Category: ideas

“The power and beauty of mathematics is exactly what you’d expect if the universe were created by a powerful deity, worthy of worship. … And yet, is the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences really evidence for the existence of a deity? Is the language of math divine? There are good reasons to doubt it.”

“Why do so many humans have pets? Animals are our friends, tools, and confidants, and may help children grow into socially responsible adults. An anthropologist believes the special bond that forms between people and animals is, paradoxically, part of what makes us human.”

“Did you know that our brain function is entirely different when we think about our own honesty versus when we think about another’s honesty? That’s if the ‘we’ is American. For Chinese people their brains look identical when considering either.”

“Now, the principle of noncontradiction says that you can never accept a contradiction. And the principle of noncontradiction has been high orthodoxy in Western philosophy since Aristotle mounted a spirited defense of it in his Metaphysics … But why should we accept that anyway? You might think that since Aristotle’s defense established the principle in Western philosophy, his arguments must have been pretty good. Were they? No.”

The issue is important “because it determines who can go out in the city [i.e., those with strong bladders] and who cannot, who can use public space and who cannot. … It’s also a laboratory for what we are willing to do to prevent some people from doing things we don’t like, and how much punishment will we give to everybody in order to ensure that.”

“A new wave of research … [suggests that] bullying can leave an indelible imprint on a teen’s brain at a time when it is still growing and developing. Being ostracized by one’s peers, it seems, can throw adolescent hormones even further out of whack, lead to reduced connectivity in the brain, and even sabotage the growth of new neurons.”

“[The] less evidence we have of another’s beliefs … the more likely we are to project our own beliefs into the voids. The same probably applies to anything else to which we attribute a personality or mind of its own, such as our car, our plant or our pet.”

“Human history is a long process of accumulating information, especially once writing made it possible to record texts and preserve them beyond the capacity of our memories. And if we look closely, we can find a striking parallel to our own time.”

“Rather than going into the public square in order to collect data for understanding traditional philosophic problems like the old chestnut of ‘free will,’ as experimental philosophers do, field philosophers start out in the world. Rather than seeking to identify general philosophic principles, they begin with the problems of non-philosophers, drawing out specific, underappreciated, philosophic dimensions of societal problems.”

“As corporate complexity collides with the fanciful phrasing of image makers, it’s getting harder to tell what some companies actually do.” For instance, “Parker Hannifin Corp., a diversified industrial company whose products include pumps and valves, styles itself ‘the global leader in motion and control technologies.’ The description might equally apply to a maker of lingerie.”