John Cox

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Tagged philosophy · everything

More To That

Travel Is No Cure for the Mind

The piece argues that travel cannot solve existential dissatisfaction because the problem isn't our external environment but our internal state of mind. Drawing on Stoic philosophy (particularly Seneca), the author demonstrates how novelty inevitably fades—whether it's a new car, a new job, or a new country—as our minds recreate the same patterns of routine and restlessness wherever we go. Rather than chasing escape through travel, the author advocates finding meaning in our current circumstances through gratitude, mindfulness meditation, reading, and genuine curiosity about the people close to us.

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The New Yorker

Elizabeth Kolbert: Why Are We So Busy? : The New Yorker

Keynes predicted in 1928 that by 2028, technological progress would make us so wealthy that we'd work only three hours a day, forcing us to solve the "problem" of abundant leisure—but the opposite has occurred, with GDP growth sixteenfold yet working hours unchanged or increased. The article surveys competing explanations for this puzzle: some economists blame human insatiability and the hedonic treadmill of consumption, others point to cultural conditioning around work and leisure, and still others note that high earners face greater incentive to work long hours because the opportunity cost of their time is so enormous. The piece suggests we've collectively failed Keynes's challenge to reimagine a society no longer organized around accumulation.

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Richard Rodger |

Why I Have Given Up on Coding Standards | Richard Rodger

The author argues that formal coding standards are counterproductive and based on flawed reasoning rooted in developers' own ego and need for control. He traces how well-meaning programmers who internalize best practices often become dogmatic managers imposing rigid rules that don't actually improve outcomes, and contends that trusting skilled developers to make their own judgments about code quality produces better results than constraining them with standards. At his company nearForm, he abandoned coding standards entirely, instead relying on developers' professional judgment to write clean code according to context-specific needs.

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The Atlantic

We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction - Ross Andersen - Technology - The Atlantic

# Summary Nick Bostrom argues that human extinction risks are severely underestimated and that the most significant existential threats arise from future technologies—such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology—rather than natural disasters like asteroids. He contends that if we value future generations equally with present ones, reducing existential risk becomes a moral priority outweighing current humanitarian concerns, since the potential number of future humans vastly exceeds those alive today. Bostrom also explores how observation selection effects complicate our understanding of extinction risk, discusses the simulation argument (which suggests we may be living in a computer simulation), and proposes that meaningful solutions require careful technological development alongside analysis to identify and mitigate the greatest risks.

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The Marginalian

Six Famous Thought Experiments, Animated in 60 Seconds Each | Brain Pickings

This piece presents six classic thought experiments from philosophy and physics—Zeno's paradox of motion, the grandfather paradox of time travel, Searle's Chinese Room on artificial intelligence, Hilbert's infinite hotel, the twin paradox of relativity, and Schrödinger's cat of quantum mechanics—through animated short videos created by the Open University that make abstract concepts visually accessible and engaging.

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The Emotion Machine

An Extreme Fear of Disapproval | The Emotion Machine

Fear of disapproval, rooted in our evolutionary need for tribal acceptance and reinforced by childhood social conditioning, can paradoxically prevent people from building the relationships they desperately need—creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where anxiety-driven withdrawal makes them invisible rather than accepted. The piece explains how social anxiety causes people to perceive normal judgment as existential threat and argues that gradual exposure to social situations, starting small and working up to more challenging interactions, allows the brain to rewire its threat response and weaken the anxiety over time.

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openDemocracy

Putting the 'American business model' in its place | openDemocracy

John Kay argues that market economies outperform planned societies not because they harness human greed, but because they enable disciplined pluralism—the freedom to experiment and innovate combined with ruthless elimination of failures. He contends that the "American business model" misunderstands how markets actually work by overemphasizing greed and financial markets while underestimating the crucial role of social institutions, trust relationships, state regulation, and cooperation in sustaining modern economies. Rather than replacing markets or adopting universal economic theory, Kay advocates for understanding how different market economies function within their specific historical and cultural contexts.

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Marginal REVOLUTION

Close the Washington Monument — Marginal Revolution

Schneier argues that the National Park Service's plan to add airport-style security to the Washington Monument misses a larger point about how we respond to terrorism. He contends that closing the monument permanently would actually serve a more important symbolic function—forcing lawmakers to confront the fear driving excessive security measures and the trade-off between safety and liberty that defines post-9/11 America. By keeping it closed, the monument would stand as a reminder that terrorism succeeds when it makes us fundamentally alter our open society, and that true leadership means accepting reasonable risks rather than pursuing impossible absolute security.

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www.afterall.net

Afterall.net | Consider All. Test All. Hold On to the Good.

That's a well designed blog. Really like the styling!

The author uses foosball and football as metaphors for the compatibilist and incompatibilist views of free will: foosball represents a deterministic picture where players are controlled by external forces (like God's predestination in Calvinism), while football represents a picture where players operate within constraints but retain genuine freedom to make choices within those bounds. He argues that God's incarnation—descending to play among humans rather than controlling from above—reveals that we are not puppets controlled by divine hands, making the football model of human agency more theologically coherent.

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www.simulation-argument.com

What's the probability that we're living in the Matrix?

Bostrom presents a trilemma arguing that at least one of three propositions must be true: either most civilizations at our development level go extinct before becoming technologically advanced, or advanced civilizations have no interest in running simulations of minds like ours, or we are almost certainly living in a simulation ourselves. The argument rests on the assumptions that consciousness can be implemented on any sufficiently powerful computational substrate and that advanced civilizations could generate an astronomically vast number of simulated minds—vastly outnumbering biological ones—making it probabilistically likely that any given mind is simulated rather than organic. Even if we accepted premise (3), Bostrom contends we should continue living normally using standard empirical methods, though the simulation hypothesis might subtly influence behavior if we made assumptions about the simulators' intentions or moral frameworks.

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paulgraham.com

How to Do What You Love

Graham argues that finding work you love is essential for both happiness and excellence, yet most people are systematically misled about this possibility through childhood education that frames work as tedium, social pressures to pursue prestigious careers, and financial anxieties that push them toward money over passion. He distinguishes between two viable paths—the "organic route" of pursuing what you love directly, and the riskier "two-job route" of working for money while building toward your passion on the side—and emphasizes that the ability to produce concrete work and resist prestige are key tests for discovering what you truly want to do. The essay concludes that while finding such work is genuinely difficult and often takes decades, recognizing it as possible and maintaining awareness of what genuinely appeals to you, rather than what you think you should want, significantly improves your odds.

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Damn Interesting

Damn Interesting » Blog Archive » The Phantom Time Hypothesis

German scholars have proposed that roughly 297 years were fictitiously inserted into our calendar during the early Middle Ages—meaning it's actually 1708, not 2005—based on inconsistencies like the Gregorian calendar's correction being smaller than it should be and mysterious gaps in historical construction records. While the proponents point to evidence of medieval document forgeries and historical discontinuities, their conclusions rest on circumstantial evidence at best, and their proposed motives for such a vast conspiracy (like Otto III wanting his reign to include the year 1000) strain credulity. The hypothesis, though intellectually intriguing for raising legitimate questions about historical dating, ultimately reflects an unscientific leap from ambiguous data to an extraordinary claim.

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