No. 17: Unhappiness, consciousness, and stagnation.

Austen/Galileo/James/Plato/Russell/Shakespeare/Smith/Socrates/Thucydides

Here's some things people have been writing:

Plato told of Socrates who treasured truth over life. I feel the same way in the face of propaganda about the needs for masks this fall. thefederalist

Russell thought “unhappiness to be very largely due to mistaken views of the world, mistaken ethics, mistaken habits of life.” Here are eight of those mistakes. theatlantic

Plato, James, and Russell each thought that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality, an idea central to Galileo’s doubts about scientific measurement. This was the topic of a workshop at Marist College. scientificamerican

Shakespeare and Austen used gender neutral pronouns in their writing, says a Michigan Supreme Court Justice conucurring on a rule change to accommodate pronouns. reason

Thucydides’s trap isn’t as convincing a case for an inevitable U.S.-China war as many think. foreignaffairs

Smith pointed out that competition lowers profits. We’re now entering an stagnating era of meager profits. We’d do well to think about how that effects our politics. jacobin