Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom is about the inevitability of a technological dystopia unless serious action is taken. Imagining a technological dystopia is not original.Huxley and Orwell, have been able to write about the end of the world we love in novels, that people to this day refer to, they even have debates about who was … Read more
The idea of deception is easy for most people to understand. It is not a puzzle that some people are able to deceive others. It is not difficult to think of many reasons why they would do so. But why self-deception? It appears paradoxical, that a person would harm themselves. Why would you, an intelligent … Read more
The perception of mental illness has changed across time. According to Foucault in Madness and Civilization, this change has more to do with social and economic needs, than any humanitarian feelings towards the mentally ill. From the discovery of that necessity which inevitably reduces man to nothing, we have shifted to the scornful contemplation of … Read more
Thomas Szasz was a physician who later became a psychologist. The Myth of Mental Illness is a controversial book, and it is famous for having changed the way people have viewed psychiatry for decades. For some, the arguments give them more confidence in accepting themselves as they are, by seeing the social stigmatization does not … Read more
This is a graduation speech by David Foster Wallace that was made into a book. In this speech, Wallace relates to us to what we need to me aware of throughout our lives. What to Think The purpose of a liberal arts education is to teach you what to think about. It has nothing to … Read more
Human Incompetence In The Glass Cage, Carr warns about a near future that is dominated by artificial intelligence – he argues that the problems that come with advanced artificial intelligence go beyond the loss of jobs for some people the way technology always had. He thinks that at some point, because of the ease with … Read more
“The sadist doesn’t create a masochist, he finds him ready made.” – Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death Masochism in Modern Man explores the psychological roots of masochism from an interesting perspecitve. When I read the final chapters of The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, I was struck by an interesting discussion about sadomasochism, … Read more
The Denial of Death is about man’s primal repression. Freud believed that man’s basic repression is sexual, but Becker argued that it is the denial of finitude, creatureliness, and mortality. Becker makes this argument based on the work of Otto Rank, Norman Brown, Soren Kierkegaard and Sigmund Freud. Freud observed that man’s neurosis was a … Read more
One of the main things that move man is the fear of death and heroism is a direct response to this modern rediscovery. Our primate ancestors ignored the cowardly and deferred to those who were extra-powerful. Man has elevated animal courage into a cult. The ceremonies of Christ’s rise form the death is a symbolic … Read more
The claim John Perkins makes in the Confessions of an Economic Hitman is not that there is one global conspiracy or that there is a small group of men in a dark room scheming about how to take over the world, but that there are many small conspiracies taking place at the same time, by … Read more