संदेश

Separation : An ethics of mourning

Separation is never easy. It can be many things, but never that. A relationship finds its meaning when it forms a triad, entangling Me, You, and the World in a fragile web. Separation, then, is not just the severance of a person—it is the breaking away from a worldview. The void left by separation is as vast as the World itself. When Nietzsche said, "God is dead, but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown," he was mourning a God who, even dead, is still woven into the myths, folklore, dreams, and identity that make up the architecture of our existence. This understanding of our interconnectedness hints at an ethics of Separation; to separate ethically is to do so with empathy, piety, and a recognition of the deep, collective wounds such partings leave behind. Separating does not beget mere sorrowness over a loss; it begets grief. Grief is a process of recognizing and accommodating the possibilities that are no l...

A Reliable Experience Machine

(Dis)agreement and Echo Chambers

Suppose you are really confident that p. You encounter a person - whom you consider as smart and well-informed as yourself - who is as confident as you that p. Question: How should this fact of agreement bear evidentially on some of your existing beliefs? Let's consider two of them:  B1 - high confidence that p B2 - high confidence that the person I just met is as smart and well-informed as I am (call it q). To the extent disagreement over a proposition puts us in a position of reducing our confidence in the proposition, for the sake of parity,  agreements should move us to increase our confidence in the proposition. Thus, you should become even more confident in p compared to your earlier confidence-level. How should (dis)agreements bear on B2? This is an extremely controversial question. However, there is a plausible suggestion which is consistent across cases of agreements and disagreements  relevant to judgements about peerhood (i.e. q) - To the extent your peer agre...