Category: Commentary
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Adrian Daub’s book on Silicon Valley thinking is intended as a criticism of the ideas that underpin the Silicon Valley-ideology, if there is one. This in itself is a worthwhile project, and teasing out the intellectual underpinnings of different spheres in society is in itself a good form of critical…
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In a newly published survey, the Pew Research Institute is looking into how Americans view China. The outcome at first glance seems unsurprising: Americans are increasingly skeptical of China, and are concerned about China across a number of different dimensions. But when you look more closely at the numbers you…
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On Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, in Svenska Dagbladet and Under Strecket – available here. And a chance to think about duckrabbits!
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Enjoyed this episode of Mindscape on my lunch walk today. Strongly recommended. One of the items they discuss is how Plato is received in China and how the Chinese scholars have read Plato’s Republic. There is an interesting bit about how the Noble Lie in Plato should be understood –…
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The video-conference meeting is a hoax. We are sitting in front of screens watching other people and talking to them, but the reality is that a screen presence is nowhere near a real presence, and all of the attention that is drawn into trying to make sense of the other…
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Edit 21.2: Thank you for the kind interest. I have no shifted over to by invitation only again, as not to have the community grow to larger or too fast. I really want feedback and ideas and not just maximize the number of readers. I have been running a newsletter…
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Noam Bardin just wrote an interesting note on leaving Google. As the founder of Waze Bardin is without a doubt a brilliant entrepreneur and a great thinker. He is also by many metrics a long-time googler, with 7 years under his belt. His leaving note, however, does leave me feeling…
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I am reading Chris Gosdens remarkable The History of Magic: From Alchemy to Witchcraft from the Ice Age to the Present (2020) and already in the beginning there is an amazing remark that I think is worth thinking about. Gosden retells the story of the Azande, as studied by Evans-Pritchard,…
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Scientists report that the residual amounts of drugs, like Prozac, are affecting the fish that live in waste water in weird ways. Here is a report from ScienceAlert: To probe further, Polverino and his team ran a two-year experiment in the lab, subjecting generations of guppies (Poecilia reticulata) to targeted…
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Predicting is hard, especially the future, as Yogi Berra supposedly pointed out. But it is interesting – but not necessarily for the reasons we originally think. Predicting the future is interesting not because you want to find out if you are right, but you want to use the predictions you…