Jack Vance, The Book of Dreams (1981):
read moreNavarth sat drinking wine with an aged acquaintance who bemoaned the brevity of existence. "I have left to me at the most ten years of life!"
"That is sheer pessimism," declared Navarth. "Think optimistically, rather, of the ten hundred billion years of death …
E. H. Carr, The 20 Years' Crisis, 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (1939), on the mistaken belief that everyone wants peace:
read morePolitically, the [incorrect] doctrine of the identity of interests has commonly taken the form of an assumption that every nation has an identical interest in …
Imagination is the ability to see things that aren't there.
An example from the classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer (1984), by William Gibson:
read moreTwo blocks west of the Chat, in a teashop called the Jarre de Thé, Case washed down the night's first pill with a double espresso. It was a …
A factual statement - "The earth is round" - is true or false.
A normative statement - "You should not steal" - is different from a factual statement. A normative statement describes a rule for behavior: you should not do something (or more rarely, you should do something). This is the domain of ethics …
read moreOne of my favorite Joseph Heath quotes:
read moreI happen to agree that some women who wear a niqab are doing it in order to engage in some kind of symbolic rejection or resistance to Western values. But here's the thing ... I don't care. I am completely unperturbed. I have lots …
The Parable of the Tribes, by Andrew Schmookler, is a concise explanation of why power - the ability to get other people to do what you want them to do, instead of what they want to do - is inescapable:
read moreImagine a group of tribes living within reach of one another. If …
Historian William McNeill, concluding The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1962):
read more... The secularist hopes and theories of the West which have won partial hold over men's minds all round the globe are remarkably generous ones. Like the ideals of earlier religions, they may yet demonstrate …
Someone on /r/canadapolitics asked for an introduction to Canadian politics, at the ELI5 (explain like I'm five) level.
Okay, I'm going to start by taking you literally: The best explanation I've seen for five-year-olds is the story "Building a new …
read moreSince my back-and-forth with John Robson three years ago, I've been continuing to argue with people about global warming. Here's my attempt to summarize the science, policy, and politics.
No matter how complicated the Earth's climate is, we know that it can't violate conservation of energy.
In …
read moreIn The Prince, Machiavelli writes:
read more... the Romans did in these instances what all prudent princes ought to do, who have to regard not only present troubles, but also future ones, for which they must prepare with every energy, because, when foreseen, it is easy to remedy them; but if you …