Erik van Mechelen - Essays and Fiction

If you want to learn about cognitive biases all humans share, you might start with Daniel Kahneman’s ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’, or the paper he wrote in 1974 with friend and colleague Amos Tversky, ‘Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases’. Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner have given us an interesting way to practice doing so in their book, Super Forecasting. In their story about a relatively small group of super forecasters who beat IARPA’s own government-backed researchers in a tournament of geopolitical forecasting, Tetlock and Gardner provide a blueprint for beginning one’s own journey of forecasting better than the average human (or at least better than you yourself do now). You can support my work at https://patreon.com/evm/

The Trigger-Happy Mouse Trap & Goal-Setting from First Principles: Book Review of Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark Max Tegmark shed tears after emerging from a London science museum in 2014, but by early 2017, his heart had warmed. In Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of AI, Tegmark explains his concern that all might be lost if AI security issues are not taken seriously. You can support my continued work at https://patreon.com/evm/

Liberty’s Dim Light: Book Review of China Miéville’s “October: The Story of the Russian Revolution” and “Iron Council” China Miéville holds a Ph.D. (2001) in International Relations from the London School of Economics, is a member of the socialist democratic party in England, and the founding editor of Salvage, a quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters. He wrote ‘Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law’, but is perhaps best known as an author of fiction, where for his novels he has won among other awards the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, and Locus literary honors. Support my reading/essays on patreon: https://patreon.com/evm/

Theseus’s Ship has Sailed: Book Review of “The Strange Death of Europe” Douglas Murray urges readers to take notice of the fatal blow Europe’s politicians have already dealt the European civilization.

Explore www.reddit/r/writinghub

Give and you shall receive.

Haseeb shares his Mental Catalog technique during my latest shakeup.tv interview.

I'm writing Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Training my eye, ear, heart, and wrists.

Pick a favorite movie scene for dialogue inspiration, then augment one of your scenes with loud dialogue.

To maintain or jumpstart your daily writing goals, consider flash fiction. I'm writing flash fiction on twitter @briefstory

Seek "to voice" and then you will find "your voice".

An easy way to write about what you love and bring new readers to your original work.

Draw a picture of your setting. Then imagine the stories that could take place there.

Poetry grants you creativity that prose doesn't always. Give writing a poem a whirl!

Listen to, play, and add music or instruments into your writing.

Find a motivational phrase or metaphor to push yourself beyond your limits.

Create your own language! (Idea prompted by Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language".