Month: May 2026

As of today, I’ve switched my writing and blogging to my SubStack.

A note on my latest SubStack post (on sex differences of brain & mind) has a note explaining the shift, quoted here:

(*1) My Psybertron blog “What, Why and How do we Know?” has over 25 years of content on WordPress. A fork in development of that technology platform is making support increasingly problematic (see post note below), so whilst I am maintaining that content on-line, I am looking for alternatives to preserve its value and accessibility as well as continue future blogging on SubStack. In that 25 years I have often remarked that blogging notes was very similar to the paper-slips or index-card techniques used by various authors to create and organise their semantic web of complex ideas and their relationships into manageable evolving texts. Robert Pirsig’s story of how he wrote both “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and “Lila” is one clear example. That technique however has a name – “Zettelkasten” – German for note-box, and unsurprisingly these days there are electronic tools that support it. Not for the first time, I’m in the process of capturing the semantic-web of my own thinking and writing to date, in the “Obsidian” tool.

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I’m contemplating simply switching all you historical followers and commenters here directly over to the new channel, but feel free to subscribe there directly.

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Post Note: I’m not killing my WordPress instances, just looking for insurance for valuable content and off-ramps if things go completely pear-shaped. I’ll keep them live even if I reduce dependency for now.

The problems with WordPress are serious according to founder Matt Mullenweg. Here his post on 23 years of WordPress just a couple of days ago, a plea for the “internecine warfare” to cease. It’s in danger of killing WordPress, and hurting real people in the process, and for what? (And – incidentally – in his very next post – he points to the calming value of 2 minutes of Alan Watts. Wonder if Matt knows the Watts / Pirsig Zen connection – the Robert Pirsig Association also runs on WordPress. Perhaps the internecine war could benefit from Sun Tzu?)

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The video embedded below is a conversation between Russ Roberts (EconTalk) and David Deutsch – a hero of mine, a quantum physicist who is incredibly thoughtful and erudite about government, democracy and society – read his “Fabric of Reality” and “Beginning of Infinity” if you haven’t already.

Their discussion topic – Deutsch’s particular thesis – is seeing antisemitism as “The Pattern”. A meme – existing long before “Jews were held responsible for the killing of God in the body of Jesus” – the impulse to legitimise hurting jews – whether big historical genocides, pogroms and lethal terrorisms or not, it’s there nascent in everyday life. In that sense they are “bottom-up” atrocities, not primarily decreed by authorities, except in some specific infamous “holocaust” cases where The Pattern was exploited by authorities. And it’s the impulse to legitimise hurting, not necessarily actively hurting, let alone killing. And the meme is not itself active “Jew-hate”, that’s also a symptom arising regularly from The Pattern.

It obviously conflicts with many other moralities in other (eg Christian) cultures, but has always been “accommodated” even if that is reducing in more recent history. The Pattern sustains, without actively being worked against. The accommodation – of the legitimisation impulse – is built into society’s world-views, quite formally and explicitly so by Augustine and Martin Luther, say. These are often rationally perverse and contradictory, often intended to help Jews, softening the impulse from active killing, without actually reversing the impulse.

That it exists and persists has clear evidence over 2500 years, even if we cannot clearly say why, when or where it arose. The whole interview is excellent on historical and modern examples through the crusades, the renaissance and reformation to today. (Dated after October 7th, and prior to the Bondi Beach atrocity.) “Anti-semitism as a mind-virus?” is the host’s sceptical summary, which I would also adopt non-sceptically as Deutsch’s memetic thesis. (He used “meme” at the start, but baulks at “mind-virus” – I’m OK with either. Strong intersection with the empathy meme / impulse – more later – often not real empathy or compassion, more part of post-rationalisation of one’s own impulses.)

“This [the pattern] isn’t the only irrationality going around.” Deutsch.

I’ll say! – Pretty much my agenda, where the antisemitism and islamophobia cases are mere examples. If we had the right / better understanding of the phenomenon, surely we’d be better placed to address it, opines David. Hear, hear!

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My thesis is that both antisemitism and islamophobia (and other public irrationalities) are about problematic self-identity in public, and the only reason I asked David for the above link to explain “The Pattern” was because of the dialogue arising on X after he had posted this:

[“Him” being yesterday’s Golders Green stabbing terrorist. Self-identity in relation to others, notice. I need to elaborate where I last raised these as “identity” issues.]

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