The wonderful Pink Agendist recently introduced Jordan Peterson by quoting this: “Haven’t heard of Jordan Peterson? Take one part Carl Jung, one part Solzhenitsyn, one part Kermit the Frog, and one part St. Augustine. Put all this in a conceptual blender”. While I don’t particularly like any of those ingredients, just like a Negroni, Peterson turned out…
Words as violence
The Russians have a law against offending the feelings of religious followers. It came up again today because a magazine did a (somewhat) explicit photoshoot in a church they considered abandoned: It turns out the church wasn’t entirely abandoned and was occasionally used. This may result in a court case against the model/photographer/publication involved: not…
The thunder rattles, the dog barks
As the world ages, we gain collective experience. Relationships between things are clarified: insecurity gives way to confidence, truth, gained through an insufferable struggle, turns into familiar axioms that don’t demand any sort of struggle. The well-intentioned man who once encouraged our predecessors to remind themselves of humility, would be the very first to be…
Charlie Gard: suffering fights autonomy
I felt awful about Charlie Gard’s case from the start. I know very little about paediatrics and these are just my thoughts as a person reading the paper, not some sort of medical opinion. Today, the boy’s parents ended their legal fight for their ill baby that aimed to have him flown to the US…
How to make your own conspiracy theory
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool – Richard Feynman … So I was watching Jordan B Peterson‘s video – I will talk about him later. Look at the bottom right corner on YouTube (in full screen): Looks like it’s straight off a Beutepanzer: Half the plot for…
Hear vs listen
The Samaritans spark a linguistic debate
Are we living at the end of an empire?
A thought experiment. There is a nuclear war in morning. The capitals and major cities are all gone. You happened to have been visiting your aunt in Castle’elsewhere, a cute provincial town, and remained alive and well. In the wake of the war, you realise that life will never be the same. There is an…
Emotions as the meaning of life
Robert Solomon proposed that emotions are the meaning of life: as in they add the meaning in a life; emotions add meaning to our experience the world.
Randomness as seen by Nassim Taleb
“Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive” Disappointed by Ayn Rand’s overfitting of consequences onto causes, I moved on to the book I’ve been meaning to read for a long time: Fooled by Randomness by N.N. Taleb. What is Fooled by Randomness…
MBTI quick and dirty cheat sheet
Warning: internet trash folklore ahead At a work dinner last night, a lovely lady whom I mentally typed as an ESFJ confessed to being in love with getting flowers and elaborated on the joys of it at length… Just like I was told they did on some less than credible website. Coincidence?! Albeit the Myers…
“There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think”
Shortly after I finished my medical degree, I pursued a master’s degree in finance. The 2008 market crash was pretty terrible for Ireland – and I was curious to find out get out of the medical bubble and learn about the world. After 5 years of medicine, everyone who wasn’t a doctor seemed well-rounded, but…
Happiness research: everything useful we’ve managed to gather so far
“Those who live under the self-imposed pressure to be optimal in their enjoyment of things suffer a measure of distress” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb Is that because those who put try to optimise for happiness are miserable to begin with – or because optimising is a curse? Happiness seems to be on everyone’s mind. Yes,…
