Jeffrey Alexander Martin

One day a wolf was seen lurking near the sheep field. Two guard dogs caught up with the wolf and asked him, "What are you doing around here?" The wolf replied, "I'm on a walk. Can't I just go on a walk?" The guard dogs let the wolf go. The next day a lamb came running to the pen and told a sheep that a wolf had scared him near the woods. The sheep said to stay away from the woods. The next day a sheep saw the wolf walking through the field. He ran to the guard dogs and told them. They said, "Has he done anything wrong?" "No," admitted the sheep. The guard dogs did nothing. The next day a lamb was heard screaming. The guard dogs ran to him. The lamb was bleeding. "The wolf bit me!" he said. The guard dogs ran after the wolf. When they caught him they brought him back to the herd. A trial was held. The wolf said, "I'm sorry. It was just a mistake. I didn't mean to hurt anyone. I won't do it again." The sheep ...

I've considered doing a PhD. They take years and are expensive. I have an interesting project idea though. Here I'll include what the proposal could look like, an email I wrote to a businessman about it, and an email I wrote to a professor about it. PhD Research Proposal Title: A Value-Based Framework for Analyzing Autobiographies: Mapping Meaning and Motivation in the Lives of Influential Individuals or Autobiographical Personality Analysis: An Axiological Framework for Analyzing Writing About the Self Abstract This research proposes a novel framework for the systematic analysis of autobiographies and memoirs through the lens of value theory, social psychology, and computational linguistics. Drawing on Viktor Frankl’s fourfold structure of creative, experiential, encounteral, and attitudinal values, this project aims to develop a scalable methodology for mapping the motivational structures of historical and contemporary figures. The study will integrate theories of meaning-mak...

Humanity is obsessed with the end of the world. Will the world end with a bang like a meteor, asteroid, volcano, or bombs? Will it end with robots and AI taking over? Will it end with a deadly and infectious bioweapon? All of these are possible, but I think it's just as likely it will end in a whimper. I gave ChatGPT 18 articles and books to read from John B. Calhoun on his studies on population. This is what the AI summarizes for the future of humanity: Overview This document synthesizes the key insights, experimental findings, and long-range predictions of ethologist John B. Calhoun across his published works from 1962 to 1993. It is designed to teach a reader unfamiliar with Calhoun's work how his theories of behavior under crowding relate to possible trajectories of human society—especially in regard to population dynamics, role differentiation, and extinction risk. 1. Core Experiments and Findings      Mouse Utopias and the "Behavioral Sink"      In hi...

People have worried about population growth because of the depletion of resources. It turns out that population growth was something to worry about, but not because of the depletion of resources, because of the social, mental, and spiritual collapse that goes with it. In 1751 Benjamin Franklin wrote 'Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.' about population growth in the American colonies. The population grows fast when the resources are available. This helped inspire Thomas Malthus to write 'An Essay on the Principle of Population' in 1798. Essentially, populations of animals grow to the extent they can according to the resources available. As the supply and demand of things like food and space equalize then larger amounts of strife and struggle keep the population from expanding. Sometimes there can be a major increase that wipes out the resources, which then wipes out the population, but more often there's an approximate balan...

All life has purpose. It's part of the definition of life; a rock doesn't in itself have a purpose or goal that it's aiming for, grass does. The roots of grass aim toward water and soil, the blade bends toward the sun, it struggles to live against the harsh realities and difficulties of life, it reproduces. Humans too pursue purposes, some small and some large. An obvious question is, "What is the highest pursuit of human life?" This question has been answered in many different ways by many different people throughout human history. The human cultures and traditions that have evolved over the millennia are hard-won knowledge. It's a history of trial and error written in human lives lived and lost. A few weeks ago I was on a road trip and drove to the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. It's quite the drive along a twisting and winding road next to the mountain cliffs. I was walking around the top taking pictures and looking at things. There was an ol...

There are eight ways to morally disengage. This allows humans to do bad things and not feel bad. The reverse of these are eight ways to morally engage and not do bad things. I can use these sixteen moral principles to make fables that will illustrate the lessons. Humans naturally morally disengage. We don't have to try to do these things. The eight ways that people morally disengage are: moral justification, sanitizing language, exonerative social comparison, diffusion of responsibility, displacement of responsibility, minimizing the injurious effects, attribution of blame, and dehumanization. Five years ago I wrote on article on how we can reverse these ideas for 'Moral Engagement': https://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2020/04/moral-engagement.html When I held political office that is the only article that I printed out and hung on my wall for the entire four years, as a reminder to myself. These fables could be done in many different ways. One way that all of them could...

Fables contain a type of narrative wisdom that connects with humanity in a more truly human way than boring knowledge divorced from story. Not that humans ever really learn the lessons anyway, but there's a reason that stories persist. Wolves and sheep are a classic subject of Aesop, and new versions are still being made. One version is: One day a flock of sheep were grazing in a field when a wolf appeared. The wolf attacked and killed one of the sheep. The next day the remaining sheep had a meeting. "Did you see how the teeth flashed and killed our friend?" said one sheep. Another agreed, "Teeth are very dangerous." The sheep voted and decided to remove their teeth so that they wouldn't be in danger. The next day the wolf appeared once again. The sheep were even easier to kill. Moral of the story: Disarming yourself makes you easier prey. This is a common human mistake, the mistake of misidentifying the cause of danger and taking action that mak...

There were two great works published in the year 1776, 'The American Declaration of Independence' by Thomas Jefferson, and 'The Wealth of Nations' by Adam Smith. Humans are naturally poor. Think about the most natural state of humanity that you can think of, people with pointy sticks and huts made out of sticks and mud. So, the first question is, "How does a society become wealthy?" Smith is clear on the answer to this. In Book 1 of 'The Wealth of Nations' he says: "The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.” He has multiple chapters on the division of labor. Here's another quote from Book 1 that expands on the idea: "It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a wel...

I listened to an audiobook recently that was written mostly in the second-person point of view, in future tense. That's unique. It was surprisingly good. I'm going to play with that idea here. I read the Oxford World's Classics version of the tortoise and the hare recently, translated by Laura Gibbs. It's under the section for fables about the underdog. Here it is: "The hare laughed at the tortoise's feet but the tortoise declared, "I will beat you in a race!" The hare replied, "Those are just words. Race with me, and you'll see! Who will mark out the track and serve as our umpire?" "The fox," replied the tortoise, "since she is honest and highly intelligent." When the time for the race had been decided upon, the tortoise did not delay, but immediately took off down the race-course. The hare, however, lay down to take a nap, confident in the speed of his feet. Then, when the hare eventually made his way to the finish ...

I feel like I need some fictional writing exercise to upskill and get the juices flowing, so I've decided to play with the opening of 'Replay' by Ken Grimwood, because I think it's a beautiful opening to a book. Maybe the best I've ever read. Last night I read through a small portion of the opening and wrote down sparse notes. This morning I attempted to reconstruct the original from my notes. This is a writing exercise I picked up from Benjamin Franklin. Let's see how I did. Here are my notes: on phone died never heard her heavy slammed chest phone fell cracked paperweight week before similar we need? pause not final sitting kitchen table breakfast nook formica table Here is my reconstruction: Jeff Winston was on the phone with his wife when he died... "We need..." she'd said, but he never heard the rest of what she was going to say. Something heavy slammed against his chest, crushing the breath out of him, making it difficult to breathe. The phon...

Part of the continual churn of death and destruction in human history is from the paradox of tolerance, which too few people are aware of. Frank Herbert has an excellent statement of it in his 1976 novel 'Children of Dune': "When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles." Babington Macaulay gives some good little examples of this type of error in volume 3 of his 1860 'Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays': "It would not be very wise to conclude that a beggar is full of Christian charity, because he assures you that God will reward you if you give him a penny; or that a soldier is humane, because he cries out lustily for quarter when a bayonet is at his throat. The doctrine which, from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by all bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few wor...