Asking what talent is may seem silly. It’s something we can all identify. Yo Yo Ma is a talented cellist. Shohei Ohtani is a talented baseball player. Kate Atkinson is a talented writer. Everyone knows these things. But what is talent? That’s a much harder that simply identifying talent. The internet defines talent as “natural…
I keep trying to start this piece, but some variation of the line, “I used to have a friend,” comes out. Then, I stop. I’m not sure if “used to have a friend” is a truthful or even a possible description. Is friendship temporal? If so, what does it take to keep a friendship going?…
When I hear the phrase “large numbers” I instantly think of the law of large numbers. That’s just that the average of a large number of results approaches the expected value. And that’s not what I’m talking about here. What I am talking about is literal large numbers. Things like a million or a billion….
Everything that exists is either a potato or not a potato. You can do it with any noun. Everything that exists is either a box or not a box. Everything that exists is either a shelf or not a shelf. But I first heard it with potato and that’s my favorite way to say it….
What is nothing? I know it seems obvious. Nothing is the lack of things. It’s right there in the word, no thing. But what is it? The word is a noun, and a noun is a person, place, or thing, so it must be one of those. But it’s not a person or a place…
The other day, I wrote a post about the song “Do You Hear What I Hear?”. My dad pointed out to me yesterday that I missed a great opportunity for some philosophizing. He’s right. The question, “Do you hear what I hear?” is a philosophical puzzle. So are the two other questions in the song,…
There’s a very simple answer to the titular question of this piece. No, Socrates cannot be an alligator. That’s so obvious you might be wondering why I’m bothering to say it. Well, last week, I read an article called All Possible Worlds. In it, Timothy Andersen talks about the idea of multiple universes and how…
Most everybody knows what inflation is or, at least, has felt the effects of inflation. It’s when there is an oversupply of money which devalues the currency and makes prices go up (I know I’m way oversimplifying. There’s no need for a detailed theory of inflation to make my point, though.). I just read an…
Not long ago, I bought a copy of The Sunny Nihilist: A Declaration of the Pleasure of Pointlessness. I’d been browsing at my local Barnes & Noble in the philosophy section, when I ran across it. The cover caught my eye, and the title promised a view which I’m sympathetic to. I’d never heard of…
Knowingness is, “a posture of always ‘already knowing’, of purporting to know the answers even before the question arises.” According to Jonathan Malesic, knowingness is a bigger problem than misinformation and echo chambers. I’m inclined to agree. Malesic makes an argument that I’ve been trying to articulate for a while now. I think I struggled…
