This question arguably bears an assumption: that reading philosophy classics has been useful to science before, whereas now reading them for use is dubious. Granted, many first-rate physicists dismiss philosophy. An assumption that philosophy has no value to offer ‘actual’ science today is common. Stephen Hawking said, “Philosophy is dead”. And Richard Feynman and Lawrence… [Read more]
Category: Lifestyle (Page 1 of 6)
I have been asked to write on how tech influences inequality. The online feeds give the impression tech is good, whereas similar talk of the 1% suggest tech is bad. To much chagrin, I think neither is correct. The picture is more complex than that, as I write below: This headline’s question bears assumptions. It… [Read more]
Sing, sing, sing all you want. We each grow up patterned by circumstance: each of us learned, not at one point but, at successive subtle points that there are singers and then there are listeners. Most of us are the listeners. Yet this listener and singer arrangement is abnormal, rare with all societies ever taken… [Read more]
Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that… [Read more]
The longest-lived healthful people neither diet or workout. Those who live in Nicoya Costa Rica, or Okinawa, or Loma Linda California, for example. Instead of excluding a tableau of food, they eat what their (lucky) environment affords; vegetables and beans and wholegrains are common denominators. Instead of attending gyms, Nicoyans, Okinawans and Seventh Day Adventists… [Read more]
The most efficient way to learn a language is already known; I systematised it here, a post about a multilingual who learned to speak multiple languages as an adult for his opera career. (Also backed by computational linguistics.) Learning languages when an adult is arduous, and it’s that which makes him impressive. Children, on the… [Read more]
The best show on British television – Inside No 9. Each time I watch an episode I am reminded of Henri Bergson. Bergson debated with Albert Einstein in the 1920s on the nature of time. Einstein was adamant that though space-time dilates, it is nonetheless objective. Bergson was adamant that time is what one thinks… [Read more]
The type of rationality assumed in economics is limited. One can generate solutions to theoretical problems, but the actual human behaviour is far messier. Each human has limits. Limits around what information is available, their own mind in processing that information, and the amount of time they have to think it through. Herbert Simon coined… [Read more]
Securely attached love and trust quite easily and second naturedly. Anxious attached strive for intimacy with others but are rife with fears, anxieties and disappointments which tragically can make such worries a reality through misplaced, and counter-intuitive, passive-aggressive behaviour. Avoidant attached tend to avoid closeness because they feel too vulnerable. It is far breezier to… [Read more]
‘Luck’ is rarely credited for successes or failures. If someone said they went on a date but it went badly because of “bad luck” we would think them self-deluding. If Bill Gates said he made his fortune because of luck, we would think him immodestly modest. (Although the date may have had a bad mood… [Read more]
