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On Religion
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1–2 minutes·
5 comments on On ReligionWhen I was 16, I was a member of my school’s debating society. As with all school debating societies, it wasn’t long before we landed on the topic of ‘Science vs. Religion’. It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that, at the time, I strongly self-identified as a scientist and atheist, and so I naturally…
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On Bullshit
During my weekly trawl through the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago, I came across an interview with Harry Frankfurt, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton, about his new book, On Truth. This was a followup to his book from last year, On Bullshit, which I’d heard a little about but had…
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The Case for Contamination
The Case for Contamination – from the New York Times magazine. A well-written and engaging essay on why cosmopolitanism is good, and trying to protect cultural practices is bad (I simplify).
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School of Dreams
School of Dreams by Edward Humes My secondary school (or high school, for you American folks) was a rather pleasant private school in Birkenhead, across the water from Liverpool. You could make a fair argument for saying that it was the best secondary school in the area, although there were a few others that were…
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The Debate
A transcript of the debate between Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy and Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. Essential reading for Pullman fans and anyone interested in the portrayal of religion in contemporary fiction.
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The Rules of the Game
I’ve just finished reading John Gribbin’s Science: A History, which is by all accounts a very well-written and interesting book. Gribbin could have probably done with making some of his sentences a little shorter and more readable, but other than that it’s an excellent review of science and the people who discovered it, starting from…
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Mu!
Mu – the correct answer to the trick question “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” Assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer “yes” is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but “no” is worse because it suggests that…
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Multiverse
Just been to a very interesting talk by Prof. Hugh Mellor on the subject of the Multiverse. The idea* behind the Multiverse is that there are uncountable numbers of other universes out there that have slightly different properties to ours, owing to different initial conditions. We can never see any of the other universes in…
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Freedom Evolves
Just finished reading Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett. It took me only four days to accomplish this, which is a great improvement from previous philosophy books that took me several weeks to finish (or I never ended up finishing them). This presents several possibilites, which I’ve listed in increasing order of likelihood: 1) My IQ…
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Armchairs and onions
One of the great things about being in UCSD right now is that I get to go to any classes I want, free of charge (unlike the poor saps who have to pay hundreds of bucks for the privilege – of course, they need course credit…). So at one of the recent cognitive neuroscience classes…
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