#  @philosophyminis Jonny Thomson Jonny Thomson posts on YouTube about in the, to the, philosophy, if you the most. They currently have [------] followers and [---] posts still getting attention that total [------] engagements in the last [--] hours. ### Engagements: [------] [#](/creator/youtube::UCD2eYNCY8wWVpR0ps6O22aA/interactions)  - [--] Week [------] -27% - [--] Month [-------] -72% - [--] Months [---------] +2,289% - [--] Year [---------] +65,354% ### Mentions: [--] [#](/creator/youtube::UCD2eYNCY8wWVpR0ps6O22aA/posts_active)  ### Followers: [------] [#](/creator/youtube::UCD2eYNCY8wWVpR0ps6O22aA/followers)  - [--] Week [------] +1.40% - [--] Month [------] +8.40% - [--] Months [------] +408% - [--] Year [------] +1,710% ### CreatorRank: [---------] [#](/creator/youtube::UCD2eYNCY8wWVpR0ps6O22aA/influencer_rank)  ### Social Influence **Social category influence** [countries](/list/countries) [travel destinations](/list/travel-destinations) [technology brands](/list/technology-brands) [cryptocurrencies](/list/cryptocurrencies) [finance](/list/finance) [social networks](/list/social-networks) **Social topic influence** [in the](/topic/in-the), [to the](/topic/to-the), [philosophy](/topic/philosophy), [if you](/topic/if-you), [the world](/topic/the-world), [imagine](/topic/imagine), [theory](/topic/theory), [we are](/topic/we-are), [book](/topic/book), [social](/topic/social) **Top accounts mentioned or mentioned by** [@sarahthebookfairy](/creator/undefined) ### Top Social Posts Top posts by engagements in the last [--] hours "AI: The Alignment Problem 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: Lets imagine we give some powerful AI of the future the prompt Reduce cancer cases in humans. Well ideally wed 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=-6Y0izZiLyk) 2025-02-07T13:01Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=P5RJnOl0QSU) 2025-04-01T12:49Z 22.1K followers, 27.8K engagements "Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=WcLCuOqlP1Y) 2025-01-27T06:48Z 22.1K followers, 29.6K engagements "Bonhoeffer: Evil and Stupidity 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." [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=3anFJ-zG2G0) 2025-04-25T13:45Z 22.1K followers, 14.1K engagements "Kafka: The Metamorphosis You will disappoint somebody at some point because everybody has different expectations of you. For most people this starts with your parents. Then later it means your friends your work and your community. You will be pulled five different ways and expected to be three different people at once and so you will fall short eventually. It's this feeling which gets to the heart of one of the most famous novels in #literature #Kafka The #Metamorphosis The Metamorphosis is about an unexceptional 9-to-5 salesman named Gregor who has a family to feed and a mortgage to pay and" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=X8vhCxCxUEY) 2025-02-21T14:45Z 22.1K followers, 40.9K engagements "Rosenberg: AI Denialism 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=KIjxNEcETcg) 2026-01-29T15:15Z 21.2K followers, [----] engagements "Korean Philosophy: In-Yun 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gyNY-UztUps) 2026-01-27T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Descartes: Doubt Everything Once 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=DLr2-O3_Dj4) 2026-01-30T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 12.3K engagements "Aristotle: The Golden Mean How do you know what the right thing is to do How can you be virtuous in any situation if you dont know what 'kindness' 'generosity' and 'courage' actually mean Well one of the greatest philosophers of all time has some guidance to offer. Aristotle argued that if you are to be #happy and fulfilled in life then you have to be virtuous. And so the question 'What does virtue mean' becomes supremely important because its essential to a good life. Aristotle gives two answers: an easy way and a hard way. The easy way for those less philosophically inclined or those a bit" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=PKhnA4yYxMc) 2025-06-14T14:35Z 21.7K followers, [----] engagements "Hardin: The Tragedy of the Commons If you've ever shared a kitchen you know about the 'dirty fridge phenomenon.' This is where people will keep their food in the fridge and yet no one will clean up the spilled milk or the mouldy fruit. And so eventually the fridge becomes unusable for everyone because no one took responsibility for its upkeep. This is what the ecologist Garrett Hardin called The Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin asks us to imagine a shared pasture open to all local farmers. And so for each farmer the rational choice is to bring along one more cow to this pasture. They get 100%" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gnKfiDE1S6o) 2026-02-01T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 10.4K engagements "Baldwin: Behind the Hate 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.'" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=iMCKkRbt3Bo) 2026-02-02T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Borges: The Library of Babel Imagine all of the lives that you didn't live a life where you never met your partner or where you didn't have a brother or a sister. A life where that horrible event didn't happen. Or where one did. The story of your life can be written in a near infinite number of different ways and when we reflect on the one narrow unlikely path we're on it can be mind boggling. This is one of the many ideas in Borges short story The #Library of #Babel #Borges asks us to imagine a vast library where the shelves hold every possible variation of books there could be. Using only" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=9drM1BSPoKc) 2025-03-17T17:14Z 21.8K followers, [----] engagements "Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=9idL4ziSVdk) 2025-03-18T17:12Z 21.9K followers, [----] engagements "Ibn Khaldun: The Empire Cycle 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=LX1yakUDXxE) 2025-10-28T15:04Z 21.9K followers, 62.4K engagements "Veblan: Conspicuous Leisure Why is it that some people are more concerned with the selfie than the experience Why do some people want to talk about visiting the great attraction rather than enjoying it Well according to the sociologist Thorstein Veblen it's all down to what he called 'conspicuous consumption.' Veblen argued that in a high-status society such as ours we buy things and experiences not because of their utility or even because we enjoy them. We buy them to signal our place in the social hierarchy. In the past the elite signalled their status through silver spoons and silks. They" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=niFHuL6FxhM) 2026-02-08T17:01Z 22.1K followers, 10.3K engagements "Plutarch: The Ship of Theseus The Ship of Theseus is one of the oldest and most popular thought experiments handed down from history and it goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Plutarch. It goes like this. Imagine that there is a ship called the Ship of Theseus and it goes out to war and it takes a battering. It gets a few holes it loses a few sails and even some of the crew are thrown overboard. But it goes back to port. And at the shipwright the holes are fixed and the sails are replaced and it gets a bit of a new crew. Now this happens again and again and again until eventually the" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=03VpZ0gC2To) 2025-07-21T15:29Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Logic: The Biconditional Your mate Jackie is off on a job interview and as she leaves she says 'If I get this job I'm going to get so drunk.' The next day you see Jackie with sunglasses on hoodie up and giving the pitiful whines of the hungover. 'Congratulations on getting the job' you say. And she groans and says 'Oh no I didn't get it. So I got drunk instead.' You've made a classic mistake. You have confused a conditional with a biconditional. The problem is that in ordinary language the word 'if' contains two easily mistaken meanings. The first is a regular conditional which states that" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=26OIB7dYIqU) 2025-03-27T12:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Parfit: Teleportation #philosophy #startrek #identity #education #learning Imagine the year is [-----] and some eccentric billionaire of the future has an exciting announcement to make: theyve just invented something called the Teletransporter. The Teletransporter is a technology which will scan your entire bodily composition. It will map your brain and it will record every atom in your body from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet and then it will atomize you. Itll break you down into your component parts and send these parts at the speed of light over to Mars where another" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=2LMYwTv5Dpw) 2024-03-25T14:26Z [---] followers, [--] engagements "Descartes: The Cogito #philosophy #descartes #cogito #thinking #learning 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 the Matrix raised four centuries later. And thats how can we be" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=3s050KZofiA) 2024-03-06T14:09Z [--] followers, [--] engagements "Kierkegaard: The Finite and the Infinite There is a great contradiction at the heart of being human and that's because on the one hand we feel utterly powerless. We feel pushed around by the world and we're told that free will is the illusion of a brain having a laugh. But on the other hand we feel terrifyingly powerful because every day presents us with a crossroads and every decision we make will end up at a different destination. This is what Soren #Kierkegaard talks about in the tension between the finite and the infinite and wisdom comes in learning to walk between the two. For" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=5LxfNiGTTow) 2025-05-14T13:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Howes: History 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=6CEolTqy2cg) 2025-04-14T10:54Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Plato: The Ring of Gyges #philosophy #justice #plato #invisibility #learning Imagine you are on a walk and you come across a small snaggle toothed crone. She looks a little bit sinister and she offers you a wondrous gift. It's a magical ring which gives you the power of invisibility. No one will see you and no one will even hear you. You can go where you want and do as you please. What would you do with this ring You don't have to tell anyone. But in your heart of hearts what would you do if you had the power of invisibility This thought experiment known as the Ring of Gyges goes back to" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=7AvGzYsrh7o) 2024-03-17T12:11Z [--] followers, [---] engagements "Arendt: The Three Arenas of Life #philosophy #learning #history #meaning #politics Hannah Arendt was a German Jew who fled to America before World War II. She is perhaps best known for her expression "the banality of evil." Arendt argued that people can commit atrocities like those in Nazi Germany because they are reduced to mere tools becoming cogs in the machine and stripped of their humanity. As part of a wider argument in her book "The Human Condition" Arendt argues that a human life can be divided into three different arenas. The first she called labor which is what we might call" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=7d_vZfmBK1U) 2024-02-29T14:37Z [--] followers, [---] engagements "Huxley: Brave New World Imagine a world where there is no pain no struggle and no suffering. Where everything is sanitized and we value safety more than adventure. This is what Aldous Huxley imagined in his [----] book A Brave New World and he thought it was terrifying. In Huxley's world if were upset about anything at all we can take Soma a morphine like drug which will level your mood and create a happy mindless stupor. But it's unlikely you'll need even this because this is a place full of easy sex and TV-like feelies which are an explosion of colour and sound designed to hypnotize you." [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=8xRPUXAldMU) 2025-04-03T10:22Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "The Cruelty of Moral Indignation History teaches us that most people are only ever a small nudge away from being able to abuse torture and murder other human beings. We only need a reason to be evil. As the writer Aldous Huxley put it The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people that they will have the chance of maltreating someone. This is known as the cruelty of moral indignation. Nietzsche once argued that there will always be some people in the background of a community who will take great pleasure in some insatiable outburst of violence all in the" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=97gg492g_Tc) 2025-09-13T12:18Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Gray: Free Play 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=BKUp1OceXrk) 2025-09-04T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Dworkin: Soft Paternalism Youre at a #party and your mate is drunk. They're slurring their words and they're walking into walls. And as they go to leave they reach for their car keys. You stop them and so they get angry and they shout at you. But in the morning with a clear head and with an empty stomach they say thank you. I think most people would agree that you've done the right thing here. And this is an example of what the philosopher Gerald Dworkin calls soft paternalism. Soft paternalism is when you stop somebody from doing something silly that you know their rational or better self" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=CkyOqFRYV6o) 2025-05-27T13:05Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Tolstoy: Evocative Art When was the last time a book a film a painting or a song made you cry When was the last time that you were profoundly and intensely moved by something It's difficult nowadays with all of the noise and the distraction to be moved but it does still happen. And for Leo Tolstoy that ability to evoke to conjure deep-seated passions is the hallmark of great art. Tolstoy defined art as something that 'communicates to other people a feeling the artist once experienced.' Art uniquely couples the artist with the person experiencing it on an emotional level. It is a bridge or" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=F_UijXWQ2F8) 2025-07-06T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Zmigrod: Extremism Some people are desperate to lose themselves. They want to find some ideology or cause to surrender to. They are ready to self-sacrifice and just need the right altar on which to do so. These people are what Simone de Beauvoir referred to as the passionate man and the idea came up a lot in this week's Mini Philosophy interview with Leor Zmigrod. Zmigrod has spent her entire career studying extremist ideologies which she defines as any system of rules or narrative which is entirely inflexible. They think that this ideology is the most important thing that this way of life is" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=GK1VF27qHBA) 2025-07-10T11:01Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Anderson: The Tyranny of the Workplace" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=GUFOVG7ZlN0) 2025-05-18T09:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Zizek: Vibes Why is it that some politicians can say any outlandish thing and people still seem to like them for it Why can some people do horrible things but it's okay because of vibes Sometimes the personality or attitude of somebody lets them get away with a great many things. This is something that Slavoj iek explores in a recent Philosophy Now essay where he talks about lying and the liar paradox. The liar paradox is where I say 'I always lie' and it's a problem because if that's true then it's a lie. But iek says that it isn't a problem because he talks about a distinction the" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=GkgA9u5V7To) 2025-08-08T14:15Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Dostoyevksy: Self-Destruction 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HQYRM-5nj8Q) 2025-06-12T12:17Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Epictetus: Toxic Relationships 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=I9DJb_D0G3k) 2025-03-28T13:51Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Rein: Strangers Quite a lot has been said about the importance of relationships of friendships and of family. And yet not much has been said about the importance of strangers to our well-being. A successful stranger interaction can have a profound effect on our day-to-day happiness. This is something that Ben Raine taught me in this weeks Mini Philosophy interview where we talked about the neuroscience of connection. Friends and family are no doubt important but both involve a complicated network of unspoken rules. How we talk behave and meet our close connections is governed by a set of" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=IMXsjqaCSZQ) 2025-10-02T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Macfarlane: Is a River Alive 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=IjpaLOmHQSU) 2025-05-06T11:52Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Bill Nye: Scientific Literacy Bill Nye once argued that we should absolutely not teach creationism in schools. In fact we shouldn't teach creationism at all to children because when you introduce such a radically unscientific idea to a kid their entire worldview will try to awkwardly accommodate this wobbly and contradictory mystery. Everything else they will learn in biology chemistry physics and engineering has to make room for this strange anti-scientific black hole. As Nye put it 'it's like trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates.' The problem is that almost all of the" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=KP0D3E4i2PI) 2025-07-02T14:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "The God of the Gaps Fallacy Everyone is an atheist when it comes to most gods. Even if you believe in the Jewish the Christian or the Muslim god you are still an atheist when it comes to other gods. You don't believe in Thor in Ra or in Zeus. You don't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Tolkien's Eru Ilvatar. Almost all philosophical arguments for God involve two steps. First they argue that such and such can't be explained under our existing frameworks for understanding the world. And second they say that therefore we need a God or divine force to explain those things. But this is" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=KruHu-2u37o) 2025-08-04T15:47Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Sherif: Conflict In [----] the social psychologist Muzafer Sherif did an experiment that would put Lord of the Flies to shame. He took a group of 12-year-old boys out into an Oklahoma state park and had them put into two groups. They were given tasks and rewards for completing those tasks. After a few days the groups had formed a kind of tribal identity. They were the Rattlers and the Eagles. They had their own cultures and languages and even a flag that said 'Keep out.' After five days Sherif brought the two groups together and had them compete for food and resources. And it was chaos. When" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=LAftuIdoi_E) 2025-09-14T13:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Baggini: Cluster Thinking 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=LYC0c2rZCOw) 2025-03-26T11:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Chalmers: Philosophical Zombies Imagine you're at a restaurant talking with a loved one and you both agree that the food is delicious and the garden outside is delightful. And isn't the waiter nice Just two humans shooting the breeze. Now what if I told you that your loved one actually has no inner life whatsoever No feelings no thoughts No. In a movie they smile. They behave and they talk just like a human. But there's no light on in their mind. This is what David Chalmers calls a philosophical zombie. And it's a great way to appreciate the problem in physicalism. Philosophical zombies" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ll-ah9pbZow) 2025-08-30T13:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Kant: The Happiness Problem What does happiness mean to you Does it mean riches power knowledge good looks or lots of family perhaps The thing is there is a problem with this. Because however rich you might be you could always be richer. However much you know you can always know more. And however good-looking you might think you are there'll always be somebody who doesn't find you attractive. So how can you ever call yourself happy if you can always be happier This is what Immanuel Kant wondered. All of the things that we think make us happymoney health love whatevercan be measured and can" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=MngFHa-hh8I) 2025-03-09T12:49Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Aristotle: Friendship [----] years ago #Aristotle argued that if you want to live a happy fulfilled and flourishing life you need to have the right kind of friends. And so to that end Aristotle divides all of our friendships into three different types. First there are what he calls friendships of utility. These are the colleagues you might see at work or the people at the weekend you play sport with. But the point is that once the shared purpose of your being together is over you won't see or even think about them again. The second type of friendship is one of pleasure. Now these are the" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=MyscGB0_oQQ) 2025-03-19T14:03Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Bostrom: The Simulation Argument Twenty years ago the #philosopher Nick #Bostrom gave us the simulation argument where he argued that it's not only possible that we're living in a Matrix-like simulation but that it's the most likely scenario. Bostrom's argument uses #probability theory and it goes like this. If we assume that there's 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=N1Lz2GTP8t4) 2025-02-12T19:01Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Oliver: Three Instructions 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=OKTRcA36mU0) 2025-07-08T14:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Williams: The Makropulos Case In [----] Bernard Williams gave us a thought experiment known as the Makropulos Case and it's one of the greatest 'What would you dos' in philosophy. How you answer the question tells us a lot about how you view life. The Makropulos Case is based upon a play written by the Czech playwright Karel apek and it involves a young woman named Elina Makropulos who takes a magical potion that gives her [---] extra years to live. And so at [---] she is offered this same potion again. Elina has seen all of her friends die. She has outlived her children and her grandchildren." [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=OX0LcaquznM) 2025-08-10T15:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Japanese Aesthetics: Geido [---] years ago the #Japanese gave us a system by which you can become a master of any art. It's known as geido. It's a system that can be used for #calligraphy and #painting as much as martial arts or a tea ceremony. According to geido a master has to go through three phases: First there is the mental commitment to the art because this will take many years of sweat and tears but hopefully not blood. Nothing great was achieved quickly and if you're not willing to devote yourself you will never be a master. Second a student must give all of their time to mimicking an" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ov-j7fiVGFI) 2025-03-05T14:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Locke: Strong Empiricism We should never laugh at somebody for not knowing something because people are not born knowing things. If you happen to know something that someone else does not that only means that you have had an educational opportunity that they have not had yet. To say I cant believe you didnt know that is the same thing as saying I cant believe you didnt live the same life as me. This is one of the implications of John Lockes strong empiricism. Today most people assume that we have to learn from experience but this hasnt always been the case. Plato viewed knowledge as" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=SPbc33AtPh8) 2025-09-28T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "O'Connor: Religious Language 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=SfQuWE3AdlM) 2025-06-24T14:30Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Jung: The Cave Joseph #Campbell once wrote in his book The Power of #Myth that 'the cave you fear to enter contains the treasure that you seek.' In one way Campbell was talking about the necessary trials of life. You need to push yourself if you are to grow stronger. Hard times make hard people. And if we are to grow we have to enter the dark and terrible depths of the cave. But it's also a great way to introduce #Jungian #psychology because each of us contains a cave. According to #Jung 'individuation' is the process of maturing where we make peace with all of the various and conflicted" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ShQt9tybQGs) 2025-06-07T14:00Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Sapolsky: Determined 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=TK-jcwoGxvY) 2025-07-31T14:30Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Sartre: Abandonment #philosophy #existentialism #psychology I distinctly remember a conversation I once had with an old colleague of mine. It was Monday morning and I asked him how his weekend had gone and he said he'd spent it burying his father. His mother had died a few years ago and his father was his only parent left and there he was burying his father. Now something he said really stuck with me. And he said that more than anything more than the sadness was that he felt alone and he felt scared. Now this was a 50-year-old man who had a wife and kids and a house and he was pretty senior" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=TUTHeoiste4) 2024-03-15T15:02Z [--] followers, [---] engagements "McCandless: Into the Wild Everybody needs to feel strong. It doesn't need to be often and it doesn't need to be a public celebration of your power. But every now and then we need to feel strong. We need to be challenged and tested and we need to fight and push back with all of our strength. And we need to win. This is one of the most memorable lines attributed to Christopher McCandless in the philosophical book and movie Into the Wild. McCandless is looking out at sea. He's looking at the great and terrible crash of the ocean and he feels that relatable sense of the sublime. He's pulled by" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=U7ckxdVVZYU) 2025-07-18T11:21Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Searle: The Chinese Room "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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=V56ad3Ee-lA) 2025-10-03T14:00Z [----] followers, 236.9K engagements "Harris: The Death Lottery In [----] the #philosopher John Harris gave us one of the most interesting and challenging #thoughtexperiment in #moral #philosophy . It's inspired lots of #sciencefiction since and it's a great intuition pump to test how you feel about the value of human life. It goes like this: Imagine that in the hospital down the road three people are dying from organ failure and there are no organs to donate. And so everybody is given a lottery ticket. And if your ticket is chosen then you are killed. Your organs are harvested they're given to the dying and your one life will save" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=V9kZaWTLpsU) 2025-04-24T14:10Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Julian of Norwich: All Shall Be Well In the 14th century Julian of Norwich wrote something so outrageous so ridiculous and so inflammatory that if she were to say it today she would be booed off stage and cancelled off social media. She wrote 'All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.' Julian was born into the middle of the Black Death when sickness and death stalked the land. So how could she say such a naive and idealistic thing This is one of the many things I talked with Simon Critchley about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview. Julian was a" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=VDCMCPhnUX0) 2025-07-23T14:30Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Epictetus: Toxic Relationships 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=VsuUoLJl7Cc) 2025-09-19T11:29Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Hanlon: Hanlon's Razor The writer Robert Hanlon once said 'Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.' This has come to be known as Hanlon's Razor. The basic idea is that it actually takes talent to be truly evil to mastermind a cunning plot and give James Bond a run for his money takes wits. Which means that when things go wrong or if some harm is being done to you it's far more likely that it's done from incompetence neglect and idiocy than any cruel intentions. Let's say somebody cuts you up on the road. They slide into your lane barely an inch away from" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Wdi9njfBthQ) 2025-07-04T11:32Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Kant: On Lying 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=_bmRMTlWAFQ) 2025-03-12T14:04Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Barr: Creative Needs You can hear my full interview with Rachel in the Mini Philosophy newsletter which is sent out every Friday. If you would like to find out more you can sign up from the link in my bio. Heres the transcript: Imagine the near future where an AI can paint like Michelangelo compose like Mozart or write like Jane Austen. The art would have perfect form and be indistinguishable from that of the artists themselves. An LLM could produce a masterpiece in the time it takes you to sing 'Happy Birthday.' But in this week's Mini Philosophy interview Rachel Barr asks an important" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=_vMG9B5cWF4) 2025-09-02T14:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Daoism: Yin and Yang The #actor Richard E. Grant once said in an interview that he thought every happy relationship involves a balancing of forces. There is a masculine energy and there is a feminine energy. But this is not about genitalia because Grant thought that he was the feminine energy in his relationship. This is not new wisdom. It's very #ancient indeed and it's probably one of the most famous #tattoo and symbols in the world: the #yin #yang. Yin-yang is the idea that there is a duality to everything. But this is not some kind of oppositional conflict between two rivals but rather" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=b8Yl6cA8TYQ) 2025-04-21T13:15Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Webb and de Waal: The Roots of Morality The primatologist Frans de Waal once argued that morality does not begin in religion or in our legal systems; it begins in nature. When you watch chimpanzees share food a group of bonobos resolve conflict through affection or elephants mourn their dead you are watching an early form of morality. De Waal argues that fairness generosity and altruism are the pillars of morality. They are not human inventions but begin in our evolutionary past. This is something that Christine Webb talked about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview and this is what she" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=bA2rI0Vf-WM) 2025-10-09T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Emerson: Thinking For Yourself A lot of people wait to be told what to believe. They will wait for a tweet a reel or a newsletter to tell them what to think. For example let's say that Sally watched an advert on YouTube last week and she thought it was pretty fun and she enjoyed it. But then everybody she follows on social media said it was abusive it was offensive it was hate speech. And so she learns to hate it. While the technology might have changed there is nothing new in this. In his essay Self-Reliance Emerson argues that we should stop borrowing what we see. Stop relying on other" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=bdKRpBV8qu0) 2025-08-19T14:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Anonymous Redditor: The Shopping Cart Litmus Test 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=bf9VhD3c_5Q) 2025-06-26T12:21Z [----] followers, 24.2K engagements "Branden: The Muttnik Principle When we talk about #relationships we often talk about people spouses friends siblings and so on. But for many people around the world some of the most important relationships are those we have with our #pets . There is something deeply important about the way we interact with #cats #dogs #horses and so on. And according to Nathaniel Branden it's all to do with visibility. Branden explains the idea with a story. Branden would often play and wrestle with his dog Muttnik on the floor and while Muttnik would jab and growl it was always with gentleness and total" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=dyCphb5ahM4) 2025-05-20T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Popper and Lawson: Open Debate 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=eb86YDWeQsE) 2025-08-27T15:33Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Pretus et al: How We Make Decisions 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=emgfwEbQ7w8) 2025-05-30T12:14Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Godfrey-Smith: The Hermit Crab Question The hermit crab question is a great way to reframe a difficult decision in your life. It's a way to step back and decide whether you should stay and carry on or whether you should go and find something better. And it's something that I spoke to Peter Godfrey Smith about in this week's Mini Philosophy newsletter. In [----] some scientists did an experiment where they gave a series of mild electric shocks to hermit crabs to measure when they would leave their shells. What they found was that the crabs would tolerate a greater deal of pain and risk more" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gd8CkkgMl_k) 2025-08-21T13:48Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Galip: Memes 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=h51ZzVSUrfI) 2025-07-29T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Tabucchi: The Confederacy of Souls 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=hH4n86cT5vA) 2025-07-28T13:50Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Huxley: The Law of Reversed Effort 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=i0CuxGcTQes) 2025-05-08T12:23Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Buddhist Philosophy: Dukkha 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." [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=mRfg_gtxTco) 2025-10-15T15:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "The Kalm Cosmological Argument The cosmological argument is probably the most popular argument for the existence of God and it's when somebody says that the universe has to have come from somewhere. It's an argument from first causes and it argues that the universe has to have a first cause the first mover a metaphysical something that flips the first domino that sets the story in motion. One of the earliest and most lucid variations of the cosmological argument goes back to the Persian scholar Al-Ghazali but it's been popularised more recently by the American scholar William Lane Craig. This" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=mYcpxyL1ICo) 2025-09-08T13:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Mitchell: Existential Failure It's pretty cool to fail at the moment. If you've read anything self-helpy in the last ten years you'll often find the idea at some point saying that 'failure is essential to success.' And both therapists and philosophers agree that often the most transformational moments in a life come after a failure: a failed job a failed marriage a failed decision. But according to the philosopher Jonathan Mitchell we risk overselling the perks of failure. Sometimes failure can break you. Mitchell argues that a lot of failure is interpreted through the 'narrative of success.'" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=nZZjFVZ5N14) 2025-08-02T15:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Thomason: Bad Emotions Aren't Bad 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=nqv7cMsnVlg) 2025-02-06T13:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Popa: Poetry It said that if you want to catch a duck you don't chase it. Instead you walk calmly quietly near the duck and you wait. And if you wait long enough the duck will waddle up to you. And that is how you catch a duck. This is one of the things I spoke to the poet and writer Maya Popa about. But of course it's not just about ducks. Popa argues that the reason why poetry and art more broadly is so important is that it reveals the concealed. This is true for both the artist and the consumer. Artists often talk about some kind of muse that possesses them as they work. They are a mere" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=pkxESblqhKA) 2025-08-04T10:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "The Bypassing Technique 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=q6-doqA1TYw) 2025-10-04T15:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Absurdism and Existentialism Existentialism and absurdism are two of the most popular philosophies and especially on social media. Existentialism is often represented by Sartre and de Beauvoir while absurdism is represented by Albert Camus. All French intellectuals active in the decades after world war two. They knew each other. The drank danced and laughed together. But absurdism and existentialism are not the same. Here is the difference. Both philosophies start at the same place. They say that there is no higher power looking over us and no purpose handed down. The meaning of life is not" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=qQmfPk2nF1Y) 2025-07-12T14:30Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Camus: The Outsider What would happen if you refused to say the lines that you are supposed to If you spoke your mind and acted as you actually are what would people think Do you think the world is ready for someone with no filter whatsoever Because this is how the protagonist of Albert Camus' novel The Outsider treats the world. And it's something I spoke to Laura Kennedy about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview where we spent a happy hour discussing all things Camus. The Outsider's plot is fairly straightforward: after his mother dies Meursault shoots 'the Arab' dead. At his trial" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=r3liI0qZAMA) 2025-09-22T15:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Han: The Burnout Society How often are you left with nothing to do I mean really nothing to do I don't mean with a phone to scroll or a #tv to binge but when you're stuck in a room or on the bus or in a car with no stimulation whatsoever. In his book The #burnout Society Byung-Chul Han argues that modern humans have regressed to a kind of wildness. We are constantly bombarded by endless stimuli and so are forced to live like animals scanning for predators. Han argues that #hyperactivity is a kind of regression. Our phones multitasking and frantically switching between tabs are symptoms of the" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=rU1YL9sE9IA) 2025-05-02T14:00Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "McGilchrist: Evil The Oxford legal scholar Ryan Meade once argued that 'no evil thing comes along except in the guise of good.' His point was that evil never announces itself. It comes wrapped in noble language freedom safety justice and it says that this harm is necessary for some great and shining future. This is one of the many things I spoke to Iain McGilchrist about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview. Three hundred years ago Immanuel Kant argued that all humans have a good will that every normal and healthy human being wants to do what is good. But the problem is that we are" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=rVyKfxNo7KE) 2025-08-12T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Grice: Conversational Maxims There are certain rules to our conversations and they are rules that most people don't even know about. For example if you were to ask me how my day was yesterday I would probably give you some of the highlights. I wouldn't take a deep breath and give you an hour-long exploration of all of the tiny details. 'Well first I got out of bed then I went to the toilet and then I got myself a coffee with no milk. And then I sat down and had my breakfast' and so on. This is an example of what the philosopher Paul #Grice calls a 'conversational maxim' and they are part of" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=rX85QRHxWXs) 2025-06-05T11:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Soojung-Kim Pang: Rest According to the #psychologist Douglas McGregor there are two kinds of bosses. Theory X #bosses think that workers are lazy and that they will cut every corner they can so long as they get a pay cheque. So we need to watch them. We need to limit their free time and make them jump through ridiculous hoops. But Theory Y bosses are the opposite. They give space and responsibility to their employees and they trust them to make the best of their job. In this week's Mini #Philosophy interview the #author Alex Soojung-Kim Pang argues that Theory X thinking misunderstands what" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=sFLm87CLpKs) 2025-04-22T12:20Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Han: Outrage 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=sGLAx2eqS1g) 2025-09-24T18:00Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Dunbar: Dunbar's Number 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 150" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=t-ncHXzU17s) 2025-09-26T14:30Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Fallacies: Motte and Bailey A motte and bailey tactic is a kind of fallacy where somebody will deliberately make a controversial argument sound like something which is actually far more reasonable. For example let's say that you and I agree that violence should be a crime. That's a motte. It's pretty easy to defend and it's pretty agreeable. But the bailey part comes in when somebody says that swearwords are a form of violence. Or maybe calling somebody a name is a form of violence. Now the harder part that we should make name-calling illegal has been smuggled in. One example of a motte and" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=uZc1lBEsLDE) 2025-07-17T11:04Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Williamson: Our Greatest Fear 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=xvidZ07TgCk) 2025-04-26T16:47Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Shieber: The Nietzsche Thesis 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=yX4Yl3Nn-nA) 2025-05-22T18:00Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Dederer: Monstrous Art Sometimes when you learn something new it ruins what you have. If you learn for example that the diamond on your finger was made with the blood of child soldiers its shine will dull. If you learn that the animals in the #circus are tortured off-stage then it mutes the easy laughter. Learning your partner has been unfaithful turns all of those happy magical dancing memories into dust. In this week's Mini #Philosophy interview I spoke with the author Clare Dederer who calls this changing experience 'the stain.' It's when you can't go back and when you feel dirty somehow" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=yo1dKPiuYOo) 2025-04-29T13:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Appiah: The Contact Hypothesis The contact hypothesis is a psychological theory that says the more you interact with a certain group of people the more you come to accept understand and to respect them. For example if a homophobe spent any meaningful time around gay people they will eventually grow out of their homophobia. In this week's Mini Philosophy interview Kwame Anthony Appiah argues that this is why cosmopolitanism will not go away. Appiah argues that people want people need to be kind to each other no matter who they are. This is how he put it to me. 'And that capacity to get along" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=-4YEzq-swOE) 2025-12-16T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 12.3K engagements "Buddhist Philosophy: Dna If you wanted a good New Year's resolution this year you could do much worse than the Buddhist idea of dna. Dna is a complex concept and it's found in almost all Indian religions and it's a kind of gift-giving without expecting anything in return. It's kindness without strings. But in Buddhism it takes on two specific elements. The first is a practical one because dna is essential to the Buddhist monastic life because it's important to look after each other and commit to the community around you. And dna is what reminds us of the interconnectedness of all life. The" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=-P7YgTs-XEM) 2025-12-30T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.6K engagements "Nyepi: Silence One day a year the people of Bali do something that most people would find very hard. In fact some of us might find it impossible. They stop talking. It's called Nyepi or the Day of Silence. And busy streets are quiet and TVs and radios are turned off because this is a day for contemplation and appreciation. There is a festival a kind of carnival but it takes place in complete silence. We live in an era of noise. It's a world of busyness and constant distraction and so many people confuse silence with boredom. And boredom means an unfulfilled life. But we don't have to be bored" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=0DJmlDf3mMI) 2025-11-30T15:15Z 16.1K followers, [----] engagements "Santa: The List The paradox of Santas list is a philosophical problem to do with moral motivation. It goes like this. Imagine there are three children playing in the playground. Theres Abby Bobby and Charlie. Suddenly Bobby falls over and hurts himself. Charlie who is a kind boy rushes over to help Bobby. But Abby pauses a bit and she thinks to herself Well next week is Christmas and Santa is watching. So if I want to get onto his good list I better help Bobby. And so she rushes over to help as well. The problem of moral motivation is whether we can call any action truly good if its only done" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=0PN-5UGjx5s) 2025-12-24T14:45Z 22.1K followers, 15.9K engagements "Kaizen: Continuous Improvement" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=0W64FRw_bRM) 2025-05-26T13:45Z 20.1K followers, [----] engagements "Chomsky: Nativism Human infants are pretty useless. Baby sea turtles know how to shuffle to the ocean a foal can gallop within a few hours of birth and many birds can fly only days after hatching. Human babies cant even hold up their own heads. But theres one area in which human infants beat everyone: their brains. And theres one magic trick this gives us: language. This interested the American linguist Noam Chomsky. Languages are really complicated things. They require abstract concepts tense person number syntax and grammar. Its truly remarkable that infants are able to not only identify" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=0WqPuL_SQzw) 2025-12-04T15:15Z 16.5K followers, 14K engagements "Han: Storyselling 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." [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=0_wZkBInw6E) 2026-01-15T16:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Kant: Lying 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=1BbMl6UXg1w) 2025-11-07T15:15Z 16.2K followers, 20K engagements "Doctorow: Product Decay Have you ever noticed how your favourite apps and websites seem to get worse over time At first they are great but then they slowly become cluttered with ads the search results become useless and the best features are hidden behind a paywall. This is an example of what the writer Cory Doctorow calls 'ensh**ification.' And while it might seem like a modern problem it's what philosophers like to label 'extractive logic.' Doctorow argues that any platform has to go through a predictable three-stage life cycle of decay. First the platform is good to users. They offer" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=5KgPff6wU2s) 2026-01-05T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 22.6K engagements "Metanoia 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." [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=5zA6x7FQUpI) 2025-12-29T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 33.7K engagements "Slingerland: Drunk 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=712KZ0O1fN0) 2025-10-16T15:29Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Foot: The Trolley Problem 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=7IeP_EC3du0) 2025-11-02T15:45Z 12.6K followers, 17.8K engagements "Japanese Aesthetics: Wabi-Sabi Why do you find some things ugly and some things beautiful We perhaps don't appreciate enough how far our aesthetic judgements are formed by our culture. For example the Western aesthetic tradition is mostly defined by the Greek idea that perfection equals beauty. But if we look at Japan we can find another aesthetic model altogether because in Japan there is this idea of wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi is the idea that there is a beauty in impermanence and transience. It's the recognition that imperfection has its own pathos and beauty. There is something wonderful to the" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=7KCtr-bMasM) 2025-10-29T16:45Z 15.3K followers, 19.4K engagements "Bregman: Humankind 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=831czF4uZqU) 2025-09-16T14:15Z 15.5K followers, [----] engagements "Singer: The Drowning Child Peter Singer's 'Drowning Child' thought experiment is one of the most provocative and famous ethical questions of all time. And it goes like this. Imagine you are on a walk in the park with your brand new shoes on and in an expensive outfit. In a pond nearby there is a child flailing about and screaming 'Help Help I can't swim' the child says. Singer's question is: do you jump into the pond to save the drowning child Or do you carry on walking and save your shoes and your outfit Of course I suspect most people would jump in. To not jump in would be morally" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=8Rth5JvQ4Lo) 2025-10-17T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Ibn Khaldun: The Empire Cycle 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=96q3BwWYhp8) 2025-06-06T14:50Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Nagel: Meaning A few days ago I asked you for ideas about what would be a good present to buy a philosopher and I got a lot of replies. Martim said a 'job application' which is very funny and Diane said 'a girlfriend' which is also very good. But one answer really got me thinking because quite a few people said something like 'purpose' or 'meaning.' And so I was wondering what present would you have to open at Christmas to give you a sense of meaning In his book Mortal Questions Thomas Nagel argues that the philosopher's search for meaning is a fool's errand because Nagel asks us what exactly" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=9dp1czyJqxw) 2025-12-22T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.2K engagements "Overton: Overton's Window 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=BcWU2ojQI14) 2025-04-27T08:36Z 15K followers, [----] engagements "The Book Fairy: Bean Soup Theory In [----] @sarahthebookfairy noticed something about the comments you read on social media and Im sure its something that you have noticed too. It all started when a vegan influencer named Kara posted a recipe for a bean soup. It was a wholesome hearty and well-cooked bean soup. And yet the comments were littered with bean haters. What if I don't like beans How can I substitute the beans What if I am allergic to beans Sarah the Book Fairy argued that the social media age encourages people to make everything about themselves. A video could be about absolutely" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=CEfXV9XnuIM) 2025-11-03T15:15Z 15K followers, 34.7K engagements "Nietzsche: God is Dead Nietzsche is one of history's most famous philosophers and he's well-loved on social media. But a lot of people misunderstand his most famous quotation: 'God is dead.' Nietzsche didn't really like religion. In fact he didn't really like any philosophy other than his own. But when he said 'God is dead' he wasn't talking about the God of classical theism. He was talking about humanity what we've done and what those actions mean. 'God is dead' is not the triumphant cheer of a dragon-slaying hero or a smug cross-armed atheist at the back of the church. It's more like the" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=EAxW0k2nz9E) 2026-01-18T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 16.1K engagements "Nutpicking 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=EQDGe9hGVqA) 2025-10-19T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Erikson: Surrounded by Idiots Do you ever feel like you are surrounded by idiots as if everybody else has it wrong and that you are the only one making sense Well in his book Surrounded by Idiots Thomas Erikson argues that the problem isn't that other people are stupid it's that we are all talking past each other. Erikson uses a four-colour model to explain human behaviour which he connects back to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. Erikson argues that these are four dispositions or attitudes that all people have to life. First you have the reds or the choleric who are bold ambitious" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Edvu3d6B3eE) 2026-01-09T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 24.6K engagements "De Beauvoir: The Serious Man Imagine you're at a party and you're happily chatting to a stranger and you're having a great time. In passing you make an off-the-cuff joke about Marxism and suddenly the mood changes. The stranger tenses up and he looks at you. Why would you say that he says and you laugh nervously. Do you think this is funny he says. Well congratulations. You have met what #deBeauvoir calls a serious man. The serious man is somebody who sees one area of life as so unimaginably serious that no one can or no one ought to question it and it should definitely never be mocked. It" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=FhpOHQTdEhA) 2025-11-28T16:15Z 16.1K followers, 13K engagements "Aristotle: Friendship [----] years ago Aristotle argued that if you want to live a happy fulfilled and flourishing life you need to have the right kind of friends. And so to that end Aristotle divides all of our friendships into three different types. First there are what he calls friendships of utility. These are the colleagues you might see at work or the people at the weekend you play sport with. But the point is that once the shared purpose of your being together is over you won't see or even think about them again. The second type of friendship is one of pleasure. Now these are the friends" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=G20vuKh6nLg) 2025-11-14T15:45Z 14.6K followers, 15.1K engagements "Scruton: Art on Art's Terms A lot of TV shows movies and books can feel cheap. We feel emotions and yet the emotions are too easy. It's as if somebody has pressed a button to elicit a stock emotional response. A dog is dying sad music plays and we cry. We cry because we are sad. And yet it feels shallow somehow. According to Roger Scruton accounts today suggest we are lacking deep and meaningful artistic emotions. Scruton makes a distinction between sentiment and artistic emotion. Sentiment is about me the viewer. It's when watching or reading something makes me feel a certain way based on my" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hlosptx8y_E) 2025-12-12T16:00Z 22.1K followers, 11.5K engagements "Aquinas: Divine Attributes 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=I4myELbZObc) 2025-12-14T19:15Z 22.1K followers, 22.5K engagements "Parrhesia: Speaking Truth to Power Many people are afraid to speak up. They are scared of being fired of being cancelled and of being abandoned by their friends and family. And according to the ancient Greeks this narrowing of thought and opinion is a hallmark of democratic collapse. This ability to speak unpopular ideas especially to those in power is known as parrhesia. It was considered a cornerstone of Athenian democracy because if you cannot rationally debate or consider all possible ideas then how can you vote on or decide which one is best Millennia later Michel Foucault argued that" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=IxYvhyJmchw) 2025-06-30T12:18Z 14.9K followers, [----] engagements "Eggers: Privacy '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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=KRwzFHrnVwQ) 2025-12-18T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 15.6K engagements "Bayes: Bayes' Theorem 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=M6vIH3g-Dzk) 2025-09-21T13:45Z 20.2K followers, 155.2K engagements "Gotlib: Main Character Syndrome If you say that somebody has main character syndrome you mean that they see themselves as the star of the story. The spotlight is only on them and everybody else is a side character at best. In some respects main character syndrome can be a good thing. Its about self-care about self-love and about manifesting. Its about embracing authenticity and expressing yourself. But in an essay for Aeon Anna Gotlib argues that main character syndrome is both morally and psychologically damaging to everyone. Gotlib argues that the philosophical problem with main character" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=MX_1s6khli8) 2025-09-30T14:15Z 11.1K followers, [----] engagements "Haug: Self Control 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=MtVxQB1Zhko) 2026-01-01T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 15.6K engagements "Plato: Debates Plato thought that debates were stupid and dangerous and given that Plato is generally considered to be one of the greatest philosophers of all time it might sound odd that he is so scathing of debates. But according to Plato debates are never about philosophy or the truth. They are about ego pride and winning at any cost. In his Dialogues Plato criticises the sophists who amongst other things were professional debaters and so they would teach members of the public how they could win at debates. They taught people certain tricks and tactics to speak well to argue well and to" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=P5QsiXVq--o) 2025-11-22T15:15Z 17.2K followers, 30.1K engagements "Barker: Perceptual Expertise Across a lot of social media there is a viral mindfulness trend that a lot of people are talking about. It's known as a colour walk. A colour walk is when you walk down a street or around a city and you focus on one particular colour. So for example you pick all of the reds there are to see. You see a postbox a car a roof tile or a sign. Then you shift to blue see the blueness of the sky a door that scarf. Suddenly the world is alive with colours that you never knew were there. We can all train ourselves to experience the world better. If you go on a wine tasting" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=QKWmgwg1ACY) 2025-11-24T15:15Z 15.8K followers, [----] engagements "Ord: The Precipice 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=QOAj0gQeQR8) 2025-10-27T15:15Z 11.9K followers, 38.7K engagements "Schopenhauer: The Porcupines Dilemma One of the strange things about being a human is that we are social animals who like to be alone. We are pulled by two different forces: the need to be around other people and the need to lock ourselves away. This is known as the porcupines dilemma and it goes back to Arthur Schopenhauer. Imagine that there are two porcupines who are cold and shivering and they are trying to keep warm on a frostbitten night. And so 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=QiExczvXC6M) 2026-01-07T16:30Z 22.1K followers, 19.9K engagements "Aella: Intimacy What does intimacy mean to you It's not necessarily tied to relationships because you can be in relationships with no intimacy at all and you can be very intimate with people who are complete strangers. Most people accept that intimacy is important but how and when does it emerge This is one of the many things I spoke to the writer and sex worker Aella about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview. Aella argues that intimacy is necessarily tied to vulnerability. We all have things that we don't want to show the world. Often this can be physical as when we keep our nakedness" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=RBvQoxanNs8) 2025-07-14T13:45Z 15.7K followers, [----] engagements "Plato: Two Questions We often treat politics as a kind of team sport where the only goal is for our side to win. But a long long time ago Plato argued that if we want politics to work then we have to put every candidate through a two-part test before they get anywhere near the ballot box. For Plato leadership shouldnt be seen as a prize to be won but rather a public duty and a responsibility. Plato said that before we give anybody the wealth the status and the power of office they need to answer these two questions. First are you willing to put the publics interest ahead of your own This" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=RJM43NjIieg) 2025-12-27T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.7K engagements "Denicola: The Cave of Ignorance Ignorance is a weakness. Ignorance makes you a prisoner because the less you know about the world the less equipped you are to deal with it. And the less you know the fewer choices you have. And according to Dan Denicola in an essay for MIT Press the problem is not just ignorance it's ignorance of our ignorance. Denicola uses Plato's cave as his starting point. In Plato's story there are certain prisoners chained and trapped in a cave a cave of their own ignorance. They are content only with the dim flickering shadows and they don't know how much more there is" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=U175UhY3yOg) 2025-12-02T16:15Z 16.2K followers, [----] engagements "The Dead Cat Strategy" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=U3NvncA_oh0) 2025-10-13T14:15Z 20.7K followers, 15.8K engagements "Chesterton: The Paradox of Hate In [----] G.K. Chesterton raised an important question: how can we hate the world enough to change it and yet love the world enough to think that it is worth changing This has come to be known as the paradox of hate. Chesterton's point is that hate is not bad in and of itself because hate is what lets us realise what needs changing. We hate what is bad. And so if you hate injustice or criminality or disease hate is what motivates you to do something about it. But the problem is that hate taken too far can motivate you to the wrong kind of action because hating" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=WQVIvGGTOJY) 2025-12-06T16:30Z 22.1K followers, 16.7K engagements "Penrose: A World of Mathematics What is an electron If you asked a physicist you wouldn't hear about colour or texture or even shape. You would hear about an equation in particular the Dirac equation a piece of mathematics that explains with incredible accuracy the behaviour of particles. And according to Roger Penrose the Dirac equation is just one reason why we might suspect that the world itself is mathematical. Because the philosophical question is whether maths is just a language we have invented or whether it's written into the fabric of the universe. For example Plato argued that" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=XCqM4XPioYk) 2025-11-26T15:30Z 15.8K followers, 11.5K engagements "Epictetus: The Dichotomy of Control 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=XQFZIYFyVxg) 2025-10-23T13:15Z 11.1K followers, [----] engagements "Paul: Vampire Problems Let's say I knock on your door and you invite me in for a cup of tea. We're having a great time just shooting the breeze when I say 'Did you know that I'm a vampire Would you like to become a vampire too It'll only take one quick bite as painless as can be. And tomorrow you will have immortality super strength and be able to turn into a bat.' What do you say According to L.A. Paul this is an example of a vampire problem. A vampire problem is any moment in life where we have to make a transformative and irreversible decision based upon insufficient information. I don't" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y2WWguKP3Uw) 2025-10-31T15:15Z 12.6K followers, 13.2K engagements "The Melian Dialogue: Realism 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=YGLigjG7RwE) 2026-01-06T16:00Z 22.1K followers, 123.4K engagements "Pascal: The Wager 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." [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZAawc0_aqCw) 2026-01-22T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.4K engagements "Nietzsche: Laughter Laughter is one of the sharpest weapons we have because when we laugh at something we deflate it we diminish it. This is why dictators all over the world hate being mockedbecause it makes them look small. It says that you are of no consequence to me whatsoever. This is something that Nietzsche knew. And in his book The Gay Science he argues that we should laugh in the face of a meaningless world. Nietzsche's Gay Science is unique in how playful it is because page after page he makes fun of pretty much everythingfrom big things like God to even us the readers. Because" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=_ESX6ZC04Ao) 2025-11-05T16:45Z 13.5K followers, 24.3K engagements "Nagel: Moral Luck Most of us are untested. We all have certain virtues and moral fibre. So some of us are generous kind and patient but others are miserly vengeful and mean. But we don't know which we are until we're tested by the world. We cruise through life with no opportunity to be good and no opportunity to be bad . Here are two examples: Norma hates her husband and thinks she deserves better. And so she's ready to be unfaithful. But Norma has never been in a situation when she can be. Norma's never away on a work trip. She's never alone in a bar and an attractive stranger never gives" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=bNVyHK4Kfxc) 2025-11-20T15:15Z 15.3K followers, [----] engagements "Popper: Falsification 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 scientific method. 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=f1P0Camp_L0) 2025-12-05T16:15Z 18.2K followers, 253.4K engagements "Han: The Burnout Society How often are you left with nothing to do I mean really nothing to do I don't mean with a phone to scroll or a tv to binge but when you're stuck in a room or on the bus or in a car with no stimulation whatsoever. In his book The burnout Society Byung-Chul Han argues that modern humans have regressed to a kind of wildness. We are constantly bombarded by endless stimuli and so are forced to live like animals scanning for predators. Han argues that hyperactivity is a kind of regression. Our phones multitasking and frantically switching between tabs are symptoms of the" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=fhKbYhbQO9M) 2025-11-13T16:15Z 14.4K followers, 10.6K engagements "Spinoza: Monism 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=g7cYOqXU4no) 2025-02-27T11:42Z 12.6K followers, [----] engagements "Lagom: Just Enough There often comes a point when a thing becomes too much. It might be when that final slice of pizza takes you from being comfortably full to a groaning misery or when the karaoke in the car goes from being fun to a throat-aching chore. Too much of almost anything is bad even the good things in life. This is ancient wisdom. It's found in the Vedas in Plato's Greece and in most religions throughout time. But in the Swedish concept of Lagom it's given a new life. Lagom translates as just the right amount and it comes in knowing when enough is enough and trying to find balance" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gAp1aOlrvLw) 2026-01-03T15:30Z 22.1K followers, 23.5K engagements "Game Theory: The Prisoner's Dilemma 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gfB2TswheBo) 2025-09-06T14:45Z 20.2K followers, 83.2K engagements "Benatar: Anti-natalism Anti-natalism is the idea that it's wrong to have kids. It argues that anybody who chooses to have biological children is immoral. One of the first and often most cited proponents of this is the philosopher David Benatar. Benatar argues that we each give an unreliable assessment of how good our lives actually are. We say things are great but actually life is always worse than we let on. Humans tend to be 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gxU7ZGKcLvc) 2025-11-29T16:15Z 15.9K followers, [----] engagements "Russell: Righteous Brutality 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=heQUd-DZOhc) 2026-01-11T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 10.7K engagements "Hobbes: Fear In his book Leviathan Thomas Hobbes argues that of the two great emotions love and fear fear is by far the most basic and powerful. In fact fear is the root of all civil society. Humans are scared of the unknown and the best horror movies like Jaws or The Shining know that the unseen threat is scarier than the seen one. Because the mind paints terrors that the world cannot. And yet humans are aware of how little we know about the world and so we are scared about all of the things in the dark that we cannot see and which might cause us harm. But the worst and most complicated" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=i0ncU7l9LkI) 2026-01-04T16:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Dbrowski: Positive Disintegration What if the reason that we are failing is because we are not failing deeply enough We often assume that if we get something wrong we only have to change a few things work a few more hours say a few words and buy something off Amazon. But this superficial tinkering around the edges is unlikely to change much. And according to Dbrowski's idea of positive disintegration sometimes we need to burn it all down and start again from scratch. In the 1960s and 70s Dbrowski argued that most of our lives are governed by what he called 'low-level integration.' These are" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=i3MkXd80XuU) 2025-10-25T14:15Z 15.8K followers, 14.2K engagements "Dennett: The Steel Man 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 straw man 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=iHJBs6JKBnw) 2025-10-07T16:38Z [----] followers, 51.9K engagements "Holiday: Wisdom We all know that life is about making mistakes. We know that wisdom is something you earn after a lifetime of flops misses and cock-ups. So what happens when you create a world where it is hard to fail What happens when you demand perfection and wins all of the time Well people end up less wise. This is something I spoke to Ryan Holiday about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview and this is what he had to say. 'A good example of this politically is we're really hard on people who change their mind about things right And then we wonder why politicians don't admit they were" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=l-i0PTV7XJU) 2025-11-12T14:45Z 14.6K followers, 17.3K engagements "Tacitus: The Luxury Trap Jill wants to quit social media. She's worried it's making her unhappy. But then how will she speak to her aunt in South Africa What will happen to her photos And how will she organise that party Now Jack wants to leave the country. He dislikes the government and dislikes the people. But then it does have good health care. And he does like the TV. And it does have good roads. These are examples of what Yuval Harari calls the luxury trap but it goes back at least to the Roman Tacitus. It's the idea that civilisation and its trappings will enslave us. The Roman Empire" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=lppgpF3z-i4) 2025-11-08T16:15Z 13.9K followers, 10.2K engagements "Japanese Philosophy: Mono no aware Nikki and Tom met each other while #backpacking around India. They were single travelers who became a couple. They had long laughing nights together and they enjoyed the intense union that comes only when travelling. But Tom lives in Canada and Nikki lives in Ireland and it's time to go home. They say goodbye and they make promises that they both know they won't keep. This is a story with #pathos . It's that moment when you know a good thing will end. And in Japanese this is known as 'mono no aware.' Mono no aware is not really an emotion per se but rather" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=mrMH1XIh2wM) 2025-06-16T12:35Z 15.8K followers, [----] engagements "Seth: The Beast Machine Theory What is the point of consciousness What is the point of a thought Of course consciousness is very nice. I like watching the clouds. I like smelling my coffee. And I like hugging my family. But what is the point of all of that Well according to Anil Seth's beast machine theory consciousness is a biological process driven by the brain's fundamental purpose to ensure survival and to regulate our bodies. Seth thinks that we should stop viewing consciousness as something that is just plopped into our heads but as something that emerges and evolves at a cellular" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=pN-sByC8wNI) 2025-11-19T15:15Z 15K followers, 13.7K engagements "Locke: Inverted Qualia 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=pPJeqgrsp8I) 2025-11-04T16:34Z 17.6K followers, 196.5K engagements "Kaizen: Continuous Improvement Some tasks can be so huge and so intimidating that you dont know where to start. When youre standing at the base of a mountain looking up at a cloudy summit its tempting to cool the whole thing off. Research proves that most people dont do well with huge ill-defined projects and when presented with a vast horizon yet to cross a lot of people will say Screw it Im going for a drink which is why the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen is so important. It allows us to finish even the greatest of tasks. Kaizen is not some ancient arcane secret discovered buried within some" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=qJF5JCXhniI) 2026-01-14T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.4K engagements "Gottman: Relationship Bids Most relationships do not end in a big explosion. There is no massive betrayal or a lie. Instead relationships end with a roll of the eyes and a small dismissive grunt. And according to John Gottman the count of happy relationships the best ones are those where you pay attention. Gottman research looked at thousands of relationships some successful and some not and he concluded that the single most important thing of a relationship is the bid. A bid is any attempt to get the attention the affirmation or the affection of the partner. It might be as simple as saying" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=q_AYQ6XlLYA) 2026-01-13T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 12.7K engagements "Williams: One Thought Too Many Two people are drowning. One is a middle-aged man and one is a six-year-old child and you can only try and save one. The man has about a 50% chance of survival and the kid has something like an 11% chance of survival. Who do you save This is the thought experiment and dilemma that Detective Del Spooner introduces in the movie I Robot. Spooner lives his life hating robots because he was the middle-aged man that the robot saved. In his world robots are entirely utilitarian. A robot did a cold calculation and his 50% odds beat the 11% odds of the child drowning" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=qgwHq8nCO7U) 2025-12-23T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 79K engagements "Locke: The Memory Theory of Identity In the 17th century the British philosopher John Locke argued that you are what you remember. He thought that your personal identity consisted in how far your memory goes back. So I I'm the same person as my schoolboy days because I can remember putting on my school uniform my history lessons with Mr. Brown and discussing computer games with Alex Hammond. Locke's theory is quite intuitive because our memories are structural to who we are. They define our personality and they motivate our future behaviour. It's sometimes said of dementia that there are two" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=sw6IO0_KUzc) 2025-03-24T11:15Z 16.5K followers, [----] engagements "Picasso: The Minotaur The #Minotaur is a beast with the body of a man and the head of a bull. It's one of the most famous mythical creatures in the world and Pablo #Picasso was obsessed with them. Because for Picasso the Minotaur is the best representation of the human condition you can get. In the original Greek myth the Minotaur was a ferocious beast who roamed the labyrinth of Crete to gorge on anything but especially human sacrifices. A feral #monster locked in an elaborate and beautiful structure. For Picasso this image represents our everyday life perfectly. Most of the time we'll go" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=tKmTAkAd97c) 2025-02-16T13:53Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Bregman: Moral Ambition The writer Susan #Sontag once argued that '10% of any population will be cruel no matter what and 10% of any population will be merciful no matter what and the remaining 80% can be swayed either way.' Her point is that most people will not be leaders. Most people are not reformers activists innovators and world changers. Most people sit on the sidelines and watch. In this week's Mini #Philosophy interview I spoke with the historian and activist Rutger Bregman and #Bregman thinks there's a lesson to be learned here. Bregman argues that we often underestimate the power" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=tl7mvSGVe7Q) 2025-05-29T13:45Z 18.2K followers, [----] engagements "Roache: Companionable Silence 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=tvhYK57CZ58) 2026-01-19T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 21.8K engagements "Becker: Immortality Projects 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=uf1xiV_-N4A) 2025-10-11T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "Kant: How Not To Treat People 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ug3RtbNNxy0) 2026-01-02T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 15.4K engagements "Aristotle: Catharsis 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=uxaGcDUxua0) 2026-01-21T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Le Guin: The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=vwReU1jLtLM) 2025-11-09T19:15Z 14.2K followers, 16.6K engagements "Diogenes: Cynicism Have you ever wasted an hour flicking through your phone and felt hollow afterwards Have you ever spent an entire day watching TV and felt somehow detached from the world at the end We have built the world in such a way that there is so much to do. There are so many distractions and so many jobs to complete. And according to the ancient Cynics we've lost something fundamental along the way. The Cynics argued that the artificial trappings of civilization had debased and repressed the human spirit. They hated all of the philosophising of Plato and his academy and thought them" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=wlia0I8jXBI) 2025-02-13T16:07Z 12.6K followers, [----] engagements "Sartre: Hell is Other People Ask someone close to summarise you in just a few words and as you hear or read what they say measure how you feel. Do you feel happy that they've got you just right or do you feel reduced or simplified in some way as if these your closest relatives have missed so much about the complexity of your existence This feeling is what Sartre means in his famous quotation: hell is other people. We all have incredibly complicated inner lives. We have fantasies that we'll tell nobody secrets we'll never share our fears we're scared to reveal and complexities that no one has" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=zT7wteeYw5g) 2025-12-20T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.2K engagements "Heraclitus: Change 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=KkhGd4_tmTc) 2026-02-14T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Epictetus: Insults 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=xggzDX52RJc) 2026-02-12T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 16K engagements "Ellul: The Betrayal of Technology 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=xd-ISZ1nKTE) 2026-02-10T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Veblan: Conspicuous Leisure Why is it that some people are more concerned with the selfie than the experience Why do some people want to talk about visiting the great attraction rather than enjoying it Well according to the sociologist Thorstein Veblen it's all down to what he called 'conspicuous consumption.' Veblen argued that in a high-status society such as ours we buy things and experiences not because of their utility or even because we enjoy them. We buy them to signal our place in the social hierarchy. In the past the elite signalled their status through silver spoons and silks. They" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=niFHuL6FxhM) 2026-02-08T17:01Z 22.1K followers, 10.3K engagements "Mini Philosophy: The Five Philosophical Archetypes 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=jfNCCE5mXlo) 2026-02-06T14:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.2K engagements "Ranalli: Indoctrination 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=CXkcuzdaMOw) 2026-02-05T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.5K engagements "Chang: How to Make Hard Choices Most of us will at some point have to make a hard choice. It might be a relationship a career or moving house but a hard choice is when there is no obvious answer about how to go on. But the philosopher Ruth Chang offers us a piece of advice to help. Chang argues that a hard choice is when all of the 'practical reasons' have run out. For example if you're deliberating what to do you draw up a list of all of the pros and the cons of option A and option B. For example imagine Adam is debating what to do about his career. Should he choose one which is" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=_7f2gaBtIqw) 2026-02-04T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 11K engagements "Watts: The Backwards Law 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=iqCyzn9cD2I) 2026-02-03T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Baldwin: Behind the Hate 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.'" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=iMCKkRbt3Bo) 2026-02-02T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Hardin: The Tragedy of the Commons If you've ever shared a kitchen you know about the 'dirty fridge phenomenon.' This is where people will keep their food in the fridge and yet no one will clean up the spilled milk or the mouldy fruit. And so eventually the fridge becomes unusable for everyone because no one took responsibility for its upkeep. This is what the ecologist Garrett Hardin called The Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin asks us to imagine a shared pasture open to all local farmers. And so for each farmer the rational choice is to bring along one more cow to this pasture. They get 100%" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gnKfiDE1S6o) 2026-02-01T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 10.4K engagements "Sartre: Consequences 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=wKnHOu81oVI) 2026-01-31T14:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.8K engagements "Descartes: Doubt Everything Once 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=DLr2-O3_Dj4) 2026-01-30T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 12.3K engagements "Judge Coleridge: The Duty Here is a real-life and quite dark ethical dilemma. In [----] a crew of four men found themselves stranded in a small boat. After a week of not eating and drinking one of the crewmen passed out from probably drinking salt water. And so in the night the other three plotted to have that man killed. In the morning they pinned him down and stabbed him with a penknife. And so they drank his blood and ate his corpse. And they survived and were eventually rescued. When at home they admitted what had happened thinking that they had done no wrong. But in December that year a" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=phBJugauvHw) 2026-01-28T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Korean Philosophy: In-Yun 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gyNY-UztUps) 2026-01-27T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Lasch: The Culture of Narcissism 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dolmn3a0aZc) 2026-01-26T18:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.5K engagements "Tolkien: The Eucatastrophe 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=pM3EujPbbUc) 2026-01-25T15:30Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Kant: Lying 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Pt6x0vJtHsM) 2026-01-24T16:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Ballantyne: Epistemic Trespassing 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=cvTnw6nu4rs) 2026-01-23T15:30Z 22.1K followers, 20.9K engagements "Pascal: The Wager 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." [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZAawc0_aqCw) 2026-01-22T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.4K engagements "Aristotle: Catharsis 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=uxaGcDUxua0) 2026-01-21T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Roache: Companionable Silence 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=tvhYK57CZ58) 2026-01-19T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 21.8K engagements "Nietzsche: God is Dead Nietzsche is one of history's most famous philosophers and he's well-loved on social media. But a lot of people misunderstand his most famous quotation: 'God is dead.' Nietzsche didn't really like religion. In fact he didn't really like any philosophy other than his own. But when he said 'God is dead' he wasn't talking about the God of classical theism. He was talking about humanity what we've done and what those actions mean. 'God is dead' is not the triumphant cheer of a dragon-slaying hero or a smug cross-armed atheist at the back of the church. It's more like the" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=EAxW0k2nz9E) 2026-01-18T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 16.1K engagements "Arendt: Lonely Extremists 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=awvgadzgejw) 2026-01-17T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 22.8K engagements "Diamond: Creeping Normality Lucy goes into her local coffee shop and she finds her favourite drink is a bit more expensive. It's only a few pennies and so she shrugs and she buys it anyway. The next month it's more expensive again but still she shrugs and she buys it. This happens again and again until eventually Lucy can't remember when her coffee became so expensive. This is known as "creeping normality" and it's when something harmful arrives slowly and where each step feels harmless. In his book Collapse Jared Diamond argues that whole civilisations ignored structural disaster because the" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=XA2tbpFQEUY) 2026-01-16T15:30Z 22.1K followers, 13.9K engagements "Han: Storyselling 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." [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=0_wZkBInw6E) 2026-01-15T16:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Kaizen: Continuous Improvement Some tasks can be so huge and so intimidating that you dont know where to start. When youre standing at the base of a mountain looking up at a cloudy summit its tempting to cool the whole thing off. Research proves that most people dont do well with huge ill-defined projects and when presented with a vast horizon yet to cross a lot of people will say Screw it Im going for a drink which is why the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen is so important. It allows us to finish even the greatest of tasks. Kaizen is not some ancient arcane secret discovered buried within some" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=qJF5JCXhniI) 2026-01-14T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.4K engagements "Gottman: Relationship Bids Most relationships do not end in a big explosion. There is no massive betrayal or a lie. Instead relationships end with a roll of the eyes and a small dismissive grunt. And according to John Gottman the count of happy relationships the best ones are those where you pay attention. Gottman research looked at thousands of relationships some successful and some not and he concluded that the single most important thing of a relationship is the bid. A bid is any attempt to get the attention the affirmation or the affection of the partner. It might be as simple as saying" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=q_AYQ6XlLYA) 2026-01-13T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 12.7K engagements "Russell: Righteous Brutality 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=heQUd-DZOhc) 2026-01-11T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 10.7K engagements "Erikson: Surrounded by Idiots Do you ever feel like you are surrounded by idiots as if everybody else has it wrong and that you are the only one making sense Well in his book Surrounded by Idiots Thomas Erikson argues that the problem isn't that other people are stupid it's that we are all talking past each other. Erikson uses a four-colour model to explain human behaviour which he connects back to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. Erikson argues that these are four dispositions or attitudes that all people have to life. First you have the reds or the choleric who are bold ambitious" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Edvu3d6B3eE) 2026-01-09T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 24.6K engagements "Schopenhauer: The Porcupines Dilemma One of the strange things about being a human is that we are social animals who like to be alone. We are pulled by two different forces: the need to be around other people and the need to lock ourselves away. This is known as the porcupines dilemma and it goes back to Arthur Schopenhauer. Imagine that there are two porcupines who are cold and shivering and they are trying to keep warm on a frostbitten night. And so 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=QiExczvXC6M) 2026-01-07T16:30Z 22.1K followers, 19.9K engagements "The Melian Dialogue: Realism 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=YGLigjG7RwE) 2026-01-06T16:00Z 22.1K followers, 123.4K engagements "Doctorow: Product Decay Have you ever noticed how your favourite apps and websites seem to get worse over time At first they are great but then they slowly become cluttered with ads the search results become useless and the best features are hidden behind a paywall. This is an example of what the writer Cory Doctorow calls 'ensh**ification.' And while it might seem like a modern problem it's what philosophers like to label 'extractive logic.' Doctorow argues that any platform has to go through a predictable three-stage life cycle of decay. First the platform is good to users. They offer" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=5KgPff6wU2s) 2026-01-05T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 22.6K engagements "Hobbes: Fear In his book Leviathan Thomas Hobbes argues that of the two great emotions love and fear fear is by far the most basic and powerful. In fact fear is the root of all civil society. Humans are scared of the unknown and the best horror movies like Jaws or The Shining know that the unseen threat is scarier than the seen one. Because the mind paints terrors that the world cannot. And yet humans are aware of how little we know about the world and so we are scared about all of the things in the dark that we cannot see and which might cause us harm. But the worst and most complicated" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=i0ncU7l9LkI) 2026-01-04T16:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements "Lagom: Just Enough There often comes a point when a thing becomes too much. It might be when that final slice of pizza takes you from being comfortably full to a groaning misery or when the karaoke in the car goes from being fun to a throat-aching chore. Too much of almost anything is bad even the good things in life. This is ancient wisdom. It's found in the Vedas in Plato's Greece and in most religions throughout time. But in the Swedish concept of Lagom it's given a new life. Lagom translates as just the right amount and it comes in knowing when enough is enough and trying to find balance" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gAp1aOlrvLw) 2026-01-03T15:30Z 22.1K followers, 23.5K engagements "Kant: How Not To Treat People 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ug3RtbNNxy0) 2026-01-02T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 15.4K engagements "Haug: Self Control 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" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=MtVxQB1Zhko) 2026-01-01T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 15.6K engagements "Buddhist Philosophy: Dna If you wanted a good New Year's resolution this year you could do much worse than the Buddhist idea of dna. Dna is a complex concept and it's found in almost all Indian religions and it's a kind of gift-giving without expecting anything in return. It's kindness without strings. But in Buddhism it takes on two specific elements. The first is a practical one because dna is essential to the Buddhist monastic life because it's important to look after each other and commit to the community around you. And dna is what reminds us of the interconnectedness of all life. The" [YouTube Link](https://youtube.com/watch?v=-P7YgTs-XEM) 2025-12-30T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.6K engagements Limited data mode. Full metrics available with subscription: lunarcrush.com/pricing
@philosophyminis Jonny Thomson
Jonny Thomson posts on YouTube about in the, to the, philosophy, if you the most. They currently have [------] followers and [---] posts still getting attention that total [------] engagements in the last [--] hours.
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- [--] Week [------] -27%
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- [--] Year [---------] +65,354%
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- [--] Week [------] +1.40%
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Social Influence
Social category influence countries travel destinations technology brands cryptocurrencies finance social networks
Social topic influence in the, to the, philosophy, if you, the world, imagine, theory, we are, book, social
Top accounts mentioned or mentioned by @sarahthebookfairy
Top Social Posts
Top posts by engagements in the last [--] hours
"AI: The Alignment Problem 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: Lets imagine we give some powerful AI of the future the prompt Reduce cancer cases in humans. Well ideally wed 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"
YouTube Link 2025-02-07T13:01Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov"
YouTube Link 2025-04-01T12:49Z 22.1K followers, 27.8K engagements
"Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus"
YouTube Link 2025-01-27T06:48Z 22.1K followers, 29.6K engagements
"Bonhoeffer: Evil and Stupidity 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."
YouTube Link 2025-04-25T13:45Z 22.1K followers, 14.1K engagements
"Kafka: The Metamorphosis You will disappoint somebody at some point because everybody has different expectations of you. For most people this starts with your parents. Then later it means your friends your work and your community. You will be pulled five different ways and expected to be three different people at once and so you will fall short eventually. It's this feeling which gets to the heart of one of the most famous novels in #literature #Kafka The #Metamorphosis The Metamorphosis is about an unexceptional 9-to-5 salesman named Gregor who has a family to feed and a mortgage to pay and"
YouTube Link 2025-02-21T14:45Z 22.1K followers, 40.9K engagements
"Rosenberg: AI Denialism 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-29T15:15Z 21.2K followers, [----] engagements
"Korean Philosophy: In-Yun 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-27T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Descartes: Doubt Everything Once 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-30T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 12.3K engagements
"Aristotle: The Golden Mean How do you know what the right thing is to do How can you be virtuous in any situation if you dont know what 'kindness' 'generosity' and 'courage' actually mean Well one of the greatest philosophers of all time has some guidance to offer. Aristotle argued that if you are to be #happy and fulfilled in life then you have to be virtuous. And so the question 'What does virtue mean' becomes supremely important because its essential to a good life. Aristotle gives two answers: an easy way and a hard way. The easy way for those less philosophically inclined or those a bit"
YouTube Link 2025-06-14T14:35Z 21.7K followers, [----] engagements
"Hardin: The Tragedy of the Commons If you've ever shared a kitchen you know about the 'dirty fridge phenomenon.' This is where people will keep their food in the fridge and yet no one will clean up the spilled milk or the mouldy fruit. And so eventually the fridge becomes unusable for everyone because no one took responsibility for its upkeep. This is what the ecologist Garrett Hardin called The Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin asks us to imagine a shared pasture open to all local farmers. And so for each farmer the rational choice is to bring along one more cow to this pasture. They get 100%"
YouTube Link 2026-02-01T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 10.4K engagements
"Baldwin: Behind the Hate 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.'"
YouTube Link 2026-02-02T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Borges: The Library of Babel Imagine all of the lives that you didn't live a life where you never met your partner or where you didn't have a brother or a sister. A life where that horrible event didn't happen. Or where one did. The story of your life can be written in a near infinite number of different ways and when we reflect on the one narrow unlikely path we're on it can be mind boggling. This is one of the many ideas in Borges short story The #Library of #Babel #Borges asks us to imagine a vast library where the shelves hold every possible variation of books there could be. Using only"
YouTube Link 2025-03-17T17:14Z 21.8K followers, [----] engagements
"Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus 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"
YouTube Link 2025-03-18T17:12Z 21.9K followers, [----] engagements
"Ibn Khaldun: The Empire Cycle 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"
YouTube Link 2025-10-28T15:04Z 21.9K followers, 62.4K engagements
"Veblan: Conspicuous Leisure Why is it that some people are more concerned with the selfie than the experience Why do some people want to talk about visiting the great attraction rather than enjoying it Well according to the sociologist Thorstein Veblen it's all down to what he called 'conspicuous consumption.' Veblen argued that in a high-status society such as ours we buy things and experiences not because of their utility or even because we enjoy them. We buy them to signal our place in the social hierarchy. In the past the elite signalled their status through silver spoons and silks. They"
YouTube Link 2026-02-08T17:01Z 22.1K followers, 10.3K engagements
"Plutarch: The Ship of Theseus The Ship of Theseus is one of the oldest and most popular thought experiments handed down from history and it goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Plutarch. It goes like this. Imagine that there is a ship called the Ship of Theseus and it goes out to war and it takes a battering. It gets a few holes it loses a few sails and even some of the crew are thrown overboard. But it goes back to port. And at the shipwright the holes are fixed and the sails are replaced and it gets a bit of a new crew. Now this happens again and again and again until eventually the"
YouTube Link 2025-07-21T15:29Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Logic: The Biconditional Your mate Jackie is off on a job interview and as she leaves she says 'If I get this job I'm going to get so drunk.' The next day you see Jackie with sunglasses on hoodie up and giving the pitiful whines of the hungover. 'Congratulations on getting the job' you say. And she groans and says 'Oh no I didn't get it. So I got drunk instead.' You've made a classic mistake. You have confused a conditional with a biconditional. The problem is that in ordinary language the word 'if' contains two easily mistaken meanings. The first is a regular conditional which states that"
YouTube Link 2025-03-27T12:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Parfit: Teleportation #philosophy #startrek #identity #education #learning Imagine the year is [-----] and some eccentric billionaire of the future has an exciting announcement to make: theyve just invented something called the Teletransporter. The Teletransporter is a technology which will scan your entire bodily composition. It will map your brain and it will record every atom in your body from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet and then it will atomize you. Itll break you down into your component parts and send these parts at the speed of light over to Mars where another"
YouTube Link 2024-03-25T14:26Z [---] followers, [--] engagements
"Descartes: The Cogito #philosophy #descartes #cogito #thinking #learning 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 the Matrix raised four centuries later. And thats how can we be"
YouTube Link 2024-03-06T14:09Z [--] followers, [--] engagements
"Kierkegaard: The Finite and the Infinite There is a great contradiction at the heart of being human and that's because on the one hand we feel utterly powerless. We feel pushed around by the world and we're told that free will is the illusion of a brain having a laugh. But on the other hand we feel terrifyingly powerful because every day presents us with a crossroads and every decision we make will end up at a different destination. This is what Soren #Kierkegaard talks about in the tension between the finite and the infinite and wisdom comes in learning to walk between the two. For"
YouTube Link 2025-05-14T13:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Howes: History 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"
YouTube Link 2025-04-14T10:54Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Plato: The Ring of Gyges #philosophy #justice #plato #invisibility #learning Imagine you are on a walk and you come across a small snaggle toothed crone. She looks a little bit sinister and she offers you a wondrous gift. It's a magical ring which gives you the power of invisibility. No one will see you and no one will even hear you. You can go where you want and do as you please. What would you do with this ring You don't have to tell anyone. But in your heart of hearts what would you do if you had the power of invisibility This thought experiment known as the Ring of Gyges goes back to"
YouTube Link 2024-03-17T12:11Z [--] followers, [---] engagements
"Arendt: The Three Arenas of Life #philosophy #learning #history #meaning #politics Hannah Arendt was a German Jew who fled to America before World War II. She is perhaps best known for her expression "the banality of evil." Arendt argued that people can commit atrocities like those in Nazi Germany because they are reduced to mere tools becoming cogs in the machine and stripped of their humanity. As part of a wider argument in her book "The Human Condition" Arendt argues that a human life can be divided into three different arenas. The first she called labor which is what we might call"
YouTube Link 2024-02-29T14:37Z [--] followers, [---] engagements
"Huxley: Brave New World Imagine a world where there is no pain no struggle and no suffering. Where everything is sanitized and we value safety more than adventure. This is what Aldous Huxley imagined in his [----] book A Brave New World and he thought it was terrifying. In Huxley's world if were upset about anything at all we can take Soma a morphine like drug which will level your mood and create a happy mindless stupor. But it's unlikely you'll need even this because this is a place full of easy sex and TV-like feelies which are an explosion of colour and sound designed to hypnotize you."
YouTube Link 2025-04-03T10:22Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"The Cruelty of Moral Indignation History teaches us that most people are only ever a small nudge away from being able to abuse torture and murder other human beings. We only need a reason to be evil. As the writer Aldous Huxley put it The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people that they will have the chance of maltreating someone. This is known as the cruelty of moral indignation. Nietzsche once argued that there will always be some people in the background of a community who will take great pleasure in some insatiable outburst of violence all in the"
YouTube Link 2025-09-13T12:18Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Gray: Free Play 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"
YouTube Link 2025-09-04T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Dworkin: Soft Paternalism Youre at a #party and your mate is drunk. They're slurring their words and they're walking into walls. And as they go to leave they reach for their car keys. You stop them and so they get angry and they shout at you. But in the morning with a clear head and with an empty stomach they say thank you. I think most people would agree that you've done the right thing here. And this is an example of what the philosopher Gerald Dworkin calls soft paternalism. Soft paternalism is when you stop somebody from doing something silly that you know their rational or better self"
YouTube Link 2025-05-27T13:05Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Tolstoy: Evocative Art When was the last time a book a film a painting or a song made you cry When was the last time that you were profoundly and intensely moved by something It's difficult nowadays with all of the noise and the distraction to be moved but it does still happen. And for Leo Tolstoy that ability to evoke to conjure deep-seated passions is the hallmark of great art. Tolstoy defined art as something that 'communicates to other people a feeling the artist once experienced.' Art uniquely couples the artist with the person experiencing it on an emotional level. It is a bridge or"
YouTube Link 2025-07-06T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Zmigrod: Extremism Some people are desperate to lose themselves. They want to find some ideology or cause to surrender to. They are ready to self-sacrifice and just need the right altar on which to do so. These people are what Simone de Beauvoir referred to as the passionate man and the idea came up a lot in this week's Mini Philosophy interview with Leor Zmigrod. Zmigrod has spent her entire career studying extremist ideologies which she defines as any system of rules or narrative which is entirely inflexible. They think that this ideology is the most important thing that this way of life is"
YouTube Link 2025-07-10T11:01Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Anderson: The Tyranny of the Workplace"
YouTube Link 2025-05-18T09:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Zizek: Vibes Why is it that some politicians can say any outlandish thing and people still seem to like them for it Why can some people do horrible things but it's okay because of vibes Sometimes the personality or attitude of somebody lets them get away with a great many things. This is something that Slavoj iek explores in a recent Philosophy Now essay where he talks about lying and the liar paradox. The liar paradox is where I say 'I always lie' and it's a problem because if that's true then it's a lie. But iek says that it isn't a problem because he talks about a distinction the"
YouTube Link 2025-08-08T14:15Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Dostoyevksy: Self-Destruction 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"
YouTube Link 2025-06-12T12:17Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Epictetus: Toxic Relationships 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"
YouTube Link 2025-03-28T13:51Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Rein: Strangers Quite a lot has been said about the importance of relationships of friendships and of family. And yet not much has been said about the importance of strangers to our well-being. A successful stranger interaction can have a profound effect on our day-to-day happiness. This is something that Ben Raine taught me in this weeks Mini Philosophy interview where we talked about the neuroscience of connection. Friends and family are no doubt important but both involve a complicated network of unspoken rules. How we talk behave and meet our close connections is governed by a set of"
YouTube Link 2025-10-02T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Macfarlane: Is a River Alive 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"
YouTube Link 2025-05-06T11:52Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Bill Nye: Scientific Literacy Bill Nye once argued that we should absolutely not teach creationism in schools. In fact we shouldn't teach creationism at all to children because when you introduce such a radically unscientific idea to a kid their entire worldview will try to awkwardly accommodate this wobbly and contradictory mystery. Everything else they will learn in biology chemistry physics and engineering has to make room for this strange anti-scientific black hole. As Nye put it 'it's like trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates.' The problem is that almost all of the"
YouTube Link 2025-07-02T14:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"The God of the Gaps Fallacy Everyone is an atheist when it comes to most gods. Even if you believe in the Jewish the Christian or the Muslim god you are still an atheist when it comes to other gods. You don't believe in Thor in Ra or in Zeus. You don't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Tolkien's Eru Ilvatar. Almost all philosophical arguments for God involve two steps. First they argue that such and such can't be explained under our existing frameworks for understanding the world. And second they say that therefore we need a God or divine force to explain those things. But this is"
YouTube Link 2025-08-04T15:47Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Sherif: Conflict In [----] the social psychologist Muzafer Sherif did an experiment that would put Lord of the Flies to shame. He took a group of 12-year-old boys out into an Oklahoma state park and had them put into two groups. They were given tasks and rewards for completing those tasks. After a few days the groups had formed a kind of tribal identity. They were the Rattlers and the Eagles. They had their own cultures and languages and even a flag that said 'Keep out.' After five days Sherif brought the two groups together and had them compete for food and resources. And it was chaos. When"
YouTube Link 2025-09-14T13:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Baggini: Cluster Thinking 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"
YouTube Link 2025-03-26T11:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Chalmers: Philosophical Zombies Imagine you're at a restaurant talking with a loved one and you both agree that the food is delicious and the garden outside is delightful. And isn't the waiter nice Just two humans shooting the breeze. Now what if I told you that your loved one actually has no inner life whatsoever No feelings no thoughts No. In a movie they smile. They behave and they talk just like a human. But there's no light on in their mind. This is what David Chalmers calls a philosophical zombie. And it's a great way to appreciate the problem in physicalism. Philosophical zombies"
YouTube Link 2025-08-30T13:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Kant: The Happiness Problem What does happiness mean to you Does it mean riches power knowledge good looks or lots of family perhaps The thing is there is a problem with this. Because however rich you might be you could always be richer. However much you know you can always know more. And however good-looking you might think you are there'll always be somebody who doesn't find you attractive. So how can you ever call yourself happy if you can always be happier This is what Immanuel Kant wondered. All of the things that we think make us happymoney health love whatevercan be measured and can"
YouTube Link 2025-03-09T12:49Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Aristotle: Friendship [----] years ago #Aristotle argued that if you want to live a happy fulfilled and flourishing life you need to have the right kind of friends. And so to that end Aristotle divides all of our friendships into three different types. First there are what he calls friendships of utility. These are the colleagues you might see at work or the people at the weekend you play sport with. But the point is that once the shared purpose of your being together is over you won't see or even think about them again. The second type of friendship is one of pleasure. Now these are the"
YouTube Link 2025-03-19T14:03Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Bostrom: The Simulation Argument Twenty years ago the #philosopher Nick #Bostrom gave us the simulation argument where he argued that it's not only possible that we're living in a Matrix-like simulation but that it's the most likely scenario. Bostrom's argument uses #probability theory and it goes like this. If we assume that there's 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"
YouTube Link 2025-02-12T19:01Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Oliver: Three Instructions 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"
YouTube Link 2025-07-08T14:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Williams: The Makropulos Case In [----] Bernard Williams gave us a thought experiment known as the Makropulos Case and it's one of the greatest 'What would you dos' in philosophy. How you answer the question tells us a lot about how you view life. The Makropulos Case is based upon a play written by the Czech playwright Karel apek and it involves a young woman named Elina Makropulos who takes a magical potion that gives her [---] extra years to live. And so at [---] she is offered this same potion again. Elina has seen all of her friends die. She has outlived her children and her grandchildren."
YouTube Link 2025-08-10T15:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Japanese Aesthetics: Geido [---] years ago the #Japanese gave us a system by which you can become a master of any art. It's known as geido. It's a system that can be used for #calligraphy and #painting as much as martial arts or a tea ceremony. According to geido a master has to go through three phases: First there is the mental commitment to the art because this will take many years of sweat and tears but hopefully not blood. Nothing great was achieved quickly and if you're not willing to devote yourself you will never be a master. Second a student must give all of their time to mimicking an"
YouTube Link 2025-03-05T14:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Locke: Strong Empiricism We should never laugh at somebody for not knowing something because people are not born knowing things. If you happen to know something that someone else does not that only means that you have had an educational opportunity that they have not had yet. To say I cant believe you didnt know that is the same thing as saying I cant believe you didnt live the same life as me. This is one of the implications of John Lockes strong empiricism. Today most people assume that we have to learn from experience but this hasnt always been the case. Plato viewed knowledge as"
YouTube Link 2025-09-28T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"O'Connor: Religious Language 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"
YouTube Link 2025-06-24T14:30Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Jung: The Cave Joseph #Campbell once wrote in his book The Power of #Myth that 'the cave you fear to enter contains the treasure that you seek.' In one way Campbell was talking about the necessary trials of life. You need to push yourself if you are to grow stronger. Hard times make hard people. And if we are to grow we have to enter the dark and terrible depths of the cave. But it's also a great way to introduce #Jungian #psychology because each of us contains a cave. According to #Jung 'individuation' is the process of maturing where we make peace with all of the various and conflicted"
YouTube Link 2025-06-07T14:00Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Sapolsky: Determined 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"
YouTube Link 2025-07-31T14:30Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Sartre: Abandonment #philosophy #existentialism #psychology I distinctly remember a conversation I once had with an old colleague of mine. It was Monday morning and I asked him how his weekend had gone and he said he'd spent it burying his father. His mother had died a few years ago and his father was his only parent left and there he was burying his father. Now something he said really stuck with me. And he said that more than anything more than the sadness was that he felt alone and he felt scared. Now this was a 50-year-old man who had a wife and kids and a house and he was pretty senior"
YouTube Link 2024-03-15T15:02Z [--] followers, [---] engagements
"McCandless: Into the Wild Everybody needs to feel strong. It doesn't need to be often and it doesn't need to be a public celebration of your power. But every now and then we need to feel strong. We need to be challenged and tested and we need to fight and push back with all of our strength. And we need to win. This is one of the most memorable lines attributed to Christopher McCandless in the philosophical book and movie Into the Wild. McCandless is looking out at sea. He's looking at the great and terrible crash of the ocean and he feels that relatable sense of the sublime. He's pulled by"
YouTube Link 2025-07-18T11:21Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Searle: The Chinese Room "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"
YouTube Link 2025-10-03T14:00Z [----] followers, 236.9K engagements
"Harris: The Death Lottery In [----] the #philosopher John Harris gave us one of the most interesting and challenging #thoughtexperiment in #moral #philosophy . It's inspired lots of #sciencefiction since and it's a great intuition pump to test how you feel about the value of human life. It goes like this: Imagine that in the hospital down the road three people are dying from organ failure and there are no organs to donate. And so everybody is given a lottery ticket. And if your ticket is chosen then you are killed. Your organs are harvested they're given to the dying and your one life will save"
YouTube Link 2025-04-24T14:10Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Julian of Norwich: All Shall Be Well In the 14th century Julian of Norwich wrote something so outrageous so ridiculous and so inflammatory that if she were to say it today she would be booed off stage and cancelled off social media. She wrote 'All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.' Julian was born into the middle of the Black Death when sickness and death stalked the land. So how could she say such a naive and idealistic thing This is one of the many things I talked with Simon Critchley about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview. Julian was a"
YouTube Link 2025-07-23T14:30Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Epictetus: Toxic Relationships 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"
YouTube Link 2025-09-19T11:29Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Hanlon: Hanlon's Razor The writer Robert Hanlon once said 'Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.' This has come to be known as Hanlon's Razor. The basic idea is that it actually takes talent to be truly evil to mastermind a cunning plot and give James Bond a run for his money takes wits. Which means that when things go wrong or if some harm is being done to you it's far more likely that it's done from incompetence neglect and idiocy than any cruel intentions. Let's say somebody cuts you up on the road. They slide into your lane barely an inch away from"
YouTube Link 2025-07-04T11:32Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Kant: On Lying 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"
YouTube Link 2025-03-12T14:04Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Barr: Creative Needs You can hear my full interview with Rachel in the Mini Philosophy newsletter which is sent out every Friday. If you would like to find out more you can sign up from the link in my bio. Heres the transcript: Imagine the near future where an AI can paint like Michelangelo compose like Mozart or write like Jane Austen. The art would have perfect form and be indistinguishable from that of the artists themselves. An LLM could produce a masterpiece in the time it takes you to sing 'Happy Birthday.' But in this week's Mini Philosophy interview Rachel Barr asks an important"
YouTube Link 2025-09-02T14:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Daoism: Yin and Yang The #actor Richard E. Grant once said in an interview that he thought every happy relationship involves a balancing of forces. There is a masculine energy and there is a feminine energy. But this is not about genitalia because Grant thought that he was the feminine energy in his relationship. This is not new wisdom. It's very #ancient indeed and it's probably one of the most famous #tattoo and symbols in the world: the #yin #yang. Yin-yang is the idea that there is a duality to everything. But this is not some kind of oppositional conflict between two rivals but rather"
YouTube Link 2025-04-21T13:15Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Webb and de Waal: The Roots of Morality The primatologist Frans de Waal once argued that morality does not begin in religion or in our legal systems; it begins in nature. When you watch chimpanzees share food a group of bonobos resolve conflict through affection or elephants mourn their dead you are watching an early form of morality. De Waal argues that fairness generosity and altruism are the pillars of morality. They are not human inventions but begin in our evolutionary past. This is something that Christine Webb talked about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview and this is what she"
YouTube Link 2025-10-09T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Emerson: Thinking For Yourself A lot of people wait to be told what to believe. They will wait for a tweet a reel or a newsletter to tell them what to think. For example let's say that Sally watched an advert on YouTube last week and she thought it was pretty fun and she enjoyed it. But then everybody she follows on social media said it was abusive it was offensive it was hate speech. And so she learns to hate it. While the technology might have changed there is nothing new in this. In his essay Self-Reliance Emerson argues that we should stop borrowing what we see. Stop relying on other"
YouTube Link 2025-08-19T14:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Anonymous Redditor: The Shopping Cart Litmus Test 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"
YouTube Link 2025-06-26T12:21Z [----] followers, 24.2K engagements
"Branden: The Muttnik Principle When we talk about #relationships we often talk about people spouses friends siblings and so on. But for many people around the world some of the most important relationships are those we have with our #pets . There is something deeply important about the way we interact with #cats #dogs #horses and so on. And according to Nathaniel Branden it's all to do with visibility. Branden explains the idea with a story. Branden would often play and wrestle with his dog Muttnik on the floor and while Muttnik would jab and growl it was always with gentleness and total"
YouTube Link 2025-05-20T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Popper and Lawson: Open Debate 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"
YouTube Link 2025-08-27T15:33Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Pretus et al: How We Make Decisions 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"
YouTube Link 2025-05-30T12:14Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Godfrey-Smith: The Hermit Crab Question The hermit crab question is a great way to reframe a difficult decision in your life. It's a way to step back and decide whether you should stay and carry on or whether you should go and find something better. And it's something that I spoke to Peter Godfrey Smith about in this week's Mini Philosophy newsletter. In [----] some scientists did an experiment where they gave a series of mild electric shocks to hermit crabs to measure when they would leave their shells. What they found was that the crabs would tolerate a greater deal of pain and risk more"
YouTube Link 2025-08-21T13:48Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Galip: Memes 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"
YouTube Link 2025-07-29T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Tabucchi: The Confederacy of Souls 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"
YouTube Link 2025-07-28T13:50Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Huxley: The Law of Reversed Effort 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"
YouTube Link 2025-05-08T12:23Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Buddhist Philosophy: Dukkha 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."
YouTube Link 2025-10-15T15:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"The Kalm Cosmological Argument The cosmological argument is probably the most popular argument for the existence of God and it's when somebody says that the universe has to have come from somewhere. It's an argument from first causes and it argues that the universe has to have a first cause the first mover a metaphysical something that flips the first domino that sets the story in motion. One of the earliest and most lucid variations of the cosmological argument goes back to the Persian scholar Al-Ghazali but it's been popularised more recently by the American scholar William Lane Craig. This"
YouTube Link 2025-09-08T13:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Mitchell: Existential Failure It's pretty cool to fail at the moment. If you've read anything self-helpy in the last ten years you'll often find the idea at some point saying that 'failure is essential to success.' And both therapists and philosophers agree that often the most transformational moments in a life come after a failure: a failed job a failed marriage a failed decision. But according to the philosopher Jonathan Mitchell we risk overselling the perks of failure. Sometimes failure can break you. Mitchell argues that a lot of failure is interpreted through the 'narrative of success.'"
YouTube Link 2025-08-02T15:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Thomason: Bad Emotions Aren't Bad 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"
YouTube Link 2025-02-06T13:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Popa: Poetry It said that if you want to catch a duck you don't chase it. Instead you walk calmly quietly near the duck and you wait. And if you wait long enough the duck will waddle up to you. And that is how you catch a duck. This is one of the things I spoke to the poet and writer Maya Popa about. But of course it's not just about ducks. Popa argues that the reason why poetry and art more broadly is so important is that it reveals the concealed. This is true for both the artist and the consumer. Artists often talk about some kind of muse that possesses them as they work. They are a mere"
YouTube Link 2025-08-04T10:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"The Bypassing Technique 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"
YouTube Link 2025-10-04T15:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Absurdism and Existentialism Existentialism and absurdism are two of the most popular philosophies and especially on social media. Existentialism is often represented by Sartre and de Beauvoir while absurdism is represented by Albert Camus. All French intellectuals active in the decades after world war two. They knew each other. The drank danced and laughed together. But absurdism and existentialism are not the same. Here is the difference. Both philosophies start at the same place. They say that there is no higher power looking over us and no purpose handed down. The meaning of life is not"
YouTube Link 2025-07-12T14:30Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Camus: The Outsider What would happen if you refused to say the lines that you are supposed to If you spoke your mind and acted as you actually are what would people think Do you think the world is ready for someone with no filter whatsoever Because this is how the protagonist of Albert Camus' novel The Outsider treats the world. And it's something I spoke to Laura Kennedy about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview where we spent a happy hour discussing all things Camus. The Outsider's plot is fairly straightforward: after his mother dies Meursault shoots 'the Arab' dead. At his trial"
YouTube Link 2025-09-22T15:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Han: The Burnout Society How often are you left with nothing to do I mean really nothing to do I don't mean with a phone to scroll or a #tv to binge but when you're stuck in a room or on the bus or in a car with no stimulation whatsoever. In his book The #burnout Society Byung-Chul Han argues that modern humans have regressed to a kind of wildness. We are constantly bombarded by endless stimuli and so are forced to live like animals scanning for predators. Han argues that #hyperactivity is a kind of regression. Our phones multitasking and frantically switching between tabs are symptoms of the"
YouTube Link 2025-05-02T14:00Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"McGilchrist: Evil The Oxford legal scholar Ryan Meade once argued that 'no evil thing comes along except in the guise of good.' His point was that evil never announces itself. It comes wrapped in noble language freedom safety justice and it says that this harm is necessary for some great and shining future. This is one of the many things I spoke to Iain McGilchrist about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview. Three hundred years ago Immanuel Kant argued that all humans have a good will that every normal and healthy human being wants to do what is good. But the problem is that we are"
YouTube Link 2025-08-12T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Grice: Conversational Maxims There are certain rules to our conversations and they are rules that most people don't even know about. For example if you were to ask me how my day was yesterday I would probably give you some of the highlights. I wouldn't take a deep breath and give you an hour-long exploration of all of the tiny details. 'Well first I got out of bed then I went to the toilet and then I got myself a coffee with no milk. And then I sat down and had my breakfast' and so on. This is an example of what the philosopher Paul #Grice calls a 'conversational maxim' and they are part of"
YouTube Link 2025-06-05T11:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Soojung-Kim Pang: Rest According to the #psychologist Douglas McGregor there are two kinds of bosses. Theory X #bosses think that workers are lazy and that they will cut every corner they can so long as they get a pay cheque. So we need to watch them. We need to limit their free time and make them jump through ridiculous hoops. But Theory Y bosses are the opposite. They give space and responsibility to their employees and they trust them to make the best of their job. In this week's Mini #Philosophy interview the #author Alex Soojung-Kim Pang argues that Theory X thinking misunderstands what"
YouTube Link 2025-04-22T12:20Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Han: Outrage 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"
YouTube Link 2025-09-24T18:00Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Dunbar: Dunbar's Number 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 150"
YouTube Link 2025-09-26T14:30Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Fallacies: Motte and Bailey A motte and bailey tactic is a kind of fallacy where somebody will deliberately make a controversial argument sound like something which is actually far more reasonable. For example let's say that you and I agree that violence should be a crime. That's a motte. It's pretty easy to defend and it's pretty agreeable. But the bailey part comes in when somebody says that swearwords are a form of violence. Or maybe calling somebody a name is a form of violence. Now the harder part that we should make name-calling illegal has been smuggled in. One example of a motte and"
YouTube Link 2025-07-17T11:04Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Williamson: Our Greatest Fear 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"
YouTube Link 2025-04-26T16:47Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Shieber: The Nietzsche Thesis 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"
YouTube Link 2025-05-22T18:00Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Dederer: Monstrous Art Sometimes when you learn something new it ruins what you have. If you learn for example that the diamond on your finger was made with the blood of child soldiers its shine will dull. If you learn that the animals in the #circus are tortured off-stage then it mutes the easy laughter. Learning your partner has been unfaithful turns all of those happy magical dancing memories into dust. In this week's Mini #Philosophy interview I spoke with the author Clare Dederer who calls this changing experience 'the stain.' It's when you can't go back and when you feel dirty somehow"
YouTube Link 2025-04-29T13:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Appiah: The Contact Hypothesis The contact hypothesis is a psychological theory that says the more you interact with a certain group of people the more you come to accept understand and to respect them. For example if a homophobe spent any meaningful time around gay people they will eventually grow out of their homophobia. In this week's Mini Philosophy interview Kwame Anthony Appiah argues that this is why cosmopolitanism will not go away. Appiah argues that people want people need to be kind to each other no matter who they are. This is how he put it to me. 'And that capacity to get along"
YouTube Link 2025-12-16T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 12.3K engagements
"Buddhist Philosophy: Dna If you wanted a good New Year's resolution this year you could do much worse than the Buddhist idea of dna. Dna is a complex concept and it's found in almost all Indian religions and it's a kind of gift-giving without expecting anything in return. It's kindness without strings. But in Buddhism it takes on two specific elements. The first is a practical one because dna is essential to the Buddhist monastic life because it's important to look after each other and commit to the community around you. And dna is what reminds us of the interconnectedness of all life. The"
YouTube Link 2025-12-30T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.6K engagements
"Nyepi: Silence One day a year the people of Bali do something that most people would find very hard. In fact some of us might find it impossible. They stop talking. It's called Nyepi or the Day of Silence. And busy streets are quiet and TVs and radios are turned off because this is a day for contemplation and appreciation. There is a festival a kind of carnival but it takes place in complete silence. We live in an era of noise. It's a world of busyness and constant distraction and so many people confuse silence with boredom. And boredom means an unfulfilled life. But we don't have to be bored"
YouTube Link 2025-11-30T15:15Z 16.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Santa: The List The paradox of Santas list is a philosophical problem to do with moral motivation. It goes like this. Imagine there are three children playing in the playground. Theres Abby Bobby and Charlie. Suddenly Bobby falls over and hurts himself. Charlie who is a kind boy rushes over to help Bobby. But Abby pauses a bit and she thinks to herself Well next week is Christmas and Santa is watching. So if I want to get onto his good list I better help Bobby. And so she rushes over to help as well. The problem of moral motivation is whether we can call any action truly good if its only done"
YouTube Link 2025-12-24T14:45Z 22.1K followers, 15.9K engagements
"Kaizen: Continuous Improvement"
YouTube Link 2025-05-26T13:45Z 20.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Chomsky: Nativism Human infants are pretty useless. Baby sea turtles know how to shuffle to the ocean a foal can gallop within a few hours of birth and many birds can fly only days after hatching. Human babies cant even hold up their own heads. But theres one area in which human infants beat everyone: their brains. And theres one magic trick this gives us: language. This interested the American linguist Noam Chomsky. Languages are really complicated things. They require abstract concepts tense person number syntax and grammar. Its truly remarkable that infants are able to not only identify"
YouTube Link 2025-12-04T15:15Z 16.5K followers, 14K engagements
"Han: Storyselling 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."
YouTube Link 2026-01-15T16:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Kant: Lying 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"
YouTube Link 2025-11-07T15:15Z 16.2K followers, 20K engagements
"Doctorow: Product Decay Have you ever noticed how your favourite apps and websites seem to get worse over time At first they are great but then they slowly become cluttered with ads the search results become useless and the best features are hidden behind a paywall. This is an example of what the writer Cory Doctorow calls 'ensh**ification.' And while it might seem like a modern problem it's what philosophers like to label 'extractive logic.' Doctorow argues that any platform has to go through a predictable three-stage life cycle of decay. First the platform is good to users. They offer"
YouTube Link 2026-01-05T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 22.6K engagements
"Metanoia 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."
YouTube Link 2025-12-29T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 33.7K engagements
"Slingerland: Drunk 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"
YouTube Link 2025-10-16T15:29Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Foot: The Trolley Problem 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"
YouTube Link 2025-11-02T15:45Z 12.6K followers, 17.8K engagements
"Japanese Aesthetics: Wabi-Sabi Why do you find some things ugly and some things beautiful We perhaps don't appreciate enough how far our aesthetic judgements are formed by our culture. For example the Western aesthetic tradition is mostly defined by the Greek idea that perfection equals beauty. But if we look at Japan we can find another aesthetic model altogether because in Japan there is this idea of wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi is the idea that there is a beauty in impermanence and transience. It's the recognition that imperfection has its own pathos and beauty. There is something wonderful to the"
YouTube Link 2025-10-29T16:45Z 15.3K followers, 19.4K engagements
"Bregman: Humankind 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"
YouTube Link 2025-09-16T14:15Z 15.5K followers, [----] engagements
"Singer: The Drowning Child Peter Singer's 'Drowning Child' thought experiment is one of the most provocative and famous ethical questions of all time. And it goes like this. Imagine you are on a walk in the park with your brand new shoes on and in an expensive outfit. In a pond nearby there is a child flailing about and screaming 'Help Help I can't swim' the child says. Singer's question is: do you jump into the pond to save the drowning child Or do you carry on walking and save your shoes and your outfit Of course I suspect most people would jump in. To not jump in would be morally"
YouTube Link 2025-10-17T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Ibn Khaldun: The Empire Cycle 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"
YouTube Link 2025-06-06T14:50Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Nagel: Meaning A few days ago I asked you for ideas about what would be a good present to buy a philosopher and I got a lot of replies. Martim said a 'job application' which is very funny and Diane said 'a girlfriend' which is also very good. But one answer really got me thinking because quite a few people said something like 'purpose' or 'meaning.' And so I was wondering what present would you have to open at Christmas to give you a sense of meaning In his book Mortal Questions Thomas Nagel argues that the philosopher's search for meaning is a fool's errand because Nagel asks us what exactly"
YouTube Link 2025-12-22T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.2K engagements
"Overton: Overton's Window 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"
YouTube Link 2025-04-27T08:36Z 15K followers, [----] engagements
"The Book Fairy: Bean Soup Theory In [----] @sarahthebookfairy noticed something about the comments you read on social media and Im sure its something that you have noticed too. It all started when a vegan influencer named Kara posted a recipe for a bean soup. It was a wholesome hearty and well-cooked bean soup. And yet the comments were littered with bean haters. What if I don't like beans How can I substitute the beans What if I am allergic to beans Sarah the Book Fairy argued that the social media age encourages people to make everything about themselves. A video could be about absolutely"
YouTube Link 2025-11-03T15:15Z 15K followers, 34.7K engagements
"Nietzsche: God is Dead Nietzsche is one of history's most famous philosophers and he's well-loved on social media. But a lot of people misunderstand his most famous quotation: 'God is dead.' Nietzsche didn't really like religion. In fact he didn't really like any philosophy other than his own. But when he said 'God is dead' he wasn't talking about the God of classical theism. He was talking about humanity what we've done and what those actions mean. 'God is dead' is not the triumphant cheer of a dragon-slaying hero or a smug cross-armed atheist at the back of the church. It's more like the"
YouTube Link 2026-01-18T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 16.1K engagements
"Nutpicking 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"
YouTube Link 2025-10-19T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Erikson: Surrounded by Idiots Do you ever feel like you are surrounded by idiots as if everybody else has it wrong and that you are the only one making sense Well in his book Surrounded by Idiots Thomas Erikson argues that the problem isn't that other people are stupid it's that we are all talking past each other. Erikson uses a four-colour model to explain human behaviour which he connects back to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. Erikson argues that these are four dispositions or attitudes that all people have to life. First you have the reds or the choleric who are bold ambitious"
YouTube Link 2026-01-09T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 24.6K engagements
"De Beauvoir: The Serious Man Imagine you're at a party and you're happily chatting to a stranger and you're having a great time. In passing you make an off-the-cuff joke about Marxism and suddenly the mood changes. The stranger tenses up and he looks at you. Why would you say that he says and you laugh nervously. Do you think this is funny he says. Well congratulations. You have met what #deBeauvoir calls a serious man. The serious man is somebody who sees one area of life as so unimaginably serious that no one can or no one ought to question it and it should definitely never be mocked. It"
YouTube Link 2025-11-28T16:15Z 16.1K followers, 13K engagements
"Aristotle: Friendship [----] years ago Aristotle argued that if you want to live a happy fulfilled and flourishing life you need to have the right kind of friends. And so to that end Aristotle divides all of our friendships into three different types. First there are what he calls friendships of utility. These are the colleagues you might see at work or the people at the weekend you play sport with. But the point is that once the shared purpose of your being together is over you won't see or even think about them again. The second type of friendship is one of pleasure. Now these are the friends"
YouTube Link 2025-11-14T15:45Z 14.6K followers, 15.1K engagements
"Scruton: Art on Art's Terms A lot of TV shows movies and books can feel cheap. We feel emotions and yet the emotions are too easy. It's as if somebody has pressed a button to elicit a stock emotional response. A dog is dying sad music plays and we cry. We cry because we are sad. And yet it feels shallow somehow. According to Roger Scruton accounts today suggest we are lacking deep and meaningful artistic emotions. Scruton makes a distinction between sentiment and artistic emotion. Sentiment is about me the viewer. It's when watching or reading something makes me feel a certain way based on my"
YouTube Link 2025-12-12T16:00Z 22.1K followers, 11.5K engagements
"Aquinas: Divine Attributes 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"
YouTube Link 2025-12-14T19:15Z 22.1K followers, 22.5K engagements
"Parrhesia: Speaking Truth to Power Many people are afraid to speak up. They are scared of being fired of being cancelled and of being abandoned by their friends and family. And according to the ancient Greeks this narrowing of thought and opinion is a hallmark of democratic collapse. This ability to speak unpopular ideas especially to those in power is known as parrhesia. It was considered a cornerstone of Athenian democracy because if you cannot rationally debate or consider all possible ideas then how can you vote on or decide which one is best Millennia later Michel Foucault argued that"
YouTube Link 2025-06-30T12:18Z 14.9K followers, [----] engagements
"Eggers: Privacy '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"
YouTube Link 2025-12-18T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 15.6K engagements
"Bayes: Bayes' Theorem 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"
YouTube Link 2025-09-21T13:45Z 20.2K followers, 155.2K engagements
"Gotlib: Main Character Syndrome If you say that somebody has main character syndrome you mean that they see themselves as the star of the story. The spotlight is only on them and everybody else is a side character at best. In some respects main character syndrome can be a good thing. Its about self-care about self-love and about manifesting. Its about embracing authenticity and expressing yourself. But in an essay for Aeon Anna Gotlib argues that main character syndrome is both morally and psychologically damaging to everyone. Gotlib argues that the philosophical problem with main character"
YouTube Link 2025-09-30T14:15Z 11.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Haug: Self Control 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-01T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 15.6K engagements
"Plato: Debates Plato thought that debates were stupid and dangerous and given that Plato is generally considered to be one of the greatest philosophers of all time it might sound odd that he is so scathing of debates. But according to Plato debates are never about philosophy or the truth. They are about ego pride and winning at any cost. In his Dialogues Plato criticises the sophists who amongst other things were professional debaters and so they would teach members of the public how they could win at debates. They taught people certain tricks and tactics to speak well to argue well and to"
YouTube Link 2025-11-22T15:15Z 17.2K followers, 30.1K engagements
"Barker: Perceptual Expertise Across a lot of social media there is a viral mindfulness trend that a lot of people are talking about. It's known as a colour walk. A colour walk is when you walk down a street or around a city and you focus on one particular colour. So for example you pick all of the reds there are to see. You see a postbox a car a roof tile or a sign. Then you shift to blue see the blueness of the sky a door that scarf. Suddenly the world is alive with colours that you never knew were there. We can all train ourselves to experience the world better. If you go on a wine tasting"
YouTube Link 2025-11-24T15:15Z 15.8K followers, [----] engagements
"Ord: The Precipice 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"
YouTube Link 2025-10-27T15:15Z 11.9K followers, 38.7K engagements
"Schopenhauer: The Porcupines Dilemma One of the strange things about being a human is that we are social animals who like to be alone. We are pulled by two different forces: the need to be around other people and the need to lock ourselves away. This is known as the porcupines dilemma and it goes back to Arthur Schopenhauer. Imagine that there are two porcupines who are cold and shivering and they are trying to keep warm on a frostbitten night. And so 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-07T16:30Z 22.1K followers, 19.9K engagements
"Aella: Intimacy What does intimacy mean to you It's not necessarily tied to relationships because you can be in relationships with no intimacy at all and you can be very intimate with people who are complete strangers. Most people accept that intimacy is important but how and when does it emerge This is one of the many things I spoke to the writer and sex worker Aella about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview. Aella argues that intimacy is necessarily tied to vulnerability. We all have things that we don't want to show the world. Often this can be physical as when we keep our nakedness"
YouTube Link 2025-07-14T13:45Z 15.7K followers, [----] engagements
"Plato: Two Questions We often treat politics as a kind of team sport where the only goal is for our side to win. But a long long time ago Plato argued that if we want politics to work then we have to put every candidate through a two-part test before they get anywhere near the ballot box. For Plato leadership shouldnt be seen as a prize to be won but rather a public duty and a responsibility. Plato said that before we give anybody the wealth the status and the power of office they need to answer these two questions. First are you willing to put the publics interest ahead of your own This"
YouTube Link 2025-12-27T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.7K engagements
"Denicola: The Cave of Ignorance Ignorance is a weakness. Ignorance makes you a prisoner because the less you know about the world the less equipped you are to deal with it. And the less you know the fewer choices you have. And according to Dan Denicola in an essay for MIT Press the problem is not just ignorance it's ignorance of our ignorance. Denicola uses Plato's cave as his starting point. In Plato's story there are certain prisoners chained and trapped in a cave a cave of their own ignorance. They are content only with the dim flickering shadows and they don't know how much more there is"
YouTube Link 2025-12-02T16:15Z 16.2K followers, [----] engagements
"The Dead Cat Strategy"
YouTube Link 2025-10-13T14:15Z 20.7K followers, 15.8K engagements
"Chesterton: The Paradox of Hate In [----] G.K. Chesterton raised an important question: how can we hate the world enough to change it and yet love the world enough to think that it is worth changing This has come to be known as the paradox of hate. Chesterton's point is that hate is not bad in and of itself because hate is what lets us realise what needs changing. We hate what is bad. And so if you hate injustice or criminality or disease hate is what motivates you to do something about it. But the problem is that hate taken too far can motivate you to the wrong kind of action because hating"
YouTube Link 2025-12-06T16:30Z 22.1K followers, 16.7K engagements
"Penrose: A World of Mathematics What is an electron If you asked a physicist you wouldn't hear about colour or texture or even shape. You would hear about an equation in particular the Dirac equation a piece of mathematics that explains with incredible accuracy the behaviour of particles. And according to Roger Penrose the Dirac equation is just one reason why we might suspect that the world itself is mathematical. Because the philosophical question is whether maths is just a language we have invented or whether it's written into the fabric of the universe. For example Plato argued that"
YouTube Link 2025-11-26T15:30Z 15.8K followers, 11.5K engagements
"Epictetus: The Dichotomy of Control 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"
YouTube Link 2025-10-23T13:15Z 11.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Paul: Vampire Problems Let's say I knock on your door and you invite me in for a cup of tea. We're having a great time just shooting the breeze when I say 'Did you know that I'm a vampire Would you like to become a vampire too It'll only take one quick bite as painless as can be. And tomorrow you will have immortality super strength and be able to turn into a bat.' What do you say According to L.A. Paul this is an example of a vampire problem. A vampire problem is any moment in life where we have to make a transformative and irreversible decision based upon insufficient information. I don't"
YouTube Link 2025-10-31T15:15Z 12.6K followers, 13.2K engagements
"The Melian Dialogue: Realism 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-06T16:00Z 22.1K followers, 123.4K engagements
"Pascal: The Wager 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."
YouTube Link 2026-01-22T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.4K engagements
"Nietzsche: Laughter Laughter is one of the sharpest weapons we have because when we laugh at something we deflate it we diminish it. This is why dictators all over the world hate being mockedbecause it makes them look small. It says that you are of no consequence to me whatsoever. This is something that Nietzsche knew. And in his book The Gay Science he argues that we should laugh in the face of a meaningless world. Nietzsche's Gay Science is unique in how playful it is because page after page he makes fun of pretty much everythingfrom big things like God to even us the readers. Because"
YouTube Link 2025-11-05T16:45Z 13.5K followers, 24.3K engagements
"Nagel: Moral Luck Most of us are untested. We all have certain virtues and moral fibre. So some of us are generous kind and patient but others are miserly vengeful and mean. But we don't know which we are until we're tested by the world. We cruise through life with no opportunity to be good and no opportunity to be bad . Here are two examples: Norma hates her husband and thinks she deserves better. And so she's ready to be unfaithful. But Norma has never been in a situation when she can be. Norma's never away on a work trip. She's never alone in a bar and an attractive stranger never gives"
YouTube Link 2025-11-20T15:15Z 15.3K followers, [----] engagements
"Popper: Falsification 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 scientific method. 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"
YouTube Link 2025-12-05T16:15Z 18.2K followers, 253.4K engagements
"Han: The Burnout Society How often are you left with nothing to do I mean really nothing to do I don't mean with a phone to scroll or a tv to binge but when you're stuck in a room or on the bus or in a car with no stimulation whatsoever. In his book The burnout Society Byung-Chul Han argues that modern humans have regressed to a kind of wildness. We are constantly bombarded by endless stimuli and so are forced to live like animals scanning for predators. Han argues that hyperactivity is a kind of regression. Our phones multitasking and frantically switching between tabs are symptoms of the"
YouTube Link 2025-11-13T16:15Z 14.4K followers, 10.6K engagements
"Spinoza: Monism 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"
YouTube Link 2025-02-27T11:42Z 12.6K followers, [----] engagements
"Lagom: Just Enough There often comes a point when a thing becomes too much. It might be when that final slice of pizza takes you from being comfortably full to a groaning misery or when the karaoke in the car goes from being fun to a throat-aching chore. Too much of almost anything is bad even the good things in life. This is ancient wisdom. It's found in the Vedas in Plato's Greece and in most religions throughout time. But in the Swedish concept of Lagom it's given a new life. Lagom translates as just the right amount and it comes in knowing when enough is enough and trying to find balance"
YouTube Link 2026-01-03T15:30Z 22.1K followers, 23.5K engagements
"Game Theory: The Prisoner's Dilemma 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"
YouTube Link 2025-09-06T14:45Z 20.2K followers, 83.2K engagements
"Benatar: Anti-natalism Anti-natalism is the idea that it's wrong to have kids. It argues that anybody who chooses to have biological children is immoral. One of the first and often most cited proponents of this is the philosopher David Benatar. Benatar argues that we each give an unreliable assessment of how good our lives actually are. We say things are great but actually life is always worse than we let on. Humans tend to be 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"
YouTube Link 2025-11-29T16:15Z 15.9K followers, [----] engagements
"Russell: Righteous Brutality 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-11T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 10.7K engagements
"Hobbes: Fear In his book Leviathan Thomas Hobbes argues that of the two great emotions love and fear fear is by far the most basic and powerful. In fact fear is the root of all civil society. Humans are scared of the unknown and the best horror movies like Jaws or The Shining know that the unseen threat is scarier than the seen one. Because the mind paints terrors that the world cannot. And yet humans are aware of how little we know about the world and so we are scared about all of the things in the dark that we cannot see and which might cause us harm. But the worst and most complicated"
YouTube Link 2026-01-04T16:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Dbrowski: Positive Disintegration What if the reason that we are failing is because we are not failing deeply enough We often assume that if we get something wrong we only have to change a few things work a few more hours say a few words and buy something off Amazon. But this superficial tinkering around the edges is unlikely to change much. And according to Dbrowski's idea of positive disintegration sometimes we need to burn it all down and start again from scratch. In the 1960s and 70s Dbrowski argued that most of our lives are governed by what he called 'low-level integration.' These are"
YouTube Link 2025-10-25T14:15Z 15.8K followers, 14.2K engagements
"Dennett: The Steel Man 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 straw man 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"
YouTube Link 2025-10-07T16:38Z [----] followers, 51.9K engagements
"Holiday: Wisdom We all know that life is about making mistakes. We know that wisdom is something you earn after a lifetime of flops misses and cock-ups. So what happens when you create a world where it is hard to fail What happens when you demand perfection and wins all of the time Well people end up less wise. This is something I spoke to Ryan Holiday about in this week's Mini Philosophy interview and this is what he had to say. 'A good example of this politically is we're really hard on people who change their mind about things right And then we wonder why politicians don't admit they were"
YouTube Link 2025-11-12T14:45Z 14.6K followers, 17.3K engagements
"Tacitus: The Luxury Trap Jill wants to quit social media. She's worried it's making her unhappy. But then how will she speak to her aunt in South Africa What will happen to her photos And how will she organise that party Now Jack wants to leave the country. He dislikes the government and dislikes the people. But then it does have good health care. And he does like the TV. And it does have good roads. These are examples of what Yuval Harari calls the luxury trap but it goes back at least to the Roman Tacitus. It's the idea that civilisation and its trappings will enslave us. The Roman Empire"
YouTube Link 2025-11-08T16:15Z 13.9K followers, 10.2K engagements
"Japanese Philosophy: Mono no aware Nikki and Tom met each other while #backpacking around India. They were single travelers who became a couple. They had long laughing nights together and they enjoyed the intense union that comes only when travelling. But Tom lives in Canada and Nikki lives in Ireland and it's time to go home. They say goodbye and they make promises that they both know they won't keep. This is a story with #pathos . It's that moment when you know a good thing will end. And in Japanese this is known as 'mono no aware.' Mono no aware is not really an emotion per se but rather"
YouTube Link 2025-06-16T12:35Z 15.8K followers, [----] engagements
"Seth: The Beast Machine Theory What is the point of consciousness What is the point of a thought Of course consciousness is very nice. I like watching the clouds. I like smelling my coffee. And I like hugging my family. But what is the point of all of that Well according to Anil Seth's beast machine theory consciousness is a biological process driven by the brain's fundamental purpose to ensure survival and to regulate our bodies. Seth thinks that we should stop viewing consciousness as something that is just plopped into our heads but as something that emerges and evolves at a cellular"
YouTube Link 2025-11-19T15:15Z 15K followers, 13.7K engagements
"Locke: Inverted Qualia 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"
YouTube Link 2025-11-04T16:34Z 17.6K followers, 196.5K engagements
"Kaizen: Continuous Improvement Some tasks can be so huge and so intimidating that you dont know where to start. When youre standing at the base of a mountain looking up at a cloudy summit its tempting to cool the whole thing off. Research proves that most people dont do well with huge ill-defined projects and when presented with a vast horizon yet to cross a lot of people will say Screw it Im going for a drink which is why the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen is so important. It allows us to finish even the greatest of tasks. Kaizen is not some ancient arcane secret discovered buried within some"
YouTube Link 2026-01-14T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.4K engagements
"Gottman: Relationship Bids Most relationships do not end in a big explosion. There is no massive betrayal or a lie. Instead relationships end with a roll of the eyes and a small dismissive grunt. And according to John Gottman the count of happy relationships the best ones are those where you pay attention. Gottman research looked at thousands of relationships some successful and some not and he concluded that the single most important thing of a relationship is the bid. A bid is any attempt to get the attention the affirmation or the affection of the partner. It might be as simple as saying"
YouTube Link 2026-01-13T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 12.7K engagements
"Williams: One Thought Too Many Two people are drowning. One is a middle-aged man and one is a six-year-old child and you can only try and save one. The man has about a 50% chance of survival and the kid has something like an 11% chance of survival. Who do you save This is the thought experiment and dilemma that Detective Del Spooner introduces in the movie I Robot. Spooner lives his life hating robots because he was the middle-aged man that the robot saved. In his world robots are entirely utilitarian. A robot did a cold calculation and his 50% odds beat the 11% odds of the child drowning"
YouTube Link 2025-12-23T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 79K engagements
"Locke: The Memory Theory of Identity In the 17th century the British philosopher John Locke argued that you are what you remember. He thought that your personal identity consisted in how far your memory goes back. So I I'm the same person as my schoolboy days because I can remember putting on my school uniform my history lessons with Mr. Brown and discussing computer games with Alex Hammond. Locke's theory is quite intuitive because our memories are structural to who we are. They define our personality and they motivate our future behaviour. It's sometimes said of dementia that there are two"
YouTube Link 2025-03-24T11:15Z 16.5K followers, [----] engagements
"Picasso: The Minotaur The #Minotaur is a beast with the body of a man and the head of a bull. It's one of the most famous mythical creatures in the world and Pablo #Picasso was obsessed with them. Because for Picasso the Minotaur is the best representation of the human condition you can get. In the original Greek myth the Minotaur was a ferocious beast who roamed the labyrinth of Crete to gorge on anything but especially human sacrifices. A feral #monster locked in an elaborate and beautiful structure. For Picasso this image represents our everyday life perfectly. Most of the time we'll go"
YouTube Link 2025-02-16T13:53Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Bregman: Moral Ambition The writer Susan #Sontag once argued that '10% of any population will be cruel no matter what and 10% of any population will be merciful no matter what and the remaining 80% can be swayed either way.' Her point is that most people will not be leaders. Most people are not reformers activists innovators and world changers. Most people sit on the sidelines and watch. In this week's Mini #Philosophy interview I spoke with the historian and activist Rutger Bregman and #Bregman thinks there's a lesson to be learned here. Bregman argues that we often underestimate the power"
YouTube Link 2025-05-29T13:45Z 18.2K followers, [----] engagements
"Roache: Companionable Silence 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-19T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 21.8K engagements
"Becker: Immortality Projects 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"
YouTube Link 2025-10-11T14:15Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"Kant: How Not To Treat People 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-02T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 15.4K engagements
"Aristotle: Catharsis 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-21T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Le Guin: The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas 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"
YouTube Link 2025-11-09T19:15Z 14.2K followers, 16.6K engagements
"Diogenes: Cynicism Have you ever wasted an hour flicking through your phone and felt hollow afterwards Have you ever spent an entire day watching TV and felt somehow detached from the world at the end We have built the world in such a way that there is so much to do. There are so many distractions and so many jobs to complete. And according to the ancient Cynics we've lost something fundamental along the way. The Cynics argued that the artificial trappings of civilization had debased and repressed the human spirit. They hated all of the philosophising of Plato and his academy and thought them"
YouTube Link 2025-02-13T16:07Z 12.6K followers, [----] engagements
"Sartre: Hell is Other People Ask someone close to summarise you in just a few words and as you hear or read what they say measure how you feel. Do you feel happy that they've got you just right or do you feel reduced or simplified in some way as if these your closest relatives have missed so much about the complexity of your existence This feeling is what Sartre means in his famous quotation: hell is other people. We all have incredibly complicated inner lives. We have fantasies that we'll tell nobody secrets we'll never share our fears we're scared to reveal and complexities that no one has"
YouTube Link 2025-12-20T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.2K engagements
"Heraclitus: Change 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"
YouTube Link 2026-02-14T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Epictetus: Insults 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"
YouTube Link 2026-02-12T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 16K engagements
"Ellul: The Betrayal of Technology 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"
YouTube Link 2026-02-10T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Veblan: Conspicuous Leisure Why is it that some people are more concerned with the selfie than the experience Why do some people want to talk about visiting the great attraction rather than enjoying it Well according to the sociologist Thorstein Veblen it's all down to what he called 'conspicuous consumption.' Veblen argued that in a high-status society such as ours we buy things and experiences not because of their utility or even because we enjoy them. We buy them to signal our place in the social hierarchy. In the past the elite signalled their status through silver spoons and silks. They"
YouTube Link 2026-02-08T17:01Z 22.1K followers, 10.3K engagements
"Mini Philosophy: The Five Philosophical Archetypes 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"
YouTube Link 2026-02-06T14:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.2K engagements
"Ranalli: Indoctrination 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"
YouTube Link 2026-02-05T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.5K engagements
"Chang: How to Make Hard Choices Most of us will at some point have to make a hard choice. It might be a relationship a career or moving house but a hard choice is when there is no obvious answer about how to go on. But the philosopher Ruth Chang offers us a piece of advice to help. Chang argues that a hard choice is when all of the 'practical reasons' have run out. For example if you're deliberating what to do you draw up a list of all of the pros and the cons of option A and option B. For example imagine Adam is debating what to do about his career. Should he choose one which is"
YouTube Link 2026-02-04T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 11K engagements
"Watts: The Backwards Law 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"
YouTube Link 2026-02-03T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Baldwin: Behind the Hate 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.'"
YouTube Link 2026-02-02T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Hardin: The Tragedy of the Commons If you've ever shared a kitchen you know about the 'dirty fridge phenomenon.' This is where people will keep their food in the fridge and yet no one will clean up the spilled milk or the mouldy fruit. And so eventually the fridge becomes unusable for everyone because no one took responsibility for its upkeep. This is what the ecologist Garrett Hardin called The Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin asks us to imagine a shared pasture open to all local farmers. And so for each farmer the rational choice is to bring along one more cow to this pasture. They get 100%"
YouTube Link 2026-02-01T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 10.4K engagements
"Sartre: Consequences 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-31T14:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.8K engagements
"Descartes: Doubt Everything Once 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-30T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 12.3K engagements
"Judge Coleridge: The Duty Here is a real-life and quite dark ethical dilemma. In [----] a crew of four men found themselves stranded in a small boat. After a week of not eating and drinking one of the crewmen passed out from probably drinking salt water. And so in the night the other three plotted to have that man killed. In the morning they pinned him down and stabbed him with a penknife. And so they drank his blood and ate his corpse. And they survived and were eventually rescued. When at home they admitted what had happened thinking that they had done no wrong. But in December that year a"
YouTube Link 2026-01-28T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Korean Philosophy: In-Yun 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-27T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Lasch: The Culture of Narcissism 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-26T18:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.5K engagements
"Tolkien: The Eucatastrophe 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-25T15:30Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Kant: Lying 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-24T16:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Ballantyne: Epistemic Trespassing 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-23T15:30Z 22.1K followers, 20.9K engagements
"Pascal: The Wager 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."
YouTube Link 2026-01-22T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.4K engagements
"Aristotle: Catharsis 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-21T15:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Roache: Companionable Silence 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-19T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 21.8K engagements
"Nietzsche: God is Dead Nietzsche is one of history's most famous philosophers and he's well-loved on social media. But a lot of people misunderstand his most famous quotation: 'God is dead.' Nietzsche didn't really like religion. In fact he didn't really like any philosophy other than his own. But when he said 'God is dead' he wasn't talking about the God of classical theism. He was talking about humanity what we've done and what those actions mean. 'God is dead' is not the triumphant cheer of a dragon-slaying hero or a smug cross-armed atheist at the back of the church. It's more like the"
YouTube Link 2026-01-18T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 16.1K engagements
"Arendt: Lonely Extremists 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-17T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 22.8K engagements
"Diamond: Creeping Normality Lucy goes into her local coffee shop and she finds her favourite drink is a bit more expensive. It's only a few pennies and so she shrugs and she buys it anyway. The next month it's more expensive again but still she shrugs and she buys it. This happens again and again until eventually Lucy can't remember when her coffee became so expensive. This is known as "creeping normality" and it's when something harmful arrives slowly and where each step feels harmless. In his book Collapse Jared Diamond argues that whole civilisations ignored structural disaster because the"
YouTube Link 2026-01-16T15:30Z 22.1K followers, 13.9K engagements
"Han: Storyselling 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."
YouTube Link 2026-01-15T16:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Kaizen: Continuous Improvement Some tasks can be so huge and so intimidating that you dont know where to start. When youre standing at the base of a mountain looking up at a cloudy summit its tempting to cool the whole thing off. Research proves that most people dont do well with huge ill-defined projects and when presented with a vast horizon yet to cross a lot of people will say Screw it Im going for a drink which is why the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen is so important. It allows us to finish even the greatest of tasks. Kaizen is not some ancient arcane secret discovered buried within some"
YouTube Link 2026-01-14T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 13.4K engagements
"Gottman: Relationship Bids Most relationships do not end in a big explosion. There is no massive betrayal or a lie. Instead relationships end with a roll of the eyes and a small dismissive grunt. And according to John Gottman the count of happy relationships the best ones are those where you pay attention. Gottman research looked at thousands of relationships some successful and some not and he concluded that the single most important thing of a relationship is the bid. A bid is any attempt to get the attention the affirmation or the affection of the partner. It might be as simple as saying"
YouTube Link 2026-01-13T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 12.7K engagements
"Russell: Righteous Brutality 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-11T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 10.7K engagements
"Erikson: Surrounded by Idiots Do you ever feel like you are surrounded by idiots as if everybody else has it wrong and that you are the only one making sense Well in his book Surrounded by Idiots Thomas Erikson argues that the problem isn't that other people are stupid it's that we are all talking past each other. Erikson uses a four-colour model to explain human behaviour which he connects back to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. Erikson argues that these are four dispositions or attitudes that all people have to life. First you have the reds or the choleric who are bold ambitious"
YouTube Link 2026-01-09T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 24.6K engagements
"Schopenhauer: The Porcupines Dilemma One of the strange things about being a human is that we are social animals who like to be alone. We are pulled by two different forces: the need to be around other people and the need to lock ourselves away. This is known as the porcupines dilemma and it goes back to Arthur Schopenhauer. Imagine that there are two porcupines who are cold and shivering and they are trying to keep warm on a frostbitten night. And so 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-07T16:30Z 22.1K followers, 19.9K engagements
"The Melian Dialogue: Realism 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-06T16:00Z 22.1K followers, 123.4K engagements
"Doctorow: Product Decay Have you ever noticed how your favourite apps and websites seem to get worse over time At first they are great but then they slowly become cluttered with ads the search results become useless and the best features are hidden behind a paywall. This is an example of what the writer Cory Doctorow calls 'ensh**ification.' And while it might seem like a modern problem it's what philosophers like to label 'extractive logic.' Doctorow argues that any platform has to go through a predictable three-stage life cycle of decay. First the platform is good to users. They offer"
YouTube Link 2026-01-05T16:15Z 22.1K followers, 22.6K engagements
"Hobbes: Fear In his book Leviathan Thomas Hobbes argues that of the two great emotions love and fear fear is by far the most basic and powerful. In fact fear is the root of all civil society. Humans are scared of the unknown and the best horror movies like Jaws or The Shining know that the unseen threat is scarier than the seen one. Because the mind paints terrors that the world cannot. And yet humans are aware of how little we know about the world and so we are scared about all of the things in the dark that we cannot see and which might cause us harm. But the worst and most complicated"
YouTube Link 2026-01-04T16:15Z 22.1K followers, [----] engagements
"Lagom: Just Enough There often comes a point when a thing becomes too much. It might be when that final slice of pizza takes you from being comfortably full to a groaning misery or when the karaoke in the car goes from being fun to a throat-aching chore. Too much of almost anything is bad even the good things in life. This is ancient wisdom. It's found in the Vedas in Plato's Greece and in most religions throughout time. But in the Swedish concept of Lagom it's given a new life. Lagom translates as just the right amount and it comes in knowing when enough is enough and trying to find balance"
YouTube Link 2026-01-03T15:30Z 22.1K followers, 23.5K engagements
"Kant: How Not To Treat People 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-02T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 15.4K engagements
"Haug: Self Control 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"
YouTube Link 2026-01-01T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 15.6K engagements
"Buddhist Philosophy: Dna If you wanted a good New Year's resolution this year you could do much worse than the Buddhist idea of dna. Dna is a complex concept and it's found in almost all Indian religions and it's a kind of gift-giving without expecting anything in return. It's kindness without strings. But in Buddhism it takes on two specific elements. The first is a practical one because dna is essential to the Buddhist monastic life because it's important to look after each other and commit to the community around you. And dna is what reminds us of the interconnectedness of all life. The"
YouTube Link 2025-12-30T15:15Z 22.1K followers, 11.6K engagements
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