Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Meta
Category Archives: Philosophy
What If We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know?
Plato’s cave and what we don’t know, or don’t know that we don’t know; David Gerrold on “woke” and why I think citing “woke” (or religion) dismisses one from any serious conversation; Short items about how a third of the … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Social Progress
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Dispatches from the Real World
My latest take on the true vs the real; A piece about RFK Jr identifies the three big reasons you’re alive today: clean water, antibiotics, and vaccines; How we know RFK Jr is wrong about vaccines; How red states lead … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Science
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Assault on and Rejection of Reality
Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic on how things are much worse than a misinformation crisis; Meteorologists notice that ignorance is becoming socially acceptable — but this has always been true, as C.P. Snow noted; The Republican conspiracy theory that children … Continue reading
Posted in conservatives, Education, Philosophy, Politics
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Consensus Reality Is Disappearing Before Our Eyes
No matter how dissociated from reality something a politician says is, there are people who will believe it. People who think everything (such as Hurricanes) must happen for a reason are debating between God’s wrath and Deep State weather control; … Continue reading
Posted in Lunacy, Philosophy, Politics, Religion
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Today’s New Insight
What ‘woke’ means, to different people; How the ancients overcame biases in understanding the world, in order to discover and navigate the world; How moderns have tried to overcome cognitive biases through constitutions and “political correctness” and being “woke,” and … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science, Social Progress
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Deutsch Infinity, Ch 1
The next big science tome I’ve begun reading is THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY, by David Deutsch, his only other book following THE FABRIC OF REALITY in 1997, which I reviewed here. This second book was published in 2011. (There’s no … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Philosophy, Science
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Examining The Techno-Humanist Manifesto
Here’s a piece that challenges my challenge to the assumption, especially in America, than more is better, that the economy must always expand, that the population should continue to increase indefinitely. My point has been that this literally cannot continue … Continue reading
Posted in Human Nature, Philosophy, progress
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Sebastian Junger: FREEDOM
Then I looked over my shelves to see if there was some other memoir type book, preferably short, that I could read before returning to another big science tome. I found this, by the same author as TRIBE, which I … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Philosophy
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Brian Greene: UNTIL THE END OF TIME, post 1
I’ve mentioned this book several times over the years (it was published in 2020), most recently here in early June, when I sat down to read it all the way through. I finished in mid-July. Subtitled: “Mind, Matter, and Our … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Cosmology, Philosophy
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Understanding Human Nature
Ultimately, everything in the daily news makes sense through an honest understanding of human nature. (It is not there are two legitimate “sides” to every issue.) Two thought pieces for today, then a bunch of shorter items. About how macaques … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Evolution, Human Progress, Humanism, Philosophy
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