Suggested Readings

A few recommendations by The Philosophy Garden for your reading pleasure

A line of climbers attempting to reach the summit of Mount Everest, from Wondering Freely.

Against bucket lists. This picture shows a line of climbers attempting to reach the summit of Mount Everest. It now resembles a line at a Disney attraction, except that you are cold, on your feet for many more hours and that you could die. Being in the line is rough. People yell at less experienced climbers who lose their footing and don't get smoothly ahead. Better guard your oxygen bottles, or they will be stolen. After all, the oxygen is not calculated to last in such a huge traffic jam. American climber Don Cash had to wait several hours for the descent because a traffic jam had formed below. He had been on his feet for 12 hours. He fainted from altitude sickness, then en route to his camp he fainted once more, and his sherpas, trained in CPR and other first aid techniques, were unable to revive him. Climbers who undertake the journey commonly see corpses along the way, which cannot be removed safely, some even serving as landmarks. Cash had quit his job as a software salesman age 55 to climb the tallest mountain on each continent. A friend remarked he was someone who “definitely lived life to the fullest.” … (Wondering Freely, by Helen De Cruz)

The double-edged sword of storytelling. Once upon a <me, in a distant land, a dark evil force—led by a puppet master hiding his true nature behind an appearance of firmness and altruism—spread its terror. Only a small band of enlightened people, who saw beyond appearances, had the strength to rebel, trying to bring freedom back to the good people oppressed by the evil yoke. Sure, broadly speaking it sounds like the plot of Star Wars, with the amiable Senator Palpatine, who is actually the evil Sith that will become the emperor, imposing his power over the universe through violence and terror. There too is the group of rebels led by Luke Skywalker, who seeks to turn the tide and eventually liberates the cosmos from the supreme evil. But it also resembles the story of Robin Hood and his companions who oppose the wicked SheriP of NoQngham. It even recalls the plot of many of the countless Western movies of the past century, those where a clique of wealthy, powerful, and depraved landowners, with the complicity of a corrupt sheriP, hold the poor townspeople in check—un<l one or more brave heroes arrive to save everyone. … (Skeptical Inquirer)

Why probability probably doesn’t exist (but it is useful to act like it does). Life is uncertain. None of us know what is going to happen. We know little of what has happened in the past, or is happening now outside our immediate experience. Uncertainty has been called the ‘conscious awareness of ignorance’1 — be it of the weather tomorrow, the next Premier League champions, the climate in 2100 or the identity of our ancient ancestors. In daily life, we generally express uncertainty in words, saying an event “could”, “might” or “is likely to” happen (or have happened). But uncertain words can be treacherous. When, in 1961, the newly elected US president John F. Kennedy was informed about a CIA-sponsored plan to invade communist Cuba, he commissioned an appraisal from his military top brass. They concluded that the mission had a 30% chance of success — that is, a 70% chance of failure. In the report that reached the president, this was rendered as “a fair chance”. The Bay of Pigs invasion went ahead, and was a fiasco. There are now established scales for converting words of uncertainty into rough numbers. Anyone in the UK intelligence community using the term ‘likely’, for example, should mean a chance of between 55% and 75%. … (Nature)

Einstein’s 7 rules for a better life. When it comes to living your best life, Albert Einstein — notorious as the greatest physicist and genius of his time, and possibly of all-time — probably isn’t the first name you think of in terms of life advice. You most likely know of Einstein as a pioneer in revolutionizing how we perceive the Universe, but Einstein was more than just a famous physicist: he was a pacifist, a political activist, an active anti-racist, and one of the most iconic and celebrated figures in all of history. … (Big Think)

The new Rasputins: anti-science mysticism is enabling autocracy around the globe. Frosty pine trees rim the edge of an icy lake. Snow is falling; spa music plays in the background. A gray-haired man with a pleasant face stands beside the lake. He begins to undress. He is going swimming, he explains, to demonstrate his faith, and his opposition to science, to technology, to modernity. “I don’t need Facebook; I don’t need the internet; I don’t need anybody. I just need my heart,” he says. As he swims across the lake, seemingly unbothered by the cold, he continues: “I trust my immune system because I have complete trust and faith in its creator, in God. My immunity is part of the sovereignty of my being.” … (The Atlantic)

Plato’s Cave & social media. The ‘Allegory of the Cave’ is a Socratic argument recorded by the Greek philosopher Plato, a student of Socrates, and the writer of The Republic (c.375 BCE), which contains a dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother Glaucon. The Allegory is a metaphorical story in which prisoners are chained up in a cave, facing a wall. There is a bright fire behind them, so the prisoners can see the shadows of people and objects that pass behind them that are cast on the wall. These shadows are the only reality they know, until one of the prisoners escapes to the outside, real world. Socrates argues that the freed prisoner would return and try to liberate his fellow prisoners, now knowing what exists outside the cave and how their reality is distorted. However, at the discussion’s conclusion, Socrates and Glaucon agree that the other prisoners would likely kill anyone who tries to free them, as they would not want to leave the safety and comfort of their known world. … (Philosophy Now)

Fringe zoology: the (in)convenience of disappearing evidence. Cryptozoology—the search for hidden, unknown, or “out of place” animals—is, by definition, characterized by testimonial and circumstantial evidence (Heuvelmans 1982; 1988). These forms of evidence are insufficient for the subjects of cryptozoology, or cryptids, to receive widespread recognition among conventional zoologists. In the zoological sciences, circumstantial evidence is inconclusive yet undeniably intriguing. Indeed, consistent, high-quality circumstantial evidence may even motivate more rigorous exploratory investigations in search of conclusive physical evidence, i.e., specimens. But what are we to make of evidence that is persistent but neither consistent nor high-quality? And what about evidence that seems so often to disappear or otherwise elude its investigators (a situation shared by alien implant and crashed saucer advocates, among others)? Is there a mystery at all? This article presents a non-exhaustive selection of occasions on which evidence for purported unknown animals was (in)conveniently lost just as it was at hand. … (Skeptical Inquirer)