Category: philosophy
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The eternal law of the animals
Tolstoy explains beautifully as ever, the hypocrisy of Christians at war. “There are in Europe twenty-eight millions of men under arms,” says Wilson, “to decide disputes, not by discussion, but by murdering one another. That is the accepted method for deciding disputes among Christian nations.…either Christianity is a failure, or those who have undertaken to…
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God the mother
I’m becoming more firmly of the belief that Mother Nature is the closest rational approximation of God. Mother Nature isn’t the Earth alone, the rules of mama nature apply throughout the universe. So if Mother Nature is God, God is a woman. Only that which has the power to create life could be anything close…
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Our time
This is kind of inspired by Roger Penrose’s thoughts on the Universe. Time goes like: And you’re sat there thinking about whether to have a Big Mac or a Filet O Fish. How can you grasp the length of time that has passed until you came on the scene? How can you grasp the length…
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I’ll be back
A possible explanation for re-incarnation, but not how it’s explained in current religions. Once you die time has no meaning. Like going to sleep. In the same way you had no concept of how much time passed until you ended up in the body you are now. How long did those last 13+ billion years…
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Arsehole theory
Out of the last year with one theory, into the new year with my next theory. Each group of people has an equal number of arseholes (3-5% seems reasonable). So each nation will have a roughly equal number of arseholes. I have no idea if arseholes are more common in men than women. It’s definitely…
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Paradise theory
Let’s assume that the earth is paradise (Heaven in other words). Its an oasis of life in the middle of billions of light years of death. So when we talk about global problems, we’re talking about paradise problems. Or indeed, trouble in paradise. Gaia theory says that paradise is alive. It maintains its temperature and…
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Keep It Simple
Occam’s razor (from FOLDOC). The English philosopher, William of Occam (1300-1349) propounded Occam’s Razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. (Latin for “Entities should not be multiplied more than necessary”). That is, the fewer assumptions an explanation of a phenomenon depends on, the better it is. Or simple is better than complex. But also it’s…
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100 million years
I like to think about time, especially how short-sighted we are. It took “only” 100 or so million years to create life on earth (from Lex Fridman vs Andrej Karpathy @13:26). Reading about How fast is gravity, the Neutron Star collision that enabled us to detect the speed of graviational waves a few years ago was 130…
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Reason and love
Following on from Informers. Tolstoy tells us (Kingdom of God ~p264) that we are brought from an eternity of nothingness and bequeathed with reason and love. Hinduism’s Krishna says: Without contemplation there cannot be peace – Bhagavad-Gita #66 I take reason and contemplation to be the same. Further I take them to be the opposite…
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Informers
There were a lot of people in fear under the Nazis. I can understand people doing terrible things if they are told to, because the consequences for themselves and their families could be worse if they don’t. Plus most people aren’t that brave. But those people who willingly helped, happily turned Jews or resistance fighters…
Ian's Philosophy 