Site-Wide Activity

Offg:  Thanks for that link.  Homo Deus is on my list too.

Phil:  Thanks for the reminder about Raoul’s books.  I’ve meant to read him since you posted about him long ago.    

offg #38 Ten years ago I was posting this. And eight years ago promoting Raoul’s book “Creating Freedom”. The crucial issue is discerning the better moral path given these truths (always obvious once the […]

michael 100 #32  and others I think is error to hold on to the mind/body distinction. before i ever heard of robert sapolsky it was noah harari who opened my mind to the free will conundrum in his homo […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXloGX2552I

Strato #36 & Zeug #33   I would like to ask Yuval Harari about the ‘problem’ of consciousness.     Remembering that he’s an historian, I’m willing to cut him some slack on this question. […]

Michael 100 #32, Zeuglodon Beta #33, Sapolsky’s Determined is, as you know about neurobiology, formative exposures and experiences, socio-economic impact, and how this should inform determinations in the […]

Strato at #34:   I almost feel sorry for Trump, given the seemingly bottomless pit of his own delusions of victimhood. Power-obsessed paranoia is a slippery slope indeed.   Then again, if I was in the habit of h […]

This is pretty priceless. I think Hugo Lowell had a few chuckles writing up this piece.   All Trump’s Oompa-Loompas at the RNC are bumping into one another trying not to be seen to be countermanding the […]

Michael 100 at #32:   I think is error to hold on to the mind/body distinction.  I’d be interested in what others think of this point.   Depends on context: I can appreciate the practical advantage of dist […]

Strato #25:  Thanks for the Harari link.  The one thing that struck me was when he referred to the mind as separate from the body.  I understand that the mind is a function of the brain which is the body.  At one […]

offg at #30:   positivism gone rogue   Monbiot calls it “politics denial” or “irrational optimism”. Pinker’s not the only one singled out. Extract here:   A few days before his [Oded Galor’s] book was pu […]

As a sort of followup from an earlier comment of mine in Book Club 2022 on Mark Lynas’ Our Final Warning, I was intrigued enough to check in on the NASA database for global warming measures. So here’s an […]

strato #27 that link to monbiot’s takedown of pinker is brilliant having read the last 2 of pinker’s books it has always bothered me that his environmental views are so out of synch positivism gone rogue

And on the Biden Administration, the Inflation Reduction Act was rather visionary. Transformational. May it generate huge impetus, inertia, in multiplied investment from the private sector. Show that capitalism, […]

Above, I was lamenting the increase in militarism in the world, as it seems. Which makes it hard, or harder to take comfort in Steven Pinker’s analysis, and conclusion that the Long Peace looks to be enduring. […]