Feed Your Head
1. What is Sentience?
PETER SJÖSTEDT-HUGHES
I always like to rephrase the question to the broader, “What is Sentience?” for the reasons given below. But before we consider what it is, let us consider why it is such a common question. Ivan Pavlov of dog fame, claimed in his Nobel speech that “Essentially only one thing in life interests us: our psychical constitution.” All our felt pleasures and pains are parts of our psychical, or sentient constitution; the loving embraces of our parents, children, friends; our visions of beautiful seascapes, awe-inducing starscapes; the siren scent of honeysuckle, the sharp taste of an Islay malt; as well as the yawning abyss of deeply depressive moods, and demonic anxieties induced by the dark—all of this and more are aspects of sentience.
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2. Math and the Mind of God
JOSHUA M. MORITZ
These days we are quite comfortable with the notion of infinity. As scientists discuss the possibility of an infinite multiverse, our entertainment features infinity wars and superheroes who travel to infinity and beyond. Yet, in the past, infinity was not so easy to come by. This is because whenever the greatest thinkers in history pondered the idea of infinity, they soon realized that this concept is riddled with paradox, breaking all the rules of common sense. Logically speaking, infinity didn’t add up.
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3. Is There a Purpose to Life?
LEWIS COYNE
Have you ever come across an idea that fundamentally changed the way you thought? Or perhaps one that gave a name to an intuition you’d always had and were sure was correct but couldn’t articulate? An idea that transforms or crystalizes the way you think about the world is sometimes known as a threshold concept. They’re so named because they serve to change your thinking, are hard to undo, and consequently have a longstanding impact on the way you see yourself and the world.
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4. Deadheads and Parrot Heads
STEPHEN STERN AND STEVEN GIMBEL
Buffett’s music was an intelligent stew of insightful character studies of people outside the mainstream, mournful ballads, hopeful incitements to what humanity could be at its best, and Bacchanalian celebrations of what it could be at its most crude. It covered the range of human emotions from loss of love and loss of self to the adoration of romantic partners and children. But most of all, it urged us to remain in touch with our own inner fruitcake, the American yearning for rugged individualism recast in terms of innocuous eccentricities. By strumming his six-string, he told us to be unafraid to break out of the grey-suit world in order to embrace bright colors and the freedom the system is trying to take from you.
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5. What Does It Mean To Be Good?
ADAM JACOBS
I’m not aware of anyone, anywhere, who gets up in the morning and thinks, “I’m going to perpetrate evil today.” As far as I know, virtually everyone thinks that they are “good” and that any “bad” things they are accused of can be explained away as a necessary aspect of doing the right thing. For example, “I am screaming at you for your own ‘good.’” That, or they simply assume that those who oppose their good and true beliefs are the evil ones.
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