Mary Martin

Empathy, or feeling with another, is not the same as compassion, or feeling for another. In empathy, we suffer with the other or share their joy or other emotions—we feel what they feel. Compassion, by comparison, involves care and concern for the person who suffers, and comes with a strong motivation to help and feelings of warmth and love. We... See more

What happens when what we’re thinking becomes increasingly transparent to technology and therefore to the rest of the world?

the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?... The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes... "

Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832)

The more you build your self-conception

on memory, which is notoriously unreliable, and the more you try to give yourself an identity

by constructing a narrative of your life, the less likely you are to understand who and what

you really are.

As we train our sights on what we oppose, let’s recall the costs of surrender. When we use generative AI, we consent to the appropriation of our intellectual property by data scrapers. We stuff the pockets of oligarchs with even more money. We abet the acceleration of a social media gyre that everyone admits is making life worse. We accept the

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I want to defend and buoy hope – it’s a fragile, quirky thing, but it has the power to help us act in the face of finitude

Hope is vitalising. When it pulses, we aspire toward better futures and conspire with what we have and have been. In its absence, we often grow listless, even court despair. I thus want to defend hope, underscore what we gain... See more

This example brings home the difference between advising and shared planning. If you and someone else are genuinely doing something together, you’ll treat a practical question about what you both should do as a shared responsibility, and aim to form a shared plan for which you’re both responsible. In contrast, if you are advising someone, you will... See more