More than ten years after I left school, my old secondary headteacher rang my parents and asked for me. She had a painting of mine. Back in that odd time halfway through GCSEs, fifteen years old, after mock exams, after the older children had left school entirely, but before the summer holiday, the school had arranged a week of “activities” rather than lessons. I chose to spend the whole week doing art....
Politics has become poisonous. I don’t think it needs to be. Government doesn’t work. I think it can. I have some ideas, and because I have no power and no platform, writing them down here is the best I can do. The positive ideas will be at the end, and it gets negative first. Bear with me. The ideas make more sense with the framing. What do you MEAN, government doesn’t work?...
Why are you reading this? For some reason, in recent weeks I keep bumping into Robert Sapolsky’s ideas. He is certain that you had no choice but to read what you’re reading, because there is no such thing as free will. You may think you chose, but there was nothing doing any choosing. Biologically, you can’t argue either – because of the evidence, not because your actions are predetermined. Whatever you do is caused by neurons firing, which are physical, and work by physical causes, combinations of sensory input, connection between them, environment and history....
Sometimes I annoy people by saying that truth is not important. “Truth” is always either provisional, dependent on formal assumptions, or a matter of faith. It can’t be absolute, and therefore we shouldn’t treat it as an end in itself. As sentient beings, we interact not directly with reality, but with representations and models of reality. More and more, in science, through sophisticated equipment, but at any time through our senses and brain processes....
After I wrote a little essay about life being better without planning, one of those fortunate coincidences occurred, and I found a book called “Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned”. I recommend the book. It may not convince you, but it presents a perspective that even sceptics could usefully consider. It makes the case, from a technical and practical base, that no ground-breaking achievement can ever be achieved by deciding on the steps to get there and working through them....