The Next Horizon​

She was holding his hand, a spark of warmth. She looked up at him, he was looking upward. She followed the path of his gaze and met a circular swirl of colour. A building, vast and elliptical. She followed the path with her eyes, it lead to a stairway penetrating the building from the front. The accented colour spiraled around the building - it appeared to fade slowly from colour to colour as it ascended from below. Yellow, orange, red, blue. Her eyes stopped. The once circular colour was broken by a gaping hole, with cracks leaping in every direction.

They stopped at a sign rooted firmly in the ground.

The Storm Approaches​

The floodgates of memory poured upon his mind. Duncan jerked forward, while all his blood went straight to his temple. He grasped his head feeling the course texture of a tightly wrapped gauze. He laid back. “What happened?” He recalled the traffic, the phone call, the sprint, the bright light, and then nothing. It was all black.

Ebb Meets Flow​

It was May 16th, 2245. May Strauss was sitting with her son in the dimly lit cafe serenaded by a melody of rhythmic percussion and smooth saxophone. Glasses clink. A delightfully caffeinated aroma floats through the air.

Before the Storm​

Duncan pulled into a parking space further from the building than he would have liked, the parking spaces near the building were reserved solely for electric vehicles. It was an intern's idea to bolster revenue - and they found that the idea worked. Beyer Dynamic partnered with the "Anther Alliance" shortly afterwards, and their statisticians discerned that the revenue for items labeled as belonging to the "Anther Alliance" had the same sales volume as did other products without the label. Interestingly, the additional revenue came indirectly - other companies copied Beyer, and customers took notice. It was prospective customers choosing electric vehicles more often for the convenience of parking closer that drove Beyer's additional revenue.

A Birch Abandon​

The train hit a bump and Duncan was jolted awake. He glanced around. "A train?" he thought. The last train to be used, as he recalled, was before - and during - the war. The war was perhaps the most bittersweet moment in human history. Human suffering, at least a vast majority of it, ended alongside the conflict, and alongside an estimated 4.6 billion human lives. Though Duncan had forgotten most of it, like most of history class, that number - 4.6 - he had never forgotten.

Duncan Strauss​

"When I'm examining a crime scene," Duncan exuberated, "I like to soak in every detail. Anything that is out of the ordinary, every contradiction, every nuance a clue!" Little Danny, a boy of six, sat eagerly listening to his uncle. It was the first time his uncle had been to visit in nearly a month. "But you see Danny, it only matters what you can detect; people say things - a lot of things. But it's the detective's duty to determine the truth! Oh Danny, nothing matters but the truth! Take nothing for granted. Trust your gut. Trust what you see!"

A Shadow at Dawn​

"It's a terrible business I'm afraid," he said standing. "But I'm not sure you've much to say." The victim groaned. "There's not a terrible lot you've done to earn this, you could say you've won a lottery - of sorts. I'm sure you want to speak, for I'm the last you'll ever see. But I'm just not very interested in anything you have to say. It's nothing personal. Even with all of the technology I can possibly want, there's nothing as elegant as a simple gag; oh the silence, the magnificent silence."

This blog post will be a bit different from my other ones. I needed to find a missing piece to the puzzle, and I think persuasion is that missing piece. I starting thinking about persuasion from Scott Adams, and read his book Win Bigly. From there he recommended Robert Cialdini's book Pre-suasion. And I'm currently reading his Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion. Both, great books. And also, if it's confusing, I'm writing this preamble a couple months after the following is written. I'm also going to cut this post a bit short, just because I think it's an important topic.

Universal morality is a treasure sought by philosophers for millennia. Can we say that an immoral action taken by a is also immoral when taken by b? Can we say that moral actors have the capacity to be immoral? Does it matter the building you work in? The color of your shirt? Perhaps the style of your hair? Referencing Stefan Molyneux's 'Universally Preferable Behavior: a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics,' this post will (re)solve the age-long question, and serve as a foundation for a future-posts analyzing society and voluntary relationships.

How do we know that something is true? What is truth? Can we even determine truth? If truth doesn’t already sound like a weird word, oh baby you’re in for a ride.