#  @philosophyminis Mini Philosophy Mini Philosophy posts on TikTok about philosophy, in the, if you, to the the most. They currently have [-------] followers and [---] posts still getting attention that total [-------] engagements in the last [--] hours. ### Engagements: [-------] [#](/creator/tiktok::7295688878329119777/interactions)  - [--] Week [------] -73% - [--] Month [---------] -40% - [--] Months [----------] +94% - [--] Year [----------] +63% ### Mentions: [--] [#](/creator/tiktok::7295688878329119777/posts_active)  - [--] Week [--] -15% - [--] Month [--] +44% - [--] Months [--] +53% - [--] Year [---] +90% ### Followers: [-------] [#](/creator/tiktok::7295688878329119777/followers)  - [--] Week [-------] +0.56% - [--] Month [-------] +2.40% - [--] Months [-------] +47% - [--] Year [-------] +137% ### CreatorRank: [-------] [#](/creator/tiktok::7295688878329119777/influencer_rank)  ### Social Influence **Social category influence** [countries](/list/countries) [ncaa football](/list/ncaa-football) [finance](/list/finance) [travel destinations](/list/travel-destinations) [stocks](/list/stocks) [celebrities](/list/celebrities) [cryptocurrencies](/list/cryptocurrencies) [technology brands](/list/technology-brands) **Social topic influence** [philosophy](/topic/philosophy) #508, [in the](/topic/in-the), [if you](/topic/if-you), [to the](/topic/to-the), [the world](/topic/the-world), [the first](/topic/the-first), [history](/topic/history), [theory](/topic/theory) #1335, [the great](/topic/the-great), [just a](/topic/just-a) **Top assets mentioned** [Golem (GOLEM)](/topic/golem) ### Top Social Posts Top posts by engagements in the last [--] hours "The Chinese Room is one of the most persistent thought experiments in the #philosophy of #artificialintelligence . It goes back to the 1980s with the philosopher John Searle and it goes a bit like this. Imagine that there is a man in a room who does not speak #chinese. On the table in front of him is a vast book containing If this then that translation notes. So if you get this incomprehensible Chinese symbol then it will tell you how to write the symbol in reply. Now imagine someone posts into this room a letter containing only Chinese symbols. The man with his book follows his instructions" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7356584480016026912) 2024-04-11T12:25Z [----] followers, 43.2K engagements "#stoicism has always been a hugely popular #philosophy. One reason for that is because of the 'dichotomy of control' which is explained best by the #stoic #philosopher #epictetus" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7358812355683192096) 2024-04-17T12:30Z 239.9K followers, 40.1K engagements "Joseph Campbell spent his life studying #literature and #mythology and he wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it he argued all #stories have a similar structure. They reflect the #journey of a #human life. #philosophy #structuralism #starwars #lotr #religion #marvel #disney" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7361426769246768416) 2024-04-24T13:35Z [----] followers, 12.1K engagements "In the 1960s Philippa Foot gave us one of the most famous thought experiments in #philosophy The trolley problem is not only about right and wrong but about #action and inaction. #learning #education #bystandereffect #ethics" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7362195212074044704) 2024-04-26T15:17Z 211.6K followers, 951.2K engagements "The problem of #freewill and determinism is a tricky problem that spans #physics #biology and #philosophy It's complicated also by the fact we can't easily define it. Here we look at John #Locke and his locked room thought experiment. #learning #libertarianism #freedom #choice #education" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7363758822940364064) 2024-04-30T20:25Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "#Panpsychism was once a niche concern of #philosophy but with the rise of #ai it's become mainstream. The basic claim is that anything can have a degree of #consciousness if it matches certain criteria. #cognition #psychology #learning #mind #artificialintelligence #cognitive" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7364754854469750048) 2024-05-03T12:50Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "#aesthetics is the #philosophy of #art and #beauty and it often focuses heavily on the European tradition. #wabisabi is a concept borrowed from #japan and #Japanese aesthetics which speaks to a different philosophical #history but which we can all appreciate" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7366610965833551137) 2024-05-08T12:53Z 98.6K followers, 29.7K engagements "The problem of #induction is one of the greatest unsolved problems in #philosophy today. It goes back to David #hume and it is about #truth #reason and how #science works. The basic point is that no amount of past observation can guarantee that the future will be the same. #scientificmethod #epistemology #learning #education #philosopher" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7366999244747574561) 2024-05-09T13:59Z 179K followers, 22.8K engagements "One of the #norms of modernity is that we have to pretend to be #happy all of the time. According to Harrison and her @The New Happy we present an illusion of #selfsufficiency and #independence when we all need #help from one another. Humans are #social animals and we are happiest when we work together. #philosophy #happiness #friendship #support #MentalHealth" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7369956010489826592) 2024-05-17T13:13Z 164.4K followers, 10K engagements "A long time ago the Greek philosopher #Xenophanes noticed how odd it was that the #gods we worship bear a striking resemblance to us. They walk like us talk like us and behave like us. They have the same petty jealousies and ambitions as humans and they have superhero level powers. In the 19th century the German #philosopher #Feuerbach noticed the same thing and he said that religion is a manifestation of our species consciousness. Species consciousness is the capacity we have to not only see ourselves as isolated individuals going about our everyday lives but also as part of a great and" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7375529540392586529) 2024-06-01T13:41Z 164.1K followers, [----] engagements "One of the most common #ethical dilemmas is known as the burning building dilemma. You can vary it as you wish but it often goes like this: There is a house burning down. There's black smoke falling beams and a fiery inferno. It's unambiguously lethal. Inside the house are two people: a professor who has the cure for cancer and your own child or a sibling or a parent. It's someone that you deeply and wholly love. So who would you save The #dilemma is interesting because it focuses on the #philosophy of partiality and emotions in our ethical decision making. A lot of ethicists will argue for" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7379232470736096544) 2024-06-11T13:10Z 228.3K followers, 214K engagements "One of the most famous images if not the most famous images in #philosophy is the duck-rabbit. It was made famous by Wittgenstein and it's all about the idea of aspect perception. Here's the problem: Look at this image and tell me if you think it's a duck or a rabbit. Because it can't be both. Because a duck cannot be a rabbit. So it's either a duck or a rabbit. But this changes depending on you. The object itself is fixed. If you go away for a cup of tea it'll be exactly the same but something in your understanding or perception is shifting the object between a duck and a rabbit and we" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7389239746611989792) 2024-07-08T12:24Z 139.1K followers, 609.3K engagements "Plato's chariot is one of the most influential allegories in philosophy. It defined Western #philosophy for millennia and probably shapes how you imagine the mind today. It goes like this: Imagine that there's a charioteer trying to harness the power of two headstrong horses. One horse is shining and pure. The other is shabby and wheezy. But you need both to move forward. If either of the horses dominates or if the charioteer tires or drops his attention then the chariot will crash. The charioteer is Logos which is our guiding reason. It's the rational logical and wise that weighs things up" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7391849936855289120) 2024-07-15T13:13Z 149.8K followers, 241.5K engagements "A lot of people are scared by AI. And even if some of the doomsayers exaggerate their point there is something rational about fearing an intelligence far far greater than ours. But one of the reassuring facts in AI research is that an #AI will stay locked in one corner of the internet and we can always pull the plug. But according to the writer Eliezer Yudkowsky thats an assumption wed do well to challenge. In the early 2000s. #Yudkowsky argued that any suitably advanced AI would have no problem whatsoever in coercing or convincing us to release it from whatever limitations we gave it. It" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7392954550514191648) 2024-07-18T12:39Z 157.3K followers, 16.9K engagements "Today the word selfish is an insult. If you're told that you are #selfish there's an implicit command to change your ways. We should look after other people and give a bit of ourselves. But for the philosopher Ayn Rand this is just a performative virtue signalling of modernity. It's a world which describes any self-concern or self-interest as evil and only things that benefit others can be good. #Rand argues that so many of our supposed values today actually serve to stifle our moral existence. The values we live by ought to benefit us. We ought to look after ourselves. And yet we bow to" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7393332826374032672) 2024-07-19T13:07Z 181.1K followers, 21.7K engagements "In the 17th century the British philosopher John #Locke gave us one of the most relatable thought experiments in history. In fact it was probably one of the earliest #philosophical questions I had. Imagine that there are two perfectly healthy people with perfectly functioning sense organs on a walk and one turns to the other and says What a beautiful blue sky And the other one nods along. But the question that John Locke raises is how do we know that the blue that one person sees does not appear to be green to the other person They both call the sky blue because thats what their upbringing" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7394128518264786209) 2024-07-21T16:35Z 61.7K followers, 219.7K engagements "In [----] Thomas #Nagel gave us one of the most bizarre but philosophically exciting questions of all time: What does it feel like to be a bat This doesnt mean imagining yourself upside down and trying to catch insects in your mouth because thats not what it feels like to be a bat. Thats a human behaving rather oddly. You see we know a lot about bats. We know that they use echolocation to navigate their environment and this means using high-frequency shrieks to reflect on objects and to then correlate outgoing impulses with the subsequent echoes. From this a #bat will develop a picture of the" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7395659843626863905) 2024-07-25T19:37Z 113.8K followers, 93.2K engagements "The alignment problem is one of the classic problems of artificial intelligence and it makes for a great many science fiction plot lines. The problem is how we can get an AI to follow the unspoken instructions or the intentions of a user. How can we stop an AI from being too narrowly focused and literal Here are two examples: Let's imagine we give some powerful AI of the future the prompt Reduce cancer cases in humans. Well ideally we'd want it to develop a wonder drug or to identify things which give us cancer. But instead the AI decides to wipe out the entire human race. Cancer cases in" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7395973286783503648) 2024-07-26T15:53Z 169.4K followers, 18.7K engagements "#panpsychism was once a niche concern of #philosophy but with the rise of #ai its become mainstream. The basic claim is that anything can have a degree of #consciousness if it matches certain criteria. #cognition #psychology #learning #mind #artificialintelligence #cognitive" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7402277461750287648) 2024-08-12T15:37Z 179.9K followers, 22.4K engagements "Freddie is two years old. He sits on a mossy stone; his back is hunched and his hands are filthy. He watches closely almost so closely as to be touching the prodigious and impossible strength of an ant carrying a leaf. The world outside of this ant is entirely forgotten. Everything that matters is what the ant is doing. It gets cold and it gets dark. And Freddie's dad tells him it's probably time to go inside. But Freddie doesn't listen because he cares only for his ant. According to #Aristotle Freddie and all children like him are the first philosophers of the world they embody something" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7402591773572271393) 2024-08-13T11:56Z 234.8K followers, 26.4K engagements "We all live with certain assumptions about how the world works. For example most people think that germs cause disease that reflected light causes colour and that the world is made up of atoms. These assumptions are what Thomas #Kuhn calls a paradigm. Sometimes in any given paradigm these strange puzzles will pop up which are these anomalies which can't easily be made sense of. In the majority of cases science will eventually solve these puzzles under what Kuhn calls mopping up. A theory will adapt and grow. In other cases an anomaly might not easily be explained but since it's only a one-off" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7403369682335567136) 2024-08-15T14:15Z 239.4K followers, 25.9K engagements "Joseph Campbell spent his life studying #literature and #mythology and he wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it he argued all #stories have a similar structure. They reflect the #journey of a #human life. #philosophy #structuralism #starwars #lotr #religion #marvel #disney" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7404107355450887457) 2024-08-17T13:58Z 117.8K followers, 101.8K engagements "Imagine there are two anthropologists Willard and Orman and they stumble across a never before seen tribe. Their first job is to decipher and determine this tribe's language. One day they're out on a walk and a tribesman sees a rabbit and points "Gavagai." "Aha" Orman shouts. "We now know that 'gavagai' is their word for rabbit" he concludes. "Not so fast Orman" Willard says "Gavagai might mean rabbit yes but it could also mean rabbit leg or rabbit at speed. In fact it could mean any number of weird things. A demon in rabbit form a rabbit God or perhaps even tonight's dinner." "Ah darn" Orman" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7406699227423804704) 2024-08-24T13:35Z 71.6K followers, 21.2K engagements "In his book The Gay Science #Nietzsche gives one of the most heartfelt and touching accounts of #friendship you can find. Because friendships are not like your spouse or your children and you don't spend all of your time around your #friends. In our school days we might spend a great deal of time around friends but as we get older we go our separate ways. We live our lives and we sail new seas. But this is what makes friendships unique and it's what Nietzsche calls a #star friendship. Nietzsche asks us to imagine friendship as being like two #ships coming into harbour. You've both come from" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7427540282876398880) 2024-10-19T17:29Z 98.6K followers, 79.2K engagements "In the early 2000s the philosopher Andy Clark argued that you are not a human. You are not 100% natural and you cannot be reduced to the muscle and tissue you carry with you. You are a #cyborg . I am a cyborg. Your boss is a cyborg. Everybody around you is a cyborg which is cool or scary depending on how you like your #sciencefiction Clark defines a cyborg as any species which fully integrates #technology in how they process or experience the world. This isn't the same as simple tool use. A raven can use a stick to get a nut and a dog will use a tree to scratch its back. But these are" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7429378437858479393) 2024-10-24T16:22Z 149.3K followers, 39.1K engagements "Have you ever sat down to watch a movie or read a book to find that suddenly two hours have passed Or have you ever been so immersed in an experience that you've escaped the world and forgot yourself Both are examples of what #Nietzsche calls the Dionysian. Nietzsche divides all #culture and #art into two: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The #Apollonian is anything that is sharply defined and the rational. So architecture with its geometric beauty and sculpture with its contours are the highest forms of the Apollonian. It's the neat the ordered and the methodical. It's the completed #Sudoku" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7432584845299158304) 2024-11-02T16:25Z 71.8K followers, 40K engagements "If you and I ever met theres no guarantee which version of me you will get. You might get the amiable chatty me or the quiet I want to go home me. You might get #philosophical Jonny or the Jonny that just wants to talk nonsense. Theres no guarantee who youll meet but you will still meet me. This is what the Italian writer Antonio #Tabucchi called the Confederacy of Souls. We are living in the age of #authenticity . You have to express your true self and find your #authentic being. But people often assume that there is a single simple version of who you are there is one Jonny and everyone else" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7434194228126698784) 2024-11-06T15:50Z 172.2K followers, 218.1K engagements "There is a well-known story found in many Dharmic traditions known as The Blind Men and the Elephant. It's probably one of the most important stories anyone can learn. It goes like this: Once upon a time there were some blind men who heard about a strange new animal coming into town called an elephant. Of course the blind men couldn't see but they were curious about what the #elephant was like and so they went out and felt it. The first man who held the trunk said Oh it's a bit like a snake. The second man though who touched an ear said A snake No it's more like a fan I'd say. And the third" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7435573588863782176) 2024-11-10T14:50Z 111.2K followers, 385.1K engagements "When you call somebody weird or you say their behaviour is strange you're doing an interesting thing. You're establishing certain rules of normality. You're drawing a line in the sand and you're saying that anything on this side is normal and anything on that side is weird. It's strange. It's #deviant . And according to Michel Foucault that is a kind of power. For Foucault #power is not just big muscles and big guns but something much more subtle. It's about expectations and a kind of collective #groupthink . One example of this is what #Foucault calls normalisation. #Normalisation is where" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7437488531817254177) 2024-11-15T15:40Z 98.6K followers, 239.9K engagements "I've got a friend and I hope he isnt watching who once told me something funny. This was a few years ago after a few beers when he turned to me and said Do you know what Can I tell you something funny Yes of course I replied. Whenever Im feeling stressed or anxious I pretend to be a sloth. What I said. Yes I do things really really slowly like this. Then he proceeded to demonstrate just how painfully slowly he could move. He turned his head like a #turtle . He gave long exaggerated blinks as if he were completely exhausted and he lifted his beer as though it were a brick. When a friend admits" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7438288156283112737) 2024-11-17T16:37Z 87.1K followers, 45.8K engagements "Happy World Philosophy Day --- I'm going to start by quoting my dad: What's the point of you Jonny It's a good question and it's one I thought about many times. But I don't mean in an existential life purpose kind of way. But what's the point of Mini Philosophy and #philosophy more broadly Why are you bothering to listen to me right now And why bother to subscribe to my account Well one of my favourite answers goes back to Bertrand Russell. #Russell asks us to imagine ourselves like cities not only disconnected from the world but actively at war with it. All of our ideas assumptions and" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7439725125865409825) 2024-11-21T15:35Z 86.9K followers, 22.2K engagements "Are #China and the #USA going to go to war Are we one rash moment away from a terrible nuclear annihilation Well according to the #Greek historian Thucydides things are not looking good. #Thucydides is considered to be one of the fathers of #history as a discipline. In his great work The History of the Peloponnesian War he uses the events of his day to present certain geopolitical principles that apply to power politics throughout all time. Back then #Sparta had been the dominant power of the region what's called a hegemon and #Athens was the young upstart rivalling Sparta's position." [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7443803922747231520) 2024-12-02T15:45Z 134.7K followers, 51K engagements "A good #apology is important. We all know what a bad apology looks like. It's the one which says I'm sorry if you took offense. But to truly apologize to somebody you must paint yourself as the #villain . You must say that you have done something wrong or made some mistake and that you are far from perfect. A good apology is the humbling of an ego. In the #philosophical literature there are three essential elements to a good apology. First it must admit guilt. It says that this action was wrong mistaken or even evil and that we are at least in part responsible for that action. Second it" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7444955634790862112) 2024-12-05T15:50Z 126K followers, 72.1K engagements "Bayes theorem is probably the single most important thing any rational person can learn. So many of our debates and disagreements we shout about are because we don't understand Bayes theorem or how human rationality often works. Bayes theorem is named after the 18th century Thomas Bayes and essentially it's a formula which asks: When you are presented with all of the evidence for something how much should you believe it Bayes theorem teaches us that our beliefs are not fixed; they are probabilities. Our beliefs change as we weigh up new evidence against our assumptions or our priors. In other" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7448235527825853728) 2024-12-14T14:40Z 172.1K followers, 591.1K engagements "Once upon a time there was a king called #Sisyphus who annoyed the ancient world by being an all-round arse. And so the #Greek gods #Zeus decided to give him a punishment which would echo throughout the ages. Sisyphus was tasked with pushing a massive boulder up a steep hill. But the catch was that when he reached the top the boulder would roll all the way back down to the bottom. A panting and aching Sisyphus would return to collect his boulder and push it up the hill and renew his torment every day for eternity. One of the reasons why the myth of Sisyphus is so enduring is because in 1942" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7449418705143958817) 2024-12-17T16:29Z 190.1K followers, 184K engagements "#Plato argued that there are four classical virtues: there's wisdom justice self-control and courage. And of these his account of courage is one of the most insightful passages in his Republic. Because for Plato #courage is not what most people think it is Courage is not the same as fearlessness nor is it something born to some people and denied others. For Plato courage is the ability to recognise what's valuable or not and what should be feared. For instance courage is when you fear losing a loved one more than your health or your wealth. It's when you see #fairness or #justice as greater" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7457557067914628385) 2025-01-08T14:50Z 110.3K followers, 62.1K engagements "There is a tool to tell if something is nonsense or not. It's a tool to call out the quacks the charlatans and the snake oil peddlers of the world. It's a tool to tell pseudoscience from real. And it goes back to Karl Popper whose falsification theory is now a bedrock of the #scientificmethod . According to #falsification a theory is only as strong as how far it can resist falsifying evidence. Empirical experiments cannot prove or verify a theory only disprove it. The theory of gravity is such a strong theory because for however many plates we've dropped over the centuries gravity will" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7458975521070681376) 2025-01-12T14:45Z 154.8K followers, 225.1K engagements "One of the first things that any artist will learn is the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is where you divide your artwork into three and you decide where you want people to focus it. Its seen in #photography classic paintings and in #fashion . But the rule of thirds is just one example of formalism in the philosophy of art. #Formalism is the idea that we can explain why anything is beautiful by pointing at the various technical elements that make it up. Most #philosophers accept a degree of formalism but Marcus du Sautoy is an extreme kind of formalist because he believes that beauty can" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7467563038648913185) 2025-02-04T14:50Z 244.5K followers, 46.3K engagements "We all like to see ourselves as the exception. We might read about some probability but assume that that happens to other people. We say "I am different. That doesn't apply to me." Take for instance the fact that a third of us will develop cancer over the course of our lifetime. You know that rationally you know how odds work and yet few of us will think that we will be that statistic. In #existentialism there is this core idea known as radical #freedom which is the transformative power we all have to assert ourselves on the world. In freedom we can reach out to change manipulate and adapt" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7471659494557355266) 2025-02-15T14:54Z 126.6K followers, 107.5K engagements "Are you a true patriot Are you a good Muslim Are you a proper #music fan Well first you must pass this test. You must look believe and behave a certain way. If not well then I'm afraid you can't call yourself that. These are examples of what the #philosopher Anthony Flew called the No True Scotsman fallacy. Imagine there's someone called John who's reading the news about a bloody and terrible crime and he says I can't believe a Scotsman would do such a thing. And the next day a #Scotsman is in fact found guilty. And so rather than admit he's wrong John says Well no true Scotsman would have" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7472400359495896342) 2025-02-17T14:49Z 126.6K followers, 73.9K engagements "#Scientism is not the same as science. If you are scientistic then you believe that science is the only way that you should live. And the scientistic are everywhere. They attack not only religion and mysticism but also certain kinds of #psychology and #philosophy . But for the philosopher Massimo Pigliucci this misunderstands what it is to live as a human. According to Pigliucci the #Stoics argue that the good life is one which combines our ethics our rationality and what science can reveal. As he told me in this week's Mini Philosophy newsletter "science will provide a certain input but that" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7473099866567232790) 2025-02-19T14:45Z 240.3K followers, 49.5K engagements "A few years ago the #philosopher Julian Baggini gave us the idea of cluster thinking. Cluster thinking is when you assume that if somebody believes one thing they have to automatically believe certain other things as well. For example if somebody is an advocate for gay rights we might assume that they are left leaning in their politics. Of course it's perfectly possible to be an advocate for gay rights without also being a socialist. The problem for Baggini is that cluster thinking promotes a kind of #tribalism . Various political and #ethical issues get lumped together with others and they" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7486080027352665366) 2025-03-26T14:45Z 139.1K followers, 52.8K engagements "If you rub shoulders with somebody they will rub off on you. You'll start to use the same words for things see the world in the same way and you will even start to behave like them. The company that we keep forms who we are and yet we are often strangely blas about it. We should take much more ownership of who we keep company with. And this is one of the many practical things that Epictetus and #Stoicism generally can teach us. Why do we often treat our relationships as if they are beyond our control We say 'Oh you can't choose family' or 'He's my friend. It can't be helped.' Yet every day" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7486848307671747862) 2025-03-28T14:45Z 139.1K followers, 133.6K engagements "In this week's Mini Philosophy newsletter I speak with the cognitive scientist and famous philosopher Susan Blackmore about drugs consciousness and the paranormal. Sign up via my bio to read it this Friday" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7488787523641117974) 2025-04-02T18:40Z 139.1K followers, 18.4K engagements "In a strange way one of the greatest compliments somebody can give you is when they take you for granted. Because we take for granted the things that we #love the most. When you are young and you have the right kind of #parents you don't thank them. You don't hope that they will be there. They just are. Being taken for granted means that you are reliable trusted and true. One of the philosophically interesting examples of this is with #sickness . A large part of sickness involves appreciating that which you took for granted. When you have a sore throat you cant believe you didn't enjoy" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7489412649088732438) 2025-04-04T14:15Z 147.4K followers, 368.5K engagements "There are some people in life who seem to have a gravitational pull. I'm sure you know the type. These are those people who have such a strength of character that they will inspire you with a single word and they will lift you up with a small gesture. Often this comes with age or authority but when somebody you respect says something it carries a certain weight. Sometimes this can be used for bad such as in those thoughtless 'banality of evil' moments that come in 'just following orders.' At other times these people can inspire us to greatness simply by their being great. When a person" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7497664669537045782) 2025-04-26T16:48Z 246.1K followers, 68.9K engagements "What would you consider to be an 'extreme' or ' #radical ' #political view and what views do you call 'mainstream' If I were to ask you those questions even a generation ago your answers would likely be different. And if we time travelled forward [--] years your answers would be different again. Because what is radical today might be mainstream tomorrow and what is normal today might be seen as weird to the future. This idea is known as the 'Overton Window.' Joseph #Overton argued that every generation has what it deems to be an acceptable range of political or #moral opinions. Or in other" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7497908922355928342) 2025-04-27T12:45Z 169.4K followers, 55.9K engagements "Nothing exists in isolation. Behind everything and every person there is an indescribably long #story explaining how and why things came to be. To understand anything we have to see it within its context within its frame and its #Relationship to all time. We have to see things as #God would see them as a dynamic and universal connectedness that is constantly evolving and constantly progressing. This is what #hegel called the Weltgeist. Hegel argues that you cannot make sense of any fact object or person as fragments. Everything is defined in relation to something else. Take for example this" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7499409199592410390) 2025-05-01T13:45Z 149.9K followers, 36K engagements "A child is outside on a walk when he turns to his dad and says 'Daddy what do you think the trees are saying' The dad scoffs and says 'Oh trees can't talk.' They carry on walking a bit and the child says 'Daddy what do you think the river wants' The dad rolls his eyes and says 'Ach it's just water son. They don't have any wants.' And so the child stops asking questions and he stops asking about nature. In this week's Mini #Philosophy interview I spoke with the bestselling nature writer Robert #Macfarlane about his new #book Is a River Alive And for MacFarlane this kind of instrumentalist" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7501298595409218838) 2025-05-06T13:45Z 149.9K followers, 39.8K engagements "A straw man is when you take somebody's argument and you make it so simplistic or so exaggerated that it makes for an easier target. For example if an #atheist says that #Christianity is just worshipping some bearded man in the sky well that's a straw man because barely any #Christian would accept that representation of their #religion . But the opposite of a #strawman is a steel man. And according to the late Daniel Dennett it's one of the key ingredients for a good philosophical discussion. In [----] #Dennett presented four rules for any good #philosophical debate. The first and most" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7502711205300145430) 2025-05-10T14:15Z 157.3K followers, 570K engagements "#ad Joseph Nye died last week. Nye was a political theorist who coined the expression soft power which is the idea that a country can exert influence through cultural and value attraction. For example the huge global popularity of Hollywood means American filmmakers can portray certain ideologies countries and even history a certain way. Control culture and you can control a lot. I read about Nyes death on Ground News. Ground News does two great things. First it gathers sources from all over the world into one place and gives you the context behind what youre reading. But most importantly it" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7508005378844609814) 2025-05-24T13:35Z 218.4K followers, 29.2K engagements "Love deepens as it grows. It matures just as much as our bodies and its quality and its focus will shift subtly. When you first meet the person that you love there's often a certain attraction. You find their personality magnetic and you find them good looking. But as the love settles it looks on different things. The Eros will live next to the simple companionship of holding hands. The side-aching laughter will exist alongside the sobbing and sorrowful embraces. Love is not just a feeling it's a story. And the #Greek #philosopher #Diotima argued that it progresses in stages. At first you" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7510950174613589270) 2025-06-01T14:15Z 168.6K followers, 64.8K engagements "A lot of people hate being told what to do. There is an odd rebellious part of many people's being that hates the idea that we have to do anything. I'm sure you can think back to a time in your life when somebody expected you to do one thing and you did the opposite just out of spite. It's a very deliberate and petulant middle finger up at the world that's making you try to do anything. A great example of this is found in Dostoevsky's work Notes from the Underground. #Dostoevsky once wrote that when presented with the beaten track we're expected to walk we will often 'stubbornly wilfully go" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7515035564609981718) 2025-06-12T13:30Z 181.1K followers, 73K engagements "In [----] Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull coined the expression 'the Peter Principle' which is the theory that all employees will eventually hit a point in the organisational hierarchy where they are no longer fit to do their job. The idea started out as a lighthearted observation but this is the reasoning behind it: all employees when they are good at their job will get promoted eventually. They'll carry on getting promoted until they reach a point where they are no longer good at their job. At which point of course they will no longer be promoted but they will linger in their post flailing" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7518803953975430422) 2025-06-22T15:59Z 182.3K followers, 120.4K engagements "In her poem Sometimes Mary Oliver gives three instructions for living life well. Of course the complexity of human life cannot be reduced to just three lines. But the more I think on what she says the more I appreciate it. First pay attention. Pay attention to other people and their depths. Pay attention to their complexity but also pay attention to the world around you because the world is a swirling sensory trove to be enjoyed. Direct your mind outside. Pay attention or you'll miss the show. Second be astonished. Oliver's work often talks about the sheer wonder of existence. How lucky and" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7524639643787169046) 2025-07-08T14:45Z 177K followers, 23.4K engagements "Why is it that some people are completely immune to facts Why are some people deaf to any arguments that aren't their own and blind to any alternative positions Well according to Leor Zmigrod in this week's Mini Philosophy interview it might be something to do with extremism. The psychologist Jean Piaget once argued that humans develop a conceptual framework for how we both experience the world and interpret it. The schema can be very basic as when the toddler labels a furry four-legged thing a 'dog.' But they can also develop according to ideology. For example let's say a Muslim and a" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7525487654499110166) 2025-07-10T16:15Z [--] followers, 97.1K engagements "For this week's Mini Philosophy interview I spoke with the philosopher Idil Galip about the philosophy of memes. I like memes Galip likes memes and I'm sure you like memes too. So here is the philosophy behind three popular memes. Hello I'm inside a meme and this one is known as 'Pepe the Frog.' Pepe is interesting because he's been everything: a stoner a sadboi a hate symbol and a crypto mascot. But he also represents something known as 'memetic shift' where the meaning of a meme will change beyond anybody's control. Pepe started out as a harmless cartoon but was co-opted by fringe internet" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7532427923282971926) 2025-07-29T14:15Z [--] followers, 11K engagements "You didn't choose to wear those clothes. You didn't choose to have that job or to eat your breakfast. Everything that we call a free choice is actually inevitable. And according to the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky in his book Determined everything about our mental life was actually written a long long time ago. Most of your brain was formed before you could speak and by the time you were out of your nappies your personality temperament and preferences had already started to take shape. Except for one part: the frontal cortex is responsible for planning inhibitions and your so-called" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7533228884767083798) 2025-07-31T14:30Z 232.2K followers, 604.5K engagements "Imagine you finally get what you wanted. You get the keys to that amazing house you get the new job you get a new phone and you feel amazing for about a week. And then bit by bit you start to feel roughly the same as you were before. And here you are again restless and searching for the next thing. This is what the psychologists Brickman and Campbell in the 1970s called the hedonic treadmill. It's the idea that no matter what happens to us whether we win the lottery or whether we break a leg we tend to return to the same baseline level of happiness. From an evolutionary perspective this makes" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7541734964925074710) 2025-08-23T13:45Z 210.9K followers, 929.6K engagements "Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance argues that any open society which allows for the total freedom of expression and of ideas risks intolerance taking over. Those who live under liberal democratic societies are best placed to overthrow those liberal democratic values. The revolution will be voted in. Fascism wins at the ballot box. And so the Paradox of Tolerance says that we need to be intolerant to intolerant ideas. This is something I spoke to Hilary Lawson about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview and we ask: how far should we entertain fringe or extreme ideas When he presented his" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7543288544157011222) 2025-08-27T15:32Z 228.3K followers, 160.2K engagements ""The Chinese Room" is one of the most persistent thought experiments in the philosophy of artificial intelligence and it goes back to the 1980s with John Searle. It goes like this. Imagine that there is a man in a room who does not speak Chinese. Now on the table in front of him is a book which contains if-then translation notes. So if you get this incomprehensible Chinese symbol then the book will tell you what symbol to give back in reply. Now imagine that somebody posts into this room a letter containing only Chinese symbols. The man with his book follows his instructions and he posts a" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7556969420472519958) 2025-10-03T14:00Z 240.7K followers, 618K engagements "The #Philosophy of #marx on #alienation at #work. For more Mini Philosophy content subscribe to my newsletter. Paid subscribers get exclusive video audio and articles. #learning #education" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7359241346420460832) 2024-04-18T16:15Z 275.8K followers, 11.8K engagements "Much of the #philosophy of #Nietzsche is a kind of strident #humanism that talks about the #Superman or #bermensch One metaphor he used for the journey of #growth and #selftransformation involves a camel a lion and a child. #joyful #playful #learning #education #literature #book" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7362928717657672993) 2024-04-28T14:43Z 276.6K followers, 27.2K engagements "#ontological arguments try to prove God using #logic and #analytic #truth and have a long history. It goes back to #anselm #ibnsina and #descartes but has a modern version in Alvin Plantinga which uses possible worlds. #Kang #god #multiverse #philosophy #religion" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7365506416964111648) 2024-05-05T13:26Z 265K followers, [----] engagements "The Frame Problem is one of the biggest problems facing #artificialintelligence . It goes back to the 1960s and while various solutions have pushed the problem back it hasn't quite gone away. Yet. Daniel #Dennett presents the problem in a thought experiment. Imagine that there is a #robot who has to save its battery in a room containing a bomb. It's programmed its instructions and it goes about its job. And so it finds the battery on a cart and decides to pull it out. Success But sadly for the robot the bomb is also on the cart. And so he carried out the bomb as well unaware of the side" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7387412297574092064) 2024-07-03T14:12Z 273.3K followers, 513.3K engagements "#Philosophy is often accused of being pointless. But today we're going to look at how it can give you the #power to take over the world. It's a power to change people's minds and make them do what you want. It all goes back to Aristotle's Rhetoric. #Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It's about using speech to change people's minds to win a debate and to whip up a crowd. It's about politicians running for election but it's also about how you can get a promotion at work. So what are these skills of persuasion Well Aristotle lists three: ethos pathos and logos. Ethos is being or seeming to be a" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7394822422354038049) 2024-07-23T13:27Z 276.9K followers, 74.5K engagements "In the 19th century the British philosopher Jeremy #Bentham designed what he thought was the perfect prison called the Panopticon. The #Panopticon was a circular #prison with open-sided walls on the cells with a tower in the middle. The tower could be manned or it could be unmanned because the fear and uncertainty was according to Bentham enough to grind rogues honest. In the 20th century the #French philosopher Michel #Foucault repurposed the Panopticon as a metaphor not for literal surveillance technology but for the power dynamics of observation. For Foucault when we're being watched we" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7396312664454057248) 2024-07-27T13:50Z 282.6K followers, 188.2K engagements "Twenty years ago the #philosopher Nick #Bostrom gave us the simulation argument where he argued that its not only possible that were living in a Matrix-like simulation but that its the most likely scenario. Bostroms argument uses #probability theory and it goes like this. If we assume that theres a near infinite number of possible civilizations in a near infinite universe then it takes only one of these civilizations to be technologically advanced and willing enough to create simulated minds like yours and mine. Eventually one civilization will be able to create The #Matrix and make it work." [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7398533524883606817) 2024-08-02T13:28Z 249.1K followers, 65.4K engagements "The Chinese Room is one of the most persistent thought experiments in the philosophy of artificial intelligence. It goes back to the 1980s with the #philosopher John Searle and it goes a bit like this. Imagine that there is a man in a room who does not speak Chinese. On the table in front of him is a vast book containing If this then that translation notes. So if you get this incomprehensible #Chinese symbol then it will tell you how to write the symbol in reply. Now imagine someone posts into this room a letter containing only Chinese symbols. The man with his book follows his instructions" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7403016438539177248) 2024-08-14T15:24Z 122.8K followers, 141.1K engagements "The problem with #artificialintelligence is that the very term is nonsense. It's an oxymoron a contradiction in terms. Intelligence goes beyond being able to create a certain output. It goes beyond #artificial parameters and excelling at only certain tasks. This is what the prominent #philosopher of AI Luciano Floridi argues. Floridi uses an example to make his point. Imagine you come to my house and there are lovely clean dishes on the table. I then ask you to guess who or what cleans the dishes. Was it the dishwasher or me by hand You tell me you can't tell. The output is the same: clean" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7408555518677110048) 2024-08-29T13:39Z 149.9K followers, 74.5K engagements "One of the most famous and important parables in #Daoism is known as the Story of the Lost Horse. It goes like this: Once upon a time there was a farmer whose horse ran away and everyone gathered round and said Oh bad luck friend. But the farmer only replied Maybe. The next day the #horse returned with six wild horses in tow and now everybody said Great luck. And the farmer just replied Maybe. The next day the farmer's son tried to tame one of the horses but he fell off and broke his leg. Oh what rotten luck everyone said. And the old farmer replied Maybe. The next week soldiers came for the" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7426724115861605665) 2024-10-17T17:15Z 265.3K followers, 1.1M engagements "In an ideal world Id be able to swear in this video. But bound as I am by the algorithmic gods I will to talk about #BS instead. In [----] the philosopher Harry #Frankfurt wrote a book about BS and why its not only different to standard #lying but its far far more dangerous to society. According to Frankfurt the difference between a #lie and BS is the concern for the #truth . When someone lies they want to substitute their lie for the truth. They want you to think what they are saying is true. They do this because they consciously or not still respect the idea of truth. They accept theres value" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7430339951805386016) 2024-10-27T16:30Z 265.7K followers, 41.4K engagements "#Plato really didn't like #democracy because he thought that it would always inevitably lead to mob rule. He thought that eventually anyone who could actually govern well would have to bow to the unreasonable whims of the mass. Plato compared a democracy to a ship. Imagine that there is a ship run by a captain who's deaf and short sighted. He's not very good. And so the crew start to think they can do better. They say things like Navigation is easy Anyone can run a ship They jostle to take over. They fight and scheme to become captain. But of course navigation isn't easy. And not everybody" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7433441541772954913) 2024-11-04T15:09Z 252.3K followers, 1.2M engagements "The #Libet #experiments are some of the most incredible and controversial studies to rattle the philosophical world. They shifted the entire #freewill debate and according to some people it even ended it. To understand the Libet experiments we have to know that there is a particular part of our brain which controls our readiness potential. Your readiness potential is what activates before any voluntary decision. So if you decide to use your thumb to scroll your phone then your readiness potential acts first and then your scrolling thumb comes second. So what was the experiment Well Libet got" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7445345324874452257) 2024-12-06T17:02Z 282.4K followers, 105.8K engagements "The #parable of the sower is one of the most important parables in the #Gospels and it's a great way to understand #enlightenment and #growth more broadly. It goes like this: There was once a person scattering some seed to grow some grain to eat. They were throwing it everywhere. Some of the seed landed on hard ground. It couldn't take root and so it came to nothing. Some of the seed landed on thin soil started to grow but was weak because it could not grow deep roots. Some seed landed in thorns and grew but was choked by the rival plants. And finally some seed landed on the good ground. It" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7446048402695097633) 2024-12-08T14:30Z 251.9K followers, 66.4K engagements "It said that debating an idiot is like playing #chess with a pigeon. They'll knock over the pieces they'll crap on the board and they'll fly back to their flock and claim victory. It's funny and insightful but according to the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer it's also deeply worrying. Because for #Bonhoeffer stupidity is far more concerning than evil. There are evil people in life. There are murderers cheaters and liars. But they are not the greatest threat. Because once something is known to be evil the good of the world can rally to defend and fight against it. When we know somebody is bad" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7447516167553568033) 2024-12-12T14:40Z 278.3K followers, 1.8M engagements "What if you've been doing gifts wrong What if handing somebody a #present and saying I hope you enjoy it is actually the worst way to do it Well that's what Jacques Derrida thought. As far back as records allow we can find examples of gift giving practices. It might be a dowry a birthday present or even bringing a bottle of wine to a party. Humans have always and everywhere given gifts to one another. The sociologist Marcel Mauss argued that gift exchange plays an important social function. It reinforces group solidarity and mutual obligation because when we give a gift we are creating a" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7451980384537021729) 2024-12-24T14:45Z 248.5K followers, 89.6K engagements "The Oracles Omens and Answers Exhibition is running at the @bodleianlibraries in Oxford and its great. Well worth a trip. *** A lot of people know the story of Prometheus who was punished by the gods for giving humans fire. But what's less commonly known is that Prometheus also gave us something far more important. He gave us foresight. He gave us planning. Recently I was invited by the Bodleian Library in #Oxford to see an exhibition titled Oracles Omens and Answers which explores the many ways humans have sought answers in the face of the unknown. The exhibition argues that seers and" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7455665640943275297) 2025-01-03T15:05Z 98.6K followers, 60.9K engagements "You can give somebody the best genetic advantage in the world. You can make them strong healthy good-looking intelligent or whatever. But if you put them in a place that oppresses or suffocates them they will not thrive. Humans like any living thing need the right conditions to #grow . So if you want to do something good we should allow other people to thrive. This is what Martha Nussbaums capability theory is all about. Nussbaums theory borrows a bit from #Aristotle and a bit from #Kant. It argues that there is a universal kind of human flourishing. It says that there is a proper way for" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7456450885967678752) 2025-01-05T15:17Z 268.2K followers, 107K engagements "#Hauntology is the idea that we are haunted by lost futures. It's when our entire outlook on life is framed by disappointment. We were promised one thing but we got this instead. For example in the late 20th century many Marxist philosophers couldn't understand why the Marxist predictions for progress hadn't happened and so they were left squinting at where and why it went wrong. And while the idea was coined first by Jacques #Derrida in his discussion of Marxism in recent times it's been repurposed by the philosopher Mark Fisher to be far broader. For Fisher hauntology is a nostalgia for the" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7458573573993631009) 2025-01-11T15:45Z [--] followers, 42.2K engagements "One of the strange things about the human condition is that we are social animals who also like to be alone. We're pulled by two different forces: the need to be around other people and the need to lock ourselves away. This tension is known as the Porcupine's Dilemma and it goes back to Arthur #Schopenhauer . Imagine two porcupines cold and shivering trying to keep warm on a frostbiting night. They huddle together to share their warmth but as they do so they prick each other. Half of the evening becomes a spiky dance as the porcupines oscillate between shared warmth and painful pricks. For" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7459415695298759969) 2025-01-13T15:02Z 257.3K followers, 168.6K engagements "What if death is not the end It might not be the end that you want but death will not be the end of your story. Because for Spinoza's #monism there is more to our postmortem existence than we might think. #Spinoza argued that the entire universe is one substance. Your body and each of your thoughts are part of this substance. Everything is part of one infinite eternal substance. But everything that we interact with all of the objects and the people that we see are modes. Modes are temporary configurations of this underlying reality. So you are just a particular composition at this moment in" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7461639966032956705) 2025-01-19T14:54Z 264.5K followers, 246.9K engagements "I had a #dream last night. An intense vivid dream. There are few things more boring than hearing about other people's dreams so all I will say is that the characters and the scenes within my dream felt real. And for Ren Descartes these kinds of dreams are reason why we might doubt everything. #Descartes argued that if we are to know anything with certainty we have to doubt everything at least once. And to do so Descartes presents three sceptical questions to sweep away everything that we think we know. First how can we trust our senses if they are known to be wrong A stick will appear bent in" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7463493150527556897) 2025-01-24T14:45Z 273.6K followers, 36.9K engagements "Very few pundits or polls predicted the first #Trump presidency or #Brexit . Very few people imagined that Russia would invade Ukraine or that #NFT s would become a thing. Hardly anyone imagined that #AI would revolutionize the world quite as quickly as it has. But after these hugely unexpected events you'll often see pundits line up to explain why they happened as if it was obvious all along. This is known as Talebs Black Swan phenomenon. The #BlackSwan Theory says that often the biggest and most world-shaping events are highly improbable but that when they happen we will retrofit neat" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7466043320544922913) 2025-01-31T14:35Z 122.9K followers, 94K engagements "Humans have a habit of screwing things up. There's a strange part of our being which needs some #drama . We thrive off it. And so we create conflict and find trouble because it gives us something to do. Our minds need action and nothing so bores and irritates the soul as stasis. This is an #ancient idea but it's found modern expression in Slavoj iek. There's something that doesn't quite fit right with humans because all other animals will find a kind of consistency in the order of things. They have an ideal condition; they seek it and they will stay there. Humans though take joy in the" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7466798982530895136) 2025-02-02T14:50Z 273.3K followers, 223.6K engagements "People will often describe certain #feelings as negative. So if you drew up a list of all of our emotions we would label some as good and some as bad. #Happiness is good. #Anxiety is bad. Feeling #stressed is bad but feeling relaxed is good. And so much is said about how we should rid or avoid these negative emotions. But according to the #philosopher Krista Thomason in her book dancing with the devil we should pull in and examine these #emotions closely. The sapiens in Homo sapiens is all about being rational. We can think deliberate and reason our way to almost anything. All of our" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7468302010706677024) 2025-02-06T14:45Z 122.9K followers, 40.7K engagements "In the 19th century the #English writer G. K. Chesterton gave us one simple rule: do not knock down random fences. The idea is to imagine you're on the walk somewhere in the countryside and you come across a fence blocking your path. It's a low wooden rickety kind of fence and you don't think it serves a purpose. So what you do is you knock it down; you think it'll make the path easier and all of the walkers of the world will gather round to thank you for your good #Samaritan work. But what you didn't realise was that the fence actually served a really important purpose for the farmer up the" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7468975147454631200) 2025-02-08T14:45Z 272.6K followers, 254.4K engagements "About [---] years ago the philosopher Immanuel #Kant gave us his theory of #deontology which argues that things are right or wrong regardless of the consequences and regardless of your feelings on the matter. It's a #duty based ethical theory. Now as a part of his deontology Kant gives us one quite stringent rule: It is always #wrong to #lie under any circumstances. He gives many arguments for this but one of the strongest is the argument from autonomy. Because when you lie to somebody you are robbing them of all of the information they need to make autonomous decisions. And if you rob somebody" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7480941001222147350) 2025-03-12T15:11Z [--] followers, 566.7K engagements "Simone #Weil once said that the first thing we should ask any close friend or relation is "What are you going through at the moment How is life hard for you right now" Of course most of us recoil from these questions. We don't want to ask them and we certainly don't want to answer them. And that's because they force us to attend to the needs and the lives of another. And of course this demands compassion. These are hard questions to hear because they require us to do something. In this week's Mini Philosophy interview I interview David Bather Woods about Schopenhauer. According to" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7491315905306135830) 2025-04-09T14:30Z 285.8K followers, 160K engagements "A mechanically integrated group is any portion of #society that shares certain values or ways of life. For example it might be the workers in a company a #bookclub that meets in a town hall or a #church congregation. For #Durkheim these groups don't just cooperate; they coexist. They are held together by likeness. Over time these groups establish strong #social norms. There are rules sometimes formal but often unspoken. All mechanically integrated groups have these norms and those who violate them are labelled deviant and then reprimanded or even banned. Because while we might challenge or" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7492040251704085782) 2025-04-11T14:15Z 259K followers, 25.6K engagements "The law of reversed effort is an idea first coined by the writer Aldous #Huxley but it's the reworking of an ancient idea found in many traditions such as #Stoicism and #Daoism . The basic idea is that the more you try to do some things the more you will fail at them. Here's an example. Imagine you were lying in bed staring at the ceiling desperately willing yourself to sleep. You've been like that for hours and so you shut your eyes and you say to yourself 'Go to sleep.' You force your body into such a relaxed state that surely slumber must follow. But of course nothing happens. You cannot" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7502049303012166934) 2025-05-08T14:45Z 284K followers, 109.1K engagements "Does it even make sense to talk about God Can we ever say something true or false about spiritual and religious things Because even for religious believers #God is thought to be beyond human cognition. He's thought to be so infinitely complex and #metaphysical that we cannot understand him from our physical and finite minds. So when we talk about God what are we actually talking about This is one of the many things I spoke to Alex O'Connor about in this week's Mini #Philosophy interview. Non-Cognitivism is the view that religious words do not match with any religious objects. There is no" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7519444250405211414) 2025-06-24T14:30Z 278.6K followers, 57.2K engagements "A few years ago the philosophy-leaning wings of the internet were talking about something first posted on Reddit. It's the closest you can come to a modern morality meme. It's called the shopping cart litmus test. The test is whether somebody returns their shopping cart to the stack once they are finished with it. As the original anonymous poster put it: Returning a shopping cart is an easy convenient task and one which we all recognise as correct and appropriate to do. It's not illegal to abandon your shopping cart and no one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart. You must" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7520232072942849302) 2025-06-26T13:30Z 259K followers, 293.9K engagements "About [--] years ago the psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger ran a series of experiments to reveal something strange: people who know the least often have the most confidence in their abilities. This has come to be known as the "DunningKruger effect." In short if you're incompetent you lack the skills you need to recognise your own competence and so you overestimate your abilities. You think you're great when you're not. But what's less commonly known is the opposite known as the "reverse DunningKruger effect." This is when you become truly competent. It's when you research you study" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7538385049016765698) 2025-08-14T14:00Z 284.1K followers, 1.4M engagements "There is a famous Jesuit expression that says "Give me the child before seven and I shall give you the adult." Because how we spend the first years of our life defines who we grow up to be. And how we teach and treat our children defines the societies in which we want to live. And according to Peter Gray in a recent Aeon essay we are depriving children of one of the most essential elements of development: free play. Free play is where a child leads the way. They choose where to go who to play with what to do and what the rules are. And of course this is risky because children are foolish and" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7546178694377753878) 2025-09-04T14:15Z 278K followers, 214K engagements "The Prisoner's Dilemma is one of the most famous thought experiments in the world and it bridges psychology mathematics and philosophy. It goes like this: imagine that you and I are caught for a crime that the police don't have much evidence for and so they give me an offer. If I confess and admit everything then I will walk free. But you will get ten years in prison. And they give you the same deal too. But if both of us betray the other person then we both get five years in prison. Or if we both stay quiet and give nothing away well the police have little to go on and we only get six months" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7546991535372373270) 2025-09-06T15:01Z 247.5K followers, 687.1K engagements "The Golem Effect is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy where if you imagine somebody as being cruel or mean or bad then their behaviour will meet your expectations. We will all rise or fall depending upon what others expect of us. In his [----] book Humankind Rutger Bregman argues that something similar is happening when we view ourselves as a species. Bregman argues that for centuries we've been telling ourselves a story where humans are the villains. Since at least Thomas Hobbes there's been a narrative that human nature is cruel egoistic and violent. It's what Bregman calls the 'veneer" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7550590626748697858) 2025-09-16T14:15Z 265.3K followers, 360.6K engagements "You never know if somebody loves you. We each love and hate and hurt and yearn in our own unique ways and we can never cross the cranial divide to check what somebody means when they use those words. Your love might be ten times greater than theirs. It might be ten times smaller. It might be something else entirely. This is something that Irvin Yalom refers to as 'existential isolationism.' Existential isolationism is a psychotherapeutic re-examination of a very old philosophical problem known as qualia. Qualia are all those subjective and private feelings that you and only you will" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7551368268678761750) 2025-09-18T13:45Z 284.5K followers, 507.9K engagements "People dont actually think that billionaires are immoral. They are just jealous. If they could be as rich as Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk they would be so in a flash. People dont actually think that power and strength is a bad thing. They are just angry that they are too weak and pathetic to be so themselves. This is what Friedrich Nietzsche called ressentiment. And he thought that all of our modern values are based upon envy and bitterness. Nietzsche argued that once upon a time the values of the world were power nobility and success. Alexander marching through Persia to India was called Great." [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7552191080477854998) 2025-09-20T15:18Z 268.5K followers, 621.4K engagements "Bayes theorem is probably the single most important thing any rational person can learn. So many of our debates and disagreements we shout about are because we don't understand Bayes theorem or how human rationality often works. Bayes theorem is named after the 18th century Thomas Bayes and essentially it's a formula which asks: When you are presented with all of the evidence for something how much should you believe it Bayes theorem teaches us that our beliefs are not fixed; they are probabilities. Our beliefs change as we weigh up new evidence against our assumptions or our priors. In other" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7552421797543660822) 2025-09-21T13:45Z 251.5K followers, 531.8K engagements "Most of us will at some point have to make a hard choice. It might be a relationship or a career or moving house but a hard choice is when there's no easy or obvious reason for choosing one path over another. But the philosopher Ruth Chang offers us a way out. Chang suggests that most of the reasons we consider when debating a choice are 'practical reasons.' This is when we weigh up the measurable outcomes of option A over option B. Consider for example somebody called Adam who's weighing up career choices. Should he choose one which is intellectually exciting or one which is financially" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7553203095056960790) 2025-09-23T15:15Z 284K followers, 445.9K engagements "Theres a certain type of person who will criticise everything. They will mock you if you try they will poke holes in what you say and they will tell you you are doing it all wrong but they will never ever be caught doing anything constructive themselves. These critics are those who are so relentlessly negative that they pull you down to their cynical sidelines. They cant stand anybody doing anything because its always going to be wrong. But as Theodore Roosevelt put it it is not the critic who counts but the brave and valiant person who enters the arena. In his book Swarm Byung-Chul Han" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7553685127386189078) 2025-09-24T18:00Z [--] followers, 163.6K engagements "How many really good friends do you have Your best friends the ones who matter the most. I bet its around five because thats the number that the social psychologist Robin Dunbar gave in his famous theory of social groupings. Dunbar began by studying primates and he noticed a pretty conclusive correlation between the size of a primates brain and how many social contacts they can have. Then he turned to looking at the size of a human brain and using his ratio he hypothesised that humans can have an upper limit of [---] meaningful social contacts. And weirdly that [---] number does come up again and" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7554359262986685718) 2025-09-26T14:30Z 251.5K followers, 117.3K engagements "Sometimes in life you will meet a person who believes something that is wrong. Worse they might even believe something that is damaging to either themselves or to other people. And in those situations what do you do If you've ever tried to change somebody's beliefs you'll realise how difficult it is to do because rational discussion often collapses into confrontational argument. But in [----] a team from the University of Pennsylvania offered a possible solution and it's called the bypassing technique. Bypassing is where instead of providing some negative takedown of an argument you instead" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7557327775955258646) 2025-10-04T15:15Z [--] followers, 399.6K engagements "In [----] the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg developed the Heinz Dilemma to measure how morally developed a person is. Give it a go to see how developed you are. Imagine there is someone called Heinz whose wife is dying. There is a drug which might save her but its too expensive and the only way to get it is to steal it. Here are your options: Heinz should not steal the drug. Heinz should steal the drug but he should go to prison for doing so. Heinz should steal the drug but should not go to prison. From these answers Kohlberg developed what he calls the three stages of moral development. The" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7560710485126024470) 2025-10-13T14:18Z 264.7K followers, 711.7K engagements "If you give it enough time you will suffer. You cannot be both mortal and human without knowing your fair share of pain. This is known as one of the 'marks of existence' in Buddhist philosophy which argues that if we understand suffering then we can hope to alleviate or even overcome it. According to Buddhist philosophy there are three kinds of suffering. The first is how most people usually understand suffering. It's bodily and physical pain. It's often associated with disease old age and of course death. You will know pain you will get sick and you will die. Secondly there's the kind of" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7561430086868536598) 2025-10-15T15:15Z 284K followers, 254.2K engagements "It's been reported that Gen Z are drinking less than previous generations and for some this is a good thing. It's a sign of maturity of virtue and of being able to find happiness without getting drunk. But in this week's Mini Philosophy interview the philosopher Edward Slingerland argues that getting drunk is important to any large-scale society. Slingerland argues that drinking and getting drunk with friends is a kind of chemical handshake. The problem in any large-scale society is how we can come to trust other people because we are all looking out for ourselves. And yet we recognise that" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7561838468020571414) 2025-10-16T15:15Z 248.5K followers, 425.1K engagements "Nutpicking is a kind of tactic when you try to present a fringe or extreme view as representative of an entire ideology or belief system. For example it's when somebody points at climate activists who are throwing soup at the Mona Lisa and says 'See they are all just terrorists.' Or it's when somebody posts a clip of a preacher saying that hurricanes are caused by homosexuality and says that that is representative of all believers. Technically there are three fallacies in one. The first is a kind of regular straw man where you pick the weakest version of an argument or the least competent" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7562812236243242262) 2025-10-19T14:15Z 251.5K followers, [----] engagements "The biologist Edward Wilson argued that the trouble with humans is that we have Paleolithic emotions with medieval institutions and godlike technology. And in this week's Mini Philosophy newsletter Toby Ord argues that the problem isn't theoretical it's existential. In his book Precipice Ord argues that we've reached a turning point. For [------] years we were powerless yet safe. Yes nature would kill us off and we would kill each other over and over again but we couldn't kill off the entire species. Now nuclear weapons artificial intelligence and synthetic biology have the power to wipe out" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7565908175355170051) 2025-10-27T16:15Z [--] followers, 227.1K engagements "The trolley problem is probably the most famous thought experiment in moral philosophy and it goes back to the 1960s with the British philosopher Philippa Foot. It goes like this: imagine that you are the driver of a trolley which is a kind of small train and it's speeding down the tracks. The brakes are not working and there's no way to stop this multi-tonne juggernaut. Now up ahead on the tracks are five workers idling away eating their lunch. They can't see the train and they can't get out of the way in time. The train will certainly kill them all. But there is an option: you can pull a" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7568055899248446742) 2025-11-02T15:45Z 265.3K followers, 545.7K engagements "A long time ago I read a thought experiment from the British philosopher John Locke and it was what inspired me to go on to study philosophy. It's a question and a thought that I suspect many people have as well. It goes like this: Imagine that there are two perfectly healthy people with perfectly functioning sense organs and they are on a walk and one turns to the other and says 'Wow look at that beautiful blue sky' And the other one nods along and agrees. Now the question that John Locke asks is: how do you know that when one person sees blue the other person doesn't actually see green They" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7569202234530008343) 2025-11-05T16:45Z 280K followers, 551.5K engagements "You can never be right. You can never say a belief is true or false because in every discussion debate and line of reasoning there will come a point when you have to give up. You can carry on trying if you want but according to Agrippa's trilemma you will inevitably and always reach one of three problematic points. The first is an infinite regress and this is when you will go on and on and on until you have no grounding whatsoever. The second is known as circular reasoning and this is when somebody's argument depends upon a point they have already made. Suppose for example that somebody says" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7571431416760716566) 2025-11-11T15:30Z 269.7K followers, 167.5K engagements "What makes your worries your anxieties and your obsessions a bit lighter What restores you Hopefully you have that one thing but there is nothing with a greater philosophical pedigree than a good walk. Many people have celebrated the humble walk but none so much as Henry Thoreau in his [----] essay Walking. Thoreau makes a distinction between a walk and a saunter. A walk is instrumental and practical. We walk to do something. I walk to the shops I walk to work or I walk to visit my friends. A saunter though is intentionally rambling. It has no other purpose than the walk itself. And for Thoreau" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7572875937071598870) 2025-11-15T16:15Z 283.7K followers, 91.5K engagements "Bayes Theorem is probably one of the most important things any rational person can learn because so many of our debates and disagreements that we shout at each other about are because we don't understand how our beliefs work. Bayes Theorem goes back to the 18th century Thomas Bayes and essentially it's a formula which asks: when we are presented with the evidence for something how much should we believe it Bayes Theorem teaches us that our beliefs are not fixed. They are probabilities. Our beliefs change as we weigh up new evidence against our assumptions or what are called priors. In other" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7577769635387378966) 2025-11-28T16:15Z 283.6K followers, 325.2K engagements "The problem with the idea of God is that it just doesn't make any sense. According to traditional monotheism God is said to have three attributes: God is all-powerful omnipotent; God is all-knowing omniscient; and God is all-loving omni-benevolent. Taken alone these have problems but put together they render the entire concept incoherent. But according to the medieval scholar Thomas Aquinas there might be a way out. For example one of the problems with omnipotence is that it can't beat itself. And the early question of children is something like: can God create a stone he cannot lift Or can" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7583672078201556246) 2025-12-14T19:15Z 284.9K followers, 349.2K engagements "Why do we find it so hard to fix our bad habits Why do 80% of New Year's resolutions fail within the first month Well according to the philosopher Matt Haug in an article for the Institute of Arts and Ideas it's because we're misunderstanding how change works. Aristotle argued that there are two types of self-control. The first the Enkrateic person is somebody who resists temptation by the strength of their willpower alone. So they see the open box of chocolates and they say no and they resist temptation. The Sphrn person is somebody who has aligned their desires with their goals and so they" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7590414707169840406) 2026-01-01T15:25Z 285.4K followers, 187.2K engagements "Be careful around anyone who thinks they are the pure ones. Be careful around anyone who thinks that their tribe their people are the righteous ones. Because as Bertrand Russell once argued anyone who is willing to divide the world into the righteous and the unrighteous are just a small push away from some terrible brutality. According to Russell when we divide the world into pure and impure saints and sinners we are simply creating an elaborate system of ethics where the herd justifies itself in wreaking punishment upon things it dislikes. When you simply disagree with someone you probably" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7594129449738571030) 2026-01-11T15:40Z 284.5K followers, 240.4K engagements "In his recent book The Crisis of Narration Byung-Chul Han argues that the great neurosis of our time is that we are trying to sell our lives to others. Han argues that we have always been storytelling creatures. We present accounts of our lives that include the deep structures of who we are. Yes we want to be accepted but by and large we would say 'This is who I am. Accept it or do not.' But in recent years Han argues that we have moved from storytelling to 'storyselling'. We say we believe things or do certain things knowing full well that people in the room will buy it. They'll say 'Good" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7595622939802733846) 2026-01-15T16:16Z 285.4K followers, 38.4K engagements "In [----] Francis #Fukuyama called #transhumanism the world's most dangerous idea. Transhumanism is the #philosophical idea that we should prolong enhance or utterly change human life using #technology . And so it's a broad school. At one end this involves the use of bionic limbs and implanted hearing aids and at the other end it involves uploading our consciousness as data to the cloud. It ranges from making life a bit easier to making us immortal. Fukuyama defines transhumanism as something which changes the human experience entirely such as prolonging a human life indefinitely or ridding us" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7453100958269050145) 2024-12-27T14:38Z [--] followers, 110.3K engagements "Pascal's Wager is one of the more curious and controversial arguments for the existence of God in the history of philosophy. Pascal was a philosopher but he was also a mathematician and his argument is based upon probability theory. Pascal argues that when it comes to the belief in God there are two options: either God exists or God does not exist. And when it comes to living our lives we have two options as well: either we live as atheists or we live as believers. Now suppose that I live my life as an atheist. I do not go to church I don't read my Bible and God does exist. Well in that" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7598225503203527938) 2026-01-22T16:35Z 290.8K followers, 163.4K engagements "#Descartes is one of the most famous #philosophers in history. And his #cogito - I think therefore I am - is probably the most famous argument there is. In fact its not too much to say that its the bedrock of all modern #philosophy at least in the West. To understand what it means we have to know that its a solution to a problem and the problem is known as radical #skepticism. Because you see a lot of Descartes works are trying to tackle the same problem that #thematrix raised four centuries later. And thats how can we be sure of anything How do we know that all that we see and experience are" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7355101524357352736) 2024-04-07T12:30Z 287.1K followers, 17.4K engagements "We only tend to focus on things when they stop working. So if you have a sore throat then you're painfully aware of swallowing. Or if the spacebar sticks then you realize how important it is. The world is taken for granted until it breaks and then we'll turn our attention to it. This is what #Heidegger explores in this distinction between handiness and being at hand. For Heidegger the world does not exist as an independent thing but instead is only understood in how it relates to me. So whenever we meet an object in the world we ask the question What can this object be used for Everything" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7396716998522178849) 2024-07-28T15:59Z [--] followers, 33.9K engagements "In [----] the philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay called The #Hedgehog and the Fox where he argued that all thinkers can be divided into two. There are hedgehog thinkers and there are #fox thinkers. Berlin himself admitted that the essay was just a bit of fun but his idea has been taken seriously by a great many people. A hedgehog thinker is a person who has one great conception of the world and they will apply this conception to everything. A hedgehog might not be fast or big or cunning but they have spikes and that's all they need. Likewise thinkers like #Plato or #Pascal believe that" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7460431710426041632) 2025-01-16T14:45Z [--] followers, 117.1K engagements "Schopenhauer's Bus Ride is a compelling and uplifting thought experiment presented by the #philosopher Mark Rowlands in his book Running with the Pack. It goes like this: Imagine you are trapped on a seriously unpleasant bus ride. It's uncomfortably hot and the toilet at the back is blocked overflowing and stinking. Sweat is streaming down your body and you bounce up and down as the hellish bus hits every pothole along the dirty track. The people all around you are making up these ridiculous stories and there are fights and shouting matches all over the place. The bus is miserable. Then out" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7506946751027268886) 2025-05-21T17:07Z [--] followers, 83.2K engagements "Last year a team from New York University ran a study to explain how people make #decisions. They wanted to know what factors mattered to people and what goes through somebody's head as they're deciding a course of action. According to the study most people have three lenses through which they decide any decision. And what's interesting is that each of these lenses often uses a different part of the #brain . First there is the moral lens. This decides if something is right or wrong mostly based on social norms and collective values. For instance 'Will saying this mean thing make somebody sad'" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7510210901404912918) 2025-05-30T14:45Z 287.5K followers, 42.2K engagements "AI is just slop rubbish posts rubbish videos and smooth-faced cartoons straight out of the uncanny valley. AI is getting worse it's getting lazier and its output more recognisable. AI is just a fad and a bubble. No one even cares anyway. Well according to Louis Rosenberg in an article for Big Think these are all false and desperate narratives designed to help us cope in a world where AI is changing everything. Rosenberg argues that the sudden and drastic rise in AI has left us reeling. And so as he put it 'society is collectively going through the first stage of grief denial over the very" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7600797366131739926) 2026-01-29T14:55Z 287.1K followers, 25.8K engagements "#kierkegaard and #sartre both argued we're exhilarated and terrified by our #freedom . That wild panic of #choice is key to #existentialism and it's got a name: l'appel du vide. #philosophy" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7360682457026301216) 2024-04-22T13:27Z 288.4K followers, [----] engagements "For Carl #Jung. Archetypes are these universal images which have existed since remotest times. They pop up in myths fables stories and our collective unconscious. #Archetypes are not people as such but rather they're different modes of behaving. Jung doesn't give a definitive list of archetypes but we can pause to hone in on three. The #Persona is the identity that we construct when we're out and about. It's the mask that we wear but it needn't be a suffocating or burdensome thing; it might be a protection. But sometimes our persona weighs heavily and it creates instability and neuroses. The" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7374797165820005665) 2024-05-30T14:19Z 288.5K followers, 20.8K engagements "Substance dualism is the idea that the universe is not just physical matter. Instead the world is divided into two: physical stuff and mind stuff. There are thoughts and then there's your body. There's your brain and then there's your mind. One of the principal proponents of dualism is Ren Descartes. #Dualism is argued on the basis of the law of identity. Essentially he says that if two things are different in any way then they must be different things. So if we can prove that our minds are different from our bodies then we must establish them as different substances. #Descartes then goes on" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7381840940656266529) 2024-06-18T13:53Z 289.1K followers, 11.2K engagements "Most people know the famous #Zen kan: 'What is the sound of one hand' But few people know how the question is framed or how the story ends. Once upon a time a Zen master called his student to him and he said 'Show me the sound of two hands.' The #student thought for a bit and then he clapped. 'Now show me the sound of one hand' the master said. The student was confused because he could not clap with only one hand. 'Go away and find me the sound of one hand' the master said. And so the student went away and thought for days. Finally he came back and he said 'I have found it.' And he whistled" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7474328332532714774) 2025-02-23T14:45Z 289.1K followers, 103.6K engagements "We should be furious at God. If there is an all-powerful God who created the world with such depravity cruelty and evil then Hes not worthy of worship. Hes worthy of scorn. This is the charge that #Dostoevsky levels in his famous book The Brothers Karamazov. In the book the character Ivan is criticising the #Christian God but it could apply to all #monotheism as well. Ivan asks how it is that God can allow one type of #evil above all others: the #suffering of children. He gives two examples. First the story of a young girl who wet the bed and is forced to stay the night in an outhouse covered" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7479154336203918614) 2025-03-08T15:30Z 289.1K followers, 113.7K engagements "So much of the news at the moment is fixated on one man and how that one man is changing the world. But how will historians of the future remember today The writer Thomas Carlyle once argued that #history is defined by the biography of great men. #Caesar made Rome #Washington made America and Mao made #China . Individuals defining history. But in this week's Mini #Philosophy interview the #historian Anton Howes argues that this is wrong. Howes is sympathetic to the #Marxist interpretation of history which says that no one person defines history but that we are all 'part of circumstances" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7493119565682052374) 2025-04-14T14:30Z 289K followers, 59.7K engagements "All empires will collapse eventually. The dominant power of any age will be overrun by corruption incompetence and a lack of vision. A country will forget what made it strong and complacency breeds fragility. When a nation starts to look after only a few people at the top it's often not long before something or someone takes over. This is known as the 'Empire cycle' and it goes back to Ibn Khaldun. Ibn Khaldun argued that the strength of any empire or nation depends upon its 'asabiyyah' or 'social cohesion.' This is the unity or bond between a tribe a nation or a people. An asabiyyah is" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7512848482303118615) 2025-06-06T14:49Z 288.6K followers, 294.1K engagements "Sometimes the best philosophy comes not from philosophers but from novelists. And Ursula Le Guins The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is one of the most memorable ethical dilemmas you can get. It goes like this. Imagine a perfectly happy city known as Omelas. Everyone has everything they need. Everyone lives a life of pleasure. Everything is a smiling dancing utopiaor so it seems. Because in a dark basement somewhere in Omelas a small child is locked away and tortured. She lives in filth her belly empty surviving on scraps and she is sporadically beaten. We learn that for whatever reason the" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7570697757787229462) 2025-11-09T19:15Z 288.6K followers, 272.8K engagements "'What have you got to hide' your friend asks and she looks at you suspiciously. She's trying to get you to install a new technology called the OmniWatch. The OmniWatch is a high-definition camera that records you all of the time. 'We all have it' she says. 'Why would you not want it You don't have any secrets do you' This is a question that Dave Eggers asks in his book The Circle and it's about the value of privacy. Imagine a near-future where social media has taken over. Everybody has it and everybody obsesses about it. And so everything you do is recorded it is judged and it is appraised by" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7585139415714925846) 2025-12-18T16:15Z 288.1K followers, 31.8K engagements "Anti-natalism is the idea that it is wrong to have kids. It argues that anybody who chooses to have biological children is immoral. One of the earliest and most cited proponents of anti-natalism is David Benatar. Benatar argues that we each give an 'unreliable assessment' about how good our lives actually are. We say things are great when actually life is far worse than we let on. Humans are optimistic. We tend to focus on the rare and fleeting moments of happiness that pop up in the long night of misery that makes up reality. We shrug our shoulders and say 'Oh it's not that bad' when" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7585644320036834582) 2025-12-19T18:54Z 288.6K followers, 749.2K engagements "Against my better judgment I'm going to share one of the more ridiculous outtakes from this year's filming. I'll admit that it's not my finest or most heroic of hours but I'm going to cave under the avalanche of peer pressure and share it nonetheless. I hope you enjoy it half as much as my friends and family clearly have. Merry Christmas" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7587812948127550742) 2025-12-25T15:09Z 288.6K followers, 103.2K engagements "Why are some people attracted to extreme ideologies Why are some people more likely to be radicalised than others Well according to Hannah Arendt in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism the single biggest factor is the rise in isolation and loneliness. Arendt argues that loneliness is not the same thing as being alone. Philosophers have long pointed out that solitude being alone is different to loneliness. Loneliness is characterised as a painful and unhappy state which involves a degree of powerlessness and feeling irrelevant. It's when we feel we are excluded and that our voice is not" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7596350534076943638) 2026-01-17T15:19Z 290.8K followers, 141.4K engagements "Sometimes you just need to scream. Sometimes you need to sob to wail and to cry. Sometimes you need to sprint up a hill or to punch a boxing bag. And after you do so you feel better. After some primal explosion of pent-up emotion you feel calmer and things feel alright. This is known as catharsis and it goes back to Aristotle. The Greeks were big fans of moderation. The great physician Hippocrates argued that all illnesses are caused by a misbalance of fluids in the body. And Aristotle argued that this can be extended to the soul where our thoughts and feelings need rebalancing as well." [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7597841174539275542) 2026-01-21T15:44Z 290.8K followers, 52.7K engagements "Tolkien once argued that the secret of a good fairy tale or myth is not in the strange characters or the magical adventures. It's in what he called the eucatastrophe and it's something we all need to hear more of more often. The eucatastrophe is a sudden and final reversal of fortunes. It's the happy ending. The Lord of the Rings does not end with the hobbits dead and Sauron cackling over his all-cash industrial empire. It ends with light beating dark with simple kindness love and companionship winning out over evil. For Tolkien the stories we tell should inspire us to greatness. They should" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7599325735005719830) 2026-01-25T15:45Z 290.8K followers, 121.2K engagements "According to Nietzsche few people actually care about the #truth . Few people care about #facts . Instead most people are concerned with looking good and feeling good. Most people care only about comfort security and power. From this observation the philosopher Joseph Shieber coined the expression 'The #Nietzsche thesis' where he argued 'the goal of most conversations is not about seeking the truth but about self-preservation.' In other words most people would accept or reject a fact based upon calculation rather than any concern for the truth. As Nietzsche put it we will accept and look for" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7507244194386218262) 2025-05-22T14:30Z [--] followers, 1M engagements "#Daoism is one of the oldest recorded philosophies and it belongs to a very different tradition to that inherited from the ancient #greeks Daoism is all about finding #harmony in life and with the universe. The #dao translates as The Way and its often compared to the flow of a river. Like a river the Dao is what carries and directs us all and we are just boats pushed along its current. You can row against the current but thats when life is hard and to be happy is to go with the flow. That going with the flow is known as #WuWei. Wu Wei is when we let go and let life carry us along. And its not" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7400092089503059233) 2024-08-06T18:16Z 290.7K followers, 156K engagements "Stoicism is really popular these days not least because it comes with a ready-made list of practical and effective tips about how to live. And one of the most popular of these is known as the dichotomy of control. The dichotomy of control goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus who argued that there are some things within our power and some things that are not. And so wisdom comes in accepting responsibility and taking ownership of what we can change and learning to deal with what we can't. But this doesn't mean that we should just shrug our shoulders and say 'Oh well' because" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7564356237865946391) 2025-10-23T15:15Z [--] followers, 322.9K engagements "The word metanoia is when you have to build something new from the broken remnants of your past. It's when a drastic change or a crisis forces you to look at the world differently and to change direction. It's an epiphany a revelation or a fresh start. Metanoia literally means changing your mind. But this is not some humdrum changing your order at a restaurant. This is an existential root-and-branch change in your being. The Christian Church Father Tertullian saw it as a kind of conversion experience and metanoia appears in the Gospels a lot and it's often translated as repentance. It was" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7589305079635643670) 2025-12-29T15:39Z [--] followers, 139K engagements "In the Iliad Achilles is given a choice: would he rather have a quiet and long life that is quickly forgotten or a short life with immortal fame If you were given the same choice what would you pick The writer Ernest Hemingway is often credited with saying that everyone has two deaths. The first is when they are buried in the ground and the second is the last time somebody mentions their name. In this way some people can be immortal. The point is that while we all must die our legends can live on through what Ernest Becker called immortality projects. When people name a building an invention" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7558367681947176214) 2025-10-07T15:15Z [--] followers, 200.3K engagements "You're having dinner with some colleagues when somebody clicks their fingers and says 'Waiter here now.' Somebody exits a taxi without having said hello goodbye or thank you. A government executes a traitor to make an example of them. What do all of these have in common Well according to Immanuel Kant they are treating people as a means to an end and they are all wrong. Kant argued that there is an unconditional dignity that comes with being a rational human being and we should always work to respect that. He said that we should act to treat humanity in every case as an end and never as a" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7590790495920540950) 2026-01-02T15:44Z [--] followers, 276.2K engagements "We often like to believe that the world is governed by fairness by rules and by international law. But [----] years ago the Athenian army delivered a brutal reality check that still defines political philosophy today. It's known as the 'Melian Dialogue.' In [---] BC Athens was the regional superpower they dominated the area with their wealth and their armed forces. And so Athens used their power to demand that the tiny island of Melos surrender and pay tribute. The Melians argued from a place of morality. They said that it was unjust to attack a neutral party and that the gods would protect their" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7592265957414882582) 2026-01-06T15:09Z [--] followers, 343.8K engagements "Why is it that sometimes the smartest people you know do the most idiotic of things Why is it that an expert in one field can look like a fool in another Well according to the philosopher Nathan Ballantyne it might be down to something called 'epistemic trespassing.' Epistemic trespassing is when an expert in one field thinks that they are an expert in another. So if you are good at coding at astrophysics or medicine you imagine that you are good at politics at sociology or at anthropology. Epistemic trespassing is when a tech billionaire who thinks that because he is successful in one" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7598573039478934806) 2026-01-23T15:04Z 290.8K followers, 142.6K engagements "About [---] years ago the philosopher Immanuel Kant gave us his theory of deontology which argues that things are right or wrong regardless of the consequences. And regardless of your feelings on the matter it's a duty-based ethical theory. Now as a part of his deontology Kant gives us one quite stringent rule: it is always wrong to lie under any circumstances. He gives many arguments for this but one of the strongest is the argument from autonomy. Because when you lie to somebody you are robbing them of all of the information they need to make autonomous decisions. And if you rob somebody of" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7598964456206421270) 2026-01-24T16:23Z 290.8K followers, 203.8K engagements "Descartes once argued that it is necessary once in your life to question everything you believe and everything you value. You need to find a quiet spot do a great deal of thinking and go back to first principles. Because most people collect their beliefs like some kind of cultural inheritance and we take these items and we stuff them in the great attic of our mind until we can move no longer. This attic is riddled with half-truths falsehoods and misunderstandings and so we need to stop occasionally to sort things out. We need an intellectual reset. We need to spring-clean the attic. Descartes" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7601171230728703254) 2026-01-30T15:06Z 290.8K followers, 138.2K engagements "I wrote in the piece on the Mini Philosophy Substack where I argue that there are five different types of philosopher. Which one of these are you First there is the Sphinx. The Sphinx questions everything but answers nothing. They'll say something like 'why do you think that way' until you doubt your own existence. Socrates was the ultimate sphinx and while they might be maddening they are also effective. They are the midwives of knowledge. Second the Leviathan. These are those who create and live by a system philosophy. There's one book one philosophy one idea that governs everything they" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7603742232411344151) 2026-02-06T13:23Z 290.8K followers, 72.1K engagements "You open your phone and see a post from your best friend. Except they're not really your best friend anymore are they Because you've drifted. The person you once knew at school is different to the person you know today and if you're honest you are different too. When we look back at things it's easy to marvel at how far things have changed. A relationship we thought would last forever lasted only a few years. The dreams we had in our 20s might seem embarrassing to us in our 30s and this is why the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that 'no man ever steps into the same river twice for" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7606732416484461846) 2026-02-14T14:46Z 290.8K followers, 118.6K engagements "Suppose that somebody insults you at a party they call you boring or stupid or irrelevant and for days afterwards you can't stop thinking about it. You replay it over and over again. You are hurt and then you are angry and then you are hurt again. The stoic philosopher Epictetus would ask you this question 'why have you given this person so much power over your mind' Epictetus argues that an insult is just words that come from one person's mouth and go to your ears and what happens next is entirely up to you. You can choose to take the words in examine them and let them fester or you can" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7605976736806882582) 2026-02-12T13:54Z 290.8K followers, 221K engagements "Technology was supposed to make our lives less stressful and easier. It was supposed to make things better in almost every way. And yet for every problem technology solves it seems to raise three more. This is why the French philosopher Jacques Ellul called it the 'betrayal of technology.' In [----] Ellul argued that while technology was supposed to liberate us it has enslaved us not through force but through necessity. Because while it might solve this or that problem it also creates three dependencies. For example the car might have relieved us of the tyranny of distance but then chained us" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7605250703849803030) 2026-02-10T14:57Z 290.8K followers, 78.4K engagements "Imagine that when you are born some kind god gave you a bag full of magical seeds. If you were to plant these seeds they would turn into giant beanstalks magic money trees and entire fields of plenty. They are the seeds could change the world and make you the hero of adventure. Now imagine this god looking aghast as you their your seeds into the fire. You put your seeds in the attic and forget about them forever. A bag of potential lies wasted as you too waste away. For Confucius this is how we ought to see the human condition: as one of huge possibilities to be nurtured or squandered. One of" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7604498950770461974) 2026-02-08T14:19Z 290.8K followers, 29K engagements "I wrote in the piece on the Mini Philosophy Substack where I argue that there are five different types of philosopher. Which one of these are you First there is the Sphinx. The Sphinx questions everything but answers nothing. They'll say something like 'why do you think that way' until you doubt your own existence. Socrates was the ultimate sphinx and while they might be maddening they are also effective. They are the midwives of knowledge. Second the Leviathan. These are those who create and live by a system philosophy. There's one book one philosophy one idea that governs everything they" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7603742232411344151) 2026-02-06T13:23Z 290.8K followers, 72.1K engagements "Most people don't actually want the truth. They want to be right. And if the truth gets in the way of being right their minds will do something odd they will lock down. And according to the philosopher Chris Ranalli when this happens we should start to call it indoctrination. In his work on social epistemology Ranalli argues that indoctrination isn't just about what you believe but how that belief is sealed off from the rest of the world. It's a psychological cage where the door in and out stays barred. Ranalli points out that indoctrination works by pre-emptively dismissing any" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7603387770954091799) 2026-02-05T14:27Z 290.8K followers, 117.9K engagements "Why is it that the more you try to be happy the more miserable you feel Why is it that trying to be better often makes you feel worse off Well according to the philosopher Alan Watts it's all down to what he calls the 'backwards law.' Watts argues that when we try to pursue a positive experience it reinforces the fact that we lack it in the first place. And so there is a kind of 'not-enough' feedback loop. For example if you desperately want to be rich you will walk through life feeling poor and unworthy regardless of your bank balance. If you want to be attractive and desirable you'll be" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7602663493900176662) 2026-02-03T15:37Z 290.8K followers, 55.6K engagements "One of the many things you learn as you grow up is that there is more going on behind what people are saying. Of course there are outright lies but there's also a range of other psychological phenomena. For example deflection is where we shift attention away from our own feelings or projection is where we claim somebody else is feeling what we actually are. Emotions are complicated. James Baldwin once wrote that 'I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense once hate is gone they will be forced to deal with pain.' Baldwin's point is that we" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7602313611087842582) 2026-02-02T16:59Z 290.8K followers, 100.9K engagements "Have you ever noticed how some people have an excuse for everything They say 'It's the way I was born' or 'My boss just hates me' or 'It's bad luck.' They blame the universe their past or their DNA for the state of their lives because it's easier to be a victim of circumstance. But according to Jean-Paul Sartre this is an example of what he called bad faith. In his most famous line Sartre said 'existence precedes essence' which means that you aren't born with a pre-written destiny. You are a blank canvas and you are nothing more than the sum of your actions. But possessing such immense and" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7601533339727662358) 2026-01-31T14:31Z 290.8K followers, 48.2K engagements "Descartes once argued that it is necessary once in your life to question everything you believe and everything you value. You need to find a quiet spot do a great deal of thinking and go back to first principles. Because most people collect their beliefs like some kind of cultural inheritance and we take these items and we stuff them in the great attic of our mind until we can move no longer. This attic is riddled with half-truths falsehoods and misunderstandings and so we need to stop occasionally to sort things out. We need an intellectual reset. We need to spring-clean the attic. Descartes" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7601171230728703254) 2026-01-30T15:06Z 290.8K followers, 138.2K engagements "Imagine you pass somebody in the park and say you nod you smile and you go back to your life. Then a few days later you notice the same person behind you in the supermarket. According to the Korean idea of in-yun something important is happening here. In-yun means fate but it really means the fate between people and relationships. It's tied to Buddhist ideas like samsara and reincarnation. But essentially it says that if you see a stranger more than once it is not just a coincidence. That is the universe trying to tell you something. It is trying to say that here is someone important they" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7600062846126312726) 2026-01-27T15:25Z 290.8K followers, 114.4K engagements "We live in the age of the narcissist. We see it in our toxic ex-partners in pouting influencers and arrogant bosses. It's vanity but on steroids. And at the same time we live in an age of powerlessness. We feel that our voices and our actions don't count for anything and so we don't protest we don't vote and we don't care. And according to Christopher Lasch these are not unrelated facts. Lasch argues that rather than criticising and mocking the individual narcissist we should point aim at what he calls The Culture of Narcissism. Because Lasch argues that when a society loses its sense of the" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7599730443042458903) 2026-01-26T17:55Z 290.8K followers, 48.4K engagements "Tolkien once argued that the secret of a good fairy tale or myth is not in the strange characters or the magical adventures. It's in what he called the eucatastrophe and it's something we all need to hear more of more often. The eucatastrophe is a sudden and final reversal of fortunes. It's the happy ending. The Lord of the Rings does not end with the hobbits dead and Sauron cackling over his all-cash industrial empire. It ends with light beating dark with simple kindness love and companionship winning out over evil. For Tolkien the stories we tell should inspire us to greatness. They should" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7599325735005719830) 2026-01-25T15:45Z 290.8K followers, 121.2K engagements "About [---] years ago the philosopher Immanuel Kant gave us his theory of deontology which argues that things are right or wrong regardless of the consequences. And regardless of your feelings on the matter it's a duty-based ethical theory. Now as a part of his deontology Kant gives us one quite stringent rule: it is always wrong to lie under any circumstances. He gives many arguments for this but one of the strongest is the argument from autonomy. Because when you lie to somebody you are robbing them of all of the information they need to make autonomous decisions. And if you rob somebody of" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7598964456206421270) 2026-01-24T16:23Z 290.8K followers, 203.8K engagements "Why is it that sometimes the smartest people you know do the most idiotic of things Why is it that an expert in one field can look like a fool in another Well according to the philosopher Nathan Ballantyne it might be down to something called 'epistemic trespassing.' Epistemic trespassing is when an expert in one field thinks that they are an expert in another. So if you are good at coding at astrophysics or medicine you imagine that you are good at politics at sociology or at anthropology. Epistemic trespassing is when a tech billionaire who thinks that because he is successful in one" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7598573039478934806) 2026-01-23T15:04Z 290.8K followers, 142.6K engagements "Pascal's Wager is one of the more curious and controversial arguments for the existence of God in the history of philosophy. Pascal was a philosopher but he was also a mathematician and his argument is based upon probability theory. Pascal argues that when it comes to the belief in God there are two options: either God exists or God does not exist. And when it comes to living our lives we have two options as well: either we live as atheists or we live as believers. Now suppose that I live my life as an atheist. I do not go to church I don't read my Bible and God does exist. Well in that" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7598225503203527938) 2026-01-22T16:35Z 290.8K followers, 163.4K engagements "Sometimes you just need to scream. Sometimes you need to sob to wail and to cry. Sometimes you need to sprint up a hill or to punch a boxing bag. And after you do so you feel better. After some primal explosion of pent-up emotion you feel calmer and things feel alright. This is known as catharsis and it goes back to Aristotle. The Greeks were big fans of moderation. The great physician Hippocrates argued that all illnesses are caused by a misbalance of fluids in the body. And Aristotle argued that this can be extended to the soul where our thoughts and feelings need rebalancing as well." [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7597841174539275542) 2026-01-21T15:44Z 290.8K followers, 52.7K engagements "How do you know if you have a really good frienda best friend Because it's often hard to peek behind what somebody says or does to determine what really matters. But according to the philosopher Rebecca Roache there is a simple if counterintuitive test: your best friends are those you don't have to talk to. In an essay for Aeon Roache runs through the various reasons why a silence might be called awkwardor not. She argues that when we meet other people weunconsciously or notassume that the entire point is to have a conversation. So if I decide to meet you in a caf the entire point is to chat" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7597120335925890326) 2026-01-19T17:07Z 290.8K followers, 309.8K engagements "Why are some people attracted to extreme ideologies Why are some people more likely to be radicalised than others Well according to Hannah Arendt in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism the single biggest factor is the rise in isolation and loneliness. Arendt argues that loneliness is not the same thing as being alone. Philosophers have long pointed out that solitude being alone is different to loneliness. Loneliness is characterised as a painful and unhappy state which involves a degree of powerlessness and feeling irrelevant. It's when we feel we are excluded and that our voice is not" [TikTok Link](https://www.tiktok.com/@philosophyminis/video/7596350534076943638) 2026-01-17T15:19Z 290.8K followers, 141.4K engagements Limited data mode. 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@philosophyminis Mini Philosophy
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Social Influence
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Social topic influence philosophy #508, in the, if you, to the, the world, the first, history, theory #1335, the great, just a
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"The Chinese Room is one of the most persistent thought experiments in the #philosophy of #artificialintelligence . It goes back to the 1980s with the philosopher John Searle and it goes a bit like this. Imagine that there is a man in a room who does not speak #chinese. On the table in front of him is a vast book containing If this then that translation notes. So if you get this incomprehensible Chinese symbol then it will tell you how to write the symbol in reply. Now imagine someone posts into this room a letter containing only Chinese symbols. The man with his book follows his instructions"
TikTok Link 2024-04-11T12:25Z [----] followers, 43.2K engagements
"#stoicism has always been a hugely popular #philosophy. One reason for that is because of the 'dichotomy of control' which is explained best by the #stoic #philosopher #epictetus"
TikTok Link 2024-04-17T12:30Z 239.9K followers, 40.1K engagements
"Joseph Campbell spent his life studying #literature and #mythology and he wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it he argued all #stories have a similar structure. They reflect the #journey of a #human life. #philosophy #structuralism #starwars #lotr #religion #marvel #disney"
TikTok Link 2024-04-24T13:35Z [----] followers, 12.1K engagements
"In the 1960s Philippa Foot gave us one of the most famous thought experiments in #philosophy The trolley problem is not only about right and wrong but about #action and inaction. #learning #education #bystandereffect #ethics"
TikTok Link 2024-04-26T15:17Z 211.6K followers, 951.2K engagements
"The problem of #freewill and determinism is a tricky problem that spans #physics #biology and #philosophy It's complicated also by the fact we can't easily define it. Here we look at John #Locke and his locked room thought experiment. #learning #libertarianism #freedom #choice #education"
TikTok Link 2024-04-30T20:25Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"#Panpsychism was once a niche concern of #philosophy but with the rise of #ai it's become mainstream. The basic claim is that anything can have a degree of #consciousness if it matches certain criteria. #cognition #psychology #learning #mind #artificialintelligence #cognitive"
TikTok Link 2024-05-03T12:50Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"#aesthetics is the #philosophy of #art and #beauty and it often focuses heavily on the European tradition. #wabisabi is a concept borrowed from #japan and #Japanese aesthetics which speaks to a different philosophical #history but which we can all appreciate"
TikTok Link 2024-05-08T12:53Z 98.6K followers, 29.7K engagements
"The problem of #induction is one of the greatest unsolved problems in #philosophy today. It goes back to David #hume and it is about #truth #reason and how #science works. The basic point is that no amount of past observation can guarantee that the future will be the same. #scientificmethod #epistemology #learning #education #philosopher"
TikTok Link 2024-05-09T13:59Z 179K followers, 22.8K engagements
"One of the #norms of modernity is that we have to pretend to be #happy all of the time. According to Harrison and her @The New Happy we present an illusion of #selfsufficiency and #independence when we all need #help from one another. Humans are #social animals and we are happiest when we work together. #philosophy #happiness #friendship #support #MentalHealth"
TikTok Link 2024-05-17T13:13Z 164.4K followers, 10K engagements
"A long time ago the Greek philosopher #Xenophanes noticed how odd it was that the #gods we worship bear a striking resemblance to us. They walk like us talk like us and behave like us. They have the same petty jealousies and ambitions as humans and they have superhero level powers. In the 19th century the German #philosopher #Feuerbach noticed the same thing and he said that religion is a manifestation of our species consciousness. Species consciousness is the capacity we have to not only see ourselves as isolated individuals going about our everyday lives but also as part of a great and"
TikTok Link 2024-06-01T13:41Z 164.1K followers, [----] engagements
"One of the most common #ethical dilemmas is known as the burning building dilemma. You can vary it as you wish but it often goes like this: There is a house burning down. There's black smoke falling beams and a fiery inferno. It's unambiguously lethal. Inside the house are two people: a professor who has the cure for cancer and your own child or a sibling or a parent. It's someone that you deeply and wholly love. So who would you save The #dilemma is interesting because it focuses on the #philosophy of partiality and emotions in our ethical decision making. A lot of ethicists will argue for"
TikTok Link 2024-06-11T13:10Z 228.3K followers, 214K engagements
"One of the most famous images if not the most famous images in #philosophy is the duck-rabbit. It was made famous by Wittgenstein and it's all about the idea of aspect perception. Here's the problem: Look at this image and tell me if you think it's a duck or a rabbit. Because it can't be both. Because a duck cannot be a rabbit. So it's either a duck or a rabbit. But this changes depending on you. The object itself is fixed. If you go away for a cup of tea it'll be exactly the same but something in your understanding or perception is shifting the object between a duck and a rabbit and we"
TikTok Link 2024-07-08T12:24Z 139.1K followers, 609.3K engagements
"Plato's chariot is one of the most influential allegories in philosophy. It defined Western #philosophy for millennia and probably shapes how you imagine the mind today. It goes like this: Imagine that there's a charioteer trying to harness the power of two headstrong horses. One horse is shining and pure. The other is shabby and wheezy. But you need both to move forward. If either of the horses dominates or if the charioteer tires or drops his attention then the chariot will crash. The charioteer is Logos which is our guiding reason. It's the rational logical and wise that weighs things up"
TikTok Link 2024-07-15T13:13Z 149.8K followers, 241.5K engagements
"A lot of people are scared by AI. And even if some of the doomsayers exaggerate their point there is something rational about fearing an intelligence far far greater than ours. But one of the reassuring facts in AI research is that an #AI will stay locked in one corner of the internet and we can always pull the plug. But according to the writer Eliezer Yudkowsky thats an assumption wed do well to challenge. In the early 2000s. #Yudkowsky argued that any suitably advanced AI would have no problem whatsoever in coercing or convincing us to release it from whatever limitations we gave it. It"
TikTok Link 2024-07-18T12:39Z 157.3K followers, 16.9K engagements
"Today the word selfish is an insult. If you're told that you are #selfish there's an implicit command to change your ways. We should look after other people and give a bit of ourselves. But for the philosopher Ayn Rand this is just a performative virtue signalling of modernity. It's a world which describes any self-concern or self-interest as evil and only things that benefit others can be good. #Rand argues that so many of our supposed values today actually serve to stifle our moral existence. The values we live by ought to benefit us. We ought to look after ourselves. And yet we bow to"
TikTok Link 2024-07-19T13:07Z 181.1K followers, 21.7K engagements
"In the 17th century the British philosopher John #Locke gave us one of the most relatable thought experiments in history. In fact it was probably one of the earliest #philosophical questions I had. Imagine that there are two perfectly healthy people with perfectly functioning sense organs on a walk and one turns to the other and says What a beautiful blue sky And the other one nods along. But the question that John Locke raises is how do we know that the blue that one person sees does not appear to be green to the other person They both call the sky blue because thats what their upbringing"
TikTok Link 2024-07-21T16:35Z 61.7K followers, 219.7K engagements
"In [----] Thomas #Nagel gave us one of the most bizarre but philosophically exciting questions of all time: What does it feel like to be a bat This doesnt mean imagining yourself upside down and trying to catch insects in your mouth because thats not what it feels like to be a bat. Thats a human behaving rather oddly. You see we know a lot about bats. We know that they use echolocation to navigate their environment and this means using high-frequency shrieks to reflect on objects and to then correlate outgoing impulses with the subsequent echoes. From this a #bat will develop a picture of the"
TikTok Link 2024-07-25T19:37Z 113.8K followers, 93.2K engagements
"The alignment problem is one of the classic problems of artificial intelligence and it makes for a great many science fiction plot lines. The problem is how we can get an AI to follow the unspoken instructions or the intentions of a user. How can we stop an AI from being too narrowly focused and literal Here are two examples: Let's imagine we give some powerful AI of the future the prompt Reduce cancer cases in humans. Well ideally we'd want it to develop a wonder drug or to identify things which give us cancer. But instead the AI decides to wipe out the entire human race. Cancer cases in"
TikTok Link 2024-07-26T15:53Z 169.4K followers, 18.7K engagements
"#panpsychism was once a niche concern of #philosophy but with the rise of #ai its become mainstream. The basic claim is that anything can have a degree of #consciousness if it matches certain criteria. #cognition #psychology #learning #mind #artificialintelligence #cognitive"
TikTok Link 2024-08-12T15:37Z 179.9K followers, 22.4K engagements
"Freddie is two years old. He sits on a mossy stone; his back is hunched and his hands are filthy. He watches closely almost so closely as to be touching the prodigious and impossible strength of an ant carrying a leaf. The world outside of this ant is entirely forgotten. Everything that matters is what the ant is doing. It gets cold and it gets dark. And Freddie's dad tells him it's probably time to go inside. But Freddie doesn't listen because he cares only for his ant. According to #Aristotle Freddie and all children like him are the first philosophers of the world they embody something"
TikTok Link 2024-08-13T11:56Z 234.8K followers, 26.4K engagements
"We all live with certain assumptions about how the world works. For example most people think that germs cause disease that reflected light causes colour and that the world is made up of atoms. These assumptions are what Thomas #Kuhn calls a paradigm. Sometimes in any given paradigm these strange puzzles will pop up which are these anomalies which can't easily be made sense of. In the majority of cases science will eventually solve these puzzles under what Kuhn calls mopping up. A theory will adapt and grow. In other cases an anomaly might not easily be explained but since it's only a one-off"
TikTok Link 2024-08-15T14:15Z 239.4K followers, 25.9K engagements
"Joseph Campbell spent his life studying #literature and #mythology and he wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it he argued all #stories have a similar structure. They reflect the #journey of a #human life. #philosophy #structuralism #starwars #lotr #religion #marvel #disney"
TikTok Link 2024-08-17T13:58Z 117.8K followers, 101.8K engagements
"Imagine there are two anthropologists Willard and Orman and they stumble across a never before seen tribe. Their first job is to decipher and determine this tribe's language. One day they're out on a walk and a tribesman sees a rabbit and points "Gavagai." "Aha" Orman shouts. "We now know that 'gavagai' is their word for rabbit" he concludes. "Not so fast Orman" Willard says "Gavagai might mean rabbit yes but it could also mean rabbit leg or rabbit at speed. In fact it could mean any number of weird things. A demon in rabbit form a rabbit God or perhaps even tonight's dinner." "Ah darn" Orman"
TikTok Link 2024-08-24T13:35Z 71.6K followers, 21.2K engagements
"In his book The Gay Science #Nietzsche gives one of the most heartfelt and touching accounts of #friendship you can find. Because friendships are not like your spouse or your children and you don't spend all of your time around your #friends. In our school days we might spend a great deal of time around friends but as we get older we go our separate ways. We live our lives and we sail new seas. But this is what makes friendships unique and it's what Nietzsche calls a #star friendship. Nietzsche asks us to imagine friendship as being like two #ships coming into harbour. You've both come from"
TikTok Link 2024-10-19T17:29Z 98.6K followers, 79.2K engagements
"In the early 2000s the philosopher Andy Clark argued that you are not a human. You are not 100% natural and you cannot be reduced to the muscle and tissue you carry with you. You are a #cyborg . I am a cyborg. Your boss is a cyborg. Everybody around you is a cyborg which is cool or scary depending on how you like your #sciencefiction Clark defines a cyborg as any species which fully integrates #technology in how they process or experience the world. This isn't the same as simple tool use. A raven can use a stick to get a nut and a dog will use a tree to scratch its back. But these are"
TikTok Link 2024-10-24T16:22Z 149.3K followers, 39.1K engagements
"Have you ever sat down to watch a movie or read a book to find that suddenly two hours have passed Or have you ever been so immersed in an experience that you've escaped the world and forgot yourself Both are examples of what #Nietzsche calls the Dionysian. Nietzsche divides all #culture and #art into two: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The #Apollonian is anything that is sharply defined and the rational. So architecture with its geometric beauty and sculpture with its contours are the highest forms of the Apollonian. It's the neat the ordered and the methodical. It's the completed #Sudoku"
TikTok Link 2024-11-02T16:25Z 71.8K followers, 40K engagements
"If you and I ever met theres no guarantee which version of me you will get. You might get the amiable chatty me or the quiet I want to go home me. You might get #philosophical Jonny or the Jonny that just wants to talk nonsense. Theres no guarantee who youll meet but you will still meet me. This is what the Italian writer Antonio #Tabucchi called the Confederacy of Souls. We are living in the age of #authenticity . You have to express your true self and find your #authentic being. But people often assume that there is a single simple version of who you are there is one Jonny and everyone else"
TikTok Link 2024-11-06T15:50Z 172.2K followers, 218.1K engagements
"There is a well-known story found in many Dharmic traditions known as The Blind Men and the Elephant. It's probably one of the most important stories anyone can learn. It goes like this: Once upon a time there were some blind men who heard about a strange new animal coming into town called an elephant. Of course the blind men couldn't see but they were curious about what the #elephant was like and so they went out and felt it. The first man who held the trunk said Oh it's a bit like a snake. The second man though who touched an ear said A snake No it's more like a fan I'd say. And the third"
TikTok Link 2024-11-10T14:50Z 111.2K followers, 385.1K engagements
"When you call somebody weird or you say their behaviour is strange you're doing an interesting thing. You're establishing certain rules of normality. You're drawing a line in the sand and you're saying that anything on this side is normal and anything on that side is weird. It's strange. It's #deviant . And according to Michel Foucault that is a kind of power. For Foucault #power is not just big muscles and big guns but something much more subtle. It's about expectations and a kind of collective #groupthink . One example of this is what #Foucault calls normalisation. #Normalisation is where"
TikTok Link 2024-11-15T15:40Z 98.6K followers, 239.9K engagements
"I've got a friend and I hope he isnt watching who once told me something funny. This was a few years ago after a few beers when he turned to me and said Do you know what Can I tell you something funny Yes of course I replied. Whenever Im feeling stressed or anxious I pretend to be a sloth. What I said. Yes I do things really really slowly like this. Then he proceeded to demonstrate just how painfully slowly he could move. He turned his head like a #turtle . He gave long exaggerated blinks as if he were completely exhausted and he lifted his beer as though it were a brick. When a friend admits"
TikTok Link 2024-11-17T16:37Z 87.1K followers, 45.8K engagements
"Happy World Philosophy Day --- I'm going to start by quoting my dad: What's the point of you Jonny It's a good question and it's one I thought about many times. But I don't mean in an existential life purpose kind of way. But what's the point of Mini Philosophy and #philosophy more broadly Why are you bothering to listen to me right now And why bother to subscribe to my account Well one of my favourite answers goes back to Bertrand Russell. #Russell asks us to imagine ourselves like cities not only disconnected from the world but actively at war with it. All of our ideas assumptions and"
TikTok Link 2024-11-21T15:35Z 86.9K followers, 22.2K engagements
"Are #China and the #USA going to go to war Are we one rash moment away from a terrible nuclear annihilation Well according to the #Greek historian Thucydides things are not looking good. #Thucydides is considered to be one of the fathers of #history as a discipline. In his great work The History of the Peloponnesian War he uses the events of his day to present certain geopolitical principles that apply to power politics throughout all time. Back then #Sparta had been the dominant power of the region what's called a hegemon and #Athens was the young upstart rivalling Sparta's position."
TikTok Link 2024-12-02T15:45Z 134.7K followers, 51K engagements
"A good #apology is important. We all know what a bad apology looks like. It's the one which says I'm sorry if you took offense. But to truly apologize to somebody you must paint yourself as the #villain . You must say that you have done something wrong or made some mistake and that you are far from perfect. A good apology is the humbling of an ego. In the #philosophical literature there are three essential elements to a good apology. First it must admit guilt. It says that this action was wrong mistaken or even evil and that we are at least in part responsible for that action. Second it"
TikTok Link 2024-12-05T15:50Z 126K followers, 72.1K engagements
"Bayes theorem is probably the single most important thing any rational person can learn. So many of our debates and disagreements we shout about are because we don't understand Bayes theorem or how human rationality often works. Bayes theorem is named after the 18th century Thomas Bayes and essentially it's a formula which asks: When you are presented with all of the evidence for something how much should you believe it Bayes theorem teaches us that our beliefs are not fixed; they are probabilities. Our beliefs change as we weigh up new evidence against our assumptions or our priors. In other"
TikTok Link 2024-12-14T14:40Z 172.1K followers, 591.1K engagements
"Once upon a time there was a king called #Sisyphus who annoyed the ancient world by being an all-round arse. And so the #Greek gods #Zeus decided to give him a punishment which would echo throughout the ages. Sisyphus was tasked with pushing a massive boulder up a steep hill. But the catch was that when he reached the top the boulder would roll all the way back down to the bottom. A panting and aching Sisyphus would return to collect his boulder and push it up the hill and renew his torment every day for eternity. One of the reasons why the myth of Sisyphus is so enduring is because in 1942"
TikTok Link 2024-12-17T16:29Z 190.1K followers, 184K engagements
"#Plato argued that there are four classical virtues: there's wisdom justice self-control and courage. And of these his account of courage is one of the most insightful passages in his Republic. Because for Plato #courage is not what most people think it is Courage is not the same as fearlessness nor is it something born to some people and denied others. For Plato courage is the ability to recognise what's valuable or not and what should be feared. For instance courage is when you fear losing a loved one more than your health or your wealth. It's when you see #fairness or #justice as greater"
TikTok Link 2025-01-08T14:50Z 110.3K followers, 62.1K engagements
"There is a tool to tell if something is nonsense or not. It's a tool to call out the quacks the charlatans and the snake oil peddlers of the world. It's a tool to tell pseudoscience from real. And it goes back to Karl Popper whose falsification theory is now a bedrock of the #scientificmethod . According to #falsification a theory is only as strong as how far it can resist falsifying evidence. Empirical experiments cannot prove or verify a theory only disprove it. The theory of gravity is such a strong theory because for however many plates we've dropped over the centuries gravity will"
TikTok Link 2025-01-12T14:45Z 154.8K followers, 225.1K engagements
"One of the first things that any artist will learn is the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is where you divide your artwork into three and you decide where you want people to focus it. Its seen in #photography classic paintings and in #fashion . But the rule of thirds is just one example of formalism in the philosophy of art. #Formalism is the idea that we can explain why anything is beautiful by pointing at the various technical elements that make it up. Most #philosophers accept a degree of formalism but Marcus du Sautoy is an extreme kind of formalist because he believes that beauty can"
TikTok Link 2025-02-04T14:50Z 244.5K followers, 46.3K engagements
"We all like to see ourselves as the exception. We might read about some probability but assume that that happens to other people. We say "I am different. That doesn't apply to me." Take for instance the fact that a third of us will develop cancer over the course of our lifetime. You know that rationally you know how odds work and yet few of us will think that we will be that statistic. In #existentialism there is this core idea known as radical #freedom which is the transformative power we all have to assert ourselves on the world. In freedom we can reach out to change manipulate and adapt"
TikTok Link 2025-02-15T14:54Z 126.6K followers, 107.5K engagements
"Are you a true patriot Are you a good Muslim Are you a proper #music fan Well first you must pass this test. You must look believe and behave a certain way. If not well then I'm afraid you can't call yourself that. These are examples of what the #philosopher Anthony Flew called the No True Scotsman fallacy. Imagine there's someone called John who's reading the news about a bloody and terrible crime and he says I can't believe a Scotsman would do such a thing. And the next day a #Scotsman is in fact found guilty. And so rather than admit he's wrong John says Well no true Scotsman would have"
TikTok Link 2025-02-17T14:49Z 126.6K followers, 73.9K engagements
"#Scientism is not the same as science. If you are scientistic then you believe that science is the only way that you should live. And the scientistic are everywhere. They attack not only religion and mysticism but also certain kinds of #psychology and #philosophy . But for the philosopher Massimo Pigliucci this misunderstands what it is to live as a human. According to Pigliucci the #Stoics argue that the good life is one which combines our ethics our rationality and what science can reveal. As he told me in this week's Mini Philosophy newsletter "science will provide a certain input but that"
TikTok Link 2025-02-19T14:45Z 240.3K followers, 49.5K engagements
"A few years ago the #philosopher Julian Baggini gave us the idea of cluster thinking. Cluster thinking is when you assume that if somebody believes one thing they have to automatically believe certain other things as well. For example if somebody is an advocate for gay rights we might assume that they are left leaning in their politics. Of course it's perfectly possible to be an advocate for gay rights without also being a socialist. The problem for Baggini is that cluster thinking promotes a kind of #tribalism . Various political and #ethical issues get lumped together with others and they"
TikTok Link 2025-03-26T14:45Z 139.1K followers, 52.8K engagements
"If you rub shoulders with somebody they will rub off on you. You'll start to use the same words for things see the world in the same way and you will even start to behave like them. The company that we keep forms who we are and yet we are often strangely blas about it. We should take much more ownership of who we keep company with. And this is one of the many practical things that Epictetus and #Stoicism generally can teach us. Why do we often treat our relationships as if they are beyond our control We say 'Oh you can't choose family' or 'He's my friend. It can't be helped.' Yet every day"
TikTok Link 2025-03-28T14:45Z 139.1K followers, 133.6K engagements
"In this week's Mini Philosophy newsletter I speak with the cognitive scientist and famous philosopher Susan Blackmore about drugs consciousness and the paranormal. Sign up via my bio to read it this Friday"
TikTok Link 2025-04-02T18:40Z 139.1K followers, 18.4K engagements
"In a strange way one of the greatest compliments somebody can give you is when they take you for granted. Because we take for granted the things that we #love the most. When you are young and you have the right kind of #parents you don't thank them. You don't hope that they will be there. They just are. Being taken for granted means that you are reliable trusted and true. One of the philosophically interesting examples of this is with #sickness . A large part of sickness involves appreciating that which you took for granted. When you have a sore throat you cant believe you didn't enjoy"
TikTok Link 2025-04-04T14:15Z 147.4K followers, 368.5K engagements
"There are some people in life who seem to have a gravitational pull. I'm sure you know the type. These are those people who have such a strength of character that they will inspire you with a single word and they will lift you up with a small gesture. Often this comes with age or authority but when somebody you respect says something it carries a certain weight. Sometimes this can be used for bad such as in those thoughtless 'banality of evil' moments that come in 'just following orders.' At other times these people can inspire us to greatness simply by their being great. When a person"
TikTok Link 2025-04-26T16:48Z 246.1K followers, 68.9K engagements
"What would you consider to be an 'extreme' or ' #radical ' #political view and what views do you call 'mainstream' If I were to ask you those questions even a generation ago your answers would likely be different. And if we time travelled forward [--] years your answers would be different again. Because what is radical today might be mainstream tomorrow and what is normal today might be seen as weird to the future. This idea is known as the 'Overton Window.' Joseph #Overton argued that every generation has what it deems to be an acceptable range of political or #moral opinions. Or in other"
TikTok Link 2025-04-27T12:45Z 169.4K followers, 55.9K engagements
"Nothing exists in isolation. Behind everything and every person there is an indescribably long #story explaining how and why things came to be. To understand anything we have to see it within its context within its frame and its #Relationship to all time. We have to see things as #God would see them as a dynamic and universal connectedness that is constantly evolving and constantly progressing. This is what #hegel called the Weltgeist. Hegel argues that you cannot make sense of any fact object or person as fragments. Everything is defined in relation to something else. Take for example this"
TikTok Link 2025-05-01T13:45Z 149.9K followers, 36K engagements
"A child is outside on a walk when he turns to his dad and says 'Daddy what do you think the trees are saying' The dad scoffs and says 'Oh trees can't talk.' They carry on walking a bit and the child says 'Daddy what do you think the river wants' The dad rolls his eyes and says 'Ach it's just water son. They don't have any wants.' And so the child stops asking questions and he stops asking about nature. In this week's Mini #Philosophy interview I spoke with the bestselling nature writer Robert #Macfarlane about his new #book Is a River Alive And for MacFarlane this kind of instrumentalist"
TikTok Link 2025-05-06T13:45Z 149.9K followers, 39.8K engagements
"A straw man is when you take somebody's argument and you make it so simplistic or so exaggerated that it makes for an easier target. For example if an #atheist says that #Christianity is just worshipping some bearded man in the sky well that's a straw man because barely any #Christian would accept that representation of their #religion . But the opposite of a #strawman is a steel man. And according to the late Daniel Dennett it's one of the key ingredients for a good philosophical discussion. In [----] #Dennett presented four rules for any good #philosophical debate. The first and most"
TikTok Link 2025-05-10T14:15Z 157.3K followers, 570K engagements
"#ad Joseph Nye died last week. Nye was a political theorist who coined the expression soft power which is the idea that a country can exert influence through cultural and value attraction. For example the huge global popularity of Hollywood means American filmmakers can portray certain ideologies countries and even history a certain way. Control culture and you can control a lot. I read about Nyes death on Ground News. Ground News does two great things. First it gathers sources from all over the world into one place and gives you the context behind what youre reading. But most importantly it"
TikTok Link 2025-05-24T13:35Z 218.4K followers, 29.2K engagements
"Love deepens as it grows. It matures just as much as our bodies and its quality and its focus will shift subtly. When you first meet the person that you love there's often a certain attraction. You find their personality magnetic and you find them good looking. But as the love settles it looks on different things. The Eros will live next to the simple companionship of holding hands. The side-aching laughter will exist alongside the sobbing and sorrowful embraces. Love is not just a feeling it's a story. And the #Greek #philosopher #Diotima argued that it progresses in stages. At first you"
TikTok Link 2025-06-01T14:15Z 168.6K followers, 64.8K engagements
"A lot of people hate being told what to do. There is an odd rebellious part of many people's being that hates the idea that we have to do anything. I'm sure you can think back to a time in your life when somebody expected you to do one thing and you did the opposite just out of spite. It's a very deliberate and petulant middle finger up at the world that's making you try to do anything. A great example of this is found in Dostoevsky's work Notes from the Underground. #Dostoevsky once wrote that when presented with the beaten track we're expected to walk we will often 'stubbornly wilfully go"
TikTok Link 2025-06-12T13:30Z 181.1K followers, 73K engagements
"In [----] Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull coined the expression 'the Peter Principle' which is the theory that all employees will eventually hit a point in the organisational hierarchy where they are no longer fit to do their job. The idea started out as a lighthearted observation but this is the reasoning behind it: all employees when they are good at their job will get promoted eventually. They'll carry on getting promoted until they reach a point where they are no longer good at their job. At which point of course they will no longer be promoted but they will linger in their post flailing"
TikTok Link 2025-06-22T15:59Z 182.3K followers, 120.4K engagements
"In her poem Sometimes Mary Oliver gives three instructions for living life well. Of course the complexity of human life cannot be reduced to just three lines. But the more I think on what she says the more I appreciate it. First pay attention. Pay attention to other people and their depths. Pay attention to their complexity but also pay attention to the world around you because the world is a swirling sensory trove to be enjoyed. Direct your mind outside. Pay attention or you'll miss the show. Second be astonished. Oliver's work often talks about the sheer wonder of existence. How lucky and"
TikTok Link 2025-07-08T14:45Z 177K followers, 23.4K engagements
"Why is it that some people are completely immune to facts Why are some people deaf to any arguments that aren't their own and blind to any alternative positions Well according to Leor Zmigrod in this week's Mini Philosophy interview it might be something to do with extremism. The psychologist Jean Piaget once argued that humans develop a conceptual framework for how we both experience the world and interpret it. The schema can be very basic as when the toddler labels a furry four-legged thing a 'dog.' But they can also develop according to ideology. For example let's say a Muslim and a"
TikTok Link 2025-07-10T16:15Z [--] followers, 97.1K engagements
"For this week's Mini Philosophy interview I spoke with the philosopher Idil Galip about the philosophy of memes. I like memes Galip likes memes and I'm sure you like memes too. So here is the philosophy behind three popular memes. Hello I'm inside a meme and this one is known as 'Pepe the Frog.' Pepe is interesting because he's been everything: a stoner a sadboi a hate symbol and a crypto mascot. But he also represents something known as 'memetic shift' where the meaning of a meme will change beyond anybody's control. Pepe started out as a harmless cartoon but was co-opted by fringe internet"
TikTok Link 2025-07-29T14:15Z [--] followers, 11K engagements
"You didn't choose to wear those clothes. You didn't choose to have that job or to eat your breakfast. Everything that we call a free choice is actually inevitable. And according to the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky in his book Determined everything about our mental life was actually written a long long time ago. Most of your brain was formed before you could speak and by the time you were out of your nappies your personality temperament and preferences had already started to take shape. Except for one part: the frontal cortex is responsible for planning inhibitions and your so-called"
TikTok Link 2025-07-31T14:30Z 232.2K followers, 604.5K engagements
"Imagine you finally get what you wanted. You get the keys to that amazing house you get the new job you get a new phone and you feel amazing for about a week. And then bit by bit you start to feel roughly the same as you were before. And here you are again restless and searching for the next thing. This is what the psychologists Brickman and Campbell in the 1970s called the hedonic treadmill. It's the idea that no matter what happens to us whether we win the lottery or whether we break a leg we tend to return to the same baseline level of happiness. From an evolutionary perspective this makes"
TikTok Link 2025-08-23T13:45Z 210.9K followers, 929.6K engagements
"Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance argues that any open society which allows for the total freedom of expression and of ideas risks intolerance taking over. Those who live under liberal democratic societies are best placed to overthrow those liberal democratic values. The revolution will be voted in. Fascism wins at the ballot box. And so the Paradox of Tolerance says that we need to be intolerant to intolerant ideas. This is something I spoke to Hilary Lawson about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview and we ask: how far should we entertain fringe or extreme ideas When he presented his"
TikTok Link 2025-08-27T15:32Z 228.3K followers, 160.2K engagements
""The Chinese Room" is one of the most persistent thought experiments in the philosophy of artificial intelligence and it goes back to the 1980s with John Searle. It goes like this. Imagine that there is a man in a room who does not speak Chinese. Now on the table in front of him is a book which contains if-then translation notes. So if you get this incomprehensible Chinese symbol then the book will tell you what symbol to give back in reply. Now imagine that somebody posts into this room a letter containing only Chinese symbols. The man with his book follows his instructions and he posts a"
TikTok Link 2025-10-03T14:00Z 240.7K followers, 618K engagements
"The #Philosophy of #marx on #alienation at #work. For more Mini Philosophy content subscribe to my newsletter. Paid subscribers get exclusive video audio and articles. #learning #education"
TikTok Link 2024-04-18T16:15Z 275.8K followers, 11.8K engagements
"Much of the #philosophy of #Nietzsche is a kind of strident #humanism that talks about the #Superman or #bermensch One metaphor he used for the journey of #growth and #selftransformation involves a camel a lion and a child. #joyful #playful #learning #education #literature #book"
TikTok Link 2024-04-28T14:43Z 276.6K followers, 27.2K engagements
"#ontological arguments try to prove God using #logic and #analytic #truth and have a long history. It goes back to #anselm #ibnsina and #descartes but has a modern version in Alvin Plantinga which uses possible worlds. #Kang #god #multiverse #philosophy #religion"
TikTok Link 2024-05-05T13:26Z 265K followers, [----] engagements
"The Frame Problem is one of the biggest problems facing #artificialintelligence . It goes back to the 1960s and while various solutions have pushed the problem back it hasn't quite gone away. Yet. Daniel #Dennett presents the problem in a thought experiment. Imagine that there is a #robot who has to save its battery in a room containing a bomb. It's programmed its instructions and it goes about its job. And so it finds the battery on a cart and decides to pull it out. Success But sadly for the robot the bomb is also on the cart. And so he carried out the bomb as well unaware of the side"
TikTok Link 2024-07-03T14:12Z 273.3K followers, 513.3K engagements
"#Philosophy is often accused of being pointless. But today we're going to look at how it can give you the #power to take over the world. It's a power to change people's minds and make them do what you want. It all goes back to Aristotle's Rhetoric. #Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It's about using speech to change people's minds to win a debate and to whip up a crowd. It's about politicians running for election but it's also about how you can get a promotion at work. So what are these skills of persuasion Well Aristotle lists three: ethos pathos and logos. Ethos is being or seeming to be a"
TikTok Link 2024-07-23T13:27Z 276.9K followers, 74.5K engagements
"In the 19th century the British philosopher Jeremy #Bentham designed what he thought was the perfect prison called the Panopticon. The #Panopticon was a circular #prison with open-sided walls on the cells with a tower in the middle. The tower could be manned or it could be unmanned because the fear and uncertainty was according to Bentham enough to grind rogues honest. In the 20th century the #French philosopher Michel #Foucault repurposed the Panopticon as a metaphor not for literal surveillance technology but for the power dynamics of observation. For Foucault when we're being watched we"
TikTok Link 2024-07-27T13:50Z 282.6K followers, 188.2K engagements
"Twenty years ago the #philosopher Nick #Bostrom gave us the simulation argument where he argued that its not only possible that were living in a Matrix-like simulation but that its the most likely scenario. Bostroms argument uses #probability theory and it goes like this. If we assume that theres a near infinite number of possible civilizations in a near infinite universe then it takes only one of these civilizations to be technologically advanced and willing enough to create simulated minds like yours and mine. Eventually one civilization will be able to create The #Matrix and make it work."
TikTok Link 2024-08-02T13:28Z 249.1K followers, 65.4K engagements
"The Chinese Room is one of the most persistent thought experiments in the philosophy of artificial intelligence. It goes back to the 1980s with the #philosopher John Searle and it goes a bit like this. Imagine that there is a man in a room who does not speak Chinese. On the table in front of him is a vast book containing If this then that translation notes. So if you get this incomprehensible #Chinese symbol then it will tell you how to write the symbol in reply. Now imagine someone posts into this room a letter containing only Chinese symbols. The man with his book follows his instructions"
TikTok Link 2024-08-14T15:24Z 122.8K followers, 141.1K engagements
"The problem with #artificialintelligence is that the very term is nonsense. It's an oxymoron a contradiction in terms. Intelligence goes beyond being able to create a certain output. It goes beyond #artificial parameters and excelling at only certain tasks. This is what the prominent #philosopher of AI Luciano Floridi argues. Floridi uses an example to make his point. Imagine you come to my house and there are lovely clean dishes on the table. I then ask you to guess who or what cleans the dishes. Was it the dishwasher or me by hand You tell me you can't tell. The output is the same: clean"
TikTok Link 2024-08-29T13:39Z 149.9K followers, 74.5K engagements
"One of the most famous and important parables in #Daoism is known as the Story of the Lost Horse. It goes like this: Once upon a time there was a farmer whose horse ran away and everyone gathered round and said Oh bad luck friend. But the farmer only replied Maybe. The next day the #horse returned with six wild horses in tow and now everybody said Great luck. And the farmer just replied Maybe. The next day the farmer's son tried to tame one of the horses but he fell off and broke his leg. Oh what rotten luck everyone said. And the old farmer replied Maybe. The next week soldiers came for the"
TikTok Link 2024-10-17T17:15Z 265.3K followers, 1.1M engagements
"In an ideal world Id be able to swear in this video. But bound as I am by the algorithmic gods I will to talk about #BS instead. In [----] the philosopher Harry #Frankfurt wrote a book about BS and why its not only different to standard #lying but its far far more dangerous to society. According to Frankfurt the difference between a #lie and BS is the concern for the #truth . When someone lies they want to substitute their lie for the truth. They want you to think what they are saying is true. They do this because they consciously or not still respect the idea of truth. They accept theres value"
TikTok Link 2024-10-27T16:30Z 265.7K followers, 41.4K engagements
"#Plato really didn't like #democracy because he thought that it would always inevitably lead to mob rule. He thought that eventually anyone who could actually govern well would have to bow to the unreasonable whims of the mass. Plato compared a democracy to a ship. Imagine that there is a ship run by a captain who's deaf and short sighted. He's not very good. And so the crew start to think they can do better. They say things like Navigation is easy Anyone can run a ship They jostle to take over. They fight and scheme to become captain. But of course navigation isn't easy. And not everybody"
TikTok Link 2024-11-04T15:09Z 252.3K followers, 1.2M engagements
"The #Libet #experiments are some of the most incredible and controversial studies to rattle the philosophical world. They shifted the entire #freewill debate and according to some people it even ended it. To understand the Libet experiments we have to know that there is a particular part of our brain which controls our readiness potential. Your readiness potential is what activates before any voluntary decision. So if you decide to use your thumb to scroll your phone then your readiness potential acts first and then your scrolling thumb comes second. So what was the experiment Well Libet got"
TikTok Link 2024-12-06T17:02Z 282.4K followers, 105.8K engagements
"The #parable of the sower is one of the most important parables in the #Gospels and it's a great way to understand #enlightenment and #growth more broadly. It goes like this: There was once a person scattering some seed to grow some grain to eat. They were throwing it everywhere. Some of the seed landed on hard ground. It couldn't take root and so it came to nothing. Some of the seed landed on thin soil started to grow but was weak because it could not grow deep roots. Some seed landed in thorns and grew but was choked by the rival plants. And finally some seed landed on the good ground. It"
TikTok Link 2024-12-08T14:30Z 251.9K followers, 66.4K engagements
"It said that debating an idiot is like playing #chess with a pigeon. They'll knock over the pieces they'll crap on the board and they'll fly back to their flock and claim victory. It's funny and insightful but according to the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer it's also deeply worrying. Because for #Bonhoeffer stupidity is far more concerning than evil. There are evil people in life. There are murderers cheaters and liars. But they are not the greatest threat. Because once something is known to be evil the good of the world can rally to defend and fight against it. When we know somebody is bad"
TikTok Link 2024-12-12T14:40Z 278.3K followers, 1.8M engagements
"What if you've been doing gifts wrong What if handing somebody a #present and saying I hope you enjoy it is actually the worst way to do it Well that's what Jacques Derrida thought. As far back as records allow we can find examples of gift giving practices. It might be a dowry a birthday present or even bringing a bottle of wine to a party. Humans have always and everywhere given gifts to one another. The sociologist Marcel Mauss argued that gift exchange plays an important social function. It reinforces group solidarity and mutual obligation because when we give a gift we are creating a"
TikTok Link 2024-12-24T14:45Z 248.5K followers, 89.6K engagements
"The Oracles Omens and Answers Exhibition is running at the @bodleianlibraries in Oxford and its great. Well worth a trip. *** A lot of people know the story of Prometheus who was punished by the gods for giving humans fire. But what's less commonly known is that Prometheus also gave us something far more important. He gave us foresight. He gave us planning. Recently I was invited by the Bodleian Library in #Oxford to see an exhibition titled Oracles Omens and Answers which explores the many ways humans have sought answers in the face of the unknown. The exhibition argues that seers and"
TikTok Link 2025-01-03T15:05Z 98.6K followers, 60.9K engagements
"You can give somebody the best genetic advantage in the world. You can make them strong healthy good-looking intelligent or whatever. But if you put them in a place that oppresses or suffocates them they will not thrive. Humans like any living thing need the right conditions to #grow . So if you want to do something good we should allow other people to thrive. This is what Martha Nussbaums capability theory is all about. Nussbaums theory borrows a bit from #Aristotle and a bit from #Kant. It argues that there is a universal kind of human flourishing. It says that there is a proper way for"
TikTok Link 2025-01-05T15:17Z 268.2K followers, 107K engagements
"#Hauntology is the idea that we are haunted by lost futures. It's when our entire outlook on life is framed by disappointment. We were promised one thing but we got this instead. For example in the late 20th century many Marxist philosophers couldn't understand why the Marxist predictions for progress hadn't happened and so they were left squinting at where and why it went wrong. And while the idea was coined first by Jacques #Derrida in his discussion of Marxism in recent times it's been repurposed by the philosopher Mark Fisher to be far broader. For Fisher hauntology is a nostalgia for the"
TikTok Link 2025-01-11T15:45Z [--] followers, 42.2K engagements
"One of the strange things about the human condition is that we are social animals who also like to be alone. We're pulled by two different forces: the need to be around other people and the need to lock ourselves away. This tension is known as the Porcupine's Dilemma and it goes back to Arthur #Schopenhauer . Imagine two porcupines cold and shivering trying to keep warm on a frostbiting night. They huddle together to share their warmth but as they do so they prick each other. Half of the evening becomes a spiky dance as the porcupines oscillate between shared warmth and painful pricks. For"
TikTok Link 2025-01-13T15:02Z 257.3K followers, 168.6K engagements
"What if death is not the end It might not be the end that you want but death will not be the end of your story. Because for Spinoza's #monism there is more to our postmortem existence than we might think. #Spinoza argued that the entire universe is one substance. Your body and each of your thoughts are part of this substance. Everything is part of one infinite eternal substance. But everything that we interact with all of the objects and the people that we see are modes. Modes are temporary configurations of this underlying reality. So you are just a particular composition at this moment in"
TikTok Link 2025-01-19T14:54Z 264.5K followers, 246.9K engagements
"I had a #dream last night. An intense vivid dream. There are few things more boring than hearing about other people's dreams so all I will say is that the characters and the scenes within my dream felt real. And for Ren Descartes these kinds of dreams are reason why we might doubt everything. #Descartes argued that if we are to know anything with certainty we have to doubt everything at least once. And to do so Descartes presents three sceptical questions to sweep away everything that we think we know. First how can we trust our senses if they are known to be wrong A stick will appear bent in"
TikTok Link 2025-01-24T14:45Z 273.6K followers, 36.9K engagements
"Very few pundits or polls predicted the first #Trump presidency or #Brexit . Very few people imagined that Russia would invade Ukraine or that #NFT s would become a thing. Hardly anyone imagined that #AI would revolutionize the world quite as quickly as it has. But after these hugely unexpected events you'll often see pundits line up to explain why they happened as if it was obvious all along. This is known as Talebs Black Swan phenomenon. The #BlackSwan Theory says that often the biggest and most world-shaping events are highly improbable but that when they happen we will retrofit neat"
TikTok Link 2025-01-31T14:35Z 122.9K followers, 94K engagements
"Humans have a habit of screwing things up. There's a strange part of our being which needs some #drama . We thrive off it. And so we create conflict and find trouble because it gives us something to do. Our minds need action and nothing so bores and irritates the soul as stasis. This is an #ancient idea but it's found modern expression in Slavoj iek. There's something that doesn't quite fit right with humans because all other animals will find a kind of consistency in the order of things. They have an ideal condition; they seek it and they will stay there. Humans though take joy in the"
TikTok Link 2025-02-02T14:50Z 273.3K followers, 223.6K engagements
"People will often describe certain #feelings as negative. So if you drew up a list of all of our emotions we would label some as good and some as bad. #Happiness is good. #Anxiety is bad. Feeling #stressed is bad but feeling relaxed is good. And so much is said about how we should rid or avoid these negative emotions. But according to the #philosopher Krista Thomason in her book dancing with the devil we should pull in and examine these #emotions closely. The sapiens in Homo sapiens is all about being rational. We can think deliberate and reason our way to almost anything. All of our"
TikTok Link 2025-02-06T14:45Z 122.9K followers, 40.7K engagements
"In the 19th century the #English writer G. K. Chesterton gave us one simple rule: do not knock down random fences. The idea is to imagine you're on the walk somewhere in the countryside and you come across a fence blocking your path. It's a low wooden rickety kind of fence and you don't think it serves a purpose. So what you do is you knock it down; you think it'll make the path easier and all of the walkers of the world will gather round to thank you for your good #Samaritan work. But what you didn't realise was that the fence actually served a really important purpose for the farmer up the"
TikTok Link 2025-02-08T14:45Z 272.6K followers, 254.4K engagements
"About [---] years ago the philosopher Immanuel #Kant gave us his theory of #deontology which argues that things are right or wrong regardless of the consequences and regardless of your feelings on the matter. It's a #duty based ethical theory. Now as a part of his deontology Kant gives us one quite stringent rule: It is always #wrong to #lie under any circumstances. He gives many arguments for this but one of the strongest is the argument from autonomy. Because when you lie to somebody you are robbing them of all of the information they need to make autonomous decisions. And if you rob somebody"
TikTok Link 2025-03-12T15:11Z [--] followers, 566.7K engagements
"Simone #Weil once said that the first thing we should ask any close friend or relation is "What are you going through at the moment How is life hard for you right now" Of course most of us recoil from these questions. We don't want to ask them and we certainly don't want to answer them. And that's because they force us to attend to the needs and the lives of another. And of course this demands compassion. These are hard questions to hear because they require us to do something. In this week's Mini Philosophy interview I interview David Bather Woods about Schopenhauer. According to"
TikTok Link 2025-04-09T14:30Z 285.8K followers, 160K engagements
"A mechanically integrated group is any portion of #society that shares certain values or ways of life. For example it might be the workers in a company a #bookclub that meets in a town hall or a #church congregation. For #Durkheim these groups don't just cooperate; they coexist. They are held together by likeness. Over time these groups establish strong #social norms. There are rules sometimes formal but often unspoken. All mechanically integrated groups have these norms and those who violate them are labelled deviant and then reprimanded or even banned. Because while we might challenge or"
TikTok Link 2025-04-11T14:15Z 259K followers, 25.6K engagements
"The law of reversed effort is an idea first coined by the writer Aldous #Huxley but it's the reworking of an ancient idea found in many traditions such as #Stoicism and #Daoism . The basic idea is that the more you try to do some things the more you will fail at them. Here's an example. Imagine you were lying in bed staring at the ceiling desperately willing yourself to sleep. You've been like that for hours and so you shut your eyes and you say to yourself 'Go to sleep.' You force your body into such a relaxed state that surely slumber must follow. But of course nothing happens. You cannot"
TikTok Link 2025-05-08T14:45Z 284K followers, 109.1K engagements
"Does it even make sense to talk about God Can we ever say something true or false about spiritual and religious things Because even for religious believers #God is thought to be beyond human cognition. He's thought to be so infinitely complex and #metaphysical that we cannot understand him from our physical and finite minds. So when we talk about God what are we actually talking about This is one of the many things I spoke to Alex O'Connor about in this week's Mini #Philosophy interview. Non-Cognitivism is the view that religious words do not match with any religious objects. There is no"
TikTok Link 2025-06-24T14:30Z 278.6K followers, 57.2K engagements
"A few years ago the philosophy-leaning wings of the internet were talking about something first posted on Reddit. It's the closest you can come to a modern morality meme. It's called the shopping cart litmus test. The test is whether somebody returns their shopping cart to the stack once they are finished with it. As the original anonymous poster put it: Returning a shopping cart is an easy convenient task and one which we all recognise as correct and appropriate to do. It's not illegal to abandon your shopping cart and no one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart. You must"
TikTok Link 2025-06-26T13:30Z 259K followers, 293.9K engagements
"About [--] years ago the psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger ran a series of experiments to reveal something strange: people who know the least often have the most confidence in their abilities. This has come to be known as the "DunningKruger effect." In short if you're incompetent you lack the skills you need to recognise your own competence and so you overestimate your abilities. You think you're great when you're not. But what's less commonly known is the opposite known as the "reverse DunningKruger effect." This is when you become truly competent. It's when you research you study"
TikTok Link 2025-08-14T14:00Z 284.1K followers, 1.4M engagements
"There is a famous Jesuit expression that says "Give me the child before seven and I shall give you the adult." Because how we spend the first years of our life defines who we grow up to be. And how we teach and treat our children defines the societies in which we want to live. And according to Peter Gray in a recent Aeon essay we are depriving children of one of the most essential elements of development: free play. Free play is where a child leads the way. They choose where to go who to play with what to do and what the rules are. And of course this is risky because children are foolish and"
TikTok Link 2025-09-04T14:15Z 278K followers, 214K engagements
"The Prisoner's Dilemma is one of the most famous thought experiments in the world and it bridges psychology mathematics and philosophy. It goes like this: imagine that you and I are caught for a crime that the police don't have much evidence for and so they give me an offer. If I confess and admit everything then I will walk free. But you will get ten years in prison. And they give you the same deal too. But if both of us betray the other person then we both get five years in prison. Or if we both stay quiet and give nothing away well the police have little to go on and we only get six months"
TikTok Link 2025-09-06T15:01Z 247.5K followers, 687.1K engagements
"The Golem Effect is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy where if you imagine somebody as being cruel or mean or bad then their behaviour will meet your expectations. We will all rise or fall depending upon what others expect of us. In his [----] book Humankind Rutger Bregman argues that something similar is happening when we view ourselves as a species. Bregman argues that for centuries we've been telling ourselves a story where humans are the villains. Since at least Thomas Hobbes there's been a narrative that human nature is cruel egoistic and violent. It's what Bregman calls the 'veneer"
TikTok Link 2025-09-16T14:15Z 265.3K followers, 360.6K engagements
"You never know if somebody loves you. We each love and hate and hurt and yearn in our own unique ways and we can never cross the cranial divide to check what somebody means when they use those words. Your love might be ten times greater than theirs. It might be ten times smaller. It might be something else entirely. This is something that Irvin Yalom refers to as 'existential isolationism.' Existential isolationism is a psychotherapeutic re-examination of a very old philosophical problem known as qualia. Qualia are all those subjective and private feelings that you and only you will"
TikTok Link 2025-09-18T13:45Z 284.5K followers, 507.9K engagements
"People dont actually think that billionaires are immoral. They are just jealous. If they could be as rich as Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk they would be so in a flash. People dont actually think that power and strength is a bad thing. They are just angry that they are too weak and pathetic to be so themselves. This is what Friedrich Nietzsche called ressentiment. And he thought that all of our modern values are based upon envy and bitterness. Nietzsche argued that once upon a time the values of the world were power nobility and success. Alexander marching through Persia to India was called Great."
TikTok Link 2025-09-20T15:18Z 268.5K followers, 621.4K engagements
"Bayes theorem is probably the single most important thing any rational person can learn. So many of our debates and disagreements we shout about are because we don't understand Bayes theorem or how human rationality often works. Bayes theorem is named after the 18th century Thomas Bayes and essentially it's a formula which asks: When you are presented with all of the evidence for something how much should you believe it Bayes theorem teaches us that our beliefs are not fixed; they are probabilities. Our beliefs change as we weigh up new evidence against our assumptions or our priors. In other"
TikTok Link 2025-09-21T13:45Z 251.5K followers, 531.8K engagements
"Most of us will at some point have to make a hard choice. It might be a relationship or a career or moving house but a hard choice is when there's no easy or obvious reason for choosing one path over another. But the philosopher Ruth Chang offers us a way out. Chang suggests that most of the reasons we consider when debating a choice are 'practical reasons.' This is when we weigh up the measurable outcomes of option A over option B. Consider for example somebody called Adam who's weighing up career choices. Should he choose one which is intellectually exciting or one which is financially"
TikTok Link 2025-09-23T15:15Z 284K followers, 445.9K engagements
"Theres a certain type of person who will criticise everything. They will mock you if you try they will poke holes in what you say and they will tell you you are doing it all wrong but they will never ever be caught doing anything constructive themselves. These critics are those who are so relentlessly negative that they pull you down to their cynical sidelines. They cant stand anybody doing anything because its always going to be wrong. But as Theodore Roosevelt put it it is not the critic who counts but the brave and valiant person who enters the arena. In his book Swarm Byung-Chul Han"
TikTok Link 2025-09-24T18:00Z [--] followers, 163.6K engagements
"How many really good friends do you have Your best friends the ones who matter the most. I bet its around five because thats the number that the social psychologist Robin Dunbar gave in his famous theory of social groupings. Dunbar began by studying primates and he noticed a pretty conclusive correlation between the size of a primates brain and how many social contacts they can have. Then he turned to looking at the size of a human brain and using his ratio he hypothesised that humans can have an upper limit of [---] meaningful social contacts. And weirdly that [---] number does come up again and"
TikTok Link 2025-09-26T14:30Z 251.5K followers, 117.3K engagements
"Sometimes in life you will meet a person who believes something that is wrong. Worse they might even believe something that is damaging to either themselves or to other people. And in those situations what do you do If you've ever tried to change somebody's beliefs you'll realise how difficult it is to do because rational discussion often collapses into confrontational argument. But in [----] a team from the University of Pennsylvania offered a possible solution and it's called the bypassing technique. Bypassing is where instead of providing some negative takedown of an argument you instead"
TikTok Link 2025-10-04T15:15Z [--] followers, 399.6K engagements
"In [----] the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg developed the Heinz Dilemma to measure how morally developed a person is. Give it a go to see how developed you are. Imagine there is someone called Heinz whose wife is dying. There is a drug which might save her but its too expensive and the only way to get it is to steal it. Here are your options: Heinz should not steal the drug. Heinz should steal the drug but he should go to prison for doing so. Heinz should steal the drug but should not go to prison. From these answers Kohlberg developed what he calls the three stages of moral development. The"
TikTok Link 2025-10-13T14:18Z 264.7K followers, 711.7K engagements
"If you give it enough time you will suffer. You cannot be both mortal and human without knowing your fair share of pain. This is known as one of the 'marks of existence' in Buddhist philosophy which argues that if we understand suffering then we can hope to alleviate or even overcome it. According to Buddhist philosophy there are three kinds of suffering. The first is how most people usually understand suffering. It's bodily and physical pain. It's often associated with disease old age and of course death. You will know pain you will get sick and you will die. Secondly there's the kind of"
TikTok Link 2025-10-15T15:15Z 284K followers, 254.2K engagements
"It's been reported that Gen Z are drinking less than previous generations and for some this is a good thing. It's a sign of maturity of virtue and of being able to find happiness without getting drunk. But in this week's Mini Philosophy interview the philosopher Edward Slingerland argues that getting drunk is important to any large-scale society. Slingerland argues that drinking and getting drunk with friends is a kind of chemical handshake. The problem in any large-scale society is how we can come to trust other people because we are all looking out for ourselves. And yet we recognise that"
TikTok Link 2025-10-16T15:15Z 248.5K followers, 425.1K engagements
"Nutpicking is a kind of tactic when you try to present a fringe or extreme view as representative of an entire ideology or belief system. For example it's when somebody points at climate activists who are throwing soup at the Mona Lisa and says 'See they are all just terrorists.' Or it's when somebody posts a clip of a preacher saying that hurricanes are caused by homosexuality and says that that is representative of all believers. Technically there are three fallacies in one. The first is a kind of regular straw man where you pick the weakest version of an argument or the least competent"
TikTok Link 2025-10-19T14:15Z 251.5K followers, [----] engagements
"The biologist Edward Wilson argued that the trouble with humans is that we have Paleolithic emotions with medieval institutions and godlike technology. And in this week's Mini Philosophy newsletter Toby Ord argues that the problem isn't theoretical it's existential. In his book Precipice Ord argues that we've reached a turning point. For [------] years we were powerless yet safe. Yes nature would kill us off and we would kill each other over and over again but we couldn't kill off the entire species. Now nuclear weapons artificial intelligence and synthetic biology have the power to wipe out"
TikTok Link 2025-10-27T16:15Z [--] followers, 227.1K engagements
"The trolley problem is probably the most famous thought experiment in moral philosophy and it goes back to the 1960s with the British philosopher Philippa Foot. It goes like this: imagine that you are the driver of a trolley which is a kind of small train and it's speeding down the tracks. The brakes are not working and there's no way to stop this multi-tonne juggernaut. Now up ahead on the tracks are five workers idling away eating their lunch. They can't see the train and they can't get out of the way in time. The train will certainly kill them all. But there is an option: you can pull a"
TikTok Link 2025-11-02T15:45Z 265.3K followers, 545.7K engagements
"A long time ago I read a thought experiment from the British philosopher John Locke and it was what inspired me to go on to study philosophy. It's a question and a thought that I suspect many people have as well. It goes like this: Imagine that there are two perfectly healthy people with perfectly functioning sense organs and they are on a walk and one turns to the other and says 'Wow look at that beautiful blue sky' And the other one nods along and agrees. Now the question that John Locke asks is: how do you know that when one person sees blue the other person doesn't actually see green They"
TikTok Link 2025-11-05T16:45Z 280K followers, 551.5K engagements
"You can never be right. You can never say a belief is true or false because in every discussion debate and line of reasoning there will come a point when you have to give up. You can carry on trying if you want but according to Agrippa's trilemma you will inevitably and always reach one of three problematic points. The first is an infinite regress and this is when you will go on and on and on until you have no grounding whatsoever. The second is known as circular reasoning and this is when somebody's argument depends upon a point they have already made. Suppose for example that somebody says"
TikTok Link 2025-11-11T15:30Z 269.7K followers, 167.5K engagements
"What makes your worries your anxieties and your obsessions a bit lighter What restores you Hopefully you have that one thing but there is nothing with a greater philosophical pedigree than a good walk. Many people have celebrated the humble walk but none so much as Henry Thoreau in his [----] essay Walking. Thoreau makes a distinction between a walk and a saunter. A walk is instrumental and practical. We walk to do something. I walk to the shops I walk to work or I walk to visit my friends. A saunter though is intentionally rambling. It has no other purpose than the walk itself. And for Thoreau"
TikTok Link 2025-11-15T16:15Z 283.7K followers, 91.5K engagements
"Bayes Theorem is probably one of the most important things any rational person can learn because so many of our debates and disagreements that we shout at each other about are because we don't understand how our beliefs work. Bayes Theorem goes back to the 18th century Thomas Bayes and essentially it's a formula which asks: when we are presented with the evidence for something how much should we believe it Bayes Theorem teaches us that our beliefs are not fixed. They are probabilities. Our beliefs change as we weigh up new evidence against our assumptions or what are called priors. In other"
TikTok Link 2025-11-28T16:15Z 283.6K followers, 325.2K engagements
"The problem with the idea of God is that it just doesn't make any sense. According to traditional monotheism God is said to have three attributes: God is all-powerful omnipotent; God is all-knowing omniscient; and God is all-loving omni-benevolent. Taken alone these have problems but put together they render the entire concept incoherent. But according to the medieval scholar Thomas Aquinas there might be a way out. For example one of the problems with omnipotence is that it can't beat itself. And the early question of children is something like: can God create a stone he cannot lift Or can"
TikTok Link 2025-12-14T19:15Z 284.9K followers, 349.2K engagements
"Why do we find it so hard to fix our bad habits Why do 80% of New Year's resolutions fail within the first month Well according to the philosopher Matt Haug in an article for the Institute of Arts and Ideas it's because we're misunderstanding how change works. Aristotle argued that there are two types of self-control. The first the Enkrateic person is somebody who resists temptation by the strength of their willpower alone. So they see the open box of chocolates and they say no and they resist temptation. The Sphrn person is somebody who has aligned their desires with their goals and so they"
TikTok Link 2026-01-01T15:25Z 285.4K followers, 187.2K engagements
"Be careful around anyone who thinks they are the pure ones. Be careful around anyone who thinks that their tribe their people are the righteous ones. Because as Bertrand Russell once argued anyone who is willing to divide the world into the righteous and the unrighteous are just a small push away from some terrible brutality. According to Russell when we divide the world into pure and impure saints and sinners we are simply creating an elaborate system of ethics where the herd justifies itself in wreaking punishment upon things it dislikes. When you simply disagree with someone you probably"
TikTok Link 2026-01-11T15:40Z 284.5K followers, 240.4K engagements
"In his recent book The Crisis of Narration Byung-Chul Han argues that the great neurosis of our time is that we are trying to sell our lives to others. Han argues that we have always been storytelling creatures. We present accounts of our lives that include the deep structures of who we are. Yes we want to be accepted but by and large we would say 'This is who I am. Accept it or do not.' But in recent years Han argues that we have moved from storytelling to 'storyselling'. We say we believe things or do certain things knowing full well that people in the room will buy it. They'll say 'Good"
TikTok Link 2026-01-15T16:16Z 285.4K followers, 38.4K engagements
"In [----] Francis #Fukuyama called #transhumanism the world's most dangerous idea. Transhumanism is the #philosophical idea that we should prolong enhance or utterly change human life using #technology . And so it's a broad school. At one end this involves the use of bionic limbs and implanted hearing aids and at the other end it involves uploading our consciousness as data to the cloud. It ranges from making life a bit easier to making us immortal. Fukuyama defines transhumanism as something which changes the human experience entirely such as prolonging a human life indefinitely or ridding us"
TikTok Link 2024-12-27T14:38Z [--] followers, 110.3K engagements
"Pascal's Wager is one of the more curious and controversial arguments for the existence of God in the history of philosophy. Pascal was a philosopher but he was also a mathematician and his argument is based upon probability theory. Pascal argues that when it comes to the belief in God there are two options: either God exists or God does not exist. And when it comes to living our lives we have two options as well: either we live as atheists or we live as believers. Now suppose that I live my life as an atheist. I do not go to church I don't read my Bible and God does exist. Well in that"
TikTok Link 2026-01-22T16:35Z 290.8K followers, 163.4K engagements
"#Descartes is one of the most famous #philosophers in history. And his #cogito - I think therefore I am - is probably the most famous argument there is. In fact its not too much to say that its the bedrock of all modern #philosophy at least in the West. To understand what it means we have to know that its a solution to a problem and the problem is known as radical #skepticism. Because you see a lot of Descartes works are trying to tackle the same problem that #thematrix raised four centuries later. And thats how can we be sure of anything How do we know that all that we see and experience are"
TikTok Link 2024-04-07T12:30Z 287.1K followers, 17.4K engagements
"We only tend to focus on things when they stop working. So if you have a sore throat then you're painfully aware of swallowing. Or if the spacebar sticks then you realize how important it is. The world is taken for granted until it breaks and then we'll turn our attention to it. This is what #Heidegger explores in this distinction between handiness and being at hand. For Heidegger the world does not exist as an independent thing but instead is only understood in how it relates to me. So whenever we meet an object in the world we ask the question What can this object be used for Everything"
TikTok Link 2024-07-28T15:59Z [--] followers, 33.9K engagements
"In [----] the philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay called The #Hedgehog and the Fox where he argued that all thinkers can be divided into two. There are hedgehog thinkers and there are #fox thinkers. Berlin himself admitted that the essay was just a bit of fun but his idea has been taken seriously by a great many people. A hedgehog thinker is a person who has one great conception of the world and they will apply this conception to everything. A hedgehog might not be fast or big or cunning but they have spikes and that's all they need. Likewise thinkers like #Plato or #Pascal believe that"
TikTok Link 2025-01-16T14:45Z [--] followers, 117.1K engagements
"Schopenhauer's Bus Ride is a compelling and uplifting thought experiment presented by the #philosopher Mark Rowlands in his book Running with the Pack. It goes like this: Imagine you are trapped on a seriously unpleasant bus ride. It's uncomfortably hot and the toilet at the back is blocked overflowing and stinking. Sweat is streaming down your body and you bounce up and down as the hellish bus hits every pothole along the dirty track. The people all around you are making up these ridiculous stories and there are fights and shouting matches all over the place. The bus is miserable. Then out"
TikTok Link 2025-05-21T17:07Z [--] followers, 83.2K engagements
"Last year a team from New York University ran a study to explain how people make #decisions. They wanted to know what factors mattered to people and what goes through somebody's head as they're deciding a course of action. According to the study most people have three lenses through which they decide any decision. And what's interesting is that each of these lenses often uses a different part of the #brain . First there is the moral lens. This decides if something is right or wrong mostly based on social norms and collective values. For instance 'Will saying this mean thing make somebody sad'"
TikTok Link 2025-05-30T14:45Z 287.5K followers, 42.2K engagements
"AI is just slop rubbish posts rubbish videos and smooth-faced cartoons straight out of the uncanny valley. AI is getting worse it's getting lazier and its output more recognisable. AI is just a fad and a bubble. No one even cares anyway. Well according to Louis Rosenberg in an article for Big Think these are all false and desperate narratives designed to help us cope in a world where AI is changing everything. Rosenberg argues that the sudden and drastic rise in AI has left us reeling. And so as he put it 'society is collectively going through the first stage of grief denial over the very"
TikTok Link 2026-01-29T14:55Z 287.1K followers, 25.8K engagements
"#kierkegaard and #sartre both argued we're exhilarated and terrified by our #freedom . That wild panic of #choice is key to #existentialism and it's got a name: l'appel du vide. #philosophy"
TikTok Link 2024-04-22T13:27Z 288.4K followers, [----] engagements
"For Carl #Jung. Archetypes are these universal images which have existed since remotest times. They pop up in myths fables stories and our collective unconscious. #Archetypes are not people as such but rather they're different modes of behaving. Jung doesn't give a definitive list of archetypes but we can pause to hone in on three. The #Persona is the identity that we construct when we're out and about. It's the mask that we wear but it needn't be a suffocating or burdensome thing; it might be a protection. But sometimes our persona weighs heavily and it creates instability and neuroses. The"
TikTok Link 2024-05-30T14:19Z 288.5K followers, 20.8K engagements
"Substance dualism is the idea that the universe is not just physical matter. Instead the world is divided into two: physical stuff and mind stuff. There are thoughts and then there's your body. There's your brain and then there's your mind. One of the principal proponents of dualism is Ren Descartes. #Dualism is argued on the basis of the law of identity. Essentially he says that if two things are different in any way then they must be different things. So if we can prove that our minds are different from our bodies then we must establish them as different substances. #Descartes then goes on"
TikTok Link 2024-06-18T13:53Z 289.1K followers, 11.2K engagements
"Most people know the famous #Zen kan: 'What is the sound of one hand' But few people know how the question is framed or how the story ends. Once upon a time a Zen master called his student to him and he said 'Show me the sound of two hands.' The #student thought for a bit and then he clapped. 'Now show me the sound of one hand' the master said. The student was confused because he could not clap with only one hand. 'Go away and find me the sound of one hand' the master said. And so the student went away and thought for days. Finally he came back and he said 'I have found it.' And he whistled"
TikTok Link 2025-02-23T14:45Z 289.1K followers, 103.6K engagements
"We should be furious at God. If there is an all-powerful God who created the world with such depravity cruelty and evil then Hes not worthy of worship. Hes worthy of scorn. This is the charge that #Dostoevsky levels in his famous book The Brothers Karamazov. In the book the character Ivan is criticising the #Christian God but it could apply to all #monotheism as well. Ivan asks how it is that God can allow one type of #evil above all others: the #suffering of children. He gives two examples. First the story of a young girl who wet the bed and is forced to stay the night in an outhouse covered"
TikTok Link 2025-03-08T15:30Z 289.1K followers, 113.7K engagements
"So much of the news at the moment is fixated on one man and how that one man is changing the world. But how will historians of the future remember today The writer Thomas Carlyle once argued that #history is defined by the biography of great men. #Caesar made Rome #Washington made America and Mao made #China . Individuals defining history. But in this week's Mini #Philosophy interview the #historian Anton Howes argues that this is wrong. Howes is sympathetic to the #Marxist interpretation of history which says that no one person defines history but that we are all 'part of circumstances"
TikTok Link 2025-04-14T14:30Z 289K followers, 59.7K engagements
"All empires will collapse eventually. The dominant power of any age will be overrun by corruption incompetence and a lack of vision. A country will forget what made it strong and complacency breeds fragility. When a nation starts to look after only a few people at the top it's often not long before something or someone takes over. This is known as the 'Empire cycle' and it goes back to Ibn Khaldun. Ibn Khaldun argued that the strength of any empire or nation depends upon its 'asabiyyah' or 'social cohesion.' This is the unity or bond between a tribe a nation or a people. An asabiyyah is"
TikTok Link 2025-06-06T14:49Z 288.6K followers, 294.1K engagements
"Sometimes the best philosophy comes not from philosophers but from novelists. And Ursula Le Guins The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is one of the most memorable ethical dilemmas you can get. It goes like this. Imagine a perfectly happy city known as Omelas. Everyone has everything they need. Everyone lives a life of pleasure. Everything is a smiling dancing utopiaor so it seems. Because in a dark basement somewhere in Omelas a small child is locked away and tortured. She lives in filth her belly empty surviving on scraps and she is sporadically beaten. We learn that for whatever reason the"
TikTok Link 2025-11-09T19:15Z 288.6K followers, 272.8K engagements
"'What have you got to hide' your friend asks and she looks at you suspiciously. She's trying to get you to install a new technology called the OmniWatch. The OmniWatch is a high-definition camera that records you all of the time. 'We all have it' she says. 'Why would you not want it You don't have any secrets do you' This is a question that Dave Eggers asks in his book The Circle and it's about the value of privacy. Imagine a near-future where social media has taken over. Everybody has it and everybody obsesses about it. And so everything you do is recorded it is judged and it is appraised by"
TikTok Link 2025-12-18T16:15Z 288.1K followers, 31.8K engagements
"Anti-natalism is the idea that it is wrong to have kids. It argues that anybody who chooses to have biological children is immoral. One of the earliest and most cited proponents of anti-natalism is David Benatar. Benatar argues that we each give an 'unreliable assessment' about how good our lives actually are. We say things are great when actually life is far worse than we let on. Humans are optimistic. We tend to focus on the rare and fleeting moments of happiness that pop up in the long night of misery that makes up reality. We shrug our shoulders and say 'Oh it's not that bad' when"
TikTok Link 2025-12-19T18:54Z 288.6K followers, 749.2K engagements
"Against my better judgment I'm going to share one of the more ridiculous outtakes from this year's filming. I'll admit that it's not my finest or most heroic of hours but I'm going to cave under the avalanche of peer pressure and share it nonetheless. I hope you enjoy it half as much as my friends and family clearly have. Merry Christmas"
TikTok Link 2025-12-25T15:09Z 288.6K followers, 103.2K engagements
"Why are some people attracted to extreme ideologies Why are some people more likely to be radicalised than others Well according to Hannah Arendt in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism the single biggest factor is the rise in isolation and loneliness. Arendt argues that loneliness is not the same thing as being alone. Philosophers have long pointed out that solitude being alone is different to loneliness. Loneliness is characterised as a painful and unhappy state which involves a degree of powerlessness and feeling irrelevant. It's when we feel we are excluded and that our voice is not"
TikTok Link 2026-01-17T15:19Z 290.8K followers, 141.4K engagements
"Sometimes you just need to scream. Sometimes you need to sob to wail and to cry. Sometimes you need to sprint up a hill or to punch a boxing bag. And after you do so you feel better. After some primal explosion of pent-up emotion you feel calmer and things feel alright. This is known as catharsis and it goes back to Aristotle. The Greeks were big fans of moderation. The great physician Hippocrates argued that all illnesses are caused by a misbalance of fluids in the body. And Aristotle argued that this can be extended to the soul where our thoughts and feelings need rebalancing as well."
TikTok Link 2026-01-21T15:44Z 290.8K followers, 52.7K engagements
"Tolkien once argued that the secret of a good fairy tale or myth is not in the strange characters or the magical adventures. It's in what he called the eucatastrophe and it's something we all need to hear more of more often. The eucatastrophe is a sudden and final reversal of fortunes. It's the happy ending. The Lord of the Rings does not end with the hobbits dead and Sauron cackling over his all-cash industrial empire. It ends with light beating dark with simple kindness love and companionship winning out over evil. For Tolkien the stories we tell should inspire us to greatness. They should"
TikTok Link 2026-01-25T15:45Z 290.8K followers, 121.2K engagements
"According to Nietzsche few people actually care about the #truth . Few people care about #facts . Instead most people are concerned with looking good and feeling good. Most people care only about comfort security and power. From this observation the philosopher Joseph Shieber coined the expression 'The #Nietzsche thesis' where he argued 'the goal of most conversations is not about seeking the truth but about self-preservation.' In other words most people would accept or reject a fact based upon calculation rather than any concern for the truth. As Nietzsche put it we will accept and look for"
TikTok Link 2025-05-22T14:30Z [--] followers, 1M engagements
"#Daoism is one of the oldest recorded philosophies and it belongs to a very different tradition to that inherited from the ancient #greeks Daoism is all about finding #harmony in life and with the universe. The #dao translates as The Way and its often compared to the flow of a river. Like a river the Dao is what carries and directs us all and we are just boats pushed along its current. You can row against the current but thats when life is hard and to be happy is to go with the flow. That going with the flow is known as #WuWei. Wu Wei is when we let go and let life carry us along. And its not"
TikTok Link 2024-08-06T18:16Z 290.7K followers, 156K engagements
"Stoicism is really popular these days not least because it comes with a ready-made list of practical and effective tips about how to live. And one of the most popular of these is known as the dichotomy of control. The dichotomy of control goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus who argued that there are some things within our power and some things that are not. And so wisdom comes in accepting responsibility and taking ownership of what we can change and learning to deal with what we can't. But this doesn't mean that we should just shrug our shoulders and say 'Oh well' because"
TikTok Link 2025-10-23T15:15Z [--] followers, 322.9K engagements
"The word metanoia is when you have to build something new from the broken remnants of your past. It's when a drastic change or a crisis forces you to look at the world differently and to change direction. It's an epiphany a revelation or a fresh start. Metanoia literally means changing your mind. But this is not some humdrum changing your order at a restaurant. This is an existential root-and-branch change in your being. The Christian Church Father Tertullian saw it as a kind of conversion experience and metanoia appears in the Gospels a lot and it's often translated as repentance. It was"
TikTok Link 2025-12-29T15:39Z [--] followers, 139K engagements
"In the Iliad Achilles is given a choice: would he rather have a quiet and long life that is quickly forgotten or a short life with immortal fame If you were given the same choice what would you pick The writer Ernest Hemingway is often credited with saying that everyone has two deaths. The first is when they are buried in the ground and the second is the last time somebody mentions their name. In this way some people can be immortal. The point is that while we all must die our legends can live on through what Ernest Becker called immortality projects. When people name a building an invention"
TikTok Link 2025-10-07T15:15Z [--] followers, 200.3K engagements
"You're having dinner with some colleagues when somebody clicks their fingers and says 'Waiter here now.' Somebody exits a taxi without having said hello goodbye or thank you. A government executes a traitor to make an example of them. What do all of these have in common Well according to Immanuel Kant they are treating people as a means to an end and they are all wrong. Kant argued that there is an unconditional dignity that comes with being a rational human being and we should always work to respect that. He said that we should act to treat humanity in every case as an end and never as a"
TikTok Link 2026-01-02T15:44Z [--] followers, 276.2K engagements
"We often like to believe that the world is governed by fairness by rules and by international law. But [----] years ago the Athenian army delivered a brutal reality check that still defines political philosophy today. It's known as the 'Melian Dialogue.' In [---] BC Athens was the regional superpower they dominated the area with their wealth and their armed forces. And so Athens used their power to demand that the tiny island of Melos surrender and pay tribute. The Melians argued from a place of morality. They said that it was unjust to attack a neutral party and that the gods would protect their"
TikTok Link 2026-01-06T15:09Z [--] followers, 343.8K engagements
"Why is it that sometimes the smartest people you know do the most idiotic of things Why is it that an expert in one field can look like a fool in another Well according to the philosopher Nathan Ballantyne it might be down to something called 'epistemic trespassing.' Epistemic trespassing is when an expert in one field thinks that they are an expert in another. So if you are good at coding at astrophysics or medicine you imagine that you are good at politics at sociology or at anthropology. Epistemic trespassing is when a tech billionaire who thinks that because he is successful in one"
TikTok Link 2026-01-23T15:04Z 290.8K followers, 142.6K engagements
"About [---] years ago the philosopher Immanuel Kant gave us his theory of deontology which argues that things are right or wrong regardless of the consequences. And regardless of your feelings on the matter it's a duty-based ethical theory. Now as a part of his deontology Kant gives us one quite stringent rule: it is always wrong to lie under any circumstances. He gives many arguments for this but one of the strongest is the argument from autonomy. Because when you lie to somebody you are robbing them of all of the information they need to make autonomous decisions. And if you rob somebody of"
TikTok Link 2026-01-24T16:23Z 290.8K followers, 203.8K engagements
"Descartes once argued that it is necessary once in your life to question everything you believe and everything you value. You need to find a quiet spot do a great deal of thinking and go back to first principles. Because most people collect their beliefs like some kind of cultural inheritance and we take these items and we stuff them in the great attic of our mind until we can move no longer. This attic is riddled with half-truths falsehoods and misunderstandings and so we need to stop occasionally to sort things out. We need an intellectual reset. We need to spring-clean the attic. Descartes"
TikTok Link 2026-01-30T15:06Z 290.8K followers, 138.2K engagements
"I wrote in the piece on the Mini Philosophy Substack where I argue that there are five different types of philosopher. Which one of these are you First there is the Sphinx. The Sphinx questions everything but answers nothing. They'll say something like 'why do you think that way' until you doubt your own existence. Socrates was the ultimate sphinx and while they might be maddening they are also effective. They are the midwives of knowledge. Second the Leviathan. These are those who create and live by a system philosophy. There's one book one philosophy one idea that governs everything they"
TikTok Link 2026-02-06T13:23Z 290.8K followers, 72.1K engagements
"You open your phone and see a post from your best friend. Except they're not really your best friend anymore are they Because you've drifted. The person you once knew at school is different to the person you know today and if you're honest you are different too. When we look back at things it's easy to marvel at how far things have changed. A relationship we thought would last forever lasted only a few years. The dreams we had in our 20s might seem embarrassing to us in our 30s and this is why the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that 'no man ever steps into the same river twice for"
TikTok Link 2026-02-14T14:46Z 290.8K followers, 118.6K engagements
"Suppose that somebody insults you at a party they call you boring or stupid or irrelevant and for days afterwards you can't stop thinking about it. You replay it over and over again. You are hurt and then you are angry and then you are hurt again. The stoic philosopher Epictetus would ask you this question 'why have you given this person so much power over your mind' Epictetus argues that an insult is just words that come from one person's mouth and go to your ears and what happens next is entirely up to you. You can choose to take the words in examine them and let them fester or you can"
TikTok Link 2026-02-12T13:54Z 290.8K followers, 221K engagements
"Technology was supposed to make our lives less stressful and easier. It was supposed to make things better in almost every way. And yet for every problem technology solves it seems to raise three more. This is why the French philosopher Jacques Ellul called it the 'betrayal of technology.' In [----] Ellul argued that while technology was supposed to liberate us it has enslaved us not through force but through necessity. Because while it might solve this or that problem it also creates three dependencies. For example the car might have relieved us of the tyranny of distance but then chained us"
TikTok Link 2026-02-10T14:57Z 290.8K followers, 78.4K engagements
"Imagine that when you are born some kind god gave you a bag full of magical seeds. If you were to plant these seeds they would turn into giant beanstalks magic money trees and entire fields of plenty. They are the seeds could change the world and make you the hero of adventure. Now imagine this god looking aghast as you their your seeds into the fire. You put your seeds in the attic and forget about them forever. A bag of potential lies wasted as you too waste away. For Confucius this is how we ought to see the human condition: as one of huge possibilities to be nurtured or squandered. One of"
TikTok Link 2026-02-08T14:19Z 290.8K followers, 29K engagements
"I wrote in the piece on the Mini Philosophy Substack where I argue that there are five different types of philosopher. Which one of these are you First there is the Sphinx. The Sphinx questions everything but answers nothing. They'll say something like 'why do you think that way' until you doubt your own existence. Socrates was the ultimate sphinx and while they might be maddening they are also effective. They are the midwives of knowledge. Second the Leviathan. These are those who create and live by a system philosophy. There's one book one philosophy one idea that governs everything they"
TikTok Link 2026-02-06T13:23Z 290.8K followers, 72.1K engagements
"Most people don't actually want the truth. They want to be right. And if the truth gets in the way of being right their minds will do something odd they will lock down. And according to the philosopher Chris Ranalli when this happens we should start to call it indoctrination. In his work on social epistemology Ranalli argues that indoctrination isn't just about what you believe but how that belief is sealed off from the rest of the world. It's a psychological cage where the door in and out stays barred. Ranalli points out that indoctrination works by pre-emptively dismissing any"
TikTok Link 2026-02-05T14:27Z 290.8K followers, 117.9K engagements
"Why is it that the more you try to be happy the more miserable you feel Why is it that trying to be better often makes you feel worse off Well according to the philosopher Alan Watts it's all down to what he calls the 'backwards law.' Watts argues that when we try to pursue a positive experience it reinforces the fact that we lack it in the first place. And so there is a kind of 'not-enough' feedback loop. For example if you desperately want to be rich you will walk through life feeling poor and unworthy regardless of your bank balance. If you want to be attractive and desirable you'll be"
TikTok Link 2026-02-03T15:37Z 290.8K followers, 55.6K engagements
"One of the many things you learn as you grow up is that there is more going on behind what people are saying. Of course there are outright lies but there's also a range of other psychological phenomena. For example deflection is where we shift attention away from our own feelings or projection is where we claim somebody else is feeling what we actually are. Emotions are complicated. James Baldwin once wrote that 'I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense once hate is gone they will be forced to deal with pain.' Baldwin's point is that we"
TikTok Link 2026-02-02T16:59Z 290.8K followers, 100.9K engagements
"Have you ever noticed how some people have an excuse for everything They say 'It's the way I was born' or 'My boss just hates me' or 'It's bad luck.' They blame the universe their past or their DNA for the state of their lives because it's easier to be a victim of circumstance. But according to Jean-Paul Sartre this is an example of what he called bad faith. In his most famous line Sartre said 'existence precedes essence' which means that you aren't born with a pre-written destiny. You are a blank canvas and you are nothing more than the sum of your actions. But possessing such immense and"
TikTok Link 2026-01-31T14:31Z 290.8K followers, 48.2K engagements
"Descartes once argued that it is necessary once in your life to question everything you believe and everything you value. You need to find a quiet spot do a great deal of thinking and go back to first principles. Because most people collect their beliefs like some kind of cultural inheritance and we take these items and we stuff them in the great attic of our mind until we can move no longer. This attic is riddled with half-truths falsehoods and misunderstandings and so we need to stop occasionally to sort things out. We need an intellectual reset. We need to spring-clean the attic. Descartes"
TikTok Link 2026-01-30T15:06Z 290.8K followers, 138.2K engagements
"Imagine you pass somebody in the park and say you nod you smile and you go back to your life. Then a few days later you notice the same person behind you in the supermarket. According to the Korean idea of in-yun something important is happening here. In-yun means fate but it really means the fate between people and relationships. It's tied to Buddhist ideas like samsara and reincarnation. But essentially it says that if you see a stranger more than once it is not just a coincidence. That is the universe trying to tell you something. It is trying to say that here is someone important they"
TikTok Link 2026-01-27T15:25Z 290.8K followers, 114.4K engagements
"We live in the age of the narcissist. We see it in our toxic ex-partners in pouting influencers and arrogant bosses. It's vanity but on steroids. And at the same time we live in an age of powerlessness. We feel that our voices and our actions don't count for anything and so we don't protest we don't vote and we don't care. And according to Christopher Lasch these are not unrelated facts. Lasch argues that rather than criticising and mocking the individual narcissist we should point aim at what he calls The Culture of Narcissism. Because Lasch argues that when a society loses its sense of the"
TikTok Link 2026-01-26T17:55Z 290.8K followers, 48.4K engagements
"Tolkien once argued that the secret of a good fairy tale or myth is not in the strange characters or the magical adventures. It's in what he called the eucatastrophe and it's something we all need to hear more of more often. The eucatastrophe is a sudden and final reversal of fortunes. It's the happy ending. The Lord of the Rings does not end with the hobbits dead and Sauron cackling over his all-cash industrial empire. It ends with light beating dark with simple kindness love and companionship winning out over evil. For Tolkien the stories we tell should inspire us to greatness. They should"
TikTok Link 2026-01-25T15:45Z 290.8K followers, 121.2K engagements
"About [---] years ago the philosopher Immanuel Kant gave us his theory of deontology which argues that things are right or wrong regardless of the consequences. And regardless of your feelings on the matter it's a duty-based ethical theory. Now as a part of his deontology Kant gives us one quite stringent rule: it is always wrong to lie under any circumstances. He gives many arguments for this but one of the strongest is the argument from autonomy. Because when you lie to somebody you are robbing them of all of the information they need to make autonomous decisions. And if you rob somebody of"
TikTok Link 2026-01-24T16:23Z 290.8K followers, 203.8K engagements
"Why is it that sometimes the smartest people you know do the most idiotic of things Why is it that an expert in one field can look like a fool in another Well according to the philosopher Nathan Ballantyne it might be down to something called 'epistemic trespassing.' Epistemic trespassing is when an expert in one field thinks that they are an expert in another. So if you are good at coding at astrophysics or medicine you imagine that you are good at politics at sociology or at anthropology. Epistemic trespassing is when a tech billionaire who thinks that because he is successful in one"
TikTok Link 2026-01-23T15:04Z 290.8K followers, 142.6K engagements
"Pascal's Wager is one of the more curious and controversial arguments for the existence of God in the history of philosophy. Pascal was a philosopher but he was also a mathematician and his argument is based upon probability theory. Pascal argues that when it comes to the belief in God there are two options: either God exists or God does not exist. And when it comes to living our lives we have two options as well: either we live as atheists or we live as believers. Now suppose that I live my life as an atheist. I do not go to church I don't read my Bible and God does exist. Well in that"
TikTok Link 2026-01-22T16:35Z 290.8K followers, 163.4K engagements
"Sometimes you just need to scream. Sometimes you need to sob to wail and to cry. Sometimes you need to sprint up a hill or to punch a boxing bag. And after you do so you feel better. After some primal explosion of pent-up emotion you feel calmer and things feel alright. This is known as catharsis and it goes back to Aristotle. The Greeks were big fans of moderation. The great physician Hippocrates argued that all illnesses are caused by a misbalance of fluids in the body. And Aristotle argued that this can be extended to the soul where our thoughts and feelings need rebalancing as well."
TikTok Link 2026-01-21T15:44Z 290.8K followers, 52.7K engagements
"How do you know if you have a really good frienda best friend Because it's often hard to peek behind what somebody says or does to determine what really matters. But according to the philosopher Rebecca Roache there is a simple if counterintuitive test: your best friends are those you don't have to talk to. In an essay for Aeon Roache runs through the various reasons why a silence might be called awkwardor not. She argues that when we meet other people weunconsciously or notassume that the entire point is to have a conversation. So if I decide to meet you in a caf the entire point is to chat"
TikTok Link 2026-01-19T17:07Z 290.8K followers, 309.8K engagements
"Why are some people attracted to extreme ideologies Why are some people more likely to be radicalised than others Well according to Hannah Arendt in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism the single biggest factor is the rise in isolation and loneliness. Arendt argues that loneliness is not the same thing as being alone. Philosophers have long pointed out that solitude being alone is different to loneliness. Loneliness is characterised as a painful and unhappy state which involves a degree of powerlessness and feeling irrelevant. It's when we feel we are excluded and that our voice is not"
TikTok Link 2026-01-17T15:19Z 290.8K followers, 141.4K engagements
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