Month: November 2005
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Ken MacLeod
I recently came across the science fiction writer Ken MacLeod. He has been writing for some time now, but for some reason I never read any of his work until a few months ago. He has a political slant which is, these days, unusual among science fiction writers: very left wing, taking communist ideas quite…
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Future generations
How much should we care about future generations? We take many actions which will dramatically affect future generations. For example, we are in the process of burning most of the oil on the planet. We are changing the atmosphere and the weather. We are in the process of massive deforestation. Et cetera. Some people argue…
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Just So Stories
People who like sociobiology or evolutionary psychology often use just so stories to explain why certain things are as they are. The name “just so stories” is taken from Rudyard Kipling’s book of that name, in which he wrote stories for children about how, for example, the camel got his hump. A typical evolutionary psychology…
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Gold
I occasionally run across someone who thinks that gold is the only real form of money. These people call dollars “fiat money” (or “fiat currency”), and argue that real money is based on gold. In fact, this makes no sense. All money is a social convention: money is something which people will normally accept in…
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Free will
I recently got in an e-mail discussion about the philosophical problem of free will. Here are some notes on it. In general I think Daniel Dennett has correctly described the issue in his books Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves (of the two, I prefer the older Elbow Room). The issue is: given a materialistic universe,…