Here it is, a rundown of interesting articles I’ve come across recently, to consider for your weekend readings:
America’s big mistake about science literacy came back to haunt us in 2021. In this day and age, it’s virtually impossible to have sufficient expertise to figure out what the complete, comprehensive, scientifically validated truth surrounding any issue is. Unless you yourself have spent many years studying, researching, and actively participating in furthering the scientific endeavor in a particular field, you can be certain — with an incredibly high degree of confidence — that your non-expertise will fundamentally limit the depth and breadth of your understanding. Put simply, your inexperience, relative to that of bona fide professionals, gives you too many blind spots that you yourself will be unaware of, to be able to distinguish what’s valid and conclusive from what’s not. … (Big Think)
How disgust explains everything. Two distinguished academics walk into a restaurant in Manhattan. It is their first meeting — their first date, in fact — and the year is 2015. The man wears a down jacket against the icy winter evening. The woman has a shock of glossy white hair. The restaurant is on a cozy corner of the West Village and has foie gras on the menu. What the man doesn’t know is that the interior of his down jacket has suffered a structural failure, and the filling has massed along the bottom hem, forming a conspicuous bulge at his waist. As they greet each other, the woman perceives the bulge and asks herself: Is my date wearing a colostomy bag? … (New York Times)
Post-Humans on a sterile promontory: the new myths of Transhumanism and the Dark Mountain. Not too long ago, humans believed that the stars determined their fate. Some still do. It was a belief born of naïveté, misunderstanding the nature of those diamonds in the night sky. But it was also a sign of our hubris, to presume that those lights in the firmament could have any interest in us. Rather than feel controlled by them, we now understand that the stars are not gods or arbiters of fate but places we now aspire to explore. The knowledge of what stars actually are, and how insignificant we are in comparison to the vastness of the cosmos, has humbled us. And yet we are brash enough to speculate that one day we will be determining the destinies of stars, not the other way around. … (Free Inquiry)
Are new gender beliefs based on science and research? There’s been some strange paradigm shifts among the educated classes of the Western world lately concerning gender. For one thing, in some circles, people are asked to state their gender and give their preferred pronouns. Controversies exist about bathroom assignment. Specialized therapists, speakers, and publications have emerged to encourage the wider public to develop greater sensitivity and new mores and etiquette for emerging genders. … (Skeptical Inquirer)
Introducing the Plato’s Academy Centre. Hello my name is Donald Robertson and I’m the president and founder of the Plato’s Academy Centre, which we’re delighted to announce is now registered in Greece as a civil nonprofit association. So let me tell you a little bit about the project… First of all, how did this begin? Well, over a year ago, I was walking in Plato’s Academy Park, in Athens, where Plato’s original school of philosophy was located. Now it’s a large public park near the city centre, containing some ancient ruins, with a small digital museum nearby, a statue of Plato, and a pleasant square with restaurants and coffee shops. The local Athenians walk their dogs in the park, jog and exercise there, and bring their children to play. Once, though, this was the most important centre for philosophy in the world. Plato’s Academy was the first academic instute in European history, from which all modern academies subseqeuently took their name. Plato would walk in this park, lecturing his students. Socrates and other ancient thinkers also came here to exercise their intellects in rational debate. … (Medium)
Philosophy as a Way of Life