly seeking the mathematically and morally absurd. Simple maxims can clarify: Economics, the study of […]
“Should economists be advocates or engineers?” asks Noah Smith. Tradeoffs reveal how reliably they perform as either. Smith worries that his trade’s “engineering” aspects are being sacrificed for “political advocacy” […]
 There are two kinds of success. One kind damages or destroys what it depends on, the other doesn’t. History and theater teach that distinction about the ambitious, evolution and religion […]
Thinking, like seeing, has built-in blind spots. An old parable and Husserl’s matchbox can illuminate these geometric, biological, and cognitive limits. We can’t evade their unseen dangers unaided. In the […]
The new nerdier news has arrived. But can its nerd tools, honed in the “olicausal sciences” (oli = few), handle the greater complexities of journalism? Steven Pinker says, “No sane […]
Your needs can’t all be as easily fenced off as land. But that map-like model lurks behind unbalanced ideas about private and public interests. The “public good” is both bedrock […]
Is the “invisible hand” always benign? Or can it be bad? Free-market fans love the idea that “spontaneous order” emerges from local decisions. But what prevents “spontaneous disorder”? Does prudence […]
Are reason and emotion sworn enemies? Many expert reasoners feel they are. But these supposed opposites overlap, emotions have logic and reason often blunders. Plato’s chariot and the anti-Freud can […]
“Be suspicious of stories,” warns economist Tyler Cowen. Stories lower “your IQ by 10 points or more,” by seducing you into simplistic “good vs. evil” thinking.” Life is too messy […]
Much talk about “the 1%” ignores three key issues. First, not all inequality is equally bad. Second, the rich are mostly as replaceable as you and me. Third, if the […]
We’re letting unnatural laws unduly influence us. A fuss about “simple economics” can remind us that markets aren’t like gravity, and their so-called laws are neither laws of nature nor […]
Prices are the magic in free-market stories. But what if prices were never right? Then free markets wouldn’t work as their fans claim. The ‘markets in everything’ crowd don’t tackle […]
When it comes to making predictions, thinkers who are hedgehogs barely beat “dart-throwing chimps.” Despite that, hedgehogs hog the spotlight.