Ben Sima

Category: Essays

  • Designing open standards with the minority rule

    Nassim Taleb has a great anecdote about why all the food in the grocery store is kosher: it costs almost nothing for a company to make their food kosher and thus gain the Jewish customer segment, and for non-Jews it costs nothing to eat kosher food. Over time, companies realize it’s in everyone’s interest to […]

  • Goalless endeavors

    My friend Carl and I recently had a short conversation about zen meditation. He brought up some points that all basically referred to the end goal of meditation: health and mindfulness benefits, etc. To which I replied that meditation is necessarily a goalless endeavor. Yes, meditating will make you think clearer and harmonize your body […]

  • Takeaway from the Thiel Under20 Summit: Incredible things can quite certainly be done

    If there’s one thing to take away from last weekend’s Under20 Summit, it’s that incredible things can quite certainly be done. While working on a creative project, you undoubtedly come to a point where you don’t know whether or not what you’re working on will succeed. Panic, mild depression, and whole-days spent in bed ensue. […]

  • Occupy Wall Street: Fallacies and Misconceptions

    You’d have to be living in a cave if you still haven’t heard of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. After numerous conversations with friends about the protests, I’ve decided to write this article. I’ll cover the origin of the protests, what the protesters stand for and want (as hard as that is to discern), […]

  • Pride and Cosmopolitanism

    Around 170 A.D., Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Pride is a master of deception: when you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business, that’s when he has you in his spell.” Even in religion, “pride” is listed as the most detrimental of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pride is the insidious parasite that sidles into your consciousness when, […]

  • Tyranny—It’s not just for breakfast anymore!

    Seven o’clock de la mañana. Tuesday, November 5th. Susan slips out of bed, into her day clothes, and makes for the polls. Today would be the first day she voted. Finally! After all this time! She had been waiting her whole life—she was too nervous to even eat breakfast. A few months later, many people […]

  • Rant: Teaching Styles in Medical and Philosophy Classes

    As a student of both philosophy and medicine, I see two very different teaching strategies on a daily basis. My philosophy classes are almost always approached in the same manner: through the readings, I am exposed to a multitude of different perspectives on a single issue. I must then synthesize the arguments and write an […]

  • How not to talk to your kids

    Interesting article from the New York mag: Life Sciences is a health-science magnet school with high aspirations but 700 students whose main attributes are being predominantly minority and low achieving. Blackwell split her kids into two groups for an eight-session workshop. The control group was taught study skills, and the others got study skills and […]

  • Atheists, On Why They Don’t Believe In God

    A long time ago, I gave up believing in the Catholic man-in-the-sky that I was raised to believe in. I just figured, my life should be up to me, why would I need another entity to steer the course of my life? If you ever struggle with the belief in a god or religion, then hopefully […]

  • Case Study: Two Leaders, One Strategy, Centuries Apart

    The Colloseum in Rome, Italy. (Photo: jonrawlinson on flickr) Gods, epic myths, heroes, and damsels in distress. The history of ancient times fascinates me. Below is one of my favorite stories from Greek history. The story of Xenophon’s mission to return 10,000 Greek mercenaries to their homeland. And for entertainment’s sake—and to display a fantastic […]