May 2010
9 posts
The triumph of the therapeutic
Christian: This is a place that you all made together so that you could find one another. The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people. That’s why all of you are here. Nobody does it alone Jack. You needed all of them, and they needed you.
Jack: For what?
Christian: To remember. And to let go.
What’s worse: this pablum, or the fact that the...
admonitory image →
Via Margaret Soltan the story of a Russian controversy: images from the fiction of Dostoevsky in the Moscow subway. People seem to be particularly freaked out by the image above.
The Moscow Times story Margaret links to doesn’t note it, but the guy with the pistol to his head is surely Svidrigailov, who kills himself near the end of Crime and Punishment after announcing that he is “going...
Baby's Touch 'N Feel Guide to Russian Literature... →
Notes from the Underground
See the yellow stain on the Underground Man’s pants. His clothes are shabby and old. What compels him to debase himself?
An epistemic rule of thumb
If your goal is true belief and if, ceteris paribus, believing that P makes you feel like crap but believing that Q makes you feel great, then you should go with P.
WatchEliezer Yudkowsky and Massimo Pigliucci talk about the singularity and other things
“The contrast to the traditional therapeutic notion of personal development is...”
– The Data-Driven Life (NYT)
Agnotology - the study of culturally-induced... →
