why we should

Skin in the game & Agent Nassim Nicholas Taleb's journey in the new world [Originally posted at Substack.com in March 2024] Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life mentions that in ‘teh’ west we have trained ourselves to contrast the individual and the collective, so much so, we miss out noticing the grey tiers in…

I’ve been reading someone else’s copy of Iris Murdochs’ Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1992. ISBN 9780701139988 (article) over the last few weeks. By “someone else’s copy” I mean it has pencilled marginalia like Astute Observation and as I have met the previous owner, these words read themselves aloud in his voice. It’s been slow going, not…

Wikipedia says The Shepherd of Hermas, or the Good Shepherd, 3rd century, Catacombs of Rome. But the devotee bringing a lamb to sacrifice is common across many local “pagan” practices in the Mediterranean. A couple of posts ago (Inappropriation) I introduced the work that led to an awkward conversation. This post is just to add that I’ve finished Jörg Rüpke’s On Roman Religion: Lived Religion…

Originally posted on substack.com in August 2023. Evidence for global cultural diffusion post at Vectors of Mind spurs the raising of the question in the comments by Little Kenny, “[…] I am trying to imagine what might have been some of the more fundamental worldview changes and social practices triggered by recursion. Maybe they're now so embedded into our behavioral norms and unrecognized priors that we…

Narcissism is regarded as a personality disorder, but what if we regard it as a worlding disorder, an inability to world, or world-build among others doing the same. or some time in Hobart, Tasmania, a small Buddhist group has been given the benefit of the doubt. This last week some survivor stories are making their appearance in news reports— Devotees…

I've been cataloguing many many sex education works, from the explicitly clinical to the psychologically instructive, and beyond into messed-up socio-econo-polio-anthro-opinio… —culture wars are not new. The period ranges from the 1920s and earlier, but peak in the 1970s, with titles like Naked Yoga, with not a yoga mat in sight, mind you. The horror. One of so many books…