Another year of the pandemic. I thought I’d wrap up by briefly reviewing some books I’ve read during the year. Friedrich Nietzsche – The Birth of Tragedy. Despite this being probably Nietzsche’s earliest famous book, I somehow never managed to get a foothold in it previously. Here he formulates his early philosophy in terms of […]
Two momentous events that took place last year were the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, and the UK’s referendum on EU membership that led to the “Brexit†decision to leave the union. The two are often lumped together and seen as symptoms of a single larger force, which they probably […]
Elon Musk, entrepreneur of some renown, believes that the sudden eruption of a very powerful artificial intelligence is one of the greatest threats facing mankind. “Control of a super powerful AI by a small number of humans is the most proximate concern”, he tweets. He’s not alone among silicon valley personalities to have this concern. To reduce the […]
One of the major themes of Western philosophy since Plato is the elevation and near-deification of consciousness. Conscious thought and reflection have been prized above all else. Suspicion has been directed towards everything that is dark, murky, instinctive, unclear, unreasonable. Spirit has been emphasised above body. Christianity and its penal mechanisms was in no small […]
Scientific method is fundamentally concerned with repeatable events. The phenomena that science captures most easily may be described using the following formula: once conditions A have been established, if B is done, then C happens. This kind of science is a science of reactions, of the reactive. But what about a science of the active? Is […]