I nearly cried when I had this realization: I don’t allow myself to do things solely because I enjoy them. After my Master’s, I went volunteering in Africa. My family encouraged me to keep a travel blog, so I reluctantly started one. Some months in, I discovered that I actually like to write. Later, I started blogging […]
Categorie: Culture
Learn to Express, Not Impress
Something’s wrong. Using Instagram, Facebook and whatnot, my generation of millennials curatestheir lives: we present ourselves to the world as how we want to be seen. Not as how we are. Of course, the desire to make oneself look good is nothing new, but nowadays we have more control over our appearance than ever. It’s not that we mention […]
There Are Two Ways To Live — One Is Meaningless
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is one of the most important philosophers in the history of mankind. Apart from the intrinsic and extrinsic value of being a goodphilosopher, what makes a philosopher important? Well, what makes any historical figure ‘important’? Arguably, someone has been weighty when he or she had a significantinfluence. Hence, when a philosopher wrote […]
The Startling Truth About “What We Deserve”
Jobs are like clothes. More precisely: pay is like fashion. The reasons that jeans are fashionable or that certain jobs are well-paid are, in both cases, quite random. Yes, I’ll explain. Arbitrary outcomes Fashionability is completely relative, and we know it is. There are no ‘facts’ about whether something is or is not fashionable. When […]
The Threat Of Freedom And The Forgotten Value Of Being Powerless
“Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.” — Martin Luther Newsflash: sometimes, I can’t get what I want. Let’s envision getting what I want as a two-step process: 1) Discover what the cause-effect relationships that govern reality are. 2) Figure out how set theright cause-effect relationships in motion. At step one, I can’t attain my objectives due to a lack of […]
Work: Ask Less To Get More
“You shouldn’t be here.” I am sitting in a sweaty classroom when I hear the voice again. I sigh. Not now please. I am not in the mood for this. I am attending the umpteenth conference talk I feel I couldn’t care less about. “You have made the wrong choice.” The voice is my own’s. It’s in my head, urging me to re-evaluate my […]
The Seekers Mode: What Steve Jobs And Richard Feynman Have In Common
If you’re like most people, you think that some statements are true and that other statements are not. That’s something that is inevitable. It’s harmless to have this or that mental model of reality and to use it to determine whether things people say to you are true or false. I believe that the earth is […]
The Problems of Science: What We Do to Things When We Study Them
ver the last two centuries, science has become more modest in its epistemological presumptions. After the failure of logical positivism, cracks appearing in the analytic project, and relatively recent discoveries such as the theory-ladenness of human perception, its original aim of mapping reality as it is independent of human cognizers seems to be as elusive as […]
The Difference: Living Well vs. Living Great
So many writers advertise their blog by promising ‘a better life’. On my Dutch website, I used to do the same, feeling increasingly uncomfortable about my pledge. Reading an essay and thinking about it is one thing, but changing your behavior is a whole different ballgame. I found it hard to imagine that my writings had a […]
The Truth about the Unexpected Danger of Being Yourself
I felt a splitting headache — hangover, again, I concluded. I was awakened by the beeping sound of my alarm. That, I realized, meant that it was noon and that I had to get up and that I could attend the late afternoon lecture if I would be really fast. (I had stopped caring for morning classes […]
