January 21, 2025
Blind Spot (2024) includes an incredibly lucid chapter on consciousness. We summarize part of it here.
Primacy of Consciousness # Our awareness and everything we experience appear within consciousness. It includes all our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and the way we experience the world around us. One aspect of consciousness is what philosophers call the primacy of consciousness. This means that consciousness comes first in how we understand and experience reality. We can’t measure our consciousness or compare it to anything.
...
August 11, 2024
James Carse’s The Religious Case Against Belief, published in 2008, was a groundbreaking work. Tragically, Carse passed away in 2020, just as large language models (LLMs) were making amazing advances. The book’s complex language, likely with a Flesch-Kincaid score above 15, makes it inaccessible to many readers. This is unfortunate, as its insights deserve a wider audience. Imagine if this influential book could be simplified without losing its core message.
...
October 20, 2023
Sapolsky, R. M. (2023). Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. Penguin Press.
The Origins Podcast interview
September 10, 2023
I spent about a decade in the Southeast. I lived in Charlottesville, VA from 2011 to 2017 and in Richmond, VA from 2017 to 2021. Although I identify as one of the most privileged demographics, a white heterosexual man, I suffered from the racism of the Southeast. There is a subtle vibe of cruelty that taints everything from wealthy suburbs to the decaying downtown. I am so glad to leave that place.
...
September 5, 2023
I’m not a big fan of the American Psychological Association.
“Doing Harm”: Roy Eidelson on the American Psychological Association’s Embrace of U.S. Torture Program
July 16, 2023
The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior.
...
June 25, 2022
Just when you thought that science and spirituality were hopelessly irreconcilable, cogntive psychologist Donald Hoffman proposes a very interesting perspective.
<—>
Hoffman, D. (2019). The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes. WW Norton & Company.
Tim Ferriss interview Apr 13, 2022
Lex Fridman interview Jun 12, 2022
The Convergence of Science and Spirituality | Donald Hoffman & Rupert Spira Mar 26, 2023
Hoffman, D., Prakash, C.
...
November 28, 2020
Many assume that the invention of a phonetic alphabet only brought benefits. In a somewhat speculative reassessment of history, Shlain makes the case that the phonetic alphabet advanced lawyer-style thinking that greatly facilitated the justification of violence. The book is unlikely to be 100% true, but also unlikely to be 100% false.
<—>
Shlain, L. (1999). The alphabet versus the goddess: The conflict between word and image. Penguin.
