Untrained Superiority

It is likely true that we all have moments where we want to claim knowledge in a subject superior to those who have studied it.

Loneliness of Intelligence

It has been said in various ways that loneliness is a failure to successfully communicate what one finds important, an absence of being understood. Because this situation can often result in a crushing type of frustration, could it be the cause of notoriously bad temperaments and attitudes from some of history's smartest people, especially for those who have challenged ideas assumed to be fundamental?

Non-Working Capital

Money is a mechanism for those who have it to give themselves credit for the work of those who don't.

Merchant Democracy

New definition of American democracy: Advancing the idea that government should be declared a corporate subdivision under the control of those in the merchant class with the most money.

Fish Story Faith

It is entirely appropriate to see religious texts as collections of fan fiction.

Rigged Worth

It is a basic truism that the primary goal of any business or corporation is to funnel as much skimmed money as possible to owners, a rigged structure that demands wealth be concentrated in the hands of a few.

Null Imposter

There is a major misdirection that is overlooked in the idea of artificial intelligence, something that is closely linked with the the idea of free will (the term "artificial free will" would be suitable for comparison). For those of us who understand free will as a fallacy, there can therefore be no basis for something so closely connected to it. To assume that something that does not exist can be faked is absurd.

Freedom Placebo

The political and religious rhetoric by those who claim to support "freedom" seems to be effective in the same manner as a placebo effect; the power is in the belief of the claim, not in its truth.

Separate Illusions

While recognizing selected elements of any grouping or system are helpful, they often mask the aggregated reality from where they were plucked, damaging an appropriate and unharmed binding view of existence.

Misplaced Power of Names

When contemplating things like souls, mermaids and phlogiston, it's always important to remember that naming a mirage doesn't make it real.

Complementary Dependence

Added insight into the placebo effect might come from seeing it as just a single example of the improvement one experiences when given any kind of positive attention by others, including things like respect, encouragement, compassion, love, gifts--and anything else perceived as a positive gesture from another.

Incidental Weather

It's interesting how inclement is used almost exclusively to describe weather and clement is never used at all--in any context.

Pretend Timelessness

When it comes to creations as diverse as dictionaries, religions, philosophies, and rules of law, we too often fail to remember that legitimacy dissolves if they are not regularly updated. We create these things to meet temporary perceived needs and, therefore, they must be updated regularly as conditions change and information improves. We should never see ourselves as beholden to anything we create.

Dirty Money

It is a tidy truism that no one deserves to be dirt poor or filthy rich.

Erroneous Equine Ingenuity

Some people use their impression of "horse sense" to measure veracity, vastly embellishing their ingenuity.

"The mind of a horse is a very limited concern relying almost entirely upon memory. He rivals our politicians in that he has little real intellect." -Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Peace Out of Water

How we approach things like money, education, business, legal processes, religion, literature, science, and more have at their cores the idea that conflict is to be celebrated as the crowning achievement of human behavior. It is a bitter paradox that so many also claim peace can be produced by these adversarial systems driven by dispute.

Clearly Wrong

Astrology: Taking as valid the conclusions reached when using a clear night sky as a Rorschach test.

The Genius of Insanity

Genius is sometimes described as the ability to make connections where others can't, but so is insanity.

Physical Exemption

To assert free will as valid, there must also be a companion claim asserted as true that molecules and atoms become exempt from the laws of physics when they come together to form a human.

We're Doing It Wrong

It should be no surprise that we are such a mess when we are allowed to be in love with only one person while praised when hating many.