Friday, July 31, 2026
Thursday, July 23, 2026
Saturday, July 18, 2026
Thursday, July 16, 2026
Philosophy Feuds: Freud vs Jung
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were immediate friends when they met in 1907. They had plenty to talk about, as they were both groundbreaking psychoanalysts in their time. Their intense relationship was doomed to burn out eventually, the ostensible reason being their divergent philosophies about what influences the mind. Or maybe they were just tired of listening to each other. (via Everlasting Blort)
Friday, July 03, 2026
Wisdom
A crossover between Chekhov's Gun, Schrödinger's Cat, Occam's Razor, and Murphy's law. Original post
— Massimo (mirror) (@rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social) June 27, 2026 at 11:47 AM
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Thursday, May 21, 2026
Saturday, May 02, 2026
Sunday, April 26, 2026
Which Button Would You Push?
A thought experiment that shows 1. whether you understand odds and 2. what your values are. The real demons are the ones who set up the game.
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Do Animals Have Minds Like Humans?
We don't know exactly what's going on in someone else's mind, but we can take a guess based on their behavior. That goes for primitive species like worms with few neurons, up through animals with many neurons, to humans, who have taken the concept of "mind" a lot further. Yet we still don't know where to draw the line on which animals have "minds" as we think of them. Heck, we can't even define "mind" as opposed to sentience, self-awareness, and consciousness.
Humans, with the most complex of all brains, have managed to use our collection of neurons to develop and understand higher concepts like empathy, morality, art, fiction, prediction, language and math, long-term planning, and civilization itself. We've become pretty good at telling others what's on our minds, although we still cannot totally experience the way someone else thinks. Kurzgesagt gives us a brief tour of how brains differ between species and how more complex brains work. There's an ad from 4:44 to 6:00. The video ends at 10:42.
Sunday, February 01, 2026
The Bully
Thursday, January 22, 2026
Morals and Responsibility
Most of us realize that the world does not revolve around us, and that we have to consider other people. Still, the amount of selfishness and empathy varies widely from person to person. You probably know people who are just plain awful even though they know better. But what if evil and selfishness were all you ever knew, and it was completely normal in your world? You'd still be a complete failure as a person, but was that your fault, or the fault if the way you were taught? In other words, how responsible are people who never learned ethics or morality?
You'd be hard-pressed to find examples of people who never had the opportunity to develop a moral structure, but that brings up the subject of psychopaths, who have a personality disorder and would like you to think it's not their fault. That subject isn't discussed here. Rather, this is a thought experiment about the responsibility of evil, which philosophers have argued about for thousands of years.
Friday, December 05, 2025
Tuesday, December 02, 2025
Do Justly
— Inspirational Skeletor (@skeletorinspires.bsky.social) August 13, 2025 at 1:00 PMThe reference here is Micah 6:8.
Monday, October 27, 2025
Friday, September 19, 2025
Reality Versus the Perception of Reality
The universe is so big and complicated that mere humans can only perceive a small part of it, and understand even less of it. Sure, our relative intelligence and ability to grasp abstract concepts is what separates is from other animals, but that doesn't mean we understand the nature of what we call reality. What if everything we know is just a simulation constructed by someone else? The possibility was once considered ridiculous, but we're at the point now where we can see how it would happen.
Kurzgesagt outlines this paradox by explaining how close we are to creating simulated universes and intelligence ourselves. What could possibly go wrong? I am reminded of that one night we watched a colony of ants and talked about how they were totally unaware of the intelligent beings watching them. So we turned around, looked up in the sky, and waved to the super-intelligent beings watching us. It's a concept that puts us somewhere between Genesis, Oculus Rift, and The Matrix. Vsauce3 looks into the question even further.
The upshot is that our reality is what we perceive, and we don't know how much we don't know. And we never will. (via Laughing Squid)
Friday, September 12, 2025
The Pros and Cons of Immortality
Would you make the decision to live forever if you could? You'd have time to do everything you ever wanted to do, but then what? Philosophers and ethicists have varying opinions. Sure, you could get bored, and you'd have to say goodbye to everyone over and over as they died, not to mention watching the love of your (present) life age while you stay 25 or whatever. Some would argue that time is only valuable to us because it is limited.
Then there are further concerns in the comments. The video says we wouldn't have to worry about death as immortals, but does not specify whether we'd experience pain or hunger or mental illness. And to keep having adventures, we'd have to keep working to earn money. And we'd have to put up with the ups and downs of the civilization around us. Then when the earth dies out, we'd be stuck in space with nothing to do until the collapse of the universe. Maybe mortality isn't so bad after all.
Saturday, August 23, 2025
Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Solitary Protest
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— Joseph Fasano (@josephfasano.bsky.social) June 30, 2025 at 10:59 AM
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