Throwing away things

When it comes to how to deal with used stuff, or with things that you don’t need anymore, there are two kinds of people, the keepers and the discarders. My temparament leant towards keeper when I was younger but today I am a staunch discarder.
I love throwing away — or even better, physically destroying — my [...]

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Random notes

1. I am currently in Hawaii. It is most wonderful. And there is something truly special about doing math on the beach. Some day I hope to find out if it is as good as having sex on the beach.
2. I am in the final couple of months of my US stay. This is not [...]

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A discussion on morality and the nature of values

To make up for my lack of posting, let me link to a discussion over at Aristotle’s blog. It started off with Rawls but has evolved into topics like the nature of morality and the objectivity (or lack thereof) of values.
—
To a casual reader of the thread linked above, I might come across as rather [...]

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The full circle

Certain events reminded me
of this funniness I once wrote.
So I called up K –  he told me
of she he was with no more;
So I asked him about the circles
And he said he’d come a full circle.
For some reason that makes me  sad.

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Intertwined

Conversations, news and movies inform me that it is pretty common for a person to say bad things about his or her ex. I have always found that practice mystifyingly alien. It is not that I necessarily have any moral objection to saying such things; just that I cannot ever imagine myself doing it.
A part [...]

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Two kinds of favourites

All time favourites are of two kinds.
The first kind is what I call ‘love at first sight’. You like them from the start and by the time you are done with them, you know they are going to become an all time favourite. Your appreciation for them peaks at or towards the end of your [...]

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Rights and responsibilites with respect to your children

As I wrote in the comments following this post, I believe parents — being responsible for the birth and day to day care of their children — should also have considerable freedom in how they choose to raise them. Short of physical abuse or gross neglect, they have an absolute right to bring their children [...]

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The age bias

I have realized that I suffer from the age bias, and I suspect I am not alone in this.
When I come across a political or philosophical writing by someone who is younger than me, I subconsciously view this fact as increasing the probability that he is wrong. In short, my immediate emotional instinct is to [...]

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Positive music

Many years ago, my then girlfriend showed me a website dedicated to “positive music”.
Positive music, the website said, was music without harsh, discordant sounds. It wasn’t the kind of music that arouses negative emotions. It wasn’t music to disturb or change the world. It wasn’t rap, hip-hop, hard rock or grunge. It wasn’t heavy metal. [...]

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Anti-loyalty alliance is still an alliance

A nice follow-up by Robin Hanson to his earlier post I had linked to:
You just can’t fight “conformity” by indulging the evil pleasure of enjoying your conformity to a small tight-knit group of “non-conformists.”  All this does is promote some groups at the expense of other groups, and poisons your mind in the process.  It [...]

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The lure of mainstream happiness

Sometimes I am tempted to modify my moral premises so that I can be more at peace with the world.
I am always saved by the realization that I cannot do such a thing deliberately and retain my self-respect.

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The road to rationality ruin

Robin Hanson expresses eloquently a theme I have often touched upon:
We feel a deep pleasure from realizing that we believe something in common with our friends, and different from most people.  We feel an even deeper pleasure letting everyone know of this fact.  This feeling is EVIL.  Learn to see it in yourself, and then [...]

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Atheism doesn’t necessarily imply common sense

Via a post by Althouse, I was alerted to this recent Richard Dawkins quote about children reading Harry Potter and other fantasy fiction:
I think it is is anti-scientific – whether that has a pernicious effect, I don’t know…
I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read [...]

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Money, power elites and morality

Eliezer Yudkowsky writes:
One of the major surprises I received when I moved out of childhood into the real world, was the degree to which the world is stratified by genuine competence.
Now, yes, Steve Jurvetson is not just a randomly selected big-name venture capitalist.  He is a big-name VC who often shows up at transhumanist conferences.  [...]

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The pursuit of science and an old email

I stumbled upon an old email today. It was written by me in December 2001. That’s very long ago, isn’t it?
***
Suppose you ask me today … (no, this is not part of the email)
So, what’s worth pursuing?
Well, scientific knowledge is worth pursuing.
What about happiness, money, comfort, security?
Sure, all those too.
But what’s most worth pursuing?
Dude, it’s [...]

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