Good Marketing, Bad Marketing
Why not use marketing principles to keep people happy? Why not use them to empower everyone to behave in ways that will improve the lives of themselves and others? Much like a knife can be used to wound or simply cut vegetables, marketing is ultimately a tool that can be used for good or for ill....
Taking Children Seriously II
Taking Children Seriously (TCS) is simply the philosophy that it is both possible and desirable to raise a child without coercion. That's it....
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....
If reincarnation were real
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing very well. Last week I was at an Effective Altruism social event and the topic of death came up. I was speaking to a practising Buddhist who was curious about what I thought about reincarnation. I was able to respond to her...
The Arbitrariness of it all
Hello everyone, I hope you have all been doing well and that my letters are making a humble contribution to this. Aside from well-being and our ability to enhance it in others, I see no real basis for meaning in this life. Fortunately, this is more than enough. "Happiness...
The problems we face
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. Here are some questions I would like you to reflect on. * What are our biggest problems? * Where should we direct our time and energy towards? We all want happiness and shirk from suffering. In fact, a problem is essentially a cause...
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...
The lies we tell
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. Yesterday I had a conversation with a good friend about Sam Harris' book Lying. Sam's position was that we tend to be skilled at rationalising that it is justified when it is not and that we tend to...
The Logic of not eating meat
For many of us, the consumption of meat is an everyday occurrence, an activity woven into the fabric of our lives. It is just the way it is, and the way it always has been. It can be difficult to imagine what life would be like without it. This is,...
Musings against god
My mother was having trouble opening a drawer. She pulled and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. Frustrated, she yelled “Jesus!” and it finally opened. “Did you see that? Because I asked Jesus I was able to open it.” This didn’t impress me. “So what you are saying is...
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Humans can thrive on a modern vegetarian diet and animals' interests in a life free of pain and premature death surely outweigh the marginal increase in pleasure we get from eating their flesh.Steven Pinker
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Pain and humiliation distract children from pondering what they did wrong.Steven Pinker
On Radical Compassion
Hatred. Anger. Jealousy. These are all forms of suffering. These are all mental defilements. It is in your own interest to banish these demons from your mind. Even from a purely selfish point of view, it can be said that there are some emotions we would truly be better off...
What is Morality?
Where exactly do we draw the line between what we call good and what we call bad? What is it we hope to accomplish by walking a straight path in life? The purpose in this piece is to make the case, that morality is concerned with safeguarding the well being...