Philosophy

To give birth, to nourish,

to bear and not to own,

to act and not lay claim,

to lead and not to rule:

this is mysterious power.

Wisdom from @david_perell's Monday musings. Infrastructure is philosophy made visible.

How could gaining knowledge amount to anything other than discovering what was already there? How could the truth of a statement or a theory be anything but its correspondence to facts that were fixed before we started investigating them?

Some philosophers have argued that, despite widespread intuitions to the contrary, knowledge is not merely a mat... See more

But this isn’t just about seeking exit from the turmoil of a modern, connected existence, nor is it merely about recharging our batteries so that we can absorb yet more political polarisation, toxic social media or climate catastrophe. It is also about engaging in a social policy of degrowth as a corrective to practices that are taxing the planet, ... See more

Nowadays, whenever I feel scared in the face of a decision and yearn for the safety of an optimizing formula, I try to remind myself that there’s another way of feeling safe. It’s not about perfection, about invulnerability, about control. It’s about leaning into the fact that we are imperfect and vulnerable creatures and that even when we’re tryin... See more

The experience of affective friction is similar as well: a loss of fluency combined with negative emotional signals arising from the gap between social expectations and realities. Even when the difference between an old norm and a new one replacing it seems trivial, the disruptions caused by the shift can create feelings of anxiety, awkwardness – a... See more