It's Time for Stories of Redemption and Reconciliation
In the past five years, we’ve had stories of old former heroes who want to live peaceful quiet lives, but are called back into present-day battles resulting from what they have done in the past. Luke...
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Symbolic Cognition
For years, I’ve been grappling with a question: Why do we expect life to make sense like a story? Why do we try to piece together the events of history and our lives in ways that make narrative sense,...
View ArticleOur Damaging Narratives of Suffering and Purpose
Life comes with many struggles. One of the most powerful methods of coping with struggles we can do nothing about is to tell ourselves a narrative: that this struggle, and the suffering it causes,...
View ArticleWhy Talk So Much about Science on My Sci-Fi YouTube Channel?
Two months ago, I started a YouTube channel called “Into the Vortex.” The theme is to look at the kinds of ideas that drew me to both physics and science fiction, ideas that often run counter to our...
View ArticleOf Numbers, Deadlines, and Mental Health
Since the last Friday of December, I have published a new blog post every week without fail. I’ve written about quantum physics, metaphysics, futurism, and all kinds of mind-bending subjects. On top of...
View ArticleThe Barrier – A Short Story
This is a work of fiction. Characters, events, locales, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely...
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God, the Personification of Our Relationship with Existence
When I was growing up, I believed God existed. This God was a superhero, and his powers were to know everything, to manipulate reality with his thoughts, and to be perfectly good in all ways. As I...
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Facts about Morality – How Small can We Make the Is-Ought Gap?
Some time ago, we talked about the is-ought gap, the idea that there will always be an unbridgeable logical gap between facts and moral duties. This is true, but that doesn’t stop us from turning the...
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Vast Minds – A Bizarre Possibility of Physicalist Consciousness
Consciousness:The Hard ProblemDualismPhysicalismIdealismIdentifying ConsciousnessVast MindsIdentity, Self, and OtherThe Question of MeaningDisclaimer: The content of this blog post is outside the realm...
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What Words Do – Literal Meaning vs Manifest Meaning
“Actions speak louder than words,” the saying goes. And it is quite clearly true. If someone says “I love you,” and another person gives you a gift that shows they have been paying attention to your...
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The End of Illusion
Image found hereOne of my goals in my pursuits of thought, and indeed one of the goals of philosophy itself, is to pierce through all the misconceptions and arbitrary knowledge we have built up through...
View ArticleParable of the Burdened Laborers
A number of people gathered before a prophet and said, “Give us tasks, for it is harvest and we wish to do God’s work in the field!”And the prophet replied, “God’s work is difficult, and it must be...
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9 Video Games that Changed My Life
Stories are one of the most powerful forces in shaping our lives and our societies, and video games, as I have said on many occasions, are the most powerful form of storytelling that has ever been at...
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Identity, Self, and Other
Consciousness:The Hard ProblemDualismPhysicalismIdealismIdentifying ConsciousnessVast MindsIdentity, Self, and OtherThe Question of MeaningSuppose there is a boat. As the boat goes on many voyages, its...
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A Perfectly Rational Being
Over the years, I’ve played with a thought experiment: suppose there were a purely rational being who had no instincts, emotions, or irrational stimuli of any kind. Something we imagine robots and...
View ArticleThis Time It's Not About Politics, It's About Standing Up for What's Right
There are three levels of attitudes toward politics. The first is through the lens of loyalty, of good guys vs bad guys. People who vote for their party because all their friends, family, role models,...
View ArticleNaNoWriMo 2020: MoebiusWar
November is here once again, and that means it’s time to write another book! National Novel Writing Month is an event where hundreds of thousands of people around the world commit to writing a...
View ArticleBuilding a Teenage Fascist Empire – Worldbuilding MoebiusWar
As you probably know, I’m writing a book this month, MoebiusWar. It’s like Star Wars, but with different magic and science. The galaxy is being invaded by a powerful totalitarian empire, and the...
View ArticleHyperspace and Repeating Time – Worldbuilding MoebiusWar
The book I’m writing for National Novel Writing Month this year is a fantastic space opera. And what is a good space opera without faster than light technology?The Moebiverse uses hyperspace, a fourth...
View ArticleConsciousness and the Question of Meaning
Consciousness:The Hard ProblemDualismPhysicalismIdealismIdentifying ConsciousnessVast MindsIdentity, Self, and OtherThe Question of MeaningWe’ve talked about the Hard Problem of consciousness, and all...
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