Monthly Archives: August 2025

Another example of someone being the first to stumble across a new idea: The Big Bang and the Steady State were comparably plausible alternatives until the mid-1960s when two Bell Labs radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert W. Wilson, discovered … Continue reading →

Bringing this argument over from Pumpkin Person’s blog: Has even the most brilliant human ever discovered anything that is not in some way a synthesis of what other humans or pre-humans already knew? -Pumpkin Person, https://pumpkinperson.com/2025/08/20/how-will-we-know-when-ai-is-smarter-than-us/ Yes. It’s always weird … Continue reading →

I had a very long conversation with Chat GPT to understand a coworker better. tl;dr- “He craves attention and a sense of importance/status, and he believes explicit verbal justification is the essence of morality, so he pursues his cravings by … Continue reading →

I’m about to switch from primarily strength training to primarily cardio training, so I tried to look up what Starting Strength has to say about maintaining strength. Boy, was that a mistake. You may as well ask a vegan subreddit … Continue reading →

I’m trying to model my previous definition more precisely by observing some ways motivation can break down. Motivation is a state where your dominant emotions are driving you to act according to your dominant values. One way that motivation can … Continue reading →

In my attempts to model deception and lying in general, I’ve asserted an intuition (without proof) that deception is never practiced for its own sake. It’s motivated by the desire to produce some deleterious behavior in the deceived person, who, … Continue reading →

I refer to this a lot in my head so I figure it’s worth sharing. This is an excerpt from my favorite book, “The Great Poets And Their Theology.” It will be worth our while here to pause a moment … Continue reading →

I’ve been reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on self-deception and cemented my own thoughts on the subject: Self-deception is motivated reasoning via normal cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias and the availability heuristic, and simple limitations of the … Continue reading →

In the modern day we often find ourselves wondering if people are evil or merely stupid. If you can think back to the events of 2020, you’ll be in the right headspace regardless of your political opinions. There are possibilities … Continue reading →

I’ve had this come up three times in two days. The first time, my wife wanted to do her indoor cycling without a fan to make it harder. The second, my friend’s wife suggested that swimmers wear extra swimsuits to … Continue reading →