Reading Time: 11 minutes Some moral questions are difficult. Some are shrouded in uncertainty. Some come into focus only with the passage of time. There are some on which reasonable people can disagree. Then there is slavery. Sadly, the horror of slavery still exists in 2022, both in practice and in its legacy. There are still thought to be […]
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Posted inPhilosophy
The revolutionary power of optimism
Reading Time: 5 minutes Optimism isn’t a naive faith in inevitable betterment, but a tenacious belief that the world can be made better—and that belief is at the root of all progress.
Posted inPhilosophy
What the heck do rabbit hutches have to do with size and danger of the universe?
Reading Time: 4 minutes So what the devil do rabbit hutches have to do with philosophical arguments against the existence of God, I hear you ask… Well, let me explain how these little houses built for pet rabbits may shed some unexpected light on whether an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving god exists. But, before we deal with the excitement of […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
The work we do, with the time we have
Reading Time: 6 minutes When I was a wee sprog, I dreamed big. I was going to be a physics professor, working on tricky cosmology problems related to heat and expansion. (I was the precocious twit reading Feynman and Hawking at twelve and, like any twelve-year-old, feeling confident that I understood everything because I’d read a few pop-sci texts.) […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
Against perfectionism
Reading Time: 6 minutes To be human is to be a work in progress. Human beings grow, change, and fail. That’s why we need compassion and forgiveness. We ought to give people a break, show some patience, and stop scolding one another. No one is perfect. This goes for other people and ourselves. But we remain strangely wedded to […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
Morality is a technology
Reading Time: 5 minutes Just as inventions like metal forging and glass-making improve our physical capabilities, morality is a technology that gives us the ability to achieve what no one individual could do alone.
Posted inLaw
What does being a ‘person’ do?
Reading Time: 8 minutes In 2008, a Macedonian court found a bear guilty of damaging beehives. Since it had no owner and belonged to a protected species, the state was made to pay the fine instead. Legal history abounds with stories of animal trials, especially in the Middle Ages and early Enlightenment, when both secular and Ecclesiastical variants played […]
Posted inCulture
The ground ball statistic: Hidden glory grounded in the seemingly mundane
Reading Time: 5 minutes OnlySky · The ground ball statistic: Hidden glory grounded in the seemingly mundane Lacrosse fans from all over the world will tune in to watch the NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship, featuring a Maryland team poised for history. But lacrosse aficionados will be attending to a facet of the game the neophyte will likely miss: ground […]
Posted inIt Kills Me to Admit This
How I narrowly avoided becoming an anti-vaxxer
Reading Time: 4 minutes Before I wrote my book on taking risks, debunking pseudoscience, and critical thinking, I was a vaccine skeptic. Crazy but true. Unlike most of my friends, who described being pregnant as one of the happiest times of their lives, I hated every second of it. I had all the bad stuff—hot flashes, extreme mood swings, […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
There is no ‘crisis of meaning’
Reading Time: 3 minutes Over 80 million. That’s how many hits a Google search for “crisis of meaning” generates in the past year alone. It makes sense that “crisis of meaning” would be in people’s minds. We are worried, and with good reason. Here in the US, the pandemic saw a surge in anxiety, depression, and other mental health […]