Philosophy
Including Religion, since most anything one likes can be subsumed under the rubric of 'Philosophy'
Sapolsky's new book, Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will, re-Kindled (so to speak) conversation with a friend (I'm looking at you, Gary) on Free Will. I'm often misunderstood on the subject I'll say again: it's not so much that i reject the idea of Free Will as I utterly don't understand where it comes from.
Of course I concede it feels lIke I'm free to choose vanilla vs chocolate, I'm just confused about how that choice is actually made. So, here I'll try to elaborate what i see as the core problem.
A dialogue on compassion between a friend and I. Edited to make me look better. And him worse.
GLB
1988 was the year I quit the Republican Party.
On a nice spring/summer day, we walked to the Rockville City Hall and I changed my registration from…
Dear Friend,
This poem comes as close to religion for me as anything I know. It is written to a boy but applies equally to a woman. Perhaps you may find it some help, as I have, when facing life's sometimes difficult choices.
If—
The Morals of Chess
by Benjamin Franklin
originally appeared in The Columbian Magazine in December 1786
The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become…
origins diverse
from throughout the universe
there is no better verse
than 'nature is perverse'
NPR had a piece yesterday on the idea that machines may one day be so intelligent as to become capable of designing and building even more intellingent machines, triggering a exponential growth of intelligence, an intelligence sigularity, such that human intelligence becomes negligible by comparison. Some consider this intelligence sigularity a existential threat.
Here is a link to the NPR Story:
The Singularity: Humanity's Last…
The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, in an interview with BBC while out on bail pending possible extradition to Sweden concerning sexual assault without a condom charges, had this to say concerning his persumably unrelated mission with Wikileaks:
"Every person who has some ability to do something about it, if they are a person of good character, has the duty to try and fix the…
The attached file is an article by Bill Joy on his concerns about modern technology. Read the article, but the main point seems to me that modern technology is too complex to manage and very likely presents threats to man which exceed the benefits. Possibly we can learn to manage the technology, possibly not.
I lean toward Mr. Joy's views, perhaps more so. Even if you don't share his concern you might benefit by being aware of them.
Conceding that 'Freewill' is a poorly defined concept, there is still some sense that we are free to make some choices and not so free to make others. Most would agree that we are free to choose vanilla vs. chocolate ice cream, while we are not free to choose to be invisible. Which is to say that some things appear to be impossilbe, regardless of what we wish them to be. While in other cases we are in some sense 'free' to make a choice.
But consider the apparent choice of ice cream flavor. Walk into a shop and look at all the options. What actually happens in your head when you…
Charity from those who believe in afterlife rewards must be greeted with some suspicion because such persons can never be entirely free of the idea that they will be rewarded for their actions, if not in life then in death. No one can be sure, least of all the believers themselves, if their actions, no matter how charitable, are in fact selfishly designed to improve their own lot in the afterlife.
The genuine athiest, however, at least has the possibility of performing an act they believe can do themselves no good at all.
To be sure, athiests are pefectly capable of…