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September 15 - October 16, 2021
From this forge emerge the kinds of ideas that render humans a true superspecies, one that surfs the rules of the universe, kicking up paradoxes in its wake.
We can accurately pass a complex abstraction from one mind to another by simply vibrating the air between us.
As did myelin, which coats the outside of neurons and allows the transmission of neurological signals to increase in speed: with myelin, our ability to move, feel, and think got faster.
When faced with a question of innovation, the Precautionary principle considers the risk of engaging in any particular activity, and recommends caution when the risk is high.
The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
“Nonsmokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to smokers in the highest sun exposure group, indicating that avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking.”16 So reductionist scientism has misled us yet again, and likely caused many deaths.
While most fringe ideas are in fact wrong, it is exactly from the fringe that progress is made.
Tragedies that happen because someone introduced risk into a school trip are easy to point to. The story is often easy to tell, and compelling to hear. By contrast, population-level tragedies, those that happen because whole swaths of the population have difficulty navigating risk and so avoid it at all costs—this is also a tragedy, and much further reaching.
Insight and growth do not happen when you are comfortable with what you know.
old white guys, their biases inherently prevented them from knowing anything real of the world.6 People of particular phenotypes, this ironically biologically deterministic and regressive worldview argues, can’t possibly have access to truth.
Culture we define as beliefs and practices that are shared and passed between members of a population. These beliefs are often literally false, metaphorically true, implying that they result in increased fitness if one acts as if they are true despite the fact that they are either inaccurate or unfalsifiable.
More than 99 percent of the Earth’s surface is a COVID-safe zone. Even in your own backyard the virus will struggle mightily to infect anyone—it has no meaningful impact unless you caught it before you walked out. In the park, on the balcony, at the beach, we are—at least for now—immune. The dependence of the virus on enclosed spaces also means that, had humanity agreed to avoid these vectoring environments for a few weeks, the pandemic could have been quickly brought to a halt.
