Science

You don't get certainty. Not about consciousness. Not about meaning. Not about the ground under your own life. We still don't know what consciousness is. Not in the way that matters. We have neural correlates, brain signatures that track conscious states. We have theories with names like Integrated ...More ›

Most of what runs through your head isn't yours. You inherited it. From parents who inherited it from theirs, from cultures that reward certain beliefs and punish others, from traumas that wrote their lessons in the language of survival. Over time, these thoughts harden into convictions, and convict...More ›

The observable universe is about 93 billion light-years across. That sounds like an answer to "how big is the universe?" but it isn't. It's how far light has had time to travel since the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. We're trapped inside a bubble of light, and the edge of that bubble is the fart...More ›

Human consciousness and originality are deeply intertwined. Your ability to have an original thought is likely the functional "purpose" of being conscious in the first place. Rather than just being a passive observer of the world, human consciousness acts as a virtual simulator. It allows you to bre...More ›

We live on a small ball speeding around a galaxy. We act like we understand things, but we haven't even seen a quarter of what we're trying to observe. And that's not defeatism. It's just worth being honest about how little of the picture we actually have. The consciousness problem If there are othe...More ›