How to Have Hope: Musings on How to Achieve Cooperation and Peace Using Law, Math, and Physics

I am called to elaborate on yesterday's post to drill down on the definition of what I mean when I say I attempt to "always do what is right over what is easy." This has been a personal motto of mine since 2009. One person suggested to me that people (including I myself) may believe we are doing the right thing, but may be confused, or may have blindspots (which the psychological literature suggests are common), and that even Donald Trump or Hitler may think or have thought they are or were doing the right thing.  There are many ways to approach the question of what it means to "do right." Many wise scholars have heated debates within the field of ethics and I won't rehash them here, except to say at elite law schools I've been affiliated with an instructive moral dilemma is taught known as the "trolley problem,"  which was invented by a woman philosopher named Phillipa Foot.   (I mention her gender only because there were so few women in the ...

At the moment, for much of the legal community, there's significant reason to lose hope or to doubt the American democratic experiment. Mark Lemley, a Stanford law professor and scholar I greatly admire, claimed we are living in the "worst timeline." While I do not know the nature of time (though it's an interest I hope to explore later in my career, and different schools of physicists debate and argue about it), I want to impart what I consider words of wisdoms to today's graduates in an era that seems without hope.  Imagine you are looking a tree. As you look up the tree, you see that there are various forks, or branches, that can represent different life paths. In one life path, you make a risky decision and follow your dreams, and in another path you stay put in your safe life and marry your sweetheart. Which is the correct choice? Robert Frost has a famous poem about the "road less traveled," but I encourage all young readers to instead consider eac...