James' notepad

Previously:  Truth versus utility The rarity of suicide and the rarity of anti-natalist belief are good examples of the unimportance of argu...

Deductive arguments have a poor track record. Even if the argument is sound, the premises may be wrong, or the argument may not map well to ...

You can have a new idea, but you may not see all the ramifications of it. Other people will take your idea and reprocess it, reformulate it,...

Greece migrant crisis: Islanders strike over crowded camps . BBC, 22 January 2020. "Strikes and protests have been held on the Greek...

Devin Helton and BAP agree: the central problem of politics is the unceasing growth of third world slums. Humans don't optimise for i...

Religion makes you have more children.   Positive ethnocentrism: if you believe that your group is "special", you are more like...

I've previously written that truth and utility are  not the same . Corollary: you shouldn't believe things which are bad for you. ...