A pseudo-essay informed and inspired by Condillac’s philosophy, that aims to describe a monadology of experience as a paradigm underlining autodidacticity and an autodidactic method: I’ve been active and interested in creating what I’ve tongue-in-cheek been referring to as the monadology of experience, which I’ve used to mean, “the independent units from which we...
TheMeaningOfLife.org is an essay made up of 44 points that describe the human experience from birth to death. This is a subset of a category that can be described as, “A number of lessons,” that often include advice on living (amongst the various modes of living) and explanations that make it easier to understand and thus coexist with life’s experiences. MeaningOfLife.tv can be...
Meta1: Look at yesterday and realize that I seriously need to revise my ability to use whatever code {fyi: markdown} this site uses for formatting! Meta2: Amongst the (potential) benefits of using a contents page, as introduced yesterday, is that it allows for easy copying and/or revision, and/or allowing partial-continuity and/or reference. Markdown. Diary; or, Dealing with a non-problem...
Editorial notes: The sections “Learning to reading to learn” and “Misc comments on writing” are typical of Shai’s phenomenological journey and his reflection on his own intellectual endeavours and achievements. As explained at length in other places, Shai’s journey has two main components: the first being the domain of knowledge under investigation, be it Philosophy, Science etc; and the second...
Money dominates our reality When I think about what money really is, I’m neither surprised nor disappointed that we’ve become existentially dependent on it. If you follow backwards along the chain of causality, you may see that most-every reward can be a consequence of money. There’s no way that can’t change us as we live our lives enveloped by this net! We treat cannabis...
Meta: The first thing I’d like to note today is that yesterday’s meta-worries were both baseless and valuable. They demonstrated both these properties (virtues?) and in doing so characterised what is perhaps most valuable about this diary-style writing, namely, “try-it-and-see” and “learn-from-experience”. Yesterday’s example is perhaps in itself not...
Journal: Reading science literature: I did a once-over browse of the TRENDS journals that have been published so far in this month, and have selected a few that I thought could be interesting. In TRENDS IMMUNOL I found an article that claims to review what’s known about the genetic implications for mechanisms of IBS. This is not something I’ll read now, but appears to be a reference...
Editorial notes: This Essay was found as a ‘draft’ entry in Everything2 and is published here with minor changes. BTW, if you are already here, check out the links in the second line of the title, below. Just hovering over them will give you some insight into Shai’s unique way of thinking and expressing himself. Discovering Geology at the Gariwerd Mountains; or...
People are strange, when you’re a stranger The Doors – People Are Strange We’re born into a world submerged in strangers. They – the strangers – are everywhere, doing so many different things, and we know almost nothing about them. Looking around, we realize that we live between the cogs of an impersonal, gigantic clockwork; and yet, we’re social creatures...
Three books collide in my mind and make me reflect on the human condition. Please excuse me. 1. T.S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruellest month because it reminds us of renewal; once, long ago, a woman asked the gods for immortality but forgot to ask for eternal youth. She begs to die and the renewal of spring in April taunts her. 2. Jorge Luis Borges, who was undoubtedly intimately familiar...
