David Pennington

Is our universe an empty forest or a dark one? If it’s a dark forest, then only Earth is foolish enough to ping the heavens and announce its presence. The rest of the universe already knows the real reason why the forest stays dark. It’s only a matter of time before the Earth learns as well.

Attention is first philosophy—

Philosophy is not only a system of thought but a mode of attentiveness, an exercised openness to what exceeds us yet calls us to deeper participation. Its systematic aspects are downstream of this attentiveness, and can certainly become a scaffolding by which others can train their own attention, but it is at its root... See more

In a world that glorifies individual success, we easily forget that our greatest power lies in our ability to come together.

“The world of real things is very inefficient.” Harnessing the network effects of big data, he foresees a future where we can more efficiently do many things: “We will definitely see dynamically priced queues for confession-­taking priests and therapists,” he said.

Don’t even mention dating or — gasp — sex when the simple act of looking into someone else’s eyes provokes anxiety. But what could they do? Give up their phones and the corporate-controlled, like-driven culture, which is all they’ve ever known? Silent scream emoji!

The decline of polymathy... is a crisis of too much information.

the belief that you can do anything, including things you are blatantly not qualified for or straight up lying about— should be pathologized. It has many names (Dunning-Krueger, illusory superiority), but I suggest we call it blowhard syndrome as a neat parallel.