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 Two Dominant Trees (🌳) of Philosophy today. The Genealogy of Postmodernism 1. Ancient/Medieval Roots (the soil) - Sophists (Protagoras, Gorgias): “Man is the measure of all things.” Early relativists who doubted objective truth. - Skeptics (Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus): Suspended judgment, argued certainty is impossible. - Nominalists ( Ockham ): Universals are just names, not real essences. A precursor to anti-essentialism. These are early shadows of the postmodern impulse: suspicion of universals, emphasis on perspective. 2. Early Modern Break (the trunk) - Descartes & Rationalism: “Cogito” sought indubitable foundations. Ironically, by making the subject central, he set the stage for questioning those foundations. - Kant : Split noumenon (things-in-themselves) vs. phenomenon (what we can know). This critical turn sowed the seeds of later relativism: we never grasp reality directly, only through categories. - Hegel: History and truth are dialectical — destabilizes static abs...

A journey from neurons to guilt, from prediction to philosophy, from perception to selfhood. 1. The Humble Neuron This is a neuron: For simplicity sake I'll just draw it like this:  >----< It’s a special type of cell — a nerve cell — responsible for processing and transmitting information in the brain and throughout the body. There are about 86 billion neurons in the human brain alone. On its own, it doesn’t do much.  - It doesn’t think, feel, or decide. - It holds no memory, no guilt, no remorse. But when a strong enough signal reaches it — through the receiving branches called dendrites — the neuron fires: sending an electrical impulse down its long arm, the axon, toward other neurons. At the end of the axon, the signal must cross a tiny gap — a synapse — where it becomes chemical and activates the next neuron: Once again for simplicity stake I'll draw it like this:  >---<○>---< And here's where it gets interesting: - The more often two neurons fire to...

1. On 'Stupid' Technically, stupid means: “Having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense.” To me, Stupid ≠ low cognitive processing power, Stupid = a refusal to use the processing power available. Perhaps a better definition is: Stupid = the willful avoidance of moral or cognitive recursion. - Have access to better cognition, but choose not to use it - Ignore contradiction even when it’s pointed out - Lack curiosity, nuance, or recursive thought - Default to tribalism, slogans, and binary thinking - Repeat harmful behaviors while refusing reflection Meaning: Trait Description Anti-recursive Refuses to loop on their own thoughts or beliefs Qualia-flattened Can’t hold emotional complexity, reacts with instinct only Meme-locked Lives inside inherited engrams, never questions them Context-impervious Doesn’t adjust based on nuance or situation Ethically inert Doesn’t feel the weight of their choices unless personally affected And what I'm m...

I didn’t expect to find genocide in the Bible. As part of some research I was doing while writing a novel, I had to go back and re-read Ezra and Nehemiah. I knew they existed in the Bible, but never gave much thought to it. The endless list of names that returned from Babylon to Israel is quite mind numbing, like reading the endless rules in Leviticus or Numbers. And it wasn't like Ezra or Nehemiah play a critical role in Christian theology so I've always skimmed it. But this time, because I was forced to, I read the stories for the first time, or should I say I noticed the stories for the first time. And it shocked me to my core. For it was a story of a form of genocide; cultural genocide to be more exact. The Israelites (or more accurately the Judahites) return after 70 years of exile in Babylon. They find the Temple ruined but surprisingly a lot of people. These people welcome the exiles and offer to help with the rebuilding of the Temple and the walls around Jerusalem. It t...