Philosophy

Be careful
Be particularly careful about the following four words: sacrifice, eternity, purity, redemption. If you hear any of these, sound the alarm. And if you happen to live in a country whose leader routinely says things like 'Their sacrifice will redeem the purity of our eternal nation' – know that you are in deep trouble. – Yuval Noah Harari, 21 lessons
Meditation on Persons
The question: What is a person? is more complex than it appears. Indeed, when we recognize the complexity of the question, and forget our assumption that a person should be a human being. We can no longer thing of a picture of homo sapiens, Vitruvian Man or his slightly obese contemporary counterpart, so the concept ...
I seek the company of others not to celebrate my narcissism, but to suppress it.
We breathe calmly. The word purpose agitates. Propos, to 'put forth' says the etymology. We are familiar with a hierarchy of purposes. At the end of a curious child's inquisitive series of "why?" every adult will resort to "just because". The purpose of growing up is to contribute to society. The purpose of society is ...
Meditation on Value
What do we mean when we say of something that it has value? And isn't all our speaking inherently evaluating? Isn't every utterance we make freely, an assignment of value? Isn't it much more elegant if we consider ourselves living in a 'soup' of value, rather than in a generally valueless world, in which we ...
My words that are idiot contracts written to the music of escape.
Review: Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz
Being Wrong is a well-written account of our understanding of error. The author points out how central error is for all aspects of cultural proress. It is not an academic treatise, but still gives the history of thinking about scientific and religious truth a fair treatment, by mentioning for example St. Augustine's fallor ergo sum, ...
Experiment
It is not because I have conclusive evidence of it, but because I enjoy teaching new things to my daughter Miru, that I believe we should introduce the most basic concepts of science to our children as early as possible. When Miru and I were wondering if the sea could freeze over, I suggested that ...
Meditation on Hope
We sit and pretend we are terminally ill. We breathe calmly. What is hope? What do we make of the bonmot that 'hope dies last' if we are lost in a desert without the prospect of water? And isn't the human condition hopeless 'in the end', if we presuppose a rough understanding of hope as ...