philosophy

Posts related to philosophy

Dealing with Unkown Unknowns

Unknown Unknowns are things that you don’t know you don’t know, made infamous by Donald Rumsfeld’s comments around the Iraq War. Any sane / rational person can deal with known unknowns, it makes sense to get a grasp on things that you don’t have much context on or are uncertain about. Unknown Unknowns are more insidious and trickier to deal with. The question then is how do you take Unknown Unknowns and make them known and therefore easier to deal with?

Woodworking for Quality

How woodworking also applies to software. As with woodworking the goal of software is not to produce a piece of software, but rather to produce a quality piece of software. Approaching software as a craft improves how we think about software development.

Symbol Manipulation

The Chinese Room experiment places Searle inside a room, in which he receives inputs in Chinese and instructions on how to process those inputs in English furthermore Searle has no previous knowledge of Chinese or its grammatical structures. Suppose that Searle and the programmers who are giving him instructions get so good at their respective tasks that Searle’s Chinese outputs become indistinguishable from those of a native Chinese speaker.

Beyond Purpose

Purpose is planned. It is calculated. Our core motivations transcend purpose, they well up inside of us waiting to burst forward. Most of the time it sits there, dormant, as we buy groceries it yawns, and while washing dishes it goes for a nap.

Death shows us the way to life

I've spent the past few months obsessing over purpose, legacy and meaning. In Job's quotation I gain a glimmer of understanding, which is comforting. Death drives us to ask the hard questions, it forces us out of our complacency. It's ironic that in this way, death is what gives us life, and not the other way round.

An endless Void

I awoke and found myself floating through a void. I was aware of it, but it seemed oblivious of my presence. I seemed to be moving quicker and quicker through space, I don't know how I know this to be true, but I do.

Coming to grips

You may be able to say there is no answer, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't scare you, or at least that's the case for me. It's so easy to understand logically that it must be so, but it is still terrifying to look at it. There's a certain sort of deep sorrow that accompanies an idea like this. Something that wells up inside you, questioning everything you've ever thought and everything you've ever done.

Simple things are most impressive

It seems as though the simple things, those we take for granted, are always the most complex and impressive.