Alan Jacobs

I was probably the sixth person to get an iPad.

We got two of them flown out.

The criteria was that we had to have a room with no windows. They changed the locks on the door.

Three developers and I were the only people allowed to go in the room. Apple needed the names and social security numbers of the people who had access.

Apple needed to be able to drill a hole in the desk and chain the devices to desk. They used those bicycle cables.

They had these custom frames built around them so we couldn’t even tell what the iPads looked like. We could plug into them so we could code to them and we could touch the screen and play with that, but we couldn’t see the form factor.

Then they took pictures of the wood grain. If any pictures leaked out, they could trace it back to which desk they came from.

Why does it seem like some languages are spoken faster than others? The answer is that speed depends on the average amount of information packed in a single syllable. It takes people about the same amount of time to read a simple story out loud whether it is translated into English, French, German, Japanese or Mandarin. But the number of syllables that will have been spoken in that amount of time varies; those languages that need more syllables to convey the same story sound faster.

A 7-Eleven clerk in San Diego was more confused than frightened on Monday when a would-be criminal dressed as Gumby entered the store and—apparently concerned that his purpose there wasn’t obvious—informed the clerk that the store was being robbed. From that point, things didn’t proceed quite according to plan: As one report tells it, the robber began “fumbling inside the costume as if to pull a gun,” but found the get-up too unwieldy for the purpose. Instead of producing a weapon, the robber ended up dropping 27 cents on the ground and fleeing the scene in a white minivan.

Most of these biological facts don’t matter, at least for Brooks’s purposes. What of our view of humanity changes if, when parents achieve an “attunement with their kids,” the molecule that “floods through their brains” is schmoxytocin, not oxytocin? The salient fact is that some molecule or some part of the brain underlies various aspects of consciousness or unconsciousness. But this is hardly news. As the philosopher Jerry Fodor once quipped, it’s been clear for a while now that mental processes occur north of the neck. The rest is a sort of biological bookkeeping that, while significant to the specialist, seems to provide the popular writer only with a long list of factoids. It’s not that these facts are wrong or unconnected to the higher-level phenomena—lust, emotional uplift, or insight—that Brooks discusses. They’re just superfluous.

In any case, surely what matters most to us about human nature typically takes place at a more macro level. In the language of biology, human nature is a phenotype—a trait or set of traits that is observable—and the underlying mechanics are a different matter altogether. (By analogy, imagine that an accountant opens a spreadsheet on his computer and unexpectedly announces that you have ten million dollars in your account. It’s true that, when the file was opened, this and that line of code in the computer program was executed. But it would be odd to conclude that this is the level at which something interesting just happened.) This kind of argument can be taken too far but Brooks at least owes us an explanation of why all these biological details are supposed to matter to his project.

But perhaps the biggest problem with much of the science in The Social Animal is that it doesn’t tell us anything that Brooks’s narrative hasn’t already said. Most of us learn about human nature from experiences in real life or from the lives of those portrayed in fiction. And that’s probably as good a way to learn as any. When we begin to see, in Brooks’s story, that the adolescent Erica will never get far if she doesn’t master her anger, it doesn’t help to be told that, during times of stress, epinephrine surges or that self-control in children is a good statistical predictor of success later in life. As many have noted, our folk psychology differs from our folk physics in that, while the latter is notoriously poor, the former often seems remarkably good. Indeed, as Noam Chomsky famously suggested, when it comes to revealing what makes people tick, a scientific psychology might never outperform the novel.

Once again, the Wheaton College food service has been named best in the country by the Princeton Review. I never can quite get over the quality and variety of what’s put before me there.

Today Teri and I decided to go to the dining hall for lunch, and I was in the mood for a sandwich. I ended up choosing one made with perfectly roasted pork with feta and Kalamata olives, on fresh-baked ciabatta. On the side I had a pasta salad with sopressata, and a green lentil salad with roasted peppers and chopped parsley . A simple bownie and coffee for dessert. Everything was delicious, and it set me back four bucks. When I think about what college food used to be like… .

Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms. The First was the Kingdom of Abstract Idea: Last night it was Tom, Dick and Harry: to-night it is S’s with P’s; Instead of inflexions and accents There are prepositions and word-order; Instead of aboriginal objects excluding each other There are specimens reiterating a type; Instead of wood-nymphs and river-demons, There is one unconditioned ground of Being. Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.

Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms. The Second was the Kingdom of Natural Cause: Last night it was Sixes and Sevens: to-night it is One and Two; Instead of saying, “Strange are the whims of the Strong,” We say, “Harsh is the Law but it is certain;” Instead of building temples, we build laboratories; Instead of offering sacrifices, we perform experiments; Instead of reciting prayers, we note pointer-readings; Our lives are no longer erratic but efficient. Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.

Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms. The Third was the Kingdom of Infinite Number: Last night it was Rule-of-Thumb, to-night it is To-a-T; Instead of Quite-a-lot, there is Exactly-so-many; Instead of Only-a-few, there is Just-these; Instead of saying, “You must wait until I have counted,” We say, “Here you are. You will find this answer correct;” Instead of nodding acquaintance with a few integers, The Transcendentals are our personal friends. Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.

Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms. The Fourth was the Kingdom of Credit Exchange: Last night is was Tit-for-Tat, to-night it is C.O.D.; When we have a surplus, we need not meet someone with a deficit; When we have a deficit, we need not meet someone with a surplus; Instead of heavy treasures, there are paper symbols of value; Instead of Pay at Once, there is Pay when you can; Instead of My Neighbour, there is Our Customers; Instead of Country Fair, there is World Market. Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.

Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms. The Fifth was the Kingdom of Inorganic Giants: Last night it was Heave-Ho, to-night it is Whee-Spree; When we want anything, They make it; When we dislike anything, They change it; When we want to go anywhere, They carry us; When the Barbarian invades us, They raise immovable shields; When we invade the Barbarian, They brandish irresistible swords; Fate is no longer a fiat of Matter, but a freedom of Mind. Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.

Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms. The Sixth was the Kingdom of Organic Dwarfs: Last night it was Ouch-Ouch, to-night it is Yum-Yum; When diseases waylay us, They strike them dead; When worries intrude on us, They throw them out; When pain accosts us, They save us from embarrassment; When we feel like sheep, They make us lions; When we feel like geldings, They make us stallions; Spirit is no longer under Flesh, but on top. Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.

Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms. The Seventh was the Kingdom of Popular Soul: Last night it was Order-Order, to-night it is Hear-Hear; When he says, You are happy, we laugh; When he says, You are wretched, we cry; When he says, It is true, everyone believes it; When he says, It is false, no one believes it; When he says, This is good, this is loved; When he says, This is bad, that is hated. Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.

“The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,” Jesus said of little children. But computer hackers might give the kids some competition, according to Antonio Spadaro, an Italian Jesuit priest. In an article published earlier this year in La Civiltà Cattolica, a fortnightly magazine backed by the Vatican, entitled “Hacker ethics and Christian vision”, he did not merely praise hackers, but held up their approach to life as in some ways divine. Mr Spadaro argued that hacking is a form of participation in God’s work of creation. (He uses the word hacking in its traditional, noble sense within computing circles, to refer to building or tinkering with code, rather than breaking into websites. Such nefarious activities are instead known as “malicious hacking” or “cracking”.)

Mr Spadaro says he became interested in the subject when he noticed that hackers and students of hacker culture used “the language of theological value” when writing about creativity and coding, so he decided to examine the idea more deeply. The hacker ethic forged on America’s west coast in the 1970s and 1980s was playful, open to sharing, and ready to challenge models of proprietary control, competition and even private property. Hackers were the origin of the “open source” movement which creates and distributes software that is free in two senses: it costs nothing and its underlying code can be modified by anyone to fit their needs. “In a world devoted to the logic of profit,” wrote Mr Spadaro, hackers and Christians have “much to give each other” as they promote a more positive vision of work, sharing and creativity.

Kurt Gray of the University of Maryland, and Annie Knickman and Dan Wegner of Harvard University, conducted an experiment designed to ascertain just how people perceive those in a persistent vegetative state. What they found astonished them.

They first asked 201 people stopped in public in New York and New England to answer questions after reading one of three short stories. In all three, a man called David was involved in a car accident and suffered serious injuries. In one, he recovered fully. In another, he died. In the third, his entire brain was destroyed except for one part that kept him breathing. Although he was technically alive, he would never again wake up.

After reading one of these stories, chosen at random, each participant was asked to rate David’s mental capacities, including whether he could influence the outcome of events, know right from wrong, remember incidents from his life, be aware of his environment, possess a personality and have emotions. Participants used a seven-point scale to make these ratings, where 3 indicated that they strongly agreed that he could do such things, 0 indicated that they neither agreed nor disagreed, and -3 indicated that they strongly disagreed.

The results, reported in Cognition, were that the fully recovered David rated an average of 1.77 and the dead David -0.29. That score for the dead David was surprising enough, suggesting as it did a considerable amount of mental acuity in the dead. What was extraordinary, though, was the result for the vegetative David: -1.73. In the view of the average New Yorker or New Englander, the vegetative David was more dead than the version who was dead.

Logically, the video revolution and television news should thrive together. But just as the rest of the world is alive with video information about a bullet-train crash in China or revolutions in Bahrain or Syria, America’s television screens, especially on cable news, are tuning out the world. When YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter show so much video of real life, why do ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox show us so little?

One of the strange powers of the logic of debt, which pervaded first North Atlantic societies and then almost the rest of the world under the organizing principle of capitalism, is that people are under the pressure of the shame and humiliation that comes with being in debt. This causes a frenetic need to look and turn everything around them into a source of profit. And that’s what the industrious people are, the people who submit themselves to that logic. It’s a deeply dehumanizing logic, and it’s a terribly destructive logic. We have to break from that and we have to realize that those who refuse to submit themselves to that logic, even if it means continuing to be poor, have genuine values, like the values of caring for each other and spending time with each other, enjoying social relations, having fun, but also, that way of just living, really having life. It’s also critically important to evaluate this if you want to save the planet, because our problem today is not that we’re not doing enough work, it’s that we’re doing way too much.