Category: Uncategorized
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On the appeal of video games
Partly it’s the challenge Partly it’s the fun of exploring fictional world and taking part in them. Partly it’s just the illusion of a productive distraction. When people have leisure they tend to go to exploratory behaviors, testing out new skills and possibilities. Part of it is the illusion of winning and dominance, of being…
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The living dialogue of humanity
I had a strange revelation, which I’ve talked about before, when I was suddenly able to see the movement of human thought across time. I saw that the truth was that everyone was right about everyone else. I heard the accusations and warnings of one side against the other. I heard their perspectives. And I…
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Rights and duties
Rights and obligations come into existence simultaneously. The principal function of rights is to protect and preserve our ability to discharge our duties. Duties are like goals in a game. Once they have laid upon us, then we have a right to pursue them. And if anyone interferes in our legitimate pursuit of our goals,…
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Differing perspectives on life and suffering
In contrast to many modernist views, the viewpoint of the ancient world was that life, by its nature, was Dukha. Unhappiness, stress, pain, disappointment. That’s what life is, and the goal of religion and philosophy was to address it. The Judaic religions echoed this by asserting the “fallen” nature of the world. The world is…
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My return to social media
Being back on social media thanks to the pandemic is reminding me why I had to get off it in the first place. It was making me so upset, it was reminding me how stupid and annoying everyone in the world is, how much they’re constantly chasing themselves into idiocy, including many of the people…
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On the burden of consciousness
One great difficulty everyone seems to be having, apart from the stress of being stuck at home, is the larger existential dread and fear that comes from reading the daily news. Humans are funny creatures. They have amazing powers, not least of which is their own consciousness, their ability to know what kind of creature…
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A note on the “Chinese Virus”
Most major viruses come from China or India. That’s because they’re the largest groups of humans on the planet. If you’re the largest civilization on Earth, it’s kind of like being the biggest city. You might as well call a disease the “urban virus”, or just “the human virus”, since the conditions for the development…
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On misogyny and child marriage
That was a great article bringing attention to the work of that doctor. It sounds like she did a lot of great at work helping women. And this is purely a comment about what’s most helpful in diagnosing and fixing problems. I’m not sure it’s enough to label child marriage as misogyny. The cause of…
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The value of disagreeable things
One might wonder, in a world of perfect ease and freedom and safety, what the value of confrontation and competition and even a certain amount of disagreeableness is. We live in a world that worships comfort and being surrounded with and told whatever makes us feel good. And of course there is immense value in…
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On gratitude during uncertain times
It’s funny to reflect on how shocking it is for us to live through something that used to be so common as to be generally assumed as part of life by humanity. Even things we think of as huge one-time events, like when the plague wiped out half of Europe, weren’t one time events. The…
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