I had a very curious experience recently. I discovered that I know what it’s like to be insane. No, save the obvious jokes; this is interesting. This came about because I read a magazine article somewhere which I cannot now identify – recent, online, a relatively prestigious publication with a tradition of think pieces –… Continue reading Sometimes I hear voices
Category: Psychology
Questioning transsexuality
In Bradley Manning Is Not a Woman, Kevin Willamson makes a case that feeling like a transsexual – that is, that one is either a man in the body of a woman or vice-versa – should be regarded as a mental illness to be treated by therapy rather than with sex-reassignment surgery. The article surprised… Continue reading Questioning transsexuality
Preventing visceral racism
I’ve been writing about race and politics a lot recently. Now I’m going to reveal the reason: in the relatively recent past I had a very disturbing, novel, and unwelcome educational experience. For the first time in the fifty-five years of my life I found out what it was like to feel racist, from the… Continue reading Preventing visceral racism
What if it really was like that?
If you read any amount of history, you will discover that people of various times and places have matter-of-factly believed things that today we find incredible (in the original sense of “not credible”). I have found, however, that one of the most interesting questions one can ask is “What if it really was like that?”… Continue reading What if it really was like that?
Charisma: a how-to
A couple of weeks ago a friend asked me how he could become more charismatic. Because the term “charismatic” has unhelpful religious connotations, let’s begin by being clear what he was actually asking. A person is “charismatic” when he or she has the ability to communicate a vision to others in a way that makes… Continue reading Charisma: a how-to
How do you bait a trap for the soul?
You bait a trap for a mouse with tasty food. How do you bait a soul-trap for people too smart to fall for conventional religion? With half-truths, of course. I bailed out of an attempt to induct me into a cult tonight. The cult is called Landmark Forum or Landmark Education, and is descended from… Continue reading How do you bait a trap for the soul?
The moral equivalent of witchcraft
The New York Times is carrying an unusually in-depth story “What Happened to the Girls in Leroy? on an epidemic of twitching, stuttering, and tics among the high-school girls of a small town in upstate New York. The reporter didn’t go there, but I couldn’t help noticing strong parallels to what we know about the… Continue reading The moral equivalent of witchcraft
Android development pulls hot chicks. Who knew?
There I was, within earshot of the smoker’s bench outside the front entrance of the hotel hosting the World Boardgaming Championships, when I overheard the word “Android” from the three college students sitting on and around it, who I mentally tagged the Guy, the Gamer-Girl, and the Hottie. I moved a bit closer, to polite… Continue reading Android development pulls hot chicks. Who knew?
Facing your inner alpha
There’s been some discussion in response to my post on A natural contemplates game on the meaning of the term “alpha male” as it applies to humans. In comments, I had this to say as a definition: As I use “alpha”, it simply means someone who is equipped for leadership roles by psychology and temperament.… Continue reading Facing your inner alpha
A major secret of effective writing
I’m in the process of editing a document for a technical project that is intended to be an introduction for newbies to certain fairly complex issues. While requesting feedback on the project mailing list, I realized that I had accidentally revealed a major secret of really top-grade writing, exactly the sort of thing that put… Continue reading A major secret of effective writing
Heavy weather and bad juju
Many primitive societies believe that maleficient spirits cause all sorts of human misfortune that in the modern West we have learned to attribute to natural causes – cattle dying, crops failing, disease, drought, that sort of thing. A few societies have developed a more peculiar form of supernaturalism, in which evil spirits recede into the… Continue reading Heavy weather and bad juju
Kill the Buddha
There’s a Zen maxim that commands this: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him” There are several closely related interpretations of this maxim in Buddhist tradition. The most obvious one is that worship of the Buddha interferes with comprehending what he actually said – that religious fetishization is the enemy of enlightenment.… Continue reading Kill the Buddha
Mystical Poetry and Mental Postures
Over the years I’ve written at least three expositions of the hacker mindset that use the form of mystical poetry or teaching riddles. Probably the best known of these nowadays is The Unix Koans of Master Foo (2003), but there has also been The Loginataka (1992, 2010) and the short Zen poem I included in… Continue reading Mystical Poetry and Mental Postures
Breaking free of the curse of the gifted
In what threatens to become a semi-regular series, I give you a plea for help that landed in my mailbox this morning, anonymized, and my response. Querent’s situation is not unique; what’s unusual is his ability to self-diagnose and his willingness to ask for help. I have diagnosed myself with what you described (here) as… Continue reading Breaking free of the curse of the gifted
Being an oracle is weird
In some areas of computer science, “oracle” is used as a term for a magic box that delivers solutions to undecidable problems. Or, sometimes more generally for any machine that generates answers by a process you don’t understand. One of the roles I play with respect to the Battle For Wesnoth fantasy game is as… Continue reading Being an oracle is weird