The Quantified Soul

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James Croall

James Croall

Maybe We Are All Theys

Maybe We Are All Theys

There’s a moment most of us have lived but never quite admitted out loud. It’s late. You’re tired. You’re typing a message you wouldn’t send in daylight, or eating the food you’d promised yourself you wouldn’t, or saying the thing to your mother

We Built This City: A Riff on the Worst Song Ever Recorded

We Built This City: A Riff on the Worst Song Ever Recorded

Quick note: I’ve been re-grouping my strategy for this newsletter, and more substantive pieces are on their way. In the meantime, I’ve been writing a few “fun” essays as a creative outlet—riffs, mostly—and figured I’d share them as they come. This is one. Notice how

What the DSM and Its Replacements Keep Missing

What the DSM and Its Replacements Keep Missing

Every experienced clinician eventually hits the same wall. You’re sitting with a brain map on one screen and a diagnostic label on the other, and they don’t match. Not in the way that ambiguous data doesn’t match—in the way that the label seems to be describing

The Most Dangerous Idea You Already Believe

The Most Dangerous Idea You Already Believe

"Knowledge is power" is one of those phrases we repeat without following to its conclusion. If knowledge is power, then "some things are unknowable" is a power move.

Stop Calling This Self-Help

Stop Calling This Self-Help

I keep getting miscategorized. Not in so many words—nobody walks up and says “hey, nice motivational content.” It’s subtler than that. I get introduced to programs that specialize in the inspirational space. I get suggested for panels alongside manifestation coaches and abundance mindset trainers. People hear the word

The Akashic Field Isn’t Mystical. It’s Mathematical.

The Akashic Field Isn’t Mystical. It’s Mathematical.

When More Information Doesn’t Help We are not suffering from a lack of knowledge. We have more data, more research, more communication infrastructure than any civilization in history. Information is not the bottleneck. And yet—trust is collapsing, politics is fragmenting into tribes that can’t hear each other,

Can AI Think Outside the Map?

Can AI Think Outside the Map?

Artificial intelligence is getting very good at answering questions. It can write essays, generate images, discover proteins, debug code, diagnose disease. Each week brings another announcement that sounds, at least on the surface, like a boundary being crossed. People keep reaching for the same phrase: this changes everything. But beneath