What, Why & How do we Know ?
Weekly collection of bookmarks that fell into TL/DR category and not blogged or linked elsewhere, yet. Dave Edmonds (of Eidenow & Edmonds “Wittgenstein’s Poker” fame) writing In Defence of Moral Experts in the OUP Blog: With links to BBC Post-Brexit Points of View including philosopher contributions already noted here, and to his own book including … Continue reading “Collected TL/DR Bookmarks for w/e 23 Sept 2016”
I blogged my own confusion about exactly what Sam Harris education was way back here, over a year ago. Reality is he’s an English major and a very clever writer. A bit like Pirsig “skating on thin ice” when writing about Zen having previously read only one book on the subject, later pursuing studies to cover his … Continue reading “What is Sam Harris game?”
Started reading Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz dialogue on Islam – the Future of Tolerance. Sadly not completed due to distractions including another read, but … My impression is very good. Most of Nawaz subtlety on Jihadi / Islamist motivations looks much like my own – pure common sense, stuff I already agree with – … Continue reading “Lessons in Islamism @SamHarrisOrg @MaajidNawaz”
Been aware of a couple of tweets from Sabine at BackReaction on the topic of continuity over scales in physics, starting with a post by Krauss in Nautilus, and culminating today with another Nautilus link to a Max Tegmark piece that Sabine “wishes she could find something to disagree with” and this from FQXi on Quantum Cybernetics. … Continue reading “Continuity in Physics? @skdh”
Day job not going so good right now, a little under the weather and dog-tired yesterday, I accidentally deliberately slept in this morning. But, I finished my C J Werleman notes on the tube, stepped out into the sunshine, grabbed a great breakfast at a little cafe I’d not previously noticed between the tube and … Continue reading “Extending the Hand of Friendship @cjwerleman”
[Updated here : 10th Sept.] Reading a very interesting book, The New Atheist Threat by C J Werleman; someone I’d not even heard of until a couple of days ago. An Aussie now resident in US who spent a decade in Indonesia, including being in Bali when the nightclub was bombed. An erstwhile New Atheist in reaction to … Continue reading “The New Atheist Threat – @cjwerleman”
By a strange coincidence, after the facebook exchanges yesterday, on the anti-Copernican indications of the Cosmic Microwave Background being mysteriously air-brushed from the record (*1), I find myself reading Arthur Koestler’s “The Sleepwalkers“. Coincidence because I just happened to pick it up randomly off the ex-library second-hand book cart at Conway Hall last night. I’d heard … Continue reading “The Devious Ways of Science”
Heard Graham Bell talk again last week, this time a LAAG event entitled: “Making moral decisions: Are ‘you’ really in charge?” (With scare quotes around the ‘you’ in the original.) Obviously with that title presented that way, I was prejudiced to expect the usual “You and your free-will are illusions” line of denial. In fact, … Continue reading ““Making moral decisions: Are ‘you’ really in charge?””