The Wayward Axolotl

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. — Eleanor Roosevelt We can divide thought and discourse into three levels of abstraction that roughly correspond to the levels in that famous quote: Thought/discourse about people and ordinary events. Thought/discourse about entities and events that are beyond direct personal experience. Thought/discourse about abstract systems, processes and theories. At the first level, we think/talk about objects and events that we can directly engage with. At the second level, we think/talk about objects and events that are removed from personal experience, because they are too big, too small, too far away, etc. However, we are still talking about objects and events. At the third level, we think/talk about systems, processes and theories. We are either thinking/talking about abstract patterns that are divorced from any specific object or event, or we are think...

Discussion with Garrick about Adam Lanza, eulavism, primitivism, etc.

To almost everyone, it is perfectly clear and obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people seem to divide almost evenly on the problem, with large numbers thinking that the opposing half is just being silly. — Robert Nozick This essay is about how not to solve Newcomb’s paradox . I will not explain the paradox here. I will use the formulation from Wikipedia, but I have also presented my own version of the problem here . (In my version, the amounts and the labels are different.) The following table shows the relationship between the prediction and the outcome: Table 1 Prediction Choice Outcome A & B A & B $1,000 A & B B $0 B A & B $1,001,000 ...