It’s much easier for the premise: immigrants are the source of all problems, to be accepted and propagated when you have a society that is addicted to algorithms that remove the need for thinking.

Next time you are in public, notice how many people have headphones in. The ubiquity is a sign of what we are losing: our ability to converse, connect, and empathise. Something I wrote about here -> open.substack.com/pub/wordscha...

I remember a debate on here once that argued audiobooks/podcasts don’t count as learning. A hugely dumb position considering we were able to listen and speak long before reading and writing.

For many, modern life is a lot of loading and unloading the dishwasher with the occasional pleasant surprise that neither is required.

And ironically, at the time this was happening people COMPLAINED that it was actually too quick a turnaround.

It has taken me far too long to see that the natural conclusion of the materialist reductionist view of the world (Richard Dawkins et al.) is that it falls prey to the same inductive leap as religious believers. But instead of a leap to God, it leaps to "future evidence" becoming known, aka faith

We need more mysticism, reverence for beauty, and comfort with uncertainty in the world. We are living in the enlightenment myth of cold, mechanistic materialism that says the universe is merely a puzzle to be solved & we are full of hubris in believing we can do so.

On reflection, letting 17/18 year olds make significant life decisions re uni or work is a bad idea. It takes time to know thyself, what interests you and what you are actually good at. Some form of national service, where one "rotates" between projects & learns skills would be very valuable.

I’ve been thinking about the nature of AI knowledge. One can know facts, Paris is the capital of France, but if one has lived there and experienced it, one can “know“ the essence of Paris. These are two types of knowing and both have different meanings/value. AI can only ever have the first kind.

I came across this poem and it made me think of a flippant piece I wrote about how the encouragement of "you can do or be anything" is, in fact, rather pernicious. An ordinary life is where meaning, beauty, and awe occurs. Article: open.substack.com/pub/wordscha...

After being offline for a while, I realised, rather arrogantly, I’d like people to eventually see the essays that I write. Hence, bsky back.