Essays and opinion pieces

About my essays

The following is a collection of my thoughts and essays on various subjects: Religion, democracy, credit card technology, prostitution, cultural norms and preconceptions—dare I call it an eclectic collection? The reason I post these here is twofold. First, I like to share my thoughts (that one should be obvious). Second, I want my thoughts to be challenged. Disagree with me? Comment; let me know. Think that my reasoning is flawed? Let me know. I’m basing proper reasoning on flawed premises? Let me know. It is by having one’s thinking challenged that one can improve it, have it grow. Reactions of visceral disapproval aren’t very helpful to me, of course, but if you have an intelligent argument, I would encourage you—I would be grateful if you let me know.

The third reason I write this (I know I said twofold above, but that was for the reason why I post these essays: The reasons why I write them are as above, plus the following) is that writing my thoughts out helps me formulate them to myself. I like to let my ideas float around in mindspace for a while, then, once I have a strong idea of what I think, I write it down in order to get a clear idea. It's very cathartic to me, and putting it in words has often helped me spot inconsistencies in my thinking.

This page is essentially a collection of all my blog posts tagged with the essays tag, augmented with handy summaries. If you like it, you can subscribe to a (tag-specific) feed .

The essays

• Anti-science, or: Jurassic Park—by or about dinosaurs?
  March 16, 2009

  Jurassic Park as a criticism of scientific thinking, and a response thereto

• How I try to think, and how I try not to
  March 6, 2009

  On scientific thinking, its goals and its pitfalls

• Science and epistemology
  February 13, 2009

  Science as a “god replacement”

• Treatments and diagnostics
  November 9, 2008

  A brief musing on diagnostic problems in mental disorders

• Martial arts training methods and self defence
  July 24, 2008

  Why some martial arts are useless for self defence, and how you will find and know good training.

• The abdication of moral responsibility
  March 30, 2008

  The Naturalistic Fallacy (and its religious variation) has the power to cause some people to utterly abdicate moral responsibility. There is no excuse: You are responsible for your actions and their foreseeable consequences, natural or not.

• The rational, the irrational, and the rest
  September 25, 2007

  Why you don’t have to be irrational, and still don’t have to be a dry, calculating machine.

• Faith
  May 23, 2007

  Why is faith considered a virtue?

• Mind over matter: The guilt of depression
  May 11, 2007

  Depression and the fallacy of thinking it’s your fault.

• The Morality of Hell
  April 28, 2007

  Why the doctrine of Hell is immoral.

• On Critical Thinking
  January 23, 2007

  What critical thinking really is and why we need more of it.

• Evolution is science; science is evolution
  December 7, 2006

  Science is a memic evolution of testable ideas.

• Fun with debating
  November 13, 2006

  Some thoughts on the abortion debate.

• Suicide is not a sin if there’s an Undo button
  October 10, 2006

  Why I find the Passion of the Christ (the story, not the movie) so odd and unsatisfying. See also Dead to Rights (subsequently brought to my attention).

• Paying with plastic: Good, bad, and pipe dreams
  October 5, 2006

  I really think the whole credit card concept could be implemented better.

• Musings on democracy
  September 9, 2006

  What I think democracy is, and what I think its problems are, in principle and practice.

• Push vs. pull, Data access and overload, or How did I ever survive without feeds?
  April 5, 2006

  An introduction to data feeds, theory and practice.

• Tolerance and acceptance
  December 28, 2005

  I don’t think tolerating people is good enough.

• Prostitution
  December 7, 2005

  Why on Earth should it be illegal?

• On the Evil of Diverse Proprietary Things, and on Instant Messaging
  November 1, 2005

  Proprietary software means that you can’t change it. Proprietary formats and protocols mean that you can’t change software.

• Promiscuity and demonisation
  May 24, 2005

  Just because I haven’t slept with a lot of people, that doesn’t mean I think those who have are necessarily evil.

• Sodom and science
  January 27, 2005

  Calling creationism pseudo-science is giving it too much credit.

• Intolerance
  January 20, 2005

  On homophobia.

• Fundamentalism
  April 28, 2004

  In which I set down my Three Commandments. This essay, alas, is showing its age.

• Devolution
  August 21, 2003

  Brief musing on how Homo sapiens has thwarted natural selection, the evolutionary guide to improvement.