Stephen Hicks – Page 382 – Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Ray Stata, Lyric Semiconductor, and probability chips

Entrepreneurship, Technology / Stephen Hicks

Stata Ventures is Kaizen interviewee Ray Stata’s venture capital vehicle. It recently provided funding to technology startup Lyric Semiconductor. Lyric is developing probability chip technology. Traditional chips use binary “yes/no” switches, but probability chips “can accept inputs and calculate outputs that are between 0 and 1, directly representing probabilities, or levels of certainty.” Commercial applications […]

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Why the nano is 750 times better than the Walkman

Technology / Stephen Hicks

More fun with philosophy math, following up on two earlier posts: Why life is 255 times better now than in 1800 and Why life in America is 40 times better than in 1900. Focusing on innovations in music technology, Russ Roberts notes: “In 1979, Sony introduced the Walkman, the first portable music player. It weighed

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Kaizen 14 — the Mary Mazzio interview

Entrepreneurship, Sports / Stephen Hicks

The latest issue of Kaizen [pdf] features my interview with Mary Mazzio, award-winning documentary filmmaker, Olympic rower, and former law firm partner with Brown Rudnick. The theme of the interview is Documentary Filmmaking and Entrepreneurship. I hope you enjoy my wide-ranging discussion with the multi-faceted Mary Mazzio, including her latest project, Ten9Eight. Also featured in

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My upcoming SFL talk at University of Chicago

Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

The Students for Liberty organization hosts conferences at colleges around the country. This year they’re having regional conferences at Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, Arizona State, and other campuses. I’ll be giving a talk at the University of Chicago conference on October 16 on the theme “What Is Liberty Good For? Political Activism and the Meaning of

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A stolen Descartes manuscript

History of Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

This week we are starting Descartes’s Meditations in my Introduction to Philosophy course. One of the wonderful things about the Internet is its enabling us easily to see things like Descartes’s original handwriting. Here is a letter he wrote, dated 27 May 1641: The letter is in French and was written to Marin Mersenne about

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Timothy Sandefur’s new book

Business Ethics, Economics, Politics / Stephen Hicks

Should one be free to drive a taxi in Miami? Apparently not. The city government of Miami controls the number of taxi cabs and, as of 2002, had decided that only 1,856 taxi licenses shall exist. When a license becomes available, it is sold via lottery. But to participate in the lottery one must pay

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Philosophy department brochure

Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

Check it out (pdf). It’s a trifold design, with panels featuring my colleagues Matt Flamm, Shawn Klein, and me, the courses we teach, a list of famous philosophy majors in college, and more. Designed by Christopher Vaughan. (I want to live that library. Right now.)

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Philippa Foot (1920-2010)

Ethics / Stephen Hicks

Philippa Foot’s career at Oxford spanned much of the sprawling twentieth-century. Foot came to be a champion of neo-Aristotelian ethics, in contrast to the schools of deontology and utilitarian consequentialism that held sway in much of the Anglo-American philosophical world. Her Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001) was her last contribution to the discussion. Here

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