Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasp...

 Law, Education, Religion are Names We Give to Adaptation

The changes in the conditions of human life during the last twenty or thirty thousand years have been mainly brought about by the acceleration of invention through increasing co-operation and the release of material and social power. There have been no doubt climatic and geographical changes, but their share has been relatively less important. The essential story of history and pre-history is the story of the adaptation of the social- educated superstructure of the animal man to the novel pro...

 World-Building Questions

1. BASIC INFRASTRUCTURE There can be no human (or alien) civilization or settlement without plumbing, energy supply, or waste disposal. So you need to spend at least a little bit figuring out how all of this worksunderneath your story’s setting. How do your characters eat? How do they transport and store food? How is waste handled? Where does the water come from? Who provides the clothes and shoes (or gear)? What money system is there? Is there a single currency? Several? Electronic mo...

 The Perspectives Game

I got a kick, when I was a boy, [out] of my father telling me things, so I tried to tell my son things that were interesting about the world. When he was very small we used to rock him to bed, you know, and tell him stories, and I'd make up a story about little people that were about so high [who] would walk along and they would go on picnics and so on and they lived in the ventilator; and they'd go through these woods which had great big long tall blue things like trees, but without leaves a...