Thoughts

2023-10-16 My religion is humankind

I don’t give myself in service to Allah, God, or Jahve.

I give myself in service to us.

My life means nothing compared to our greatness.

To having lived a life fully in service of us, is the greatest achievement one can make.

I will sacrifice myself for us. Sacrifice my family for us.

We are not perfect, all-knowing beings. We are faulty, we are messy, we know so very little.

2023-03-29 We should live in tribes

These are some thoughts I’ve been having for a long time. Why is it that most people in industrialized countries choose to live 1-2 adults and 1-3 kids in a single house? Why is it, that when our kids move away from home, we choose to keep living alone, just two?

Yes, it’s convenient. You get to choose what you want. Nobody can get in the way.

But also, you’re always lonely. And always stressed. And you need to depend on the state or some organization for things, you could easily do if you just had more friends.

2022-12-06 Democracies are ridiculous racing horses

I just finished listening to the podcast “Videnskab fra vilde hjerner” ep. 7, 14. October 2022, called “Casino-kneb holder dig fast på sociale medier, ikke fri vilje” with researcher Vincent F. Hendricks. It’s a good podcast, and he is an interesting guy.

It made me think. Democracies are crazy places. It is the only kind of place where everybody can say what they want - you can’t have liberalism without democracy (that’s a bold statement, and I’ll get back to that some other day). At least there’s a connection between free speech and liberalism, and democracies.

2022-06-12 Infrastructure should be democratic

When setting up my site and email, I encountered a problem. None of the hosting providers or email providers I could find were democratic. I see (cloud) hosting and email as core infrastructure of the internet, and it bugs me that I can’t influence the decisions of those that I run my most critical stuff on. I don’t trust companies like google or amazon with my private data, and I don’t trust smaller companies to stay in business.

2018-06-29 Notes on society

To keep up with change, so it does not become obsolete. I think what I’m doing is to search for a path from our society to a better one. Or I’m looking for reasons for things, and why some things don’t make sense. The society should win at survival in a host of different situations. Or maybe just in the current situation. The needs here are much the same as that of species. With one notable exception: society is able to change the world around it. So what the society actually needs to do is: Be the best at survival in this situation, change the world around you, so you are continuously the best. Change to meet the demands of the world around you, so you are continuously the best. Create the best offset for your society, so you can continue being the best.

2016-08-27 A global village

One of the problems with society today, is that it is easy to stay anonymous, and anonymity reduces negative response to destructive behaviour.

Consider society anno 1800. Almost every person in the world lives in a small village or a minor town, and they know only the people in their vicinity. If someone in such a tight-knit community doesn’t respect the people around him, the entire community will quickly learn of it, and will be more careful around him. And if he completely malfunctions, they may throw him out – which was a terrible thing back then. In this society, people with empathy and respect for others will flourish, as success (food, mates) comes much more easy if they work together.

2016-08-27 I’ve challenged myself to study the world

Today I watched the movie Captain Fantastic. The name is misleading – the movie is not about a superhero, but instead about a father and his 6-7 children living in the woods and studying the world. It’s a funny movie, but it also got me thinking.

Disclaimer: I’m Scandinavian, many of the ‘alternative’ methods the father uses to raise his kids are common here. But his insistence on teaching and reflection are inspiring, as is his insistence on caring for one’s body.

2015-04-14 DRAFT: What about a relational database for research papers?

Research papers contain references to data and/or other research papers. I’d love a website linking all the research papers to each other in some graphically beautiful way. Google Scholar probably already does this, but it’s so ugly…

So imagine if I search for ‘epistemology’. The search results could be in chronological order (the first research paper mentioning epistemology followed by all the others, the origin), rated order (maybe by most referenced, by expert validations, by popular choice), some combination of the two (highest rated by experts in the last 10 years).

2015-04-08 On Darwin’s theory of evolution and the purpose of life

I know Darwin states that the fittest survive. And I know that he is credited for inventing the theory of evolution. Both of these remain true to this day. What I do not know is whether he states that the purpose of life is to survive. But whether or not he did, I’d like to comment on that.

It came to me, today, that of course the best survivors survive – I mean, they are the best at survival, so it seems reasonable that they would be the ones to survive things. But that’s probably not because they felt that they needed to. It’s probably much more random…

2015-04-08 On the motivation gained from working on something groundbreaking

I realised today that I really don’t like working on something entirely new. Whenever this happens, unless other motivators keep me working on it, I’ll just stop working on it and do something else. Probably something less dangerous.

Why do I feel like this?

I’ll get back to that.