“Prove me wrong.” This is a topical phrase, as I write, for tragic reasons, but this is not about that. It’s about me trying to work out why I’m uncomfortable with it, really. Because I wouldn’t expect to be. By instinct, I’m close to a free speech maximalist. Saying things and being able to say things feels extremely important to me. And countering bad ideas by talking about them is better than suppressing them....
Toby is brilliant. And a problem. Somebody I know calls everybody of a certain type “a Toby”, because that was the name of the first one she encountered. If you come into a company as a consultant and begin asking questions, Toby’s name will come up a lot. Because Toby knows the things that everybody else just takes for granted. Toby can do the things nobody else can do, and understands the things that nobody else can quite grasp, so everybody else leaves them to him....
I don’t think about mountains much at home in the UK. In Taiwan, I think about them a lot. They’re right there, though they aren’t what most people associate with the place, I think. Taiwan is shaped by mountains. It’s a leaf at the edge of the pacific, twisted a little in the water so the spine is off-centre, and the spine is rugged. So the mountains make the land what it is, and in many ways human society what it is, too....
I have a problem with socialism. I can discuss it intellectually and rationally, and see why it appeals to others. But, like a lot of core political things, I conclude that most of us have emotional instincts, and one of mine struggles with the concept of taking things from some people and giving them to others, no matter how well-intentioned and for everyone’s good. So, while I do accept redistribution is necessary to some extent, and am open to discussion about what that extent might be, fundamentally those who believe in equality of resources are always going to have an uphill struggle persuading me....
“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.” I have never really understood the English class system. I’m English. Very English. I nodded to myself when Hugh Grant said we’re born one gin-and-tonic below par. And we all swim in this sea of class consciousness, whatever we might like to say about it being a relic of the past. For all we ignore it and pretend otherwise, it makes a massive difference to almost everything experienced by anyone, like me, who comes from a very obvious long-standing English background....
Some time ago, working for a company that was growing fast, I was asked to write an article to appear in a trade magazine. That wasn’t my job, but they liked my writing and my know-how. When the result was passed around the upper levels of the company and the sales team, some people loved it. But overall, it made senior people too nervous, and it was revised beyond recognition, with just the core message still retained for those who could detect it....
In the nineteen-nineties, there was a small chain of shops devoted to men who wished to be, or seem to be (both were catered for), women. I discovered this after reading the autobiography of the transgender owner, part of an exploration that was very important in my life. Visiting the shop in London blew my mind. There’s no doubt in my mind that if things then had been like they have been in the twenty-twenties, I would have gone the whole way down the gender reassignment road, the sheer inevitability carrying me....
Wrestling with the theory of Artificial Intelligence is not a new thing. Two books have occupied space in my head for many years now that still have some of the best questions, at least – The Emperor’s New Mind Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid What they have in common is that they attempt to deal with consciousness, and they take Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem as a basis for it....
Dusk is later than it was, And, waiting on the path outside karate, It isn’t dark, just getting grey. As we wait, the air is full of shrieks, Cries and clouds of shapes around the tallest trees. The rooks are busy, noisy, crowded, And possibly the tree above us is their pub, With all the noise their sharing of the week. I have no clue what any rooks are doing....
If you like, feel free to abandon this post and read this instead: Beyond Elon Don’t worry, the title is basically clickbait, but the essay itself is very good, and says what I’d like to say myself, very well. If you’re still here, or have come back … When I was at school, the teachers loved me. I was the kind of child they went into the career for. I came from nowhere, a family with no expectations that had nobody with a university background, and I picked up pretty much everything effortlessly....