science
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Science does not disprove free will
Someone contacted me through Quora recently because they were having an existential crisis — it was stimulated by the ostensibly scientific notion that humans do not have free well. Any theory that insists that we do not actually make choices is going to causes distress among many people who valorize academic thinking. Many hard-nosed metaphysicians…
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Synchronicity, Coincidence and VALIS
Synchronicity is coincidence right? Here’s how Wikipedia defines the concept: “Synchronicity is a concept, first explained by psychiatrist Carl Jung, which holds that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship, yet seem to be meaningfully related.” Since meaning is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose you get to decide if a coincidence is an example of…
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Which is the most evolutionarily advanced part of the human brain?
This is a potentially controversial issue, since there is no consensus yet on the evolution of the brain, beyond a very coarse-grained chronology. Broadly speaking, neocortical areas are new, hence the term “neo-cortex”. But among cortical areas, there is still some disagreement about which areas emerged most recently in primates. Based on what we know about…
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How reliable are psychiatric diagnoses?
This post, which mostly provides useful citations, was originally written as an answer to the following Quora question: Is ADHD one of the only psychiatric conditions that can be diagnosed objectively?