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Indeterminacy of Personal Identity

Who are we really? Are we a group of cells expressing a distinct sequence of DNA? Maybe we are disembodied soul or mind that persists beyond this grouping of cells. Are you actually the same person you were from you childhood? Personal identity it seems is hard to tie down. Which is very concerning when it is the basis of so much of how we frame our existence. If we are unsure about who we are, then how can we go about assigning responsibility and meaning to our selves?

Brain Aneurysms and the Multiverse. Re-published.

By now, most everyone has been confronted with the concepts of extra dimensions, parallel universes, or alternate timelines that exist just beyond our experience. For decades, science fiction has conjured countless different versions of a deeper reality that we have yet to uncover. Many of these ideas have been presented for public consumption neatly wrapped […]

Common Enemy. Re-Published.

Now in the final months of his presidency, Obama and his administration have moved to strengthen the guidelines and legal framework for the US government’s extrajudicial killing. The kind that is accomplished by way of flying robots that rain death from the sky. Rather than reduce the extent to which the US military uses this […]

Come Again?

The sense that we are protagonists in our own movie is not just instilled culturally. It comes written in our genes, forged over millions of years of mammalian evolution. The paramount importance natural selection has placed on our survival has led us to believe our survival is important, that giving it up for another is a great sacrifice. Along with the genes that led to our instinct towards community, for in-group out-group behavior, survival behavior leads entire cultures to indulge in that self affirming narrative.

The Universe is a Dick. Re-published.

Reason number one thousand seven hundred and eleven why life is devoid of any meaning and all the better for it: The universe is a dick. While being in and of itself the fabric and the laws that allow conscious beings to exist, it has a thousand and one ways to wipe out any and […]