I picked this book up because I thought Citizens was great, not because of any particular interest in this subject. That turns out to be a problem because Schama assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of the reader about Dutch political history and some knowledge Dutch cultural history. Fortunately, there’s the internet now. But that didn’t exist …
Category: Society
Copz
I just finished listening to “Behind the Police,” the Behind the Bastards miniseries on US policing from 2020. And while I do not agree with a lot of it, I do think it’s important to listen to – or to read its sources – to get more perspective on policing, particularly in the US. The …
Are Conservatives Ever Right About Anything?
Sorry for the clickbait headline but this is a question I’ve thought about often over the course of my adult life. You’ve no doubt heard of the famous Stephen Colbert quote “Reality has a well known liberal bias.” (That quote is nearly 16 years old now, which is scary.) And you might be familiar with …
It’s Status, Stupid
Note: I wrote this in January and then it set in my Drafts. So I’m publishing it now, with very few edits, in the hopes that it still makes some sense. When I was in undergrad and grad school, studying political philosophy, I was extremely skeptical of explanations of human behaviour based in class. Especially …
Journal of the Pandemic Year: Vaccine!!!!!!
The first people in my region will be vaccinated next week, roughly a year after the virus first started spreading. It’s one of the great achievements in medical history. By summer or fall I should be vaccinated and I am already planning a party to take advantage of our fantastic new backyard which somebody else …
70 Million Americans Voted to Re-Elect a Con Man to the Presidency [Updated]
In August of 2016, before his election to President, I wondered whether or not Donald Trump was the Greatest Con Man of All Time. (The GOAT-Con? The Con-GOAT? The GCMOAT?) A year and a half later, still mystified by his support, I wondered how people continue to trust him, as he burns one after the …
I’m Agnostic But I Tell People I’m an Atheist
I am agnostic. I make no claims to know what caused the universe. To me, it’s the height of presumption for someone to claim they know why the universe exists, perhaps even how the universe exists.
International Tax Compliance
The biggest problem the world faces should go without saying: climate change. Human behaviour is changing the climate to the extent that it will be harder for people to inhabit certain parts of the world, and that will cause all sorts of other problems. But that problem is long-term, no matter how immediate it seems …
Essentialism: The Terrible Legacy of Western Philosophy
In 2017 I wrote a piece about the root of so-called “alternative facts.” I blamed the ability of people to accept alternative facts as truth on Western Philosophy, but specifically on Plato’s essentialist view of reality. The piece became my most widely read ever, dwarfing my books and anything else I’ve published online. Frankly, I …
Time to Abolish Juries?
A recent season of Undisclosed details the arrest and conviction of Fred Freeman for the murder of a community college student in 1986. Freeman was living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at the time, and the murder occurred in Port Huron, a 6.5 hour drive away. Witnesses claim to have seen Freeman in the …
Journal of the Plague Year: Blood on Their Hands
If you had asked someone in Autumn 2019 which country would be best equipped to handle a pandemic, they might have answered “The United States”. They have the most resources of any country in the world. Of course, given who is in power, they might have expressed doubt. But ask the question in Autumn 2015, …
Diary of the Pandemic Year: Nobody Follows the Rules
“Nobody is following the rules!” That is what literally everyone is saying. So many people are saying it that some of the people who are saying it must also not be following rules. As Jenn put it, each of us thinks we are following the rules better than everyone else. And we want everyone else …
The Psychology of the Thought-Leading CEO
The archetypal CEO is a man who combines instinct and intelligence, who knows when to go with his gut and when to listen to the experts. He has strong convictions. He reads a lot, or as much as he can. He keeps in shape. He knows what to do and when. He is not afraid …
Diary of the Pandemic Year: It’s Oh So Quiet
Time has lost all meaning. Weekdays feel like weekends and weekends feel like weekdays. The only thing that lets me figure it out is consciously thinking about it. I have a weekday work schedule, which helps too. But I still have to think to myself “This is a weekday” in order to start it. So …
Journal of the Pandemic Year: Day 50
Time has lost all meaning. Sometimes it slows to a crawl. Other times it moves so quickly I can’t believe it.
Diary of the Pandemic Year: Day 42
The Americans want to reopen things. But of all countries, the US is worst hit in terms of total numbers: they will hit 1,000,000 confirmed cases sometime week and they will likely hit 50,000 dead by the day after tomorrow (April 24).
A Journal of the Pandemic Year: Day 37
Continued from Day 36 I think one reason I don’t have much to say about our pandemic is because I have been putting my faith in the experts, to a much greater degree than I normally do. From the beginning, my girlfriend was paying far more attention than I was and was more informed. And …
A Journal of the Pandemic Year: Day 36
The WHO declared coronavirus a pandemic on March 11th. On March 12th my province extended the upcoming March Break for an additional week. On March 14th, my country recommended against international travel. On March 17th, my province declared a State of Emergency. (The day before, my girlfriend’s office instructed them to work from home.) On …
The Problem of Subjectivity
Throughout most of human history, we haven’t done a good job of understanding objective reality. Learning about objective reality has been a slow, difficult process, with many setbacks, but which has rapidly accelerated in the last few centuries, especially the last one. If you compare the growth of scientific knowledge about the universe versus the …
UBI Now
COVID-19 is causing all sorts of economic problems. Rather, reactions to COVID-19 are causing all sorts of problems. Behaviour that is good for reducing the spread of this virus is bad for the economy. Nobody is quite sure what to do or how to moderate the inevitable recession. Our government has a plan, this plan …
Born On Second
I was born on second but I don’t think I got a double. I have had an extraordinarily privileged and lucky life. It is my hope, by exposing my privilege, I help others like me see how lucky they’ve been.
Status Rewards for Paying Taxes
As I have written elsewhere, I feel like tax avoidance/evasion is the second biggest problem humanity faces right now. The rich move most of their money out of the societies they earned that money in, and it sits in off-shore bank accounts, benefiting the account holder far more than it benefits the society where it …
Why I Went From Libertarian to Left Wing
In High School, I was a fascist.
How Do People Create Conspiracy Theories?
How do people come up with conspiracy theories? I was a former koolaid drinker, but I discovered a preexisting conspiracy theory (Oswald was a patsy) and drank it up. I never created my own, I just read about one that was already extremely popular. But someone had to be the first person to suggest that …
We Need to End Inheritance
Life is unfair. However, life is more unfair for more of us than a small group of people who have less unfair lives. And there’s no good reason why it’s more unfair for some of us than others. Because none of us actually deserve to be here.
Incremental Socialism is a Conspiracy Theory
I was having a conversation with a conservative on Reddit a while ago. The conservative I was primarily engaged with shared many of my views (to an extent) when it came to the nature of reality, something I was not expecting. I had posted those views because I thought fundamental disagreements of the nature of …
Doubling Down on the Electoral College
I have advocated for Canada to become a republic for a long time but recent developments in the United States have alarmed me, as the US political system seems unable to reform itself.
What is the Point of Government?
The question “What is the point of government?” likely strikes you either as an obvious question or an absurd and pointless question, depending upon your philosophical beliefs. I assume either you think it’s a question always worth asking or a question never worth asking. Count me in the former camp. I believe asking “what is …
Ontario and the Notwithstanding Clause
There are many things to like about Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a more inclusive bill of rights than, say, the American one. But there’s always been a crucial flaw, the “Notwithstanding Clause.” This clause grants any provincial government the right to override the Charter in a specific instance for a specific period of …
Remembrance
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we remember people lately, particularly since John McCain died. To read the American media’s coverage of McCain’s death, he was some sort of saint. Yet, in reality, he was human, just like the rest of us. Worse, he was a Republican, and a successful Republican at that; a …