The hacker culture is neither good nor evil, but instead focuses on getting results. It is self-reliant and rooted in an anti-authoritarian embrace of individuality. No citizen is beholden to any single person, only to the quality of work being done.

Someone can be forgiven for assuming that a person who confesses to a crime is probably the person who committed it. One need not be as incurious as Sheriff Lamb, in Veronica Mars, to recognize that the probability of a person falsely confessing to a murder is pretty low. One can arrive at this conclusion through a process known to philosophers as inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is contrasted with deductive reasoning, which typically begins from a general statement of principle and (...) moves to a more specific conclusion. Despite Veronica's expertise in the use of Occam's razor and avoidance of Occam's broom, there are occasions when Veronica is wrong, not just because she doesn't have all the facts, but because she's the victim of her own cognitive biases. Her brain leads her astray, causing her to apply reasoning that is clearly flawed. (shrink)

Developed in the mid‐twentieth century, game theory is a mathematical discipline that now drives fields as diverse as warfare, economics, evolutionary theory, and foreign policy. This chapter explores the importance of understanding others to Ender's military brilliance. For Ender, this understanding was not merely intellectual, but also emotional. The chapter also shows how Ender's instinctive ability to understand his enemies places him in a prime position, according to game theory, to redefine the game to create a path to victory. This (...) is the lesson that Ender's Game teaches about how to find a path to victory even when one doesn't seem to exist. For Ender, at least, it seems that sympathy, empathy, and love are not fundamentally different. Instead, they lie on a continuum. Love and sympathy, experienced simultaneously, allow empathy. (shrink)

Of all the crew to serve on a starship Enterprise, none has had such a convoluted line of existence as the venerable Mr. Spock. This chapter explores what the various incarnations of Mr. Spock can tell us about the nature of reality, existence, and personal identity. Lewis argues for the metaphysical theory of modal realism: all possible worlds are as real as the actual world. In science fiction parlance, this philosophical concept of world is more often called a universe. Thus, (...) Earth and Vulcan are both part of the same world depicted in Star Trek. The central question Lewis addresses is whether our world is the only real world, or whether other possible worlds could also be considered real. Lewis argues for the metaphysical theory of modal realism, all possible worlds are as real as the actual world. (shrink)