A Good Explanation
The quest for good explanations is at the heart of science and all of our fields of knowledge. In this piece, I discuss the different between good and bad explanations. Namely; that they are hard-to-vary....
Creativity and the Cosmos
Hello everyone, I hope you are well — and that reading this letter will make a humble contribution to this. For those of you in parts of the US affected by the recent unrest, please look after yourselves — my thoughts are with you. Also, please do not forget that underneath all...
On Cynicism
Hello everyone, I trust you are all well. At the very least, you are well enough to have the leisure of reading this letter. It is a good start — contemplate for a moment how many people are living right now that do not have this luxury? I want to cut...
Taking Children Seriously
Hello everyone, I hope you have all been doing as well as the laws of nature allow. I certainly have been. I have been helping test a user interface called Material Shell, very slowly trying to teach myself Japanese and reading through the short stories of Ted Chiang. It is...
Determinism, Randomness and Free Will
In this piece I write up my thoughts on the useful concepts of determinism and randomness, and how they impact on our conventional sense of free will....
Cloudy with a chance of Coronavirus
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well, both physically and psychologically. Please take all the common-sense steps you can to safeguard your own health and those around you. The first I had heard about the coronavirus was towards the end of January. I was attending a series of...
Insert Label Here
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” When we are born, we are given a name. We walk through life with a strong attachment to it, as if something about those syllables revealed who we really are. We pick up many more names on the way. I...
The Seed of Certainty
Hello everyone, I hope you've been doing well — I certainly have. My new article is finished. I have now left it with the wonderful Iona Italia for editing. It should be published within a week, you'll receive an email when it is. Who knows? "The...
David Deutsch's Multiverse
Hi everyone, I hope you are all doing well. I have finally finished reading The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch and since then I have also finally read Conscious by Annaka Harris. In this email, I would like to talk a little about the former. When David was a...
Book Recommendation
An explanation of explanation
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. I feel a little bad about something. I still do not feel close to being able to publish my next article How we know what we know. Epistemology — the study of knowledge — is deep. I have spent thinking about the problem...
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All evils are caused by lack of knowledge.David Deutsch
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Prediction without explanation is prophecy.David Deutsch