Why do I always do that?
Over-generalising is a basic human need. Little wonder then that we are quick to apply “always”, even to ourselves – whom we imagine to be more consistent and coherent than most of us actually are.
ReadTag: Self & identity
What’s the problem with boredom?
The thought that only boring people get bored is such a commonplace that it’s not clear who said it first. G K Chesterton, for example, coined the similar “There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.” Like many familiar sayings, there is a wisdom here that quickly turns to folly if we don’t read it carefully…
ReadShould we quantify ourselves?
True self-knowledge demands neither complete trust of our introspective judgments nor deference to the calculations of the spreadsheet, but a combination of the insights of both.
ReadThe death of my father
What surprises me is not that people die or get sick, but that other people continue to be so surprised when it happens. Am I unusual in this because I have devoted so much of my life to philosophy? I suspect the causal arrow is the other way round: I have devoted so much of my life to philosophy because I am unusual in this. After all, it is not as though the basic insight depends on a close reading of the Stoics, Socrates or Schopenhauer.
ReadDan Dennett interview
Ridicule and misrepresentation are in some sense an occupational hazard for the philosopher. “The best philosophers are always walking a tightrope where one misstep either side is just nonsense,” he says. “That’s why caricatures are too easy to be worth doing. You can make any philosopher – any, Aristotle, Kant, you name it – look like a complete flaming idiot with just a slightest little tweak.”
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