For content related to philosophy, ethics.

Blogging credo

Here are the principles and guidelines I follow when blogging here on my blog.

Truth and accuracy: Everything I write is as accurate and truthful as I can manage, with some important exceptions noted below. (Note: not all my posts are about subjects where this is pertinent.) I welcome comments with suggestions and corrections. If I discover an error, I will either leave the original and add the correction, or make the correction and add a note explaining what was corrected and why.

My selves

PeterElias
28 Jun 2024

After I posted a comment in an online conversation I was told by someone I know well in real life: “That doesn’t sound like the Peter Elias I’ve worked and played with over the years.”  My response was the simple observation that most of us automatically use different ‘voices’ in different settings: we don’t use the same vocabulary or phrasing when addressing a work colleague, a grandparent, a state trooper, or a skiing buddy. Code switching is a current term for this.

Antisemitism is the wrong word

PeterElias
6 Jun 2024
A Semite is any of the peoples who speak or spoke (or descended from people who spoke) a Semitic language. The Semitic languages (note the plural) are a sub-family of the Afro-Asiatic language family that includes Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Amharic.
 
The Semitic peoples, then, include Amharans, Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, some Ethiopians, Hebrews, Tigrayans.
 

Neighborhoods evolve.

PeterElias
24 Sep 2023

In our local community, as in many others, there is active and often acrimonious debate about zoning. While everyone agrees that there is a severe shortage of available and affordable housing and that increasing the housing stock is essential, not everyone agrees that new housing should be created in the neighborhood where they live.

Humility

admin
9 Mar 2021
"A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator the smaller the fraction." 
 
~ Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) quote in Howard Eves, Return to Mathematical Circles

Responding to the 'but 99% survive' argument

admin
3 Feb 2021
Among the many candidates for arguments against taking action to protect our families, friends, colleagues, neighbors, communities and country from COVID, none make me angrier than the "but 99% survive" gambit. This argument is numerically illiterate (Mark Twain said “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so”), racist, ableist, and inhumane. Let me explain.
 

My proposed treatment for our COVID-19 pandemic

PeterElias
23 Mar 2020

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic across multiple spheres of American society is a novel event. Some have used the term black swan, Taleb's term for an event that can't be anticipated because it is outside the realm of experience. I prefer to think of it as a gray rhino, Michele Wucker's term for the big and obvious thing coming at you that you don't want to acknowledge. I think of this as a threat to our society writ large, not just as a threat to our economy or even just to public health. I think those narrow framings guarantee inadequate analysis and response.

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