I used to think of programming as something natively binary. 0's and 1's, [ True, False ], just like the Propositional Logic in first year Philosophy. And filesystems do work that way on the disk - every picture is made of 0's and 1's.

However, Philosophy, or Logic in general, has other systems. Some of them use 'True' …

In recent years I've slowly changed my thinking on the concept of 'faith'. Or perhaps I've been thinking about attitudes, and just made very narrow use of a very broad word. Here's the thought:

Someone with a cool mind, an impartial attitude, and some very basic arithmetic can optimize. It's fashionable to make fun of …

I feel an unstated agreement among disparate civil society that one shouldn't preach. Breaching the preaching rule quickly looks like hypocrisy, because everyone has more work to do on themselves.

Easier Said than Done

Someone - usually young - preaching about veganism, trans-rights, the effects of aeroplanes on …

Once in a while I hear of someone who's decided to not have children because of bad ideas. I don't want to argue that anyone should or should not have children, but I do want to remove those bad ideas. The bad ideas usually go something like this:

"I have this condition, and I don't think I should inflict that on …

Reading Plato's various Dialogues, I've come across a few very strange choices from the translators.

Firstly, a pig could be dedicated as a 'sacrifice' to a god. I've read that people would then eat the 'sacrifice', and initially thought this was a cop-out - if you eat the meal, then you're not really sacrificing …

Plato's Republic can come across as naïve, and I find that fact tragic.

Broadly, the book climaxes with a plan to make a state ruled by Philosopher Aristocrats. While Plato calls these rulers "Philosophers", we shouldn't picture modern Philosophy students, but academics.

I find the failure tragic because all …

The most efficacious piece of Philosophy written this century was buried in a software licensing agreement, and the Philosophy faculties of every major university have missed it.

While clicking 'I agree', to all those licences, everyone will have come across this piece at some point.

 1## Preamble
 2
 3The GNU General …

I have a personal rule concerning arguments. I accept only two.

I've made this a tight habit. If anyone protests (as they have) that they didn't put forward their strongest argument at the start, then I say this indicates a waste of time even more. Why put forward bad reasons, if you have good ones?

This saves time, …

A group of Victorian gentlemen called the 'Eaterateri' wandered various Scottish restaurants, trying all they could. The now well-known Adam Smith and David Hume regularly talked in the group about their ideas.

I don't know if Hume felt bold enough to speak about Atheism, but Adam Smith may well have developed those …