I’ll just come out and say it. I’m sick of academic arrogance. Academic. Scientific. Intelligence mafia. I don’t know why authority seems to be the foodstuffs of ego. But it sure seems like it is. I am so tired of being talked down to — as a society member — by those who are supposedly smarter than me. And it isn’t just the false dualism of ‘I’m smart and you’re not’. Or even that other people might know more…
The KEW Acid Tests ask how Nature can inform the big questions humans ask. “Why are we here?”, “Who am I?”, and “What is our purpose” have puzzled humans for years – perhaps millennia. In the past 4,000 years or so, we have employed philosophy, religion, and science as mechanisms to ask and answer these big questions. While we certainly have learned a lot, the questions are too big to have definitive answers. I don’t…
How do we know whether one thing is better than another? This may seem like a benign question, but think about that for a minute. When making decisions about something we need, whether it’s a new car, new shoes, or the food we eat we bring into the decision our opinions, ideas, and biases. Usually, we have a range of ‘quality’ (whatever that is) that we think is appropriate. This is largely driven by budget…