To be fluent in a language means not only that you can understand it, but that you can speak it competently. Competency in the language does not necessarily make it your first language. It may be your second, or third. Your first language is your dominant one. Reason can be thought of like a language,… Continue reading Reason and the ability to use it are two separate skills
Toxic
Water is vital, essential, and wonderful. When not treated with proper respect, water can kill you. So is water healthy or is it toxic?
When Fiction is Truer than Non-Fiction
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson We could leave it there and be done, or we could parse that out a bit more. Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris and Brett Weinstein discussed the idea of a metaphorical truth. They defined it as a notion that is literally false but conveys benefits to the… Continue reading When Fiction is Truer than Non-Fiction
What if angels were never told what they are?
Here’s a thought experiment about angels…
Chaos, Negative Emotions, and Creativity
Those nasty negative emotions. If only we could just do away with them, right? But they have value, and they show up more in creative (right-brained) thinkers. Here’s why they are both valuable and in larger quantity in creative types, according to Jordan Peterson:
Redefining Reality in Six Minutes
Competency Matrix
In my all-time most viewed post, Serotonin and Social Status, I inquired as to whether there are mindsets that protect us from societal influences on serotonin levels. Five years later I finally attempt to answer that question with Does Competency-Awareness Drive Serotonin Levels? Jordan Peterson posits something like (I’m paraphrasing), no one knows the upper limits of the benefits… Continue reading Competency Matrix
Everyone Has an Origin Story
A tragic turn of events unleashes new, unfamiliar superpowers that shock the wielder, eventually forcing him to face his moral obligation to reduce the suffering of those around him.
Malevolence, Forgiveness, Acceptance, Buddhism and Christianity
Jordan B. Peterson is known for an ostensibly uncontroversial position: the reality of malevolence and malevolent people. This position seems at odds (he says as much) with Buddhism’s perspective that Evil is essentially ignorance. Buddha taught (quote TBD) that evil is born out of ignorance, and that perspective instructs us on how to vanquish evil (knowledge!) Might Jesus Christ agree with Jordan, that… Continue reading Malevolence, Forgiveness, Acceptance, Buddhism and Christianity
Mac OS X vs Windows XP
Back in 2002, I created xvsxp.com, and when I shuttered the site in 2005 (due to personal matters), the downloadable pdf of the site had received over a quarter of a million downloads, and that’s just the pdf.